Their Soul Mate [The Hot Millionaires #5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (13 page)

“I can’t,” she said, pulling away from him.

“You’re still mad at me?”

“Yes…no.” She shook her head. “A little of both, I guess.” She folded her arms defensively and turned away from his searing gaze. “You and Cody, your mother, Jason. It’s all such a muddle.”

“You don’t still care for Jason?”

“No, I absolutely don’t. He says he wants me back, and I wasn’t even tempted, and that’s the honest truth. But I have to go to this Mansell thing on Friday, and I know that if I don’t play along, he’ll find a way to humiliate me.” She finally lifted her eyes to his face. “And he will. He’s very good at finding and exploiting my weak spots.”

“It’s just one evening.”

“No, you don’t understand. It’s more than that. It’s my entire self-respect we’re talking about here. I can’t move on until I put Jason and his petty games of one-upmanship behind me. I thought I could, but I can’t.” She sighed. “How I’m supposed to do that, I don’t have a clue.”

“Let me help.”

“Thanks, but there’s nothing you can do.”

“You don’t have to look for another job, you know.”

“I think I probably do.”

“Promise me you won’t start looking yet, then. Come with us tomorrow to see Mary Elizabeth, then get the Mansell thing out the way. One step at a time.”

“Thanks, I’ll think about it.” She managed a brief smile and pushed him toward the door. “Now go and get some sleep. You look beat.”

* * * *

They set off for Hampshire the following morning, all of them subdued and introspective. In spite of Justine’s rejection of him, exhaustion had ensured that Zac got a good six hours’ sleep. This morning he was charged with a combination of anticipation at meeting his mother and terror at the prospect of Justine quitting on him. She hadn’t actually agreed not to look for another job and wasn’t making any particular effort to talk to him now as he drove his car down the motorway at above the speed limit.

“Did you phone to say you were going?” Cody asked.

“No.” Zac shook his head. “I want to talk to the staff there before I decide whether or not to speak with Mary Elizabeth.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to see her?” Justine asked from the back seat.

“Depends what’s wrong with her. I might make matters worse.”

They completed the hour’s drive mostly in silence. The GPS guided them to a well-maintained, stately house buried in the countryside. There were tall double gates that were closed and an entry phone system. Zac felt ridiculously nervous as he lowered his window, pressed the button, and told the disembodied voice that answered him that he was there to see Mary Elizabeth.

“Oh, I see. Drive up to the main entrance. Someone will meet you there.”

Zac drove slowly up an immaculate gravel driveway that cut through well-manicured grounds, not a leaf out of place.

“This place must cost a pretty penny,” Cody remarked.

Zac, who’d been thinking the same thing, merely grunted.

A middle-aged woman descended the front steps when Zac pulled the car to a halt. When he climbed out, the woman blinked and then flashed a welcoming smile.

“You must be Zac,” she said.

Zac balked. “You know who I am?”

The woman smiled. “Mary Elizabeth talks about you constantly. At first we wondered if you were a figment of her imagination, but her mother assured us that you were real.”

Cody and Justine stood behind Zac, clearly as stunned as he was by the woman’s calm explanation.

“I’m Susan Elliott, the administration manager here.” She laughed and shrugged simultaneously. “It’s not nearly as grand as it sounds. I’m really just a general dog’s body.”

Zac suspected she was a lot more than that. He’d only known her for thirty seconds but was a good judge of character and already suspected that the place would fall apart without her. He introduced the others, and handshakes were exchanged.

“This is a lovely place,” Justine said. “Very tranquil. Has it been here for long?”

“Thank you, we like it. It’s been run as some sort of care facility for over fifty years now. Let’s go inside and we can talk properly.” Susan led them through a grand entrance hall with several large communal rooms leading off it. “My office is this way,” she said.

Once they were in the rather-cramped room and coffee had been served, Zac got right down to business.

“You ought to be aware that I didn’t even know my mother and grandmother existed until after Mrs. Everton’s recent death.”

Susan nodded. “We thought as much, but Mrs. Everton was reluctant to answer our questions about you.”

“If Mary Elizabeth kept asking after Zac, why did no one attempt to trace him?” Cody asked.

“Because Mrs. Everton specifically asked us not to. When she explained the circumstances of his birth and rather-bungled removal to America, we had to agree with her.” Susan lifted her shoulders. “Besides, she was paying for her daughter’s care and we took our instructions from her.”

“Even if those instructions weren’t in Mary Elizabeth’s best interests?”

“Our doctors obviously thought they were. Had it been otherwise, they had the power to overrule Mrs. Everton.” Susan sounded firm yet defensive. “We always put our patients’ care first. That will become more apparent when you meet her and learn what’s wrong with her.”

“What
is
wrong with Mary Elizabeth?” Zac asked, finding it hard to even think of her as his mother, much less refer to her as such.

“Severe schizophrenia,” Susan said, shaking her head, “attributable to drug abuse when she was younger. We see a lot of that here.”

“Will she ever recover?” Cody asked.

“No, she’s here for life and, I have to say, institutionalised. She’s comfortable at Holmwood because it’s familiar. Her life here has structure and routine, which means she doesn’t have to think or make decisions for herself. She wouldn’t last five minutes on the outside.”

“Who picks up the tab since Mrs. Everton died?” Zac asked. “It doesn’t look as though the place comes cheap.”

“The state, at the moment anyway, but that won’t last indefinitely.”

Zac leaned his elbows on his splayed legs and frowned. “I’m surprised they’re doing it at all.”

“She’s been here for so long that it’s now officially her home, and they can’t just pluck her up and plonk her down somewhere else. They’ve tried it with other patients, with catastrophic results. Like I said, stability counts for a lot with the mentally ill.”

