Enraptured (25 page)

Among Alex Fullerton’s many talents was the uncanny ability to uncover hidden information, especially when it came to protecting his nephew. As he dug around to find a judge more sympathetic to our situation, he unearthed a history between Judge Pemberton and Aazim Jaffer Hosein that had heretofore been undiscovered. She had operated as one of their family attorneys before she had been assigned to the bench, and TruNews had once courted her for her expert opinion for a show that they had developed but never made it to air.

This proved a conflict of interest, especially now that
Aazim and Elise were engaged. This resulted in us being delivered right back to Judge Schultz. We appeared before the judge by the beginning of September, only to learn that Jonathan had been shipped off to a boarding school on the East Coast. His grades were so low, and his misconduct so high, that he was on the verge of being expelled yet again, mere weeks after being admitted.

The judge was fatigued by this ongoing battle. He ordered visitations, hoping that Jonathan would be able to turn his behavior around if he was able to do the one thing he wanted to do more than anything: see his ailing father.

This posed a problem, as there were restraining orders still in place for Alex and me, and Zoe no longer worked for Elise. Once Jonathan headed east, so did Zoe – to work for yet another family under the EAL umbrella.

Alex phoned her that night, but she was a different girl than the one we met earlier that year. She was frightened and didn’t want to encourage any kind of relationship between them.

Within days, Alex headed on a plane to New York to figure out what was going on. He met up with Agent Delgado and they managed to convince Zoe to meet them in secret. At first she had been reluctant to give them any information. She was terrified to speak.

As it turned out, she had reason to be.

She finally confessed that Troy De Havilland had been a frequent visitor while she lived with Elise. She began to suspect that they were sleeping together, since their conversations were frequent and secretive. “They had a fight the day before Memorial Day,” she told Alex. “He told her he wasn’t going to let her and Aazim go to his party in Santa Barbara. He told her that he had things under control and for her to be patient.”

The night of the party,
Jonathan had disappeared. “She was frantic because she knew he was on his way to Santa Barbara. She was on the phone all morning, as was Aazim. It felt like damage control, but I wasn’t sure why.”

“Like they knew
what was coming,” I said to Alex when he relayed the story to me that evening on the phone.

“They knew,” he confirmed.

As time passed, Zoe began to uncover information that linked Troy to both Elise and Aazim. She didn’t like the way Elise treated Drew’s fate like justice served, and she especially didn’t like that she would say such things around Jonathan when he was so clearly distraught.

“She began using herself as a shield,” Alex told me.
“To protect him.”

And that was when Troy confronted her.

Thanks to her foreign status, he had a bargaining chip. He told her to forget all about Drew, Elise and Jonathan, and he’d set her up with a new family back east. And of course, she couldn’t refuse, or else she risked deportation.

That night Agent Delgado began investigating phone and bank records. Within three days
she had a paper trail that connected one of Aazim’s companies to Pablo Rojas.

This company also made sizable donations to Troy’s various fundraisers, and all the money passed through Prescott Petroleum Bank in Houston.

It was just the breakthrough we needed.

The day that Elise was supposed to bring Jonathan to the house for a visit, Agent Delgado was already in place to meet her. This was a good thing, considering she didn’t bring Jonathan with her at all
, citing her bogus RO as a reason. She had come to double down on her threat to take him to Dubai when she married Aazim.

She was shocked to see federal agents waiting for her. She glared at Alex. “What kind of game are you playing now?” she wanted to know, though I could see fear in her eyes as they darted from Agent Delgado to Alex.

“That’s what we’d like to know,” Martina said as she handed her a printout that detailed what they already knew. “What part did you play in the fall of Teton Tech?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she scoffed. “Anything business related goes through
Aazim.”

“Good to know. Considering two more federal agents are waiting to greet his plane.” Her eyes widened. “Maybe you can tell us about this $100,000 ‘donation’ to Villa de Rojas. It was posted May 30.”

She shrugged. “Not my money,” she denied easily.

“But it was your plan,”
Martina prodded. “A plan for revenge. A plan to get rid of Drew Fullerton once and for all so you could get his son, and his inheritance, all to yourself?”

Her chin trembled as she shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she mumbled again, only this time far less convincingly.

My blood ran cold as I watched her squirm. Alex squeezed my hand in his.

