Unleashed #4 (12 page)

Fuck that. I needed
her. I didn’t have a ring, yet. I’d been too worried about
leaving her on her own for even a few hours to go buy one. But I
could still offer her my heart for the rest of my life. We’d find
time to pick out a ring.

If she said yes. I knew
she could do much better, but maybe she’d get caught up crazy
enough to take a chance on me? I couldn’t wait to make her mine. I
wanted to play with her all day, tease her, tempt her, drive her
wild. She tasted like nectar of the gods and I’d never get enough.

But that would all have
to wait, because I had to take a call from my lawyer. The phone rang,
right on time. Stephen was as tenacious as a dog after a bone. That
was what I paid him for, after all.

“Are you sitting
down?” Stephen began the conversation. It wasn’t like him to be
so dramatic. I figured he must be joking around.

“Why, Stephen? Do you
have something shocking to tell me?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Oh.” Well, then
I’d sit.

“I’ve received a
communication,” he continued. “From an attorney in New York. He’s
under the employ of your late father’s estate.”

The drink I’d been
sipping choked in my throat. I sputtered and spat the liquid out as
if it had burned me.

“Are you all right?”
Stephen asked.

“Yes, damn it.” I
dismissed his question. The hell I was. My late father? In New York?
“What are you talking about?”

“It seems your
biological father has recently passed away. His attorney has been
trying to locate you. He has been for some time. He was under the
impression that your last name was Kavenaugh.”

“Kavenaugh?” The
name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place why.

“Yes, Kavenaugh, your
late father’s surname.”

My head swam. What the
fuck was going on here? Stephen was right. I was glad I was sitting
down.

“There’s quite a
lot to review, Declan. You’re going to want to do it in person.”

“I’m out in
Bozeman.”

“Yes, I can meet you
there tomorrow morning. We can go through it all together.”

I sat there,
dumbstruck. The phone felt like an alien object in my hand, as if I’d
never held one before. What was he saying again?

“My father died?” I
repeated.

“Yes, your father,
Richard Kavenaugh.” Stephen repeated it all, clearly understanding
that I needed to hear it again. My biological father had just passed
away, but his attorney had been trying to find me for a long time.
There was an estate to settle. My father had been trying to find me.
And now he was dead.

“Nine a.m. tomorrow,
Declan. I’ll come to you.”

“All right.” My
voice sounded wooden, my head felt packed with cotton as I ended the
call.

“Everything OK?”
Kara asked, emerging pink and concerned from the shower, a towel
wound around her. Why she bothered with towels, I didn’t know. I’d
just take them right off. Even in my shock, I still was a dirty dog.

“I just got some
news.” My hand rested on the phone.

“What’s wrong?”
she asked, taking a step forward. I must’ve looked shaken.

“My father’s dead.”
I repeated the words, though they still sounded absurd to me. “He
lived in New York. But he recently died.”

Turned out, I didn’t
need to take the towel off of Kara this time. Her hands flew up to
her mouth in shock and the towel dropped right off, falling to the
floor around her feet.

§

Tomorrow morning, it
wasn’t just Stephen who stepped out of the giant, black SUV. A
small man accompanied him. He looked about 70 years old, but taut
energy fueled his steps as he approached us. His formal suit
contrasted starkly with the rugged, Montana wilderness.

“Nelson Armistead,”
he introduced himself in a formal British accent, “attorney for the
late Mr. Richard Kavenaugh.”

“Declan Hunt.” We
shook hands.

“You’re a hard man
to find,” he said, surveying me in my cowboy hat, jeans and boots.

“Not really,” I
replied. I kept myself composed, my words and actions revealing no
emotions. But if you looked close you could probably see the pulse
pounding in my neck, the firm set of my jaw.

“I suppose it helps
if you’re looking for someone under the right name,” the lawyer
agreed.

I didn’t know what he
was talking about, but I figured I was about to find out. We walked
to a room in the resort’s main building, set up for business with
leather arm chairs and a rectangular wooden table. Our guests came to
get away from it all, but we’d discovered that ‘it all’
frequently came along with them, anyway.

