Wrong then Right (A Love Happens Novel Book 2) (2 page)

Becoming an architect hadn’t always been Hope’s dream, but getting a college degree had, and it was first and foremost on her agenda. There were people in this world—powerful, morally corrupt people—who preyed on the kindhearted but uneducated, using them for personal gain while their own lives spiraled out of control.

Control. It was such a perilous thing.

A short childhood spent watching her mother maintain another woman’s palatial mansion while coveting her lifestyle had taught Hope a valuable lesson. Seeing her work day and night, tirelessly caring for the unstable woman’s successful husband and neglected teenage son as her own young daughter fended for herself in cramped staff quarters above a four car garage, had shown Hope the way of the world.

Money equaled control and control equaled freedom.

And the best way to earn it was with an education, not by being an overworked and underpaid member of the help. Since she wasn’t exactly BFF’s with math and science, Hope chose art. Horticulture, specifically. Growing things, it seemed, was in her blood.

As a little girl, she’d spent many of her long, lonely days chasing hummingbirds through the gardens spread across the vast property that made up Coleson Creek Winery. Endless hours spent secretly exploring the award winning vineyard, with its constant buzz of activity and unending rows of twisted grapevines providing a forbidden place for her to play. To daydream. But no matter how strong the temptation was, she knew not to pick the plump fruit, even though the dark purple ones were her favorite. Marshall Coleson had eyes everywhere.

There had been only one time, on a warm spring day when she was six, that she’d been caught snatching a handful of the prized grapes, cradling them in the fabric of her dirty gingham skirt. He’d grabbed her hand and never let go, walking her the entire way to the main house, a big, beautiful place where she’d never been allowed. Motioning her into his wood paneled den, Hope had done exactly as he’d told her, barely holding back tears as she climbed into the chair facing his massive desk. Staring at her dusty Mary Jane’s and picking at a scab on her knee, she’d fearfully awaited her punishment. The air conditioning gave her goosebumps and a clock on the wall ticked loudly, just like the one in her nursery rhyme. There were books stacked on top of each other, filling shelves that spanned floor to ceiling, and Hope wondered if he could read all of them. Even the ones without pictures.

“Do you know what this is, Hope?”

She looked up sharply at the sound of his voice. He was holding a one dollar bill.

Nodding, her chin wobbled and she pinched the skin on her arm to make it stop. She was a big girl, her mommy said. Too old to be crying and carrying on, her mommy said. Old enough to stay by herself, even when it was dark outside.

“You do?” he questioned. “What is it, then?”

She was six, she wasn’t stupid. “Money,” she whispered, looking at the framed photo on his desk. Three people stared at her, smiling big. Like a family on a television show.

“That’s right. And here at Coleson Creek, this,” he said, waving the bill in the air, “comes from these.” Pointing to the stolen merchandise—the grapes—sitting on his desk, he picked one up. “Every time you pick one of these, I lose one of these. Do you understand?”

She nodded even though she didn’t.

“If I lose too many, then your mother loses her job. She would have to leave the vineyard and find a new place to live, and that would be a very bad thing, Hope. Because you can’t go with her. You have to stay here. With me. Do you know why?”

Hope couldn’t stop them then. Her tummy twisted in a knot and she began to cry, her tiny shoulders shaking. She didn’t know why her mommy would leave without her. Because she sometimes cried? Because she was scared of the dark? Because she picked the grapes?

“It’s because I’m your Daddy, Hope. And you belong here, at Coleson Creek. This house and this vineyard,” he clutched a handful of the grapes, “are your destiny. It’s for you and Ash—”

“Dad!” The door to the den was thrown wide open and the boy, the one her mom looked after, rushed in, dropping his backpack to the floor. Last week he’d been given a pool party for his sixteenth birthday, with a big chocolate cake and a fancy red truck. Not invited, Hope had watched the party from the window above the garage, overlooking the backyard. “An Army recruiter was at school today and I’m gonna sign—oh...”

He stopped mid-sentence, staring at her with a furrowed brow before looking back at Marshall. He’d never spoken to her, but one day he’d let her follow him to the deepest part of the creek running along the back of the property, where schools of bluegill swam and tiny frogs hid under moss covered rocks. She’d watched him bait a hook and cast a line, but after a minute with no bites, she’d lost interest and gone in search of a new litter of barn kittens. Soon someone else might see her and she’d have to go back to the garage.

