Page 2 of Beau
If she remembered correctly, it had been Calhoun who had notified them of her death.She thought about waking him up to see what he had to say, but just as she was convincing herself that this was all a scam for some reason, her brother called her.
“I just heard from someone telling me that she was our mom.”She told him that she’d gotten the same call just a little while ago.“I hung up on her.I don’t know what sort of scam this is, but I’m not playing with her.Mom died, the insurance policies that we had paid off.We went to the funeral and had a party in her honor.Who is this person who is trying to cause trouble?I don’t believe for a minute that it’s our mom.Especially after all this time.What’s it been, about ten years?”
“Did you actually tell her that we had a party in her honor?And yes, it’s been about ten years since the accident.”He said that he had not, but wished that he had thought about it.“Why couldn’t any of this have waited until a decent hour?She told me that she just got into town, and I no more believe that any more than I do she’s our mom.What do you suppose is going on right now?”
“Hang on, I’m getting a call from Toby.He’s going to be pissed.”When she hung up the phone, she reached out to her family to get things settled up about this.If this person really was their mother, why the fuck didn’t she reach out to them all instead of using a phone?And how did she get her phone number?It wasn’t the company number but her personal one that no one had but family and a few take-out places.Damn it, there were more questions than answers about this, and she wanted to hunt her down and figure this out.“She said that she was in a coma for the last few years and that Dad lied to us.”
They had each heard from her by now, and the only one that hadn’t had been Belinda.If the person really was her mother, then she’d missed out on a lot of things.Like the death of Benson and the grandchildren, Belinda moving to Ohio to start a new life, and even Toby’s kids, all of them under the age of ten.
“I was just thinking about contacting dad.It’s been a while, but I should be able to talk to him.”Calhoun said he’d do it now, and Rogen thanked him for that.“All right.I know that we should more than likely wait until later in the morning, but whatever this woman is up to, it’s not going to go over well with anyone if she’s lying.”
Calhoun didn’t contact their dad with all of them on the same link.She thought that was smart of him.If she were indeed alive, then he’d be the one to get pissed off at their father rather than all of them at one time.If she were really alive, she was going to be really pissed off at both of them.There just wasn’t any reason for them to be told that she was dead when she had been kicking around for some time now.At least the three months she’d told her that she was looking for them.And that, too, bothered her.Why didn’t she reach out like family could do?Why do this on the phone, trying to convince them one at a time who she was to them?No reason that she could think of other than she wasn’t really their mother.
Weston joined her in the office and brought her a cup of tea and some of the cookies that had been in their picnic dinner tonight.She was just munching on them when her brother contacted her again.The news wasn’t good.
“Whoever she is, she’s not our mother.”
~*~
Danielle knew that her family had been killed in the living room.Her father had done it when he just simply couldn’t take it anymore.His mother had treated him like dirt, and his grandparents didn’t have the backbone to deal with her.So he’d killed both his grandparents, hating that she’d been told that he’d killed his own grandda, but he’d seen too much when he had killed his mother with an axe to the back of her head.She never cared for her grandmother—not that many people did, but she was gone now, and thankfully, she’d been the last person alive in the Pine family to inherit.
She’d not only gotten the house, a big nine-bedroom estate, but she’d gotten all the money that had been left behind as well.There was even a trust set up so that the taxes were paid each year for her, so she’d not have to worry about it.With the land surrounding the house that was rented to farmers around the area, she had a tidy income so that she’d have food in her belly when she was hungry.And it couldn’t have come at a better time than it had.
About a year ago now, she’d not just lost her job but her apartment as well.The company that she’d worked for had decided that they didn’t want to deal with the public anymore, and her apartment complex had decided to sell out, and the new owners were giving everyone two weeks to get their things out of their building before it was torn down.Some of her neighbors had lost everything when the bulldozers showed up on the fourteenth day and dozed all their belongings into the ground like they were nothing.She’d been living out of her car since then and had only just been notified by the family attorney to say that she had inherited the estate and everything that had gone with it.
Jameson Sheppard, a good friend of hers from college, had been very helpful to her since he’d been one of the attorneys who had been notified about the family being killed, leaving her everything.He and the family had been helpful too in getting things cleaned out of the house that she didn’t want, and she was well on her way to getting the house set up just the way that she wanted it to be.
He’d also said that he was going to be looking into her losing her apartment.No one could justtell you that you had only two weeks to get out of a place, and them not offering compensation for her to find another apartment wasn’t right either.She wasn’t worried about that now, as she had a roof over her head, but he’d been really nice to her so far that she couldn’t turn him down when he said he wanted to help her.He was a good man, she thought.
The only room that she’d been having trouble with was the master suite.It wasn’t the room that was giving her trouble, but what she’d found in the room.Her grandmother had had notes in thick books about every person in town.Little snippets of information that could have been used for blackmailing them, even children.One that bothered her the most was about five-year-old Peter Day.The note said the little boy picked his nose.What reason would she have for keeping that sort of information about a child?She didn’t want to know, nor did she care to find out.Grandmother wasn’t the best sort of person to be around, even when you were family.
