Ties That Bind (37 page)

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Authors: Brenda Jackson

BOOK: Ties That Bind
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Zach nodded. “After reading that report, why wouldn't you want to be found, Anna?”
She sighed deeply. “Mainly because I also read over that document again, the one signed by a member of the Fuller family, and it wasn't a mistake.”
Zach frowned. No one had admitted to signing such a document. “Do you mind if I take a look at it?”
Anna studied him thoughtfully. “Why? You don't believe me?”
He gave her an assuring smile. “Yes, I believe you, but I want to see with my own eyes the signature of the person who outright lied to my father and Mr. Fuller.”
Their gazes held for a moment then Anna nodded. “All right. It's at my apartment.”
Zach placed money on the table for his coffee. “You're not working today?”
Anna shook her head. “It's my day off.” She stood. “Are you ready to go?”
He took one last sip of his coffee. “Yes.”
 
Zach grimaced as he read the signature. He then handed the document back to Anna.
“Well?” she asked as she placed it back in the chest.
Zach shook his head. He knew Randolph had personally spoken to his grandmother about the document and she had denied having any knowledge of it. Her signature proved otherwise. “All hell's going to break loose in the Fuller household, that's for sure.”
Anna shook her head. “Not if I'm not found.”
Zach sighed deeply. “No, Anna, you have every right to be found and your grandmother is due her day in court over what she's done. I don't think your uncle and grandfather will ever forgive her.”
Anna stood and paced the room. Then she stopped and looked at Zach. “You can go back to Washington and forget you've met me.”
Zach returned her stare and hesitated for just a heartbeat before saying, “I don't think that I could forget meeting you even if I wanted to, Anna.”
Her lips curved into a smile at the compliment she read in his words. “Thank you, Zach.”
“In fact,” he decided to add, holding her gaze, “if possible I'd like you to go back with me. My mother is giving my father a birthday party Saturday night, his sixtieth, and I can't imagine a more perfect gift than you.”
She returned his stare and then her lips firmed. “What about my grandmother, Julia Fuller?”
Zach's gaze hardened at the thought. “It's my understanding she will be there along with your grandfather. I think it will be the perfect time to expose her for the liar that she is. After what she did, you owe her nothing, Anna. But you do owe those who wanted you found and prayed each night that one day you would be.”
Anna sighed. It was something she had to think about. “I need to think things through, Zach. You've given me so much to absorb at once.”
He nodded, then stood and walked over to her. “I know I have, but remember, my father and your uncle have been waiting thirty-four years. Do you think it's fair to make them wait any longer?” He smiled. “Just take your time and think about everything; especially what you think your parents would want you to do.” He reached out and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “You know where I am when you make a decision.”
He released her hand, then walked out the door.
 
