Bettina’s Gamble
Book Four of the Texoma Series
[December 2005]
Bettina Montgomery’s world crumbles when her mother announces the name of her biological father–and then leaves the country. What’s a girl to do but take off to search for the man who never knew she existed.
Ron Gregory’s in trouble big time. Just doing the right thing by paying his gambling debts to Big Ernie gets him in even hotter water when he’s ambushed by Ernie’s wife. There’s no where to go but into hiding until things cool off. The last thing he expects though is to be photographed as he sunbathes nude–and then to have the most delectable photographer he’s ever seen take the picture and run.
It’s not really lying when he needs so much help.
It’s not really kidnapping when she goes willingly.
Or is it?
Reviews
“Bettina’s Gamble is a book that I would love having on my nightstand to read again.”
Romance Junkies
Excerpt
California
“You. Me. Now.”
Ron Gregory’s steel-edged words followed Levi Fletcher into the small men’s room on the third floor of Bone Cold–Alive’s recording studio. Even though Fletch cast a look of daggers over his shoulder, Ron wasn’t deterred from shooting through the door behind him, whirling to close and lock it. He ignored the profanity from the other side of the door as Eddie C Samuels pushed to enter.
Fletch didn’t let Ron’s words or actions stop him. Casually unzipping his designer trousers, he looked straight ahead at the granite tiled wall. “Gee, Ron, I didn’t know you cared.” He let a smile lift the corners of his mouth. “But C is going to have a field day with this. He’s just looking to get something on you. Paybacks are hell.”
“I don’t care, not in this universe, I don’t, you old bugger.” Ron sat on the vanity edge by the sink and crossed his arms and ankles. The wooden drumsticks still in his hand beat a rhythmic tattoo against the granite. “And C can go to the ladies’ room. He’s probably been there before.”
“Just not to use the facilities, right?” Fletch re-zipped, then elbowed Ron off the area as C’s protests became louder. “What do you want that can’t be accomplished with an appointment or staying late after the session or a phone call? All of a sudden, we don’t let the drummer have my numbers?”
“The drummer. That’s all I am to you, aren’t I? Well, your sexy secretary won’t let me have an appointment and you haven’t stayed to the end of a session in ten years and if I want to hear your voice, I shouldn’t have to do it on the answering machine!”
Fletch removed his glasses and sighed as he splashed water over his face. What kind of trouble was he about to be plagued with now? And from his least favorite member of the band, his perpetual Achilles’ heel. The other four members–troublesome though they were–the other four never even came close to irritating him the way this man did. Ron had a way of crawling under Fletch’s skin and scratching it from the inside. It was an itch he could never quite lose. Reaching for a linen towel, he buried his face in it and gently massaged his temples. He tossed it to the wicker bin, replaced the wire-rims and stared up at the younger, taller, fitter man. Metallic gray eyes met his as Ron set his mouth in a straight line above the well-shaped dark goatee.
Fletch cleared his throat. “I told Cherie to keep the riffraff out.”
“Well, you’re going to think riffraff if you don’t listen to me!” Ron poked Fletch in the chest with the end of the sticks. “I’m in trouble, old man.” Poke. “Serious trouble.” Poke. “And you aren’t going to have a drummer to insult if you don’t at least listen to me!” He pulled the sticks away, turned to the locked door, clicked the bolt just as C laid a shoulder into the door. He fell in and Ron side-stepped him, never missing a beat, as he stalked off down the carpeted hall.
Fletch helped C right himself before he hit the floor. “And what was all that about, Fletch? You and Ron getting cozy all of a sudden?”
“Shut up, C.” He brushed his hands down his pants and looked up and down the hallway for Ron, but he had neatly disappeared. Ignoring the slam of the bathroom door in his wake, Fletch started to his office three floors up.
Damn! What was the matter now? He punched the elevator button with more force than necessary for the car’s arrival. Ron’s trouble must be of mega-proportions if he was seeking Fletch’s advice or help. The band members were adults, and Fletch, as band manager, let them live their lives, including living with the consequences those lives brought. But in the last three years, it seemed one crisis after another just attached itself to his persona and organization. First, he had had to get Eddie T off drugs–a relatively painless experience compared to finding him recuperating in the arms of a “good woman”, one who had turned the rock-music world’s number one bad boy into a loving husband and father. It was a reputation the former reprobate was basking in, and if Fletch had had to guess where the next piece of trouble was coming from, he’d have picked Eddie T’s retirement from the public eye.
