Amos weaved back and forth on his bare feet, and suddenly belched. He was bare-chested, his pants still gaping open. His uncombed hair stood out in all directions, he was unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, and his breath foul with sleep and drink. In contrast, Gray towered over him, six feet four of lean, steely muscle, his black hair neatly brushed back, his white shirt spotless and his slacks hand-tailored to fit him.
“You ain’t got no call to be shovin’ me around, I don’t care who your daddy is,” Amos complained. Despite his bluster, he cowered back every time Gray moved.
Russ and Nicky had crowded out of their bedroom, but they made no move to back their father. Facing down a raging Gray Rouillard wasn’t their style; attacking anyone who could cause them trouble wasn’t their style.
“Do you know where Renee is?” Gray asked again, his voice icy.
Amos hitched one shoulder. “Must’ve gone out,” he mumbled sullenly.
“When?”
“Whaddaya mean, when? I was in bed. How in hell would I know what time she left?”
“Did she come home last night?”
“Course she did! Gawddammit, what’re you sayin’?” Amos yelled, the slur in his words testimony to the alcohol still in his blood.
“I’m saying your whore of a wife has left!” Gray yelled back, his dark face twisted with rage, his neck corded.
Pure terror sliced through Faith, and her vision blurred again. “No,” she gasped.
Gray heard her, and his head snapped around. His dark eyes were glittering with fury as they raked over her. “You look sober, at least. Do you know where Renee is? Did she come home last night?”
Numbly Faith shook her head. Black disaster loomed in front of her, and her nostrils were filled with the sharp, yellow, acrid smell of fear . . . her own.
His upper lip curled, showing strong white teeth in a snarl. “I didn’t think so. She’s run away with my father.”
Faith shook her head again, and then couldn’t seem to stop it from wagging. No. The word reverberated through her brain. God, please, no.
“You’re lyin’!” Amos yelled, tottering toward the rickety table and sagging into one of the chairs. “Renee wouldn’t leave me and our kids. She loves me. Your whore-hoppin’ pa’s out with some new piece he’s found—”
Gray lunged forward like a snake striking. His fist connected with Amos’s jaw, knuckles smashing against bone, and both Amos and the chair crashed to the floor. The chair splintered into kindling beneath him.
With a terrified wail, Scottie burrowed his face harder against Faith’s hip. She was too frozen to even put a comforting arm around his shoulders, and he began to cry.
Amos groggily scrambled up from the floor, and staggered to put the table between him and Gray. “Why’d you hit me?” he whined, holding his jaw. “I ain’t done nothin’ to you. Whatever Renee and your pa done, it ain’t my fault!”
“What’s all the yellin’ about?” came Jodie’s deliberately sultry voice, the one she put on whenever she was trying to entice a man. Faith looked toward the entrance to the lean-to, and her eyes widened with horror. Jodie posed against the doorframe, her uncombed reddish blond hair tossed back over her bare shoulders. She wore only a pair of red lace panties, and demurely held the matching lace camisole so that it barely covered her breasts. She blinked at Gray with wide-eyed innocence so blatantly false that Faith cringed inside.
Gray’s expression tightened with disgust as he glanced at her; his mouth curled and he deliberately turned his back. “I want you gone by nightfall,” he said to Amos, his voice steely. “You stink up our land, and I’m tired of smelling you.”
“Leave?” Amos croaked. “You high-and-mighty bastard, you can’t make us leave. There’re laws—”
“You don’t pay rent,” Gray said, a cold, deadly smile twisting his lips. “Eviction laws don’t apply to trespassers. Get out.” He turned and started toward the door.
“Wait!” Amos cried. His panicked gaze darted around the room as if looking for inspiration. He licked his lips. “Don’t be so hasty. Maybe . . . maybe they just took a little trip. They’ll come back. Yeah, that’s right. Renee’ll be back, she didn’t have no reason to leave.”
