The Real Father

Instead he stared at the ring, which lay on the dresser like an accusation, winking aggressively in the lamplight. The Forrest ring. Eighteen-karat gold forged into a pattern of interlocking leaves—the metal so soft and precious, the design so intricate that it was hard to imagine the thing surviving even one owner. Yet it had been worn by every first-born Forrest male since the Civil War.

His brother’s ring.

“Damn you.” He spoke aloud. His voice was husky and slurred. “What a snake you are, Forrest….”

His voice trailed off. Who was he talking to? Beau? Or himself? He wished he hadn’t had so much to drink—it limited his vocabulary. But maybe there wasn’t a word in the entire English language that could sum up the disgust he felt for the both of them tonight.

Clenching his teeth against the stale memory of Michelob, he raised his head. “Jeez,” he muttered to the haunted man that stared back at him. “You are one pitiful son of a bitch.”

The ring winked its golden eye again, and a new wave of nausea rolled over him.

How could he stand it? How could he live with what he’d done? With a slurred curse he swept his hand across the dresser top, sending everything spinning to the floor. Coins, cuff links, keys—they all fell in a discordant metallic jangle along with the ring.

As the noise echoed hollowly through the large, high-ceilinged room, the door opened. Somehow Jackson managed to look up without losing his balance. It was Beau. At the sight of his brother, one lucid fact finally pierced Jackson’s mental fog. He didn’t want to punch something. He wanted to punch somebody.

He wanted to punch Beau.

And he wanted Beau to hit him back. He wanted a fierce, primitive battering that would draw blood or tears or both. He wanted to hurt and be hurt. To punish and be punished. As if that alone could cleanse him now.

But Beau wasn’t interested in Jackson’s fury. He wasn’t even aware of it. He didn’t notice the mess on the floor. He was, as usual, entirely focused on his own emotional state.

Which clearly wasn’t any happier than Jackson’s. Beau slammed the door shut behind him, cursing with a vivid vocabulary that put Jackson’s earlier drunken mumbling to shame. His blond hair was tousled, hanging down over his forehead as if he’d pulled his fingers through it a hundred times. Under the tangled fringe, his green eyes were hard and angry, and the golden tan of his face had darkened to the unmistakable deep bronze of rage.

He looked nothing like the sunny angel he was known far and wide to be. Nothing like the coddled darling, the sweetheart of awestruck little girls in pinafores, sex-crazed cheerleaders in pom-poms, lonely old ladies in blue hair—and everything in between.

He looked almost ugly. And he looked mean. For a piercing instant of self-serving spite, Jackson wished that Molly could see Beau now, like this, with his true nature stamped on every feature.

But he mustn’t think about Molly. He needed to clear his head. He needed to find out what had made Beaumont Forrest, his beloved twin brother, the elder by fifteen minutes and the favorite by a country mile, so furious that he forgot to be charming.

What if he had found out—?

But no. Jackson rubbed his eyes, trying to adjust his vision, which was still offering him double images. Beau couldn’t have found out anything, not this soon. That was just Jackson’s guilty conscience working overtime. Might as well get used to it. He had the sick feeling that he was going to be living with a guilty conscience for the rest of his life.

Beau shoved Jackson aside and began yanking open the dresser drawers.

“Where the hell are my keys?” Beau tossed clothes roughly as he dug through stacks of neatly folded T-shirts and jeans, turning pockets inside out. “I know I put them in this goddamn room somewhere.”

“God, Beau. Chill.” Denied the support of the dresser, Jackson sat on the edge of Beau’s four-poster bed, hunching over, hands dangling between his knees. “What’s got you in such a lather?” He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but he couldn’t quite do it. “Something go wrong? Did your bimbo du jour fail to show up for the fun?”

Beau didn’t even turn around. “Shut up, Jack,” he growled, slamming one drawer and wrenching open the next. “I’m not in the mood for any of your crap right now.”

Jackson’s inner radar began to pulse. Being an identical twin meant that you heard things no one else could hear, felt things no one else could sense. Something was wrong. Really wrong. This wasn’t just another of Beau’s sulks. This was trouble.

“What’s the matter, Beau?” He stood, ignoring the dizzying nausea as best he could. “Is it Molly?”

“To hell with Molly.” Beau shoved the drawer shut violently and kicked at the dresser in frustration. He spun around and turned his savage gaze on his brother. “Damn you, Jackson. If you’ve got the keys to my car, you’d better cough them up pronto.”

He was losing control. Jackson could feel the blood pounding in Beau’s throat, at his temples, behind his eyes—just as if it were happening to him. He took two steps forward, reaching for the edge of the dresser. “They’re on the floor—”

With an ugly oath, Beau lunged toward the fallen keys.

