CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 

Brant

 

I opened the door to Graystone Hill, finally exhaling the breath I felt I’d been holding since boarding the plane in New York. “Hello?”

“In here,” I heard May call. She appeared in the hall as I was stepping into it from the foyer and her smile was instantaneous. Warm. Welcoming. “Brant!”

“Hi, May.” I gave her a hug and then followed her into the kitchen as she spoke over her shoulder.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming when we talked earlier.”

“I didn’t know. I decided after we spoke.”

“Oh.” She looked off to the side, seeming worried.

“May? What’s wrong?”

“Well, if you’re here then I guess you don’t know that Isabelle isn’t.”

My heart skipped a beat and then resumed in quick staccato. “What do you mean, she isn’t? She’s still out riding?” Was she hurt?

“No, no. She took the truck and drove to see her parents.”

Her parents? A jolt of worry speared through me. Why? She’d questioned whether they’d had something to do with the deaths of her family, and dismissed it, but . . . I still didn’t like it. And I had no actual idea how to get to her. “Ah, where?” I asked.

May walked behind the island, bending and looking at something in the oven. “Well, I know it’s Ohio Amish country. I’m afraid I don’t have the exact address.” She appeared thoughtful for a moment. “Your father might, if she listed them as next of kin on any of the employment forms.”

“Right. Where is my father? Upstairs?”

“No. Actually, he rode to the breeding stable with Mick. It’s good for him to get out, and I’m glad whenever he feels up to it.”

I nodded, and it really hit me standing there looking at May’s kind face that eventually, sooner not later, my father would succumb to his illness. Had I not believed it until now? No . . . I still couldn’t wrap my head around a world that didn’t contain the larger-than-life personality of Harrison Talbot.

I cleared my throat, feeling a strange swirling inside, overwhelmed by a hundred different emotions simultaneously: worry about Isabelle, sadness about where we had ended up, confusion about my feelings for my father . . . ah, hell, I didn’t even know. “I’m going to go put my bag in my room,” I told May, turning away.

“Sounds good, Brant. The sheets are clean.”

The sheets. Those sheets upon which I’d made love to Isabelle again and again, the ones we’d spent that glorious weekend between when we’d had the house all to ourselves. I set my travel bag on the floor, memories both assaulting me and caressing me, heat moving over my skin as cold regret settled in my bones. That weekend . . . I’d been happy, free, but half out of my head in a way that sent dread spiraling through me. The way I felt for Isabelle was a dizzying whirling tornado that I couldn’t control . . . and I, no, I couldn’t let it pull me under. I’d already decided that.

But if I didn’t, I’d never win Isabelle back.

I left the room, heading toward the office. The office where Isabelle worked. I could picture her now, sitting in the oversized leather desk chair, one ankle crossed over the other as she bit the inside of her cheek in concentration. Christ, this whole house was filled with memories of her. I clenched my eyes shut, wanting her here with me so desperately it was a physical ache.

I opened the desk drawers but there were only supplies inside them. There were no file drawers in the office at all. “Where do you keep your employment papers, old man?” I murmured.

Back in the foyer, I took the stairs two at a time the way I’d done when I was a teenager. My father’s door was half open and I went inside, heading straight for his desk.

The first drawer I opened held a stack of manila file folders, the top one unlabeled. Of course. Just like my father. He’d always been so disorganized. I pulled it out and opened it, and it appeared to be a pile of business receipts, for tax purposes presumably. The folder underneath that one didn’t have a label either, and I pulled it out, expecting more random papers and instead came face to face with . . . my own face. It was an article from a few months before about my nightclubs. Frowning, I took it out, finding another article underneath that one—a review of the food at one of my bars. What the hell? Sitting in the desk chair behind me, I put the folder on my lap and leafed quickly through the huge stack of articles and clippings. They were all about me, going back to the very first business I’d opened when I was twenty-five.