Kara joined us. Last
night when we’d received the news, I hadn’t assumed that she
would. I was used to doing everything on my own.

“You think I’m
going to make you learn about all of this on your own?” she’d
questioned me, aghast. Guess I was going to have to get used to
someone caring about me, looking after me. I was willing to give it a
try. I was grateful to have her by my side.

Plus, Kara actually
seemed excited about all of this. Due to my cold shock, she was
keeping it in check, but I knew her well enough to see the subtle
smile pulling at the edges of her mouth. She thought it was cool, a
missing piece in the picture of my life. She’d been urging me to
find my father, and now look what had happened. My father had up and
found me. But not until after he’d already passed away.

Nelson the attorney
didn’t waste any time. Brisk, efficient and to the point, he gave
us the background story. Twenty-eight years ago, real estate mogul
Richard Kavanaugh had traveled with some business associates from New
York to Montana on a fly-fishing getaway. While vacationing, he’d
met an attractive young woman named Celia Cruise at a local bar.
They’d spent the night together. Then Richard had returned to New
York where he lived with his wife and infant son.

“Oh my! He was
married! And he had a baby?” Kara exclaimed at my side. I rubbed my
hand across my forehead, feeling like I’d somehow just stepped into
a trashy reality show. Only it was my life.

“Yes,” Nelson
continued. He sounded slightly disapproving, but that could have
simply been his English accent. “Nine months later, Richard
received a phone call informing him that he now had a second son.”

“She didn’t tell
him she was pregnant?” Kara asked, shocked but engrossed.
Apparently she enjoyed trashy reality TV.

Nelson shook his head
no. “I’ve been the Kavanaugh family attorney for four and a half
decades. Mr. Kavanaugh did not know that she was pregnant.” He
paused, then looked at me to add, “He did not know about you until
after you were born.”

“How do you know I’m
his son? Do you have proof?” I managed to still maintain my
composure. All those high-stakes business meetings in my past served
me well to perform under pressure, and I asked the question calmly.
Under the table, though, Kara held my hand tight. Despite my stoic
demeanor, she knew this was hard.

“We do.” I looked
at him, awaiting further clarification. In response, he asked, “What
did your mother tell you about your father?”

“Nothing,” I said.
“Only that he left before I was born.”

“The day after you
were conceived,” Mr. Harrison agreed. “With no knowledge that you
had been.”

“But how do you know
that he’s my father? My mother wasn’t exactly honest.”

“We’re aware of
that.” Nelson pushed a legal-looking document toward me. I could
see it was a birth certificate, for a baby named Richard Kavanaugh,
Jr. “This was the copy of the birth certificate she provided to us.
We didn’t realize at the time, but it was forged. You were not
named Richard Kavanaugh.”

I looked at the forged
document like I was seeing a ghost. It had my birthday on it, and my
mother’s name and signature.

“She fooled us on
that count,” Nelson continued. “But she eagerly cooperated with
paternity testing. Under supervision. You are, without a doubt,
Richard Kavanaugh’s biological son.”

I brought my hand up to
my head again. Kara subtly rubbed my shoulder.

“I’m going to tell
you everything, Mr. Hunt, without delay. It’s going to be a lot to
process and I’ll be happy to review any details. But I always feel
it’s better to get everything out in the open.”

“Go on,” I agreed.
Kara leaned closer to me, her shoulder pressed against my arm. It
kept me grounded, and I needed it because everything else seemed like
crazy talk.

“Your mother lied
about your name, making up both first and last so she could control
and conceal your identity. This was before the Internet, personal
computers, social media, all of that. Identities were much more
easily withheld.”

“She made up the name
Declan Hunt?” Kara asked.

“Yes,” Nelson
confirmed, then continued with his incredible story. “Mr. Kavanaugh
wired Miss Cruise money every month, more than enough to keep both of
you comfortable.”

“We had nothing,” I
interrupted, shaking my head.

“You had nothing,”
Nelson corrected. “She had her drugs.”

I looked down at the
table. I wanted to walk right out of the room, but I couldn’t. I
knew I had to sit, listen and learn the truth about my past.

