Текст книги "Heir to scandal"

Автор книги: Andrea Laurence

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

Four

It was nearly three in the morning when Xander turned off the main highway toward her apartment complex. They’d opted to leave her car at the diner. Craig would take her to work the next day and she could get it then.

They didn’t talk much on the drive home and Rose was relieved. She was emotionally and physically exhausted. Tonight had been a night eleven years in the making and now it was done. All she wanted to do was get her baby into bed, make him comfortable, give him some pain medication and pass out herself.

Rose glanced over her shoulder at the slumped-over bundle in the backseat. Joey was out cold, as was to be expected. Between the late hour and the medication, he didn’t stand a chance. She was just happy that he could sleep, considering the heavy, uncomfortable cast on his arm. He actually looked quite peaceful. Rose had always enjoyed watching him sleep. The first night she brought him home from the hospital, she’d just sat in her rocking chair and watched him in his bassinet.

Then and now he was like an angel in a painting with peach skin and dark eyelashes against his rose-kissed cheeks. His lips were full and pouty, like hers, and they moved ever so slightly as he dreamed. He was getting older, and his cherubic face was fading into the lean features of his father, but she couldn’t help but look at him and see her baby again.

“He’s been out since we pulled onto the highway,” Xander said. “Poor guy.”

Rose smiled at her son and turned back to face the road. “He’s had a long day. I hate to wake him up to get him inside, but he’s gotten too big to carry anymore.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Xander said. “We might be able to walk him in without fully waking him up. I used to sleepwalk. All you had to do was stand me up and guide the way. By the way...does your brother live near you?”

“No,” Rose said. “He has a house in Litchfield.”

“Well, then is there any particular reason why your brother is following us to your place? It’s a little late to preserve your honor.”

“What?” Rose turned again, this time to look at the truck following behind them. It was Craig, all right. His truck was jacked up on big wheels and one headlight was fading out. “That’s odd. He didn’t mention coming back with us. He should’ve turned off onto 63 a couple miles back.”

Xander made a thoughtful humming sound but didn’t respond. Instead he listened intently as Rose gave him the last bit of instructions to lead him to her building. He pulled into a vacant spot and her brother’s truck rolled into the one beside them.

Rose and Xander climbed out of his SUV, meeting Craig as he opened the back door of the Lexus. “You didn’t have to come all the way back with us. I know it’s late and you have to work tomorrow.”

“It’s no problem,” Craig said, giving Xander an appraising look before he reached in and scooped up Joey into his arms. Even in his sleep, Joey clung to him like a monkey and Craig brushed past them toward the apartment.

Rose noticed the slightly annoyed expression on Xander’s face. He’d been a dad officially for only a few hours now, but he seemed perturbed to lose his opportunity to fill the role. At the same time, her brother wasn’t about to step aside. He’d been Joey’s father figure since the day he was born.

She expected Xander to say something about it, but he shook it off and shut the door.

“It’s late for you, too,” she said, looking up at the handsome man who’d anticipated only a nice date with an old friend tonight. This was not at all how she’d planned this night to end, either. Things had taken a sharp left turn the moment her brother called. Part of her wished she could wind back the clock and change the way the night ended, but another part of her was relieved to have all the secrets out in the open. Well, at least the ones relevant to Xander.

He smiled and reached out to take her hand. “I don’t have to work tomorrow.”

She felt so tiny and delicate wrapped in the massive warmth of his fingers. It felt like electric sparks were dancing up her arm when their skin touched, making her tremble softly. When he lifted her knuckles to his lips, her breath moved almost as rapidly into her lungs as her heart beat in her chest. She responded even to the most simple and innocent of Xander’s gestures. She wished she didn’t. It would be easier to tell him no. That was the right thing to do. Son or no son, he would be going back to D.C. soon. If she wasn’t careful, he would leave heartbreak in his wake.

He still had her hand clasped in his when he spoke again. “Besides, I’m twelve feet from your apartment. It would be stupid not to see this date through to the very end. May I walk you to your door, Rose?”

