The Scandal and Carter O'Neill (19 page)

“Could we get some privacy?” Carter snapped, and his family started to clear the room.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Savannah whispered before giving him a quick hug. Tyler patted his back.

“Try not to blow this,” Tyler said. “We like her.”

Finally the room was empty of O’Neills and he was alone with Zoe.

“I think your brother is right—this might be an act of desperation,” Zoe said.

“I know.” Carter laughed and it felt so good he did it some more. Why did this feel so good? Maybe it was the ten cups of coffee, or maybe it was finally living a life without control. “I’m totally desperate. I’m an absolute mess, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to have anything to do with me. But I have to say, Zoe, I feel better than I have in years. I’ve spent my whole life frightened, trying to control everything. And I don’t have to do that anymore. All I have to do is love you. And I do.”

Zoe stared at him, level and calm, unmoved by his words. It made him feel desperate, lost, and he realized that this was how he’d made her feel. He’d shut her out like this when she’d been naked in front of him.

His instinct was to pull back, save himself, protect himself somehow, but he couldn’t. She’d been so brave, loving him. Showing him every scar and ugly place in her life. The least he could do was show her every beautiful thing he saw when he looked at her.

“You’re the most uncontrollable force of nature I’ve ever met. You’re unpredictable, and unorthodox. You wear your whole heart on the outside of your body and aren’t happy unless I’m doing the same. You make me laugh and you make me feel good. And this baby…your baby…is a product of your bravery and that gigantic heart that I admire and respect so much.”

She blinked, her eyes damp, and his heart soared in relief. “I know I don’t have much to offer you. I mean, in terms of security. Eric has offered me some kind of job, but I don’t know what that is. I might be on a road crew, which I hear makes good money, so you wouldn’t have to worry about that. But—” He was babbling, like Zoe when she was nervous, and it wasn’t until she laughed that he could stop talking.

“I don’t care about your money,” she said. “All I’ve ever cared about is you.”

He sighed with pleasure, her words like a warm bath he could ease into. “I know I’m late to the game,” he whispered, carefully reaching out for her belly, that taut swell of hope and excitement and love waiting to be born. “But I swear I will spend the rest of my life caring about you and this child.”

Her breath shuddered and hiccuped and then she was crying and in his arms and he couldn’t hold her close enough.

“She’s crying!” Katie cried through the door, the little spy. “But they’re hugging so I think it’s good.”

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered into her hair, against her skin. “I will never hurt you like that again. I love you so much.”

He heard Savannah cheer in the other room and he groaned. “At least you’ve met my family,” he said. “They can’t scare you away now.”

“I love your family,” she said, cupping his cheeks and kissing his lips. “Almost as much as I love you.”

“Christ, Carter, can we come in?” Tyler yelled through the door. “It’s like a weeping pregnant women’s club out here.”

“Come in!” Zoe cried, tipping back her head and laughing. The full-throated sound made him drunk with love. With affection. For everyone.

Then his family was there, their arms around them both, their love and laughter ringing through his ears. His life. The years away from them had dried out parts of his body, and they were suddenly flush and living again, tingling and painful like flesh waking up.

So much joy.

“Here’s what’s left of the goddamned gems!” Margot cried, and everyone turned to watch her plunk a potted orchid on the kitchen table.

MARGOT GRABBED THE ORCHID at the base of the plant and yanked it from its pot. Its fleshy roots dripped dirt like blood.

Carter shared a wild look with Savannah and Tyler.

“This was supposed to end it,” Margot said. “Get her out of our lives for good. Stop the damned bleeding of money from this family.” She tossed the orchid on the table and from inside the pot dug out a black bag wrapped in tape.

Casual, like it was a baseball, she tossed it to Carter.

“Consider it a wedding gift.”

“What the hell?” he breathed, his fingers ripping at the duct tape.

Within seconds the blood-red glitter of a ruby peeked out of the black plastic.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tyler laughed, plucking the palm-sized gem from the bag. He held its crimson brilliance up to the light. “It was in the greenhouse? All this time?”

“Margot had it all along,” Savannah said, and slumped into a chair. “You lied to me.” Her husband, Matt, stroked her hair.

“Margot,” Carter said through clenched teeth, “you have a lot of explaining to do.”

Margot sat down at the table, all her earlier queenly elegance gone. “I’d been keeping tabs on Vanessa and your father for a long time, making sure they wouldn’t come back into our lives. And, I won’t lie to you—”

“You say that now,” Tyler said, bristling with anger. “But clearly, you’ve been lying to us for years.”

Carter couldn’t muster up much anger, or frankly, much surprise. Maybe he was just too tired. Or maybe he wasn’t surprised by his family anymore. He wrapped his arms around Zoe, wondering how much worse this was going to get.

“I won’t apologize,” Margot said, her cheeks red and her eyes flashing.

“My father spent seven years in jail,” Matt said. “You owe someone some apologies.”

The fire banked in Margot’s eyes, and a lifetime of regrets, anger, desperation, all poured out of his grandmother.

