Fay Robinson - Coming Home To You

Only Lenny Dean, the bass guitarist, was alive. If you could call it living. A drug addict, he had tripped out one too many times on PCP, and his mind was gone. He hadn’t been on the plane the night it went down. He’d been wasting away in a mental hospital for the past nine years.

James’s mother, Marianne Hayes Conner, had refused to cooperate on the book. So had his stepfather, George Conner, and his sister, Ellen Hayes. Bret, his younger brother, represented not only Kate’s best chance to get what she needed on James, but her only chance. She had to get his cooperation, and get it quickly. Otherwise, this biography would never be what she’d envisioned.

“Pull off the Marshall research for a couple of days,” she told Marcus. “I’d like you to follow up on what I found out here. Maybe we can come up with something that’ll help me when I approach Bret Hayes again.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Find out what you can about a place called Pine Acres. It’s an orphanage or foster-care facility. And do some more digging into Hayes’s finances. I want to know why someone who inherited millions of dollars is living like a country bumpkin.”

“Bad investments? Gambling? Drugs?”

“Maybe, but his criminal record is pretty clean. A few misdemeanor convictions for brawling but nothing major. He’s supposed to have put money into this orphanage, but I don’t think that would account for all of it. And this sudden streak of generosity bothers me, anyway. From what I’ve pieced together about him, he doesn’t strike me as the type to give money away once he gets his hands on it. Lose it doing something stupid, maybe, but not give it away. Oh, that reminds me. Find out what you can about the cost of breeding quarter horses. And check with the Secretary of State’s office for public records on his business. Let’s try to estimate how much he’s invested in it and what he’s worth.”

“Why the interest in his financial situation? What difference does it make how well-off the brother is?”

“Probably none, but I sure would like to know what I’m dealing with here. If he squandered the fortune his brother left him, it would be some story for the book, don’t you think?”

“Is that what you believe happened?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t want to make any assumptions before I get the facts, but my gut tells me something isn’t right about this guy. Most of his life he walked in the shadow of an older brother who had everything—looks, money, talent, fame, some say even the woman he loved—but when he inherits money and gets his chance to live the good life he’s always wanted, what does he do? He buys a horse farm in an out-of-the-way place and spends part of the money building an orphanage. No way does that add up.”

“I see your point. I’ll get right on it. But hey, you watch yourself. He won’t like it when he finds out we’re digging around in his finances and his business records. You be careful.”

“I will.”

When Kate hung up, she went back to her computer. Tomorrow she’d spend the day asking questions, but tonight she needed to look through what she had on Bret and refresh her memory. She’d downloaded the files with his name on them into her laptop before she left, the information gleaned from interviews with childhood friends of the brothers and their high-school classmates.

She skimmed it. The stuff was pretty routine, although she’d found it useful while writing the early chapters about James’s life. Bret was five years younger than James. He’d spent less than a year at the University of Tennessee, then gone through one dead-end job after another. More than once his brother had bailed him out of trouble and supported him financially.

She got her pad and made a note to ask Marcus to call some of Hayes’s former employers. Why was he living in Alabama? Why not live in Tennessee where he could be close to his mother and sister? Because of creditors? To get away from the media? The man carried his desire for privacy to extremes, that was for sure. All those signs… That horrible little dog…

Whatever the reason, she was too tired to chase after it tonight. Tomorrow was soon enough. When she had more information from Marcus, she could start to piece things together.

She closed the file and went to bed, but she couldn’t sleep. For a long time she lay staring into the dark. She tried to close down her mind, as well, but it ran too fast, presenting her with too many questions and not enough answers.

Hayes would be attractive to the ladies, no question there. That handsome face and dark hair probably sent female hearts fluttering with little effort; that big muscular body no doubt made hormones race out of control.

Restless, she rolled over and punched up her pillow.

He had the same chin as James, slightly dimpled in the center as though someone had stuck a finger there and left a soft impression. And like James, Bret had also inherited his mother’s deep-blue eyes.

But that was where the similarity between the brothers ended. James had been tall, handsome, but thin as straw. Bret was tall and most definitely handsome, but his muscular arms and chest strained against the fabric of his shirt. When he’d dragged her down onto his horse today, his body had felt rock-hard.

An image of his quaint house and vegetable garden off to the side popped into her mind. The garden had a scarecrow dressed in sun-whitened overalls and a plastic Halloween pumpkin for a head. Flowers filled the yard. A nice little farm, but nothing elaborate. His truck was old, and his house was in need of painting and repair. The dirt driveway had potholes.

She’d expected a different lifestyle. Where were the expensive cars? The big house? He’d inherited thirty-six million dollars when his brother died. What had he done with all that money?

HE COULD SHOE a horse, dig fifty fence-post holes by hand in a single afternoon and grow a pretty fair tomato, but he was the worst cook east of the Mississippi. He knew it. Sallie knew it. Even she wouldn’t eat anything he fixed.

So once a week, when his stomach rebelled at the thought of eating another bite of his own cooking, Bret drove to town and ordered breakfast. His mouth started watering when he pulled out of the driveway, and by the time he parked the truck in front of the Old Hickory, he’d worked up a powerful hunger.

Man, oh, man, real coffee, instead of that instant stuff! And gravy that tasted like gravy, instead of lighter fluid! He could already taste it.

He sat down in his favorite booth in the back corner, the one people rarely used because one of the seats was ripped and had been mended with silver tape. He liked the corner because it was far from the jukebox and out of the stream of traffic from the kitchen. He could eat in peace. He didn’t have to nod or say, “Hey, how ya doin’?” to people who passed by his table.

He even liked the smell of this place in the morning, with bacon browning on the grill and coffee perking in aluminum coffeepots, instead of those drip machines.

He ordered his usual, opened his newspaper to the sports section and folded it so he could read and eat at the same time. When his order came and he bit into those perfectly prepared eggs, a bulldozer couldn’t have moved him out of that seat.

He hadn’t counted on a 110-pound bulldozer with a smart mouth.

She sneaked in while he was reading about the Braves, and he didn’t notice her until some guy let out a long low whistle. He looked up to see her threading her way through the tables toward him. She moved with the confidence of a woman who knows she’s beautiful and doesn’t try to pretend otherwise.

The moss-green dress was the same color as her eyes. The skirt stopped at midthigh and swished enticingly around her slender legs when she walked.