Zach received a call late that evening. Anna had made a decision. She would go back to Washington with him.
Haywood glanced around the room that had been hers as a child. No matter where she went it was always good to return to the place she considered home.
She and Trey had arrived back in Richmond less than an hour ago, and he was downstairs talking to his father in his office. Her thoughts drifted to the time they had spent on Glendale Shores, specifically, the last week. Surrendering to all the raging needs inside of them, they had been ravenous as if it had been years since either had enjoyed that kind of pleasure.
A soft knock at the door interrupted Haywood's thoughts. “Come in.” She smiled when her mother entered her bedroom. For the first time in a long time she felt a little uneasy as her mother studied her. “What is it, Mom?”
Jenna tilted her head and smiled at her daughter. “Oh, I don't know. You look different somehow. A little more relaxed maybe.”
Haywood shrugged. The last thing she planned to do was volunteer
information that she and Trey had spent an entire week together doing very little other than eating, sleeping and making love. “Glendale Shores can do that for a person,” she said calmly. “Relax them.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
Haywood smiled, knowing she couldn't pull too much over on Jenna Haywood Malone Fuller. “Okay, Mom, evidently you want to talk to me about something.”
Jenna came further into the room and sat next to her daughter on the bed. She was concerned. She felt certain that Trey and Haywood had slept together while on Glendale Shores. The signs were all there. The smiles, the innocent touches and the heated looks when they weren't aware others were watching. There was enough sexual awareness flowing between them to bottle it.
“I want to talk about you and Trey,” Jenna finally said.
Haywood lifted a brow. “What about me and Trey?”
Jenna met her daughter's inquiring gaze. “There's something going on between the two of you. I can feel it.”
Haywood had no intention of indulging in any conversation with her mother about her love life. After all, she was a twenty-seven-year-old woman. Too old to be explaining or defending what she did to anyone, including her mother. But she saw the concern and love in her mother's eyes and decided to make an exception.
She stood and walked over to the window and looked out. It was the middle of October; the middle of fall. In Richmond the air was already a bit chilly. But in some places like Glendale Shores, the days were still hot. She smiled. And the nights were hot as well, if you made them that way.
Sighing deeply, Haywood turned around to face her mother. There were no accusations lining her mother's face. There were no signs of disappointment or disapproval. What she saw in her mother's gentle smile—pure and simple—was understanding and support. Understanding for whatever it was she had done and support for whatever decisions she would make.
“Yes,” she finally said softly. “There is something going on between me and Trey.”
After a few minutes Jenna nodded then asked, “Is it serious?”
A smile touched Haywood's lips. “It was last week.” Things had been so perfect and had felt so right that more than once she and Trey had teasingly commented that they were under some sort of spell. But now it was time for a reality check. Trey would be returning to California in a few days and she would be returning to Paris.
“And what about now, Haywood? Is it serious now?”
Her mother's questions invaded her thoughts. “I don't know, Mom. We didn't do much talking.”
“I see.” Jenna shifted positions on the bed to study her daughter. “Then let me ask you this. How do you feel about Trey?”
Haywood shrugged. “I don't dislike him anymore if that's what you mean.”
Jenna shook her head. “No, that's not what I mean.”
Haywood had known that it wasn't. She slowly walked back over to the bed and sat down beside her mother. “Mom, do you believe it's possible for two people to connect together in such a way that …”
“That what?”
“That they feel so attuned to each other? Like it was meant for them to be together?”
Jenna nodded slowly as she remembered how things had been for her and Randolph. “Yes, I believe that's possible.”
“Well, that's the way I feel. For me it was more than just sharing a bed with Trey. I felt some things with him that I've never felt with anyone, not even Aaron. I'd been with Aaron a little more than a year, yet thoughts of him didn't even cross my mind. When I'm with Trey I think of no one else.”
“So what do you suppose that means?”
Haywood's forehead furrowed. “I don't know. A part of me wants to think it's too early to consider the possibility that I've fallen in love with him but then …”
“But then what?”
“I know I'm going to miss him when he goes back to California and I return to Paris. I also know I would jump at the chance to continue what we have.” She met her mother's direct gaze, deciding to be completely
truthful. “And I'd sleep with him again, in a heartbeat, if he gave any sign that he wanted me.”
Haywood sighed. If her words had shocked her mother, she didn't let on. The one thing she had always appreciated about their relationship, now that she was a woman, was her mother's ability to treat her like one and not like she was still a child. They could speak mother to daughter, yet woman to woman.
Jenna patted her daughter's hand. “I think things will work out.”
Haywood lifted a brow. “Why do you think that?”
Jenna smiled. “Because this entire thing, your and Trey's stay on Glendale Shores, was orchestrated by Gramma Mattie. And a part of me believes she had a reason for doing what she did. One good thing out of this is that you got Trey to talk with his father.”
Haywood nervously gnawed on her lower lip. “Yeah, and it has me worried.”
“Why?”
“What if Trey doesn't believe what Dad tells him? Or what if he does believe him? How will he handle the fact that his mother lied to him all these years?”
 
