Legal Heirs 3

By Kimball Lee

Answers from the past and action for the present!!! Did Finn forgive Charlotte? Who ended up with her love? Also, a few surprising new developments are always part of the story! By the way, is Atticus a Bly or a Hale? What happened in the 13 years when the heirs were growing up, AND, what are they up to now that they’re free to run the world?!!! The past, the present, and all the thrilling details that keep the LEGAL SERIES going strong, while keeping readers on the edge of their seats and wanting more!!!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kimball Lee
• Release date: Mar 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310963018

Kimball Lee

Hi, I'm Kimball Lee and I'd like to welcome you to the many worlds of my imagination! The topics of my novels and novella-series will vary but my style of writing remains the same. I don't write 700 page books padded with useless words that take three chapters to describe a doorknob! I do write funny, interesting, happy, sad, romantic, often titillating and always thought provoking works that pack a lot of good reading into just the right number of pages. I hope you enjoy my writing and know that it comes from the heart and I give every spare moment to creating characters you would want to have as friends and worlds you would want to visit or live in. Happy reading! Kimball Thank you for visiting my author page, please connect with me on my social media sites! [e-mail]

Book preview

Legal Heirs 3

Hearts of Fire…

BY Kimball Lee

Copyright 2013 Kimball Lee

Smashwords Edition

Chapter One

Charlotte chose not to fly on Bly’s jet with everyone else, and only Charlie had stayed behind with her. Now he sat next to her, his fingers flying deftly over the screen of his iPhone, intent on playing whatever game he was obsessed with before the flight attendant made him turn it off. Charlotte was settled into the first class cabin of a commercial jet on her way to New Orleans, her father and Evangeline would meet her and her youngest son at the airport, and from New Orleans the four of them would drive to the McCall House. An entire summer at the beach stretched ahead, and it would be a flurry of activity as friends and family came and went to celebrate Hadley’s graduation from high school and acceptance to NYU. Atticus and Holden had gone ahead of the others to open the house for visitors, and Hadley and Skyler had just flown in from a photo shoot in New York. Upper most in Charlotte’s mind was that Hadley was getting serious media buzz over an independent film she had appeared in.

Hadley had talked Finn into letting her take a small role in the movie, and Charlotte was helpless against the two of them when they were on a mission. It was what Hadley wanted most in the world, to be an actor, but their agreement was that she would graduate from college before she pursued her chosen career. Finn had defied Charlotte, and insisted that it would do no harm to let their daughter act in one inconsequential film before she left for college. Spencer Beck was the director, and his son, Milo, had been the one to bring Hadley’s modeling pictures to his attention. Of course, who could have guessed that the obscure little movie would win top honors at the Cannes Film Festival? It had been released two weeks earlier, coincidently on Hadley’s birthday, and critics were betting that newcomer Hadley Hale would receive a best supporting actress nomination for her very first role as an actor.

Charlotte had limited Hadley’s modeling career from day one, not wanting her daughter thrust into the public eye as she had been when she appeared on the cover of American Jock. She had allowed her to appear in a few photo shoots with Skyler, who’d worked steadily as model all her life, but it hadn’t appealed to Hadley, it wasn’t the same as acting. Atticus as well, was offered modeling jobs, but he had no interest in fame what so ever. Even as children, Atticus and Hadley had drawn attention with their looks, and Charlotte, Finn, and Bly had done their best to keep them out of the spotlight. Then the call came from Spencer Beck, he insisted that Hadley was exactly as he had envisioned the teenage girl in his movie. Hadley wanted the part more than anything she ever imagined, and Finn had given in and said yes. It had always been that way, Finn couldn’t refuse anything to the children.

Bly was just as bad, between the two of them, Bly and Finn, Charlotte sometimes felt like she was butting her head against a pair of brick walls to see that her children lived somewhat normal lives. When Atticus turned sixteen Bly had handed him the keys to a brand new Camaro with an engine that sounded like a jet aircraft about to take off. Charlotte cried so hard over the thought of her little boy driving too fast, and maybe drinking and driving, or God knows what else, that Atticus had given the keys back to Bly, and instead he drove Finn’s old Range Rover.

