“I instigated the investigation before I got to know you.”
“I don’t want to hear your excuses.” Because she’d want to believe him. And for her sake, for Rhett’s sake, that wasn’t wise.
“I’m not making excuses. I’m stating facts.”
“Hiring a P.I. to smear my reputation shows how low you’re willing to go to get what you want. You want Rhett. You don’t want me. But I won’t be a part of that plan, and I won’t let Rhett be raised by a mean bastard who would intentionally hurt others.”
Tugging off the engagement ring and placing it on the leather blotter hurt more than it should. “I’m not marrying you. And if you try to take Rhett from me I will go straight to the press with everything. I survived being flayed by them once. I will again.
“I made a youthful mistake of trusting the wrong person. But you, you’re deliberately and willfully trying to cover up a possible murder and take a child from the one person who loves him most.”
She forced her feet to carry her around the desk. Mitch stood between her and the exit. “Marlene was right. You are a cold, conniving rat bastard.”
Mitch didn’t even blink. “Carly, you can’t take Rhett and leave. We’ll—he’ll lose everything.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before. Integrity is worth so much more than money. And you apparently have none of one and too much of the other.
“Here’s your fax.” She shoved the papers into his hand, stepped around him and headed for the door. But she paused in the threshold. Mitch needed to hear the truth, even though he probably wouldn’t believe it. No one had. Except Marlene. Carly didn’t know why his knowing mattered, but it did. She faced him.
“The newspaper was wrong. Wes seduced me. He convinced me that I had a chance at a college scholarship if I perfected my volleyball skills. At first I only stayed a few minutes after practice. And then we met longer and on weekends. I thought I was in love. And when he kissed me and held me, I thought he was, too.” Her voice broke, but she soldiered on.
“I didn’t know he was married until I turned up pregnant. He told me then he’d never leave his wife for me and he offered to help me take care of my problem. My problem. As if he’d had nothing to do with the baby we’d made. He took my heart, my virginity and my trust, and threw them away as if they meant nothing.
“I had nowhere else to go but to my parents who went to the police. Wes went to the papers.”
She sucked in a slow, painful breath. “He told the reporters I was a tramp hell-bent on destroying his marriage and a hazard to all the innocent boys in my school. I denied it, but nobody listened because Marlene…”
She wheezed in another burning lungful of air. She’d loved her sister, but Marlene hadn’t always made the best decisions.
“Marlene got into sex early on. But when she slept with a guy, she always pretended to be m-me. I had a reputation for being loose even though I’d never slept with anyone before Wes. So when he said I seduced him, everyone believed it.”
Her nails dented the wooden door frame. “I lost everything. My friends. My home. My parents’ trust.”
A tear burned a trail down her cheek. She swiped it away. Tears solved nothing. She’d cried an ocean of them twelve years ago to no avail.
“But more than that, I lost the right to watch my precious baby girl grow up. I don’t know her name. I’ll never see her smile or hear her laugh. I won’t get to brush her hair or dry her tears. I can’t be there if she n-needs me, and I can never tell her how much I loved her even before she was born or how much it hurt to give her away. But it was the right thing to do. So I did it.”
A sob clawed its way up in her throat. She swallowed it back. “So, yeah, if you want ammunition to take Rhett away from me, you probably have it. But the man I thought you were, the man I fell in love with, couldn’t be that heartless.”
He flinched, and that flinch told her what she needed to know. He didn’t love her and probably never would.
“Now you know the facts. Tell your private investigator he got it wrong.” She bolted down the hall and up the stairs.
Mitch didn’t call her back.
Once in her room, she locked the door, backed against it and slid down the wooden surface until her butt hit the floor. She tilted her head back and blinked furiously to keep her tears at bay. When her vision cleared, she saw the wedding dress she’d fallen in love with but couldn’t afford hanging from the canopy bed frame. Mitch must have bought it.
But the beautiful hand-beaded silk gown would never be worn. Not by her.
What was she going to do?
Rhett deserved his share of the Kincaid estate now more than ever before. But Carly didn’t think she could bear to stay at Kincaid Manor. Mitch’s betrayal had demolished her respect for him and for herself.
Worse, his P.I. might be right. Her past might very well cost her the child she adored.
Eleven
A tap on the door froze Carly’s muscles and set her heart racing.
She didn’t want to talk to Mitch.“Mama,” Rhett’s treble penetrated the closed bedroom door.
Rhett. She’d been in such a panic to pack her belongings that she’d left him with Della too long.
Della. Another casualty of Mitch’s deviousness. Carly was going to hate losing the older woman’s friendship.
“Carly?” Her mother’s voice.
And suddenly Carly needed her mother more than she needed anyone. She dumped her armload of clothes on the bed, rushed to the door and flung it open.