But, no! What was he thinking? It looked like the misery was going to continue to be spread around!
The elevator doors opened and he was grateful to be the only passenger. Leaning his head back on the wall, he continued cataloging his troubles. Then Eddie C, T’s twin and the poster-child for bad relationships with women, managed to have one woman fall in love with him–and he with her–while conceiving a daughter with another! It took a wedding and an adoption to straighten that mess out, turning, in the interim, a perennial human tomcat into the most obnoxious photograph-showing daddy Fletch had ever met! The man probably saw himself with a dozen children scattered about the hearth, his wife Jemma smiling beatifically as she nursed and rocked the latest one.
Fletch made a mental note to have an immediate talk with the very pregnant Jemma per the size of the Eddie C family.
The elevator dinged. The sixth floor. He looked at his office doors at the end of the hallway with something akin to longing. Refuge–and a smiling Cherie–waited on the other side. In a normal walk to his door, he would stop to admire the string of multi-platinum albums, straighten an autographed photo, rearrange the music industry awards in the trophy case–to which he was the only holder of a key. But, of course, things were certainly not normal–whatever that used to be. His mind dragged up the memories of simpler days even as his body tried to double-time down the hall. He couldn’t even hire a graphic artist/webmistress without complications. Sara Charlotte–SC to those she wanted kept at a distance–Ward-Wilson had stirred the band’s emotions as she’d descended on Jinks, Texas, last April–was it just a year ago?–for a BCA weekend that had stretched even Fletch’s long-suffering patience to the breaking point.
Jinks. Now there was a fine piece of geography! Once he’d thought it the answer to prayer, a safe haven where T could recover. How was he to know that he’d soon own two pieces of it himself: one, the high-tech state of the art studio where they should be right now and for some reason weren’t, and two, a lake cabin with a formidable neighbor in the person of Mary Nell Lucas, a widow with Fletch in her matrimonial crosshairs. Which, now that he thought of it, was probably what prompted him to hire Cherie. It was a backlash, a rebound. He needed something to explain it.
He reached the double doors to his office suite. Ron Gregory. The band member he loved to hate. The drummer. Couldn’t live with one, couldn’t live without one. At least not in this business, where the drummer might set the beat, but otherwise he was buried behind the more glamorous vocalists. Drummers were most assuredly not a dime a dozen. But this drummer had yet to meet the deck of cards or the pair of dice he didn’t want to make love to. Was that it? Had he finally made a bet so huge and horrendous he needed into his 401k to pay it off? Not very likely, Ron, my boy! Not very likely!
Pushing open the doors, he found Cherie, all red-haired five-foot-one built-like-a-brick-outhouse of her, standing arms akimbo in the doorway to his private office. Her foot tapped and she whirled on her boss. “Levi,” –why he had allowed her to call him that, when no one but his mother and a very special long-ago dalliance ever had, he’d never know, but he thought it had something to do with her perfume– “Levi, Mr. Gregory says he has an appointment with you. I have informed him numerous times–”
He waved a hand at her. “It’s okay, Cherie. Sometimes you just have to face the unpleasantness.” He tightened his smile. “Right, Ron?”
Ron slouched his six foot frame further down into one of Fletch’s visitor chairs. “It was good of you to see me on such short notice.” He made no effort to hide the contempt in his voice. The bitch that guarded the office had verbally attacked him like the alley cat she was when he’d strode into and through her precious domain. He hoped she was a good lay, because surely the old boy was sleeping with her for that kind of abuse to be taking place in his office right under his nose. Hell, he’d probably given her lessons.
Fletch narrowed his eyes at Ron and reached over to the phone, pushing a button and smiling at his guest in the process. “Hold all my calls, Cherie. Nothing, I repeat nothing, is to interrupt us.” He didn’t lose contact with Ron’s eyes. “In fact, lock the door and go home.”
