Forbidden Son Read online

  He towered over her, his stare drilling into her. His eyes seemed to capture her from hair to high-heeled shoes. Clearing her throat, she tried to appear businesslike.

  “Have I changed so much that you don’t recognize me, Tripp?” This wasn’t at all the way she had rehearsed the scene in her head. She didn’t blink an eye—afraid any reaction might betray her uncertainty.

  “Look, miss, I don’t have time for twenty questions. I meet a lot of people, if—”

  She wanted him to remember, to remember her, to remember—what? That seventeen years ago she had walked away from him? That she hadn’t had the courage to stand up to his father and fight for her position in the life of the man she loved. That for sixteen years she had raised the son he never knew existed. She should never have left Tripp. So much guilt, for so many mistakes. She had no one to blame but herself.

  She lifted her eyes to his. “Seventeen years ago, in Charleston, South Carolina, I asked you to take me for a ride in your shiny white BMW.”

  The silence of the office closed in around her.

  Praise for Loretta C. Rogers

  “Loretta C. Rogers’ novels are infused with characters that walk off the pages and into your heart.”

  ~Night and Weekend Reviews

  “This author uses her experience to tell a story in a fast-paced, spellbinding way. Her strong characters are believable and held my interest throughout.”

  ~Romance Studio

  Forbidden Son

  by

  Loretta C. Rogers

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Forbidden Son

  COPYRIGHT Ó 2012 by Loretta C. Rogers

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Rae Monet, Inc. Design

  The Wild Rose Press

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Vintage Rose Edition, 2012

  Print ISBN 978-1-61217-000-8

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To all the military men and women—

  Those who have sacrificed for my freedom

  And those who are still fighting today.

  God bless you all.

  Chapter One

  Washington, D.C.

  1980

  Dear Senator Hartwell,

  Seventeen years ago we—

  Honey Belle Garrett crumpled another sheet of hotel stationery, tossed it toward the wastebasket, and missed. The numerous wads of paper scattered over the hotel room’s carpet reminded her of giant dustbunnies.

  Dear Tripp,

  Do you remember when—

  She bent over a fresh sheet of paper and scrawled the few words only to abandon the thoughts. Frustrated, she pushed from the chair and padded, stocking-footed, to the bathroom for a temporary escape from the task she dreaded.

  She leaned against the sink to look at herself in the mirror, swallowing convulsively as she peered at the pale reflection with its haunted eyes.

  Dragging in a deep shuddering breath, Honey Belle wondered how she would explain to a United States senator that seventeen years ago he’d fathered a child.

  Her child.

  His child.

  Now she was in Washington, D.C. with their son, who in two days would be introduced as a junior page in Congress.

  In a few short weeks her life had transformed from that of a single mother happily in charge of her own quiet world, teaching rambunctious third graders and cheering at football games for her son and his teammates, to that of a woman who felt as if she were marching toward the gallows. She looked down and saw her hands were shaking. Strange, she was usually a confident, self-assured woman.

  “Damn,” she whispered, “what am I doing here? I should have stayed in Georgia.” And then she reminded herself of the importance of meeting with the senator before he and her son accidently bumped into each other.

  After splashing her face with cold water, she wearily returned to the bedroom.

  On the desk lay two pictures. She ran a loving finger across the image of her sixteen-year-old son. The other photo was of his father at the age of twenty-two. The two were twins, seemingly, and this frightened Honey Belle. Neither son nor father knew the other existed.

  Picking up the telephone, she dialed the hotel restaurant and ordered a pot of coffee and a peach turnover. She needed something strong and black to clear her head while she searched for the elusive words to pen in the note requesting a meeting with the senator.

  While she waited for room service, she paced back and forth, aware she had a hard furrow to hoe.

  She answered the rap on the door almost like an automaton. “Who is it?”

  “Room service. You ordered a carafe of coffee and a peach popover?”

  Honey Belle removed the security chain and opened the door. “Thank you.” Handing the room steward a gratuity for his services, she accepted the tray.

  She placed the refreshments on a table next to a wingback chair, retrieved a stack of stationery and a pen from the desk, and then, inhaling the rich aroma of the coffee, settled in the chair and poured a cup. As she savored the black liquid, she closed her eyes and tried to arrange her scattered emotions into cohesive thoughts. How could she trust this man not to dupe her?

  With a long sigh, Honey Belle opened her eyes and reached for the popover. “When all else fails, eat sweets.”

  Still restless, she wandered again to the bathroom and turned on the tub’s hot and cold water faucets, checking the temperature before she went into the bedroom for her gown and robe. She found her makeup bag, opened it and removed her electric razor, then undressed, tossing her skirt and blouse on the bed.

  Taking the razor with her, she returned to the bathroom, turned off the faucets, set a towel where she could reach it, reached down and tested the water, and then stepped in, gingerly.

  She liked the way the bath relaxed her, and slid lower into the water. The movement created warm, undulating waves that washed over her body and brought brittle memories of a particular nighttime swim at South Carolina’s Folley Beach.