Carrie, Archie’s wife, could see ghosts and had dealt with her family before they crossed over to the next place.She’d told her that her dad had sobbed about being dead and wanted to know if she could send him back for two months so that he could live a few weeks more without his mother’s constant harping on him.The poor man hadn’t anything else to hold him here, so he had left when Carrie had told him she couldn’t do that for him.To be under such restraints, like he’d been only to be killed a few hours after he’d killed his family, would make her sad when she thought about it.Poor, poor man, her dad was.
Opening the door when her new doorbell sounded—her grandmother had had a herd of elephants running through a forest as the sound when she’d moved in—she was surprised to see Amber, Wrangler’s wife, there on the stoop.Inviting her in, she said she didn’t want to mess up her time there.Danielle assured her that the only thing she was doing was thinking, and that might get her into trouble.
“I know how that is.I get myself in trouble a great deal when I have nothing to occupy my time.”She laughed with the other women.“The reason I’m here is that I wanted to invite you to have lunch with us tomorrow.The women in the family get together once a week when we can to have lunch and to talk about life in general.”
“But I’m not part of your family.”Amber waved her off, saying that she might as well be for as much as they all loved her already.“I’d love to have lunch with you and the other ladies then.I have an appointment in the morning with Jameson at the bank, but other than that, I’m free all day.”
“I heard that you were going to talk to the farmers who are renting your land from you.Jameson said that since you’ve decided to allow them to continue renting it, he said you’ve made a lot of people happy.”She told her that as long as they continued to pay on time, she didn’t want them to leave her.“Jameson said that as well.Now that you’ve met all the brothers, we figured that you’d enjoy a day out with us.”
“I’ve not.Met all the brothers yet.”She cocked her head at her when she entered the house.“Not that it matters, but I’ve not met Beau.He’s been taking college classes, I was told, so that he could cook for himself.I think that’s commendable.Maybe I’ll do the same now that I have time to devote to some more college classes to learn the basics.I can’t cook at all, but for a few basic things like grilled cheese and maybe some tomato soup from a can.”
“He’s learning how to cook so much more than that.He had Wrangler and I over for dinner the other night, and we were both impressed with his skills.You should do it.”She said she was just enjoying the freedom of life right now.“I can well imagine that too.You’ve not had a great year from what I’ve heard from Jameson.”
“What did you mean about me meeting all the brothers?And what does that have to do with having lunch with you guys?”She said that she’d hoped that she was one of their mates.“Mates as in wives or something?No thanks.If I had wanted a husband, I could go to any police station and find myself a man who would do that for me.”Amber asked what she meant by that.“It’s just that I don’t want anyone to take my freedom away from me now that I have it.I’ve heard about mates all my life, and I want nothing to do with them.”
“The Sheppard men aren’t like that.”She only nodded.“They aren’t.I swear.They would die for their mates, and it would be something small to them.The men in this family grew up with a person worse than your grandmother and managed to turn out all right.”
“I know that Jameson has, and the others seem to be really nice, but I’ve only just gotten things to where I don’t have to work for a while, and it’s all mine.To have someone come along and tell me that I have to have him run things for me just doesn’t appeal to me.Thanks, but no thanks.”Amber just smiled at her.“Am I still invited to lunch tomorrow?I can understand if you say no.”
“We want you there.And the sooner you meet Beau, the better if he’s your mate.”She didn’t say anything about her not meeting Beau because she was going to avoid that as much as he could.As she’d told her, she didn’t want a man coming along that was going to ruin things for her when they were perfectly fine the way that they were.“I’ll pick you up since I don’t know where it is that we’re going yet.”
They made arrangements for what time she was going to pick her up, and Amber left.After closing the door, Danielle made her way to the kitchen to read the instructions again on how to microwave her lunch.The instructions were plain enough, but she didn’t know what wattage her microwave was, so she was having a hard time figuring out what time she should cook it for.It had taken her fifteen minutes of reading the manual that had come with it when she bought it to know how to set up the power settings.Putting it in the thing, she decided to watch it carefully to make sure she didn’t burn it like she had her supper last evening.She’d gotten distracted and had forgotten about it until it was too late.And she wasn’t going to think about the burnt popcorn that she’d decided to have after the meal disaster.
She’d done all right for herself this time and was eating her lunch when the front doorbell rang again.Going to the door, she was surprised to see Jameson there with one of his brothers.She just knew that it was going to be Beau and that Amber had sent him here so that she could test the theory about him being her mate.
“I’m staying right here, and you two are going to go home.”Jameson laughed and told her that he had been sent by Carrie, the leap bitch.“I don’t care what she is, I’ve decided to not have a mate, and while the idea is probably nothing I can do anything about, I’m not going to allow you anywhere near me.”
