Chapter Nine
I HAVE A naughty side? I have a naughty side. Ohmygosh! I have a naughty side! Parker’s body was humming from head to toe. That probably shouldn’t thrill her so much, considering she’d just done something she’d never imagined doing in an elevator, but it did! She must have a naughty side, because when Grayson had whispered to her, she’d wanted to act out each and every one of his dirty suggestions.
Grayson’s hand came around her waist as they stepped from the elevator, and her body heated up again. Holy cow. How am I going to think in there?
“Mind if we stop at the restroom before going to see Abe?” he asked, calm and casual as ever.
Darn him. Her entire body felt like a bundle of exposed nerves.
He leaned close to her ear and said, “You’ve got me wired so tight I’m going to explode if I don’t get some seriously cold water on my face in about ten seconds.”
She followed his gaze to his impressive arousal. The smile lifting her cheeks must have made her look like she was gloating, which she most definitely was.
“Sorry,” she said lightly before popping into the ladies’ room.
Ten minutes later they were standing beside Abe’s bed. Parker’s heart was beating so hard she wanted to hook herself up to one of his blinking machines to make sure she wasn’t having some sort of attack. But it wasn’t because of what she’d done with Mr. Naughty in the elevator. Seeing Abe, who looked as though he’d aged ten years overnight, had shocked her back to reality. His skin was ashen, and his breathing sounded rough, like he had rocks in his throat. Parker’s heart ached for him. She wanted to climb into his bed and hold him so he wouldn’t suffer alone, despite how mean he’d been to her and Bert.
“It’s nice to see you again, Abe. How are you feeling?” She reached for Grayson’s hand, needing his support to steady her nerves.
“I’m still here,” he grumbled.
Would he rather be dead? Grayson cocked a brow, and she knew he was wondering the same thing.
“I’m glad you’re still here. My friend Grayson is with me again today.”
“I figured.” Abe sounded bored. “Lacroux?”
“Yes, sir,” Grayson said. “How do you know my name?”
“You think I let just anyone into my room? A friend, you said,” he scoffed. “A little money goes a long way. I knew who you were before you came into the room yesterday. Ironworker. Pretty darn good one, from what I’m told.”
“Thank you,” Grayson said, giving Parker a what-the-heck look.
Given Abe’s wealth, Parker wasn’t surprised he’d had them checked out. That was practically a no-brainer in her industry. Although she was surprised at how quickly he’d done so.
“Talk to me,” Abe snapped, and launched into a coughing fit. His frail chest rose off the mattress, his neck muscles straining with each gravelly hack.
Parker grabbed tissues from the bedside table and placed them in his hand. “Are you okay?”
The doors opened, and the nurse hurried toward the bed. “Sir?”
He waved his hand dismissively, clearing his throat with a long, low sound before lying back on the mattress again. The nurse ran an assessing eye over him, then left the room without a sound.
“We can come back another time,” Parker offered.
He waved his hand again. “Talk.”
Parker squeezed Grayson’s hand. She’d practiced what she was going to say in her head on the way over, but nothing she’d practiced felt real. It felt practiced, like a role, and that wasn’t what she wanted, so she let her heart speak for her.
“I’m sure you don’t want to talk about the past, but—”
“Don’t tell me what I want to talk about.” Abe curled his fingers around the sheet. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to take control of a situation?”
“I’m sorry. I’m nervous.” She swallowed hard at the unexpected confession.
“Nervous is good. It means you’re alive,” Abe said with a nod. “Spit it out or your boyfriend’s going to explode.”
She looked up at Grayson, who did in fact look as though he was still tightly wound. He cracked a smile, and a hint of seduction from their secret tryst passed between them, helping to put her at ease.
“This isn’t easy for me to explain,” she said, “but I’m going to try.”
“Quickly,” Abe said.
“Yes, sir. Quickly.” She drew in a swift breath. “I loved Bert. Regardless of what happened between you two, he was a good, kind, talented man, and I wasn’t there for him when he passed away. I was on location, filming.” She felt Grayson’s eyes hone in on her, and she realized this was new information for him, too.
“I never had a chance to say goodbye, and he never told me why he left me the letters you returned. But I know you were important to him, and Bert was important to me. And I hate that you both lost out on all those years when you could have been close. You were family!” No amount of acting lessons could have prepared her for the anger and sadness spewing from some deep emotional well she didn’t know existed. “There are people who would kill to have family. I would kill for a family. I grew up in foster care, dreaming about the very thing you threw away. Pushing him out of your life was selfish and mean, and I want to understand it. To, I don’t know, mend the fence before, before…”
“Before I die,” Abe said flatly, his unseeing eyes pointing away from her.
