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  NEVER TOO LATE

  Patricia Watters

  SOMETIMES WHEN IT'S LEAST EXPECTED, LOVE FINDS ITS WAY... When Andrea and Jerry set out on a luxury cruise neither want, before long they find themselves drawn into a drug-smuggling scheme by the smooth-talking Italian who singled Andrea out for flattery the first day aboard. That's also when Andrea and Jerry begin to see each other in a whole different light, one that ignites a flame that had long since died.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  Copyright © 2012 Patricia Watters

  Created by Patricia Watters

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Watters, Patricia

  Never Too Late / by Patricia Watters

  ISBN-10: 1479118990

  ISBN-13: 978-1479118991

  ASIN: B007WV4R4K

  SERVICE REQUEST 1-810105014

  Printed and manufactured in the United States of America

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  BOOKS BY PATRICIA WATTERS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  Andrea Porter tapped away at her memoires, her fingers punching the keys on her laptop with more force than needed to input the letters, yet enough to release the pent-up venom over what was coming next...

  …I was three hundred miles from home, completely on my own to arrange my belongings, make up my bed, run my life—at least without the daily micromanaging of my parents (i.e. my father), and make my own decisions. Little did I know, my first day at college, that I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life. That was the day I met...

  "Andrea?" Her mother appeared in the doorway to the bedroom that had been Andrea's when she was growing up, a spacious suite with hand-finished Venetian plaster walls, a bathroom with a bidet imported from France, and a sitting room with a window that looked out on an estuary dotted with boats, and said, "James has cocktails ready for us on the veranda. Your father wants to talk to you there. I had Florie prepare the lobster dip you like, and your father's waiting for you to join him for cocktails."

  "You know I rarely drink, Mother, and never in the afternoon," Andrea said, wanting to delay the inevitable. Having her favorite lobster dip prepared was her mother's ploy to deliver her to her father, a sure sign that whatever he had to say would not be good.

  Her mother eyed her with vexation. "James prepared a Shirley Temple for you."

  Andrea drew in an agitated breath, while silently framing her modus operandi for evading her father's questions about why she was home for another long weekend. She was running out of excuses. And her father was becoming suspicious that her marriage was in trouble. But the day Carter Ellison III learned the truth about his daughter's marriage would be the day he'd roll out the big attorney guns—he had a whole battalion of them waiting to spend a chunk of the Ellison fortune—and make sure Jerry didn't get a single Ellison dime. But Jerry was too proud to take so much as a Ellison penny, so it was a moot point. However, she and Jerry weren't there yet. Although the D word had been bantered about, neither had acted on it. And the girls still had no idea that the home they grew up in had become a battle zone...

  When she realized her mother was still standing in the doorway, Andrea said, "Tell Daddy I'll be down in a few minutes."

  "Don't keep him waiting," her mother clipped. "You know how that irritates him."

  Andrea was familiar with men who got irritated when kept waiting. She'd lived with one for just short of twenty-five years. Odd how alike the two men were in some ways, and how completely poles apart in others, though neither would admit to the former. If truth be known, neither would like to acknowledge the existence of the other. Sucking in a long, nerve-calming breath, she filed away her memoires, shut down her laptop, and grudgingly went to face her father.

  ***

  On a covered veranda that featured a wet bar, a barbecue pavilion, and a fully equipped kitchen with an eating area that overlooked a swimming pool faced in Italian travertine marble, Carter Ellison sat reclined with his wife on the plush cushions of a double rattan lounge chair, a hand-rolled cigar in one hand, his signature whiskey sour in the other. Still fit and trim at seventy-four, with a crop of silver hair that showed no sign of thinning, and dark eyes sharp with awareness, his attention was drawn to Andrea when she stepped out of the solarium.

  Flicking ashes into an alabaster ashtray on a table beside his chair, he leveled his eyes on Andrea, and said, "You look like hell."

  "Thank you Daddy. I knew you'd brighten my day," Andrea replied, catching the glint of vexation that flared in her mother's eyes with the exchange of barbs. From a bowl on the butler's tray, Andrea took a square of bread with crusts removed, scooped up some lobster dip from the chaffing dish, and popped it in her mouth.

  "I'm serious," her father said, his tone less confrontational. "You've got circles under your eyes, you're nothing but skin and bones, and your hair looks like a rats’ nest."

  "Your father's right," her mother said. "You do have circles under your eyes, and your hair could use a good cut and styling. It gets to looking a little matronly when you do nothing to it."

  Andrea really, really didn't need this right now. It was bad enough being middle aged. She didn't need a reminder of just how bad it was.

  Her father drew on his cigar, exhaled a blue smoke ring, and said in the calculating tone he used when about to close a deal, "It's that bastard you ran off with, isn't it?"

  Andrea eyed her father with irritation. "I know you feel nothing but disdain for Jerry," she said, "and it's well established that he is in fact a bastard, like you so frequently point out, but he's also a self-made man, which is more than I can say for—" she stopped short. Reminding her father that he had nothing to do with building the Ellison cotton gin fortune was tantamount to self-destructing.

