Legal Heirs - Box Set Edition: Books 5-8 (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles) (24 page)

Finn slammed the phone down and walked outside and crossed the yard to the curb. Bly’s Bentley was just pulling up and Finn used his one good arm to jerk the door open and land a quick and effective blow that broke Bly’s nose. Blood splattered across the interior of the car and Bly unbuckled his seat belt and knocked Finn onto the grass with a deadly precise blow. They fought in the yard in plain sight, fists flying, bones shattering, blood spraying, until five men ran from the street and neighboring houses and pulled them apart.

“You crazy obsessive bastard,” Finn shouted as three of his neighbors held him back. “Stay the fuck away from what’s mine, do you hear me? That means my wife and my son, come near her again or try to see him without permission and I’ll show you what I do best. Your days of dealing with Charlotte are over, you want to see the boy, deal with me, man to man. And if you even think of dragging her into court, I swear to God you’ll never live to see the day.”

“You crossed a line here today, Finn, you fucking lunatic,” Bly said calmly, but fury simmered just beneath the surface. “You
stole
Charlotte and that boy from me and you’re going to pay for it. I should have left your ass to rot in that jungle prison in Taiwan. Go on and try to keep me from what’s rightfully mine, I can guarantee you’ll play hell doing it. There’s one thing you can fight against but you can
never
change, Atticus and I share a common bond that doesn’t include you. We’re connected by blood,
my blood that runs through his veins
. He’s mine and he’s Charlotte’s, rage against that until fucking hell freezes over, kill me if you think you can, but he’s a Bly and nothing you can do will change it.”

Finn felt those words land like a knockout punch, but he didn’t back down. Both he and Bly were dripping blood, and a pair of La Jolla policemen stepped out of a cruiser at the curb. Finn grabbed Bly’s shirt and spoke close to his ear, “If she wanted to be with you, she would be, and if you had any understanding of Charlotte you would know that she left you because I am the man she loves. I’m the man she chose to be a father to her son and a husband she could be happy with for the rest of her life. Can your smug, arrogant ass can comprehend that? I AM HER CHOICE! You can see Atticus on our terms until he’s old enough to decide what he wants. And if you send your bodyguard to deal with me, I’ll gladly send the both of you slowly and painfully to hell.”

“Don’t worry about my bodyguard, you sadistic fuck, I’ll take care of you myself,” Bly said, and the fight would have started all over again if the policemen hadn’t handcuffed both men.

*

Charlotte and Billy Kipling arrived at the San Diego county jail at exactly the same time, and they sat talking with the chief of police.

“I must say, I’m surprised to see you here on a personal matter, Counselor,” the police chief told Charlotte as he leaned back in his desk chair and studied her beautiful face. Charlotte Hale, Counselor at Law, she had a reputation for being a blood thirsty barracuda in the courtroom, and it had been rumored for years that Alexander Bly was still in love with her. It was obviously true, and who could blame him? The police chief remembered Charlotte from her American Jock cover, and they had both been seniors at UCLA the same year. They’d never met, but she had been fantasized about by every guy on campus, and he was included in that group. In those days she was married to the NFL quarterback, and after her divorce she didn’t seem interested in men. That broke quite a few hearts, her refusal to date. She ended up becoming roommates with two special-ops nutcases with more testosterone than brains, and now she was married to one of them. Bly and her husband had been taken to the emergency room to have their faces stitched up before they were booked for disturbing the peace. Both men looked like hammered shit, their faces and knuckles split open and swollen, the arresting officers had been shocked at the ferocity of the fight between two upstanding members of San Diego society. The chief had decided to drop the charges and release them to Charlotte since neither Bly nor Finn wanted to file assault charges against each other. Alexander Bly would buy his way out the charge anyway, and there was an unspoken understanding in the law enforcement community that Finn Hale was in a line of work better left alone.