  She drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly as she ran her hands over her naked body. It was almost as good at the age of the age of thirty-five as it had been at nineteen. Her stomach was flat, breasts softly rounded and legs slender. The sensual movement of the water evoked memories of tender caresses by the man she’d loved and thought had loved her, too.

  Resting her head on the back of the tub, she closed her eyes, allowing her thoughts to drift back to the year nineteen sixty-four and a sultry June day in Charleston, South Carolina. The day she’d met Tripp Harlan Hartwell III.

  Her daydream had rapidly become a nightmare.

  She was considered the poor white trash from the wrong side of the tracks—a high school dropout who flipped hamburgers for a living, with no real plans for the future.

  Tripp Harlan Hartwell III was the rich college boy destined for greatness. To say it was love at first sight for Honey Belle and Tripp sounded like a tired cliché. The fact remained: they did fall in love, and it was that passion which had set the course for disaster.

  She soaked awhile longer in the tub, then turned her attention to sh
aving her legs. The water grew cold, and she toweled off and slipped into the nightgown and robe. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she checked the time. Almost nine o’clock.

  With her son safely housed at the residential hall provided for pages, she had nothing but time on her hands until tomorrow, when she hoped to meet with the senator.

  She went to the closet and dug out her suitcase. Unzipping the top, she removed a scrapbook and a large manila envelope—the same envelope Tripp’s father had handed her so many years ago—the one that held demeaning pictures of her past. The pictures he’d used to force her to leave South Carolina.

  She didn’t like having her life turned upside down. Once had been enough. The insecure part of her feared she was about to open Pandora’s Box, but the mother part of her was a fierce tigress ready to protect her son against unfathomable hurts.

  She removed the robe and climbed into bed. Plumping the pillows with her fists, she propped against the headboard and tucked the quilt around her as if it were a safe cocoon. Then, almost reverently, she opened the scrapbook.

  For a while, she stared at the handsome face smiling up at her. The face of the man who’d promised to marry her. The man who’d left her alone and pregnant. Standing next to him was a person she’d hidden from and feared for seventeen years. Finally, she said to herself, “There’s no turning back now. This is what it’s all about.”

  She pushed back the damp tendrils of blonde hair as she turned the page and allowed her thoughts to drift backward as she relived all the events that led her to this time and place.

  Chapter Two

  Charleston, SC

  1964

  Honey Belle Garrett was born in rural South Carolina, on the wrong side of the tracks. In most social circles that translated into poor white trash. She never thought of herself as trash, just poor.

  Her daddy worked at the pulpwood mill and her mama flipped hamburgers at the Burger Bin. As much as she longed for nice clothes and sweet smelling perfume, Honey Belle knew it took both of her parents’ incomes to keep food on the table and pay the rent. Every so often, her mother managed to scrape together enough money to buy a few niceties. All that changed when her daddy had a heart attack. Sick as he was, he still managed to work a couple of days a week.

  The rental house Honey Belle shared with her parents was old and musty-smelling. The fans kept the air moving, stirring up dust, and whimsical daydreams.

  ****

  On a sultry March evening in 1964, Honey Belle had barely finished washing the supper dishes when her mama called, “Honey Belle, come sit on the back steps for a spell.”

  “Just a sec, Mama, I still need to wipe the stove.”

  When Honey Belle pushed the screened door open, she watched her mother grimace at the door’s familiar squeak. Settling on the step, she wrapped her arms around her knees and waited for her mother to speak.

  Delilah Garrett mopped the sweat from her forehead with a hankie so threadbare Honey Belle could almost see the moon through the dingy white material. “Lordy, Honey Belle, it’s only March and hotter’n Hades. Reckon we’re in for a scorcher of a summer.”

  Even though Honey Belle was an only child, her mother rarely gave her the time of day unless it was Honey Belle, do this or Honey Belle, I need you to—

  This is how she knew something important was about to happen when her mother invited her to sit with her on the backdoor steps.

  “Whaz up, Mama?”

  Honey Belle’s stomach clenched when her mother’s mouth tightened and she turned a slit-eyed gazed toward her. “I swannie, Honey Belle. Don’t young’uns speak English no more?”

  Ignoring the chastisement, Honey Belle concentrated on the stars, and vowed that someday she would leave South Carolina to seek fame and fortune as an actress in Hollywood. Lost in the daydream, she vowed to never again wear hand-me-down clothes or shoes, and she’d have a chauffeur drive her to the ritziest shops.

  Her mother’s words jolted her back to reality. “Honey Belle, there’s an opening at the Burger Bin. I talked to my boss. He said you could start next Monday. It’s a full-time job.”

  It seemed the stars exploded and all Honey Belle’s hopes and dreams of a different life shattered into a million pieces. She shifted uncomfortably on the wooden step. “I can’t work full time, Mama. There’s still two months left of school, and next year I’ll be a senior.”

  “You’re sixteen. What with your daddy sick and only working a few days a week, it’s high time you started pullin’ your weight around here. Why, I’ve been working since I was fourteen. You ain’t no better, little girl.”