He’d kept updated, on my life, my successes and my failures, all these years. My heart clenched painfully in my chest, emotion overwhelming me. Oh Jesus, Dad. Despite everything, he had cared. I didn’t know how to feel about it, didn’t even really want to think about it all, considering the turmoil I was already in regarding Isabelle. Too much. It’s too much.

I started to put the file folder back when I glimpsed the edge of a piece of paper with what I recognized as my mother’s handwriting. My heart lurched, and I reached for it as if I’d spotted the tips of her fingers appearing through a cloudy wall of mist. It was a note, and as my eyes scanned the lines, a lump filled my throat and I closed my eyes tight. Oh God.

I was so surprised, so overwhelmed with emotion, I didn’t hear my father come up the stairs, didn’t know he was in the house at all until he stepped in the door. His eyes moved to the stack of papers in my lap, the note in my hand, and then to my face. For a second he appeared frozen, but then his expression melted into one of resignation.

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

“For what good reason, Brant?”

He stepped farther into the room, and I could see that he was moving as if in pain, one measured step before another. He sank into the armchair, taking a deep breath and looking at me.

“The truth. Isn’t that a good enough reason?”

“You were hurting. How much more would it have hurt to know about that?” He waved his hand toward the note still clutched in my hand.

“My mother was having an affair, Dad. She was leaving you for another man for Christ’s sake! And you let me think you were the bad guy.”

“Ah, Brant. I was the bad guy. Life isn’t a fairy tale. In real life, there can be more than one villain.”

As I stared at him, that day came back to me in living color. My mother had taken me out to lunch. She’d been in that mood of hers that I hated: flighty, erratic, unpredictable, crazy. She’d poured salt on the table from the shaker and had drawn pictures in it and laughed. I’d been embarrassed and ashamed. We’d come home and walked into the house, and there was my father, kissing his secretary against the wall. Mom had crumbled, and horror and betrayal had coursed through me as I’d tried to comfort my sobbing mother. I’d found her later that day in a pool of blood in the bathroom.

Because my father had cheated on her in her own home and she couldn’t bear it. Only . . .

“I messed up, Brant. Your mother had left that note for me a few days before. She was in love with another man and was leaving with him. We fought, she cried, told me it wasn’t her fault, that you loved who you loved and that was it. I told her if she was going to skip out on her family, she’d have to be the one to tell you. It was her responsibility, not mine. I figured, ah hell, I figured she’d change her mind, come to her senses. You know your mother was prone to these ideas that—”

“That flew away with the next strong breeze.”

He sighed. “Yeah.” He shook his head, suddenly looking every minute his age, his illness, his limited time . . . “But I loved her. I loved her spirit. She wasn’t always the way she was near the end. In the beginning, she was this beautiful girl who loved to dance in the rain. Full of life, full of joy and laughter.”

“I saw that side of her too, Dad.” I looked away from him, out the window where the Talbot land stretched before me. “I think it’s the only one I chose to remember.”

My father regarded me for a moment, looking at me in that sharp-eyed way of his that led me to believe he understood exactly what was going on in my head. Hell, maybe he did. Hadn’t he always?

“Is that why you began an affair with your secretary? Because my mother was leaving you?”

“I wasn’t having an affair with my secretary. I was hurting that day, weak. I thought your mother was out telling you she was leaving us. I kissed Moira because she was there and I was needy. I used her, and I regretted the hell out of it. She was a decent woman who I knew had what you’d call a crush on me, I guess. I just . . .” His voice trailed off, but he took a breath and continued. “Christ, she was there and I was so goddamned sad.”

I set the note down on the top of the manila folder and raked my hands through my hair, expelling a breath. “After my mother . . . why’d you let me think that was the reason she . . . did what she did?”

“Because you were destroyed, Brant. Finding her that way? And hell, for all intents and purposes it was because of that. Your mother’s reasoning wasn’t always sound, and she was self-centered. Something like that . . . she wouldn’t have worked through it reasonably.”

I stared at him, knowing exactly what he was saying, understanding, remembering.  I looked away. “Was she crazy?” I asked softly.