“Your husband and Alexander Bly were arrested for fighting like a couple of teenaged gang members on a nice residential street in La Jolla. I have to say, that’s not something I get to see every day. I’m cutting them lose, they seemed intent on killing each other but now neither one wants to file any charges. You can sign them out and they’re free to go. Although, you might offer them some free legal advice, tell them to settle their differences in a law office rather than in the court of fists and F-words.”

“Well, they’ve kind of lost their minds I suppose, Chief. I’d like to have a word with them, did you say you put them in cells next to each other? That’s good, I suggest you keep them locked up for a few hours and let them talk out their differences until they’re blue in the face. I’m going on to Texas today to pick up my daughter. Billy, you go ahead and bail them both out if you want, I’m done with men, I’ve had about as much fun as I can stand in one lifetime,” Charlotte said. The police chief laughed to himself, and pictured her fine young ass on the pages of American Jock as he led her back to see Finn and Bly.

“My, my, aren’t you two a pair,” she said, pacing in front of the jail cells. She shook her head in disbelief as she stared through the iron bars at the two men who had made her life heaven and hell for way too long. “I see the two of you failed in your attempt to kill each other, maybe you should let it go now because here’s the big news of the day; I’m through with both of you. Don’t say a word, please, just shut up and listen. Atticus is the tie that binds all of us together, and he deserves the best of everything. And I don’t mean everything money can buy. I mean the three of us working together to give him a good, solid, happy start in life. He knows and loves Finn as his father, and that’s the way it’s going to remain until Atti is old enough to decide otherwise. Bly, I’ll tell him about you and the two of you can have a relationship, what you make of your time with him is up to you. I don’t want the world to know he’s a billionaire’s son just yet, no bodyguards, or people wanting a piece of him, a normal childhood is what he’s going to have. His name will be Atticus Hale not Atticus Bly, someday he can decide if he wants to make that change. How this all came to be doesn’t matter right now, I’m sure he’ll demand an answer, but we’ll cross that difficult bridge when we come to it. In the end, he’ll either love or hate us, and the last the thing that child needs is three parents who are tearing each other apart and spending all their time in jail or the courtroom.”

“My love,” Finn said so softly she barely heard him, and she walked to the cell and put her hand over his on the cold metal bar. She looked into Finn’s eyes and in them she saw her world, but she’d made up her mind, it would be a world without him or Bly… a world on her own.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she glanced at Bly. They both loved her, there was no question about that, but together they’d made a mess of love. Three hearts were too many for one love affair, so she would end it, and they would simply learn to exist with hearts of fire that perhaps someday would burn themselves out.

*

Charlotte missed her plane, but she waited at the airport and caught a later flight. She sat in a window seat and stared out at the immense star dappled sky, and she felt more alone than she ever had in her life. Self-inflicted wounds were the worst of all, she realized, and she couldn’t help herself, she cried like a baby.

“Ma’am, we’d like to move you to first class,” a flight attendant said as he bent down and handed her a stack of tissues.

“What? Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll be alright in a minute. Really, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother anyone,” she said, dabbing at her eyes and turning away from the scowling passenger seated next to her.

“We have a seat available for you, ma’am, please, if you’ll just follow me,” the young man said with more determination in his voice.

“I’m fine right here, miserable but fine, thank you very much,” she said and pulled a magazine out of the pocket of the seat in front of her and buried her face in it.

The flight attendant closed his eyes, let out an exasperated sigh, and headed to the front of the plane. A moment later a voice came over the intercom announcing that a bit of nostalgic music would be playing for a couple on board that was very much in love. Hearing that, Charlotte began to wail into the magazine, ‘a couple very much in love’, that really was the last straw.

“Shhh!” the woman next to her hissed, “I wanna hear this song, it’s “The Heart of the Matter,” I love Don Henley.”

Charlotte stopped crying then and listened, and she remembered when she and her love had danced to that very same song at a little bar on the beach.

