Sutherland’s Pride
Kathryn Brocato,
author of
Old Christmas
Avon, Massachusetts
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
Copyright © 2013 by Kathryn E. King
ISBN 10: 1-4405-5821-3
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5821-4
eISBN 10: 1-4405-5822-1
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5822-1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © 123rf.com
This book is dedicated to my childhood friends:
Nancy DuBose Richardson
and
Peggy “Jolene” Jordan Kenyon
Chapter One
“What on earth are you reading?” Flynn Sutherland asked. In less than five hours, he would see Pride Donovan again for the first time in three years, and he wanted to get an early start on the work that awaited him.
His secretary, Killeen Ross, buried in the depths of the
Houston Chronicle
, appeared to be sinking deeper by the minute as she thumbed through section after section.
“I’m looking for my favorite column.” Killeen’s brown pageboy appeared for a moment above the sheets of newsprint. “This is Thursday. Tracy Eric’s ‘Single Mommy’ column is supposed to be — here it is. They keep moving it.”
“‘Single Mommy?’” Flynn repeated, in tones of distaste. He leaned over Killeen from behind her chair so that his sun-bleached, dark blond hair almost brushed her cheek.
“It’s a fantastic column,” Killeen said. “She writes about single parenting, all the way from having the baby on your own to how it feels to have a date for the first time in two years. She gives hints on how to cope and tells you how much to pay the baby sitter — everything a woman in my situation needs to know.”
Flynn raised his brows but wisely said nothing. Killeen had just been liberated from a bad marriage, thanks to Flynn’s legal expertise, and was rearing two teenagers by herself.
Killeen folded the paper open and spread it out on her desk. “I know several single fathers who keep up with Tracy’s column. There’s no one else they can turn to.”
Flynn bent further over Killeen’s desk and studied the column. Above the title, “When You Have to Go Home Again,” a photograph of an attractive, dark-haired woman caught his eye.
“Oh, wow,” Killeen muttered. “She’s going back home for the first time in three years. That’s where it all happened.”
“What happened?” Flynn asked.
“Tracy Eric got pregnant three years ago, but her boyfriend deserted her. Now she’s coming home for the first time in three years. She’s going to fill us in on what it feels like.”
Flynn experienced a momentary jolt. Three years ago, Pride Donovan had faced him in her Houston apartment, told him she was pregnant, and asked him what he wanted to do about it. He had stalled. The baby could not have been his, as doctors had pronounced him sterile since a bad case of childhood measles. But before he could give in and marry her, Pride had disappeared.
“She ought to leave well enough alone,” Flynn observed.
“Not Tracy. That’s the beauty of this column. You feel as if Tracy Eric is your best friend, and the two of you are talking over cups of coffee at the kitchen table.”
“That good, huh?”
Flynn never read over his secretary’s shoulder, but this aroused his interest. Pride Donovan had been gifted in writing pieces that made you feel you were inside her heart. He stood behind Killeen and swiftly absorbed the column.
He found the premise simple enough. Tracy Eric, a young, single mother, was returning to her Texas hometown for the first time in three years to bury her father, who had disowned Tracy when she became pregnant out of wedlock. Future columns would fill the readers in on Tracy’s feelings about reliving old memories and renewing old acquaintances with her son in tow.
He suppressed a mild sense of surprise. Pride was coming home to bury her father also, but without a son in tow.
He wished suddenly with all his heart that Pride had married him and borne a son after all. The baby would be his.
Flynn straightened, shaking his head. People ought not to dwell on the past. Talk about an unproductive pastime … .
“This column is so popular, the
Chronicle
started running it twice a week,” Killeen said. “Do you know what that means?”
“I’m afraid to ask,” Flynn said. “However, I have to attend a funeral at two o’clock. Are those letters ready to sign?”
“Give me five minutes, boss.” Killeen skimmed the column.
Flynn smiled. Killeen had probably stayed overtime yesterday to type the letters. His instincts had not betrayed him when he had hired her and acted in her behalf in court. She was a loyal secretary who always put his interests first in the office.
He went into his office and stared out the windows at the Houston skyline. Too bad his instincts were so off target when he became involved with Pride Donovan. He would never have picked Pride as a woman who would two-time a man, yet, how else could she have become pregnant?
That Pride would have tried to trick him into marriage by the oldest scam around still shocked him. Her pale face and hurt green eyes almost coaxed him into forgetting that he was a rich man’s son, a target for hundreds of marriage-minded women.
He turned away from the window and picked up a file folder. She vanished from Houston and the small, Southeast Texas town of Anahuac soon after he began his successful stalling procedure. Sure enough, she claimed she had miscarried soon after.
Outwardly, he professed relief, but the hurt remained. Probably what hurt worse was the fact that he missed her, longed for her, and had even gone so far as to search for her.
He should have married her anyway and claimed the baby as his own, if there had really been a baby.
