Chapter Fifteen
Taylor
I finished my day off in relative silence after Dalton left. I typed up ideas about different people, the lives of the rich and famous I was not personally a part of but reported on. I talked about the Vanderbilt house. Lives of those who seemed like they had it all together, but deep down, the secrets of the South bubbled long and hard.
People have preconceived notion about what women in the South are like. Fainting flowers, passive aggressive, great cooks. But secrets are what do families in. They snake through the very pores and veins and sinew of a family and do unrepairable damage.
Typing furiously, I wanted to escape how I felt about telling Dalton I no longer wanted secrets. I wanted to be honest about our relationship. We had years of history before he left. He grew up in the bar. When I was a teenager, I noticed him. He had just finished up his bachelor’s degree with Eric. We had always been friends. But then it was like a pow, right in the chest. I was at the bar wiping down glasses, and he was swinging bottles around, and he looked at me and smiled. And winked. It did me in. That’s when I first developed my crush for Dalton.
If my heart needed to be put away for a while, I wouldn’t be happy about it, but I would do it. My heart wanted, no needed, more. I would wrap it up in linen and store it all away. I wanted to go forward in the relationship. I had been happy to settle with Joe, but it wasn’t in me to settle. Now, after we had been sampling the forbidden fruit, I wanted it all. I wanted Dalton, and I wanted a true relationship.
No relationship was perfect, but I wanted as close to that as I could get. I wanted it with my Dalton. With his scar, his sardonic smile, his wit. The last week without him had made me sure that this was the route to take. I missed him with every beat of my heart. It felt like I was in the dark when he wasn’t around and light when he was. It was time to come out of the shadows. It was a gamble and a price I was willing to pay.
What Dalton and I had been experiencing was enjoyable, so very enjoyable, physically. The best I had ever had. I no longer just needed companionship. I wanted the fire that went with it. The blaze that burned and melted and forged. I tasted it. He made me feel that way when I was with him. I was willing to stake it all that he wanted it as well. He wasn’t angry when he left. He looked determined with that iron jaw fixed in place. I smiled to myself. I could see how my brother’s hand had busted on that. It’s probably why he had been so successful so fast. When he was determined, he went after what he wanted.
That just swung it back to me again. Had he not wanted me? If you want something, you come back for it. Right? That’s the way of the world. Why had Dalton never come back to me? Never called, never anything. Just left. Confused more than ever, I shut down my computer and headed back upstairs.
I bounded to my bedroom and felt my phone start singing and vibrating in my sweat pants. My Facetime was lighting up and it was Kris. After the incident with Eric and Courtney, Kris texted me that she had a whole full week of work. Then it was radio silence. It bothered me. I knew she fumed over Courtney, but I didn’t know if she saw her as competition or if Kris was feeling sorry for herself. I had gotten a couple of texts. Those gave me little or no information on her state of mind.
The fact she was Facetiming instead of coming over was disconcerting. I clicked on the app and saw Kris's reddened face. She was in full bawl mode. The only other time I had seen her this way was when she lost out on the role in the high school play. It pushed her toward photography instead of the dramatic arts in college, but at the time, she was devastated and looked just like she did right now.
My friend took too much to heart, and it was hard to watch at times. She would go quiet and then think about things until it came out in buckets of tears.
“Okay, what’s up, Kris? And don’t you dare say nothing.”
She blinked at my gruff remark. She shrugged and then started her story. “Taylor, all week I have thought about Courtney and Eric. I thought that maybe they had something going on. Something behind my back, but then I realized that if anything does happen, it's because I didn't do anything. I just let it go. Obviously, all the times over the years I've thought about him, but I always kept him at arm’s length, never wanting Eric to know how I felt about him. I always felt like I’m like another kid sister to him. And it might be too late. I listened to him in the bar all those years ago as he talked to me about what it felt like to lose Courtney and here she is, back in his face again.”
She stopped momentarily, swiping at her tears, almost angered by them. “And the fault is all mine. Taylor, I can't do that anymore.”
“You need to step out there. Tell him how you really feel. Tell him you don’t want to be just friends anymore. If you don’t, if it is not Courtney, it will be someone else. Get out of the friend zone.”
I knew I was preaching to the choir, but I was in her same shoes. Only I was the friends with benefits and I wanted more.
“I know I can't go on like this any longer,” we said together.
“What?” Kris asked.
I rolled my shoulders. I hated being on the spot, and Kris, with laser vision, would see right to the heart of the matter with me.
“I told Dalton today that he needed to tell Eric. No more secrets. Either make it real or let me know it’s not. But I’m not okay with the way things are, and I want more.”
“Huh,” was all Kris said.
I heard running up the stairs. For a second, my heart soared, thinking it was Dalton. However, a moment later, I realized it was just my brother’s heavy clod that I would know any day of the week.
“Kris, Eric’s coming. I need to get back with you.”
She wiped at her face. “I don’t want him to see me like this. Can I come by tomorrow?”
“Always,” I told her. “I’ll even make some muffins.”
Kris snorted. “Your muffins suck. I’ll bring my own.”
I smiled at her. “It’s a date!”
I had barely gotten off the phone with Chris when Eric slammed the bedroom door open, and I jumped about a mile. He stalked across the room to me. Crap, he knew. I braced myself.
“Taylor, there you are! I’ve been tearing up the house.”
“Eric, what the hell? This is just weird.”
“I’m your brother. I’m always weird.”
