Redemption's Touch (Kimani Romance)

by Ann Christopher

  Aunt Arnetta surged to her feet, all gentility gone. “Eric.”

  Eric, perhaps sensing doom, froze, his mouth hanging open.

  “Shut. Up.” Aunt Arnetta glared at him, making Andrew’s fearsome glower of a moment ago look like a smile from Santa Claus.

  They all gaped, probably because no one in living memory had ever seen Arnetta Warner be anything other than the perfect lady. This, clearly, was a bad sign.

  Eric recovered first. “S-sorry, Grandmother.”

  Aunt Arnetta, giving him a satisfied nod, resumed her seat and crossed her legs. “Thank you. May I have a drink, please? Make it a double vodka.”

  Arianna, shaking off the lingering shock effects of this outburst, snuck a glance at the pendulum’s slow swing on the grandfather clock in the corner. Ten-twenty. At this rate, they’d all be staggering by noon.

  Ah, well. When in Rome…

  “And I’ll have a Bloody Mary,” she told Eric.

  Eric raised his eyebrows. “Are you even legal?”

  Arianna didn’t have the time or patience for nonsense. “Don’t make me come over there.”

  Muttering unintelligibly, Eric reached for another tumbler.

  Drinks were made and passed around. Arianna sat on a love seat and tasted her Bloody Mary, which was spicy enough to keep her sinuses clear for weeks to come. Andrew and Eric sat as well. They all stared at each other, sipping and brooding. No one spoke.

  Dawson Reynolds crept into the silence, owning her thoughts as he had since she laid eyes on him. No. Not Dawson Reynolds. Joshua Bishop. She’d have to work on remembering that.

  Was it just last night that she met him? Was that possible? What did she think about before he showed up in her life? Anything?

  So…just to review: Last night, she’d met and fallen wildly in lust with a man she thought was named Dawson Reynolds. They flirted, they had sex in the greenhouse, he disappeared, she cried.

  Today, it turned out that Dawson Reynolds was an innocent ex-convict named Joshua Bishop, who was the adopted son of Franklin Bishop, her aunt’s right-hand man, and the biological son of Arianna’s late and apparently unlamented Uncle Reynolds. Dawson/Joshua hated the Warners, and they weren’t any too fond of him. He wanted his share of the pie, and they no doubt wanted to be left alone to continue their unbroken streak of dominance in the corporate world.

  To summarize, then: pretty much everyone here at Heather Hill had a deep secret and/or wasn’t what s/he seemed to be and/or had betrayed or been betrayed by another family member.

  Nice, huh?

  Maybe Microsoft or Google could design software sophisticated enough to track all these hidden relationships; it really was hard to keep up.

  The best part of all was that Arianna also had a secret. Well, she had more than one, seeing as how she’d dodged some of Dawson’s questions last night, but that wasn’t the one on her mind now.

  No. The troublesome secret for the moment was this: A remote, shameful part of her was glad to see Dawson/Joshua/Whoever again. Glad to know who he was and where he came from. Glad to know she could find him again if she needed to. Glad to see that he hadn’t forgotten their interlude last night and wasn’t immune to her this morning.

  Yeah. They all had serious mental-health issues here at Heather Hill, didn’t they? Must be something in the water.

  Another sip of her powerful Bloody Mary had a buzz shooting straight to her brain, which was good because her brain could use a little relief from its overload. On the other hand, it was bad because how could she think clearly about a complex problem like Dawson when she was already half a sheet to the wind?

  She got him now, though. Totally understood the wounded eyes and the mountain-sized chip on his shoulder. There wasn’t a man alive who wouldn’t be enraged over the loss of years of his life for no good reason. And to have also lost the love of his family, and not even have them to rely on in his time of need, well…

  She couldn’t imagine the damage that must have been done to Dawson.

  Joshua.

  Whoever.

  Suddenly, nonsensically, she was mad, too, and the hurt Dawson had caused by walking out on her last night seemed like a big, fat nothing. She was tough; she’d get over it. She’d punish him for it, of course, but she would get over it.

