It Had To Be You Read online

  “Drink this, Mama,” the man said, gently raising the glass to Zach’s mother’s lips.

  Zach wanted to knock the glass away, then plant his fist in the man’s face. She was his and Paige’s mother. “Paige?”

  “She already knows. I told her before she married Shane,” his mother answered.

  Zach fought a sharp stab of anger. “Why am I the last to know?”

  “Don’t talk to her that way,” Trent snapped, stepping behind the settee to place his big, work-roughened hands on her trembling shoulders.

  Zach shot to his feet. “Don’t you tell me how to talk to my mother!”

  “Somebody has to. She’s my mother, too,” he said, temper flaring in his own dark brown eyes. “You had her all of your life, yet you seem to have forgotten every good thing she ever taught you.”

  A picture of tears on Laurel’s face flashed before Zach. He started for Trent. “You bas—”

  His mother’s sharp intake of breath stopped him, sliced through him. Trent looked as if he wanted to tear what was left of Zach’s heart from his body with his bare hands. Zach knew he deserved it. Trent rounded the chair and sank in front of their mother.

  “He’s just upset. He’s hurt. He didn’t mean anything.”

  Zach felt like slime, lower. His mother hadn’t been married when she’d had Trent.

  “Mother.” He went down on his knees, saw the tears in her eyes, knew his harsh words had caused them. His throat felt tight. No matter what, this woman always loved him, supported him, even when she had to bear the brunt of his father’s anger. Nothing would ever change his love for her. He said the only thing he could think of. “I love you. Please forgive me.”

  She stared down at the glass clenched in her hands.

  “Please, Mother, look at me.”

  He didn’t need Trent’s sharp elbow in his side to keep talking. “I couldn’t be who I am without you. I’ve made some mistakes, but they were mine. God couldn’t have blessed me with a more loving, caring mother.”

  Her face finally lifted, tears glittering in her eyes, staining her cheeks. He and Trent reached at the same time to brush them away. Each paused, looked at the other, then wiped tears from her cheek on the side where he knelt.

  His mother handed Zach the glass, then reached for his hand the moment it was empty. With her other hand, she reached for Trent’s. “I dreamed of this moment for so long. I cheated you both out of so much. Trent, you most of all.”

  “Mama, no. You did what you had to,” he said, his voice strained but full of love.

  She took a deep breath and stared at Zach. “I just pray you can forgive me when I finish. I was married to your father when Trent was born, but he wasn’t your father’s child.”

  Zach’s gaze jerked to the man beside him. There was nothing of Zach’s father in Trent’s dark profile and eyes. Yet he couldn’t imagine his mother being unfaithful to his father.

  “I met Trent’s father a month before the wedding and fell in love.” Both of her hands grabbed Zach’s. “It was impossible to call off the wedding. Neither my parents nor your father would have liked the scandal. Trent was born and your father knew he wasn’t his and couldn’t accept him. I gave him up for adoption and never saw him until he found me.” Tears crested in her eyes again. “Trent, I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger.”

  He tenderly kissed her on the cheek. “We’ve been through this and I hope we don’t have to do it again. You had no choice. I have you now.” He stared at Zach. A warning. “And I’m not going anyplace.”

  Silence stretched on and on. Zach tried to process what he’d been told growing up with what he was hearing now. “My older brother died in an accident when her car accidentally ran into the river. Mother was ill for weeks afterward.”

  “I’m alive. There was no way he would have given her a divorce. Faking the accident was the only solution she could think of,” Trent said. “You know how deeply she loves. Neither of us can imagine how difficult it must have been for her to give me up, but it was the only way.”

  He was right. His mother loved fiercely. His father, on the other hand, had conditions attached to his love. He would have never accepted a child who wasn’t his. Zach could only imagine his father’s response to Trent’s birth. “How did Father react afterward?”

  Zach thought he saw her flinch before she said, “We managed.”

  Zach frowned. His father wasn’t the forgiving type, Zach could attest to that.

