An Unexpected Father
Автор
Marie Ferrarella
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Prologue
This had to be a dream, Brady Fortune told himself. A really bad dream.
No, not a dream, he amended.
A nightmare.
And any second now, he was going to wake up and everything would be just the way it was supposed to be. Life would be back to normal.
But it wasn’t back to normal. It would never be back to normal again.
Brady felt completely numb, from his stunned, frozen heart, right down to his very toes.
It took him a moment to realize that he was clutching his outdated cell phone so hard, it was perilously close to being snapped in half.
Breathe, damn it, Brady. Breathe!
The simple directive throbbed over and over again in his head. He drew in a deep breath, then let it out. His heart continued racing at an uncontrollable pace. He drew in another deep breath, but that didn’t help either.
His heart was still pounding like a bass drum.
“Mr. Fortune? Mr. Fortune, are you still there?” Brady heard a faraway voice on his cell phone asking him. The deep voice corkscrewed its way deep into his consciousness.
It was the voice of Allen Mayfair, Gord and Gina’s lawyer. The man who had just sent his entire world reeling before it burst into flames.
“Yes, I’m still here.” Brady heard a voice that sounded a lot like his own answering the lawyer’s question. It took him another couple of moments to realize that the hollow, stunned voice he heard actually belonged to him. Brady tried again. “Yes, I’m still here,” he repeated more firmly.
“I realize that this must be such a shock to you. I am really sorry to be the bearer of such terrible news, Mr. Fortune,” the lawyer was saying.
Five minutes ago everything had been fine. And then his phone rang. Mayfair was calling to break the worst possible news to him: that his best friend, Gordon, and Gord’s wife, Gina, had been killed in a horrific motorcycle accident.
He refused to believe it.
He had to believe it.
Brady was realistic enough to know that life was about terrible things happening, terrible things that were hiding in the shadows, ready to just jump out at you at the worst possible time.
As if there was ever a good time for something like this to happen.
“No,” the voice on the other end of the call assured him. “They didn’t suffer. It was instantaneous.”
He knew he should have been comforted by that, but he wasn’t. Wasn’t because he knew he wouldn’t ever hear Gord’s deep voice calling him up to get off your duff because we’ve got things to do and places to see. Never hear his best friend’s oddly high-pitched laugh again when something struck him as being weirdly funny.
Never see Gord again or do any of the things they had made plans to do ever since they were kids.
“Mr. Fortune? Did you hear my question?”
No, he hadn’t. His mind had gone elsewhere. “Wh-what?”
Brady realized that he had gotten lost in his thoughts again, silently railing at Gord for being such a thoughtless fool as to go riding on a motorcycle like that when he had little kids to think of.
Little kids who were all alone now.
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t,” Brady apologized. “Could you repeat what you just said?” He hadn’t a clue as to what the lawyer had just said and he wasn’t up to trying to pretend that he knew.
Mayfair patiently repeated his question. “I asked how soon you think that you could come by to pick up the twins?”
“The twins?” Brady repeated numbly, his brain incapable of processing the question or making any sense of it.
Nothing was making any sense to him anymore.
“Yes, the twins,” the lawyer repeated, then added in the boys’ names as if that would clear everything up. “Toby and Tyler. Gordon and Gina’s children.”
“Why would I be picking them up?” Brady wanted to know, confused.
He wasn’t all that good with kids. Had Gord thought he could somehow comfort the twins if something awful were to happen to him and his wife—which it had, Brady thought angrily. Brady’s eyes stung as he blinked back tears. Gord knew him better than that.
“Wouldn’t they be better off with one of Gina’s relatives? Or Gord’s parents?” Anyone but him, Brady thought. He was in need of comforting himself. He wasn’t in any position to offer it.
“Apparently they didn’t think so. As I told you, Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson named you as their twins’ legal guardian in their will.”
“Legal guardian,” Brady repeated. Obviously, he’d missed that part of the conversation.
“Yes. That means that you are now completely responsible for Toby and Tyler,” the lawyer patiently explained.
“You mean for now?” Brady asked, trying to get his bearings. This had to be some kind of temporary arrangement until the actual guardian or guardians for the twins could come for them.
This was all so surreal. His head was still swirling as fragments of thoughts continued to chase one another through his brain.
“No, permanently,” Mayfair told him. His voice indicated that he was rather confused as to why the man he was speaking to would have thought the arrangement for the twins’ guardianship was only temporary.
And just like that, with those words, Brady’s whole life was completely and indelibly changed forever.