  But what about Dawson? Would he ever get over the hurts he’d suffered at the hands of his family?

  What kind of so-called father rejected his son, adopted or not?

  Turning to Bishop, she studied him. They’d become friendly during her visit, and if anyone had asked her two hours ago, she’d’ve said he was a fine gentleman, the kind they didn’t make anymore.

  Now, though, she saw him as an old man who’d royally screwed up the most important task he—or anyone—could have in life: raising his child.

  Andrew, meanwhile, sighed and ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it. Like the others, he seemed to have aged ten years this morning, and the stress lines showed on his face. “There are a couple ways we could go with this,” he began. “We could fight him, of course, and force his hand on the—”

  “I don’t understand this, Bishop.” Arianna spoke quietly, but there was no keeping the ferocity out of her voice. Who in this crowd would speak up for Dawson if she didn’t? “What did you do to him?”

  They all gaped at her, except for Bishop. He sat, shell-shocked and frozen, on the edge of the sofa, his hands on his knees and his gaze on the floor.

  He didn’t answer and seemed not to breathe. His coloring was definitely off now, chalky, and his face was damp with what looked like a clammy sweat.

  “Arianna,” Aunt Arnetta said, “this is none of your concern.”

  Arianna considered this, her gaze still on Bishop. “True. But I’m trying to understand. I can’t figure out how this man I thought I knew a little bit, this fine gentleman, could have turned his back on his son. How he could have thrown his paternity in his face. Have I misjudged you that badly, Bishop?”

  Bishop stirred for the first time, staring off at something just beyond the coffee table, a memory that only he could see. “Joshua was a hard boy. You can’t understand that now, but he was. Hardheaded. Never listened. Always made his own path.” He paused just long enough to let the beginnings of a smile flicker across his face. “And he was smart. Way smarter than me, and I never finished high school.” His faint smile vanished. “I couldn’t handle him.”

  So what? What did this have to do with disowning Dawson and letting him molder in jail for something he didn’t do? “I still don’t—”

  The harshness in her voice seemed to snap Bishop out of the past and put him firmly in the here and now. His lips twisted with a wry grin. “You’re awful hard on me, Arianna. How many children you got?”

  Was that supposed to shut her up? “You’ll have to do better than that, Bishop. You can deflect all you want, but that doesn’t change what you did.”

  “Arianna,” Aunt Arnetta snarled.

  Bishop held up a hand. “Let the girl speak, Arnetta. She’s right. Well…half-right, anyway. That boy went off to Duke. Started drinking. Running with the wrong crowd. Got into all kinds of trouble, and I let him know. I didn’t want no son of mine acting like an ass down there.”

  “So?” Arianna said. “That’s the story of half the kids in this country.”

  Bishop blinked at her, his gaze hardening. “He cussed me. Said I was nothing but a butler who spent his whole life waiting on folk, being a second-class citizen, and what did I know? He said he wished he had a daddy he could be proud of, like one of the Warner men up at the big house—”

  “Oh, Bishop.” Aunt Arnetta put a consoling arm around his shoulders.

  “—and he didn’t never…didn’t never want to wind up like me.”

  The effort of getting this last part out seemed to take a real toll. Bishop raised a gnarled hand to his temple and rubbed, as though he needed to soothe away an unreachable pain. That hand shook and his lower lip trembled. H
urt pride practically leaked from him, and he was such a perfect mirror for his son’s wounded teddy bear soul that Arianna couldn’t look away.

  Neither could anyone else, apparently. All eyes were riveted on Bishop.

  “He stabbed me in the heart, that boy.” Bishop looked to each face in turn, seeking understanding, desperate for absolution. Andrew nodded at him, but Eric lowered his gaze, looking intensely uncomfortable. Aunt Arnetta rubbed his back. “Stabbed me right in my heart.”

  Arianna didn’t so much as blink. How could she grant forgiveness when she wasn’t done accusing? This ugliness between parent and child was unimaginable to her. She thought of Daddy, God rest his soul, and Mother, home in NYC, with a box of Godiva’s hazelnut praline truffles always at the ready, just in case Arianna decided to pop home for the weekend. Even when she’d driven her parents crazy, and there’d been plenty of that over the years, there wasn’t one second of her life when she’d doubted their love for her, or her place in the family.

