Chain of Title (7 page)

“I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have
said that.  I didn’t mean it.  I just think you’re making a huge mistake.  You
need to talk to Daddy...
Dad
.  Oh, whatever!  You two need to talk!”

Danielle raced out of the
house without looking back.  Shayna heard the tires on the blue BMW screech
around and out the circular drive.  The day could only get better from here.

Right?

For a
good chunk of the afternoon, Shayna sat and stared out blankly from her hilltop
home over Lake Indigo to the city of Mt. Pleasant, trying to reconcile the
events of the last twenty-four hours.  Hell, the last forty-eight years.  Oh,
how she wished she could talk to her dad.  He had always been able to make her
feel better.  If nothing else, he could’ve just wrapped her in one of his big,
warm, Montgomery bear hugs.  He wouldn’t have had to say a word.

She thought about calling one
of her brothers, but they were barely speaking to her right now.  They had
drawn a line in the sand.  Their prodigal mother had wormed her way back into
Jackson and Scott’s lives after the death of Ben Montgomery, and they felt that
Shayna should be more accepting of her.  She wanted a relationship with her
brothers, just not with their mother.  She really wasn’t angry with them.  A
little hurt maybe, but not angry.  Why they felt the need to choose sides was a
mystery to her, but they had—for now at least.

The Montgomery brothers
didn’t know everything that Shayna did about Abigail Montgomery, and she saw no
need to tell them—in honor of their father.  It would only make her look
spiteful if she did.

Now she had Frank trying to
manipulate their daughter into choosing sides—his, of course.  Why would he
suddenly be doing that?  Or maybe it wasn’t all that sudden, maybe today was
just the first she had gotten wind of it.  He couldn’t possibly have been surprised
that she went through with the divorce.  That was just crazy talk.

Inhaling deeply, she
stretched her arms up and over the back of the thickly padded chaise lounge, dragging
the pale yellow sundress farther up her toned legs.  The warm summer breeze, as
comforting as it felt on her skin, wasn’t able to ease the cold ache in her
heart.  A part of her hoped that Frank really did hurt as much as she did from
the ruin of their marriage.  Then at least she could feel like he had loved her.
 Not enough, in the end, but close.

If she had learned anything
during her time on earth, it was that there are all types and degrees of love. 
The way she had loved Frank wasn’t the same as her first love, but that was
okay.  It was still a strong, passionate love, and they had been good for each
other.  They’d had a sizzling chemistry, a connection from the very beginning
that hooked her.  She had thought they would be together until the end—death,
that is, not divorce.  Now she had experienced both kinds of endings, and they
were equally painful, disorienting, and suffocating at times.

“Hello, beautiful.”  Shayna
inhaled sharply and almost choked before jumping up from her lounger to see
Frank standing on the deck.

“How the hell did you get in
here?”

“No, hello?  How’ve you
been?”  He was clearly pleased that he had startled her.  Slowly moving a few
steps closer he said nonchalantly, “I have to say, Shay, I completely disagree
with our daughter on this one.  That hairstyle suits you.  Christ, you look
amazing.”  He openly eyed her from head to toe as if he had the right to.

“I
asked
how you got
in here, Frank.”

The question was moot.  Dani
had obviously run to tattle and had given Frank her key—or maybe he had copied
it even before today.  The thought galled her.

“The place looks incredible,
too.”  He gestured back to the house.  “The colors, the style, it’s definitely
you, Shay.”

She cocked her head in doubt. 
“You mean unforgiving and cold?”

She couldn’t believe Frank
was standing in her home so cavalierly, as if he owned the place, as if they
were still together.  She hadn’t been face to face with him in quite some
time.  He looked a little older, more salt than pepper in his hair now, but
still thick and wavy.  His bright, sapphire blue eyes matched the silk shirt he
was wearing anchored by the Rolex gleaming in the sun, just above the pocket of
the black dress pants that he had casually tucked his hand into.  It was simply
wrong that he still looked so good.  There was no way she would look
that
good in seventeen years.

