Gina Wilkins - The Family Plan

“Your uncle the police chief put you on security detail tonight?” Gideon inquired blandly, sweeping the officer with a cool glance.

Dylan was actually a year younger than thirty-year-old Gideon, but he didn’t look it. Experience had toughened his features and hardened his expression until there was nothing boyish left about him. Nathan doubted there were many who would be willing to pit their strength against this six-foot-one cop.

Yet Dylan spoke pleasantly enough when he responded to Gideon’s barely veiled gibe. “That’s right. My job is to keep all the riffraff away from the society crowd here tonight.”

“Well, keep up the good work. Maybe you’ll get promoted to traffic detail.” Gideon made no effort to hide the fact that he hadn’t forgotten several ugly confrontations between them in the past. One of those encounters had left Gideon with a black eye and a severely bruised ego.

To Dylan’s credit, the sudden tightening of his jaw was the only evidence that Gideon’s cutting words had angered him. Turning his back on Gideon, he spoke to Deborah, instead. “’Evening, Ms. McCloud. You’re looking extremely well tonight. Very sophisticated and successful.”

There was nothing polished about Deborah’s response. “Bite me, Dylan.”

Before the other man could reply to that suggestion, Nathan said quickly, “That’s enough, you guys. Isn’t it finally time to put the past behind us and let bygones be bygones?”

Three smoldering glares turned his way. “No,” they all said in unison.

He sighed, conceding that he had done all he could to settle that old conflict. “Whatever. Gideon, where’s your truck?”

Without answering, Gideon turned and headed toward the western side of the parking lot. Deborah followed him, though Nathan saw her throw one quick glance over her shoulder toward Dylan. Since Dylan was watching her walk away, Nathan saw their eyes lock—a moment of shared memories, perhaps? Deborah was the one who broke the connection, jerking her head around and hurrying after Gideon.

Nodding cordially to the officer who had once been a thorn in his own side, Nathan followed his siblings, bracing himself for the discussion to come.

Gideon had parked beneath a security lamp, his black-and-chrome pickup gleaming in the yellowish light. It was fully dark now. Though the early October days were still warm, they were growing shorter as winter crept closer. Several of the houses grouped around the golf course were already decorated with orange lights for Halloween.

“What’s so important that you had to talk to us tonight?” Gideon demanded, leaning back against his pickup with his arms crossed over his chest.

Unlike Nathan and Deborah, who had inherited their father’s blond hair and blue eyes, Gideon was dark-haired and green-eyed like their mother. And yet in some ways—a trick of facial expression, perhaps—Gideon looked very much like their father, though Nathan knew his brother would not appreciate the comparison.

Nathan drew a deep breath, faced his younger siblings squarely and told them about the call he had received that afternoon.

“Surely you aren’t even considering bringing that child here,” Deborah said flatly, holding up both hands as if to physically ward off a really bad idea.

Nathan studied his sister’s horrified expression. “You think she should be put up for adoption.”

“Of course. Face it, Nathan, it’s the best solution for everyone, the child included. In California she can be placed with a family who’ll raise her far away from the scandal here. People who might never know the circumstances of the child’s conception. You bring her here, where everyone knows what went on four years ago, and she’ll never live it down. Hell, it’s hard enough for us to deal with the looks we still get whenever that old gossip resurfaces.”

“I can’t imagine that anyone would hold the parents’ mistakes against an innocent child,” Nathan rebutted. He had never known Deborah to be deliberately cruel to anyone, but then again, none of the McClouds were rational when it came to the traumatic events of four years ago.

“It would kill Mother to have that kid shoved in her face every time she goes out in public in her own hometown. It would start the old gossip going again, have her friends tittering behind her back…”

“Some friends, if they would do that,” Nathan muttered.

Deborah ignored him. “If you were foolish enough to try to raise her, you would make it impossible for our family to get together for holidays or special occasions. You can’t seriously expect Mother to welcome her husband’s bastard into the home she shared with him for thirty years!”

“Dad and Kimberly were married by the time Isabelle arrived,” Nathan reminded her. “True, they had only been married a few weeks, but Isabelle was not born out of wedlock.”

“Surely you wouldn’t do this to Mother,” his sister insisted, her voice thick with the pain of a betrayal from which she had never fully recovered.

Drawing another deep breath, Nathan clung to his patience. He reminded himself that Deborah had been young, barely twenty-two, when she’d learned about her father’s affair and his young girlfriend’s pregnancy. A senior in a large university in another state, she’d had to face the media circus and the avid curiosity of her classmates on her own.

“I didn’t say I’m going to bring her here. It’s just hard for me to put her up for adoption without even considering all the other possibilities. She’s our sister, Deb.”

Deborah took a step backward, clearly rejecting that particular argument. “She’s the result of an affair between a middle-aged man and a twenty-five-year-old bimbo,” she stated angrily. “No one in this town would ever see her differently.”

She was probably right. Not only would it be unfair to bring the child into the household of a footloose bachelor who didn’t have a clue about raising kids, it would be wrong to subject her to the gossip that would probably always surround her here. “I guess I just needed confirmation that I’m doing the right thing.”

Deborah’s face softened, if only fractionally. “I know you’ve always had some misguided compulsion to take care of the family and to keep everyone happy and connected. Nathan the Peacemaker—you probably should have been a minister instead of a lawyer, but even when you went to law school it was to please Dad. You couldn’t even cut ties with him when he betrayed every value he’d ever stood for. I never agreed with you about that. I never believed he deserved to have even one of us in his life after he deserted us, but I knew you well enough to understand why you felt compelled to make the effort. Even though I still think you were wrong.”

She had never tried to hide her disapproval of Nathan’s visits with their father during the past four years. Like their mother, Deborah thought those visits were disloyal. They had wanted Nathan to choose a side—theirs—and never cross that line. “I didn’t approve of his choices any more than you did, Deb. But he was still our father.”

“He abdicated that position when he ran off with Kimberly.”

It was an old argument and a fruitless one. Even if he could change her mind, it was too late now. Stuart was dead.

She seemed to read his thoughts. “Dad’s gone now, and we’ve all managed to move on. Mother looked more content tonight than I’ve seen her in a long time. Don’t hurt her again, Nathan.”

His chest was starting to hurt—whether from heartburn or heartache, he couldn’t have said. He looked at Gideon, who had remained stoically silent throughout Nathan’s discussion with their sister. “I suppose you agree with everything Deborah said.”