Coming To Terms
COMING TO TERMS
Patricia Watters
WELCOME TO THE BAHAMAS
ANDREA AND JERRY'S STORY: Tragic circumstances tore Andrea and Jerry's marriage apart, but when their grown daughters surprise them with a 25th wedding anniversary cruise to the Bahamas, on the eve of divorce proceedings, the young women inadvertently set into motion a dangerous chain of events that neither Andrea nor Jerry could have imagined when they set out on the unwanted cruise. It's also when they begin to see each other in a whole new light, one that forces them to face the truth behind their crumbling marriage, while reigniting a flame that had long since died.
BOOKS BY PATRICIA WATTERS
DANCING MOON RANCH SERIES
VIDEO BOOK TRAILER
Prequel: Justified Deception
Book 1: Righteous Lies
Book 2: Pandora's Box
Book 3: False Pretenses
Book 4: Uncertain Loyalties
Book 5: Becoming Jesse's Father
Book 6: Bittersweet Return
Book 7: Cross Purposes
Book 8: Dancing With Danger
Book 9: Bucking the Odds
Book 10: Forbidden Spirits
Book 11: Imperfect Magic
Book 12: Finding Justice
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCES
Coming to Terms
Adversaries and Lovers
Bittersweet Promises
In Hot Pursuit
HISTORICAL ROMANCES
Colby's Child
Perilous Pleasures
Miss Phipps and the Cattle Baron
Twilight of Memory
Come Be My Love
COMING TO TERMS
Copyright 2020 by Patricia Watters
Also published as Coming to Terms
Printed in the United States of America
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or were used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. The republication or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic or mechanical or other means, not known of hereafter invented, including xerograpghy, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law.
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
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LEVEL OF SENSUALITY: If you're looking for steamy stories you'll find instead sexy stories in a non-graphic way. My goal is to create heartwarming, action-packed romances about the power of love to triumph over adversity and the joy that comes with giving the gift of hope.
CHAPTER 1
Andrea Porter tapped away at her memoir, the force of her fingers punching the laptop keys reflecting the pent-up venom over what was coming next: I was three hundred miles from home, completely on my own to run my life without the daily micromanaging of my parents (i.e. my father). 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 that looked out on an estuary dotted with boats, and said, "James has cocktails on the veranda. I had Florie prepare the lobster dip you like, and your father's waiting for you to join him."
"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.
"James prepared a Shirley Temple for you," her mother said.
Andrea drew in an agitated breath, while silently framing her modus operandi for evading her father's question 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 an Ellison penny, so it was a moot point. However, she and Jerry weren't there yet. Although the D word had been bantered about, even more frequently of late, neither of them acted on it, and although there had been some strained moments when the girls were around, she was certain they had no idea the home they grew up in had become a battle zone.
"Please don't keep your father waiting. You know how that irritates him," her mother said, her words trailing off as she turned into the hallway and left.
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 calming breath, she filed away her memoirs, shut down her laptop, and grudgingly went to join her father. After making her way across the great room, she stepped into a solarium that featured a wet bar, a barbecue pavilion, and an eating area that overlooked a swimming pool faced in Italian travertine marble, and found her father sitting with her mother 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 eyes sharp with awareness, his attention was drawn to her when she stepped onto the veranda. Flicking ashes into an ashtray on a table beside his chair, he leveled his eyes on her, and said, "You look like hell."
"Thank you Daddy. I knew you'd brighten my day," Andrea replied, while 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, your face looks drawn, and your hair looks like a rat's nest."
"Your father's right," her mother said. "You could use a good makeover, and your hair needs styling and some highlighting to avoid looking like a dishwater blond."
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 vexation. "I know you feel nothing but disdain for Jerry, 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 banking fortune was tantamount to self-destructing.
"Inheriting old m
oney and holding onto it are two different playing fields," Carter Ellison III pointed out. Funny how she 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 added, "Your problem 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, and I happen to share it with the man I love." She took a swig of what tasted like maraschino cherry juice with a squeeze of lime, and added, "I'm going to 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. 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 rose from below. "I suppose you're going to shut yourself away for the evening."
