Nick set his beer on the side of the hot tub and sank further into the hot water. His mother didn’t like to drive after dark so he figured he was safe for the night. He’d call her in the morning and get it over with.
Gwen placed the telephone to her ear for about the fifth time in the last hour. “Delaney has obviously taken her phone off the hook.”
Max walked across a thick Aubusson rug and stopped behind her. He took the receiver from her hand and hung it up. “Then she obviously has her reasons.” He rubbed Gwen’s shoulders and pressed his thumbs into the base of her skull. “You’re too tense.”
Gwen sighed and lazed her head to one side. Her soft blond hair brushed across his knuckles, and the smell of roses filled his nose. “It’s the latest rumor about her and Nick,” she said. “He’s out to ruin my daughter.”
“She’ll handle Nick.”
“You don’t understand. He’s always hated her.”
Max remembered the day Nick had barged into his office. The man had been angry, but Max hadn’t received the impression that Nick held any animosity toward Delaney. “Your daughter is a grown woman. She can take care of herself.” He slid his hands to her waist and pulled her back against his chest. It seemed their time together was always the same. Gwen fussing about Delaney, and him wanting to touch her like a lover. He’d seen quite a bit of her since Henry’s death, and he’d found pleasure in her bed on several occasions. She was beautiful and had a lot to offer a man. Yet he was growing tired of her immersion in her daughter’s business.
“How? By creating a scandal?”
“If that’s her choice. You’ve done your job. You’ve raised her. Let it go or you might lose her again.”
Gwen turned and Max saw fear in her eyes. “I am afraid she’s going to leave me. I always thought she stayed away because of Henry, but now I’m not sure. A few years ago I went to visit her when she lived in Denver, and she said that I always took Henry’s side when she was growing up. She thinks I never stood up for her. I would have, but Henry was right. She needed to get good grades and go to college and not run around town like a hoyden.” Gwen paused and took a deep breath. “Delaney is stubborn and holds a grudge for a long time. I just know that she’ll leave in June and never come back.”
“Maybe.”
“She can’t go. Henry could have made her stay longer.”
Max dropped his hands to his sides. “He wanted to, but I advised him that a judge might strike down the will if Henry stipulated a lengthier period.”
Gwen turned and walked to the fireplace. She gripped the brick mantel and gazed back at Max through the mirror in front of her. “He should have done something.”
Henry had done everything he could to control the people in his life from the grave. He’d stayed just to the right of what a court would consider fair and reasonable restraints. The whole thing had been extremely distasteful to Max, and it bothered him that Gwen supported her late husband’s manipulations.
“Delaney needs to stay here. She needs to grow up.”
Max looked at Gwen’s reflection; her beautiful blue eyes and pouty pink mouth, perfectly flawless white skin and hair like ribbons of caramel and butterscotch. Desire settle in the pit of his groin. Maybe she just needed something else in her life to think about. He walked toward her, determined to give her that something else.
Nick didn’t get the chance to call his mother the next morning. She rang his doorbell at seven a.m.
Benita Allegrezza set her purse on the white marble counter and looked at her son. Nick obviously thought he could avoid her, but she was his mother. She’d given birth to him, which gave her the right to drag him out of bed. No matter that he was thirty-three and no longer lived with her.
He’d pulled on a pair of ragged Levi’s and an old black sweatshirt, and his feet were bare. Benita frowned. He could afford to dress better. Nick never took very good care of himself. He didn’t eat when he should, and he spent time with loose women. He didn’t think she knew about the women, but she did. “Why can’t you just avoid that
“I don’t know what you’ve heard, but nothing happened with Delaney,” he said, his voice rough from sleep. He took her coat and hung it in the hall closet.
Obviously, he thought she could be fooled, too. Benita followed him into the kitchen and watched him pull two mugs from the cupboard. “Then why were you there, Nick?”
He waited until he’d filled the two mugs with coffee before he answered her. “I installed some locks at her shop.”
She took the mug he offered her and looked at him standing by the kitchen sink as if nothing had happened in that beauty salon. She knew better. She knew the less he said, the more he left unsaid. Sometimes she needed a Mack truck to pull anything out of him. He’d been that way for a long time now. “That’s what your brother told me. Why couldn’t she hire a locksmith like everyone else? Why does she need
“I told her I’d do it.” He leaned one hip against the counter and shrugged the opposite shoulder. “It was no big deal.”
“How can you say that? The whole town is talking about it. You haven’t returned my phone calls and you’ve been hiding from me.”
His brows drew together, and he frowned at her. “I haven’t been hiding from you.”
Yes, he had, and it was Delaney Shaw’s fault.
From the day she’d moved to Truly, she’d made Nick’s life harder than it had been before she’d arrived.
Before Henry married Gwen, Benita could tell herself and everyone else that Henry ignored Nick because he didn’t want to have children. Afterward, everyone knew that wasn’t true. Henry just didn’t want Nick. He could lavish love and attention on a stepdaughter, yet reject his own son.
Before Delaney’s arrival in Henry’s life, Benita would sit with Nick on her lap and hold him close. She’d kiss his sweet forehead and dry his tears. Afterward, there were no more tears or hugs. No more softness in her son. He’d grow stiff in her arms and tell her he was too big for kisses. Benita blamed Henry for the pain he caused his own son, but in her eyes, Delaney became the living, breathing symbol of deep betrayal and rejection. Delaney had been given everything that should have been given to Nick, but everything hadn’t been enough for her. She’d been a troublemaker to boot.
She’d always had a way of making Nick look bad. Like the time he’d hit her with a snowball. Although he shouldn’t have thrown a snowball at her, Benita was sure
And then there was that horrible episode when those awful rumors had spread through town about Nick taking advantage of Delaney. Ten years later, Benita still didn’t know what had taken place that night. She knew Nick was no saint when it came to women, but she was sure he hadn’t taken anything Delaney hadn’t been more than willing to give him. Then like a coward, she’d fled and escaped the stinging gossip, while Nick had stayed behind and braved the worst of it. And the rumor about Nick taking advantage of that girl hadn’t been the worst of it.
She looked at him now-her tall, handsome boy. Both her sons had succeeded on their own. No one had handed them anything, and she was extremely proud of them. But Nick… Nick would always need her to watch out for him, even though he didn’t think he needed her at all.
Now all she really wanted for Nick was for him to settle down with a nice Catholic girl, marry in the church, and be happy. She didn’t think it was too much for a mother to ask. If he married, the loose women would quit chasing him-especially Delaney Shaw. “You probably wouldn’t tell your mother if something did happen with that girl anyway,” she said. “What am I to believe?”
Nick raised his mug and took a drink. “I’ll tell you what. If something did happen, it won’t happen again.”
“Promise me.”
He gave her an easy smile meant to appease her. “Of course,
Benita wasn’t appeased. Now that girl was back and the rumors were starting again.
Chapter Eleven
