Love Redone

Love Redone

By Peyton Reeser

Text copyright © 2013 Peyton Reeser

All Rights Reserved

ISBN:
9781301699254

Title: Love Redone

Author: Peyton Reeser

Publisher: Smashwords, Inc

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Peyton Reeser holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

This is for CAZLE

You are my sunshine

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

EPILOGUE

LOVE REDONE

The room was pin drop quiet.  Heavy drapes hanging over a tall row of windows were drawn back to let in what light was left on a day that had slipped into the deepening shadows of twilight. An eerie silence permeated the room lending an atmosphere of total quiet that was almost deafening.

The air was thick with emotion; something dark and painful seemed to be hovering over everything.  Barely a bump in the linens, a small form huddled in the midst of a huge bed, it’s breathing the only break in the awkward silence. 

Somewhere in the quiet, a door swished open and then, after a few moments, shut again with a tiny snick of sound as the latch caught. 

In the hallway outside
, two people stopped to look at one another, each reading the uneasiness in the other’s face.

“I’m worried
, Ted.  Really worried.  She isn’t even making an attempt to pull herself together.  And I don’t know what to say to her.” The last was said in whispered annoyance and frustration.

“Well
, hell, Jane, I have no idea what to say to her either. I mean, let’s face it-she’s my sister, but we barely know each other.  My being so much older than her meant we were raised at different times.  I was just months away from heading off to university when she was born. And right now as I stand here, staring down forty, I have no more notion of what to say to a messed-up twenty-year-old than you do,” a confused and equally frustrated voice lamented.

“Maybe you should call your parents.”

“And say what exactly?” he hissed. “Hi, Mom and Dad. Just wanted to let you know that Shannon is back from Africa, and she’s had a minor car accident. Got thumped pretty good on the head. Nothing to worry about though. Oh, and by the way, the accident was triggered by a miscarriage that I only know about because I pulled rank on her nurses and demanded to see her chart. Really, Jane, I’m thinking the answer to that is a big no. Shannon obviously isn’t going to tell any of this to us or Mom and Dad. She’s a big girl and we don’t know what happened, so let’s not get involved and just move on.”

Two pair
s of concerned eyes turned at the same time, fixing thoughtful stares at the closed room. Beyond that door, in the huge bed, huddled under a mountain of soft blankets, lay a young girl—no, not a girl anymore young, but a woman in pieces. The life-altering events of the past year had brought her far from her girlish youth.

* * *

Inside the room, cocooned safely under the deep bedding, she imagined the anxious whispers of her older brother and his wife, in whose home she’d been staying since her unexpected return to the states from the other side of the globe.

She knew she should try to pull herself together
, but her heart just wasn’t in it today.  Not even for her family.  Reality surged, a sudden pain clutching with its vicious claws at her heart, a ruthless throbbing reminder of the truth. 

She didn’t care whether she ever got up and left that room.  Did not care at all.  Nick was gone, having betrayed her in the
cruelest way possible. The child they’d created together, that she hadn’t realized she was carrying, was no more.    In that moment, Shannon knew and saw nothing except a dark tunnel of pain and loss spread out in front of her. What was the point of even trying to go on?

She’d been understandably distraught after discovering that the man she had loved was a fantasy, someone who never even really existed so deep were his lies and the subterfuge he worked on everyone.

At first she just assumed that having her heart broken explained why she felt so lousy, but the truth of her situation came crashing home in brutal terms when she’d blacked out while driving, gotten whacked on the head, and been rushed by ambulance to the nearest hospital where she nearly bled to death from a ruptured cyst. The trauma and blood loss ultimately caused an end to a pregnancy she hadn’t even known about. When the doctors reassured her she could have other children, her heart shut down. No.  She would never allow herself to let anyone get that close ever again.  That part of her life was over.

She’
d laid her heart open to her first love and given him everything.  Absolutely everything. And from the depths of that openness, they had created a life. Maybe it was best that she hadn’t known, better that she’d been unaware instead of mourning a tiny moment of bliss that was not to be and which she would never, ever get back. 

Tomorrow really would be another day
, and maybe she’d think then about stepping back into her life.  For now, she was so empty and numb that she didn’t have anything left. The only action she could summon up was to simply change positions in the big bed in her dark room and keep those covers over her head because she just wasn’t ready to move on. Not yet. She hated having to stay with Ted and his wife, but at the moment she was adrift and had no place else to go.

Just then a gust of wind picked up
, causing the long, heavy drapes to flutter and sway.

* * *

In New York City, Julianna Barrett let herself into the executive apartment at the top of the Barrett office building.

A
fter three days of uncharacteristic silence, she had gone in search of her big brother, who at this moment was M.I.A. from his position as head of the family business.

The last month had been god awful
, Jules, as she preferred to be called, thought to herself when the heavy apartment door swung open.  People were always saying how life can change completely between one heartbeat and the next, but she’d never truly appreciated that sentiment until recently. Now she could see that very reality all over her life and the lives of everyone she knew.