“By the time you were
eight or nine we’d become well aware that Miss Cruise was less than
trustworthy. But she proved difficult to track down.”

“We moved all the
time,” I recalled.

“Every time we were
getting close to locating you.”

“Montana’s not that
big a state,” I protested.

“Big enough. She used
several aliases. And this was a different time—”

“Yes, before the
Internet. You said.” My voice had an edge to it now. “He couldn’t
have tried that hard to find me.”

“It became much more
difficult once Miss Cruise became incarcerated.”

I winced at the words.

“You no longer lived
with her and as we didn’t know your real name, we had no way to
search for you. We contacted all of her known relatives and
associates, but most hadn’t seen her for some time. None had any
knowledge of your whereabouts.”

I swallowed, tense. “I
was in foster care.”

“I only learned of
that recently.”

“Richard Kavanaugh.”
I repeated the name, my eyes fixed on the table as I realized. “I
met him.”

“You did,” Nelson
confirmed.

“That night at the
Met.”

“He attended the
charity event,” the lawyer said. “He’d read about you and
become curious. You resemble your mother more than your father, but
he wondered. He always worried about you.”

I bristled at the
assertion, not exactly ready to buy this version of reality. My
long-lost father searching for me, worrying about me. But I said
nothing while he continued, explaining that my father had become
convinced of my identity after we’d spoken that night. But it had
taken time to piece it all together, and he didn’t have time.

“As you may have
noted when you spoke,” Nelson remarked, “he was quite ill. He
passed away from cancer shortly thereafter. Only 62, far too young.”

The lawyer paused. I
kept perfectly composed, my poker face firmly in place.

“It was a source of
great pain to him that he could not find you. Even given all of his
considerable resources,” Nelson continued. “It was his dying wish
to give you a full inheritance alongside your brothers and sister.”

“What?” Kara spoke
up at that. She clutched her hand to my arm. “Brothers and sister?”
Of course she was more excited about the revelation of family than
the inheritance.

“Yes, three
half-brothers and a half-sister. Gigi is the youngest. She just
turned 20. All of them are from his marriage to his first wife,
Margo.”

“Gigi’s 20?” Kara
asked. Oh man, here we go. Kara was probably crocheting her a scarf
as we spoke.

Nelson nodded, then
continued. “Richard also left behind his wife and stepson from his
second marriage. Your presence, Declan, has come as quite a shock to
them all.”

I snorted. “I’ll
bet.”

“Do you doubt that?”
The lawyer’s eyes narrowed, but only slightly. He clearly knew how
to keep emotions in check as well.

“I don’t doubt it.
Not at all. I’m sure they all hate the idea of splitting their pie
with me.”

“There’s no need to
be crude about it,” he scolded me.

“You forget,” I
grinned without mirth, “I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in
my mouth. You couldn’t find me. I got dragged all over, sometimes
without a winter coat or shoes that fit my feet. I am the definition
of crude.”

Kara cringed at my
words, at the image of me young and helpless. I never talked about
those days. She likely knew how much I hated to do it now.

But I didn’t need to,
did I? I didn’t need to sit there and re-live my worst days, hear
more news about how my mother had lied and cheated and screwed me
over. I was done with this meeting.

“It doesn’t matter.
I don’t want any inheritance.” I stood up from the table. “This
meeting is over.”

“I thought you might
say that.” My lawyer, Stephen, spoke up for the first time all
meeting. I’d almost forgotten he was there.

“You knew about all
this?” I looked at him, accusatory.

“Only for the past
day. I was briefed on the details. But I thought you should hear it
all in person. And I told him there was a good chance that you would
refuse your inheritance.”

“If you prefer,”
Nelson spoke to me, “the inheritance will be gifted entirely to
your charity for foster children. Your father admired your work
greatly.”

I grunted,
non-committal.

“But first you must
do one thing.”

I stood and waited for
it, my whole body tense.

“It was Mr.
Kavanaugh’s wish that you meet your family. For any funds to be
released, you must agree to do so.”