  Dawson, on the other hand, had grown up in a house where he wasn’t quite loved and didn’t quite belong. And they’d wondered why he had anger issues?

  “So you stabbed him back,” she said to Bishop. “You told him he wasn’t yours.”

  To his credit, Bishop didn’t try to minimize the ugliness. “Worst mistake of my life. Biggest regret I’ve ever had. I broke that boy’s heart, and my wife’s heart, and she never got over it. Broke my own heart.” He paused. “I never got over it.”

  Andrew stared off across the room, looking thoughtful. “That must’ve been when Joshua really spiraled out of control. Right after he graduated. He had a couple DUIs and a drunk-and-disorderly. We bailed him out the first couple of times. It only pissed him off. He didn’t want anything from a Warner. He told me to go screw myself.”

  Bishop nodded. “That boy was trying to destroy himself. I knew what he was doing. I couldn’t stop it. And when he was arrested for sexual assault, I tried—”

  “You didn’t try hard enough,” Arianna said flatly.

  There was a general hiss of disapproval around the group, and to her dismay, Andrew’s gaze sharpened on her with the keen intensity of a hawk. “What’s all this to you, Ari?” he questioned. “You weren’t here then. You don’t know anything about this. Why are you Joshua’s biggest defender all of a sudden? I didn’t think you two even knew each other.”

  Arianna froze, suddenly feeling as conspicuous as a flying hippopotamus.

  Damn it. When would she learn to keep her big mouth shut?

  “It don’t matter.” With a choked, broken sound, Bishop curled in on himself, wrapping his arms around his abdomen and rocking back and forth where he sat. “She’s right. I wasn’t ever the father that boy needed.”

  This, finally, cracked the buildup of ice around her heart. It was such a stunning and horrifying thing to see Bishop lose control—Bishop! who’d run this household and successfully navigated the stormy waters of Aunt Arnetta’s moods since Adam and Eve put on their first set of clothes—that Arianna wanted to hang her head in shame for everything she’d just said to him.

  Poor man. Look at him. He knew what he’d done, and all the ways he’d failed.

  “I’m sorry, Bishop,” Arianna began.

  Aunt Arnetta had already moved into damage-control mode. “You hush now, Bishop.” Pulling out that same lace hanky, she tried to press it into his hand so he could wipe his streaming eyes, but Bishop’s fingers were shaking so badly he only dropped it. “Everything’ll be okay. You stop that crying.”

  Bishop, to their intense embarrassment, didn’t stop crying. Worse, he seemed to have passed into some other realm where he had to plead his case and no amount of reassurance could reach him.

  “Joshua,” he said, sobbing and rocking, his voice garbled with emotion and drool trickling from the corner of his mouth, “please sorry can’t me not blame.” One half of his face spasmed, and unwrapping his hands from his body, he pressed them to the sides of his head. “Blame not Joshua sorry Joshaaa. Joshaaa.”

  “Hush, Bishop,” Aunt Arnetta said, still trying to soothe him.

  Arianna, Andrew and Eric, meanwhile, exchanged looks of alarm. This wasn’t normal, was it? Something else was going on here, because a man shouldn’t—

  “Bishop,” Arianna cried, reaching out to him. “Are you okay?”

  They watched in stunned disbelief as Bishop’s eyes rolled back in his head. Before anyone could stop him, he slumped over sideways, his dead weight knocking Aunt Arnetta down with him.

  “Bishop!” Arnetta screamed.

  “Somebody call 911,” Andrew said grimly.

  Chapter 7

  A couple hours later, Arianna pounded on Dawson’s door with her palm and, fueled by frustration, raised her voice. “I need to talk to you. Dawson.”

  She shot a quick glance over her shoulder down the long, plush hallway. Empty, thank God. Five-star hotels like this generally didn’t take kindly to people banging on the guests’ doors, but she had more important things to worry about than being arrested for disturbing the peace.

  Hearing no movement inside, she knocked again.

