Controversy Read online

  controversy

  ADRIANNE

  byrd

  controversy

  To the Byrd Watchers Book Club Group,

  thanks so much for your support. I hope

  this episode of the Adams sisters will

  continue to delight you.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  “I oughta kill him,” Michael Adams grumbled into her third Long Island iced tea. “I gave that bastard the best years of my life. The least he could do is drop dead.”

  Michael’s sisters, Peyton, Joey, Sheldon and Frankie sat huddled around Mike at their usual table in the Peppermill. Each of the sisters avoided making eye contact with their angry sister in hopes they wouldn’t get dragged into some evil revenge plan inspired by her increasing amount of alcohol.

  “C’mon, girls. You must agree with me,” Mike said. She noticed the absence of amens to her latest rant and grew irritable about the lack of support.

  Brave Sheldon, the eldest of the Adams clan, spoke up first. “You said we were going to celebrate your divorce being final. This is starting to feel more like a wake.”

  “We are celebrating!” Mike lifted her glass and egged her sisters on to join her in a toast.

  The girls painted on smiles and lifted their glasses.

  “To Philip’s balls rotting off!” Mike barked.

  The glasses came back down with a collective moan.

  “I’m kidding. I’m kidding.” Michael laughed. She held up her glass again and waited for the others to join her. “To new beginnings!”

  “Hear! Hear!”

  Everyone’s glasses clinked together.

  Michael gave her best effort to climb out of her two-year depression. A condition she thought she hid well; but tonight it was a lot harder than normal.

  Divorced.

  The word left a bitter taste in her mouth—one she kept hoping the vodka would wash off. So far, it wasn’t working.

  “Philip was having an affair,” she blurted.

  The sisters fell silent and darted cautionary glances around the table.

  “Are you sure?” Peyton, the designated driver by default because she was eight months pregnant, set her ginger ale down and reached for Michael’s hand. “Did he tell you this?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Mike rolled her eyes and reached for another nacho chip piled high with her favorite toppings. “Phil isn’t bold enough to confess and he’s too damn smart to get caught.”

  More darting gazes and Michael reached for another chip.

  “Did you hire a private investigator?” Frankie asked, leaning forward and twirling her own huge diamond ring. “Or are you just working on a hunch?”

  “Hell. I’m better than any damn P.I. and you know it.”

  “This is true,” Joey said.

  The other sisters bobbed their heads in agreement.

  Michael straightened triumphantly. “I just wish I could’ve caught him in the act, but that man is slicker than a can of oil,” she complained, thinking about her many solo covert operations during their trial separation. She’d followed her ex-husband across town and had pulled weekend stakeouts in her old neighborhood. Each time, she was busted by the ever-present geriatric Neighborhood Watch gang.

  Admitting Phil had gotten the best of her and had managed to walk away to tell the tale got under her skin.

  “If you couldn’t catch him then maybe he wasn’t having an affair,” Sheldon suggested. “If for no other reason than the fact he’s scared of you.” She looked to the other sisters and then added, “We all are.”

  Tears glossed Michael’s eyes as she fluttered a hand over her heart. “Thanks, Sheldon. What a nice thing to say.”

  A round of snickering ensued and Mike took it in stride. Well, she tried to anyway. Peyton leaned over and wrapped an arm around her waist. “Cheer up, Mikey. Phil lost the best thing that has ever happened to him. Remember what happened between Joey and Lawrence a couple of years ago?”

  Of course she remembered. Everyone remembered—because Joey made it a point to tell anyone who would listen about how her ex-almost-fiancé had dumped her on Valentine’s Day when she was expecting an engagement ring. Instead, the Beverly Hills plastic surgeon married a leggy, silicone-stuffed model slash D-listed actress who couldn’t act her way out of a box.

  In the end, getting dumped turned out to be the best thing that happened to Joey because it led her to meet and fall in love with her megasuccessful, A-list director husband, Ryan Donovan.

  Mike smiled through a film of tears. “You’re right!” Mike declared. “Screw Phil.”

  “That’s our girl,” Frankie said, beaming.

  When Joey squeezed Michael’s thick waist, she grew self-conscious about the near sixty pounds she’d gained in the last two years. A great many of them resulted from her depression. She’d tried dieting a few times, but that had turned into a madcap comedy. She’d go weeks eating nothing but salads and chicken, only to watch the numbers on the scale mock her efforts by not moving or creeping higher. Once, she’d join a gym, worked out like crazy and garnered the same results.

  In the end, carbohydrates were the only things that soothed her. The more, the merrier.

  “I know just how I’d like to do him in, too,” Michael sulked, returning to her soapbox. When her sisters’ weary eyes turned toward her, she ignored them and continued, “I’d like to bash him over the head and stuff him into the trunk of my car—then I’d drive him somewhere no one could hear him scream.”

  “Sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this,” Frankie said, worried.

