Prologue
Not interested.” Zack Winston snapped his mouth shut and focused on the two men staring back at him from the other side of the linen-draped table.
Low lighting and the slight clink of utensils on fine china surrounded them as he waited.
What he waited for, he wasn’t sure. What could they say? He’d made his stance clear. He wasn’t interested in getting to know them. That train had passed years ago.
And he most certainly wouldn’t be heading north to visit their “quaint little town.”
“I hope you’ll reconsider,” Cody said. Though the men were identical, it was clear he was the angrier of the two. He’d shown up with a chip on his shoulder the size of Zack’s bank account. “We’re not talking about moving there.” Cody was working to remain polite, but Zack could see that he wanted to tell him to go to hell. Good for him. The feeling was mutual. “Just visiting,” Cody continued. “Sugar Springs is small, but it’s a good town.”
“Cody spent a year there as a teenager, then came back a few months ago,” Nick jumped in. “That’s where I found him.” Nick was obviously the peacemaker.
Zack watched as Nick riffled through his thoughts as if searching for anything he could say to win him over. The fact was, nothing they said would win him over. He knew exactly what they were after, and it wasn’t brotherly love.
Cody and Nick Dalton had shown up at Zack’s Atlanta high-rise the evening before, cornering him on his way out of the building. It had taken only one look to know who they were. They bore features strangely similar to his.
Same hair. Same eyes. Same . . . everything.
They’d claimed to be his brothers, one year younger than his thirty-three. And he couldn’t deny the truth. He had brothers, yes. He’d discovered the fact ten years ago.
Adopted into a loving family as a baby, Zack had met his biological mother exactly once. And once had been enough. Pam Dalton had lived in squalor, just outside of Nashville. He’d learned all he needed to know about her and his two brothers at that meeting. Now, the only questions remaining were, how much money did they want?
And when would they get around to asking for it?
He balanced his fork on the edge of his gold-trimmed plate, concentrating to keep his expression blank. They didn’t need to know that their appearance had thrown him. He’d written them off after his meeting with their biological mother. That’s where they would remain.
His heart thumped hard against his ribs.
Only . . . why, then, did they claim to have found each other only three months ago? That was contradictory to what Pam had said.
Which would mean . . .
He settled his hands together on the table in front of him, fingertips touching, and didn’t allow himself to venture what that would mean. Instead, he systematically ran through the facts.
Fact: All three of them had been separated at an early age.
Their story matched his. He’d hired a private investigator ten years before, who’d reported back that Zack had not only been given away as a baby, but so had Cody, at the age of two—only he’d ended up a ward of the state. Nick had remained with Pam.
Fact: Their father had died years ago in a bar fight. That matched the info he had, as well.
Fact: Pam was dead.
This was a new one. Apparently she’d succumbed to a failing system due to longtime drug and alcohol abuse, merely one week before Nick had supposedly discovered he had brothers and sought out Cody.
Zack could buy organ failure as the cause of death. She’d certainly been well on her way to that fate when he’d met her. She’d shown up high as a kite before proceeding to down more whiskey in the thirty minutes they’d talked than he would wish for in a month. She’d also been the nastiest piece of trash he’d ever had the displeasure of meeting. Barb had been equally unimpressed.
He loosened his jaw after realizing that thinking of his ex-fiancée had made him grind his teeth together. She hadn’t mattered in years, and she certainly didn’t now. She was simply a lesson learned.
As had been Pam.
What Zack wasn’t buying from Cody and Nick’s story was that they’d only recently met. And that they’d never known he existed. That did not match his facts.
But then, that particular fact had come from Pam.
The strung-out, piece-of-shit drug addict who’d shown up to meet him only long enough to demand that he owed her money. She’d been running low on cash to feed her habit, apparently. Her claim was that she’d provided him with a good life by giving him away, thus he should repay her for that.
She’d skipped the part where his parents had handed over a hefty sum before she’d “given away” anything. They’d been more than happy to pay both the fees and Pam’s medical and living expenses during the pregnancy. Everything had been handled legally through a private adoption.
However, as someone who’d been around for a while, Zack also knew that figures could be padded. Expenses faked.
He knew that Pam Dalton had made out like a bandit.
When guilt hadn’t worked on him, she’d resorted to blackmail. She could have sued him for seeking her out without her granting permission.
But she was his birth mother. He’d had to know.
Thus, blackmail had worked. But only once. He’d also forced her to sign the waiver indicating she’d given permission to seek her out.
Probably he shouldn’t have written the check, but he’d been more interested in getting him and Barb away from her at that moment. He’d heard enough. But when she’d seen that the amount on the check was only half of what she’d demanded, she’d started spitting like an alley cat. She’d let him know his brothers would be coming to collect as well.
Only, he’d given all he was going to. He would not bow to more threats. There was no way those drugged-out hillbillies would get another cent out of him.
Instead, he’d gotten the hell out of there and had never looked back.
Until now.
He stared across the table at the identical faces so similar to his, at the matching dark hair, both men waiting for him to speak. Now his past had shown back up. Claiming they wanted to get to know him.
Pam had been a piece of work, many times over. But had she lied about his brothers?
And if she had, did he care?
He was pretty sure he didn’t. He had his work, his mother.
He had a life that didn’t include Podunk, USA.
As far as he could tell, he didn’t need anything else. Least of all two men who were most likely looking to scam him.
“Surely you two don’t think there would be any reason I would want to visit,” he finally made himself speak. His mouth had gone dry, but he refused to reach for his water glass. If they wanted to pretend they hadn’t come here with their hands out, he would go along with their ruse.
Yet he didn’t believe them for a minute.
“I’m not seeking long-lost family,” he continued, “and I don’t need to see the backwoods of America to know that Atlanta is where I belong.”
Nick’s brown eyes never left Zack’s, but disgust now pulled at his mouth.
Zack needed time to think. To figure things out.
To not be staring into eyes that looked so much like his own.
He peered at them with disdain for two more seconds before lifting his hand to a passing waiter. What he didn’t need was to be ambushed into something that would bring on false hope. He’d had enough of that in his lifetime. “Check, please.”
He was done there.