  “Damn it, Dawson, I know you’re in there, and I don’t appreciate—”

  Without warning, the door swung open, and there Dawson was, cell phone in hand, naked but for the white towel across his hips and the drops of water sprinkling his skin.

  Oh, man.

  Despite the crisis, her hormones were fully functional. Overactive, in fact. She wanted to scoop him up and devour him, one delicious bite at a time, like a DQ Oreo Blizzard. She wanted him between her legs again, inside her, their sweat mingling in an intoxicating musk. She wanted to lock herself inside that room with him and never come out.

  All of which proved, once again, that she had the IQ of a newborn hamster where this man was concerned.

  They stared at each other in mutual speechlessness until finally her face burned so red-hot with embarrassment that she had to lower her gaze and pray for composure.

  She hadn’t expected this. Well, she’d expected him to answer the door, obviously, because this was his hotel room. But she hadn’t expected him to look like…that.

  You’d think that a near-naked Dawson wouldn’t hit her so hard, having had sex with him last night and all, but no. Last night, she hadn’t seen all this. And all this was magnificent.

  Acres of dewy bare skin, gleaming warm and brown in the early afternoon light. Shoulders and arms cut with muscles so defined they probably required a Rocky-style championship bout workout, with one-arm push-ups and whatnot, to achieve. That unidentifiable tattoo on his neck, which she now saw was a grid like a tic-tac-toe board, with swirls at the ends. A rippling abdomen. Strong thighs, heavy calves, nice feet. Even in her flustered foolishness, she didn’t dare peek at the towel and what it hid, but man, she wanted to.

  Feeling strangled, she cleared her throat.

  “Arianna?”

  That raw huskiness in his voice snapped her out of her sensual reverie.

  What was she doing? This wasn’t about admiring the jerk’s badass body, or remembering delicious snippets of last night. This was an emergency.

  “I need to talk to you.” Shoring up her courage, she looked back in his face and wished she hadn’t. There was such heat in those dark eyes, such flashing desire, that she knew something had to be going on underneath that towel.

  Another excruciating second passed.

  Em-er-gen-cy.

  Shouldering past him and into his room, she ignored the electric contact of their arms and glanced around. It was a suite, with tasteful modern sofas and tables, potted plants and a bar area, and enough space for a family of four to live comfortably until the kids went off to college. She’d expected as much. Dawson, having come into his money fairly recently, apparently liked to roll with style, and she couldn’t blame him for that.

  “Come right in.” He shut the door behind her.

  “Where have you been? We’ve been call
ing and calling you.”

  His expression turned wary. “I…was blowing off some steam in the hotel’s weight room. What’s up?”

  “I left you a thousand messages.” All the morning’s mounting frustrations rose up to make her a little manic. “I had to call your office and sweet talk your assistant into telling me your cell phone number and what hotel you were at. And then I had to bribe the front desk clerk to tell me your room number. Why didn’t you check your messages?”

  “I just was.” He held up the cell phone. “What’s going on?”

  Now that her desperate find-Dawson mission was accomplished and the moment was here, she couldn’t say it. She hated to hurt this man any further. The frustration on top of the worry, naturally, made her snippy.

  “I don’t even know what to call you,” she said sourly.

  After a long hesitation, he shrugged with what looked like real confusion. As though the whole topic was as big a mystery to him as it was to her.

  “I don’t know what you should call me, either.”

  Great.

  “I have some bad news for you…”

  He stilled.

  “Bishop collapsed after you left. He’s in critical condition at the hospital. They’re running tests, but…we think he’s had a stroke.”

  “Oh.”

  She waited, but that was all he said. Just oh.

  She was beginning to reflect on the general heartlessness of both father and son in the misbegotten Bishop family when she saw it: a subtle contraction of all his features, with a look of such fleeting but abject pain that she almost missed it.

  Then—oh, no—then he blindly reached behind him, found the coffee table and sank onto it. Putting his elbows on his knees, he clasped his hands together and rested his forehead against his fists, either praying desperately or trying to pull himself back from the brink of despair.

  Oh, God. What did she do now?