“She went to a doctor once who diagnosed her with manic depression. He gave her some pills that made her practically catatonic. She hated it.” He sighed. “Truth is, I hated it too. She was . . . unpredictable, but at least she was there.”

I nodded, wondering for the first time in my life what it must have been like for him to love her. God, I’d never even considered it, hadn’t let myself remember the patience he’d had with her, the way he’d shrug off every batch of burnt cookies that she’d left in the oven because something else had caught her interest. The way he’d fashioned a leash for an injured baby possum because my mother had been beside herself with grief and insisted on raising it herself . . . for a couple of days. Then my father had taken over the raising of that possum, feeding it with an eyedropper until it was independent enough to be set free. He was always there for her. He always indulged her, took care of her messes, loved her despite them. Allowed her to live her life the way she needed to. Loved to. Just as a man who loved a woman should.

My father was a protector. Perhaps a misguided one, but a protector nonetheless.

I put my head in my hands, rubbing my temples, memories coming at me from every direction, flowing in like an unblocked stream. The force so strong it felt as if I were being knocked down, dragged along the sandy bottom. Why? Why had I dammed it up in the first place?

“I worried I was like her,” I breathed, the words rising to my mouth, unbidden.

“What?”

I blew out a breath that felt like it had been trapped in my body for years, decades. “Everyone always used to say how much I reminded them of her. How . . . full of life we both were . . . how wild, fun . . .” My voice trailed off as I stared unseeing at the wall. Afterward . . . after that day . . . I had shunned the part of myself I associated with her. Became the complete opposite not only for fear I’d turn into her, but also because then I’d have to acknowledge how she’d really been. And how afraid I was of turning into that other part. The part that scared me, the part that I . . . hated. Oh Christ. I hated it. I did. Hated how irrational she was, how disconnected. How . . . crazy.

I’d blocked her out entirely, afraid that in letting in some of the good, I’d have to also face the bad. And so I’d kept her in the back of my mind as a fuzzy image of reality, a mere shadow of who she’d really been. If anyone had dishonored my mother, it had been me.

I had to acknowledge my true feelings about Ethan before I could find peace, Isabelle had said. I don’t know what’s locked inside your heart, but you have to face it. It will be hard, but it will be worth it, I promise.

I let out a sharp hiss of breath. She had been right . . . because she always was. She’d seen me, she’d known what I was doing, what I’d been doing since I’d left this house, and she’d tried to help me. Only I’d been too blind, too fearful to listen to her, too stubborn to attempt change.

Even if I was like my mother, did I imagine I was powerful enough to control it by will alone? Had I thought I could hold it back by only allowing through a rationed amount of passion? That I could somehow regulate my emotions where she could not? Somewhere inside, did I blame her for not trying harder to be the mother I’d wished her to be? The person I’d wished her to be? Oh Jesus. It hurt to think about this, but I needed to. My father didn’t deserve my hatred, my disgust. God, he’d lost the woman he loved that day, and his son. He’d been left all alone. And for thirteen years, he’d never tried to correct my assumptions, but he’d silently applauded me from the sidelines.

I looked at my father, really looked at him for maybe the first time, saw the heartache in his eyes, the way he covered his own feelings with gruffness. “Yes, Brant. You are like your mother. The best part of her. I never,” he choked slightly and then coughed, taking a moment to recover, “I never wanted you to forget that side of her. I didn’t want you to let that be covered over by her actions in the end.”

It felt like I was choking too. “So you took the burden of my hatred to spare me the pain of hating her on top of my grief?”

“It seemed better that way. And I wasn’t blameless. I made my own mistakes. I was willing to pay for them.”

“Ah, Dad. Christ.” I gripped my hair again, leaning my head forward as the truth of that day settled into my mind, my soul. We’d all made such big mistakes, let guilt and anger and terrible sadness rule our choices for far too many years. No more.

I let go of my hair, looked up. “I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry.”

For a moment my father didn’t speak, but his shoulders shook slightly. Then he gathered himself together. “I’m the one who’s sorry. Please forgive me, son.” His voice faded off at the end. He was going to go to his grave believing he deserved my hatred.