“After I heard about Vanessa approaching you in that breaking and entering case,” Margot said, looking at Carter, “I realized that no amount of money was going to keep her away. So I waited for the perfect chance to get rid of her. Three years later I heard that Richard had been approached about the casino job. It didn’t take much to leak some information to Vanessa, who I knew wouldn’t be able to resist being at the drop-off site, hoping to get in on the action. The plan was to have both of them arrested and out of our hair for a long time.”

“Instead, Dad vanished, Mom vanished, and Matt’s dad was arrested,” Savannah cried.

“That wasn’t my fault,” Margot said. “All I did was give Vanessa the information she needed to be there, and I knew she would take care of the rest. Once Richard saw Vanessa, he left—”

“Were you there?” Carter asked.

“Of course,” Margot said, and Tyler laughed.

“Of course she was—an eighty-year-old grandmother in a biker bar in Henderson. Makes perfect sense,” Tyler breathed.

“I had to be sure it worked, because I knew I wouldn’t get a chance like that again.”

“Unbelievable,” Tyler muttered. “Un-freaking-believable.”

“Richard left the jewel case with Joel, Matt’s father, but Joel wasn’t a thief. He wasn’t even a crook. He was just a guy who knew casinos, so Vanessa made an easy mark of him. She managed to get the emerald out of the case, but once she heard the sirens, she slipped it into Joel’s pocket and left out the back. In the chaos, I grabbed the case and tried to get the emerald out of Joel’s pocket so he wouldn’t get in trouble, but there was no time.”

“Did you call the cops?” Savannah asked, and Margot nodded.

“I’m sorry, Matt. I am. I didn’t mean for your father to get arrested,” Margot said.

“I’m so sorry, Matt,” Savannah whispered, her hand tugging on the edge of his T-shirt.

Matt stroked his wife’s hair, his smile so tender it made Carter glad his sister had found such a man. “Dad knew the risk when he got involved,” Matt said.

“Mom broke into the greenhouse,” Tyler said. “And I searched this place top to bottom and only found the diamond. What were you doing? Moving the gems around?”

Margot shook her head. “I don’t know how Vanessa missed the ruby. When I cleaned up the next morning after the first break-in, I found the bag in the corner, under some broken glass. It was a fluke. Seven years ago, I put the diamond in the attic and the ruby in the greenhouse and I waited. I knew Vanessa would show up eventually, looking for those gems.”

“This was a long shot at best,” Tyler said. “Your odds—”

“I know,” Margot said, and suddenly she looked every one of her years. The sparkle and sizzle of Carter’s grandmother was gone, and now she sat at her kitchen table, an old woman, surrounded by an angry and disbelieving family and piles of regrets. “But she was bleeding me. Paying her every year was going to bankrupt me at some point.”

“Why didn’t you just give her the gems?” Matt asked.

“She wouldn’t have stayed away,” Carter answered. “Margot could have given her the gems, but Vanessa would have been back for another ten grand in a few years. She’s a bottomless hole.”

“And I wanted her to get caught,” Margot snapped. “I wanted her far away from us.”

“This is nuts, Margot!” Tyler snapped.

“You lied!” Savannah cried. “I asked you if the gems were here and you said no. We could have helped you. We could have figured something out.”

“I understand what you did,” Carter said, and everyone turned to face him. “The risks you took to keep your family safe.”

Margot nodded. “It wasn’t an easy decision, but when you gave her that alibi and I knew it was a lie—that she had blackmailed you into it. And I knew she would just keep coming at us. It was only a matter of time before she destroyed our lives. I’m sorry, Carter,” she breathed, her broken heart in her eyes. “I was too late to help you.”

He nodded and leaned his head against Zoe’s. “She’s gone,” he said, thinking of that lonely hotel room and those broken fingers. “She can’t come back—people far more scary than us are looking for her.”

The room was silent, everyone trying to make sense of the eighty-year-old criminal mastermind who was also their grandmother.

“I don’t know about anyone else, but I need some coffee,” Juliette said.

“And some eggs,” Savannah said, standing up to go to the stove, her pregnancy leading the way. “Zoe? You want some? You should eat.”

Zoe agreed, and suddenly, everyone was just going on about their day. Coffee. Eggs.

A giant stolen ruby in the middle of the table.

Laughter, slightly hysterical but totally unstoppable, burped out of Carter. He laughed so hard he had to sit down and then, never one to be left out of a good time, Tyler joined in, his hands on Carter’s shoulders.

Then Savannah, who had to brace herself against the stove.

This was his family. Love it, hate it; he couldn’t change it and didn’t want to. He’d take them, all of them, his gem-stealing grandmother, his sparkling devil of a brother, his too-good-for-the-world sister.

He had them now and he was never going to let them go.

Zoe plunked herself down on his lap, smiling into his eyes. “Let me in on the joke,” she whispered.

