Chapter 19
CHARLOTTE
Claira Shepard insisted on making the breakfast she’d invited me to herself.
All I had to do was sit there while she fluttered around her kitchen like the physical embodiment of sunshine, her big hair and bigger pearls glowing gold in the early morning light streaming in through the kitchen windows.
“Are you sure I can’t help?” I offered for the umpteenth time, my fingers wrapped around a cup of the most divine coffee. “I’m not completely useless behind a stove. Although my brothers always complain that my pancakes are too salty.”
She laughed but shook her head. “I’ll be done in two shakes. Before you leave, I’ll give you my pancake recipe. It’s completely foolproof, but you might have to be prepared to make it every day. Your brothers will keep begging.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
She shot me a glance over her shoulder, but the next moment, breakfast was ready and I was treated to enough food for a family of six. Biscuits, honey butter, bacon so crisp it snapped, and grits so creamy I was pretty sure they violated several laws of physics.
“This looks amazing,” I said honestly as she put the plate down in front of me. “Wow. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, sugar.” She smiled and lowered herself into a seat across from mine at their kitchen table, her plate not piled nearly as high. “Make sure you have all those biscuits. You’re just a wisp of a thing. Trent has been working you too hard, hasn’t he?”
I chuckled into my coffee. “He hasn’t even made me pick up a shovel just yet.”
“Yet,” she echoed knowingly, smiling behind her mug like she had decades of Shepard-family secrets stored between her dimples. “It’s only a matter of time. Well, dig in, darlin’. It’s not going to eat itself.”
As soon as I set the coffee down and picked up my cutlery, she shot me an approving smile, then proceeded to mostly watch me eat while she drank coffee, chatted, and picked at her food like a baby bird.
The more time I spent with her, the more I understood why Trent was the way he was, polite, feet flat on the ground, and quietly confident. Claira was all steel wrapped in velvet. Still, even with her effortless sophistication, she seemed curious.
Eager, even. Like she wanted to ask me a hundred things all at once and I’d bet my inheritance that those questions were mostly about my relationship with Trent. Every time I mentioned him, even in passing, her eyes sparkled a little, but she held back.
For now. I wasn’t sure she would last the hour.
She didn’t make it two more minutes. “So, how are you and Trent doing, honey? You two seem to be getting along just fine.”
Her tone was carefully neutral, but her grin was not. That grin was wide and excited, like she already had the wedding halfway planned.
I blushed behind my biscuit. “He’s very kind to me.”
“Kind? Oh, honey, he’s something, alright.” Her voice had a tone mothers used when they were thinking about stories their children would die if they repeated. “I’m just not sure kind is enough to cut it.”
The heat on my cheeks intensified, but as I looked at her, I realized she knew everything about his past. The things he didn’t talk about. The things that had made him shut down in the truck last night and that he didn’t want me asking about. But curiosity was a terrible, unstoppable force.
After about twenty more minutes of Claira pretending not to vibrate in her chair with barely restrained wedding-planner energy, I finally decided to just go for it. She could shut me down too if she wanted, so I set down my fork and tried to sound casual.
“Claira, can I ask you something?”
Her brows shot up, but it didn’t look like surprise. To me, it looked a lot more like delight. “Of course, darling. Shoot. What’s on your mind?”
I took a breath. “Who is Savannah?”
The effect of saying that name was immediate, almost like I’d slapped her with a wet dish towel.
Her whole body went still. Her smile vanished and even the air in the kitchen seemed to flatten.
She recovered quickly, her smile reappearing a beat later, but her eyes were sharp when they met mine again.
“Did Trent mention her to you?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No. We saw her yesterday at the club. She came over to say hi, but it didn’t seem like a friendly sort of greeting.”
Claira muttered, “I’m shocked that piranha showed her face in Dallas again.”
Suddenly rising from the table, she spun toward her pantry and started pulling out flour, sugar, butter. Basically, everything she needed to bake something elaborate and stress busting. A coping mechanism, if I had to guess. I watched her set out bowls and whisks like she was deploying weapons.
“Claira,” I said gently, repeating the question. “Who is she?”
She ignored me at first, or maybe she was just pretending to. It was hard to tell. She cracked two eggs with more force than strictly necessary, but when she finally looked up, her expression was pained. Protective. Maternal.