How was she going to explain there wouldn’t be a wedding?
She didn’t have to say a word. Her mother set Rhett down inside the room, closed the door and opened her arms. Carly fell against her and took strength from her hug.
After a few moments, her mother leaned back to look into Carly’s eyes. “Mitch says you’re not going to marry him. Tell me what I can do to help you.”
The whole story tumbled out in fits and spurts. The will and Rhett’s inheritance. Falling in love with Mitch. The P.I.’s report. Getting her heart broken. Again. Her mother waited until Carly ran out of steam.
“First off, Mitch is right. If his father is responsible for Marlene’s…end, then a higher power has already dealt out the consequences. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to know what happened. I won’t rest easy until I do.
“Second, you are my daughter. I know you’re hurting now, but I also know you have the most generous heart of any woman I’ve ever met. You’re going to make the right decision.” She cradled Carly’s cheek. The love and approval in her mother’s eyes and words brought tears to Carly’s eyes.
“Whatever your decision is, your father and I will support you. If you need to leave, we’ll help you. But if you want to stay here for Rhett, then your father and I will move to Miami to be your backup.”
“But you love your life in Arizona.”
“We love you more. And just like we moved to give you a fresh start after you relinquished your baby, we’d move for you again in a heartbeat.”
“I thought you moved because I’d embarrassed you.”
“No, dear. We told you we left Nashville because we didn’t want you to be continually reminded of painful things and because the press wouldn’t let you forget. I know you didn’t believe us then, but that’s the gospel truth. And with the dangerous path Marlene was headed down, it was a good time for us all to start over somewhere else.”
Carly’s breath snagged. “You knew about Marlene?”
“Of course I did. And your father and I tried to help her, but she wouldn’t let us. She derived something from those boys’ attention, as inappropriate as it might have been, that we couldn’t give her.”
“But the home for unwed mothers…I thought you wanted me out of the house and out of your sight. I thought I’d disgusted you.”
“Oh, Carly, I’m sorry I didn’t communicate my concerns better. I tried, but I was afraid to harp on and sway you into making a choice you’d regret, one you might hate me for later, so perhaps I didn’t say enough. Baby, letting you go through that alone was like tearing off a limb, but we did it anyway because we wanted you to have counselors who would help you make a decision you could live with. The home promised me their specialists could do that.”
Tears streamed hot paths down Carly’s cheeks. “They did. And I know in my heart that I did the right thing. I couldn’t have been the mother my daughter deserved.”
She studied her finger, the one that for a few hours had worn Mitch’s ring. “Mom, for Rhett to inherit his share of Everett’s estate he has to live here for the rest of the year. I don’t know if I can handle that, but I won’t abandon him. He deserves this. It’s the only thing his father will ever give him. I need to find a way to make it work.”
“Why am I not surprised that you would put Rhett’s concerns ahead of your own? Running away has never been your style. And I have no doubt that if you choose to stay, you will find a way to manage it. You’re strong, Carly. You can handle anything.”
Her mother sat silently for a moment and then tilted her head. “Is there a way to share this monstrosity of a house without having to cross paths with Mitch too frequently?”
“Pish! Orange pish. Big,” Rhett cried out.
Carly’s glanced over to where he knelt on the window seat pointing toward the koi pond. The evening sun glinted off the windows across the yard and an idea took root.
“The nursery is on the opposite side of the house.”
Her mother stood and offered a hand. “Then I think we need to see the nursery, don’t you? And if it’s suitable, then we’re going to lay some ground rules for Mr. Kincaid. He’s going to learn he can’t mess with the Corbins. We are a formidable team.”
“I don’t need you tonight,” Mitch said Friday afternoon from the door of Rand’s office, and then immediately turned and left. He didn’t want to discuss his aborted plans.“Whoa,” his brother called out and chased him into the hall. “You can’t drop a bomb like that and keep walking. You’re supposed to get married in a matter of hours. What happened to the wedding? You come to your senses?”
Rand shadowed him past his PA’s desk and into his office. “Spill it, Mitch.”
“I had Dad’s P.I. do a little checking into Carly’s past and her sister’s death.”
“Marie, hold his calls,” Rand told Mitch’s PA and then shut the office door. “What did he find? She’s already married? A black widow? A transvestite?”
Mitch scowled. He wasn’t in the mood for Rand’s twisted humor.
“There’s nothing in Carly’s past to change my mind.” If anything, he wanted to hunt down an ex-volleyball coach and remove the guy’s nuts with a rusty knife.
He’d been his father’s axman for years. He should be able to handle this situation without breaking a sweat. He wiped his brow, trying to clear the vision of Carly’s pain-filled eyes from his mind. No such luck.