“Where are you going?” Jackson’s nerves were tingling with a nameless dread. He suddenly wished he had hidden the keys. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m getting out of here, that’s what. If that tramp thinks she’s going to ruin my life, she’s got another think coming.”

Jackson tried to shake the Michelob from his brain. “Who? Molly?”

Beau’s face was frightening. “Molly? Hell, Jack. Get real. Who gives a damn about that frigid little bitch?” He moved toward the door.

Jackson followed on legs that seemed to be made from something numb and wobbling. “Beau, wait. Why don’t you let me drive?”

Beau didn’t even bother to answer. And Jackson knew it was a ridiculous suggestion. Beau might be deranged with fury, but Jackson was so drunk he probably couldn’t get the car out of the front drive without climbing an oak tree. Still, every instinct was screaming for him to stop his brother. He lurched down the stairs, keeping Beau’s retreating back just barely in sight.

When he reached the low-slung red sports car that sat waiting in the moonlit drive, Beau had already ground the engine to snarling life. There was no time to waste. Jackson vaulted over the convertible’s closed door and dropped onto the black leather seat. For a long, tense moment, he met his twin’s furious gaze with an unyielding stare. Beau could breathe fire if he wanted to. Jackson wasn’t getting out.

Finally Beau looked away. He jammed the car into reverse, gears screaming, and backed out of the drive at a mad, blind tear. At the front gate, he swung the wheel, sending the car into a sliding spin that somehow ended up facing the road.

After that there was only hissing wind, blue moonlight and the silent madness of breakneck speed. Neither of them spoke a word as the little car tore through the empty streets of downtown Demery. Stop signs, stoplights, sharp curves—nothing slowed Beau’s fury. Jackson watched quaint storefronts and stately homes streak by like bleeding paint on an Impressionist canvas. He wondered how much fuel was in the tank, hoping that Beau would run out of gas before he ran out of luck.

They nicked a curb, jolting every bone in Jackson’s body. If Jackson had hoped that the potent cocktail of sheer danger and mute fear would drain the rage from his brother’s heart, he’d been deluding himself. Beau seemed to grow more inflamed with every wild mile. The streets grew narrower, less carefully cultivated. They weren’t far now from Annie Cheatwood’s house. The dread in Jackson’s body began to take a clear and terrible shape.

“Beau,” he called over roar of the engine. “Beau, knock it off. You’re going to kill us both.”

But Beau didn’t hear him. Or wouldn’t hear him. Eyes narrowed against the wind, he steered the car grimly, his foot never lifting from the accelerator. Jackson watched him, strangely hypnotized, and he thought he saw Beau’s lips form a word.

“Bitch,” he seemed to say. And then over and over, “Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

Jackson turned his gaze back to the road just a fraction of a second too late. With a cold horror he saw the statue flying toward them, like something out of a bad dream, a fifteen-foot marble monster suddenly coming alive and hurtling toward the little car.

“Beau!” Jackson grabbed the wheel and shoved it desperately to the left, though he knew it was hopeless. Nothing could stop the insane advance of the statue, the figure of a Civil War general that stood in dignified sentry in the center of Milton Square, a sweet, civilized plot of land at the edge of town.

Beau was clawing at the wheel, too, finally aware of their danger. But even the combined strength of their young, athletic bodies could not wrench the car free of the relentless, magnetic pull of the statue.

Metal exploded against marble. Bone crushed against chrome. Steel ripped through leather and flesh.

And for Beau and Jackson Forrest, twenty-two years old, the world went black and ended.

CHAPTER ONE

“WHAT A DELIGHTFUL little girl your daughter is, Ms. Lorring.”

Janice Kilgore, vice principal at Radway School, was beaming. Even her dense network of freckles seemed to glow. “She’s so easy with the other children. She fits in beautifully here, don’t you think?”

Molly nodded, not wanting to spoil Miss Kilgore’s pleasure by pointing out that Liza usually fit in comfortably wherever she went. The other woman naturally preferred to believe it was some magic chemistry provided by her exclusive private school. It would help to justify the exorbitant tuition she was going to have to discuss with Molly later on.

Besides, Miss Kilgore’s enthusiasm was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that Liza came recommended by Miss Lavinia Forrest of Everspring Plantation. In Demery, South Carolina, population fifteen thousand, the Forrests reigned supreme. Forrest children, including Miss Lavinia, had attended Radway for three generations.

Still, Liza’s bright, uninhibited smile was quite a recommendation all its own.