“Well, whatever else happens today,” Zac said, “you don’t need to worry about her fees anymore. I’ll take care of them.”

“That’s a relief. I so hate battling for my patients against the bureaucrats.” She turned toward Justine and offered her a friendly smile. “Was it you who called about Mary Elizabeth the other day?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad you tracked her down, and I’m glad you’re here,” she said, addressing the second half of her remark to Zac. “She never stops asking about you. Personally, I think being forced to give you up is partly responsible for her condition.”

Zac sighed. “Then I guess I ought to see her.”

“Yes, and you’ve chosen a good day to come. She’s going through one of her lucid spells.”

“We’ll wait here,” Cody said. “I think you ought to see her alone, Zac.”

Zac didn’t want to see her at all, not really. Coming here today was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. All the way down in the car he’d been inventing excuses in his head to put the confrontation off. Being civil to the woman who’d tossed him out like a piece of garbage was asking one hell of a lot of a man with Zac’s fiery temperament. And yet here he was. It seemed he was driven by a force greater than his own will and was unable to turn back now.

He still didn’t know why he’d even bothered to track Mary Elizabeth down—or have Justine do it for him. Perhaps he wanted to give her a piece of his mind, explain what a hellish life he’d had in the American care system. But he wasn’t capable of being deliberately cruel to a mentally ill woman, so it had to have been straightforward curiosity that stopped him from calling a halt to the trip.

“Yeah, okay.” Zac stood up, grinding his jaw so hard that his teeth protested. “Let’s get this over with.”

Justine reached up and squeezed his hand as he passed her chair. “Good luck,” she whispered.

The feel of her fingers closing about his, the empathy in her tone, affected him on a level over which he had no control. So he thought about things he could control. Like regaining Justine’s trust and keeping her at Grantham Park on a permanent basis.

Susan led Zac into a small day room where several women and a couple of men appeared to be occupied with artistic pursuits. Zac recognized Mary Elizabeth almost immediately, and any lingering questions about her actually being his mother became redundant. The resemblance to himself was too marked to leave any doubt. She must be almost fifty but looked younger. Her black hair was streaked with gray, but her face was virtually unlined and her figure was trim enough for her to pass as a young woman. She stood up when she saw him, her sketchpad falling to the floor as a wide smile split her face.

“Zac,” she said, opening her arms wide. “You’ve come to see me at last.”

Zac’s limbs refused to move, and he remained rooted to the spot, continuing to stare at the woman who gave birth to him. He still found it hard to look upon her as a mother. He ought to feel something—anger, delight, relief—but he remained emotionless, his heart an empty vacuum. Seemingly oblivious to his state of frozen accessibility, she hurtled herself at him, leaving him with no choice but to close his arms around her.

“Where have you been? We expected you days ago.”

“Zac’s been busy,” Susan said briskly. “You know that.”

“That’s right,” Zac agreed, taking his lead from Susan.

“Well, never mind, you’re here now. Let’s go into the garden. It’s such a lovely day, and we have so much to talk about.”

Zac glanced at Susan, who nodded just once and then quietly left the room. Zac, who seldom felt fear, was apprehensive at the prospect of being alone with this child-woman. Even so, he’d come this far, and she seemed lucid so perhaps he’d get a few answers to the questions that had plagued him since he was old enough to feel the lack of a family.

Feeling like a condemned man, he followed Mary Elizabeth into the garden.

* * * *

Justine and Cody sat in awkward silence—a silence that Justine refused to break. Cody and Zac had made it very clear what they thought of her. What more was there to be said? Okay, so Zac had tried to apologize, but that was probably only because he wanted to get her into bed. That might not have been as obvious as it was now, but when he held her in his arms and kissed her with such unbridled passion it was so damned hard to think straight. Thank God she hadn’t weakened, like she’d desperately wanted to. Well, she was thinking coherently enough now and wasn’t about to be taken in for a second time.

“Are you all set for the function on Friday?” Cody suddenly asked.

“Yes, don’t worry, I’ll be gone after that.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

Justine quirked a brow. “Do I?”

“Nervous?”

She sighed. “Why should I be?”

“Because, unless I read him all wrong, your ex will blame you if it goes wrong.”

She flashed him a look. “Well, at least we agree on one thing.”

“Why is Mansell so important to you? You didn’t really explain.”

“Because he’s the first major project that Jason gave me free rein with, and I need to prove something to myself. Jason persuaded him to employ us, virtually guaranteeing that we could deliver both sales and sponsors. He took a shine to me and insisted that I arrange everything, so Jason had to agree.”

“Will it be successful?”

Justine waved her hand back and forth. “Jason has influence but shouldn’t have made those promises. He can make people attend the opening. I mean, who isn’t up for a freebie? They’ll drink his booze, but there are no guarantees that they’ll put their hands in their pockets.”

“I know we’ve been… Fucking hell!” Justine followed the direction of Cody’s gaze in time to see Zac and the woman who had to be his mother walk out onto the terrace. They sat on a bench together, deep in conversation but close enough to the window for Justine and Cody to have a clear view of the woman’s face.

“She doesn’t look old enough to be anyone’s mother,” Cody breathed.

“Being tucked away from the world in this place has probably saved her from the ravages of life,” Justine said. “How do you think Zac’s coping?”

“He’ll take it in his stride, I guess. I’ve known him for a long time, and nothing ever fazes him.”

“Except this?”

Cody raised a brow. “Yeah, this has got him twisted right out of shape. How did you know that?”

Justine shrugged. “He’d be less than human if seeing his mother for the first time in his life didn’t affect him emotionally.” She paused when she recalled the arbitrary manner in which he’d treated her the day before. “Always assuming he has any emotions, that is.”