Pride Donovan hadn’t been spectacularly beautiful, but parts of her were definitely spectacular. She had honest green eyes, delicate, feathery brows, and a sprinkling of freckles across a lovely, straight nose. Her hair was a wild tangle of light-brown curls, and her skin sported a perpetual light tan during the months she spent with him.
Flynn smiled, remembering Pride’s determination to hoist the mainsail on his sailboat by herself. The wind had been stronger than Pride, and she wound up in the water.
Pride always went after things like that, things that involved acting first and thinking later. No doubt that’s that had happened when she came up with the idea of pretending pregnancy to encourage his proposal. She simply went ahead with the plan before she took the time to think it over.
Obviously, she hadn’t been pregnant at all, but Flynn had passed many a lonely night thinking about the child Pride might have given birth to. Of course, there was no way he could have been the child’s father, but suppose a miracle happened and the baby had resembled him?
Pulling out his chair, Flynn jerked his mind off that subject and thought about Pride. She had been special, and he had wanted to marry her, until she jumped the gun and tried to force his hand.
• • •
Pride Donovan suffered through her father’s funeral without shedding a tear. Helping to corral four small children during the service kept her mind occupied and her sorrow tamped back.
Any private sorrow she felt would be dealt with later. That was the story of her life now, she admitted. Her own feelings came later. She would sort them out on paper, where she best dealt with everything.
The following morning she drove to Houston, accompanied by her cousin and the four small children, to learn the contents of her father’s will.
Something warned her to bring her relatives for along for support. Judge Alan Donovan had been a strange and bitter man, and Pride did not put it past him to try and humiliate her one last time through his will.
“Johnny, stop that,” she cried.
Johnny, two years old and full of curiosity and energy, twisted in Pride’s arms. Houston traffic fascinated Johnny, and he wanted to get right out there in the middle of it. The moment his small feet touched the ground in the downtown parking garage, he made a run for the street.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go alone?” her cousin, Gloria Boudreaux, asked. “In another minute, there’ll be total anarchy around here. It’s a shame the weather is so pretty.”
Pride agreed. The late May sky glowed a deep, cloudless blue. The usual Gulf Coast humidity was temporarily absent, thanks to a cool front, and the spring foliage retained the new green color of early spring. She couldn’t blame the children for wanting to make use of it.
“I’d rather you came with me,” Pride said, nerves jittering. “I have a feeling I’m going to need some support.”
“You call four children under the age of five support?” Gloria asked. “Eric Boudreaux, stop that this instant. Why should there be any trouble over your father’s will?”
“Daddy never did anything without causing some sort of trouble. Why should his will be any different?” She could not put into words the feeling of impending disaster that hung over her.
“Now that’s a reason if I ever heard one,” Gloria said, grinning.
Gloria was a slender woman with wildly curling dark hair and large, brown eyes. The two-year-old girl in her arms repeated Gloria’s coloring, as did the two children on the sidewalk between the two women. Pride loved them to distraction. Without them, she could not have made it through the past three years.
The fourth child, who rode in Pride’s arms, also had large brown eyes, but his hair was dark blond.
“You and the children are tremendously comforting to me,” Pride said. “I can’t imagine going anywhere alone. I wouldn’t know how to behave. This way, Tracy.”
Walking down a busy, downtown Houston sidewalk carrying two small children and leading two others by the hand wasn’t easy, but the women managed it.
“I know what you mean,” Gloria said. “That week Eddie and I spent in New Orleans while you kept the kids nearly drove us both nuts. Too much silence. No interruptions of tender moments. No little faces to wipe.”
“Exactly,” Pride said. “Come on.”
“Are you going to get in touch with Flynn Sutherland today?” Gloria asked in casual tones.
Pride winced inwardly and felt the jangle of all her pulses. “I’m not ready yet. I’m still considering the most distantly friendly method of contacting him.”
“I thought you said you caught a glimpse of him at the funeral yesterday,” Gloria said. “Don’t you think he has a few questions about Johnny?”
“Like what?” Pride’s voice remained cheerful in spite of her inner anguish. Flynn had not approached her to so much as offer condolences. “If he thinks about it at all, he’ll figure Johnny could not possibly have anything to do with him.”
“Now I would say Johnny has everything to do with Flynn Sutherland. Tracy Boudreaux, give Aunt Pride your hand. No, you can’t walk by yourself. Not on these sidewalks.”
“Daddy put the word out that I’d had a miscarriage the minute I left town,” Pride managed to say around the lump in her throat. “No doubt Flynn found that a tremendous relief.”
“I’ll never understand why your father would say such a thing,” Gloria marveled. “Eric, stop that. What if you’d shown back up and made a liar out of him?”
“Believe me, Gloria, the thought never crossed his mind. No one bucked Judge Donovan when he laid down the law.”