  “Thought, hell. I’ve dreamed—no—fantasized about it,” Michael confessed. “I’d tie him to a tree and beat him to a bloody pulp…but not until I got the name of that trick he dumped me for.”

  Sheldon drew a deep breath and nibbled on her bottom lip—a sign she was trying not to say something.

  “What is it?” Michael asked. “Spit it out.”

  “Well—” Sheldon glanced at the other girls to judge whether they’d have her back. “I was just wondering if you’ve thought about, um, or considered talking to someone about…some of your issues.”

  “What issues?”

  The table fell silent.

  “You all think I have issues?”

  Peyton shrugged. “One or two.”

  “Peyton James Adams, you take that back,” Michael barked.

  “Last name is Carver,” she corrected. “And I will not. Come on. It’s no secret you get a little crazy when you feel slighted. How many times have you been arrested for one of your revenge pranks?”

  “I seem to remember having a few partners in crime sitting right next to me.”

  “We’re too old for that stuff now,” Frankie admonished.

  “Really? Joey didn’t think we were too old when we broke into her ex-fiancé’s house last year and rigged the place.”

  “Wh
at?” Sheldon, Frankie and Peyton thundered and whipped their heads in Joey’s direction.

  “Ex-almost-fiancé,” Joey corrected. “And that was supposed to be our little secret,” she hissed.

  Michael waved her off. “Right. Whenever I’m helping you guys, everything is gravy, but when I ask for a favor on a simple thing like murder, it’s suddenly a big deal.” She realized that didn’t come out right, but she just waved her hand and said, “Whatever.”

  It took some time, but the subject drifted away from Mike’s so-called “issues” and the even stickier subject of murder. It wasn’t as though she really wanted to kill Phil; but if she did, her sisters, of all people, should’ve had her back—even if they still liked their ex-brother-in-law.

  Happy hour morphed into social hour and then finally into a full-blown club scene. Michael waved to a few friends and flirted with even more strangers, but it was the sight of two old high-school and college buddies, Ray and Scott Damon, that put a smile on her face.

  Well past her drinking limit, Michael allowed the cute twins to pump more alcohol into her system while they reminisced about old times and the innumerable pranks they’d pulled on their unsuspecting friends.

  Michael lost track of the time and it was her sisters who finally busted up the private party and announced she’d had enough. It was time to go home.

  “You keep your chin up,” Ray said, lifting his shot glass in a final toast. “We got your back, buddy.”

  “Yeah,” Scott concurred. “We’ll be seeing you again…real soon.”

  “Aw,” Michael cooed. “I love you guys.”

  “C’mon on, Mike,” Joey said. “Let’s get you home.”

  Michael jutted a thumb and winked. It was great seeing her old friends though she had long lost track of what they were talking about.

  “Aren’t those the Damon twins?” Peyton asked, helping Mike put on her jacket.

  “Yep,” Mike said. “Haven’t seen them since you divorced their best buddy, Ricky.”

  “Then that’s a good thing,” Peyton sneered. “Those two are nothing but trouble.”

  Michael laughed. “Oh, they’re harmless.”

  It was closing time. As Mike walked out to the car, she realized she’d eaten too little and drunk too much, and when she got into the back of Peyton’s car, she threw up her beloved nachos all over the backseat.

  “Great. Just great,” Peyton mumbled, frowning at the mess.

  “Oh, I feel much better now.” Michael panted. She rolled onto her back and watched as Sheldon, mother of six, whipped out emergency baby wipes and went to town cleaning both Michael and the backseat of Peyton’s car while they were still in the Peppermill’s parking lot.

  “Is she going to be all right?” Frankie asked somewhere in the vicinity.

  I’m fine, Michael said inside her head, because opening her mouth suddenly required too much effort.

  “Just drive with the windows rolled down,” Joey suggested. “The cool air should be good for her.”

  “Someone is going have to come with me. I won’t be able to get her into the house alone,” Peyton said. “I have to be careful with the baby.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Frankie volunteered. “Hubby is still out of town. So it’s just me and Lola again tonight,” she said, referring to the teacup Yorkie she treated like it was her own flesh and blood.

  “We’ll all go,” Sheldon declared. “Joey and I will follow you. Try not to drive with your foot pressed to the floorboard, P.J.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Peyton lied unconvincingly.

  Michael snickered and four heads peered down at her.

  “Well, it looks like she’s still with us,” Frankie said, brushing back strands of Michael’s hair. “How’re you doing, Mikey?”

  Managing just a smile, Michael snuggled her left cheek against her sister’s palm. It had been years since she’d allowed someone else to comfort her. Despite being the middle child of five girls and a baby brother, Michael had always taken the leadership role in the family.

  Everyone depended on her—not the other way around. But tonight, she told herself, just this once, she wanted someone else to take over before she fell apart.

  “Oh, she’ll sleep like a baby tonight.” Joey laughed.

  “Tonight’s not the problem. Tomorrow morning is what she should be worried about,” P.J. said.

