The Secrets of Paradise Bay (23 page)

Clyde had just finished shooting hoops with Raymond, and dropped by the club a few hours prior to opening. He wanted to admire in solitude the place that was half his and helped turn his life around. It was still hard to believe that the club bore his name and gave him something to be proud of.

He was sure his mother was checking him out from heaven and applauding for turning things around in his life. Clyde doubted he would ever be able to take Trey's place as the all American success story in her eyes. He had no problem with that. All he'd wanted was to leave his own mark and make his life count for something other than bad choices.

Clyde was confident he'd made good choices with the club and Stefani. He heard a sound from behind and turned around. It was Trey.

“Hey,” Clyde said. He noted that Trey's countenance was rigid. “What's up?”

Without warning or time to react, Clyde was hit in the face by Trey's fist, causing him to stagger but remain on his feet.

Clyde, feeling the sting in his jaw, peered at his brother. “What the hell did you do that for?”

“You backstabbing bastard,” hissed Trey, hitting him again, this time in the mouth.

Clyde tasted blood as he bit back the pain. “I don't know what I did.” He had a pretty good idea upon reflection, hoping it was something else.

“I'm talking about you sleeping with my wife!”

Damn
. She actually told him? “It's not what you think,” Clyde voiced tonelessly, wishing that were the case, but knowing otherwise.

“Like hell it isn't!” Trey roared. “At least be a man about it and admit that you had your way with Ivana!” When Clyde hesitated, Trey hit him again with a solid punch to the head, knocking him to the plush maroon carpeting. “Get up, asshole, so I can finish what
you
started!”

Clyde dragged himself up, feeling sick to his stomach that Trey knew what he never wanted him to. How could he make things right? Or were they way past that?

“It was never about you,” he told Trey. “Or Ivana. I just got caught up in a moment. It could've been with anyone.”

Trey rejected this with a firm gaze. “But it wasn't with just anyone, dammit. It was with my wife! How could you do something so self-centered? I let you into my home when you had nowhere else to go. I trusted you to respect me. I bent over backward to do right by you. And this is how you respond—by stabbing me in the back and twisting the knife every which way, so the pain was beyond compare?”

“You have every right to be pissed,” said Clyde, knowing he would have been equally upset had the tables been turned. “I never meant to hurt you, Trey. If I could do it all over. . . .”

“That's just it—you can't. The damage done is irreversible. The trust has been broken into a million pieces. I wish now that your ass had rotted in prison. That's where you belong. Once a common hood, always one.”

Clyde's nostrils ballooned. He had this coming, but he still resented the statement. Especially since it was because he'd tried to protect Trey from Willie's crazy and dangerous scheme that his ass had ended up in prison in the first place.

Trey took another swing at Clyde.

This time he blocked the blow with a powerful forearm. “I'm not going to fight you, Trey.”

“Why the hell not? Isn't that what you do best?”

Trey threw more punches, which Clyde easily deflected or dodged. His lashes descended over a baleful stare, and he remembered when his fists had ended up getting him sent to prison. And for what? A brother who hated him now more than ever. Maybe he should have just allowed things to happen as Willie had wanted, and let the chips fall where they may. Then Trey would have had to fend for himself and likely come out on the losing end.

In spite of feeling his temper rise, Clyde refused to be baited into fighting Trey. The worst thing that could come out of this was to physically injure his brother on top of the mental wounds he'd already inflicted upon Trey.

“Not anymore,” Clyde responded tartly, lowering his eyes. “Not where it concerns you.”

“Well, maybe you'd better get back into it,” Trey said hotly. “Because I'm not through with you. Not by a long shot.”

He took another wild swing, and Clyde ducked and came up behind Trey, getting him into a neck lock.

“Enough!” Clyde said commandingly. “This is getting us nowhere. I screwed up big-time and have to live with it for the rest of my life. Don't let this take us down too.”

Trey tried to wrestle himself free but was being held too tightly. “I think it's way too late to be thinking about brotherly affection. You took ‘us' down when you decided to have sex with my wife. I propped your ass up out of love when you were down and damned near out and you just threw it all away.”

Clyde gulped, not liking the sound of that. He released Trey, while keeping his guard up. “So what are you saying?”