“You may.” It was safe with Craig still there. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t invite Xander in. She took his arm and walked with him down the narrow sidewalk that led to her apartment door. It was already open and judging by the light in the hallway, Craig was inside getting Joey into bed.

“I’m sorry about his arm,” Xander said, “but I’m not sorry about the rest of it. I’m glad you agreed to have dinner with me. And I’m glad to finally know what’s been going on all this time. Maybe the three of us can go out later this week when he’s feeling better.”

His words made her heart light with a sense of hope she’d been lacking all these years. His cool response to finding out about Joey had worried her that he would remain hands-off. “That would be nice.”

Xander placed a palm against her cheek, stroking her soft skin before leaning in to press his lips against hers. This wasn’t like the kiss in the parking lot. That one had left her achingly unfulfilled and burning for his touch. This kiss was tender, comforting, and it warmed her body and soul.

“May I have a word?” Craig’s sharp voice cut through the moment, causing Xander to jerk away. He looked at her brother for a moment and then he nodded.

“What’s this all about, Craig?” Rose asked.

Craig crossed his arms over his chest. “I just want to have a chat with Xander.”

Rose planted her hands on her hips and scowled at her brother. He’d always been an overprotective bear. She appreciated the role he played in Joey’s life—that father he didn’t have until now—but she didn’t need his two cents on this situation. And she certainly didn’t want him giving Xander a good talking-to.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” she said. “You’re not my daddy.”

“Daddy would do it if he were here. This talk is ten years overdue.”

Rose opened her mouth to argue, but Xander held out his hand. “It’s okay. I don’t have any problem talking with Craig. It’ll be fine.”

Rose scowled at her brother and swung her purse over her shoulder. “Fine, but there’ll be none of that stepping-outside nonsense. If you’ve got something to say to him, you’ll say it while I’m standing here or not at all.” She could see some of her brother’s bravado dissipating. He couldn’t be the macho jerk he wanted to be while she watched and Rose knew it. “Go ahead,” she said, her tone sharp. “Say what you’ve got to say, Craig.”

Craig took a deep breath and turned to Xander with a frown. “Fine.”

“Before you start,” Xander said, “I wanted to say thank you.”

That brought Craig’s rant to a sudden stop. “You want to thank me?”

“Yes. Apparently, a lot has happened while I’ve been gone. I wish I had known the extent of it, but I can’t go back and change things now. So thanks for being there for Rose and Joey. She told me how you take him to games and practices. It means a lot to me to know that Joey wasn’t missing out because I wasn’t a part of his life.”

Craig’s square chin tipped up as his chest puffed. “You’re right,” he said. “He hasn’t missed out. I’ve done everything I can to make sure of it. He’s a happy kid. He knows he has family that loves him. I’m not going to let you waltz in here and hurt him.”

“Craig!” Rose chastised, but her brother ignored her.

“No. It needs to be said.” He pointed his finger at Xander but stopped short of touching him. “If you’re going to be in his life, you can’t half-ass it. No announcing you’re his daddy and then hightailing it back to D.C. and forgetting about him for months at a time. That’s not how it works.”

Rose held her breath. Xander was a busy man with a schedule that didn’t leave time for much, especially the obligations of a child. They hadn’t talked about this yet. There were a lot of things still to discuss, but she worried if Craig pushed too hard, Xander would walk away from the whole thing. At this point, she couldn’t prove Joey was his child. He was taking this on what she told him and what his eyes perceived.

“You’re absolutely right,” Xander said, and the air rushed from her lungs. “You can be certain that Joey will be our number-one priority as Rose and I work this out. This isn’t something that can be resolved in a night. And for now, we’ve agreed not to tell him about me yet. Or tell anyone, for that matter. I’d appreciate it if you would help keep this secret until we’re ready.”

Craig seemed to follow along in agreement, but when Xander finished, her brother tensed up and eyed him with suspicion once again. “Sometimes I forget you’re a politician. This all sounds real good, but I can’t believe a word you say. I’ll keep this secret for Joey’s sake, not yours. You’ve got to prove to me with actions, not words, that you mean what you say.”

