The Truth About Fairy Tales (3 page)

“I don’t have anything to say to you and I certainly don’t want to hear
what you feel you need to tell me.” My childish answer reflected my feelings.

Jackson
concentrated on driving through the deserted streets of one of the most influential sections of Austin.

He turned onto a private drive leading up to a house that even from the road I could see was enormous. It sat
back from the road against the hills overlooking the city lights.

As the car drew closer, the lights outside the house came on illuminating its mass. It
consisted of two stories, sprawling along the lines of the hillside almost as if it were part of the landscape itself. The driveway curved around to the side of the house where Jackson hit a button to open the garage as the car drew closer.

Once
inside the garage, he turned to face me.

“I’m not going in there
,” I told him with as much false bravado as I could manage in the face of his grin. Of course, I was going inside. I knew it -- he knew, the only question was would I go willingly or would he help. I decided the safest way would be under my own power.

H
e got out of the car, came around to my door, and waited for me to get out. “Good decision.”

The house was just as impressive on the inside as it was on the out. In the enormous living room
, a wall of windows looked out beyond the deck to the city below. I knew without even considering it that this place must have cost a fortune. Not that it mattered. He could certainly afford it.

“Would you like something to drink?” That had me forgetting the spectacular view before me and turning back to Jackson who stood just behind me, watching me. Was
he nuts? I didn’t want to be here at all. He’d brought me here against my will and now he was acting as if this was a social visit?

“Why did you bring me here, Mr. Riley?”

He studied me for a long moment. "Okay, we’ll do it your way then.” He left me standing alone, mouth open from shock shaking my head. I had no idea what kind of game he was playing, but I suspected I didn’t really want to know either.

When he returned, he carr
ied a thick folder in one hand. Even before he spoke, I knew what would be in that folder.

“You didn’t do like I asked you to, Maggie. Ben is more determined than ever to stay and that’s all because of you.” His glance slid over me as if to say he didn’t understand his nephew’s infatuation. “The funny thing is when I ask Ben questions about you, he doesn’t really know anything except that you have a grandmother somewhere in a small town. That’s strange, don’t you think, considering he’s so enraptured with you that he’s willing to give up a very promising future to stay here with you? You haven’t told him anything about yourself, have you?”

I tried without much success to hide my shock as well as that sickening feeling inside at what I knew was coming next. He’d found out all about my past. It was all right there in that little folder. I saw the truth in the triumphant look in his eyes.

“That
had me curious.” Jackson continued to watch me while all the dread, the sinking feeling of having to relive my horrific past in front of him resurfaced. I couldn’t even begin to hide my reaction as each of his words hit me hard. “So I decided to do a little checking up on you. I wanted to see what you’ve been hiding.”

He held the folder up again and I felt my heart strike its usual frantic cadence whenever someone got too close.

I’d never once shared anything about my past with Ben, or anyone else for that matter, because I was just too ashamed of it all.

Now
Jackson, the man that I’d been trying to convince myself I despised knew about my past. That much was evident in the blue eyes that observed me like a predator waiting to devour his next victim.

“So you know.”
Somehow, I got those words out.

“I know everything. All about your mother
and your past. The real question is why doesn’t Ben? Why haven’t you told him?”

I didn’t bother sticking around to answer that question or to hear anything more that he might have to say. He could do whatever he wanted with the information in that folder as far as I was concerned. Even use it against me with Ben if he wanted to. I no longer cared.

I started for the door, but he stopped me.

“Where are you going?” I could almost swear there was just a little hint of regret or something bordering on human
in his voice. When I turned back to him, my hand still on the door the look in those cold eyes told me I'd been wrong. Jackson wasn’t human and I was a liability to him.

“I’m leaving. Do whatever you want with all of that
.” I pointed to the folder still in his hand before opening the door. “Because you see, it really doesn’t matter to me what you think of me.” And just like that, and I think to his complete surprise, I walked out of his very expensive house and away from Jackson Riley.

I ran
down the curved drive and out of sight and yet I couldn't keep stop. I was trying to outrun my past, but just like always, it was right there with me in my head and in my heart.

When I reached the edge of his exclusive neighborhood, I stopped and sank down on the edge of the road.

The little girl tears that had been there so many times in the past came back to haunt me making it impossible for me to believe I would ever be more than Rachel Monroe’s illegitimate daughter. The daughter of a drug addict. A woman who sold herself for the thrill of the high.

The memories of my mother and the years I’d spent with her had the power to make me feel worthless
, dirty, and unwanted all over again. All the things I’d fought to overcome growing up. All the things I wished that I could forget now.

I wasn’t like my mother—was I? I’d tried to convince myself of that over and over again. Our only real resemblance was our looks. My mother had the same silver blond curls as me and yes
, we were both very stubborn women, but that was it. That was where any resemblance ended.

Part of me still believed, and the very thought of it scared me to death, that if I’d remained with her for only a little while longer I would have turned out just like her. My life would have become a carbon copy of Rachel’s.

At fifteen, she’d dropped out of school, ran away from my grandmother and disappeared from sight. A year later, she was back. She’d just showed up at my grandmother’s small house in Santa Anna with me, a baby of only a few months in tow. I think my grandmother knew even then she was abusing her body with drugs. I was just lucky she’d had the common sense not to use while pregnant with me.

