Page 139 of The Pretend Christmas Bride
Tomorrow, they’d be going home with Shawn and Ethan as a holding place until they could find out if there were other family members who wanted to take over their care. She didn’t think that there would be anyone out there but she did keep her hopes up that they’d have family. It was sad, she thought, to go through life without anyone to call your blood kin.
After they made arrangements to have things delivered to the storage unit that was set up for the supplies, they headed to dinner. The women, their husbands and the brothers were going to meet them there as they’d been in town getting things set up for the school fair that would bring in the extra money needed to buy several new school buses that were very much needed. Just as they were sitting down, she felt Shawn stiffen and she looked around to see what would have her nervous like she could feelnow.
“Henderson.” That was all she had to say to have Georgie glaring at the man that she’d pointed out. “He’s becoming a pain in my ass right now. I had a wonderful day, and now he’s going to be fucking it up with his demands.” As soon as he saw them, Georgie stood up.
“Weren’t you told to stay away from my sister? Several times, as a matter of fact? Didn’t spending time in jail tell you anything?” He said that he wasn’t speaking to her. “However, you just did. I’m thinking that you need a lesson in manners. Or, at the very least, someone to kick your ass into the future.”
“I just need for her to do her job and I’ll leave her alone. Damn it, what is so hard about just doing someone a solid anymore. The work wouldn’t take her more than a couple of days, and I know that she has the time. Here she sits on her ass, acting like she has all the time in the world. Just get her to fucking do it, and I can be on my way.” Shawn asked him what he was going to do if she did this one thing. What would he do if there were more problems with the advertising. “Find you again. For all the crap that you’re causing me on this project, you should be bowing down at my feet. You’re not all that good, but the client, my client, thinks that the sun sets in your favor.”
“Perhaps if you’d have spent some of this energy on your education, you might well have been able to do this all on your own.” He waved Shawn off, and Georgie had to laugh. “I’m not going to be at your beck and call, Mr. Henderson. I have a life now, and I’m not going to have you fucking it up with all your demands. Go away before I have to make sure that you don’t bother me again. I’m not going to do that project for you. You are on your own.”
“What the fuck, Shawnie? I mean, really, it seems to me that you have the time to do so. And after talking with your son for a little while, whom I will never believe is your son, he said thatyou were spending money like you have an endless supply. He seemed to understand what I’ve been saying to you all along. You need a job.” Shawn asked Henderson when he spoke to her son. “He’s out there in a car watching this place like he’s casing the joint. When he saw me, not only did he act like we were on the same page about you doing this for me, but he told me that if you didn’t do it, he’d talk to you. I should have allowed him to do all the talking. I’m seeing that now.”
Georgie could feel Shawn’s anger. But she also knew that to look at her, you’d never know that she was as pissed off as she seemed. Reaching for the file, she thought for sure that she was going to cave to do the project that was set up for her to finish. But she put the file over the little candle that was nearer to her and set it aflame. It was burning in a small flame, not really big enough to notice when she smiled at Henderson.
“I worked on it.” He asked her what the hell was wrong with her to burn his papers. “You handed it over to me to fix, and I did. Now that we have that cleared up, you can be on your merry way, and I’ll not have to kill you.” He said that the originals were in that file. “Well then, as the saying used to go, it really sucks to be you. You get out of here now, and I won’t have to beat the shit out of you or sic some of the shifters I know on your ass. Get. Out. Now.”
Shawn didn’t say much after that. She did engage when spoken to but she could tell that she was either too angry to talk to the others or she was talking to Ethan. Either way, she could tell that she was plotting something that would have her son wishing he’d kept his nose out of her business. Asking her if she was going to be all right, Shawn smiled.
Georgie had always heard about smiles that didn’t reach their eyes. She’d never understood how that was pulled off. But Shawn either had had a lot of practice in making it appear as if she was in a good mood when it was obvious to anyone closeenough to her to see her eyes that she wasn’t, in any way, shape or form. Georgie could almost feel sorry for Shamus, but he’s brought this all on himself by treating his mother like she was some kind of simpleton.
“He’s in deep shit, isn’t he?” She nodded, and Georgie hurt when she saw that tear roll down her cheek. “I can help you. Not by taking your son to task but by holding you back so that you don’t do something stupid that you might regret later. Either way, I’m right there with you.”
“I’ve already spoken to Ethan. He is going to meet me at the house with my son. The locks have been changed, and thanks to having a nearly unlimited supply of money, the fence is up and around my land. All of it. I’ve even gone so far as to hire a couple of trolls to guard the front entrance so that there won’t be any way in hell that Shamus comes around without my permission.” Georgie asked her if that was to keep them away as well. “At first, yes. But I’ve been thinking that having a family around like you guys might keep me out of prison. Being immortal and having to spend my life in prison won’t be good for me. My son either if he ever crosses me again.”
The rest of the luncheon went smoothly. The police did finally show up and after hearing their side of the story, he left without a word or arrest. It had a great deal to do with the donations that they made to the department that didn’t have Shawn taken out in cuffs also the fact that the restaurant manager had shown the police the recordings of the event that Henderson had lied about.
As far as Georgie was concerned, this was the most fun she’d had while having a meal. Things were heating up with their families, and she was thrilled that she was here to watch the entire thing go down.
