Secret Garden (4 page)

He turned to her, suddenly furious. “I
will not
lose my tour card.”

“Of course you won’t, Colin. I know. The inheritance is... Think of it as a contingency plan.”

He turned and stared out the window. “Then tell Jessie to mail me the check.”

“I did, but she said you need to be there, for lawyers and signatures and whatever else. Then she mentioned Mr. Sage, Jamie’s employer. Colin, I looked him up on the internet. Do you remember the family?”

Colin shook his head, ignoring her outstretched hand, cradling the phone. He didn’t like that she was getting so excited about this. For too long, Daisie Lee had cried over the divorce, and Colin, even as young as he was, had been the one who’d had to lift her spirits.

“Don’t frown, Colin. Surely you remember the MacDowall family that lived in the castle? Rhiannon, the little girl? She was so sweet to you. The two of you were so close back then.”

Of course he hadn’t forgotten her. Rhiannon had been the one great thing about that place. The best thing, actually.

But then, Rhiannon had never written to him the way she’d promised. Colin couldn’t help thinking that he’d done something wrong, because he’d believed her when she said that she would write him.

She’d seen everything that had happened, though—had heard what his father had said to him, and Colin had always figured that in the end, it had affected her decision to keep in touch.

“Rhiannon’s mother,” Daisie Lee continued, “was a Sage. The Sages of Scotland—you’ve heard of them? They own that big shampoo and cosmetics empire?”

Daisie Lee didn’t wait for his reaction. She just kept talking, an excited look on her face. “Colin, they’re now about the wealthiest people in Scotland. Can you believe it?”

“I really don’t care about that,” he said coldly. Because he didn’t.

“Their company is called Sage Family Products. Here, I looked it up. They sponsor professional athletes.”

He saw where this was going, all too clearly. She was trying to ensure his financial stability in the event that he crashed and burned on the pro tour. She was just being a mother.

He sat down at the table and put his head in his hands. He just wanted to keep his tour card and his dignity. No amount of money could save that.

Daisie Lee’s voice was softer now, but she was still revved up. Apparently, she really was convinced that Colin should return to the place that she’d scorned for so many years.

Not that he’d blamed her. Daisie Lee’s life had been tough after the divorce. The laughter had died in their little home. For a while, they’d been living in a trailer in her mother’s front yard, next to a chicken coop. Daisie Lee had cried herself to sleep every night, and he’d heard it because the trailer had been so small.

But the worst thing of all was that his father hadn’t once asked how they were doing. Colin hadn’t heard a word. Not a card on his birthday, not a call at Christmas.

He could never, ever forgive that.

Colin stood. Everyone was staring at him. Mack, Leonard, his mom. In a sense, they all depended on him. Colin had never thought of himself as someone big on commitment—he’d expressly avoided it, in fact—but when it came right down to it, he was fast realizing that he
was
a committed man.

He had a team to support. A caddie, a business manager, his fans, his sponsors... They were all good to him—friends—and Colin didn’t desert his friends.

Maybe it was just important to him that he end up being the good guy that his father hadn’t been.

Mack was watching him, waiting for his decision.

Leonard rolled his pen in his fingers. He looked sorry about the whole thing. Daisie Lee was filled with crazy hope. Mack, too, probably.

Colin didn’t like his options. Either go to Scotland and renew the relationships he had no interest in cultivating, or stay here and watch an opportunity to help his team slip away from him.

If he lost the tour card, if he ended up back on the minors tour, or worse, working in obscurity as a club pro, knowing that he’d failed his talent and he wasn’t worth it, then he would need money for his support system. He loved them.

“I’ll go,” he said quietly.

“You will?” Daisie Lee asked.

“Sure.” He would be responsible and bring home the income stream that would keep them all going. He would do it, but he wouldn’t like it.

While Leonard nodded, Colin took another drink of water. Crushed the cup with all the fury he had inside him.

Mack rose. With a quiet voice he said, “I’ll talk to Doc about hitching a ride on his plane. I know he’s going to a charity tournament in the Highlands this week.”

“Thanks,” Colin said. “I appreciate it.”