Eight weeks ago she’d been an excited, soon-to-graduate college student making plans for her future. Then her stern and controlling grandfather, a man who had in her mind been an evil, emotionless puppeteer calling the shots in the lives of her mother, brother
, and herself since the day her beloved daddy had perished in a senseless accident, had dropped of a massive stroke. Just like that, all their lives changed instantly.

With her big brother summoned back from time he’d been spending abroad, life had been turned upside down by the old man’s condition.  Then, just a month
later, he had died. In the blink of an eye, or a heartbeat, Nicky, the older brother she adored, was at twenty-five years old, the new CEO and majority holder of a huge international family business.

The weeks since then had been alarming for Jules and her mother as t
he burden and overwhelming responsibilities of running a billion-dollar global company consumed Nicky’s life.  Seemingly overnight he seemed more and more distant, as if the duty he’d inherited had changed his life the way a jail sentence would.

Nicky
had always been the heir to their grandfather’s enormous business legacy, so why he’d seemed so miserable as the mantle of power and control had settled on him didn’t make much sense to Jules.  Or her mother, for that fact, who was equally confused by her son’s apparent fall into a pit of despair, which was so very unlike him.

She supposed that the sham engagement he’d been forced into by the terms of their grandfather’s smarmy will was fueling his isolation. Rachel Dane was the daughter of one of her grandfather’s business cronies.  Just one in a long line of older men who ran their companies like feudal kingdoms, wielding power, ego
, and control without conscience, and who in this case was willing to put his own daughter on the table as a negotiating point in a multimillion-dollar development deal, which would, when completed, bring an obscene profit to both men.

Jules knew that Rachel was as interested in being married to her brother as the wood column by the front door.  They both seemed trapped
, however, by the terms of the will and the devious business deal Rachel’s father and their grandfather had struck. Jules and her mother, Alanna, both prayed desperately that Nicky could find a way out of this mess.

Still, it wasn’t just that
, because he’d been different from the moment he’d returned from Africa.  Something was wrong beyond the forced engagement, she could feel it, but with the whole Barrett world freaking out around them, there hadn’t been time to get big brother alone.

Jules had expressed her concerns to Nicky’s oldest friend, Ned Ste
wart.  She and Ned had gotten seriously close in the last year, and it was natural to share her worry with him.  In fact, Jules was head over stilettos with the man, so Ned took her apprehensions seriously.  It had been he who suggested she check the penthouse when her brother had gone off the radar.  Especially since his less-than-enthusiastic fiancée didn’t seem to care one way or the other.  Something definitely wasn’t right.

The moment the door closed behind her
, Jules took in what was basically a holy hell mess stretching from the vestibule through to the high-ceilinged living room.  There were pizza boxes stacked on the hallway table, and the unmistakable aroma of scotch permeated the air.

Once in the living room
, she spied take-out containers, piles of clothes, and boxes of tapes and books strewn everywhere.  The place looked and smelled like a wolf pack had been living there.  This much evidence hadn’t piled up in just a day or two.  The scenario she’d stumbled upon looked to her like Nicky had been going off the rails for weeks.

She thought for a moment that someone else was there when a voice out of nowhere pulled her up short. Then she saw a homemade video playing on the large screen TV just a split second before she then noticed her brother, out cold, sprawled on the sofa.

“
Fabulous, just great,”
she muttered hurrying over to the sofa to see if he was alright. More sounds of laughing voices and scenes from a part of Nicky’s life that she knew nothing about intruded on her task. With an impatient flick of the remote control, she paused the recording at the exact moment when the image of her brother engaged in some seriously close dancing with a blonde-haired woman froze on the screen.

Face down on the
sofa, dressed only in a pair of well-worn jeans, Nicholas Barrett was sleeping off what looked to have been an epic drunk.  Quickly assessing that he was alright and deciding it was best to leave him be, Jules went to toss a throw blanket over him when she noticed a small tattoo, real low on his back.  What would normally have been covered by clothing had he not been half undressed, was a bird with an unusual symbol done in midnight-blue ink.

She wasn’t surprised so much that he had a tattoo; Nicky always did whatever he wanted
, especially if what he wanted was something that would annoy the shit out of their oppressive grandfather.

No, what struck Jules was where the image was located
—clearly placed in one of those areas that would not be seen by the casual viewer. This mark and its placement were meant for the eyes of a lover.

The symbol meant something to him
, of that she was sure. Glancing up at the frozen image on the screen showing Nicky with his arms wrapped around the blonde-haired woman with his face pressed against her neck, Jules’ instincts went on high alert.

Nicky’d
had no choice but to follow his destiny when the time came for him to do so, but in this moment Jules was painfully aware that in order for all their lives to continue on without disruption her brother may have paid a terrible price.  One which, judging by the state of things today, she hoped he’d recover from.

Just then a gust of wind blew through the wide
-open French doors leading to the balcony terrace, causing the long, heavy drapes to flutter and sway.

Heaving a heavy sigh
, Jules turned her attention back to the task at hand. Satisfied that Nicky was alright and just sleeping it off, she began gathering the mounds of trash and dirty dishes littering the otherwise well-organized space.