Force of Nature Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 4) (2 page)

Force of Nature

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

World Castle Publishing, LLC

Pensacola, Florida

Copyright © by Kathi S. Barton 2012

ISBN: 9781938243035

First Edition World Castle Publishing March 20, 2012

Second Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC August 10, 2013

http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover: Karen Fuller

Photo: Shutterstock

Editor: Maxine Bringenberg

~
Chapter One
~

“I’m sorry, Miss Webber. We did try to reach you several days ago when his illness took a turn for the worst. But as he had no number for you…well, I am sorry.”

CJ wasn’t sure what to say to the man on the other end of the phone. She’d really had no contact with her father for over seven years and his death—recent death, apparently—didn’t really mean a great deal to her. She’d written him off, pretty much the same way he had written her off all those years ago.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Patrick? I mean, do I have to see to…I don’t know, arrangements?” She had no idea what she could do for him in death that she couldn’t ever do for him in life, but she still made the offer.

“Oh no, Miss Webber. He’d had his arrangements made for several months before his passing. There is the matter of his final resting place, but when you get here we can settle on—”

“Mr. Patrick, I’m not sure how well you knew my father, but we didn’t actually see eye to eye on a great many things. And the decision regarding his final resting place would be better left to someone who knew him better.”
Or at least cared about him
, she thought.

“Yes, I was…it was hard not to know about your relationship with him in a town this small.” CJ didn’t doubt that, but didn’t say anything. “Well, we could bury him next to your mother, but as I understand it, they had not…we were led to believe that…oh my.”

“Yes, that pretty much sums it up. Don’t put him next to my mom. You can put him in the trash for all I give a care.” When the man started to sputter, she continued. “Look, put him somewhere at the other end of the cemetery.  Or better yet, put him in another cemetery altogether. Is that one…Memorial Gardens…is that still in business?”

CJ hadn’t been back home in years and wasn’t sure what was there now. She’d heard of cemeteries going out of business, but never really cared why. She only hoped this one was still there so she could be done with this call.

“Yes, Miss Webber, it’s still there. I believe that would be in the best interest of all parties concerned. Will you…I mean, are you going to be back here in time for the services, or should I just…well, start them without you?”

She smiled at his question. “Yeah, you do that. I don’t know when I’ll be back that way. You have an address now for any outstanding bills he had. My attorney will know how to reach me again if you need anything else. All right?”

“Miss Webber, your father had done well in the later years of his life. There won’t be any outstanding bills. And as I said before, he had already made arrangements for his death, as well as making sure it was paid for.”

CJ laid her head against the wall of the building. She didn’t really need to hear that right now, but knew that ranting to this man would do her no good. Instead, she simply thanked him and hung up.

Going to her truck, she went to the bed and lay down. She had an eight-hour layover, and her forced rest time gave her too much time to think. She rolled to her side and grabbed the remote for the little television she had bolted to the shelf above her bed. After flipping through the six stations and finding nothing to keep her mind off the phone call, she decided to actually rest. It didn’t take her long to realize that she wasn’t going to get any sleep.

She had been born Charlie Jane Webber, but had been called CJ almost from birth. Her mom, Rebecca Jane Whitehall, had been thirty when she was born. After years of trying to have a child, she’d had CJ late in life. CJ’s father, Charles Allen Webber, was forty, and hadn’t been too thrilled to have a child, much less a girl, at that point in his life.

She’d been just independent enough not to bother him too much. CJ seemed to know from the beginning that he didn’t much care for her. But as she thought back now, she knew she had tried to get him to notice her. She’d excelled in school, which had only seemed to piss him off. But when she won a scholarship to Harvard, he’d been happy. She’d be gone, and it wouldn’t cost him anything.

When she’d graduated with honors at nineteen, he had not come to the graduation and had forbidden her mom to attend. It wasn’t until months later, when she’d come home for a visit, that he told her in a drunken rage that he’d expected more out of her than a law degree, and what the hell was she going to do with it, being only a girl, anyway? But what she found out he had done to her mom had her seeing red.

