Playing for Keeps (Texas Scoundrels) (4 page)

AGAINST HER BETTER judgment, on Saturday morning Griffen made the long drive from Hart out to Possum Kingdom, an elite lakeside community far away from the city and in the middle of nowhere. Multi-million dollar homes dotted the landscape, occupied by people who lived a lifestyle that exceeded her Visa limit. While she hadn’t exactly grown up poor, her family was more of the roast beef and potatoes crowd, not Wagyu connoisseurs.
 

By the time she pulled her Jeep Cherokee into the long driveway of the Bluff Creek Point address, her stomach was in knots. As she pulled up alongside a black Cadillac Escalade complete with the vanity plate tchdown parked in the driveway, her case of nerves had tripled. The Mediterranean-style home was lavish and picture perfect, and probably worth more than twelve city blocks in her hometown of Hart, founded by her great, great grandfather.

She half expected a swarm of Dobermans to come charging after her as she left the Jeep and headed up the flagstone steps to the enormous front door. She had no idea if Maitland was even in town. When a series of phone calls had failed to produce results, she’d promised Austin she’d at least try the Possum Kingdom house. She had to see this through now, even if it meant disappointment for her son when the “legend” wanted nothing to do with him. While she wasn’t exactly keen on the whole idea, her son was willing to take the risk. So, here she was, about to knock on a total stranger’s door and tell him he had a son with her sister more than a decade ago.

She rang the bell. Her plan was simple. Tell Maitland who she was and why she was there, then leave and never see him again. Austin would be heartbroken, but he’d just have to get over it. She’d return to Hart, sell her business, and send out her resume. With luck, she and Austin would be settled within the next three months, and she’d have that nine-to-five job, a 401k and health insurance.
 

Simple.
 

Easy.
 

No complications.

Maybe she should have hired someone to perform the uncomfortable task in front of her. Now that would have been smart. They’d called her Smart Hart in high school. When had she become so damned stupid?

She rang the bell again and hefted her bag higher onto her shoulder. Inside, she carried copies of Dani’s journal along with another copy of the letter addressed to her. The only items she had to prove Dani’s claim of Maitland’s paternity were thin at best, but without a DNA test, it was all she had to offer.

No sound drifted from inside the house. She tried the bell a third time and started counting. If she hit fifty and no one answered, she’d leave. She knew where he lived now. She'd just send him a letter.
 

Twelve, thirteen
.
 

A simple plan.

Twenty-four, twenty-five
.
 

An easier-to-execute plan.
 

Thirty-six, thirty-seven
.
 

The least complicated plan.

Forty-one, forty-two
.
 

Simple and easy flew out the proverbial window when Jed Maitland opened the door. “Yeah?” His voice was gravel hard and about as welcoming.

Griffen couldn’t speak. She couldn’t have found her voice with both hands and a road map. Lord he was tall, and she was far from petite. His hair was a mess, hanging in bloodshot, chocolate brown eyes, looking as if it hadn’t seen the productive side of a comb in weeks. The green striped button-down shirt he wore hung open, revealing a massive chest with a light sprinkling of chest hair that arrowed down, disappearing into a pair of worn jeans he’d only managed to zip, not button.

She pulled in a deep breath and wrinkled her nose. Dear God, he reeked. This was the man her sister had fallen in love with? A man who smelled like the bottom of a whisky bottle?

Her fears fled. So did her worry about competing with her son’s hero. This over-the-hill, past his prime “legend” was nothing but a used up excuse for a man. She almost wished Austin
could
see him right now. Surely the sight in front of her would take down her son’s hero worship faster than a sacked quarterback.

“Mr. Maitland?”

He narrowed his bloodshot eyes and leaned against the door jam, impervious to the chilled breeze against his exposed skin. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Griffen Somerfield. Griffen
Hart
Somerfield. I’m Dani Hart’s sister.”

He gripped the door and stared at her. She waited for him to slam it in her face. Instead, he shocked her clear to her toes by straightening and stepping back, pushing the door wide in silent invitation.

This was it
. She sucked in a breath and took that fatal step onto a rough, brick floor. Her place wasn’t small by any stretch of the imagination, but Maitland's foyer was at least the size of her formal dining room, if not larger. He strode past her, leaving her no choice but to follow or remain in the foyer alone.

She walked to the edge of the den, her high heeled boots clicking over the brick flooring. She took the four steps down and followed him across the expansive room to an old fashioned mahogany bar, complete with a brass foot rung. Behind the bar a mirror, or what had once been a mirror, lay shattered. Atop the counter below the mirror and on the floor behind the bar lay an inordinate amount of broken glass. She stepped over newspapers littering the carpet and moved toward a white leather sofa. The toe of her boot clipped an empty bottle of Johnny Walker Black.
 

“Drink?” he asked, not looking at her.

“No. Thank you,” she said, continuing her perusal of the room while she set her bag on the arm of the sofa. She righted a nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels and set it on the coffee table next to an empty bottle of Jim Beam. The interior walls were rounded log, but that didn’t prevent Maitland from displaying awards and trophies of his professional career. “Mr. Maitland, I’m sorry to disturb you like this.”

Jed turned to face the woman with a husky voice that more than bordered on sexy. So this was Griffen. The middle of the three Hart sisters. He hadn’t recognized the family resemblance to Dani at first, but it was there in her eyes and in the way she carried herself.
 

And he needed a drink. He downed a shot of José, then poured himself another, not yet ready to deal with the past.
 

He turned back to the bar and splashed another two fingers worth of tequila in the glass, halted, then topped it off. He had a bad feeling. The churning in his gut had nothing to do with the mother of all hangovers, and everything to do with the purpose of Griffen Hart’s surprise visit. “The name’s Jed.”