“I’ll do everything I can to prove to them, and to you, that I mean it.” Xander offered his hand to shake on it.

Craig accepted it, but before he let go, he leaned in and said something else Rose couldn’t hear. Xander stiffened slightly at the quiet words, and then he nodded and pulled his hand away. Whatever the discussion, it seemed to satisfy her brother.

“Night, Rose,” Craig said, heading out to his truck with a casual wave. “I’ll pick you up about ten for work.”

Rose just shook her head. She would never understand men. She watched Craig drive away and glanced at her watch. Great. He’d be back in about six hours. Who needed sleep? It was highly overrated.

“I’d better go,” Xander said. “Do you need anything else tonight?”

She turned to him and sighed. “No. You’ve done enough, thank you. I’m sorry about my brother. He’s not very sensitive to how all this must be for you.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “If my sister was in this position, I’d probably do the same thing. Only I’d have my three brothers and Ken scowling behind me.”

“I’m surprised Julianne can date at all.” Rose could barely stand one overbearing brother. How Julianne managed with all four of the Eden boys and her father watching, she didn’t know. Last Rose had heard, Julianne hadn’t married yet, either. Maybe the brothers were successful.

Xander smiled, confirming her suspicions. “If she does, she’s smart and keeps quiet about it.” He took a step toward her and wrapped his arms around her waist. Rose allowed herself to be pulled against him, the protective cocoon of his body welcome after a long, distressing night. He dipped his head to kiss her again. Reluctantly, he pulled away and took a step toward the door. “See you soon, Rose.”

After the door shut, Rose let her body sink back against the wall. A swirl of emotions in her gut, compounded by exhaustion, made it hard for her to keep herself upright.

The future was wide-open now and she had no idea what to expect. It scared the hell out of her.

* * *

If you hurt my sister or my nephew, I swear I’ll be sharing a cell with my dad that very same day.

Those were Craig’s exact words, yet they’d inspired more confusion in Xander than fear. The threat was clear and Xander understood how concerned Craig was with keeping Rose and Joey happy and safe.

But a cell with his dad? Admittedly, Xander was out of touch, but certainly he would’ve heard something if Billy Pierce was in jail. Right?

There was only one way to find out for certain. Xander rolled out of bed sometime around lunch that afternoon. He got dressed and made his way from the converted barn known as the bunkhouse, where he and the other boys stayed growing up, over to the main house to talk to Ken or Molly.

He opened the back door, walking straight into the old kitchen he’d raided repeatedly during his teen years. His foster father, Ken, was sitting at the worn kitchen table, hovering over a bowl of soup and crackers.

“Morning, son,” Ken said, looking up and then back down at his watch. “Good afternoon, rather.”

“Hi, Dad.”

“Grab some soup and join me.”

“Sounds good.” Xander went to the stove, where beef-and-vegetable soup was simmering in a large pot. Even though it was only Ken and Molly on the farm now, she still cooked as if she had a houseful of teenage boys to feed. He ladled soup into a bowl and took it and a glass of tea with him to the table. “Where’s Mom?”

“She went into town to the farmers’ market. Everyone is getting ready for the strawberry festival this weekend. She wanted to pick up a bushel or two of Joe Wheeler’s berries and plan her entries for the baking competition.”

Every summer, Cornwall hosted the Strawberry Days Festival. Friday, Saturday and Sunday would be filled with parades, carnivals, food booths and contests. Someone would be crowned Queen of the Berries. Molly would cook herself half to death this week in the hopes of bringing home one of the coveted blue ribbons. The most cutthroat of competitions were the strawberry-preserves and the strawberry-pie categories, and the winner could lord it over all the other women in town the rest of the year.

Xander could remember eating so many of Molly’s practice dishes as a kid that he went nearly two years in college without eating strawberry anything. He swallowed a spoonful of soup and shook his head. Molly worried herself sick every year and never won, even though her stuff was great. “I’m surprised she’s still butting her head against that wall. You and I know it’s a setup and the mayor’s wife always wins. I know corruption when I see it.”