“That’s fine,”
Agent Delgado quipped. “We can take it to court. Present the evidence we’ve unearthed so far, which I’m sure is only the tip of the iceberg. We have enough here to seek, at the very least, conspiracy to commit murder. So I hope orange is one of your wedding colors, because you will see jail time for what you’ve done.”

“I didn’t do anything!” she exploded. “It wasn’t my money. He didn’t even die!”

“You bitch!” Alex roared as he flew across the room, only to be held back by two burly federal agents.

Agent
Delgado held up a hand to Alex. She turned back to Elise. “You’ll be relieved to know that you’re not the one I’m after. I’m after Troy and Aazim, and anyone in EAL who set up companies to launder money for the Rojas cartel. I mean, I’ll take you if that’s all I can get. And I guarantee they’ll all watch you go down in flames, letting you take the fall while they skate free – again. So it really is up to you. If you confess we can work on a plea bargain or reduce your sentence. But I need something concrete to take down De Havilland. If you have it, now is the time to offer it.”

The other agents stepped in behind her. She burst into tears as she nodded. “
It was Troy’s idea. He suspected that Alex and Drew were working with federal agents and threatening his operation. He knew he needed to stop them. He said that as long as Drew was alive, he’d never let me have custody. But as soon as Drew was gone, I could have Jonathan and his whole inheritance. He swore no one would trace it back to us because of Drew’s own alliances with Rojas.”

“And you can prove it?”
Martina asked.

Again she nodded. “
Aazim knew we couldn’t trust him. All the communication was recorded, every phone call, every visit. He knew that even if we couldn’t use it in court, he could put it on TruNews and take down Troy’s career. So we both had equal leverage.”

Alex glared at her as she sobbed into her hands.
“How could you do this, Elise?”

“You don’t know what it was like!” she cried out. “I never had control of my life. First it was my parents,
then it was Drew. I just wanted to stop being a victim for once! There wasn’t any other way. He was never going to be happy until he took Jonathan away from me forever.”

“You’ve done that to yourself,” I told her.

Martina handed her paperwork. “As part of a plea bargain, you will be asked to relinquish your parental rights to Jonathan Fullerton. You can fight it, of course, but conspiracy to kill his father would almost certainly ensure those rights are stricken from you permanently anyway. This way, you can relinquish voluntarily, and Mrs. Fullerton can begin adoption proceedings as soon as possible.”

Elise’s
deadened eyes met mine. It was the final shot fired in the war between us, and we both knew it. She took the paperwork. “Do you have a pen?” she asked Agent Delgado.

“You can have your lawyer look it over,” I suggested, but she shook her head, completely defeated.

“I just want it over. I just want it all over.” She scribbled her consent across the dotted line, as our lawyer, and several federal agents, bore witness to it.

They led her out to the dark car in the driveway, and that was the last I saw of Elise
McAuliffe.

Within hours Jonathan Fullerton returned to his home in Beverly Hills. He flew into my arms the minute he saw me, and I sank to my knees to hold him tight. “Mom,” he whispered into my neck, and I nodded through my tears. At last it would be true.

He had several priorities when he returned home. He wanted to say hello to Yoda of course, but he also wanted to meet his new sisters. He stared down at the round crib they shared. “Girls,” he pondered momentarily, and wondrously. Finally he decided, “Cool,” with a smile.

The next thing he wanted to do was see Drew. Both Alex and I agreed that we should warn him about how different his father looked, and be fully honest with him about his prognosis. I took him by the hand and led him up to his room.

“We’re not going to go see your father today,” I announced softly.

“Why not?”

I took a deep breath. “Your father has been very sick, Jonathan. His body has been fighting a losing battle for months. When you see him, it will be a shock. It was for me,” I added, telling him that I hadn’t seen Drew in the two months it took me to have the girls. “But I have something for you.”

He sat on his bed and I sat next to him. I produced a book from his nightstand. “When your dad was a little boy, about your age now, he started writing letters to his dad. They contained all the things he never felt he could say
to him. Like a journal.”

He nodded as he opened the book.

“This is your real father, Jonathan. No matter what you see in that hospital tomorrow, or even what you remember from the past. This is his heart. These are his dreams. This is his gift,” I concluded with a catch in my throat.

He nodded again as he ran his hand along the page.