“But, Levi…” and it was a whiny voice. Surely, surely, he was sleeping with her.
“Now, Cherie. See you Monday.” Fletch clicked the button, leaned back in his desk chair and spread his hands. “I’m all yours.”
Now that he had the band manager’s undivided attention, Ron stalled. He crossed his left ankle over his right knee and picked at the hem on the worn jeans. Fletch steepled his hands under his chin and didn’t say a word. This is how Cherie would find them Monday morning if Ron didn’t start the conversation he had insisted upon.
“I have a gambling problem.”
This, of course, would not be big news to Fletch. It certainly wasn’t big news to BCA or bookies or Las Vegas high-rollers. That he could voice this as a concern and add the word “problem”, that was big news. It had taken some deep soul-searching to come to this turn of phrase and Fletch’s raised eyebrow acknowledged that.
“And?”
Ron cleared his throat and looked up at the ceiling. “And you know the gravity of this problem for me to come here to you.”
Fletch nodded. Ron. Fletch. Never a match made anywhere near heaven, Ron felt they were each other’s Necessary Evil. Fletch was the best at what he did, and the five members of the band had the opportunity, each and every one of them, to be millionaires many times over. If they weren’t, it was their own fault and Ron felt himself squirm inwardly. If money were his only problem, he wouldn’t be sitting here abasing himself to his nemesis. Fletch had benefited equally well financially. Ron was appreciative of the mind behind BCA’s success; he was equally appreciative of the fact that he was an important cog in the wheel, one that had been there from the beginning. Surely that loyalty could pay off now.
“So how much are you in for?”
As if he would ask him for money! But then, what else would Fletch think? Ron coughed. “The jewels,” he answered.
“What jewels?”
“My jewels. My family jewels.” Ron made a brief motion toward his mid-section.
Fletch grinned and gave a little laugh. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning?”
~ * ~
London
“Mum, you needed to see me?” Bettina Montgomery eased open the door to her mother’s bedroom and peered in. The small, comfortable room glowed in the mid-afternoon English light that streamed in the open windows. Boxes and suitcases were stacked on each piece of furniture, and Bettina wondered how the bed could hold any more clothing. “Bridget and Wes are going to un-invite you if you try to squeeze all that in the shipping crates.” She tried to keep her voice light, entertaining, amused. She didn’t want to sound like what she felt: deserted.
Beatrice Montgomery halted folding her favorite nightgown and laid it across the top of the closest open suitcase. “Nobody forced Wes to ask his mother-in-law to live in Australia with them. He might as well know the worst of it now and un-invite me, as you said.” She opened her arms to her daughter and Bettina gave her a quick hug. There wasn’t any place to sit, so she leaned against the bed post and watched her mother remove two pairs of khaki trousers from the suitcase, unfold, re-crease, refold, and then place them back precisely where they had been. She was, Bettina realized with a furrowed brow, distracted, nervous almost. But why? And why now, months into this enterprise?
“Would you close the door, dear?” she asked with her back to Bettina.
She pushed off the piece of solid mahogany, a wedding gift from her grandparents to her mother, and closed the door. The click of the brass latch echoed off the wooden floors. Turning, she kept her distance and leaned her back against the door instead of the bed.
Beatrice puttered for another minute and finally Bettina could stand it no longer. “Mum, I left work early to come see you. What is this about?” They were a loving family. Close-knit would best describe the widowed mother and her two grown daughters, but Beatrice didn’t ask her children to leave work early. Bettina was fully expecting to go to the airport with them later in the evening, would be spending a great deal of time with the shippers tomorrow. To be asked to leave the ad agency early… all the photos from the American shoot still to be inspected… What last minute decision had her mother made? What was to be said that needed just the two of them behind a closed door?
A jumper clutched to her midsection, Beatrice turned. “Oh, dear. I’ve muddled it, haven’t I?” She studied her toes, bare feet a habit no one could break her of, no matter how cold the house became. A piece of her childhood, she always said. One didn’t grow up in Africa without bringing a piece of it home. And it was warm in Western Australia. Wes had promised.
“Is there a problem, Mum? Is there something I need to tell Bridget or Wes? Have you changed your mind?”