Randolph looked across the room at his son. Trey had sat silently while he had told him everything. Not once had he interrupted him or defended his mother. He had sat there and listened.
But now as their eyes met across the room he knew there would be questions and denials. The two things he hadn't told Trey and never intended to ever tell him was that Angela had drugged him the night they had slept together which had resulted in her getting pregnant, and about the time he had come home for a business meeting and found her in bed with another man. He felt neither was relevant to what his son needed to know. And what he needed to know more than anything was that Jenna had not destroyed his marriage and that he had not turned his back on him.
“Are you trying to tell me that you never once saw Jenna during the entire time you and Mom were together?”
“Basically yes, Trey. I saw Jenna only once and that was at her
father's funeral. I saw her but she didn't see me. She hadn't known I was there until I told her when we got back together.”
Randolph walked across the room to his safe and opened it up. “I want you to look at these,” he said, handing him some documents. “Understandably, considering the circumstances of my and your mother's marriage, I was still in love with Jenna. However, she had broken our engagement so I could marry your mother. But a part of me couldn't let her go completely, although I knew we would never get back together. I wanted to make sure she was all right. For the first two years I had no idea where she had gone since no one would tell me. So I hired a private investigator to find her. Once he found her and I was assured she was all right, I kept him on the case to send me yearly updates as to how she was doing.”
Randolph inhaled deeply, remembering those times before continuing. “As you can see, the last report came to my office two years
after
your mother and I had gotten a divorce. Two solid years, Trey. I wasn't even aware that Jenna was a widow until then. This proves that I didn't have an affair with Jenna while I was still married. Nor did I rush out and break up Jenna's marriage before the ink dried on my own divorce. I had accepted my fate. For some reason, which turned out to be a blessing, God brought Jenna back into my life a little more than two years after my divorce from your mother. By then I had already started dating other women.”
“But Mom was hoping that the two of you would get back together.”
“Yes, but I never gave her reason to think that we would. In fact I made it absolutely clear to Angela that we would never remarry. I even made that point clear to you that day I took you to Glendale Shores to meet Jenna.”
Randolph sighed. “You're old enough now to accept that the only reason I married your mother was because I had gotten her pregnant. She was engaged to marry my brother and I was engaged to marry Jenna, a woman that I loved completely. After being married to Angela for ten years I knew that I could never love her the way she wanted and needed to be loved. That's why I gave her her freedom.”
“And what about me?”
Randolph met his son's gaze. “There was never a time I didn't love you, Trey. In fact the reason I stayed married to your mother as long as I did was because of you. You were all I had, all I ever wanted and Angela knew it. I allowed her to use you to get to me, to keep me on her leash. But then I couldn't deal with it any longer. She always hung the threat of taking you away from me over my head if I got too involved with anyone. And she made sure you didn't like any woman I dated after our divorce.”
Trey nodded. He knew that much was true.
“But at no time did I turn my back on you. You don't know how upset I was when I went to pick you up for my wedding to find she had sent you on a camping trip with her father. The only reason I didn't come after you was because I let her convince me that you really hadn't wanted to go.”
Trey's eyes widened. “That's not true. I wanted to be there. I had begun to like Jenna and when I heard that she had been the reason you and I couldn't spend any more time together, I began despising her.”
Randolph nodded. “Jenna is not that type of person. Just like I accepted Haywood as her child, she accepted you as mine. She would never have done anything to come between us.”
He walked over to the window and looked out a few minutes before turning back around to face his son. “Your mother threatened me numerous times with what she would do if I didn't call off my wedding to Jenna. My mistake was in not believing she would carry any of them out. When I discovered how wrong I was, it was too late. I have documentation of the times I took her back to court after you had moved to California just to have visitation rights.”
Trey shook his head sadly, still in shock over the things he had heard. “And she led me to believe just the opposite. For all these years I thought you didn't want me.”
Randolph's misty eyes met his son's. “I wanted you, Trey. You were my son and I loved you with all my heart. I wanted you more than anything. And each time I couldn't have you, it was like a knife going through my heart and your mother knew it.”
Trey rubbed a hand over his face. His entire body was shaking. He
felt a part of him ripped in two. How could his mother do such a thing? How could she feed him all those lies? How? Had she been that obsessed with his father that she would have done anything to keep him away from Jenna? Even go to the extreme of turning his son against him?
He stood, needing to get away for a while. “Look, I—I need to go someplace to think. I'm going back to the hotel.”
Randolph nodded. “You're welcome to stay here, Trey.”
“Thanks, but I can't. Not right now.”
Randolph nodded in understanding. “Will you be attending Noah's birthday paty later?”
“I'm not sure about that, either. Right now I'm not sure of anything, Dad.”
Randolph sighed deeply. “All right.” He walked his son out of his office at the same time Haywood and Jenna were coming down the stairs. He saw Haywood take one look at Trey and rush over to him. He watched as she wrapped her arms around him. He then watched as Trey held onto Haywood as if she were the only person in the world.
Randolph frowned. What he was seeing was not a regular embrace between two people. He felt something. An instinct, an intuition, a natural inclination that something was going on between Trey and Haywood. And as he continued to watch how they touched each other with clear familiarity, he knew with all certainty that they were sleeping together. He looked past them to Jenna and saw the tears in her eyes. She met his inquiring gaze and nodded, knowing what he was silently asking.
He cleared his throat and spoke when Trey and Haywood finally broke apart. “Trey is going back to the hotel for a while.”

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