Eight
In an absurdly masculine room, deep in the halls of Clarkson Castle, Deacon Holt carefully neutralized his expression. He wouldn’t give Tyrell Clarkson the satisfaction of seeing anger, envy or any other emotion.
“Drink?” Tyrell asked, making a half turn toward Deacon from the inlayed walnut bar. He held up a cut-crystal decanter that Deacon could only guess held decades-old single malt.
Tyrell was well-known in Hale Harbor, Virginia, for indulging in the finer things.
“No,” Deacon answered. He had no idea why he’d been summoned today, after being shunned his entire life, but he was positive this wasn’t a social occasion.
Tyrell shrugged and poured two glasses anyway. He cut partway across the library and bent at the waist to set the glasses on opposite sides of a dark wood coffee table.
“In case you change your mind,” he said and gestured to one of two brown leather armchairs flanking the table.
Deacon preferred to stand. He wanted to be on alert for whatever was coming.
“Sit,” Tyrell said and folded himself into the opposite chair.
Though he was in his late fifties, Tyrell was obviously in good shape. He had a full head of hair, and his wrinkles were few, giving his face character. By any objective measure, he was a good-looking man.
Tyrell was rich. He was clever. He was powerful.
He was also detestable.
“What do you want?” Deacon asked.
The rest of Hale Harbor might jump to Tyrell’s commands, but not Deacon.
“A conversation.”
“Why?”
Tyrell lifted his glass and turned it in the light that beamed down from the ceiling fixtures. He gazed at the amber liquid. “Glen Klavitt, 1965.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“You’re supposed to be curious. When was the last time you tasted fifty-year-old single malt?”
“I forget.” Deacon wasn’t rising to the bait, even though they both knew he wasn’t in a tax bracket that would allow him to casually spend whatever 1965 Glen Klavitt cost. Not that he’d be foolish enough to blow his money on it anyway.
“Sit down, boy.”
“I’m not your dog.”
One of Tyrell’s brows went up.
Deacon expected Tyrell to react with anger. He mentally braced himself for the onslaught, realizing he’d been looking forward to a fight from the moment he walked through the oversize castle doors.
“But you are my son.” Tyrell’s words, though softly spoken, fell like cannonballs into the cavernous room.
Deacon held still, half expecting eight generations of Clarksons to rise from their graves and rattle the crested shields hanging on the stone walls.
He tried to gauge Tyrell’s expression, but it was inscrutable.
“Do you need a kidney?” he asked, voicing the first theory that came into his mind.
Tyrell’s mask cracked, and he almost smiled. “I’m in perfect health.”
Deacon didn’t want to be curious about anything to do with the Clarkson family. He wanted to turn on his heel and walk out the door. Whatever was going on here, he wanted no part of it.
Tyrell had two healthy, living legitimate sons, Aaron and Beau. He didn’t need to reach out to Deacon for anything—at least, not for anything that was honorable.
“Will you relax?” Tyrell asked, gesturing to the empty chair with his glass.
“No.”
“Stubborn—”
“Like father, like son?” Deacon asked mildly.
Tyrell laughed.
It was the last thing Deacon had expected.
“I don’t know why I thought this would be easy,” Tyrell said. “Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”
“I stopped caring about you a long time ago.”
“Yet, here you are.”
Deacon knew Tyrell had him there. Despite his anger, despite his hatred, despite the twenty-nine years of resentment, Deacon had come the first time Tyrell called. Deacon told himself he was here for a confrontation with the man who had impregnated and then abandoned his mother. But the truth was he’d also been curious. He was still curious.
He sat down.
“That’s better,” Tyrell said.
“What do you want?”
“Do I have to want something?”
“No. But you do.”
“You’re not stupid. I’ll grant you that.”
Deacon wasn’t sure if Tyrell expected a thank you for the backhanded compliment. If he did, he was going to be disappointed.
“Why am I here?” Deacon pressed.
“I assume you know about Frederick.”
“I do.”
Tyrell’s youngest son—and Deacon’s half brother, though they’d never been introduced—Frederick had died of pneumonia six months ago. Rumor had it that Frederick’s lungs had been seriously damaged as a child, when he’d been thrown from a horse. The fall had also broken his spine and confined him to a wheelchair.
“Did you know he lived in Charleston?” Tyrell asked.
Deacon hadn’t known where Frederick lived. He’d only known Frederick had left home after college and never returned.