“Yes,” she admitted sadly. Grayson pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
Uncomfortable silence fell over the room. Parker looked for signs of emotions in Abe, but he hadn’t flinched or sighed, huffed or fisted his hands. When he finally turned his gray-blue eyes toward them, he looked markedly older than he had only moments earlier. His sunken cheeks hung loosely from his angular cheekbones and jaw. The hollow crescents beneath his eyes seemed darker, more pronounced, and his colorless lips were unmoving. Had he looked this way all along, or was this new?
He finally inhaled a labored breath. “That was a mouthful.”
“Yes. Sorry,” she said softly.
“Honest.” His eyes widened. “And mean for America’s sweetheart.”
“Sorry.” Shoot.
“It’s okay,” Grayson whispered to her.
“Is it?” Abe asked in a stronger voice.
“Yes,” Grayson said confidently. “She needed to say it, and you probably needed to hear it. Only you can decide that, but she definitely needed to say it.”
Abe nodded, new lines mapping his deeply etched forehead. “The Bert you knew, was he focused? Driven? Smart?”
“Yes. All of those things.” Parker’s heart was racing. Her inability to read him was more unsettling than his anger.
“He wasn’t, you know,” Abe said. “When we were growing up, when I was going to college, then working night and day in the chain of convenience stores our father owned in order to learn the business from the ground up, he was playing the part of a starving artist. Sleeping who knows where, painting.” He cringed, as if the word tasted acidic. “He couldn’t have run the family business. He didn’t have the wherewithal to manage a chain of thirty stores, to work fourteen-hour days, to manage the financials and legal divisions. We would have lost it all. He was too soft, like our father.” Another word he didn’t seem to care for.
Something inside Parker snapped at the demeaning things he’d said about Bert. “I don’t want to argue about if Bert could or couldn’t have run the business, and I don’t really care what you thought of his lifestyle as he was finding his way to being the incredible photographer he was. I just want to…” What? What do I really want? Why am I here? She stumbled over the thought. She’d wanted to fix their past, but she realized she couldn’t, and it wasn’t her place to try. Still, she felt a need to soothe Abe’s bitter heart, even if he didn’t know it needed soothing.
“I just want you to know that Bert loved you,” she finally said. “And I know he would have liked to reconcile. He was hurt when you returned his letters, but I know he would have forgiven you if he’d been given the chance.”
“I read his first letter,” Abe snapped, anger returned to his narrowed eyes. “He wanted to fight it out, to defend himself.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Grayson threw back at him. “If the tables were turned, wouldn’t you have wanted to defend yourself? To fight it out until you could see clearly again? Until you and your brother, your own flesh and blood, were on solid ground?”
She looked at him, but Grayson’s eyes were trained on Abe. His jaw was tight, his tone firm, but his eyes were full of compassion.
Abe stared straight ahead, giving Grayson his profile. “Didn’t take much to convince our father not to trust him. Tsk. So easy. So pathetic, the two of them.”
Grayson’s hand left her waist and fisted by his side. Compassion gone. “You pushed your brother out of the business?”
Tension rose in the room like a fever spike, threatening the powder keg standing beside Parker and the one in the bed. She held her hands up. “Enough. I don’t want to do this. I made a mistake.” She choked back tears. “I can’t. It’s too upsetting.”
Abe turned toward her. “You came here to tell me my brother loved me, because you grew up in a crappy system with some fairy tale in your head about what life should be. I listened to you. Now you listen to me.” He wagged a shaky finger at them.
Parker pressed her lips together to ward off the anger and hurt vying for release. Grayson gripped her hand so tightly she knew he was barely holding it together, too.
“You think you’re telling me something I don’t know? Something that’ll change who I am?” Abe scoffed. “Nice is for the weak. I’m not a nice man. That’s my cross to bear, not yours. My daughter ran off to join a rock band, or some such nonsense, and never looked back. Good riddance. My wife left me for another man.” He smacked his hand to his chest. “Nothing breaks me. Pride kept me going. Strength and pride. That’s what makes a man.”
Grayson released Parker’s hand, the muscles in his arms twitching, the veins in his neck plumped up like thick snakes beneath his skin. “Pride is earned when you’ve done something well.” His tone was as icy as his stare. “Strength is the power to move through anything. And where family is concerned, strength takes stepping back, making room for those you love, putting yourself second or fifth or last, even when you deserve to be first.”
Parker couldn’t take her eyes off of the man who was claiming pieces of her heart by the minute. Conflicting emotions warred inside her. She hadn’t come here to fight or make Abe feel bad. But every word Grayson spoke was powerful and true, and she didn’t want him to stop.
“I’m afraid you’ve fooled yourself, Mr. Stein.” Grayson rolled his shoulders back, and his tone softened. “You cheated your brother and father, disgraced your family, and you moved past that disgrace by hiding behind a bitter, condescending demeanor. You’ve driven away people who loved you because you didn’t like the man looking back at you in the mirror. That’s not pride. I’d call that a coward.”