“I think you have to be a Notorious O’Neill to get it,” he whispered, and leaned forward to kiss her. “You’re pretty notorious, but we need to work on the O’Neill part,” he said, rubbing her belly. The baby kicked and he took that as a yes vote.

“Are you asking me to marry you?” Zoe asked, and he nodded.

“A Christmas wedding,” he said. “A spring baby. What could be better?”

Zoe sighed and curled up against him, his sunshine on all the dark unknown days ahead. “Nothing,” she sighed. “Nothing at all.”

One Year Later

“WE MAYBE SHOULD HAVE TALKED to each other before everyone decided to have babies,” Tyler said, trying to jam a deck of cards into one of the kids’ stockings. “We could have scheduled this better.”

“Is that the last of it?” Carter asked, checking the floor for any little pony or forgotten doll.

“I think so.”

Tyler stepped back next to Carter and they looked at the stockings strung up against the mantel in The Manor’s library. The Christmas tree glittered behind them, practically levitating on piles of presents. “It’s a lot of pink,” Carter said.

“Poor Jake is the odd man out,” Tyler said, talking about his son, born five months after Savannah’s Faith, who had been born early, six weeks after Amelia. “We need more boys.”

“I need more sleep,” Carter muttered.

“Amen to that,” Tyler said with a smile. The glimmer was turned down on Ty these days—no sleep and dirty diapers could do that to a man. But there was a steadfastness in him that hadn’t been there before.

A steadfastness Carter never thought he’d see in his devilish little brother.

“I’m proud of you, Tyler,” Carter said, and Tyler blinked. “I don’t say that enough. But I mean it. You are a good man.”

“Thank you,” Tyler said, his voice rough. “That means a lot.”

“I should have said it more when we were growing up. I should have done more—”

“Stop, man. We’re together now. The three of us. Our kids. That’s all that matters.”

“Hi, guys,” Savannah said, stepping into the room and right into the space between her brothers. “Wow. It looks like Christmas exploded in here.”

“What are you doing up?” Carter asked, wrapping an arm around his sister. Savannah liked hugs, and he was making up for lost time.

“Checking on Margot.”

“How is she?” Tyler asked.

“Sleeping comfortably.”

They were silent, staring into the glitter and gleam of a holiday at the Manor. Maybe Margot’s last one. None of them said it, but the thought was there, as much a part of the holiday as the food and gifts. They’d returned the ruby to the casino anonymously last year, and three months later Margot had had a stroke.

And then another.

Carter and Zoe tried to come back to The Manor as often as they could. It was difficult with the baby and Zoe’s academy taking off like it was, but everyone was well aware that Margot didn’t have much longer to live.

Luckily, the foundation work he did for Lafayette Corp. he could do from anywhere.

“She’s had a good life,” Tyler said. “She’s eighty-five—”

“No, she’s not!” Carter said. “She’s like seventy.”

Savannah laughed. “You’re both wrong. Matt and I were looking for her will and we found her birth certificate. Margot’s ninety-two.”

“Shut. Up,” Tyler whispered, and shook his head. “What a woman.”

“What a Mom,” Savannah said. “Good and bad. We couldn’t have had a better one.”

“No,” Carter agreed. “And I couldn’t have a better brother or sister.”

Savannah held his hand, and Tyler’s arm around his shoulder felt like the best kind of anchor, keeping him here, present and rooted in his life.

“We’re starting a new legacy,” he said. “For our kids.”

Savannah nodded. “Something they can be proud of. Part of Margot, but parts of us.”

“And hopefully a good portion of the people we married,” Tyler said, and they all nodded. “But I’m still teaching all our kids how to play five-card.”

Savannah groaned.

“I’m not kidding,” Tyler said.

“I know,” she said. “That’s what scares me.”

Carter’s heart was huge in his chest, love like a balloon. But he suddenly needed Zoe and Amelia.

This love was like that. He’d be in the middle of a meeting and he would need them. Need Amelia’s sweet babble, or the touch of Zoe’s hand on his. The weight of his girls in his arms.

“Good night, guys,” he said. “You should get some sleep—it’s going to be a short night.”

Tyler groaned, and they all went upstairs to their beds.

He opened the door to his old room. The light from the night-light in the hallway fell over Zoe’s sleeping face, the baby nestled against her in the middle of the bed.

It was no way to sleep—with a tornado baby in bed with you—but sometimes it was the best thing in the world.

He slid under the covers as quietly as he could, and Amelia sighed in her sleep, rolled over and flung out a hand, connecting with his face.

Zoe’s silent laugh shook the covers. “You okay?” she whispered, her green eyes aglow.

Okay? he thought, suddenly overwhelmed. The woman of his dreams was in his bed, the baby of his heart beside him. His family was asleep in the house around him. Every dream he had ever had for his life had been reborn and made better, because of this woman.

“Sweetie,” Zoe sighed, reaching forward and catching the tears that fell from his eyes.

He caught her hand and pressed a kiss to it.

Never in his wild imagination had he thought that being a Notorious O’Neill would make him so damn happy.