“Yes,” I choked, standing, the file folder slipping to the floor, years’ worth of papers spilling out. My dad stood, and I hugged him, taking care with his cancer-riddled body, the full impact of the fact that I’d gotten my father back again and would soon lose him once more hitting me full in the chest.

“I’m so proud of you, son. All these years . . . so proud,” my father said, hugging me tightly. “I hoped . . . I hoped so much you’d come back. I didn’t want it to be like this, but I’m so glad you’re here now.”

After a moment I let go, helping him back into the chair. Tears sparkled in his eyes but he blinked them back. I squatted in front of him. “Dad, we have so much to talk about, so much to catch up on, but right now, I need to find Belle.”

He tilted his head, approval clear in his blue eyes. “You messed things up, did you?”

“Yeah. Big time.”

“Then I’d say you better go fix it before another minute passes.”

I breathed out a laugh. “I agree. I just don’t know where to go. May said she went to visit her parents but doesn’t have their information.”

My dad frowned. “Hand me the folder with her name on it in the second drawer on the left,” he said, pointing at his desk.

I retrieved the folder and brought it to him and he rifled through it, shaking his head. “This is her original job application, but she didn’t put any information in here about her parents. Paige and Aaron Singleton are listed as her emergency contact.” He handed me the piece of paper.

“Damn.” I frowned. “Okay, I’ll go call them.” I paused. “Thanks, Dad.”

He nodded, closing his eyes, obviously worn out—physically and probably emotionally too. But I smiled as I patted him on the shoulder and turned to leave. I still had a lot to work through regarding my mother and my turbulent feelings about who she’d been and what she’d done, but it felt like a weight had lifted from my soul.

I shut my dad’s door and turned toward the stairs then hesitated. Maybe there was something in Isabelle’s room that would give me the information I needed. An address book? Something? I opened her room door, the very faint scent of her making my heart speed up with longing. Isabelle. Vanilla and honey.

Home.

I opened the desk drawers but they were as empty as the first time I’d looked in there. Her dresser drawers were full of the clothes she’d unpacked. I picked up a nightgown and brought it to my nose, inhaling, groaning.

Isabelle. Please don’t give up on me yet.

The only other piece of furniture where she might have tossed an address book was the nightstand. I opened the small drawer and peered inside, everything inside me stilling and then immediately quickening.

With shaking fingers, I picked up the plastic baggy, staring at the one word clearly seen in the tiny window on the enclosed test stick.

Pregnant.

Isabelle was pregnant . . . and she hadn’t called to tell me.

I sat down heavily on the bed.

God, why would she call me? And why would she ever consider giving me a second chance?

 

**********

 

I paced the office, my cell phone clutched in my hand as Paige and Aaron’s voicemail picked up again, the number that had been listed on Isabelle’s employment form. “Hi, this is us. We’re not home right now, but leave a message and we’ll get back to you.” Apparently Aaron hadn’t changed the outgoing message to reflect his newly single status. Apparently Aaron didn’t know that few people had home phones anymore.

I started to leave a third message when the line was picked up, I heard a man’s voice saying, “Hold on,” and then the machine was clicked off. “Hello?”

“Aaron? This is Brant Talbot. I’ve left a few messages.”

“Sorry, I just got home. What’s happened? Is Isabelle okay?” He sounded genuinely concerned.

“Yeah. She’s fine. But she went to her parents’ house, and I’m planning on surprising her but don’t have their address. I was hoping you might.”

He paused for a moment. “I don’t, but it’s possible Paige does. I’ll call her. She won’t be happy to hear from me, but I’ll do it for Isabelle.”

“If you give me the number where she’s staying, I can call her.” I paused. “Listen, Isabelle told me things got . . . physical between you two, and it’s probably better—”

“Physical?” He let out a short burst of laughter. “What the hell did Paige say I did to her?”

I frowned, uncomfortable. I only wanted the damn address where Isabelle was, and I didn’t want to be responsible for having a man who’d beat his wife contact her when she was just looking to be left alone. “I wasn’t there for the conversation. She told Isabelle you’d been angry, gotten violent with her.”