GRAYSON PULLED PARKER toward the door, fed up with Abe’s nasty, bitter attitude. The comment he made about Parker’s notion of a fairy tale was bull, and he wasn’t about to let her listen to any more of the old man’s hatred.
“Walk out that door, and you’re the coward,” Abe challenged.
Grayson spun around. Parker’s eyes pleaded for him to let it go, but he was well past letting it go. He pulled free from her grip and stalked back to the bed. “You got something to say, old man?” he seethed. “Because I’m about a second away from losing it.”
Abe grumbled something indiscernible. Parker opened her mouth to say something, but Grayson silenced her with one look, unwilling to allow her to fall into any more of this man’s head games.
Abe turned to him, chin up, unseeing eyes holding a steady path. “Your speech was as lame as hers.”
“Only to deaf ears,” Grayson replied through clenched teeth.
“Touché.” Abe coughed once, twice, then settled back against the pillow again. “Neither of you told me anything new. I know who I am.” He paused, gathering the sheet in his fists, and when he spoke again, his tone was defensive rather than accusatory. “I chased after my daughter. Paid thousands to track her down, but she didn’t want to be found. Gone, without a trace. My wife? Pfft. Left for another man, told you that. What kind of man fights for a woman like that?”
“I get that,” Parker said softly, surprising Grayson. She stepped closer to the bed and reached for Abe’s hand. Abe went rigid, but she softened. Her stance, her eyes, even the tension around her mouth. That sweet, lovely mouth curved into a small smile that made Grayson’s heart soften, too. “I didn’t know about your wife leaving for another man, but I understand why you didn’t fight for her. And your daughter? I didn’t know she left for that reason, or that you’d looked for her, but if you did—”
“For years,” he mumbled.
“Then you did what you could,” Parker said. “But Bert? Why, Abe? If he was willing to let the past go, to forgive, why couldn’t you?”
Grayson had seen Parker morph into her actress persona, and he’d seen her climbing out from under too much tequila. He’d witnessed the real Parker, Polly, at the bar, and enough times since to recognize that transition, too. The person he was watching now, the empathetic, confident woman, was a beautiful mix of both. He had given the old man grief. Parker held her head up high, compassion practically dripping from her pores, her determination to get to the truth still driving her on, only this time she did it with a natural grace no one could fake. If anyone deserved to feel proud, it was the woman standing beside him.
“You’ve got guts, little lady,” Abe said. “My Miriam had guts, too. Had to, to leave like she did. Maybe you deserve the fairy tale.”
Parker placed her other hand over Abe’s, unfurling his fingers and pressing them gently into her palm. “I know all about the arguments, the pissing and moaning and goading each other on that siblings and parents do. I’ve heard about loud, obnoxious holidays where they can barely stand to be in the same room. I want it all—the jealousies that come with family, the anger that feels like it’ll break you, and the underlying love that lets you know you’ll never really break, because your family’s got your back no matter what. So, if that’s a fairy tale, yes, I want it.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “And I’m not ashamed of my past or of wanting that fairy tale. Your brother gave me all I really ever wanted, a sense of family. And believe me, Abe, Bert wasn’t always easy. He had his less-than-stellar moments, too.”
Abe’s eyes widened with a glint of interest. “Tell me.”
His interest sent a jolt of surprise through her. “Gosh, okay. Well, for one thing, he chewed like a cow.”
“Always did,” Abe said with a hint of a smile.
“And sometimes he didn’t think before he spoke, so he’d say something crass that he didn’t really mean.”
“He meant it, the fool,” Abe said with another small smile. “He was just smart enough to know he shouldn’t.” He must have noticed he’d gone soft, and grumbled, “What else did the pain in the butt do?”
“He refused to celebrate Christmas with me. Ever.” Parker listed a litany of memories that seemed to pour straight from her heart, and Grayson found himself, like Abe, hanging on to every word she spoke. Even if Abe left things as they were, distant and cold, he knew she’d be okay, because the memories she was sharing were pushing her grief to the side and filling the spaces it left behind.
After she’d exhausted her lungs, she blinked her tears away and inhaled a long breath, then blew it out slowly. Her lips curved up as her eyes rolled over Abe’s face. “And he missed you, Abe.”
Abe slid his hand from between hers and laid it over Parker’s. “I’ve given you my answer,” he said quietly.
Parker’s brows knitted. “I don’t understand.”
Grayson put his arm around her. He’d been too angry before to hear the truth. “Pride kept him from reconciling with Bert, baby. It’s a powerful thing.”
Tears spilled from her eyes. Parker leaned over the bed and wrapped her arms around the frail old man. “Thank you.”
Abe’s arms lay rigid beside him. When Parker kissed his cheek, he lifted one hand to her back, holding her there for a long moment. When she broke the embrace, he gripped her forearm, keeping her near as he whispered so quietly Grayson barely heard him, “Thank you.”