He had beaten her. Not just recently, though that was bad enough, but all through their marriage. CJ had been kept in the dark until she walked in on her mom, who was coming out of the bath one afternoon without her robe, which hadn’t been where she’d left it, leaving her skin exposed.

“What happened? Did you have an accident? Mom, tell me.” CJ won the tug of war with her mom and pulled back the towel she’d wrapped around her to hide the worst of it. The bruises covered her back, and were all over her legs and arms. “Mom?”

“It’s nothing, Charlie, nothing at all.” She was the only one who had ever called her by her given name. “Go on to your room and I’ll come down soon. All right?”

It occurred to her later that she should have pushed. Her mother would have told her, she knew, but CJ hadn’t pressed…neither had she asked again until a week later. That time she’d found her mom throwing up blood, and the bruises were accompanied by broken bones, three ribs. When her mom had passed out, CJ called an ambulance. That was when she’d found out so much about her parents’ marriage.

Her father had been hurting her mother from day one. He blamed her for everything, from his inability to hold down a job to their not being able to have a boy child. The doctor explained that her mom had done a good job of hiding it from everyone, but recently her father had become …meaner, he’d said.

“Becky has been in here several times over the past three months. The violence is getting to be more and more dangerous.” CJ looked over at her mom while the doctor explained. “If he keeps this up, he’ll kill her.”

CJ hadn’t left her mother’s side the entire two days she was in intensive care. She hadn’t tried to contact her father, and didn’t want him there anyway. When her mom woke up, CJ tried to talk her into leaving him, but hit a stone wall every time she tried. Ready to wash her hands of both of them, she was sitting there wondering what to do next when the doctor came in to talk to her mom.

The blood work had shown an elevated white cell count and they wanted to run more tests. More tests, he said, would help them determine if there was cause for concern or simply a need for a bit more testing. Three days later, they had learned there was no need for more tests. Her mom had cancer.

It seemed as if she went from bad to worse in no time. Within a few hours, they were moving her to Hospice, and when there, they set her up on a drip…to make her more comfortable, they’d said. It wasn’t until the second morning there that they did a few more tests and found that her mom had a very rare type of cancer, and that she had had it for some time. 

“If found early, we may have been able to fight it better, but now…well now, Mrs. Webber, it has taken its hold, and the only thing we can do is make you comfortable.”

“Comfortable? I don’t understand. Why can’t you operate, or give her chemo or something? Fight it with something?”

The doctor looked at CJ, then at her mom. A message seemed to pass between them that now, years later, she understood. Then, it had only pissed her off. Her mom had known she was dying. Not only that, but she’d known it for several months and had hoped, she finally admitted to CJ, that her dad would kill her and she would not have to suffer. She didn’t like him, she’d said, but she didn’t know what else to do when she’d gotten sick.

Her mom had lasted another month. In that month, her father had come to the Hospice center only twice: once when she was first admitted, the second time when her mom had requested him to come. CJ had been asked to leave the room. Her father had stayed for a little over twenty minutes, then left. Her mom died three days later after slipping into a deep coma and never waking up.

The funeral was a week later. She’d been instructed to notify her grandmother, her mom’s mother. CJ was shocked to find out that she had a living grandmother, and that she didn’t like Charles Webber any better than her granddaughter did.

He’d proven how much he hated his daughter at the graveside. CJ had sat next to her father, with her grandmother on her other side. When the minister had said his final prayer, everyone had gotten up to pay their last respects. Phil Campbell, a friend of hers from college, had approached her to wish her well when her father had turned to her.

“She’s dead and I’m not going to pretend any longer.” The hand that hit her knocked her back against her mom’s casket, bloodying her mouth and blackening her eye. “You stay the hell away from me. We’re through, you hear me? You’re not my kid any longer. I didn’t want you in the first place, and now that your mother is gone, you will no longer darken my door.”