Trey turned around and knitted his eyebrows. “I'll make it very clear for you. I'm saying I'm cutting off all funding for this place and incidental expenses. You and I are through, you understand me? If you want this club to remain open, you'll do it without my money or support. I don't give a damn what happens to it—or you—from this point on.”

“You don't mean that,” Clyde said, searching his brother's face.

“I mean every damned last word,” Trey maintained. “I never want to see your sorry ass again. And stay the hell away from my wife—or the next time . . . Well, I won't go there, but don't test me.”

On that note, Trey stormed out the door.

Clyde wiped blood from the corner of his lip, shaken that one mistake was about to cost him everything. And, once again, he had no one to blame but himself.

He got out his cell phone, intending to call Stefani, though unsure what to say. Clyde noted he had a message. The caller ID indicated that Ivana Lancaster had left it.

 

 

Clyde had expected Stefani to think he was the world's biggest jerk, incredibly selfish, and unworthy of her affections, much less love, when he fessed up about his brief, ill-advised involvement with Ivana. He'd waited for the ax to drop.

Instead, Stefani took him to bed and showed him the type of support and affection he probably didn't deserve, but was very grateful for nevertheless.

“You should have told me,” she said after they had made love hot and heavy and were still clinging together in the afterglow.

“It wasn't something I was proud of or wanted to share with the first real woman to come into my life,” Clyde said honestly. “I should have stayed the hell away from Ivana, and she should have stayed away from me. But we let misplaced feelings cause a moment of irresponsible weakness. I ended things after that and tried to forget it ever happened. I never wanted Trey to find out—or you . . .”

“Maybe it was best to get it out in the open,” Stefani said understandingly. “Holding that in would have only put more stress and strain in your life, especially where it concerned your relationship with Trey and Ivana.”

“It doesn't exactly feel like this will make my life easier,” Clyde muttered, though suspecting deep down she was right. Living with a secret had cost him once dearly; doing so again had been even more costly, for it had taken away his brother. And maybe everything else he had going for him. Except for Stefani.

If he didn't know it before, Clyde certainly knew it now. He cared for her more than he ever had any other woman. He held Stefani a little tighter and met her eyes. “Thanks for standing by me.”

Stefani held his gaze. “Did you think I wouldn't?”

“Not many women would have.”

“I'm not most women.”

He half-grinned. “I can see that, and I love you for it.”

Stefani's cheeks rose. “You do?”

“Yeah.” His voice deepened. “I'm in love with you, Stefani. This probably isn't the best time to say it, but—”

“It's the perfect time to say it,” she broke in. “Especially since I feel the same way.”

“Really?” Clyde somehow doubted the words, even if it was everything he could possibly have hoped for from her.

“Yes, I love you, Clyde Lancaster,” Stefani affirmed. “I would've told you sooner, but I wanted to hear it from you first. Whatever you did in the past has no bearing on the future, unless we allow it to.”

I only wish I could believe that
, he thought. His past mistakes had come at a high price. Could they really be so easily pushed aside? Or would they continue to catch up with him in ways he couldn't foresee?

Clyde smiled tearfully at Stefani. “Have I ever told you that you're the best woman in the world?”

She grinned. “No, but I don't mind hearing you say it.”

“Then I will every day, baby.”

Clyde tilted his head and kissed her. Stefani took the kiss and returned it with equal ardor. They made love again, and Clyde relished being inside her, finding it a comfortable place to be, unlike the rest of his world that was threatening to crumble around him if Trey remained steadfast in his promise to destroy the life Clyde had successfully built for himself.

Willie got high in his apartment. He'd had to kiss Roselyn's ass to keep her from breaking things off. Ever since he was kicked out of Clyde's Jazz Club a week and a half ago, things had been strained between him and Roselyn. No doubt her meddlesome roommate, Gail, had been playing with Roselyn's head, trying to poison her against him.
That bitch needs to be put in her place. Someday I'll do just that.

Right now he had to placate Roselyn and make her feel special. No one walked out on him until he was good and ready for it to happen. He saw no reason to throw away a good thing. At least not until a better one came along.

Willie smoked the meth, his thoughts turning to his arch-nemesis, Clyde Lancaster. It was his fault for the strain between him and Roselyn.
That asshole is the cause of all my problems. He took half my sight. Now he's trying to take away my manhood
.