“Yes, but she’s stubborn, just like all of you kids.”

Xander smiled at the incredulity of his father’s statement. “You’re not including yourself in that group? The man who had a heart attack but refused to tell his kids because it was nothing? The man who’d rather sell off huge chunks of land than admit to his extremely wealthy children that he’d lost his medical insurance and needed some help with bills?”

Ken shrugged. “You all come by it honestly, I suppose.”

Xander shook his head and ate his soup. His father had no idea how much trouble he’d caused by selling that land. The unused back portion of the farm had served no purpose to him; it paid off his medical bills without causing a fuss. He couldn’t fathom why the kids were so upset. They were upset because they knew what was hidden in the far section of the property.

And now so did the whole town. They just didn’t know who it was. Over the months, the information had been slow to come and sparse when it did. Cornwall didn’t deal with many murder victims. So far the only information the police had released was that the remains had been buried for approximately fifteen to twenty years and that it was the body of a young adult male.

When they’d found out Ken had sold the land, Xander’s oldest brother, Wade, had come home to deal with the issue and buy back the land before anything could happen. Unfortunately, their parents had sold three plots and Wade had secured the wrong one. They hadn’t found that out until the body was found on another piece of the property.

Then the dead man’s sister had come to Cornwall looking for answers about her missing brother. Brody had sounded the alarm and dug up a mountain of information they could use against her if necessary. So far it hadn’t been needed. There was no information on her brother to find. Everyone had told her what they knew—Tommy had run away from his foster home a week before his eighteenth birthday and had never been seen again.

Now that Congress was out of session and the facial re-creation sketch could hit the news at any moment, it was Xander’s turn to deal with the potential fallout. An entire situation that could’ve been avoided if Ken hadn’t been so pigheaded.

Of course, if none of this had happened, Xander wouldn’t have known he had a son. Everything was a mess, but somehow he couldn’t regret that.

“What kept you out so late?” Ken asked. “Molly said you were going to that new Italian place, but they close at eleven. I heard your car roll in close to four this morning.” His bright blue eyes looked over his son, waiting for his explanation for the five-hour gap, as if he were seventeen and out past curfew again.

“I had to take my date to the hospital.”

Ken’s eyes widened in surprise, his cracker hovering halfway to his mouth. “Go that well, did it?”

“It wasn’t her,” Xander said with a smile. “Her son broke his arm and we had to meet him there.” Xander was surprised how hard it was for him to say “her son.” It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since he uncovered the truth and yet Joey was already “his” in his own mind.

He wanted to tell Ken the truth, but it was too soon. He couldn’t tell Ken and not let him tell Molly. That would put him in a bad place with his wife. Molly was desperate for grandchildren. If she was the last one to find out that she had one—and he was ten—someone would get hurt. “You remember Rose, don’t you, Dad?”

“Your high school girl?”

“Yeah.”

Ken nodded. “Sure. I saw her at the diner a few weeks back. Is that who you went out to dinner with? Your mother didn’t know.”

“I didn’t tell her, but yes, I had dinner with Rose. I didn’t want Mom to read too much into it.”

“I forget that she has a son,” Ken added. “I’ve never even seen her with him, but they live a few towns over, I think.”

“He’s a cute kid. Broke his arm pretty bad on the trampoline.”

“That’s a shame,” Ken said, pushing aside his empty soup bowl. “That whole family has faced one stroke of bad luck after the other. First Billy’s wife got that awful cancer. Things were so hard for them after that. He nearly ran their auto shop into the ground, he was so lost without her. And then...well, it’s no wonder Billy got wrapped up in that bad stuff.”

Xander’s ears perked up. He knew his parents would know what was going on with Rose’s father. Molly knew everything that happened in this town, and whether Ken cared or not, Molly would tell him all about it. “Bad stuff?”

“I forget you guys miss out on everything going on around here. About five years ago, Billy got in with the wrong crowd. He was recruited to drive the getaway car while a couple of them robbed a bank.”