“
I got the call today that I didn’t want to hear, but I knew that it would come, an old true friend of ours was talkin’ on the phone, she said you’d found someone. And I thought of all the bad luck and the struggles we went through, and how I lost me and you lost you, what are these voices outside love’s open door, make us throw off our contentment and beg for something more? I’m learning to live without you now, but I miss you sometimes, the more I know the less I understand all the things I thought I knew, I’m learning again. I’ve been tryin’ to get down to the heart of the matter, but my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter, but I think it’s about… forgiveness… forgiveness, even if, even if, you don’t love me anymore.
”

She handed the magazine to the women sitting next to her and unbuckled her seat belt in a flash. She hurried toward first class and he was standing in the aisle waiting for her, and every person who witnessed their tears and laughter and endless kisses, clapped and cheered.

“My love, my love, forgive me, it was my fault. How could I have ever gone off the way I did and lied to you? You
are
my life,” he whispered in her ear as she kissed every inch of his face, her hands curled tightly in her husband’s hair holding him close.

They didn’t go to the Rhodes Ranch, Charles and Belinda were waiting for them at the airport with their daughter. Hadley ran full tilt toward Finn as soon as she spotted him and flung herself against him so that he held her with his good arm as she examined his cast.

“Daddy Daddy Daddy!” she cried, actually shedding tears, which was not at all like her. “I missed you, Daddy, what happened to your arm, did somebody make it break?”

“Yes my sweet girl, somebody made it break, but it’s all better because I’m here with you now. What do you say we go back home and see Atticus, and I’m pretty sure it’s time for a visit to Sea World,” Finn said, holding his daughter close and smiling the smile of a truly happy man.

“Yayyyyy, Sea World!” Hadley shouted and jumped down to run and kiss her grandfather goodbye quickly before landing back in Finn’s embrace.

Chapter Two

They hadn’t made love when they returned home that night, parenthood intervened. They picked up Atticus at Georgina’s, and both kids curled up with Finn and Charlotte in their big bed and wouldn’t let them out of their sight. Finn and Charlotte held hands with their arms stretched across their children and talked in whispers through the night. There was so much to say, regrets and hopes to share, and the horrible truth that JP was never coming home again. Charlotte fearfully asked how Finn could be sure, and he assured her that she didn’t want to know. She insisted, and at last he told her that an insulated cooler had arrived at the offices of the DEA with a note of warning for the U.S. government. It was from El Santo, ‘the saint’, head of the largest drug cartel in Mexico, who was also Lizzie’s husband. The note warned the government to keep it’s assassins out of Mexico, and inside the cooler was JP’s severed head.

Charlotte had cried the rest of the night, sick to her very soul over JP’s death. How could the world ever be complete again, with JP gone forever? There was also the nagging fear that Beau and Skyler would live under the awful shadow of Lizzie’s whims, as well as the unthinkable terroristic power of her blood-thirsty husband. That thought caused Charlotte to shake uncontrollably, Lizzie had abandoned her babies but who knew how crazy she was, or if she would decide she wanted her children back eventually.

Finn had slipped away from Hadley’s bear hug then, he pulled the covers up snuggly around her sleeping body and wedged his body into the narrow space at the edge of the bed next to Charlotte. Her lips found his in the dark, her hands on either side of his face pulling his mouth down to hers as her fingers gently skimmed the stitches in his beautiful face. They kissed, and breathed each other in, happy to be together, relieved that the strength of their love had withstood the great obstacles that had been thrown in its path.   

“Tomorrow,” Finn said, as they drifted off to sleep, “I have a surprise for you, and I think you’re going to love it. Tomorrow, my love…”

*

“We’re off to the zoo,” Georgina announced the next morning. She stood at the edge of the bed with Atticus and Hadley, and the three of them laughed as they stared down at Finn and Charlotte sound asleep fully clothed. “The kids and I will see you when we see you,” Georgina said, herding the children out of the room and down the stairs. “Go on a date, have a blast, make a baby if you feel up to it!” The kids laughed and squealed at that remark, as the front door slammed behind them.