Her Billionaire Heartthrob - Kaylee Baldwin Page 0,27

to Morgan Mortuary in Montgomery, Alabama.

Liam’s heart dropped. Marcus Tripp had been flying the plane that had killed his daughter and granddaughter. He continued reading paper after paper, his eyes scanning for any information about the Tripps.

Finally, about six weeks later, Marcus’s name popped up again in a short article under the Local Interest section. It more aptly could have been named, The Gossip Column, as he learned who had a baby recently, who was deployed, and who got which scholarships to which colleges so far. Near the end, he spotted Marcus’s name.

Marcus Tripp has returned from an extended stay in the St. Vincent Hospital in Little Rock. In a phone interview, he stated that The Old Grand Theater will be closing as of this moment. “I should have closed it ages ago and moved to Montgomery to be with my daughter while I could.” Christmas won’t be the same without The Old Grand, but for a man missing his daughter and granddaughter, Christmas will never be the same again.

Liam sat back in his chair, the air whooshing out of him. He hadn’t imagined something so sad when he’d set out to see what had happened. Businesses failed every day, and he’d assumed that for this theater it had been the same.

Except for that doll. He pulled up the first picture he’d found, weeks before, of Marcus with his wife and daughter. Jenny clutched the doll in her arms, and he swore it had to be the same one. Perhaps he couldn’t bear to take it with him. Or bear to look at it, where ever he’d gone.

After buying another online subscription—this time to a family roots researching site—Liam entered Marcus’s full name and found a picture of his grave. He had been buried in Montgomery, Alabama, near his daughter and granddaughter, twenty years ago. From a posted family story, Liam learned he’d died of lingering effects from the accident. In a faded photo of the man in the hospital, he saw that his arm, chest, and neck were burned, and his leg was in traction.

The death certificate stated heart failure as the cause of death.

Weighed down with this man’s tragedy, and feeling as though he were peering into private sorrow that wasn’t his business, he powered down his laptop, and sat in the dark, thinking.

His own father had died of a heart attack, not long after Xander’s wedding. In some ways, he’d been a hard man, always driven, always measuring a person by their work ethic and success. Xander had gotten close to their grandfather when he had rebelled, but Liam had always been the solid one. The responsible one. The one who proved again and again that he could succeed, but still recognized the small frown of disappointment on his dad’s face that pushed him to try even harder.

Life could end in an instant, and what did he have to show for it?

He shuddered at the thought of losing his mom or Xander. He and his mom weren’t close—he’d always been too busy to get close to her—something he regretted now that she was getting older.

He’d always prioritized money and the expansion of his company over every other thing in his life, but what if he had chosen the wrong things? Was it too late to change? Could he change?

He went to bed, his mind whirling with thoughts, and when he finally fell asleep, it was to the vision of a lone doll in a theater seat.

Chapter 13

“I like the spider,” Liam said when Viola opened the door to his knock Friday evening. He hooked his thumb behind him to where the spider had been decked out as a Thanksgiving pilgrim.

“That’s all Grandma,” she replied. “Let me grab her. Come on in.”

He stepped into her house, and she tried not to feel self-conscious as he peered around. Their house was over a hundred years old and perfectly fit her and Grandma in its small space. She could only imagine the luxury homes Liam was used to.

“So, you’re the one who stood my granddaughter up in Hawaii.”

“Grandma!” Viola’s cheeks burned. Grandma stood in the hallway, her arms folded over her stomach, her eyebrows raised in challenge. She’d put on dark black slacks and a white silky shirt with tiny black hearts scattered across it, and her white hair had been styled, just that morning, in loose curls around her ears and neck.

“It’s okay,” Liam said. “That was me. I don’t know what I was thinking, but it was wrong,