Sugar Daddy (Travis Family #1)(104)

"You knew my mother," I said.

The fire in the hearth sounded like a flag whipping and flapping on a windy day.

Churchill answered with astonishing self-possession. "I loved your mother." He let me absorb that for a moment, and then gave a decisive nod. "Help me move to the sofa; Liberty. The chair seat's digging into the backs of my legs."

We both took temporary refuge in the logistics of transferring him from the wheelchair to the sofa, more a matter of balance than strength. I fetched an ottoman, propped it beneath the cast, gave Churchill a couple of small pillows to wedge against his side. When he was comfortably settled, I sat next to him and waited with my arms wrapped tight around my middle.

Churchill fished out a slim wallet from his shirt pocket, searched through its contents. handed me a tiny ancient black-and-white photo with tattered edges. It was my mother as a very young woman, beautiful as a movie goddess, and there were words written in her own hand. "To my darling C. love, Diana. "

"Her father—your grandfather—worked for me," Churchill said, taking back the photo, holding it in the palm of his hand like a religious artifact. "I was already a widower when I met Diana at a company picnic. Gage was barely out of diapers. He needed a mother, and I needed a wife. It was obvious from the start Diana was wrong in just about every way. Too young, too pretty, too fiery. None of that mattered." He shook his head, remembering. Gruffly, "My God, I loved that woman."

I watched him without blinking. I couldn't believe Churchill was opening a window to my mother's life, the past she had never talked about.

"I went after her with everything I had," Churchill said. "Whatever I thought would tempt her. I told her right off I wanted to marry her. She got pressure from all sides, especially her family. The Truitts were middle-class, and they knew if Diana married me there was no limit to what I'd give 'em." Without shame he added. "I made sure Diana knew that too."

I tried to think of Churchill as a young man. pursuing a woman with every weapon at his disposal. "Jesus, what a circus it must have been."

"I bullied, bribed, and talked her into loving me. I got an engagement ring on her finger." He gave a sneaky laugh that I found sort of endearing. "Give me long enough and I grow on a person."

"Did Mama really love you. or was it an act?" I asked, not meaning to be hurtful, just

needing to know.

Being Churchill, he didn't take it the wrong way. "There were moments I think she did. But in the end it wasn't enough."

"What happened? Was it Gage? She didn't want to be a mother so soon?"

"No, it had nothing to do with that. She seemed to like the boy well enough, and I promised her we'd hire nannies and housemaids, all the help she'd ever need."

"Then what? I can't imagine why... Oh."

My father had gotten in the way.

I felt instant sympathy for Churchill, and at the same time a jab of pride in the father I had never known, who had managed to steal my mother away from a rich and powerful older man.

"That's right," Churchill said, as if he could read my thoughts. "Your daddy was everything I wasn't. Young, handsome, and as my daughter Haven would say, disenfranchised."

"Also Mexican."

Churchill nodded. "That didn't go over big with your grandfather. In those days, marriage between brown and white was frowned upon."

"That's a nice way of putting it," I said dryly, aware that it had probably been an outright disgrace. "Knowing my mother, the Romeo and Juliet scenario probably made the whole thine even more attractive."

"She was a romantic." Churchill agreed, tucking the photo back in his wallet with extreme care. "And she had a passion for your daddy. Her father warned if she ran off with him, not to bother coming back. She knew the family would never forgive her."

"Because she fell in love with a poor guy?" I demanded in outrage.

"It wasn't right," Churchill admitted. "But times were hard."

"That's no excuse."

"Diana came to me the night she ran off to get married. Your father waited out in the car while she came in and said goodbye and gave back the ring. I wouldn't take it. I told her to trade it for a wedding present. And I begged her to come to me if she ever needed anything."

I understood what those words must have cost him, a man of such enormous pride.

"And by the time my father died," I said, "you'd already married Ava."

"That's right."

I was quiet then, sifting through memories. Poor Mama, struggling to make it on her own. No family to go to. no one to help. But those mysterious disappearances, when she would be gone for a day and then there would be food in the refrigerator and the bill collectors stopped calling...

"She came to you." I said. "Even though you were married. She visited you and you gave her money. You helped her for years."

Churchill didn't need to say anything. I saw the truth in his eyes.

I squared my shoulders and forced myself to ask the big question. "Is Carrington yours?"

Color mounted in his weathered face, and he gave me an offended glare. "You think I wouldn't take responsibility for my own child? Let her be raised in a damn trailer park? No, there's no chance she's mine. Diana and I never had that kind of relationship."