  “If you’d like for us to go, we will,” his mother said, her voice shaky.

  “He doesn’t.” Trent stared at him. His eyes promised more than an elbow jab if Zach didn’t snap out of it and say something. “He knows how it is when things spiral out of your control through no fault of your own. Loving a person sometimes creates more problems.”

  He did, but this . . . this was his mother. A woman with more honor and unselfishness than anyone he knew. “Trent, help me get Mother some tea.” Without waiting for an answer Zach got to his feet and headed for the kitchen. He heard Trent whisper, “Don’t worry.” Zach gritted his teeth.

  In the kitchen Zach prepared the tray for the tea, then turned to Trent, who stood a few feet away from him with his arms folded. Zach didn’t want Trent in his house, but tossing him out would only hurt his mother. “You don’t look anything like my mother or anyone in her family.”

  “I take after my father, Wade Taggart. He was a Texas rancher. He met Mother when he went to Atlanta on business.”

  Zach didn’t want to think about his mother with another man. “So you’re a rancher.”

  “I own a trucking company,” Trent answered.

  If Paige knew about Trent, then Shane knew. He’d certainly have had Trent checked out, but Shane could have missed something. “Some trucking companies have taken a hit in this economy.”

  “Not mine,” Trent answered, his gaze steady.

  Zach pushed away from the counter and walked until he was a foot away from Trent. “Let’s cut to the chase. What do you want?”

  “What you’ve had all of your life. My mother. And you and nobody else is going to keep her from me now that I’ve found her,” Trent said, his voice low, each word precise.

  Zach could easily recall the warmth and love in his mother’s voice and face when she looked at Trent. “Did your adoptive parents help you find her?”

  “I grew up in an orphanage.”

  Zach’s stomach twisted. His gaze jerked toward the terrace even though he couldn’t see his mother, then to Trent. Learning that must have hurt his mother deeply. “I—I don’t know what to say.”

  Trent shrugged his wide shoulders. “It’s over. I have a mother just like I always prayed I would.”

  “And now that you have a mother?”

  “I’m going to do everything in my power to keep her happy,” Trent said. “She wants all of her children to know one another. I want what she wants.”

  Zach picked up the porcelain teapot and turned on the tap of instant hot water. Finished, he placed the teapot on the tray and picked it up. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you do one thing to hurt her, I won’t rest until I make you pay.”

  “I’d expect nothing less, but if I wanted to cause problems, I would have done it long ago,” Trent said. “But let me warn you, you cause Mama any more distress and you’ll have to answer to me.”

  Any more—the words didn’t sit well with Zach. He loved his mother. He wasn’t about to judge her. He certainly didn’t want to hurt her. Nodding abruptly, he returned to the terrace.

  His mother stood the instant Zach and Trent returned. She quickly went to them. Her anxious gaze searched their faces. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes,” Zach answered. “We were just getting your tea.”

  “But he forgot the lemons,” Trent said.

  The fact that he had forgotten his mother liked lemon in her tea, and Trent remembered, irritated the hell out of Zach. He plopped the tea service on top of the
glass coffee table. “Perhaps you’d like to go get some.”

  “Zach, is that any way to talk to your brother.”

  Zach whirled. A tall, stunning woman with long black hair, in a white pantsuit, stood in the doorway.

  “Dominique, you were supposed to wait,” Trent said, but there was no heat in his tone. Just the opposite—there was indulgence and love.

  “You know how I am about you and your mother.” Her eyes locked on Zach, she stopped within a foot of him. “I’m your sister-in-law, Dominique.” Her stance combative, she crossed her arms across her chest.

  He started to say he didn’t have a brother, then clamped his teeth together. He didn’t want to upset his mother again, but these other two pushy people were another matter. “It’s customary and polite not to intrude on a private conversation.”

  A perfectly arched eyebrow lifted regally. Her arms slowly dropped to her side. “When it comes to the man I love, the rules don’t apply. But after what you did to Laurel, I wouldn’t be so quick to point fingers.”

