Courting Trouble Read online

  COURTING TROUBLE

  By Maggie Marr

  COURTING TROUBLE

  Maggie Marr

  Copyright © 2012

  All Rights Reserved.

  AGENCY INFORMATION

  NLA Digital Liaison Platform LLC

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

  Writers spend years laboring over a single book. Please respect their work by buying their books from legitimate sources. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is for my mother, Margaret L. Marr, who gave me my life

  and

  for my niece, Lauren Harrison, who saved it.

  Praise for Courting Trouble

  “Courting Trouble has all the elements I love: family drama, strong characters, and sizzling heat. I loved Courting Trouble!”

  —Jennifer Probst, New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage Bargain and The Marriage Trap

  “Family secrets, buried truths, and long-lost love—Maggie Marr gives us all that and more! Courting Trouble makes facing the difficult past absolutely delicious!”

  —Megan Crane, author of Once More With Feeling and I Love The 80's

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Maggie Marr

  Praise for Hollywood Girls Club

  An Excerpt from Hollywood Girls Club

  Praise for Secrets of the Hollywood Girls Club

  An Excerpt from Secrets of the Hollywood Girls Club

  ’Praise for Can’t Buy Me Love

  An Excerpt from Can’t Buy Me Love

  Chapter One

  Savannah McGrath pushed open the Jeep door and the shriek of old metal tore through the frigid mountain air. A gray pall hung heavy in the sky—no sun—no blue—not even the scent of snow. Her legs trembled and sent a shiver up her spine. The shiver shifted and hardened in her belly into a thick, sick feeling. Her hand tightened around the butt of the Winchester 1897 and her thumb caressed the initials that had been carved into the heavy wood stock nearly a century before by a dime-store pocket knife.

  Grandma Margaret always said the only difference between a possum and a man was that the possum hissed before you shot it. Savannah’d seen a possum hiss—this morning she intended to find out about the man.

  Savannah’s breath, like puffs of smoke, drifted into the early morning sky. She trudged across the Hopkinses’ front yard—a foul-looking patch of dirt and rock—past a rusted snowmobile missing both skis that waited on cinder blocks for a rescue that would never arrive. She climbed the porch steps. Rickety and rotted, the wood creaked beneath her. On the porch crumpled beer cans lay scattered beside a ripped green leather sofa. The Hopkinses didn’t take much interest in caring for things, including their family.

  Anger surged in Savannah. Anger fueled by seventeen years of neglect. Anger fueled by her daughter. Anger fueled by Bobby Hopkins. An anger that rushed through her head and caused a pounding within her brain nearly as loud as her fist pounding on Bobby’s front door.

  “Bobby, you get your no-good ass out here!”

  A shadow flickered on the other side of the picture window, but no face emerged.

  “I know you’re in there!” Savannah yelled. “I’m not leaving until we settle this. You hear me, Bobby?”

  She pressed her nose against the cool glass of the picture window. Silent images flickered across the unwatched TV in the darkened living room. Her heart hung heavy in her chest with the emptiness of the room, with the squalor of the house, with the absence of Bobby and his continued cowardice toward their daughter.

  Savannah turned away from the window, her grim feelings like gravity on the corners of her mouth. She stomped down the steps. Her gaze locked on the window just above the garage and she backed into the front yard. Seventeen years before, Savannah had thought she discovered the cure to all that ailed her within that bedroom—a lover, a friend, a partner for her life—but what Savannah had really found was a whole lot of sex and very little contraception.

  “She’s mine, Bobby!” Savannah called out into the early morning air. “Do you understand? I raised her! You ran your ass off to Alaska and I raised her!” Her cheeks were too cold to feel her tears. On her tongue the salt tasted bitter. “Damn you, Bobby Hopkins.”

  Her heart broke wide and pain thrashed out at her ribs and squeezed at her lungs—so tight and so hard that air burst from her lips and she struggled to draw in a breath. The pain wasn’t for her, the pain wasn’t for Bobby, the pain wasn’t even for Savannah’s long-lost, once-upon-a-time young love—the pain—this pain—that crippled her and stole the breath from her body was for her nearly grown daughter, Ash.

  Shame. Embarrassment. Sadness. She and Bobby conveyed those tokens upon their only child much like Savannah’s mother had bequeathed to her. Savannah’s mouth clenched closed with a force that might shred enamel from her molars.

  Dammit, Bobby would speak to her. Savannah raised the butt of the gun to her shoulder and sighted on the bedroom window. Her finger settled against the cold metal of the trigger. She wouldn’t let Bobby cower and hide like a cur. He would answer for what he’d done to her, to them, to Ash. He’d answer for what he did in the past and what he was trying to do now. She wouldn’t kill him, but she’d flush out the son of a bitch.

  Savannah raised the shotgun’s barrel and aimed just over the roof. She squeezed tight on the trigger and the gun butt slammed into her shoulder. A shaker shingle exploded off the roof.