He held his hand up in a
gesture of truce.  “I never should’ve said that.  I’m sorry, Shay.  I just
haven’t been myself lately.”  He stood staring at her as if she were a port in
the storm.  “I think we should talk,” he said softly.

“Now you want to talk?”  She
shook her head.  “
Now
?  Not
before
you screwed that girl in our
bed? 
Please
don’t tell me again how it didn’t mean anything, as if the
fact that it means
something to me
means I’m the one blowing it out of
proportion!”

She moved closer into Frank’s
space and lowered her tone.  “Tell me, Frank, how do you think you’d have felt
if you’d walked in on me with another man’s dick inside me—in
our
bed?” 
She saw a ripple break his calm surface.  “Think you could ever get that image
out of your head?  Think you could
ever
look at me again and
not
see that?”  Frank swallowed hard.  Shayna straightened and inhaled deeply.  “I
don’t know why you’re here, but you need to turn around and leave.”

She stood her ground and kept
her unyielding stare locked on his.  Frank blinked a couple of times before
stepping back and clearing is throat.  He glanced over to the hillside lush
with evergreens before looking back to Shayna.

He spoke contritely.  “You’re
the last person I ever wanted to hurt, Shay.  I know that what I did is
unforgivable, and yet, here I am, asking for your forgiveness.  I never wanted
to be without you.  I thought we’d be one of those rare couples that’d be
together until the end.  Not because we felt obligated, but because we wouldn’t
want any other way.”  She glimpsed the watery sheen in his eyes before he
blinked rapidly and looked away.  “Other couples get through this sort of
thing, Shay.  It’s not easy, I know that.  But they find a way to start over
and make it all work again.  Why can’t we?”  He asked roughly, staring
pointedly at her.

“Because we’re divorced,
Frank.  You already know the ending; you just don’t want to accept it.”  He
exhaled sharply.  “If you’d known me at all, the way I thought you did, you’d
have known what you did was a deal-breaker for me.  When someone hurts me that
deeply you know I don’t look back, don’t give that person the chance to hurt me
again.”

She moved back into Frank’s
personal space.  “So, it’s one of two things, Frank.  Either you thought you
could screw around on me and
not
get caught—
have it all
—or you
wanted
me to catch you, so you could avoid that whole conversation about not wanting
to be married to a middle-aged woman anymore.  The woman that was there and
stuck by you
before
you made your millions.  After all, you’re an
attractive, wealthy man who should be able relive his twenties for the rest of
his life.  Right?   Was that it, Frank?  I didn’t fit the image of what a woman
married to a man like you should look like?  Did you think you’d
earned
a younger model?”  She noticed Frank lightly shaking his head with an odd
expression.  “I just became too old for you at some point and that’s why you
screwed a girl your daughter’s age.”

Frank’s expression was
incredulous.  “That’s what you’ve been thinking this whole time?  That I
thought
you
were too old?”  He raked his hands through his hair and lifted
his face skyward, shaking his head.  “It really wasn’t about you, Shay.  It was
about me—
my
insecurities.”

He stepped away from her with
a dazed expression, walking slowly toward the cabled railing.  “I still can’t
believe I’m in my sixties,” he said, cynically, moving to brace his hands on
the railing and looking hard across Lake Indigo.  “I
feel
so much
younger, but the reflection staring back at me doesn’t lie.  It’s like I went
to bed a thirty-year-old man and woke up sixty.  Where the hell did it all go? 
Oh, I know the stereotype for this thing, I should’ve had a mid-life crisis
in
mid-life,
for Christ’s sake.  But I was too busy, then.”

He paused as if reminiscing. 
“I never thought I’d get married, and then...there you were that day in the law
firm.”  He snorted softly, closed his eyes, and shook his head at the memory. 
“Then this beautiful girl agreed to marry me.  Me.  I felt like anything was
possible.  We started a business.  We had Danielle a couple of years later and
we just never stopped, never slowed down that whole time.”

Shayna bubbled with
conflicting emotions and turned her head when Frank glanced at her.