Maybe that was the crux of it, and in her heart, Bettina didn’t know what she’d feel if her mother had decided not to go. Bridget and Wes had returned to his native land two years ago when he’d finished his doctoral studies at Oxford. Then they’d come back to London to do the final arm-twisting in the campaign to persuade Beatrice that she wanted to join them, that she wanted to see her grandchildren grow up… An offer the verging-on-spinsterhood Bettina wasn’t going to make to her any time soon, especially after it became obvious that Bridget was already in the family way. Having recently retired from her bank position, Beatrice had accepted. Almost gleefully.
“No, I haven’t changed my mind.” She drew a deep breath as she turned large, chocolate brown eyes on Bettina. Her café-au-lait skin bore few wrinkles, and she could pass for a woman at least ten years younger than her fifty-plus years. There was no gray in her hair, and she smiled the toothy smile Nils Montgomery always said made him fall in love with the quiet, intelligent woman with the English father and the Nigerian mother. Which, Bettina supposed, as she looked at her lovely mother and then glanced to the photograph of the ruddy Scotsman on the dresser, was how she ended up with out-of-control black hair, freckles, blue eyes, and what appeared to be a year-round tan. With uncharacteristic chagrin, she thought of her sister, auburn-headed and dark-eyed, and knew Bridget would be turning heads on the street when she was nine months gone with child. “Do you mind terribly being alone?”
“Mum…”
“No, dear, I know we’ve been over this. But you can come with us.” She paused, chewed her lower lip. “There’s no one to keep you here, is there?”
“Mum.” Bettina set her jaw. “As you have so often told me, ‘Bettina, you’ve lost at love three times already. Be cautious or quit!’” She tried to get her exasperation in check. “Is that why you hauled me in here? Guilt?”
“Guilt?” She sighed. “Not for leaving, no.”
The hairs stood on the back of Bettina’s neck and her arms got goose pimples. Was there a skeleton in the closet? She took a deep breath. “So, the secret of the day is…”
Beatrice’s eyes snapped and Bettina could watch the decision she was wavering on become lodged in concrete. “Well, you’re not going to like it, but I can’t leave until it’s told.” Her mother moved the open suitcase to the floor and sat down, patted the space beside her for Bettina. “I’ve tried to. God knows I’ve tried to not tell you.” She patted the spot again and Bettina reluctantly pushed herself off the door and joined her mother. Beatrice took her hand but didn’t look at her. Instead, her eyes rested on Nils’ photograph. “I loved Nils Montgomery very, very much.”
It came out as verra verra, and Bettina felt her heart rate quicken. This was not boding well. Her mother lapsed into her father’s brogue only when nervous. Very nervous. She’d been a blithering idiot in it two years ago when Nils had suffered his fatal heart attack.
“We loved Daddy, too, Mum.” Bettina patted Beatrice’s hand.
“He were a good man.”
“Yes, Mum.”
“You have no idea how good.” Now Beatrice looked at her, and the hairs on Bettina’s neck got the shivers.
“Why don’t you just say it, Mum?”
“You weren’t Nils’ child.”
What? What had her mother said? What had she just blurted out with little preamble? No going a long way to finally telling a short answer, no that wasn’t Beatrice’s way. Once pushed, she’d just say it. “You weren’t Nils’ child.”
Bettina felt her skin go clammy and she caught her breath in her throat. Maybe she hadn’t heard correctly. “Mummy? But you and Daddy were married when I was born.” And she could count to nine, too. They weren’t married when Bettina had been conceived, but, good Lord!, was anybody these days? Well, yes, she answered her own question, Bridget and Wes were married pre-conception.
“Yes, we were. Married, that is. But he knew you weren’t his when we married.” She set her jaw. “I never lied to him, Bettina. I told him up front what was what.”
“And what was that, Mum? What was what? I mean, who was what? I mean, who is my father?”
Beatrice let go Bettina’s hands and they both wiped the clamminess off on their trousers. Her mother stood, strode halfway to the window before turning back. She clasped her hands in front of herself and stood still as a statue. “I guess I need to start at the beginning.”
“It would help.”