  "Inheriting old money and holding onto it are two different playing fields," Carter Ellison III pointed out. Funny how Andrea always thought of him that way when he got huffy.

  "And making one's own fortune is considered out in left field, as far as you're concerned," Andrea retorted. "But to get back to your pet peeve about Jerry... Yes, he was raised by an unwed mother who gave birth to two other children by different fathers, and no, he never went to college because he had to make his own way in the world. But he's managed to keep the girls and me living very comfortably over the years." She was surprised to be defending a man she'd like to see disappear from her life. Permanently! She shoved a toast round mounded with caviar into her mouth, and said, without thinking it through, "The problem with you is, you can't stand it that I married a man who refuses to jump through your hoops."

  "Please don't chew and talk at the same time," her mother commented. "You weren't brought up that way."

  "Give it up, Barbara," Carter said. "Andrea made her bed twenty-five years ago. Now she's lying in it."

  "Actually, Daddy, it's a very comfortable bed," Andrea countered. "And I happen to share it with the man I love." She shoved a cracker with pate fois gras into her mouth then found she couldn't swallow, her mouth too dry to get it down. After a swig of what tasted like maraschino che
rry juice with a squeeze of lime, she said, "I think I'll stroll down to the water and take the kayak out. Will I need to dress for dinner?"

  "It would be nice," her mother said. "The Hartfords are coming."

  Andrea didn't have to ask what to wear. Her mother would have clothes laid out on her bed—several sets of casual dinner wear to choose from, recently purchased from Charleston's most fashionable shops in preparation for the day the prodigal daughter would return to the proverbial nest for good. Her mother had no idea how quickly that day was approaching. But before that day would arrive, she'd be forced to celebrate yet another wedding anniversary with a man she no longer loved. A man she dreaded even seeing again.

  ***

  The following afternoon, Andrea swung her metallic-blue BMW around the circular driveway to the upscale home she and Jerry built in Myrtle Beach twenty years earlier, and punched the garage-door-opener, but as she pulled the car into the garage, she could already hear the TV blaring from the great room. She braced herself for Jerry's usual diatribe that would follow her appeal to turn down the volume...

  ...yeah well a man's home is his castle so get over it" ... or "...cut me a little slack. I'm busting my butt to keep you in designer jeans and two-hundred-dollar sneakers..." or "....it drowns out the sound of a nagging wife...

  Or, she could slip off to their bedroom suite and see how long it took for Jerry to realize she was home. Opting for the latter, she was in the process of making her way up the stairs when Jerry's voice blared from below. "I suppose you're going to shut yourself away for the evening?"

  Andrea turned and peered into a pair of cold hazel-brown eyes in a hard face. "You're right," she said, "because at least I can concentrate without having to listen to the TV blaring away. But it shouldn't make any difference to you. When we're together it's not exactly quality time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to continue my memoires. I've just come to my first day in college, which, if you recall, is the day we met."

  As she continued up the stairs, Jerry called after her, "Be sure to mention that you never worked a damn day in your life after that, thanks to me."

  Andrea stopped midway up, hands gripping the handrail, and said over her shoulder, "Yeah... right. And while I was sitting on my butt sipping daiquiris and eating caviar, the kids were getting themselves up in the morning and off to school, and fixing their own meals, and driving themselves to music lessons and brownie scout meetings and soccer practice because their father never had time to do it!"

  "That's because I have to work 24/7 because I have a wife whose sole purpose in life is to spend my money as fast as I can make it!" Jerry yelled up.

  Andrea turned, and said between agitated breaths, "If I had been able to finish college and start a career before you got me pregnant, five minutes after we were married, I might be earning my keep, so don't lay that guilt trip on me."

  "You're the one who insisted on dropping out of college to marry me," Jerry yelled up after her. "And I didn't exactly drag you screaming and yelling to my bed. Back then I couldn't keep you out. You were ready and willing anytime, day or night."

  "That's because I thought that's what you wanted!" Andrea snapped her jaws shut and continued up the stairs.

  "Hell, you wanted it as much as I did!" Jerry started up the stairs after her.

  Andrea glanced back. "Maybe from your viewpoint, but it was no picnic for me, having a husband who was hot and horny every second of the day and night, keeping me pregnant or nursing with three kids the first five years of our marriage, and a fourth about the time I thought we were done!"

  "Well, you pretty much shut that off when Scott was born," Jerry countered.

  "Don't bring him into this," Andrea warned. "He had nothing to do with what's happened to our marriage." She marched into the bedroom and swept open the door to the walk-in closet.

  "The hell he didn't," Jerry said. "You blame me for his death, and you'll never get over it."

  Andrea peeled off her shirt and hurled it into the laundry hamper. "Yes, I do blame you because if you hadn't bought him that muscle car he'd still be alive!" Turning her back to him she shed her clothes and grabbed her robe and shrugged into it in record time.

  "Wrong! If you hadn't let him go to a party where you had to have known there'd be booze and no parents, he'd still be alive!" Jerry said, his large frame blocking her exit.