Gray gave a harsh bark of laughter, his contemptuous gaze moving around the room, taking in the mean interior of the shack. Someone, probably the youngest girl, had made an effort to keep it clean, but it was like trying to hold back the tide. Amos and the two boys, who were younger editions of their father, sullenly watched him. The older girl still lounged in the doorway trying to show him as much of her tits as she could without actually dropping that scrap of cloth. The little boy with Down’s syndrome was clinging to the younger girl’s legs and bawling. The girl was standing as if turned to stone, staring at him with huge, blank green eyes. Her dark red hair hung untidily around her shoulders, and her bare feet were dirty.
Standing so close to him, Faith could read his expression, and she cringed inside as his gaze swept over the shack and its inhabitants, finally settling on her. He catalogued her life, her family, herself, and found it all worthless.
“No reason to leave?” he sneered. “My God, as far as I can tell, she doesn’t have a reason to come back!”
In the silence that followed, he stepped around Faith and shoved the screen door open. It banged against the side of the shack, then slammed shut. The Corvette’s engine roared to life, and a moment later Gray was gone. Faith stood frozen in the middle of the floor, with Scottie still clinging to her legs and crying. Her mind felt numb. She knew she needed to do something, but what? Gray had said they had to leave, and the enormity of it stunned her. Leave? Where would they go? She couldn’t make her mind start working. All she could do was lift her hand, which felt as heavy as lead, and smooth Scottie’s hair while saying, “It’s all right, it’s all right,” even though she knew it was a lie. Mama was gone, and it would never be all right again.
Four
Gray managed to make it almost half a mile before the shaking became so hard that he had to stop the car. He leaned his head on the steering wheel and closed his eyes, trying to fight off the waves of panic. God, what was he going to do? He had never before been as scared as he was now.
Bewildered pain filled him, and he felt like a child who runs to hide his face in his mother’s lap, much as that Devlin kid had tried to hide against his sister’s skinny legs. But he couldn’t go to Noelle; even when he had been a child, she’d pulled away from clinging little hands, and he’d learned to go to his father for reassurance. Even had Noelle been more affectionate, he couldn’t look to her for support, because she would be looking to him for the same thing. Taking care of his mother and sister was his responsibility now.
Why had Guy done it? How could he have left? His father’s absence, his betrayal, made Gray feel as if his heart had been torn out. Guy had had Renee anyway; what had she offered that tempted him into turning his back on his children, his business, his heritage? Gray had always been close to his father, had grown up surrounded by his love, had always felt his support like a solid rock at his back, but now that loving, reassuring presence was gone, and with it the foundation of his life.
He was terrified. He was only twenty-two, and the problems looming over him looked like unscalable mountains. Noelle and Monica still didn’t know; somehow he had to find the strength to tell them. He had to be a rock for them, and he had to put aside his own pain and concentrate on holding the family finances together, or they stood to lose everything. This wasn’t the same situation it would have been if Guy had died, for Gray would have inherited the shares, the money, and the control. As it was now, Guy still owned everything, and he was gone. The Rouillard fortune could come tumbling down around their ears, with wary investors jumping ship and various boards of directors seizing power. Gray would have to fight like a son of a bitch to keep even half of what they now had.
He, Monica, and Noelle had some assets in their own names, but it wouldn’t be enough. Guy had been
giving Gray a crash course in managing it all, but hadn’t given him the power to do so, unless he’d left a letter giving Gray his proxy. Desperate hope reared its head. Any such letter, if it existed, would be in the desk in the study.
Failing that, he’d have to call Alex and get his help in laying out a strategy. Alex was a damn smart man and a good corporate lawyer; he could have had a much more lucrative practice somewhere else, but he was backed by his own family money and hadn’t felt the need to leave Prescott. He had handled all of Guy’s business, as well as being his best friend, so he knew as much or more about the legal situation as did Gray.
God knows, Gray thought bleakly, he’d need all the help he could get. If there wasn’t a letter of proxy, he’d be lucky to keep a roof over them.