  After the blast of two more shotgun shells and the eruption of two more shingles from the Hopkinses’ roof, a black-and-white SUV rolled to a near-silent stop. No flashers. No siren. Quiet and still, just like that cold Rocky-Mountain morning before Savannah’s shotgun blast.

  Self-possessed and without fear, Sheriff Jennings slowly stepped from his SUV. “Morning, Savannah.”

  “Wayne,” Savannah said. She didn’t turn. She didn’t lay down her gun. Instead, she pressed the butt to her shoulder and considered whether she wanted to squeeze off another shot.

  “I’m gonna have to ask you to lay down that gun.”

  Savannah closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Adrenaline pounded through her body. Her heart hammered within h
er chest to the righteous beat of a lover scorned. She pointed the gun toward the ground.

  “No problem, Wayne.” Savannah leaned forward and laid the gun on the ground as if settling a baby into a bassinette. When she stood she raised both hands in the air. Not because Wayne told her to, but because she figured that’s what you did when you got arrested.

  “Thank you, Savannah,” Wayne said. “Now I need you to back away from the gun.”

  Savannah stepped back—away from Grandma Margaret’s gun, away from the Hopkinses’ house, away from her anger.

  “I hate to ask you to do this Savannah, seeing as you’re wearing nice pants and all, but you’ve gotta kneel on the ground and put your hands behind your head.”

  With her hands raised, Savannah half turned toward Wayne. “Really?” Savannah asked. Her limp shoulders slumped forward; the McGrath fight drained out of her. Her rage deflated like a pinpricked balloon. “Can’t you just come on over here and cuff me?

  “It’s procedure,” Wayne said.

  Savannah knelt onto the ground. The cold wet mud pressed through the material to her knees. With the click of closing handcuffs and the weight of cold steel on her wrists, shame lodged in her heart. Savannah’s bottom lip quivered—what had she just done?

  Her head hung low as Wayne led her to his SUV. She couldn’t meet the gaze of the looky-loos now gathered across the street in Linda Landry’s front yard. Her mass of brown curls fell about her cheeks, but she couldn’t hide—Ash couldn’t hide. Growing up, Savannah and her sister had endured taunts about their mama’s bad behavior, and now Savannah had inflicted a similar humiliation onto Ash.

  “Damn it,” Savannah muttered.

  “What’s that?” Wayne settled behind the wheel and met Savannah’s gaze in the rearview mirror.

  “Just the hell to pay Ash will have.” Savannah looked across the street at the women wearing nightgowns and whispering behind cupped hands.

  “Kids can be cruel,” Wayne said.

  Both Wayne and Savannah knew from experience just how cruel the kids of Powder Springs, Colorado, could be to each other.

  Savannah fought the humiliation that settled in her chest and the tears that brewed in her eyes. “Wonder what Grandma Margaret thinks today?” As if she might erase the last ten minutes, Savannah closed tight her eyes and shook her head. “Me standing on Bobby Hopkins’s front lawn, shooting at the sky?”

  “She probably thinks you’re one strong McGrath woman standing up for your own.”

  Savannah pressed her lips into a hard line and fought back the tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks. At least Wayne didn’t think she was half-cracked, even if she was sitting in the back of his police cruiser with her hands in cuffs.

  Savannah’s sister wouldn’t share Wayne’s sentiment. Tulsa would tell Savannah how dramatic she was, how bad Savannah’s behavior was for Ash, how Savannah had jeopardized custody of Ash to release her own anger.

  That was once Savannah told Tulsa Ash’s custody was even in jeopardy.

  “Tulsa coming back from LA?” Wayne asked.

  Savannah locked eyes with Wayne in the rearview mirror. “She is now.”

  Chapter Two

  “Albie Hecht, you are the biggest prick on this planet!” The vowels swirled long and slow from Sonia’s mouth with her thick Brazilian accent.

  “Well, if I’m the biggest prick what does that make you? Perhaps the biggest cu—”

  “Hey!” Tulsa held up her hand. There were certain words she didn’t allow in her law firm. “Let’s keep it courteous, shall we?” Cool and sharp-edged, Tulsa’s voice drew a line that both her client, Albie, and his soon-to-be ex-wife crossed at their peril.

  Sonia clutched Sprinkles, the couple’s pampered pup, closer to her cleavage, soothing the pooch with the stroke of her hand and the bounty of her breast.

  Opposing counsel, David Strotmeyer, placed his elbow onto the slick mahogany conference-room table and settled his chin into his palm. “We’ve come to terms on everything: the home in Aspen, the pied-à-terre in Paris—”

  “—the original Picasso,” Tulsa broke in.

  “But there is one final matter.”

  Everyone’s gaze landed on Sonia. The lynchpin to the success of this multi-million-dollar divorce settlement quivered on her lap.

  Sprinkles.

  “Can we please reach some sort of agreement with regards to Sprinkles?”

  “We must come to terms over Sprinkles,” Tulsa said. “If you truly want this marriage to be finished.”

  The jaw muscle in Albie’s cheek flinched. He crossed his arms and turned his chair ever so slightly away from the table.