  Zach’s eyes narrowed in anger. Suddenly Trent was in front of him, his dark eyes hard and unforgiving.

  “Trent,” his mother said, going to him. “Zach might be angry, but he’d never hit a woman. He’s not like—”

  Zach whirled, rage almost choked him. “Did his father hit you?”

  His mother looked startled for a moment, then smiled. “Wade was the gentlest man I’ve ever known.”

  Zach saw the love and truth in her face, the wistfulness in her voice. “Where is he?”

  She swallowed. Trent and Dominique went to stand by her side, both sliding an arm around her waist. “He died before Trent found me.”

  Zach’s fingers tenderly touched her face with his fingertips. “I’m sorry.”

  “There’s hope for you yet,” Dominique said.

  Zach’s eyes narrowed. “You talk a lot.”

  She laughed. Amazing as it was, so did her husband, who had been ready to take Zach’s head off when he thought Zach might hurt her. “Wait until my cousin arrives.”

  Zach didn’t plan on meeting her cousin or any other relative.

  “Don’t go stubborn,” she said, somehow guessing his thoughts. “Since I stood in your shoes, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. I know how it is when lies come back to bite you on the backside and make the person you’d give your life for walk away.”

  “I was a stupid fool,” the man said, lifting his hand to lovingly stroke her hair. “If I hadn’t been so stubborn, you would have never gotten hurt.”

  “But it brought us together,” she said softly. “Like you, Zach, I had reasons for not telling Trent my real name. My family is wealthy, my brother wealthier. I wanted to make it on my own. When Trent found out my real name was Dominique Falcon, he didn’t take it so well.”

  “Falcon,” Zach said. The name rang a bell. “Are you related to Daniel Falcon?”

  “My brother. By the way, Trent’s cousin, Madelyn, is married to Daniel,” Dominique said with meaning. “If that isn’t enough, Blade and Daniel, once friendly business rivals, are now close friends. Sierra is the cousin I mentioned. If you weren’t Paige and Trent’s brother, you’d be over your head in trouble.”

  Zach was surprised by the connection, but he’d never reacted well to threats. “They know where to find me. They can’t do any more to me.” His fingers speared through his hair. “Laurel won’t talk to me. She won’t even look at me. I called the recording off because she looks ready to crash. Nothing they do can make me feel worse. Let them try. I don’t care. I already called Paige to tell Shane and Rio to bring it on.”

  “It twisted my insides when I learned Dominique’s true identity and that she hadn’t been entirely honest with me, but I was thinking of a past betrayal,” Trent told him. “Laurel probably feels the same way. She’s hurt.”

  “No matter what our reasons, we violated Trent’s and Laurel’s trust,” Dominique said. “Love has to build on trust.”

  Despite everything, they were baring their past to help him. “I know that. Each day we were together in Mexico I tried to tell her, but I was so afraid of losing her. I planned to tell her the last night we were together, but that loud-mouthed Lee Wilson tracked me down and started calling me Rolling Deep. Rio ensured his silence. At least he’s not on Laurel’s record label, so after I sign the exclusive contract, I won’t have to work with him.”

  “I thought you were a free agent,” Trent said.

  “He is,” his mother said. “He likes the freedom of being able to choose who to work with.”

  “So what changed?” Dominique asked.

  Zach’s first thought was to tell them it was none of their business, but it was. With his lies, he had dragged all of them into the situation. It was obvious the family and extended families were close. “The CEO was threatening to sue Laurel if she didn’t finish the album. He wouldn’t consider letting her buy the contract back. He was going to let it drag on for years.”

  Zach’s lips flattened in a straight line. “She can’t stand any more. He wouldn’t listen when I asked him to give her more time or release her from her contract, so I used the only bargaining chip I had.”

  “You.”

  He looked at his mother. “She’s near the breaking point and I put her there. The thought is never far from my mind. I’d do anything for her.”

  “How do you think Laurel will feel when she learns what you’ve done?” Dominique asked.