The bed and breakfast in Pass Christian had been closed two years before when Atticus had gone off to Annapolis to the Naval Academy. The house and grounds were now used simply as a year round family vacation spot and retreat where Atticus, Hadley, Charlie, and their friends could congregate. Bly had gone so far as to buy the estates on either side of the McCall House to insure complete privacy when the family visited. Both newly purchased properties boasted lovely antebellum homes on several beach front acres, and Bly deeded one house to Atticus, and the other to Holden and Mia. There was now an eleven acre family compound with Charlotte’s ancestral home at its center.

Why do I have to turn my phone off? Charlie asked, rolling his eyes and shoving the phone into the pocket of his jeans. It’s completely unfair, I was all the way to the last level of my game. Charlotte leaned over and kissed the top of his head, she was astonished that he had grown several inches in the last year. He would be twelve by the time the new school year started, and he was tall and handsome, with a will of iron and a rebellious streak a mile wide. Her little ‘dividend baby’ as she referred to him, was a carbon copy of his father.

I know, she said, smiling into his astonishingly beautiful eyes. You’re so mistreated, my darling Charlie, it’s an awful shame.

Right, Mom. You think you’re so funny, he said, rolling his eyes yet again before he tucked a pillow under his head and turned toward the window to sleep.

The pilot’s voice sounded over the jet’s intercom announcing that they had reached their cruising altitude, and a flight attendant handed Charlotte a glass of champagne. Charlotte smiled and thanked the young woman, but mostly she smiled to herself. She remembered another flight when she had been summoned to first class, and handed a glass of champagne, and kissed by an utterly irresistible man….

*

Thirteen years before…

I suppose it all started with my bad decision, Finn said, looking at Charlotte with equal amounts of hurt and longing. "The first sin was mine. When you asked me to choose between our love and my job, I shouldn’t have hesitated. If I’d made the right choice, then you would never have been susceptible to Bly when he showed up in your life. Or maybe I should’ve been man enough to leave you alone after Hong Kong and let you have a fairytale life with Alexander Bly. But of course it was utterly impossible for me stay away from you, just as it is for Bly, so who’s at fault here anyway? The truth is, we all are, Charlotte. I love you more than anyone I’ve ever loved in my life, but even if it is my fault, I’m still mad at you. I’m fucking furious that you ran to him and that he dared to touch you, that he put his hands on you, my wife…. You are without question, my wife, not his."

Finn, I don’t love him, I know that now. Before I thought that I….

THAT YOU WHAT? THAT YOU FUCKING LOVED HIM? THAT YOU FUCKING LOVED BOTH OF US? he yelled with such ferocity that Charlotte jumped. She was sitting in the middle of their big bed watching Finn as he struggled to pull a clean shirt on over the cast on his arm. She wanted to help him, to run her hands lovingly over the fresh wounds that covered his deeply muscled chest and back, to feel his resolve melt at her touch. She couldn’t remember Finn ever raising his voice to her before, and the sound of fury and anguish froze her heart and made her sick with disgust for herself. "For someone so God-damned smart, Charlotte, that was a stupid assumption. You were never in love with Bly, I knew that or I wouldn’t have come back for you all those years ago. If there’s one thing I never doubted, it was that you and I are parts of the same being. Just the two of us, I guess it’s why I let it go on for so long. I put up with Bly and his fucking obsession with you because I knew you were mine down deep in your heart and soul where it matters. I still believe that, so you don’t have to try and convince me that it’s true. The problem is I don’t think I can live with what you’ve done, that you ran to him, and gave your body to him so readily. Whether it’s my fault, your fault, or the devil’s fault, doesn’t matter, it happened and now it’s done. I’m just a man, my love, and everything in me is hurting right now. My ego and my heart, and I