Shattered. Joan Johnston
news she’d heard this morning from Harry Dickenson’s assistant, who was going through his deceased boss’s open files to make final reports to Harry’s clients. She should’ve known that her bitch of a daughter-in-law would find a way to stab her in the back. Her grandsons, who’d been such assets in the political arena, had become definite liabilities.
Her eyes narrowed. “I have some unpleasant news I need to share with you.”
J.D. groaned. “Save it.”
“This is important. It relates to our other problem.” She smiled as she realized her own play on words, “In fact, it’s directly related to our other problem.”
He swallowed the rest of the Dewar’s in his glass and said, “Get to the point, Mother.”
Upset at his rude interruption, Ann Wade said bluntly, “Lucky and Chance aren’t your sons.”
“The hell you say!” J.D. limped his way over to her from the bar, his unshaven face blotchy with the blood that had rushed there. “That isn’t funny, Mother.”
“No, it isn’t,” she agreed, curling her hands around the smooth horn arms of the chair. “And you haven’t even heard the best part.” She sat forward and looked up at him. “Wyatt Shaw is their father.”
The glass dropped from J.D.’s hand and rolled across the Turkish carpet under the desk, before clattering along the pegged oak floor all the way to the wall.
“You’re shitting me,” J.D. said.
“I promise you, it’s the truth. I found out the twins weren’t your sons when Lucky needed a blood transfusion earlier this year. Kate was in a coma, so the hospital sought permission from me to treat him. Which is how I found out his blood type is A positive, an impossibility if the twins were yours.”
“How did you find out Shaw is their father?”
“I hired a very good private investigator, Harry Dickenson. Harry’s assistant called me this morning to tell me he found copies of DNA tests that prove Shaw fathered the twins. The assistant was calling because Harry was killed after he met with Shaw.”
“Shaw had him killed?”
“Who knows? He was hit by a garbage truck that ran a red light outside Shaw’s office in downtown Houston.”
“Has Shaw contacted Kate?”
“I don’t know that he has, but we have to presume that he will.”
“Oh, shit.”
“What has me concerned is the possibility that Dante D’Amato has—or will—discover the truth.”
“Holy shit.”
“Precisely my feeling,” Ann Wade said.
“Goddamn it all to hell,” J.D. said angrily, stomping back to the bar, where he found another glass and poured himself another double shot of Dewar’s.
“I’m not any happier about this than you are,” Ann Wade said. “Do you realize what this means?”
“My wife was fucking another man the same time she was fucking me.”
“I was thinking more about the additional ammunition this will give D’Amato when he comes asking for more favors.”
“This is all that bitch’s fault,” J.D. muttered.
Ann Wade didn’t bother to point out that J.D. had been playing the same game as his wife. Except, no unexpected children had shown up on his doorstep. Yet.
“What happens now?” J.D. asked, shoving a hand through his stringy blond hair.
“I think the solution to both our problems is obvious.”
“Kill D’Amato. Kill Shaw. Kill both the bastards dead.”
“Can you do it?” she asked. “Or arrange to have it done?”
“Sure. If I had enough cash.”
“How much?”
“Fifty thousand,” J.D. said. “But the minute you make a withdrawal like that, D’Amato’s going to hear about it and start looking over his shoulder for a hired assassin.”
“I’ve got that much in the safe here at the ranch.”
“Then I can manage the rest. I plan to—”
“I don’t give a good goddamn how you make this all go away, J.D.,” she interrupted brusquely. “Just get it done.”
Because if he didn’t, she would take care of the problem herself. The entire problem.
7
“This plane is bad!” Lucky said, grinning broadly as he stepped inside Wyatt’s luxurious Gulfstream 550 business jet.
By which Wyatt knew his son meant the plane was “neat” or “cool” or one of the myriad other phrases his generation had used to sound “hip.”
“It’s a jet, stupid,” Chance said as he clambered onto the camel-colored leather couch that took up part of one wall toward the rear of the plane. He leaned over to peer through a porthole window and said, “How far can we fly before we have to stop, Mr. Shaw?”
“She’ll go seven thousand seven hundred and fifty nautical miles without a fill-up,” Wyatt replied with a smile. He was going to have to think of something else to have his sons call him besides “Mr. Shaw.” And he would rather his sons didn’t call each other stupid. But there would be plenty of time to correct them, after they learned he was their father.
And that he loved them. Had loved them from the moment he’d seen their images in a photograph and learned of their existence. And that he would always love them. For themselves, of course, and because they had brought him back together with their mother.
Wyatt had felt poleaxed when he’d realized that the mother of his children was the woman with whom he’d spent a single, life-altering night nine years before. That woman had shared herself without holding back, then stolen away like a thief in the dark, taking his heart with her.
He shouldn’t have been surprised when the anonymous woman disappeared or when she was impossible to find. He’d felt the rings on her finger the moment she’d grasped his hand. He’d known she was someone else’s wife, that she’d chosen him at random for a night of sex. He hadn’t asked her reasons and she hadn’t offered any.
He hadn’t asked her name or given her his.
She’d nearly chickened out when the elevator doors opened on the penthouse floor. Her chin had wobbled, and she’d looked up at him with anxious blue eyes. He’d led her directly to the bedroom, hoping that her nerve would hold a little longer.
The bed had already been turned down, and the only light on the pure white sheets had come from the full moon outside. He’d taken her in his arms while she was still fully clothed and felt her tremble in his embrace. She’d made a mewing sound as he slid his open hand down to her hips and pulled her close enough to feel the heat and hard length of him.
But she didn’t try to pull free. Instead, she breathed in the scent of him as she slid her palms up over his shoulders. He could remember feeling gooseflesh rise on his arms as she teased her fingers through the hair that fell onto his nape and then tugged his head down toward hers.
He remembered the soft weight of her breasts, and then their pebbled tips against his chest, as she leaned into him and raised her lips for his kiss.
That first kiss—
“Wow!” Chance said, tugging on Wyatt’s hand and putting an abrupt end to his erotic daydream. “We could probably go all the way to China in this plane!”
“Yes, we could,” he agreed. Before he could say more, the boy was off