CJ didn’t move when he stormed off. Hundreds of mourners had witnessed the scene, and she wasn’t as much humiliated as she was stunned. Phil had helped her up and her grandmother had helped brush her off. It wasn’t until she found herself in a limo that she spoke.

“He really hates me, doesn’t he? Why? I didn’t ask to be born. I didn’t…I have no one.”

“Yes. I knew that he resented Becky getting pregnant, but I never…I guess I should have known the selfish bastard would do something like this. I’m sorry, baby,” her grandmother said before pulling her into her arms. “But you have me and this nice young man. I’ll bring you home with me. We’ll be fine.”

Her grandmother, Angeline Marston, had lived for another four years, and had made it easier for CJ to, not accept her mom’s death, but to learn to have it hurt a lot less.
The old
bat
, CJ now thought with a smile, had left her everything. As her mom, her grandmother’s daughter, had left everything to her as well, CJ had a nice, tidy nest egg.

When her phone rang about an hour after talking to the funeral home, she didn’t bother looking at the ID. There was only one person in the world with her number, and that was her best friend Phil.

“The wicked bastard is dead, huh? Are you going to celebrate or just have a huge party in honor of the occasion?”

She smiled at his greeting. “Nah, I thought I’d go and piss on his grave next time I’m in town.” She shifted on the big bed. “What’s up?”

“Do I need a reason to call my dearest and oldest friend? Can’t I just call and say hi, how’s it hanging?”

“You could, I suppose, but as I have nothing hanging, as you put it, and you know that I’m your only friend, that doesn’t cut it.” She smiled when he snorted. “So I ask again, what’s up?”

“I bought you something today with your money. You’re going to stop this driving shit now, as you promised some time ago, and become stationary so we can have an occasional dinner together. There’s even a house in the deal for you.”

She had promised him that she’d give up the life of a trucker once her father was gone. She couldn’t remember the why of that now, but at the time, she had thought it was a sound idea. CJ closed her eyes and tried to think of a reason for her not to give up the road.

“Phil, I—”

“No. I won’t hear anything other than, ‘Thanks, Phil. Give me all the details of this wonderful opportunity.’ Say it, CJ…tell me what I want to hear. I miss you.”

She looked around the cab that had been her home for over six years. She loved her life as a driver, and wondered again why she’d said she would give it up.

“Thanks, Phil.” CJ closed her eyes again. “Let me finish this run and I’ll be there in a few days. Can you make arrangements to have Grandma’s house opened for me? Do I still own it?”

His laughter was what she needed. “Yes…I didn’t sell it. But you should know that your mom’s house is yours again also. You own it free and clear now. I’m making arrangements to have it sold, if you want. There’s a company wanting to buy it that had approached your father about it several times during his life. Of course, he couldn’t sell it, but now that he’s gone, they have contacted me. What do you think?”

What did she think? Her mother had brought the house to their marriage, and when she’d died had left in her will that CJ would get the house so long as she let her father live there until his death. CJ shuddered to think what he’d done to the house, and was sure that he’d done nothing to maintain it. She’d told Phil to make sure that the roof stayed fit and some other things, but other than that, she didn’t care.

“Let me think about it. Send in a cleaning crew and have the place cleaned out of his things. Box them up and give them away, I don’t care. When I get there, I’ll have a look at it and we’ll decide then.”

CJ hung up after making arrangements to have him contact the company she was carrying for. As she owned her own rig she could simply go to her grandmother’s and stay there with it. She was an independent driver, so she had no contracts to break or any kind of equipment to return.

CJ closed her eyes. She had another eight hours to drive tomorrow to drop and hook this load, and a delivery on the other end to a local company. Then she would be finished. She’d had a moving home for so long she wondered how hard it would be to get used to living in a house again.