When he raised his head from the steering wheel, he had regained his self-control, the pain pushed to the background and steely determination taking its place. By God, his mother and sister would have a hard enough time dealing with this as it was; he’d be damned if he let them lose their home, too.
He put the car into gear and drove away, leaving the last remnants of his boyhood behind on the rutted dirt track.
• • •
He went first into Prescott, to Alex’s office. He would have to move fast to salvage anything. Andrea broke into a smile when he came in, something women often did at the sight of him. Color heightened a little on her round, pleasant face. She was forty-five, old enough to be his mother, but age had nothing to do with her instinctive female reaction to his tall, muscular presence.
Gray automatically returned the smile, but his mind was racing with plans. “Is anyone with Alex? I need to see him.”
“No, he’s alone. Go on in, hon.”
Gray walked past her desk and into Alex’s office, firmly closing the door behind him. Alex looked up from the well-ordered mountain of files on his desk, and got to his feet. His good-looking face was taut with worry. “Did you find him?”
Gray shook his head. “Renee Devlin’s gone, too.”
“Oh, God.” Alex collapsed back into his chair and shut his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I can’t believe it. I didn’t think he was serious. My God, why would he be? He was—” He stopped and opened his eyes, flushing a little.
“Fucking her anyway,” Gray finished bluntly. He walked over to the window and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down on the main street. Prescott was a small town, only about fifteen thousand citizens, but today traffic hummed around the courthouse square. Soon everyone down there would know that Guy Rouillard had left his wife and children and run off with the Devlin whore.
“Does your mama know?” Alex’s voice was strained.
Gray shook his head. “Not yet. I’ll tell her and Monica when I go home.” The original shock and pain had gone, leaving behind a ruthless willpower and a certain remoteness, as if he were standing at a distance watching himself go through the motions. Some of that distance leaked into his tone, making him sound cool and steady. “Did Dad leave a letter of proxy with you?”
Until then, evidently, Alex had thought only of the personal ramifications of Guy’s defection. Now the legal aspects dawned on him, and his eyes widened with horror. “Shit,” he said, lapsing into unusual vulgarity. “No, he didn’t. If he had, I’d have known he was serious about leaving and tried to stop him.”
“There may be a letter in the desk at home. He may call in a day or so. If so, there’s no problem with the financial side of things. But if there isn’t a letter, and he doesn’t call . . . I can’t afford to wait. I’ll have to liquidate as much as I can, before news of this gets around and stock prices drop like a rock.”
“He’ll call,” Alex said feebly. “He has to. He can’t just walk away from this kind of financial obligation. A fortune is involved!”
Gray shrugged, his face a careful blank. “He walked away from his family. I can’t afford to assume that the business means more to him.” He paused. “I don’t think he’ll come back or call. I think he meant to walk away from everything and never come back. He’s been teaching me as much as he could, and now I know why. If he had meant to stay in charge of everything, he wouldn’t have done that.”
“Then there should be a letter of proxy,” Alex said insistently. “Guy was too sharp of a businessman not to have taken care of that.”
“Maybe, but I have Mother and Monica to think about. I can’t wait. I have to liquidate now, and get as much money as I can, so I’ll have something to work with and rebuild. If I don’t, and he doesn’t make arrangements, we won’t have a pot to piss in.”
Alex swallowed, but he nodded. “Okay. I’ll start doing what I can to shore up your legal position, but I have to tell you, unless Guy gets back in touch or left a letter of proxy, it’s a mess. Everything is tied up unless Noelle divorces him and the court awards her half of his assets, but that will take time.”
“I have to plan for the worst,” Gray said. “I’ll go home and look for a letter, but don’t wait until you hear from me to get started. If there isn’t a letter, I’ll call the broker immediately and start selling. Either way, I’ll let you know. Keep it quiet until I call.”
Alex got to his feet. “I won’t even let Andrea know.” He shoved his hands through his dark hair, an indication of his worry, because Alex wasn’t given to nervous gestures. His gray eyes were dark with misery. “I’m sorry, Gray. I feel like this is my fault. I should have done something.”