Andrea turned and peered into a pair of hazel-brown eyes in a rock hard face. "It was my plan. When we're together it's not exactly quality time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get back to my memoir. 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 you never worked a damn day in your life after that, thanks to me."
Andrea stopped midway up the stairs, and said over her shoulder, "Yeah, right, and while I was sitting around sipping daiquiris and eating caviar, the kids were getting themselves off to school, and driving themselves to music lessons and brownie scouts 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!" 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 try to lay that guilt trip on me."
"You're the one who insisted on dropping out of college to marry me, and I didn't exactly drag you screaming and yelling to bed. Back then I couldn't keep you out. You were ready and willing anytime, day or night."
Andrea glanced back. "That's because I thought that's what you wanted, but it was no picnic for me being pregnant with three kids the first five years of our marriage, and a fourth about the time I thought we were done!" She snapped her jaws shut and continued up the stairs.
Jerry started up after her. "Well, you pretty much shut things off when Scott was born."
"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. You blame me for his death."
Andrea peeled off her shirt and hurled it into the laundry hamper. "That's because if you hadn't bought him a muscle car he'd still be here!" Turning her back to him she shed her clothes and grabbed her robe and shrugged into it.
"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 here!"
"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." Andrea shoved her way past Jerry and headed for the bathroom. "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! It's been no picnic for me either."
"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! Your father would bury me alive, along with my business, if I dared cut his 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.
"That's because if I had accepted your father's handout I'd just be another of his lackeys, bowing and scraping to stay on his good side."
"Well you certainly can't claim that. You manage to stay on his bad side all the time and do whatever you please!" Andrea sucked in a mind-clearing breath. "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 and a wedding anniversary to get through while we're there, so we need to at least put up a front for them and get each other gifts to open 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, "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 pinned her with eyes like steel, and said, "You've just convinced me it's worth the risk. Tomorrow I'll have Bill get the paperwork started."
"Fine, do that. And I propose we tell the girls as soon as they arrive so we won't have to go through two weeks of pretending we're happily married. The thought makes me want to barf."
"That works for me."
The hard look on Jerry's face was a reminder of the reason she wanted the man out of her life. "Then all we need to do is decide is which of us will go to the lake with the girls, and who’ll stay here."
"You seem to be running the show as usual," Jerry said, "so you decide."
Andrea absorbed that rebuke. "Okay then, 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. 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 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, within a ten minute span, all three girls arrived from different parts of the state. After hugging her two older daughters, Megan and Bailey, and their respective husbands, Andrea crouched to make a fuss over her three 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, Megan, stood holding the hands of her two-year-old twin boys, while Bailey pulled her three-year-old daughter, Sammie, away from the fountain in the turnaround and scooped her up to rest on her hip. "Where's Dad?" she asked.
"At work," Andrea replied.
Bailey rolled her eyes. "Why do I even ask? At least he gives us two weeks a year. We have to love him for that." She looked at Andrea with concern. "He did arrange to be away from the office for two weeks, didn't he?"
"Of course," Andrea said, although she dreaded breaking the news that she wouldn't be along, the first time in the twelve years they'd owned the lake house that the girls would have only one parent to fuss over them.
The sound of Jerry's SUV brought all heads turning in the direction of the black Mercedes barreling up the long drive. Jerry had barely climbed out when all three girls descended on him, giving him the bear hugs he always got when he arrived home, the way it had been since the girls could first toddle, which for some reason aggravated Andrea today. The girls even had Jerry's hazel-brown eyes, though Megan was the only one with his intense gaze.
Jerry kissed each on the forehead, and each looked at him adoringly, but then they'd only seen one side of their father. Although it was tempting to tell all, she'd spare the girls that. But Jerry had always been a different man with the girls. With them he had the patience of Job. They were his three dancing princesses he'd called them early on, but with Scott he'd been different. Stern, demanding, expecting Scott to take his knocks and get back up and be a man.