My mother disappeared again in her usual fashion, sneaking out in the middle of the night. She left me behind with a note for my grandmother, telling her that I would be better off with her. From that day on, my grandmother took care of me and loved me just like I was her own child. In fact, because of the things we went through with Rachel, we ended up closer than most mothers and daughters.

I didn’t see Rachel again until I was almost four.

When she came home again, fed my grandmother a string of lies about being clean and off the streets and then just like before left in the middle of the night. This time she took me with her.

Years later, I overheard Gran and Lee talking and learned that someone, probably one of her loser boyfriends had told her she could get money from the government for me. The only catch was I had to be living with her at the time.

Rachel had dragged me off with her in the middle of the night. I can still remember how frightened I was. I cried for days, missing my grandmother.

We moved around a lot in those days. Living in more run down apartments in Houston than I can remember. When the money ran out, we were forced out on the streets and eventually into a shelter.

Right before my fifth birthday, my mother decided she’d had enough of dragging a kid around with her. I suspected that it was because people were starting to ask questions and I was old enough and honest enough to answer all of them.

I ended up back with my grandmother, where I couldn’t have been happier. But my poor sweet grandmother was forced to take on the task of making me presentable to the world.

By that time, after being out on the streets for so long, I’m sure I resembled a little street urchin.

Grandma Sarah got me cleaned up and into school and church. Before I knew it, and in that childlike way, I was adjusting quite well to my structured lifestyle. Especially for someone who had known very little structure in her life.

I was happy again. I was with my grandmother—the only real family I had. It was a long time before I realized having me back in her life
forced my grandmother to keep working as a teacher to support me. She never complained. Later, I'd learned the truth from Lee and I’d loved her all the more because of all the sacrifices she’d had to make to keep me.

That was the last time I saw my mother again until after my tenth birthday. She came home one weekend and I hardly recognized her. She looked old, almost older than my grandmother
did. Her lifestyle was beginning to take its toll on her physically.

My mother had once been a very beautiful woman, or so I believed from all the earlier pictures I’d seen of her. Now she was nothing more than a shell of that fun loving girl my grandmother spoke so fondly of.

Rachel tried again to make us believe she’d changed. She wanted me to come back to live with her in Houston. She tried convincing us that she was clean and had gotten her life back on track. I knew my grandmother didn’t buy it any more than I did, but she believed she was powerless to stop her daughter from taking me if it came to that.

I, on the other hand, was not. After all I didn’t really know my mother anymore. All those terrible days I’d spent living with her had become just a suppressed nightmare that would wake me sometimes late at night.

I cried and cried and clung to my grandmother, the only real parent I’d known until finally, my mother gave up and left. With her gone, peace returned to my world. I forgot all about my mother for the time being.

Oh, she’d turn up from time to time like a bad penny, but I didn’t really have much to do with her. She was just a visitor as far as I was concerned.

Then, when I turned thirteen, she’d come back with a husband in tow determined to make up for lost time with me. She was clean and, I have to admit, she looked better than I’d ever seen her. She’d actually gained a little weight. She appeared happy which was all fine and good, but I had no intention of going to live with her even if she did have a special room ready for me in a brand new house.

I’d gone to my grandmother then for help and she’d decided to put an end to this whole thing once and for all. She’d sought legal help and found it all in Lee Worthy.

Lee was an older gentleman who had been practicing family law for more than twenty years. He’d taken my grandmother’s case for free. It wasn’t long before they became fast friends.

Lee won custody of me for my grandmother and I became instantly enamored with the law.

After the decision was official, my mother was forced to back down, but she and her new husband were determined to prove to me that things were different this time. For the rest of my years, living in my grandmother’s house, my mother had made herself a part of my life—whether I wanted her there or not.

I couldn’t accept her in my life at all. Maybe that was wrong, but to me she would never be more than a stranger. That’s all she’d been for me growing up and that was the way I was determined to keep things. My grandmother Sarah was the only relative I knew or needed.

But still, Santa Anna was a small town and almost everyone knew about my past. My friends came to my rescue in school when some kid would say something cruel to me, but there were always, throughout my life, those inevitable questions about my family that sent me back to the past.

Most of the time, I’d learned to simply steer clear of things that led up to those questions or keep silent when faced with them, which usually had people thinking my parents was most likely dead and I didn’t want to rehash painful memories. That had been the case with Ben.

But the thought of someone as unfeeling as Jackson Riley knowing my secrets was almost enough to send me running back home to my grandmother.

I would have, too, had I not kept reminding myself that both
Jackson and his nasty little opinion of me didn’t mean a thing. With any luck, he’d accomplish with Ben what I could not. He’d get him to leave me.

Besides, it didn’t matter what
Jackson knew about me. My future was settled. I was going home to Santa Anna to join Lee’s practice and nothing Jackson Riley could do—no matter how powerful he was—would ever change any of that. The man could do whatever he wanted with the stuff in that folder. I didn’t care.

No matter how hard I tried to ignore the pain, it hurt more than I could ever have imagined possible for
Jackson to know those truths.

Chapter Three

After my late night run-in with his uncle, I was almost certain I’d never see Ben again, yet two days before his scheduled flight to Paris Ben still didn’t have a clue about my past. I’d been expecting Jackson to actually gloat over telling his nephew all the dirt he’d found out on me. I certainly couldn’t imagine what he might be waiting for.