“She shouldn’t be in here, Dad,” the boy said, his excitement vanishing. “If Mom sees her, she’s gonna freak her shit. And she’ll be pissed as hell at me, too.”

Hope gasped at his use of bad words.

Looking back at her, he gestured nervously toward the door, his wide eyes telling her to leave. Eyes that were blue like the ocean where she and her mom once built a sandcastle. Her eyes were blue, too.

She jumped when a sudden, terrible screech sounded from the doorway, surprising her, and she scrambled out of the oversized chair. The pretty blonde woman, the mean lady her mom cleaned and cared for, stared at her with a scary face.

“You! You don’t belong here, you snot nosed little brat. You’re a stain on this family, along with your whore of a mother,” she sneered, before confronting Marshall. “How dare you bring her into my house. Has this been happening all along? Sneaking her in behind my back? How many more of your unwanted spawn are going to show up and sully my home?” Before he could answer, she looked toward the boy and lifted her brow, sniffing in disgust. “And you’re going to turn out just like him, I’m afraid. A handsome charmer, a serial cheater, and a practiced liar all wrapped into one. Thinking only with your swinging dick.”

The boy adamantly shook his head in denial and she put a hand on her chest, laughing shrilly before dabbing her eyes and straightening the strand of pearls around her neck. “Well, now. That remains to be seen, doesn’t it? I bet I’ll be wiping the tears of many a heartsick debutante when you break your promises, too.” When the woman looked back at Hope, she shrank against the chair. “Don’t be stupid and saddle yourself with one of those, though. They’re not as easy to get rid of as you think. Such an unnecessary nuisance.”

She pointed to the door with her long fingernail, glints of light reflecting off the pretty bracelet on her wrist. “Get out of my sight, little girl. And don’t you ever walk back in this house again. You are not one of us and you never will be.”

Hope ran then, past the boy who put out his arms to catch her when she stumbled on the fringed edge of the oriental rug. Past the horrible woman calling her a no good spic bastard. And past the man who sat silently on the other side of the desk, still holding the one dollar bill.

That was the day Hope learned that Marshall was her father. That her daddy had a wife that wasn’t her mother. And it wasn’t long after that day, only a year later in fact, that neither she, nor the boy with the same blue eyes, had a mother at all.

Control and money went hand in hand. Which was why accepting the college fund had been a bitter pill to swallow, the shame still burning a hole in her gut when she recalled the smug look on Marshall’s face as she took it. Rosa’s words—the one’s she’d repeatedly said to Hope as she grew from a skirt wearing tomboy into an olive skinned, blue-eyed beauty—ringing in her mind.

Pretty ain’t forever, Hope Elizabeth, but smart is. You best believe it before you turn out like your dearly departed madre, God rest her troubled soul.

It would be a cold day in Hell before she turned out like her mother.

And since the odds were about the same that she’d go to her family for money, that meant she lived—and ate—off her measly salary working her tail off in the Vistancia’s catering department. God knew, she damn sure wasn’t going to live at Coleson Creek ever again. That would be tantamount to selling her soul. Much like her half brother had, she’d fled the sprawling Spanish Colonial mansion sitting atop the hill above the family winery as quickly as her feet would let her. Leaving Rosa behind had been Hope’s only regret as she’d packed up and left within a week of receiving her high school diploma. The plump, gray-haired housekeeper—who had to be sixty, if she was a day—had been her only caretaker after her mother died. At least, aside from Marshall. Sure, the house and surrounding vineyards were only forty miles east of downtown San Diego. Hardly a significant separation. But the distance had proven far enough for Hope’s freedom.

Nothing and nobody could make her go back.

Not a severe vitamin deficiency from the lack of nutrients in freeze dried noodles. Not the frightening texts she’d been receiving for the last month, warning her that she was being watched and chilling her to the core. Not the fact that she may live out the rest of her natural life alone and lonely, unable to enjoy a man who wore a pair of suit pants like he was born to.

And certainly not Helen, who held Hope’s livelihood in her beefy man hands.

CHAPTER TWO

She was the only thing making this whole goddamn scene worth sweating through. The brunette with the bright blue eyes and shiny pink lips.