  Andrea faced him squarely. "And if you hadn't been working late, leaving me to deal with the kids, like always, you would have been here to stop him from running off like he did." She shoved her way past Jerry and headed for the bathroom.

  Jerry grabbed her arm. "This house you live in, that new BMW you drive, your closet stuffed with designer clothes and shoes, every damn thing you have is because I work my butt off late at night to provide them. Now go on in the bathroom and shut the door and turn on the shower like you always do when you want to cut things off."

  "Ha! If only it were that simple," Andrea said, her voice laced with sarcasm.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Andrea glanced at his crotch, then looked at him, and said, "It means that when I'm finished my shower and ready for bed, you'll still be intact."

  "Don't worry, sweetheart!" Jerry spit out the words. "You're in no danger of me jumping your body. The urge to do so isn't there."

  Andrea glared at him. "All I can say is thank heaven the girls will be arriving tomorrow. That’ll mean two weeks we won't be alone to fight about anything and everything. How I've managed to stay with you for almost twenty-five years is nothing short of a miracle."

  "That works both ways!" Jerry said. "I'd like for once in my married life to find my wife smiling at me with open arms instead of giving me hell if I try to relax in front of the TV."

  "Then why don't you leave?" Andrea hissed. "The girls are married and gone and don't need either of us, so what's keeping you from cutting me loose?"

  "Your zillionaire parents!" Jerry barked. "They'd bury me alive, along with my business, if I dared cut their little silver-spoon-fed princess loose."

  "You've held that against me ever since my father offered to buy us a house and you turned him down flat," Andrea snapped, "which didn't get you any points with him."

  "I'm sure it didn't," Jerry said, "But if I had accepted your father's handout I'd just be another one of his lackeys, bowing and scraping to stay on his good side."

  "Well you certainly can't claim that," Andrea said. "You manage to stay on his bad side all the time and do whatever you damn well please."

  She started into the bathroom, but when she went to close the door, Jerry braced a hand against it and shoved it open. "Okay, now just cut the crap," he said. "It's getting damn tiresome listening to you rag at me day and night."

  Andrea turned to him and said in a quietly restrained voice, "Me rag at you? Why do you think I keep visiting my parents?"

  "Hell, I don't know," Jerry replied. "That fifteen-thousand-square-foot monstrosity of a house with its hot tubs and wet bars and ballroom-size bedrooms is the last place I'd want to go if I couldn't get along with my spouse."

  Andrea sucked in a long breath to keep from screaming, and said, "Look, we're getting nowhere with this. The girls will be here tomorrow and we'll have two weeks with them at the lake house as well as a wedding anniversary to get through while we're there, so we need to at least put up a front for them. They don't need to know that their parents can't stomach each other. And we need to get each other gifts to open in front of them on the hallowed occasion."

  Jerry let out an ironic laugh. "So what do you want for twenty-five years of hell with me?"

  "Since you put it that way," Andrea said, holding his steely gaze, "the only thing I really want is a divorce. But of course you wouldn't give it to me because my zillionaire parents would bury you alive."

  His expression dead sober, Jerry replied, "You've just convinced me it's worth the risk. Tomorrow I'll talk to Bill and have him get the paperwork started."

  "Fin
e, you do that," Andrea said. "And I propose we tell the girls as soon as they arrive so we won't have to go through two miserable weeks of tippy toeing around, pretending we're happily married. The thought of it makes me want to barf."

  "That works for me," Jerry said.

  The hard look on Jerry's face was a reminder of the reason Andrea wanted the man out of her life. "Then all we need to decide is which of us will go to the lake with the girls, and who’ll stay here." She waited for Jerry's reply, deciding whichever he chose would be fine with her, as long as they were not together.

  "You seem to be running the show as usual," Jerry said, "so you decide."

  Andrea absorbed that rebuke. "Well, since you never have time for the girls and their families, you go. It will give me two weeks of silent bliss and you a chance to get to know your grandchildren. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to shower."

  When Jerry made no move to leave, Andrea unfastened her belt, dropped the robe on the floor, and stepped into the glass-enclosed shower. This time she made no attempt to cover herself because the threat of having to go to bed with Jerry was no longer there. Feeling a release she hadn't known in years, she threw her head back, raised the lever on the faucet handle and let a stream of hot water beat against her naked body...

  Jerry let out a string of expletives, turned from the room and slammed the door.

  And Andrea primed herself for facing their three daughters with the whole ugly truth...

  ***

  The following day, and within a five minute period, all three girls arrived from different parts of the state in a great display of hugging and fawning over each other's children out on the front lawn. After hugging her two older daughters, Megan and Bailey, and their respective husbands, Andrea crouched to make a fuss over her grandchildren, then patted the protruding belly of her youngest daughter, Stefanie, and said, "How are you feeling, honey?"

  "Like crap," Stefanie replied, "but Mitch treats me like a queen so I'm getting through it."

  Andrea's eldest daughter, Bailey, pulled her three-year-old daughter, Sammie, away from the fountain in the driveway turnaround and scooped her up to rest on her hip. "Where's Dad?" she asked.