I left him to read privately and he didn’t emerge from his room until ten o’clock the following morning. He was dressed in a dark suit as he descended the stairs. Alex and I gathered the girls and we all headed to the hospital.

I watched Jonathan’s face as he entered Drew’s hospital room. His eyes misted as he took it all in, but his chin tipped upwards in an effort t
o be strong. He walked to Drew’s bedside and took his hand in his. “Can I be alone with him?” he asked without looking at us.

I nodded and followed Alex out of t
he room. Twenty minutes later Jonathan joined us in the waiting area near the nurses’ station. His eyes were bloodshot and his nose was red, but he was completely composed as he called us all back into the room. Nothing had changed for Drew, even with Jonathan’s return.

Jonathan took a deep breath before he spoke. “Dad once talked about being in a lonely room. He felt like a prisoner there. And we all know what that feels like.”

I swallowed hard as I listened.

Jonathan took his father’s hand in his. “I think it’s time we open the door,” he said as his voice shook.

Alex suppressed a cry as he turned away. I walked over to Jonathan and placed my hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure?”

He looked up at me. “Weren’t you?”

I thought back to that hospital room in Texas, where my baby boy had lingered but a week.

I had held onto Drew much, much longer. And it wasn’t fair to him. I nodded.

We called Dr. Vidal, who brought the necessary forms. Jonathan refused to leave. He wanted to be there as the machines were switched off and the wait for death began.

We listened to Drew’s heartbeat slow as each second passed. Alex walked over to his brother’s side. There were tears in his eyes as he bent to whisper something in Drew’s ear. His hand covered Drew’s for a moment. “You will always be my hero,” he managed before he finally had to turn away.

Jonathan was next. He crawled into bed next to Drew and held his hand tight as he tried his best to contain the tears that demanded to fall. “I’ll never let you down, Dad,” he confessed in a broken whisper. “I promise.”

Finally I walked to my husband’s side. I could barely see his face through my own tears as I brushed my hand through his hair. There were no words that could ever mean as much as
the three I whispered as I leaned forward and kissed his lips one last time.

“I love you.”

The monitor finally silenced.

Our Drew was finally free to fly
away.

I stared out the window at the vast green pasture. Ominous clouds gathered overhead, a thunderstorm in the making. I smiled to myself. God, I had missed Texas
.

A throng of rowdy pre-teens raced through the spacious kitchen where I stood, barreling through the double doors that led to the back yard. Nancy shook her head with a smile as she approached. “I swear that brood gets louder every single time they get together.”

I laughed. “I happen to love that sound,” I informed her.

It was the sound of
life… of love, of laugher and family. And it was my favorite sound in the world.

She wrapped an arm around me. “So what do you want me to do?”

“The individual cakes are already frosted,” I said, referring to two tiny round cakes decorated in white and pink frosting. “I’m finishing the big cake,” I said as I piped yellow frosting onto a chocolate sheet cake. “Guess all that needs to be done is take the meat out to the grill masters.”

She rolled her eyes.
“Masters, my ass. Greg’s eyebrows are still growing in. Did you have to buy a grill the size of Toledo?”

I held up my hands. “Take it up with Alex. I handle the garden. He handles the barbecue. That’s the deal.”

Millicent laughed from her position at the kitchen table, where she cut up vegetables for the various salads. “He’s certainly taken his transplanted Texan status to heart.”

“We’re only here four months a year,” Alex announced as he walked through the kitchen, picking up on the conversation. “I say, go big or go home.”

We all looked at him with a smirk. “Go home!”

“I don’t have to take this,” he said as he raised his nose in the air. “I’m going home.”

He swaggered outside where all the kids waited.

Jonathan sat on a swing next to
Becca, where he skillfully strummed his guitar. The twins, now officially a year old that very day, clapped their hands as they listened.

They adored their big brother. He was perhaps their favorite human alive.

I heaved a sated sigh as I watched them. I had fought long and hard for all of them, and I adored them beyond measure. I had finally adopted Jonathan, but I no longer homeschooled. He belonged to a private academy now, one where he got excellent grades and had an even better reputation. He had grown up far quicker than he should have, but he was managing this early maturity well. He was on track to head to college in a little less than four years, and he was determined to earn it by the sweat of his brow, rather than the power of his last name.

He would be president of Fullerton Enterprises International by the time he turned twenty-one.

After a year spent backpacking in Europe, anyway.

