Love in the Vineyard (Tavonesi #7)
by Pamela Aares
Prologue
HE’D FIND HER. AND THE KID. HE’D DONE the math—the kid had to be his.
Fate could push a man to the brink of insanity.
Eddie stared at the tumbler in front of him. Lifting it, he swigged the tart orange juice and tried to imagine the cool liquid dousing the fire in his belly, the fire that threatened him every day.
He was better. Nearly healed. But dark forces still lurked, still teased. It took every skill he’d learned to banish them. To find moments of peace.
He fingered the court seal on his grandfather’s will. Why his crazy grandfather had set the will up like he had, he’d never know. If his father and mother had lived, it’d all be different. Or would it? Maybe his grandfather wouldn’t have left them anything. His parents would have fought him in court, that much he knew. But they couldn’t fight now. Their yacht had gone down in the Greek islands three years ago. Only one crew member had survived the sinking boat. Eddie had never liked boats. Never would now.
His grandfather was like some eighteenth-century lord, creating a will that required Eddie to have an heir before his thirtieth birthday. He’d never approved of Eddie’s choices. And even dead, the old man had managed one more stab at the heart of his life.
Three months. He had just over three months before he turned thirty. Maybe if his grandfather had told Eddie the stipulation a couple of years ago, he could have done something about it. Had his grandfather considered that he’d set an impossible mission?
At least until last night it had been. But last night the tide had shifted. A reward for turning his life around?
His rehab program required that he at least try to make amends to the people he’d wronged, make an attempt to find those he’d harmed and express his regret. He didn’t believe that good deeds could blot out the bad deeds of the past, but he was committed to the program.
At first he’d thought that returning to the casino, to the scene of his deepest shame, was ridiculous. The chances of the woman being there or of anyone knowing her whereabouts were slim. It’d been ten years since that horrible night, the night that showed him that he had to get help. It hadn’t mattered that he’d gone back the very next evening to apologize. She hadn’t been there. The bartender had told him she’d quit. No one knew where she’d gone off to.
She’d disappeared.
Only he knew why. He’d have run from himself if he could have during those dark days.
He still couldn’t think about what he’d done that night. She’d tried to change her mind, leave the room. He’d been drunk, had lost at the tables. He’d snapped. Had taken his pent-up rage out on her. But that night and what he’d done to her had made him change. Got him to get help. Real help. Now he had his life in front of him. And just maybe it would be a wealthy one.
Because when he’d heard the doorman talking over the stall to one of the croupiers in the casino’s men’s room, it wasn’t only amends that had risen in his mind. Natasha—if her name really was Natasha—had a son. A ten-year-old son. What were the odds that it was his child? Unlikely. But possible.
Hope surged. He had a chance.
He just had to find the kid. And her. Shouldn’t be too hard. And if he did? How many women would walk away from a billionaire father for their kid? None that he knew.
But he’d always believed that hope was fuel for insanity. Without hope you could just drop into the abyss and stay there until life flickered out. But hope? Hope kept a man’s nose just above the water and forced him to face life.
He’d questioned the doorman a second time, confessing that he’d heard him talking about Natasha with the croupier. The man remembered Natasha, he’d finally admitted. Knew she had a son. But said she’d left ten years before and had never been back. The doorman was adamant about that. Eddie had experience interrogating people; the Air Force had trained him well. His instincts and training told him the doorman hadn’t lied.
Eddie took another swig of the now tepid orange juice and flipped through the pages of his grandfather’s will, stared at the familiar, slanting signature. His attorneys were searching for loopholes. He hoped to make a case that his grandfather hadn’t had a full grip on his mental faculties when he’d written it. But the odds of proving that weren’t good.
Some days he worried that insanity ran in the family. But his therapist had assured him he was sane. Troubled but sane and on the mend. Nearly there.
He shoved the will across his desk, and it fluttered to the floor. He should just forget the whole thing. Forget that he needed the money, the lure the crazy man dangled from the grave.
But disability pay didn’t cut it.
Since he’d returned from Afghanistan, he’d found he had an appetite for the riches and privilege of his younger years. The privilege he’d turned his back on when he’d bucked his parents’ wishes and joined the Air Force. After their deaths he’d inherited some money, but in his traumatized drunken days, he’d foolishly run through it. He knew better now. He had his feet under him. What an irony that he had a chance at having the resources for a new life and that chance had the odds stacked against him.
He pulled the will from where it had landed on the carpet. He’d find the woman and her son. He had to. He still had three months. She’d covered her tracks well. But she couldn’t know that tracking people was his forte.