  Michael drew a deep breath, closed her eyes and welcomed her black oblivion—a place where nothing could harm her. Too bad she couldn’t stay there forever. Even in her drunken state, she understood by morning she would have a splitting headache, an upset stomach and her cold porcelain toilet would be her best friend.

  How pathetic.

  What was more pathetic was to be thirty-eight and single again.

  Single.

  No children.

  No career.

  Nothing.

  The realization brought fresh tears to the surface and rolled down the sides of her face. Was it so hard for a man to love her? Sure, she was strong willed and more than a handful, but whatever happened to the adage that there was someone for everyone?

  Even her.

  Were there no more tall, black knights who could step up to the plate and love her the way she yearned to be loved? If it could happen for her sisters, why couldn’t it happen for her?

  She groaned and opened her eyes. She wasn’t interested in the conversation going on in the front seat between Peyton and Frankie; but while lying down, she stared out the back window and up at a blanket of stars twinkling against black velvet. It was a beautiful, clear night. The kind made for lovers.

  Suddenly, a star shot across the night sky. Michael, feeling like a lost fairy princess, closed her eyes and made a wish and promptly fell into a deep sleep.

  Chapter 2

  For the first time in months, Michael enjoyed an erotic dream—and with someone other than her ex-husband. In fact, she didn’t know who the mysterious dark-chocolate, hard-muscled man in her dreams was, and honestly, she didn’t care. She just loved the way his nice, firm butt pumped and gyrated between her legs, causing her to inch up a large fantasy bed covered in black satin.

  The heat this man generated had Michael kicking the sheets off her real bed and made every sensitive part of her body tingle and throb. As the dream stretched on, Mr. Fantasy tossed and flipped her into positions that would, in real life, require a team of engineers to pull off.

  Damn, they were having a good time.

  The bed started jumping and banging against the floor.

  Michael’s head tossed among the pillows as she drew toward her dramatic crescendo. The banging grew louder and somehow seemed out of sync with the wild sex performing in her head.

  Then the banging became a distraction and she wanted whatever it was to stop.

  It wouldn’t.

  Instead, it caused the throbbing between her legs to cease and her temples to hammer.

  Someone was at the door, trying to break it down from the sounds of it.

  Michael flopped over in the bed and buried her head beneath the pillows.

  Still her insistent tormentor pounded away and made it clear that he/she/it wasn’t going away anytime soon.

  “Fine. I’m coming. I’m coming,” she grumbled. Sitting up, she raked her acrylic nails through her hair before swinging her legs over the side of the bed. When she stood up, her scratching went from her head to her belly and then legs while she stepped over piles of clothes, books and whatnot.

  She really did need to clean the place up and try to make it look like someone actually lived there.

  When she finally neared the door, the pounding felt like a jackhammer against her skull and she swore if someone wasn’t dead or dying, she would personally kill the SOB for waking her up at this hour.

  Hell, what time was it?

  “Who is it?” she snapped, ready to give whoever it was a big piece of her mind.

  “Police! Open up!”

  At
the authoritative bark, Michael’s hands stilled on the top lock. She was suddenly completely sober. A million questions raced through her mind while fear clogged her throat. By the time she turned all the locks and swung the door open, she was in a state of panic.

  The first shock was that she recognized the man on the other side of the door as the dark-chocolate fantasy that had just been screwing her brains out upstairs in her dreams.

  “Mrs. Michelle Matthews?” the sinfully deep baritone asked. His sharp onyx gaze impaled her.

  “Michael,” she corrected him hoarsely. Was she still dreaming? Would she invite this cop inside her house only for him to start a striptease in the living room that would lead her to being handcuffed to the bedposts?

  God, she hoped so.

  “Michelle Michaels?” He glanced down at his small pocket notepad.

  “No. It’s Michael Matthews—well, it was. It’s now Michael Adams,” she rambled. “I’m divorced. Recently. Happily—sort of.”

  He frowned, his gaze traveling from the top of her hair, which she suspected was standing straight up from its roots, to the tips of her chip-painted toenails.

  “Your name is Michael?”

  “Friends and family call me Mikey or Mike.”

  His gaze returned to her figure, this time paying particular attention to her voluptuous curves.

  She rolled her eyes. “Yes. I am a woman.” His powerful gaze traveled back to her face and warmed it considerably.

  “Yes, ma’am. You most certainly are.”

  The compliment took her by surprise and him, too, judging by how quickly his eyes diverted back to his notepad.

  “I’m Detective Kyson Dekker and this is my partner, Detective Robert Griffin.” He indicated a lanky white cop in black jeans and a T-shirt.

  Up until that moment, Michael hadn’t noticed the flaxen-haired detective. She gave him a cursory nod and then dismissed him to stare at this fantasy man.

  “Is there a problem?” she asked, anxious again about why they were there and why they’d been about to break down her door.

  “Yes, um.” Dekker cleared his throat as he crossed his arms in a V in front of his body, planted his legs wide and darted his eyes around her own.