He swore under his breath. “Paige is a fucking pathological liar. She lies as easily as other people breathe. I didn’t know the full extent of it until recently. But let me assure you of this—I never laid a hand on my wife.”

Wait, what?

“Listen,” Aaron went on. “I’ll dig that address up for you myself. Give me your cell number and I’ll text it to you. And please tell Isabelle to call me when she returns.” I gave him my number, he repeated it back, and after a terse goodbye, the call was disconnected.

I shook my head in surprise, not knowing what the hell to make of that. Was he lying? Paige is a fucking pathological liar, he’d said, sounding so angry, almost unhinged. Deciding I had enough of my own problems at the moment to worry about theirs, and feeling frustrated and antsy as all hell, I left the house and jogged to the stable. I prayed Aaron would send the address I needed quickly. I could look up the location of the Amish community in Ohio and drive in that direction, but how likely would it be that once I got there, anyone would give me the specific location of Isabelle’s parents’ house? I wasn’t sure, but waiting for Aaron seemed like the more logical course of action. I needed to get rid of some pent-up energy before I got in the car and drove to Isabelle. I needed to think, to come up with the words I’d say to her, how I’d put voice to the things in my heart. And I knew from experience the best place to do that was on the back of a horse.

It only took me ten minutes to saddle one of the mares, and then I was leaned over the powerful animal as she galloped across the pasture.

Peace. Freedom. Clarity.

As I rode swiftly over the rolling hills, it felt as if the movement allowed the coat of armor I’d outfitted myself in to slip free and fall behind. Out here I was just me; a man now, but also the wild boy I’d once been. Uninhibited by anything. Unafraid. Willing to take on the world. Willing to risk it all. I’d been so scared to allow that part of myself to surface. That’s why I’d been so deathly afraid of the way Isabelle made me feel—out of control, practically obsessed . . . crazy at times, truth be told. But that’s what love was.

Love.

I was a fool.

I hadn’t asked Isabelle to marry me because it made sense. Hell, if anything, it made little sense. I’d wanted to marry her because I was head over ass in love with her. I’d asked her to marry me because from the moment she’d entered the room that first day, I’d been infatuated, my feelings so immediate and so strong that the damn earth had moved. And I’d only fallen deeper and deeper with every moment we spent together. It was irrational, practically inexplicable and the truest, most honest thing I’d ever experienced.

Fuck. I’d been so terrified of the intensity of my feelings for her that I was ready to give her up rather than acknowledge what they were.

I’d been ready to give her up rather than give in to the delirium of love.

Isabelle. Brave, strong Isabelle. My Isabelle.

I hadn’t wanted to be with her for Caspian Skye, or anything else. I’d give it up in a heartbeat for her. Hell, I’d give up my entire empire for her. Anything. She was the love of my life. I didn’t need the fulfillment of opening another bar or getting the best deal on a new property. Not anymore. I needed her.

I pulled up on the reins, slowing the mare so she came to a trot, then to a stop. I hopped off, tying her reins loosely to a tree and leaving her to graze on what was left of the dying fall grass.

Had I meant to come to this spot? To the copse of trees I’d found refuge in as a boy? Or was it coincidence I’d ended up here, the place where I’d first begun to love Isabelle Farris? I entered the circle of trees and memories flowed in. In this place, which still felt holy to me in some way that was difficult to define. It was here where Isabelle had first shared a piece of her soul with me and seemed to look into mine. Ah, God, Belle. Belle. My heart thumped with love for her, every beat echoing her name.

Please don’t tell me it’s too late.

How can I make this right?

I looked at the break in the trees above, shimmery golden rays filtering in.

If only this really was a portal and in the next heartbeat, I could be with Belle, wrapping my arms around her, inhaling her sweet scent.

I fell to my knees under the pale stream of light and stayed there for a long time, my decision taking form, settling. I knew exactly what I wanted to do and nothing had ever felt more right.