Chapter 4
Shawn was taken back to Rita’s cell. She’d brought pictures of the children in the event that she needed to use them against her. But it was hurting her heart to see the woman now that she was in jail.
Rita had lost a great deal of weight. She was clean, thanks to the mandatory shower that she’d had. But she was a mess all the same. Her hair wasn’t combed, or if it were, it was now a mess from her lying on a pillow. As she rocked back and forth, it took her several minutes to figure out what she was saying. Repeating each child’s name and that of her husband before starting again. Shawn said her name, and the other woman looked right at her.
“They weren’t my children. None of them.” Before she could ask her about them, Rita continued on like she had been waiting to say something for a while. “Trent had numerous affairs while we were married. Resulting in him bringing home a child when one was born to him. They weren’t a one of them of my body. I wish they were, but they were of one of his numerous women that I believe he killed off after the child was born.”
“What did he say when he brought them home to you?” Shawn had whispered the question in much the same way that Rita had spoken to her. “Did he have a reason for what he did?”
“The children were his, from other women. But since I knew from about my teenage years that I couldn’t have children—and I had told him about it before we were wed—he would bring one of them home, or the twins home, and told me that I was to raise them as my own or he’d kill them off. It made me so that I couldn’t love them. I wanted to but about the time that I was nearly liking them, he’d bring home another one. The last straw was when Tisha was brought to me.” Rita took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Because I couldn’t work, or wasn’t allowedto, I wasn’t able to help with the bills or anything else. We lost everything, and he told me that we were going to be moving into another part of the state so that he could start fresh like with fresh women. He told me that. That he needed fresh women so that he could have as many children as he wished. Since I couldn’t have a life outside of raising his offspring, I resented them and him for a long time before we lost our home.”
“Did he work?” She only shook her head, and it saddened her to think what sort of life Rita had endured through no fault of her own. “How did you have food for them all? Pay the bills that went with the house?”
“He took every penny that my parents left me. I didn’t know that at the time. I thought that when he was out during the day, he was working. It was the only time that I had for myself when the older ones went to school. Then he brought home the baby and—I know that I’m not saying this in any kind of order. But I need to speak, or I’ll die. I might just anyway. I can’t wait to be in prison where there will be no one to talk to about my family.” Shawn asked, mostly to herself, how much money there had been. “Millions of dollars from the insurance policies that my family left me. It was in a secure account. But he’d been able to get into it somehow. I didn’t ever find out, and he used it to woo. That’s what he told me to use the money to woo the woman that would get with his child. I don’t even know why he wanted children. He never paid them any mind when he was around. Not once asked after them or to see if they had enough to eat. As you can imagine, I hated them as well. The children that I couldn’t have were draining me dry, and I resented having them around me. Much less calling me mom like I had really given birth to them.”
“Tell me how you were able to kill him and try and kill the children.” Rita said that she regretted trying to kill off the kids. She said that it wasn’t fair for her to punish them for being born.“They think that you’re a monster.”
“So do I.” She sat there, rocking back and forth as she waited. Shawn didn’t want to rush her or to see what was in her mind. She had a feeling that the inside of her mind was dark and scary, just like someone who had lived their entire life in terror. “I don’t want the children to know that they’re not mine. In fact, I would just as soon that they did not know anything about me other than I killed their father and tried to kill them. I did know that Samuel was going to save everyone that night. I’m so proud of him for that.”
“Why did you kill your husband? For that matter, why were you married to him at all.” She told her that she’d not wanted to marry him at all, but he’d drugged her, and she ended up in his home. “So you don’t even know if you were legally married to him at all.”
“No. Not that it would matter all that much to anyone. But I didn’t have any means of looking it up.” She laughed a little, more like a snort, she supposed. “You’re probably thinking that since I had money, I should have been able to get myself free. But it never worked like that. I was never free from him. When he was gone, I was chained up. When he was home, he’d fuck me until I bled, then he’d be gone again. I hated everything about Trent. Including…he wasn’t as good a man as the kids think. Or they might know. I don’t care anymore.” She rocked a bit more.
When Ethan reached out to her, she told him what Rita was telling her.“That’s what I was getting in touch with you about. She wasn’t married to him. Nor did he seem to have held down a job, not anywhere in the last several years. He didn’t even have a driver’s license after he’dgotten it renewed about twenty years ago.”She told him about Rita’s money.“Brook found that. She’s right. There is nothing left of it. There was just over three million dollars. She’d not invested any of it because it looks as if Trent got into it just after her parents died. That’smore than likely the reason that he targeted her. And the other women. She might not get much jail time if any at all. She was abused about as bad as I’ve ever heard a woman being.”
“I don’t believe she wants to live. She told me about the kids and them not being hers. Please tell me that’s true. I don’t want to believe her for trying to murder them, but—wait, she’s speaking to me again.”
“When you leave here, I wish that you’d send me an attorney. I heard that you’re keeping an eye on my children and I’d very much be willing to sign them over to you. So that you can adopt them, I mean. There is no one else on my side, and I know that Trent had a sister at some point. I have no idea where you can find out about her. I never met her.” She asked Rita if she thought that she’d want to raise them. “Doubtful. The few times that he would talk about her, he said that she didn’t believe in his lifestyle and had cut all ties with him. I mean, she might well want them, but I’m thinking no.”