Willie wasn't about to let that happen. Clyde needed to pay for the troubles he'd caused him. And so did Clyde's brother. If it hadn't been for Clyde trying to protect Trey's property, Willie was certain things would've turned out differently for him. For one, he could have sold whatever he swiped from Trey's place and made a lot of money. And, just for the hell of it, he would have smashed Trey's face in had he been stupid enough to get in his way.

To hell with both of them
, Willie thought. They needed to be brought down a few pegs from their lofty position.

It was time he did just that. Clyde couldn't be protected forever by that brute at the club. Neither could his brother, who seemed to think he owned Paradise Bay and everyone in it.

Not like he owns Clyde and that fine woman Trey married.

Willie inhaled the meth, closing his eyes while feeding on the sensation. He opened them and studied the gun beside him in the couch. He grabbed it and aimed, pretending to shoot Clyde right between the eyes.

After driving around in circles, Trey found himself in his own driveway. He really didn't know what the hell to say to Ivana, still stung by her revelation of having a one-night fling with Clyde. Trey wanted to hate her the way he did Clyde for betraying him in the worst way possible. But he couldn't. Not when Ivana was the love of his life and someone he couldn't ever imagine living without.

I still love her, no matter what she's done. I think she still loves me, in spite of what happened between her and Clyde
.

Trey blamed himself for destroying the sanctity of their marriage by straying. He had opened the door for Ivana to seek the attention of another man after she'd lost her trust in him, and thereby her desire to be loyal to him intimately.

I don't want to lose the best thing to ever happen to me. I just can't
.
We'll find a way together to get past the indiscretions and distrust.

Trey headed toward the house, so intense in thought that he never even noticed Ivana's car wasn't there.

Inside the house, he expected to find his wife frazzled, not particularly eager to see him after the way he'd handled things. Or unsure if he would still want her. But Ivana was nowhere to be found. Trey considered that she may have gone ahead without him and checked herself into rehab, perhaps believing that was more preferable than having to face him again.

But he found Ivana's bag still in her room. Where the hell was she?

Trey looked out the window and noticed that her car was gone. Damn. Considering her fragile state of mind and having had at least one drink and likely more, panic set in.

He found Emily in the great room, watering plants with headphones on, no doubt listening to the classical music she loved.

When Trey got her attention, Emily removed the headphones. She could see the concern etched in his face. “What's wrong?”

“Where's Ivana?”

Emily flashed a blank stare. “I don't know. I didn't see her leave.”

“Her car's not in the driveway,” Trey said, ill at ease. “I'm going after her. Please call me if Ivana comes back.”

Emily's forehead crinkled. “Tell me what happened, Trey.”

“We had a fight,” he responded, leaving it at that. “And I have to find her, let Ivana know that it's not the end of the world. Or at least our world.”

“I'm sure everything will be fine,” Emily said. “She probably just needed to clear her head.”

Trey doubted it was that simple. He feared that Ivana, despondent and probably inebriated, might do something crazy. If anything happened to her, he'd never forgive himself.

“Search the house and see if she left a note or anything,” Trey instructed Emily, not wanting to waste precious time doing so himself. “Oh, and ring the detox center, just in case Ivana decides to check herself in.”

He ran out the door, hopped in his car and sped off, praying that Ivana hadn't wrapped her car around a tree.

Or worse.

 

 

Ivana tried to stay focused on the road through tear-filled eyes and a mind gripped by guilt and misgivings. She could no longer stay in that house where she was apparently no longer wanted. Trey made it perfectly clear how he felt about her. It seemed as though he was the only one capable of making mistakes in their marriage. She was somehow held to a higher standard than Trey held himself.

It wasn't fair. She had frailties just like anyone else. Getting involved with Clyde was probably the biggest mistake of her life and one she would forever regret. But she couldn't undo the damage.

Ivana wiped away tears, not sure where she was headed, knowing only that she wanted to go somewhere far away from the life she knew. She just wanted to feel loved and protected. And not consumed with things that no longer mattered.

She prayed that Trey and Clyde had not killed each other. Clyde had not responded to her message, leaving Ivana to wonder. Maybe in the end they realized they were brothers and needed each other more than not.

It was a tag Ivana could not live with. She took a deep breath and pondered what else might be out there for her, believing that she no longer had a home or husband to go back to.