he was his own man. Another woman he’d treated kindly but had callously used for his own end. Michelle had had a date, too—a pompous ass a few years older than them who’d looked down his nose at all the alumni from their elite high school. Forty-eight of the fifty kids he’d graduated with had been there. And many from Michelle’s class, two years behind his, had attended, as well.
“A bunch of us got drunk and my date threw up on the porch steps,” Josh continued, sparing himself nothing—telling her something she already knew. “Thank goodness it was the back porch steps and Bart liked us enough to get it cleaned up before anyone found out.”
Bart—his maternal grandfather’s live-in help. A man who’d run the Montford city estate since before Josh had been born.
Josh had escaped besmirching the Montford name that time. But he hadn’t learned his lesson.
Michelle’s head tipped forward, and with his fingers around her chin as he’d been shown, Josh righted her. And rubbed her cheek.
On some level, he told himself, she had to know that he was there. That she was surrounded by tenderness. By anything and everything money could provide.
She had to know that the only thing she’d wanted—his attention—was hers.
“One day when Sam Montford was away from the mansion on business, his wife and baby went out and found a lynch mob waiting for them on the front steps outside their home,” he said, looking out in the distance, to the harbor seventeen stories down and about a mile over from them. Unlike his shame of ten years ago, that long-ago event had taken place on the front porch—not the back.
“The mob killed them both,” he said evenly, hardly feeling anything at all. Just like Michelle. They were alike in that way. Dead to any kind of real living. “Hard to picture Boston’s elite in any kind of a mob, isn’t it?” he said. “But things were more primitive then. People took matters into their own hands. And didn’t stand calmly by when others tried to change the rules by which they lived.”
Michelle’s gaze was turned on him and his breath caught in his throat. Until he remembered that he’d repositioned her head.
“But to kill a woman and an innocent baby...”
If only Michelle would recover, even a little bit, if he could talk to her, find out what she’d been thinking the night she’d nearly drunk herself to death, to know for sure that he’d been the reason she’d consumed such a dangerous level of alcohol the night of their prewedding party.
He hadn’t loved her. Her heart was breaking.
And he’d been too self-absorbed to notice that anything was wrong.
Alcohol poisoning, loss of oxygen and a careless fiancé had all contributed to Michelle’s predicament. He’d been the only one who could have saved her.
“When his wife and baby were killed, Sam Montford left town,” he blurted. “He took up residence with an Indian tribe out west. And later, after marrying the daughter of a missionary he met on the reservation, he founded a little town in the middle of the Arizona desert.”
It had just been in the past couple of years that his mother had developed an interest in genealogy, helped along by the readily available resources on the internet. That research infused her with the need to get to know her distant relatives—relatives she’d heard about but never met. Being able to look them up, learn details of their lives, made them seem real to her, although she hadn’t contacted any of them yet. The two branches of the family had not been in touch since old Sam Montford left Boston. After his sojourn with the Indians, he’d founded Shelter Valley. But he’d never reconnected with the Boston part of his family.
While researching her family tree, Josh’s mom had discovered the names of cousins several times removed, as well as birth dates, marriages and deaths. The need to meet them intensified.
And because Josh had agreed to make his home there, she’d finally given her blessing to his plan to move away—at least for a while—rather than travel for an extended period until the news of Michelle’s tragedy and his subsequent broken engagement died down a bit. “It’s a town that welcomes losers,” he added.
Not quite what his mother had said. She had framed it as a town that would welcome him.
Because she thought he was going to arrive in town a Montford. Or even a Redmond. She thought he’d been in touch with the newfound—and long-estranged—branch of her family. He’d never told her so. It was just what she’d have done—and expected him to do.
He wasn’t moving to Shelter Valley as a Montford.
He was going as Josh. To accept the junior-level position his Harvard business degree had qualified him to have in the university’s business operations office.
“That’s where I’m going, sweetie,” he said. “Out to Shelter Valley, Arizona.”
He wiped away more saliva. And could hardly remember what it had felt like to kiss her lips. Wished they stood out from all of the other lips he’d kissed.
Or even that he could remember the last time he’d kissed her.
“We didn’t get to the altar, to exchange our vows.” He bowed his head. “But I’m promising something to you now. I will change my ways, become more aware of those around me and do what I can to make this world a better place.”
He wasn’t actually sure if Michelle was into the whole bettering the world thing as much as the Montfords were. They’d never really gotten around to talking about it. Still, she’d been involved in charity work. He wasn’t sure how much. But during their two-year engagement, he’d accompanied her to several black-tie affairs for different causes.
He’d written generous checks.
And spent most of the evenings making business contacts. Or doing other things like planning the mountain-climbing expedition he and several of his friends had taken over Christmas the previous year.
“I’ve got a few thousand dollars with me to get started,” he told her. “I sold the Mercedes. And the 4x4. I bought a used SUV with a hitch and loaded a trailer with stuff, and that’s all I’m taking. The rest of the stuff I sold with the condo, and that money went into your trust, too. My monthly stipend will also go into the trust. It’s there for as long as you need it.
“My mother’s agreed, for the time being, not to get involved,” he said, thinking of the days ahead. “I told her I’d handle the first contact with the Arizona Montfords on my own—or I wouldn’t go. If she interferes with my life while I’m there, I’ll just move on. The point is for me to get away from here. It doesn’t matter where. She’s the one who wants me in Shelter Valley, and this is the only way I’ll do it.” There wasn’t going to be any big family reunion in the near future.
What his mother didn’t know was that his “visit” with the Montfords was going to be short and sweet. He wasn’t one of them.
He was starting a new life. Not going on vacation. He was going to live like a regular guy. One who had to work and sweat and save. One who was humbled enough to pay attention to the people around him. He couldn’t do that if his old life followed him. Making things easy for him.
“Sweetie? Michelle? Is there anything I can do, or say, anything that...”