There was really no hurry. FEI finally started to stabilize once again
shortly after Troy De Havilland was indicted for his part in Teton Tech and the money laundering scandal. Alex tried to step into his brother’s shoes for about six weeks before he realized everyone would be much happier if he left such matters to those who thrived in an office environment. He missed his horses and fresh air, so he turned the business over to the vice president and backed out of the executive life gracefully and happily. He maintained a controlling interest, and knew enough to keep us from wandering down any nefarious road like before, but he was back on the ranch by Christmas, as were we all.

After Drew’s funeral, we
all rather collectively decided to shutter the house in Beverly Hills. We couldn’t bear to sell it, but the memories there were much too painful for all of us. Instead, we moved to the ranch and I allowed my children to live much like their grandmother before them.

There was never a question of us all staying together. We were a family, as unconventional as it was. We needed each other, and there was no turning back for any of us.

But it wasn’t the same as before, either. Alex and I were devoted to Drew’s memory, I as his wife and he as his brother. Our focus was on the children. We had a full house now, two boys and two girls, and that became the source of our joy.

We all fell into a rhythm together that quite simply fit.

By spring, I decided I wanted to expand our family back to Texas as well. My girls had proud Texas roots, and I wanted them to know where they came from.

We bought a ranch just west of Dallas/Fort Worth, where we could have the peaceful country life that we all had come to treasure. It was our summer home, and everyone, including Cleo and Harrison, were welcome.

In fact, Cleo and Harrison liked it so much they decided they wanted to stay in Texas year-round. And I could hardly blame them, even on days like this when the temperatures inched towards three-digits and humidity hung heavy in the air.

Summers in Texas were why God made air conditioning. Besides, if one didn’t like the weather in Texas, one only had to wait around fifteen minutes or so for it to change.

And that was really the most fun of all.

We’d already experienced several thunde
rstorms since we had arrived in late May. My California guys loved it. Alex and Jonathan would sit on the porch for hours watching lightning cut across the darkened skies, and Jonathan’s artist eye already had him itching to capture the phenomenon on film. He’d scan the skies eagerly for his next opportunity, making our wraparound porch one of his favorite hangouts on the ranch.

That was where the twins’ birthday party ultimately ended up for that very reason. Alex played his guitar, along with some help from Jonathan, as rain poured around us. I held both girls in the swing, and they rested against either breast. My arms, and my heart, were full.

But days like this were understandably challenging. Every ‘first’ we had experienced in this past year reminded me of the losses we had all suffered. Drew wasn’t there to see his daughters take their first steps or say their first words.

And now he was missing their first birthday party.

He had essentially been gone from before they were born, and that weighed heavy on my heart anytime I stopped to think about it.

Thankfully chasing twins around every day gave me little time to do so.
The nights were the worst part of it, where the house got quiet and my bed got lonelier. I thought about all the time we wasted and regret chased me like a mongrel dog.

Fortunately things were a lot simpler for my girls. E
ven though their father was gone, Alex and Jonathan in particular were devoted to keeping him alive for them, so they got to know the best part of Drew Fullerton, a man so much larger than his tragically shortened life. Almost every night Jonathan would read to them from his dad’s book of letters. Alex would tell them all about Drew as a child, and had created several photo albums for them so they would know who he was and how much he was loved.

When
Winter had mimicked her favorite cousin Max and mistakenly called him “Daddy,” Alex corrected her gently and showed her Drew’s picture. “That’s your daddy, sweetheart,” he said with a smile. “But I love you, just like he does.”

How I loved him when he did such things.

In fact, the love I had for Alex before couldn’t hold a match to my feelings for him now. He had proven himself in every sense of the word as my partner, my friend, and my family. I couldn’t imagine my life without him, nor did he give me any reason to.

I knew he would take care of us and be there for us until it was his turn
to shuffle off this mortal coil, just like there was no question that I would be there for him.

There were no others. We were it.

Jonathan had tried to match-make in recent months, to let us know it was okay if we ever decided to take our relationship to the next step. There were no secrets anymore, so he understood how complicated our relationship had been in the past. It had taken all these months for him to make peace with it, and when he did he decided, “If you can’t be with Dad, you should be with Alex. It’s your turn to be happy, Mom.”

I hugged him tight. “You make me happy, Jonathan.
You and your sisters.”