He faced her and raised the glass in mock salute. She didn’t say anything, just looked at him with those big green eyes that brought back memories he didn’t care to recall. He took a long swallow of booze to keep them at bay.

“Very well. Jed.” She perched her curvy behind on the arm of his sofa. Her long, jean clad legs easily reached the floor. She wore her auburn hair, a shade or two richer than Dani’s, in a long, wavy cut that just about brushed her shoulder blades. The woman had Irish written all over her, and he’d bet she had a temper to match her don’t-fuck-with-me attitude.

“You had an affair with my sister fourteen years ago, correct?”
 

The disdain in her voice irritated him. “Fifteen, not that it’s any of your business.” He wasn’t in any mood to travel down memory lane, especially with a woman who looked down her straight and perfect nose at him.

She moved her bag to the seat of the sofa and adjusted her position on the arm. “I’m afraid it is, Mr. Maitland. Dani had a son.”

The anger never far from the surface started to rear its head. “So what does that have to do with me? Dani and I split up a long time ago,
Sister
.”

She sighed and reached for her bag. “I knew I shouldn’t have come here.”

“Then why did you?” He couldn’t keep the memories away and silently damned Griffen Hart straight to hell for making him remember.

She stopped and turned back to face him. He took another sip of whisky. Yup, she had a temper, all right. Her eyes nearly sparkled with it, and if he was in a better frame of mind, he might have found her interesting. Too bad he was in a shitty mood.

“I’m here because it’s the right thing to do,” she said, the sharp, clipped tone of her voice matching the anger simmering in her gaze. “An investigator came to see me a few days ago and delivered the contents of Dani’s safety deposit box. She passed away nine years ago and the bank only recently confirmed her death.”

He set the glass on the bar with a snap and moved to the windows to stare out at the lake. Dani was gone. She’d been out of his life for a long time, but he couldn’t believe she was really gone. It wasn’t as if he’d hoped she’d come back to him, but the news of her death still touched him in a place he’d long ago forgotten about—his heart.
 

Not bothering to turn around, he asked, “How?”

“According to the investigator—”

“No.” He shoved both hands through his hair. “How did she die?”

“It doesn’t matter.” The anger had left her voice. “What—”

He spun around to face her. “How the fuck did she die?” Regardless of what this woman thought about him and his relationship with her sister, he’d loved Dani, had planned to marry her, but she’d disappeared from his life. And it had damned near torn out his heart.

To her credit, she didn’t flinch. “When Dani was sixteen, she was diagnosed with Leukemia. She’d been in remission for a number of years. Then all of a sudden, she came home from college, pregnant and almost immediately suffered a relapse after Austin was born. Having him was just too much for her.”

He hadn’t even known she was ill. All the time he’d spent with her, he hadn’t even known she’d been sick. Okay, so she’d been in remission, but why had she kept something like that from him?
 

Apparently she’d kept a lot of things from him.

“Austin,” he repeated. Dani had named her son after his grandfather, the man who’d raised him. The man responsible for where he was today. He’d been ten and heading for trouble fast, but his grandfather had signed him up for a youth football program in the small, backwater Mississippi town where he’d gone to live after his parents had been killed in an accident.
 

“Where’s this kid of hers now?” he asked, telling himself he was merely curious. Dani had never contacted him again after she’d disappeared. What were the chances the kid was even his?

“My ex-husband and I adopted him before we lost Dani.”
 

“Then why are you here?” Was she looking for a handout? Had the kid gotten to be too much for her and she was planning to dump him on his doorstep? She could forget it. He had his own problems.
 

“He’s your kid,
Sister
. Obviously you’ve got adoption papers that say so.”

The look she gave him could have fried the balls off a swamp full of gaters. She shoved a lock of silky looking hair behind her ear, then tossed her bag back on the sofa in show of obvious frustration or anger. He was guessing anger.

“I’m here,
Mr.
Maitland because I just learned that you are Austin’s biological father. Unfortunately, my son is a huge fan, and as nauseating as I find it,
you
are his idol. I’m sure even you could imagine what that kind news would do for a thirteen-year-old boy.”

He braced his feet apart and crossed his arms over his chest. “So what do you want me to do about it? You here for an autograph?” Yeah, he was being a bastard and he knew it. But it kept people away, kept them from getting too close.
 

“I’m here because I promised my son I would come.” Her hands landed on her gently rounded hips and she gave him a look filled with disgust. “I don't expect, or want, anything from you, but Austin does. He’s going to be disappointed for a while.” She picked up her bag again and slung it over her shoulder. “But don’t let it worry you. He’ll get over it.”

She opened the canvas bag and withdrew a thick manila envelope, tossing it on the glass table. “For your reading pleasure,” she said before turning on her heel and storming out of his house, and hopefully his life.

Jed heard her car start and pull out of his driveway. He stood by the window, staring at the envelope for a long time. The past was a place he didn’t want to travel. Too many bitter memories awaited him at the end of the road.
 

He crossed the room, picked up the envelope then hit the switch to ignite the logs in the fireplace. Dani had walked out of his life fourteen years ago. He wasn’t about to let her back in now.

The split logs caught, and he waited until a healthy fire blazed, then tossed the envelope inside. The edges turned black and curled until the package was fully engulfed in flames.

Satisfied, he picked up a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels and made his way to the sofa. He flipped on the big screen television. A rowing competition played on ESPN. He hit the mute button and stared at the screen as the four man rowing team from Cal State Northridge took the lead.
 

With the bottle resting comfortably between his legs, he popped three more painkillers into his mouth, then tipped the bottle and chugged. In another twenty minutes, he wouldn’t care who won the rowing competition. Better yet, he wouldn’t give a fuck about anyone or anything, not even the resurrected memories of a past best forgotten.