  “She’ll never find out. It was the only way,” he said. “Sometime tomorrow afternoon she’ll receive a personal call and then a visit from the CEO. She and the record company will part on amicable terms. She’ll be able to return to Nashville and forget.”

  “I would have never been happy without Dominique,” Trent said, and put his arm lightly around Zach’s shoulders. “I don’t think Laurel will be happy without you. We’ll just have to find a way to get her to listen.”

  Zach didn’t even think of throwing the arm off. He wanted Laurel back in his life more than his next breath. “How?”

  Trent smiled. “Just leave it up to your big brother.”

  Ten

  A little past seven that night Laurel lay curled in her bed, but at least she wasn’t crying. She hadn’t known a person had that many tears. Her eyes and head hurt, but still they had come. She cried for Zach’s deception, but also because she wanted to believe him. Her arms ached to hold him, her lips to kiss him.

  The phone rang on the bedside table. She ignored it. The housekeeper would pick it up.

  She didn’t want to talk to anyone—unless it was the CEO calling to tell her they’d reconsidered and were letting her out of her contract. Her lawyer said they sounded amicable, but he also said you never knew until you started going over details.

  Hope surged through her as the phone rang again. Perhaps it was her lawyer calling again. She rolled and picked up the phone. “Hello.”

  “Laurel Raineau, please.”

  “This is she.” Her CEO always had his secretary put his calls in.

  “Hello, Laurel. This is Paige Elliott, Zach’s sister.”

  Laurel was unprepared for the stab of misery at the mention of his name, the yearning that grew with each breath.

  “There’s something that I think you should know,” Paige continued.

  Alarmed, Laurel sat up in bed. “He isn’t hurt, is he?”

  “Not physically, but he’s miserable without you.”

  Laurel’s hand clenched on the phone. “He brought it on himself with his lies.”

  “He knows that better than anyone, and regrets it more each moment you’re apart.”

  Laurel swallowed the knot in her throat and wondered how long before the aching loneliness dulled.

  “He hurt you, and the only way he could think of to set you free is to give up his own freedom,” she said.

  “I’m not following you,” Laurel said instead of hanging up. She shouldn’t care what happened to Zach.
r />   “The only way your record company would let you out of your contract without taking you to court was for Zach to sign an exclusive contract with them.”

  “What!” Laurel came to her feet.

  “Zach would have my head if he knew I’d told you, but we decided you should know. No matter what happened, Zach loves you.”

  Laurel wondered fleetingly who we were, then began to tremble when she heard his sister repeat, “Zach loves you.”

  “He used me so I would let him produce my next album.” Laurel paced the length of her room.

  “Zach appreciates and loves your music. This might sound pompous, but he doesn’t need to produce your album. Even without his income from the music industry, he’s quite wealthy on his own. Producing your album was personal to him. Your music company’s quick capitulation to you shows how well he’s thought of in the music industry. He can name his own price.”

  Laurel didn’t have to think long to know Paige was right. Peterson had been salivating over Zach doing the album and getting him to work with other clients on their label.

  “If you want to talk to him, we’re having dinner at his place tonight. We sort of barged in on him. He needed us, but he needs you more.” Paige gave her the address. “I’ll leave instructions at the gate for you to get in. Don’t let pride and anger stand in the way of the love of a lifetime. Think back to those magical moments when you first met and let your heart guide you.”

  “He lied to me,” Laurel said.

  “By omission and because he was afraid of losing you.”

  “He still lied,” Laurel repeated, her voice breaking.

  “Not when he said he cared,” Paige told her. “Good-bye.”

  Laurel held the phone in her hand, heard the dial tone, slowly hung it up, and then went back to lie down in bed, drawing her knees up into the fetal position.

  He’d lied to her.

  You make me want to be better.

  I’d rather hold you than sleep.

  You’re the only woman for me.

  The tears started again. She didn’t want to be used again. What was she going to do?

  Zach couldn’t believe he’d let them barge in on him. He loved his mother and sister, but he wanted to be alone. He wasn’t fit company.