CHAPTER THREE

T
WO DAYS LATER
, Colin sat beside Mack on the large, comfortable seats of Doc Masters’s private plane, and prepared for takeoff.

Back in the conference room at Sunny Times Golf Academy, the plan had seemed simple. Fly in. Meet Jessie and Jamie. Go to the funeral and collect his check, then fly home.

But now... Wednesday morning was when Doc needed to leave for his charity tournament, so Colin would be arriving four full days before Sunday’s funeral. That meant spending more time in his grandparents’ company than Colin wanted. To make matters worse, he’d finally sucked it up and emailed his grandmother. She’d responded immediately with the address of a restaurant where she wanted to meet at six o’clock local time, after he landed.

He had no idea what he was going to say. Whatever happened, he was determined not to let it get to him. He wouldn’t care too much about it.
Keep everything light.

The flight attendant stopped by, bringing Colin a drink from the bar service. Colin drank it gratefully and, without asking, she promptly brought another one. He finished that one, too. Colin wasn’t a big drinker—he was an athlete first—but the comfortable, mellow glow that the alcohol gave him helped dull the edge of his anger. He was even able to tolerate Doc and his small, sarcastic digs.

He didn’t even mind too much when Doc sprang on them that they were making a detour to Iceland to pick up somebody’s wife or girlfriend—this wasn’t exactly clear to Colin. All he knew was that it added more than an hour to their flight time.

Then, once they did finally land in Scotland at the small Highland airport, there was a short delay before they could disembark. Something about their plane’s manifest needed to be straightened out before they could clear customs, and that made the delay that much longer.

By the time the pilots finished the formalities, it was a few minutes past the time Colin was supposed to meet his grandparents.

“Are you
sure
you don’t want to come with us to St. Andrews?” Doc Masters asked Colin as he reached for his bag.

Colin would have given anything to head off to the famous golf course. But it wasn’t possible with his schedule, and frankly, he was glad to get a break from Doc. “Thanks, but if you don’t mind, I’ll just hook a ride back with you on Sunday night.”

“I’m sorry about your father,” Doc’s wife said.

Colin thought about being truthful, telling her that he hadn’t really known his father well, but what was the point? So he just nodded silently and went through the motions of grabbing his stuff and disembarking from the plane.

Once out on the tarmac, standing beside their pile of luggage, Colin realized this was the first time he’d been on Scottish soil since he was eight. All he kept thinking about was the way he’d felt that day. He’d been just a little kid, and he’d been scared and upset and ashamed. His whole world had blown apart, and his grandparents had sided with his father against them.

At least, that was what his mom had always said. To contact them and maybe find out otherwise had always seemed disloyal. So Colin had avoided it.

Given the choice, he would still rather avoid it. No doubt about it, he didn’t see how this reunion could possibly be pleasant, for any of them. They had a lot of old, bad feelings to deal with.

“Where to?” Mack asked.

“I booked a hotel for us,” Colin said. “But first, I need to meet my grandparents at a restaurant in town.”

“Okay. You mind if I tag along?”

“Mind? Hell no.” Colin was just grateful that Mack was willing to be a buffer for him.

Colin dug the address out of his wallet, and they flagged a cab. The driver was an old-timer and Mack shot the breeze with him, especially once the old-timer saw Colin’s golf clubs. Colin signed his autograph, but didn’t say much otherwise. It wasn’t like him, but he was starting to feel kind of distracted and crappy.

Honestly, would he even recognize his grandparents? All those years with no contact had dulled his memory. Yes, his grandmother had tried to get in touch with him and maybe he shouldn’t have ignored her. But when he was young and vulnerable, he’d always thought that his grandparents could have picked up a phone or hopped on a plane to see him, and they hadn’t. So he was determined not to feel guilty if he couldn’t identify them right away.

He and Mack finally found the restaurant—they were late because of the diversion and the holdup at the airport—and the server at the counter told them they’d missed Jamie and Jessie by a half hour.

“They
left
me?” Colin asked, incredulous. “They couldn’t just eat dinner and wait an extra few minutes to see their grandson?”