  “But, Mama, if I quit school, I can’t go to college. It isn’t fair.”

  Her mother snorted, her voice a sarcastic sneer. “College? Humph. Big plans for a girl who ain’t got no money. How do you ’spect to pay for books and such? Besides, it takes brains, which by the grades on your report card, you ain’t got.”

  An awkward silence passed between them. Honey Belle silently admitted she was currently majoring in flirting and boys—especially those on the football team.

  She pushed aside the ache building in her chest to plead her case. “Please, Mama. At least let me finish out the year. What difference will two months make?”

  Even though it was too dark to see, she knew her mother sat with her legs crossed. She had a habit of jiggling her right foot. The wooden steps vibrated with the rapid movement. “I’ll tell you, little girl. It makes the difference between paying the rent and being set out on the street. It makes the difference between puttin’ food on the table or starving. It makes the difference in havin’ enough money to buy your daddy’s medicine. That’s what it means.”

  Honey Belle swiped a finger under her eyes and drew in a deep breath. “What if I worked after school? Wouldn’t that be okay, Mama?”

  Her mother stood and, in a rare gesture of affection, patted her daughter on the shoulder. “Doctor said your daddy cain’t work no more. We’re three months behind on the rent, and Mr. Ellerby said he cain’t tote us another month.”

  “I know things are bad, Mama, but with an education I can get a good job and help make life easier for you and daddy. Please, Mama, please don’t make me quit school.”

  The sorrowful sigh her mother heaved pierced Honey Belle’s heart. “I had hopes and dreams once upon a time. We all do, Honey Belle. Fact of the matter is, life usually gets in the way.”

  As much as Honey Belle wanted that intimate moment to last, it passed as quickly as the fluttering wings of a night moth. Her mother’s next words brooked no nonsense. “You’ll march down to the principal’s office tomorrow and withdraw yourself from school, or I’ll do it for you. Monday you’ll start the wake-up shift. I’ll stay with your daddy until you get home at two-thirty.”

  At that moment Honey Belle wanted to throw up. She didn’t bother to hide the groan that rose from the pit of her stomach. The wake-up shift started at five in the morning. Her vision had adjusted to the dark. In the moon’s rays, she saw the steel in her mother’s eyes, and the iron set of her jaw. When she got that look of absolute stubbornness, Honey Belle knew nothing would change her mother’s mind. Not even the devil himself.

  ****

  Time seemed to take wings, and before Honey Belle knew it, three years had raced by. Three years of baking biscuits and flipping hamburgers. Three years of eavesdropping on the conversations of high school kids sitting in the fast food joint’s booths, sipping colas and talking about which college they planned to attend, the careers they wanted to pursue. Three years of realizing that dropping out of high school had been a huge mistake.

  Never in her wildest imaginings did Honey Belle Garrett dream she was about to make an even bigger mistake, one that would change her life forever.

  Chapter Three

  When Tripp Hartwell III pulled to the Burger Bin’s drive-through window in his shiny white BMW convertible, Honey Belle knew he was somebody special. A notorious flirt, she leaned out the window a
nd handed him the order of double cheeseburger, hold the onions, fries, and a cola. She offered him her most seductive smile. “How ’bout a ride in your fancy car?”

  She wanted to swim in those blue eyes that reminded her of the ocean on a sunny day. When he smiled, his teeth were perfectly straight and matched the color of his shiny white car. “I don’t ride girls in my convertible unless there’s a very good reason, darlin’.”

  She leaned closer to catch the subtle hint of his cologne. Expensive, she guessed, and wanted to snuggle against his chiseled jawline. “Today is my birthday. Is that reason enough?”

  He flashed a wink. “Ah, your birthday. I’m not interested in jailbait. What are you, sixteen?”

  Still leaning out the window, Honey Belle squeezed her armpits together to accentuate the mounds of her breasts. “When I get home there’ll be a birthday cake with nineteen candles on it. I reckon that makes me old enough to ride in your convertible.” She returned his wink. “And with the top down, of course.”

  He arched an eyebrow. It was a simple gesture, but one that pitter-pattered Honey Belle’s heart. “In that case, birthday girl, what time is your shift over?”

  “First, my name is Honey Belle Garrett. And second, my shift ends at two o’clock. I’ll meet you out front, Mr.—”

  “Tripp Hartwell the Third.”

  “My, my. Fancy name to go with your fancy car, Mr. Tripp Hartwell the Third.” She smiled pleasantly.

  “Honey Belle…are you as sweet as your name?” Before popping a French fry in his mouth, he pursed his lips into a kiss. The way he looked at her caused her heart to bang unevenly against her ribcage. She gave herself a little hug when he revved the engine and drove off.

  A loud harrumph sounded behind her. She turned to face Carla, a round-faced, red-cheeked girl who worked the counter. “I can see you’re busting out all over to say something, Carla. Go ahead, spit it out.”

  “Hope you ain’t countin’ on that rich boy to keep his promise.”

  “You’re such a pessimist, Carla. He’s a man of his word.”