  “You do want this marriage to be over, don’t you?” Tulsa’s gaze bounced from a closed-off Albie—arms crossed, gaze averted, to Sonia, who leaned forward while Sprinkles’s tongue lapped at her lips.

  Tulsa sucked in her cheeks and stifled a gag reflex deep in her throat.

  “He does not love Sprinkles!” Sonia shot out, her voice filled with thick-sounding consonants. She flipped her luxurious black hair over her shoulder. “He only wants to have her! To control her! Albie has no love for any woman!” Sonia’s hand sliced through the air as if chopping a carrot top. Sprinkles jumped in response, the tiniest whimper escaping from her throat. “We are merely trophies for him to put on a shelf.”

  David started, “This case is—”

  “Is that what you think?” The force of Albie’s words propelled his arms—his torso—across the table toward Sonia. “That I wanted to control you? That you were only a trophy?”

  Like a magnet to metal, Sonia leaned toward Albie, her voluptuous lips pursed not in disdain, but in near arousal. Her eyes begged for more from her mate—more words—more emotion—more time.

  A breath heavy with frustration escaped Tulsa. She’d often witnessed the look now on Sonia’s face—on innumerable soon-to-be ex-wives. Sonia still wanted Albie.

  Tulsa clasped her hands together. Her gaze landed first on Albie, with his eyes wide and hopeful he searched Sonia’s face for the tiniest hint of a rekindled romance. Tulsa next turned to her opposing counsel, his eyes heavy-lidded and weary from eight months of never-ending settlement negotiations. Finally Tulsa looked up at the ceiling—smooth and flat—just like she willed her face to remain.

  “All I ever wanted was to give you everything,” Albie continued, his voice a hopeful plea emphatic with the emotion contained in the death of a marriage. “Why do you think I did all those crappy films? Action movies? When have I ever done an action movie? I’m a character actor. I went to Yale, for God’s sake. I did them for the payday.” Albie’s voice softened, his shoulders dropped, his palms faced up on the table as if he were begging to be understood. “I did it for you.”

  Sonia’s bottom lip quivered and Sprinkles shivered in her arms. “For me?”

  “Yeah, baby, all of it for you.” Albie rushed around the conference table. In less than a second he and Sonia were lip-locked.

  David scooped up Sonia’s file from the table and tucked it into his briefcase. “So much for the visitation schedule,” he mumbled toward Tulsa.

  “I wouldn’t bet the farm,” Tulsa said.

  Marital mini-reconciliations usually lasted just long enough for the couple’s raging pheromones to release. Once Albie and Sonia realized that regardless of the hot sex, the same problems existed in their relationship, Tulsa and David would again haggle over where Sprinkles spent Christmas.

  “I’ll see you in about two weeks,” Tulsa said.

  Albie and Sonia pressed their foreheads together while Sprinkles licked both their chins. She’d give the lovebirds a couple of minutes before Tulsa had her paralegal, Sylvia, give them a swift kick out the door.

  Tulsa escorted David into reception, shook his hand, and did a quick U-turn back toward her office. Her quick strides caused her long, barely tamed sable curls to bounce about her shoulders. She’d given up on trying to tame the mass of McGrath hair and accepte
d her long dark locks as another part of the unruly McGrath legacy.

  Jo, Tulsa’s law partner, stood just outside the conference room and watched Sonia, Albie, and Sprinkles canoodle on the other side of the glass. Her black hair was pulled into an all-business bun and her face was uncreased by lines left from emotion. “Guess you can withdraw the petition.” Her voice contained the tiniest bit of judgment. Jo maintained an extreme dislike of the gray area that accompanied indecision.

  “Give it a couple of days,” Tulsa said, continuing down the hall toward her office. She was unconvinced this marital reunion would stick. In Los Angeles, love and marriage were as ephemeral as a dewdrop in a desert.

  Once inside her office, Tulsa sifted through the magazines, letters, and bills that Sylvia had placed on the corner of her desk. On the bottom of the pile was the California Bar Association’s monthly magazine. Tulsa’s own big blue eyes stared back at her from the cover. Arms crossed, with a smile that could only be described as cocky yet knowing, she’d been named California Divorce Attorney of the year.

  She turned the magazine facedown—she didn’t need to have her own eyes staring up at her all day—she saw enough of her face when she looked in the mirror. Tulsa pushed the magazine to the far side of her desk and pulled a depo transcript from a file. Of course she was good at her job—she’d grown up surrounded by emotionally overwrought people and now, for giant sums of money, she represented them.

  “I think we have a problem.”

  Tulsa closed her eyes. A chill chased down her spine and balled in her belly. She looked at Sylvia, her paralegal, who stood in the doorway of Tulsa’s office. A hard-core veteran of the divorce wars, Sylvia was calm in the face of screaming spouses, blubbering ex-wives, and phone-hurtling opposing counsels. If Sylvia said there was a problem then there was definitely a near-cataclysmic storm on the horizon.

  “Sonia and Albie are still in the conference room?” Tulsa asked, a hopeful lilt in her voice.