“It’s complicated,” she finally said before she went back to what she was making.
“Isn’t everything?”
She gave me a smile so tired that it made me feel terrible for bringing it up. Clearly, there was a story there, and it was definitely one that mattered, but if it hurt them all too much to talk about, I wouldn’t keep pushing.
That knot of possessive jealousy in my gut melted into disappointment, because if even his mother couldn’t talk about this woman, then Trent surely couldn’t be ready to move on. Not that he was doing that with me anyway, but after these last few days together, maybe I’d hoped.
After Claira had measured flour twice and forgotten both measurements, she sighed, leaned against the counter, and finally started talking.
“Savannah was the love of Trent’s life for a time,” she said, folding her arms. “She comes from a very respectable family. Old oil money like ours. She was polished, pretty, and sharp as a tack, and I thought, Lord help us, this girl is it.”
I stayed quiet, not wanting to push any more than I already had. Plus, the awesome, creamy grits seemed to be going sour in my stomach. I reached for my coffee to hide the unexpected sting of pain that zapped through me.
The love of his life.
“She and Trent were together off and on for a couple years, but we never pressured him,” she continued.
“Not at first. They were so young and they were both happy. We just assumed marriage would be coming eventually. Everyone did, and when he didn’t propose, well, after about two years, Troy and I started wondering. And then—”
She broke off, swallowing hard and literally reaching for her pearls. A pit of doom opened up in my stomach. “Then what?”
She hesitated. “I didn’t learn this from Trent directly, so it may not be the full truth, but there was a baby involved.”
My breath stopped, my lungs instantly went on strike, and my heart slammed against my ribs so loudly I was sure she could hear it. A baby?
I finally found my voice but barely. “Was it, uh, was the baby his?”
Claira braced both hands against the countertop and closed her eyes like she needed a second to summon full southern emotional fortitude. Then she straightened, went to the fridge, and pulled out a chilled bottle of white wine.
At ten in the morning. And she didn’t even pretend it was for cooking.
“Oh, honey,” she murmured, grabbing two glasses and filling them both nearly to the brim. “You’re going to need this.”
Claira took a long swallow of her wine before setting the glass down with a soft clink. Her eyes drifted toward the window, like she was watching ghosts wander across the lawn.
“They were only twenty-three,” she began quietly. “Young but old enough to know better. Or at least, that’s what I thought, but they’d been dating seriously for years when Savannah announced she was pregnant.”
My heartbeat thudded in my ears, but that wasn’t even the worst of it. Claira looked up, her eyes misty as she shook her head. “Trent married her.”
My eyes slammed shut. I couldn’t help it. It felt like someone had punched me in the chest and yet she kept going.
“He started having the plans drawn up for that big house of his and gave her access to all his money. He did everything right.” She pressed her lips together, pride and regret warring on her beautiful features. “Everything.”
I couldn’t speak, but at least my eyes were open again. My lungs were still refusing to work properly, though.
“Within a few months of the announcement and the quick wedding that followed, the scandal ripped through every circle they were part of. Savannah was having an affair.”
My chest tightened.
She sighed. “With one of Trent’s good friends.”
I winced. God. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to talk about it.
“Savannah wasn’t even sure if Trent was the father,” she said, her voice now thin with disgust. “Apparently, she’d simply felt that he was the more stable option.
The better name. The better life, but after a little digging…
” She gave a humorless laugh and took another gigantic gulp of her wine.
“I found out she’d been spending Trent’s money as fast as he could make it.
Tens of thousands. Using her so-called business trips for her boutique in Dallas to take lavish vacations with her affair partner. ”
My throat closed. Poor Trent. My Trent—Wait, no. Not my anything.
“The baby was three months old when Trent found out he wasn’t the father.”
I put a hand against my stomach, nausea swirling through me. I hadn’t been planning on drinking the wine she’d poured me, but she’d been right. I needed it. So I reached for my glass and took a page out of her book, tipping almost a quarter of the glass into my mouth in one long sip.
“He was willing to raise the baby anyway,” Claira said. “To stay in the marriage. To be a father, a protector. He was ready to shoulder all of it, but we forced him to end it. To let them both go.”