“It’s the middle of the day, and what are you doing home?”
“I want you to check into Courtney for me.”
It took effort not to shake him and ask him if he was crazy. Not what I thought he was going to say. Not even close.
“Seriously, you can do a little bit better than looking up your ex-fiancée on the web. Really?”
“I’m not interested in Courtney,” he protested.
I immediately perked up at that information. “If you’re not interested in her, why do you want me to look her up?”
She was seriously pissed off when she left Eric’s office last week. I didn’t say anything to him about it, as Eric always will talk about things bothering him. She didn’t get her way with either Dalton or my brother. My day was looking up.
“Dalton came by the bar today, and I found out from him that she had hit on him the same day the will was read.”
“Okay,” I responded. “Did Dalton mention anything else?”
Eric shook his head. “Not really. We did some talking about things between us and covered some ground about how I felt about Dad and him being closer than I felt Dad and I were.”
“That’s bull, and you’re feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I realize that now, but I needed to just get it out of my system.”
“Smells like that went down with a shot or two of Crown Royal.”
Eric breathed into his hand. “Whatever.”
Great, so Dalton didn’t say anything. I didn’t know if I felt relieved that it hadn’t happened yet or pissed off for the same reason. I sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything. Maybe I imagined that I meant more to him. It didn’t matter right now. I could only deal with one guy at a time and right now that was my brother.
“I need to find out what's going on. Since you are the tech geek in the family, I need your help.”
He grabbed me by my arm and started dragging me to the stairs. “Come on. Let's go do this. I really want to find out what she's really up to.”
I pulled my arm out of his grasp. “Okay, okay. I'll help because I am as curious as you are. In the meantime, you need to get something for us to eat because I will be down in my captain’s chair for quite some time.”
He saluted me as he pulled out his phone and dialed.
About three hours and a cheese pizza later, I was able to dig around and find some things out. Now, it’s not exactly legal but you learn things over time when you spend all your days online. What I couldn’t find on the Internet, I sent little texts or messages to people I knew just asking innocuous questions about how things were going and any good gossip and did you hear about Courtney hitting on Eric and Dalton both in the same night?
Women, I have found out over the years, love a chance to gossip, even more so if it is anonymous and they don’t think it will come back on them. Nothing is cattier than women who think someone will get a comeuppance for slights of the past. And Courtney had sowed some bad seeds with many pissed off women in the area. Surprising to me, however, some of her clique wanted their pound of flesh as well.
What I found out was that Courtney's family, once the richest family in the county, was now one of the poorest. Ready to be bumped out on their asses. The reason their family was still in their home was because George’s family bailed them out. The Harris family couldn’t have that black mark on their family name. Some of the rumor mill thought that Courtney was going to leave him years ago and get money in the divorce, but apparently, the pre-nup was iron clad and she got nothing and her family lost everything if she filed or ever left him. That would seriously suck to be stuck to someone you didn’t want to be attached to anymore. It explained why they both seemed to sleep around.
George’s family was a little bit harder to delve into. Old money, of course, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of the business partnerships and development deals I was reading about over the year. He was the only son, his father was off roaming the world with wife number four, Mom on husband three. I knew I could find more if I kept digging but I was getting tired. Courtney’s family had all this real estate, but it was just on paper. Their properties, their family home, everything had dried up and blown away. Bad business deals had long since closed the door after the horse got away.
It looked like George handled it all. He was the one whose money kept Courtney and her family in the business of still being wealthy when they were heading toward bankruptcy. Of course, all the work Courtney had done – they say you can’t tell, but you really can – must have cost a pretty penny as well.
I turned to Eric, who was asleep in the beanbag chair on the floor. “Eric, do you have any idea when you were talking with Courtney that her family is flat broke?”
He yawned and stretched his arms. “No. She never brought that up.”
“I'm not so sure about George's either. They may be rich on paper, but I'm not seeing anything on here that says how they are making their money. Either that or I just don’t really know how to read what I’m seeing.”
“Well, that’s good, right?”
“I don’t know. I do know I can't do anything else tonight; it’s getting to late to talk to people.” My wheels started turning. “But it’s not too late to put a thought about…”
Eric raised up out of the beanbag chair. “I don’t like that look in your eye, sis.”
“I won’t be able to hear anything back until tomorrow, but I can do something tonight that might get a rise out of her.” I nibbled on my lip. “Something girly.”
“Girly?” Eric asked.
“You know, that only a girl would understand, but it has to be a girl of Courtney’s social status. Which isn’t me, but…”
I let the question hang and then I cracked my knuckles and turned back to the keyboard. I started pounding on the keys to get to the sites I wanted. I had an alias account that I used when I searched for things… just in case. I used it now for what I needed so it would keep my identity unknown but let me have a little fun with Courtney.
“I’m going to start a little rumor. Maybe observation would be a better word or white lie. I’m sure I will not only get a rise out of Courtney, but I’ll start hearing back pretty soon.”
I typed just a couple of sentences.
Eric looked over my shoulder. “What does that mean?”
“Wait and see.”
The single tweet said, Was that a knock-off purse and shoes I saw Courtney Knight-Harris wearing at the Blue Oyster the other day?
“How do you know that she was at the Blue Oyster?”
“It’s on her Twitter account. You really need to pay attention. Tech is here to stay, you know.”
I pressed enter and within thirty seconds, the responses came in.
Let the games begin.