And girl was an apt description in this case, because he guessed her age to be significantly lower than his own thirty-three years. A hard thirty-three, at that. Oh, she was legal based on her champagne pouring duties, assigned by a ballbusting hag who took pleasure in cracking the whip, old school clipboard and ball point pen in hand. But he’d be shocked as shit if the object of his attention wasn’t more than a full decade younger than him.

Taking a long pull off his cold bottle of beer, Beckett Smith mentally corrected himself. It wasn’t just the girl making this long day tolerable. The unlimited amount of icy India pale ale’s also helped. In his experience, they always did.

Tugging lightly at the restricting collar of his rarely worn dress shirt, Beck watched his boss and mentor with mixed emotions. Sam Gleeson had just married the love of his life. Tied himself spiritually and legally to a woman who loved him like he was the second coming of Christ. And apparently, he loved her back. Popping the top off another IPA, he watched the couple huddle in the middle of the makeshift dance floor, swaying more than anything, as the setting sun and a shit ton of lit candles cast an orange glow on the white lace of his bride’s body hugging dress. The beaming smile on Ali’s face was the picture of pure happiness and Sammy’s return grin was the same, with a bit of devilish intent added in.

Love and sex and loyalty? For life?

Lucky fucking bastard, Beck thought, with a silent snort. But if anyone deserved it, Sam did. The former Army Ranger had spent his military career as a sniper, saving countless innocent people by taking the lives of those who sought to harm, not to mention the numerous servicemen and women he laid cover for, his resolute skill with a rifle aiding in their ability to fight another day. Beck had been one of those guys. And now Sam, along with his business partner Asher, who was former Delta Force and all around beast, owned Scorpio Securities, Inc. Providing job security for retired special forces like himself, Mike Mendoza, Grady Foster, and Nolan Ellis, Sam and Ash also provided the glue holding their brotherhood—and Beck’s tenuous sanity—together. The company handled all things security related, from the simple assignment of installing state of the art, impenetrable security systems and guarding influential people, to providing domestic and foreign defense training, strategy consultations, and wide reaching hands on support of just about any kind, including the ability to provide special ops trained teams for worldwide action. Equipped to handle any task from small scale local assignments to major offshore deployments, Scorpio could facilitate the operations necessary to secure people, places and things.

It sounded bad ass because it was, with Sam heading the domestic jobs and Ash, who was a natural born leader but preferred the life of a loner, taking charge of the foreign assignments.

Beck had the utmost respect for his bosses and even though Nolan was his closest buddy, Ash had been there for him on more than one occasion when the memories, and therefore the booze, had taken hold. He owed Ash. More than he could ever repay, despite the healthy bank balances in his numerous accounts, but damned if he wasn’t going to try. Which was why he’d poured several hundred dollars worth of top shelf liquor down the kitchen sink with a biting sense of fear more keen than he’d ever felt running life and death missions for Uncle Sam.

White-knuckling the bottles, he’d drained so many, it was obvious to any onlooker that the situation had gotten grave. The expression on Ash’s face as he’d watched Beck do it was fucking grave, too. And in the few months since, he’d managed to steer clear of the hard stuff, smart enough to know a suicide mission when he saw one.

The dark craving for something beyond a few beers still lurked, though, a more formidable opponent than any terrorist Beck had ever encountered.

Ash and Sam were dyed in the wool Army, as were Mike and Grady, but Beck and Nolan didn’t hold it against them. Not every man had what it took to be a SEAL, they taunted regularly, holding true to their beloved Navy. But branch allegiance aside, they had all been in the same boat, experiencing the wonder and horror that was war. Spending years seeing and doing things they could never speak of. Not with their soulmate should they be lucky enough to have one, and not with their shrink should they be unlucky enough to need one. And they each had their own way of dealing with it. Of forgiving themselves so they could move on, believing they actually deserved the good things in life. Like love and sex and loyalty.

It was a process, the self help books all said. You had to work at it, because bouncing back didn’t happen automatically. The human mind wasn’t conditioned that way. The healing of wounds, be them visible or not, took time. For some, it might take mere weeks for a semblance of peace and normality to return. For others, it could take months. Months, that turned into years, that turned into a fucking lifetime. Beck wasn’t one of the fortunate former, and since he’d been out of the service for nearly two years, he’d begun to wonder if the weight would ever lift. If he was destined to be one of the tortured lifer’s.