Gray shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself. Like you said, who would have thought he was serious? No, the only people I blame are Dad and Renee Devlin.” He gave a wintry smile. “I can’t imagine anything she had being good enough to make him walk out on his family, but evidently it was.” He paused, lost for a moment in the grimness of his thoughts, then shook himself and headed toward the door. “I’ll call you when I find out something.”
After he had gone, Alex sank back into his chair, his movements stiff and feeble. He barely managed to control his expression when Andrea popped into the office, alive with curiosity. “What’s going on with Gray?”
“Nothing much. A personal matter he wanted to talk over with me.”
She was disappointed that he didn’t confide in her. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No, everything will be all right.” He sighed, and rubbed his eyes. “Why don’t you go on to lunch, and bring me back a sandwich or something. I’m waiting for a call, so I can’t leave.”
“Okay. What do you want?”
He waved his hand. “Anything. You know what I like. Surprise me.”
She rambled around in the outer office for a few minutes, cutting off the computer he’d bought the year before, storing the disks, collecting her purse. After she’d gone, Alex waited a few minutes before going into the other room and locking the door. Then he sat down in her chair and turned on the computer, and swiftly began typing. “Damn you, Guy,” he whispered. “You son of a bitch.”
• • •
Gray parked the Corvette in front of the five wide steps leading up to the covered porch and double front doors, though Noelle frowned on that and preferred that the family’s cars be properly protected and out of sight in the attached garage behind. The front drive was for visitors, who shouldn’t be able to tell which family members were at home by the vehicles parked in front. That way, one felt no obligation to admit to being there, and thus forced to receive unwanted guests. Some of Noelle’s notions were positively Victorian; usually he indulged her, but today he had more important things on his mind, and was in a hurry.
He leaped up the steps with two strides, and pushed open the door. Monica had probably been watching from her bedroom window, because she was hurrying down the stairs, anxiety twisting her face. “Daddy still hasn’t come home!” she hissed, glancing toward the breakfast parlor, where Noelle was evidently lingering over a late breakfast. “Why did you break the window in his study, then light out of here like a cat with its tail on fire?
And why did you park in front? Mother won’t like that.”
Guy didn’t answer, but strode rapidly down the hall to the study, his bootheels thudding on the parquet floor. Monica rushed after him, and slipped into the study as he began examining, one by one, the papers on Guy’s desk.
“I don’t believe Alex told the truth about the poker game,” she said, her lips trembling a little. “Call him again, Gray. Make him tell you where Daddy is.”
“In a minute,” Gray murmured, not sparing her a glance. None of the papers on top of the desk was a letter of proxy. He began opening drawers.
“Gray!” Her voice rose sharply. “Surely finding Daddy’s more important than looking through his desk!”
He stopped, took a deep breath, and straightened. “Monica, honey, sit down over there and hush,” he said in a kind tone that nevertheless was underlaid with steel. “I have to look for a very important paper that Dad may have left here. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
She opened her mouth to say something else, but he gave her a look that changed her mind. Silently, vague surprise on her face, she sat down, and Gray returned to his search.
Five minutes later, he sat back with the taste of defeat bitter in his mouth. There was no letter. It didn’t make sense. Why would Guy have gone to so much trouble to teach him everything, then leave without providing the proxies? As Alex had said, Guy was too smart not to have thought of it. If he intended to stay in charge himself, why had he bothered to give Gray such intense instruction? Maybe he had intended to turn over the reins to Gray, then changed his mind. That was the only other explanation there could be. In that case, they would be hearing from him again, within a few days at the most, because his financial dealings were too complicated to leave for longer than that.
But, as he’d told Alex, he couldn’t afford to assume things would be taken care of. He couldn’t imagine Guy not taking care of business, but until this morning he hadn’t been able to imagine Guy leaving them for Renee Devlin, either. The impossible had happened, so how could he blindly trust in anything else he had always assumed to be true of his father? Responsibility for his mother and sister weighed heavily on his shoulders. He couldn’t risk their welfare.