While my insightful son insisted that I needed more, Alex and I sa
w no point to rush into anything. Our relationship was already transcendent in so many ways. It was more solid than a marriage, and so much deeper than a friendship.

And though we weren’t ashamed of what we shared, then or now, Drew’s ghost remained a third wheel in our relationship. We still had so much to work through, and we refused to exorcise our grief in bed.

We were content to let what was meant to be happen at its own pace.

I liked to think of Drew as our guardian angel.

When the time was right, he would let us know.

Little did I realize that
we would have his answer before we returned to California.

The weather remained stormy for the week following the twins’ birthday. We had a basement, thankfully, so that we had a place to go if it got really severe. As soon as the sirens went off that Thursday afternoon, I corralled everyone down the stairs to safety. Millicent and Jonathan took Max and the twins, while Cleo and Harrison rounded up some supplies.

I walked outside to look for Alex. He had been at the stables for much of the morning, and I grew concerned that he had yet to return. I peered over the darkening horizon down the pasture toward our stables, but it was too far away to see anything. I glanced around at the sky, looking for any sign of a funnel cloud or rotation, before I darted down the path to find him.

The wind whipped my hair around my face so hard it felt like whips cutting into my skin. Hard raindrops fell, propelling me faster as I ran down the hill, screaming his name.

I couldn’t even hear my own voice over the thunder and the wind.

The stables were dark as I reached them. “Alex!” I cried as I kept one eye to the churning clouds above. Panic rose like acidic bile in my throat. I couldn’t go through this again. I couldn’t lose someone else… and I most certainly couldn’t lose Alex. He was my rock.

My hero.

“Alex!”

The sirens wailed loud as hail began to pummel the top of the stables, giant chunks of ice that bounced off the roof and onto the ground in quarter-sized rocks. I looked back at the house, which seemed much further away than it normally did. A sizzling bolt of cloud to ground lightning hit the pasture off in the distance before I could even think about making a break for it.

Yet exposed as I was, I wasn’t afraid for myself. I worried for my children, even though they were relatively safe and secure in the basement of our home. And I worried about Alex, since I had no idea where he was at all.

I slid down onto the cold ground in the middle stall. The walls rattled from the claps of thunder, and I ended up curling into a ball with my hands on my ears to buffer the sound.

I could barely hear the muffled, “Rachel!” being called from the distance.

I shot to my feet in time to see Alex sprint down the hill from the house. I nearly cried with relief as he approached, but he was as ominous as the thunderclouds above us.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” he yelled as he reached the stall. “Are you crazy? Why would you come out here?”

“I thought you were here,” I tried to explain, but he was livid.

“How could you risk someth
ing happening to you?” he raged as he grabbed me roughly by the arms. “Do you know how stupid that is? You have children that depend on you, Rachel!”

“And I depend on you!” I shouted back
, and he released me just as roughly. “Do you know what would happen to me if I lost you?”

“Me? I’m nothing!” he shouted right back at me. “I’m an uncle.
A relative. A stand-in.”

Rain drenched us as I stared at him. “Is that really what you think you are?”

He considered the question that had haunted him his whole life. “It should have been me!” he finally snapped as he turned away.

I crossed the space he put
between us and placed my hand on his shoulder. “Alex.”

“I was ready. I had everything in place. I knew my risks and I took my chances.” His voice broke. “He didn’t.”

I turned him to face me. “He did,” I assured him softly. “You made your choices and so did he.”

He crumpled to his knees and I followed him down to hold him in my arms.
He finally allowed himself to break, after so many months of his being so strong for all of us. “I miss him, Rachel,” he sobbed. “I’d give anything I had to have him back.” His eyes met mine. “Even you.”

It was then I realized that was what we had both been doing. We had denied our feelings in hope that it would resurrect the dead.
We had set Drew free, but locked ourselves in our own lonely rooms in his place. In doing so, Drew could never truly rest in peace.

I cupped his face with my hand. “Oh, Alex,” I said softly. “Haven’t you figured it out? You can’t get rid of me if you tried. It’s you and me.
Forever.”

His bloodshot eyes scanned my face. As the storm raged around us, his head finally bent towards mine. Our lips were wet and tasted of rain as we kissed, and I felt something spark inside me that I thought had died a long time ago. He clutched me to his body as his mouth parted over mine, and I wrapped myself around him at last.