“I started to think I was too
old for you, Shay.  I never really gave our age difference a thought until
these last four or five years.  But, Jesus, look at you.  For the first time in
my life, I started to feel like I’d robbed the cradle.”  He pinched the bridge
of his nose.  “Ben couldn’t have been happy about you marrying me, his beautiful
daughter giving up her youth to a middle-aged man, but I didn’t even think about
that back then.”  He sighed loudly and turned toward Shayna.  “I am so sorry
that I fucked everything up so royally between us.  I take full blame, Shay.  I
know it’s on my back, not yours.”

Shayna chewed nervously at
the inside of her lip, scanning Mt. Pleasant and refusing to meet Frank’s
searching gaze, not wanting to give in to old habits, familiar ways—the trap
that time laid.  If she looked in his blue eyes right now, she knew there was
every chance that’s exactly what would happen.

“I understand why you didn’t
want to talk to me in the beginning.  Why you didn’t want to see me.  I gave
you space and then when you pressed for the divorce—I finally agreed, not
because I wanted it—but because I hoped you would decide on your own not to go
through with it.  But then you signed those damn papers yesterday.”  He
released a stuttered sigh.  “So, now, I’ve been telling myself that maybe
that’s a good thing.  Maybe that’s what we need, a fresh start.  Get to know
each other again, start with clean slates, date again, and take it slow.”

Out of her peripheral view,
Shayna could see Frank trying to catch her gaze.  The bruised part of her ego wished
they could start over, but the pragmatic part of her was dubious.

“How many were there,
Frank?”  She saw his pinched expression in the corner of her eye.  “Girls,
women, whatever.  How many were there?”

He rubbed at his chin and
thought a moment.  “One.”

“And you’re still together?”

He waited before answering. 
“Off and on.”  As if anticipating her reaction, he blustered, “You’ve wanted
nothing to do with me, Shay.  I’m not a monk.”

Yeah, like she didn’t already
know that.

“Did you—do you—love her?”

He took an offended stance.  “No,”
he answered resolutely.  Shayna nodded deliberately watching the sun in its
slow descent.

“Did you tell her that you
loved her to get her into bed with you?”

She heard him swallow.  He
hung his head.  His silence was the answer—and she had expected it.  She turned
with a stony stare to look Frank squarely in his eyes.

When she spoke, it was with
marked sadness and the acceptance of great loss.

“Your words are lovely,
Frank.  But your actions are ugly, not to mention
louder
than anything
you could ever say.  And your logic?  It’s flawed, and that’s being kind.”  She
answered his quizzical expression.  “Your new found concern for robbing the
cradle?  Well, it’s a bit hard to believe when you demonstrate your anguish by
screwing a girl
half my age
.”

He started to speak, but
Shayna held up her hand, shaking her head.  “You should really stop talking.” 
A single tear streamed down her cheek.  “If it wasn’t for Danielle, the last
twenty-five years of my life would’ve been a
complete
waste
.  You
did take my youth—and wring out the last drop.  You didn’t love me enough to be
honest—even now.  Then, to top it all off, you insult me further by saying God
knows what to our daughter about me and Abigail.  I couldn’t possibly be more
disappointed in you for not at least being a better father than you were a
husband.”

Shayna turned to leave and
Frank grabbed her arm.  She jerked back and yanked herself free from his grip. 
“Don’t
ever
lay a hand on me again!  You lost that privilege three years
ago, and you’re
not
getting it back.”  Her voice laced in warning, she
pivoted to walk away.

“What do you know about this
Sean Parker, Shay?” Frank asked in a bruised voice he attempted to cover with
calm.

Shayna stopped dead in her
tracks. 
Dani!
  She exhaled and shook her head at the realization of
what this visit had been about all along.  She heard Frank approach and stand
behind her.

He leaned down and
admonished, “You need to be careful, Shay.  You’re a mature, single woman with
means now...
substantial
means.  Younger men with money troubles, failing
restaurants for example, will be very interested in you.”

He had come out swinging
now.  Shayna buffeted the insult and turned slowly to look boldly up into his eyes.

“You need to be careful too,
Frank.  A twenty-something without her own means will pretend to be very
interested in a man others might mistake as her father...or
grandfather
.”