The server looked apologetic. She gave them a slip of paper that Jessie had left, with their home address and telephone number written in neat script.

Colin’s forehead was throbbing. He knew he might be overreacting, but given their history, it was understandable. He stared at her address in disbelief. His grandmother expected him to stay with them, it appeared.

Or maybe Daisie Lee had given her that impression. Colin hadn’t really talked with his grandmother about the sleeping arrangements—he’d just exchanged that one email about his estimated time of arrival, because frankly, it was all the contact he’d been able to take for the moment. He was filled with resentment, it seemed, and this wasn’t like him. He hated feeling this way.

He was also sobering up.

“Are you going to phone them?” Mack asked.

“Not yet.” Colin needed to calm down first. He was a mellow guy, laid-back. That was his reputation. That was what kept him sane.

“Let’s sit here, get a drink first,” Colin said. There was a pub attached to the restaurant, so they headed over to check it out. A three-person group was performing. Guitar, vocals, drums. Celtic music—they were pretty good.

Colin and Mack found chairs at a table. Before Colin knew it, two local women gravitated toward them. Mack talked with them—Colin was too busy getting his mind comfortably numb again to interact much. One song flowed into another. One beer flowed into another.

Somewhere along the line Colin noticed that one of the women was sitting on Mack’s lap. By now, there was lots of laughter. He kept forgetting the names of the people they were talking to—the faces started to blend. Mack was getting friendlier with the two women... Bonnie and Clyde...that was what Mack was calling them. Colin was clear that Bonnie was the tall redhead currently sitting in Mack’s lap, and the other woman wasn’t really named Clyde, but Clara or Cassandra...something along those lines. Still, Mack coined them Bonnie and Clyde, which the two ladies thought was hilarious.

Mack was wearing his cowboy boots, and the more he drank, the more pronounced his Texas drawl became. Bonnie especially seemed to like that.

After the pub closed, the party moved to a local house. Even though it was well after midnight, Colin didn’t feel tired at all. His body clock was seven hours behind the local time. Mack took the front seat of Bonnie’s car, and Colin crowded in the back. Colin wasn’t going to end up with either of the women—that would be stupid for someone with his profile, and he wasn’t stupid, he was just prolonging the inevitable pain of meeting his grandparents.

In the back of his mind, he knew he had to deal with a potential confrontation that he just wasn’t ready to face.

He also felt sick, and sad, and he didn’t want to be. His father was dead and he was too late to do anything about it. This wasn’t a jam Colin could talk his way out of. A problem he could smooth over with a laugh and a joke. He was here, in Scotland, and he needed to somehow get beyond the anger.

Because he wasn’t a kid being manipulated or dragged around any longer. Those days were over. It was years ago that he’d overheard his parents arguing on that last trip to Scotland. Overheard his father telling his mother that it just wasn’t worth it. His mother screaming back, “What about your son, isn’t that reason enough?” His father answering, “No, that’s not enough. It’s not enough!”

All those years, deep down, Colin had spent feeling guilty and ashamed, as if it were his fault. Anger, because rationally, he knew it
wasn’t
his fault. He’d felt sad, for his mom and for him, too, because their lives had changed so drastically.

Or maybe he was slowly making up his mind to decide to get over it. To forgive his grandparents for not reaching out earlier—and himself for reaching out only now, when it was too late. Maybe he should just start the weekend with a fresh slate. Colin still wasn’t sure, though. Mack obviously sensed his inner turmoil, and seemed to be steering clear of Colin’s mood, or of any discussion regarding it.

“Do you want us to drop you off at the hotel?” Mack asked him finally. “Because I’m gonna stay over with Bonnie. She said she’s got a couch you can stay on, too, if you want. When we wake up, I’ll help you call your grandparents. How about if we just arrange a time to meet them before the funeral on Sunday? Will that work?”

It was the coward’s way out, and it was tempting. Colin could avoid the whole three-day wait this way and then meet them at the funeral.

But now that he was sobering again, something bothered him. Avoiding his grandparents sounded too much like running away from the problem. Colin wasn’t irresponsible. He didn’t want to be like his father.

Especially not like his father.