Xander felt his soup start to churn in his stomach. He’d known that Billy being in a cell didn’t bode well, but he’d hoped for check fraud or tax evasion. A crime, but one that didn’t hurt anyone. He’d never anticipated armed robbery.

“Billy just sat in the car and drove off when they ran out. He had no clue what actually happened inside the bank, but apparently, things went badly. One of the guys shot and killed a security guard. It was a big mess.”

Yes. Yes, it was a big mess. Xander tried not to outwardly react, but the universe seemed to be conspiring against him. He’d managed to avoid scandal all this time. Now he had enough circling around him to end his political career forever.

Illegitimate children, murder, armed robbery—it was getting downright juicy. Heaven forbid one of the news outlets got ahold of this. If all this was so easily uncovered, he couldn’t imagine what a determined reporter could find if he really tried. On the bright side, he’d have plenty of fodder for a second book if all this didn’t tank the first one.

Xander wouldn’t lie. He wanted Rose. Badly. Before she got that call, he was pretty certain he’d been on the verge of having her. Her cheeks had been flush, her lips bee-stung with kisses. She’d been pressing against him and making those soft sounds of desire that he remembered from all those years ago. And then everything fell apart. He still wanted her, but was it even possible now? He’d sensed her pull back after their kiss at the restaurant. She might’ve just been worried about her son, but it seemed like more than that. As if she regretted it.

And even if that wasn’t true, the night had ended far more complicated than it had started. They could try to keep Joey and her father’s incarceration a secret, but eventually, word would get out that he was romantically involved with Rose. It wouldn’t take much digging for a reporter to find out the rest and start connecting the dots.

And that was just Rose’s family. Never mind that Xander was fighting to keep his own skeleton buried. “How did Rose take it?”

“I’m not sure. I know that’s when she moved back here with her son. She tried to run her dad’s garage for a while, but her brother took over eventually. Molly mentioned that Rose always seemed so positive when she spoke to her. I think she copes by trying to pretend it didn’t happen.”

“That’s probably true,” Xander said. “She didn’t mention it to me at all last night. That’s sort of a big thing.”

“You can’t blame her. If one of you committed a stupid and violent crime, I wouldn’t be shouting it from the rooftops.”

Xander swallowed a mouthful of soup and opted not to respond. The last year and a half, he and his siblings had been struggling—not to stay out of jail but to keep Tommy Wilder’s death and their involvement a secret from their parents. They’d never wanted or intended to do what they did that day. Their hands had been forced by circumstances and the fear of losing their new home and parents.

But they had committed crimes that day. Heath had killed Tommy while trying to protect Julianne. Wade had hidden the body. Xander and Brody were both guilty of destroying or fabricating evidence. Brody had taken Julianne to the bunkhouse to clean up and change out of her torn and bloody clothes. Xander had gathered her clothes and burned them, along with all of Tommy’s belongings, and then forged a note from Tommy. Heath had cleaned up the scene.

They were just kids. Hell, Heath and Julianne were only thirteen at the time. They’d panicked and done what they thought they had to do to protect themselves. If pressed, they could prove Tommy’s death was an accident that happened while defending their sister from Tommy’s attack. Anyone who knew Tommy back then knew what he was capable of. He stole, he got into fights and he didn’t do his fair share around the farm. He’d been brought to the Garden of Eden as a last-ditch attempt to find him a foster home when his own family could no longer control him and no one else would take him.

But that didn’t mean the truth wouldn’t disappoint their parents. That the shock of it wouldn’t give Ken another attack or break Molly’s heart. At the very least, Ken would beat himself up for being sick that day and unable to protect his young daughter when she needed him. He might feel guilty that his sons had had to do it for him and carried the burden of their actions for all these years.

Xander couldn’t disappoint his parents. Or Rose. Or his son. He wouldn’t disappoint his constituents or the people who depended on the Fostering Families Center, either. They had put their faith in him and he wouldn’t abuse their trust.

It seemed everyone had their secrets. Now Xander just had to make sure these secrets didn’t destroy everything they’d worked so hard to build.