Cross My Heart Read online

  Cross My Heart

  A Family Saga Romance

  Kris Jayne

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Circle the Stars

  About Kris Jayne

  Cross My Heart

  Copyright © 2021 by Kris Jayne

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Prologue

  Carter Cross Jr. wrapped his hand around the tie hugging his throat and tugged.

  In the car on the way from the church, the man on the radio said it was 106 degrees. Hottest day of the year.

  Sweating up his Sunday suit, Carter thought he’d die.

  His chest squeezed like the time his cousin, Troy, knocked him to the ground with a Bruce Lee kick and sat on him to steal the quarters his grandmother had given him.

  He pulled a little harder, and the stupid thing popped loose. His arm jerked, and the clipped-on fabric flew to the crumbs of dirt skirting the pit in front of him.

  Mama’s elbow jabbed him in the shoulder. Twice. The motion jarred him but didn’t get to him through the thick pad of his jacket.

  She didn’t look at him. She didn’t even drop her chin in his direction. She rubbed her swollen belly and stared forward at the hole. The hole large enough for the box inside it. The fancy box that didn’t look big enough.

  There was a crowd. Even in this heat. A woman sang some sad song that Carter had never heard before. People cried and carried on. Mama’s sister, Carla, plus some other ladies who hadn’t let up since the service at the church. With the heat and her being so upset, Mama told Grandma Etta to stay at the house. People kept whispering how it was unnatural to outlive a child.

  Uncle Shepard squeezed an arm around Aunt Carla as she waved her hand around.

  “Not our Carter. No, Lord!”

  Over her shoulder, a thin, white man Carter Jr. didn’t know handed her a hankie. He turned a stern eye to little Carter.

  The man’s blue eyes chilled, which should have been a blessing in the Texas heat. It wasn’t.

  Seven-year-old Carter bit his lip to nearly bleeding. He huffed. Oven-hot air blazed his lungs and prickled his eyes.

  Daddy had told him that crying was for girls. Men had to be strong. In charge. That’s the only lesson his father had taught him.

  Carter’s little sister, Jasmine, trembled next to him. Her face twisted up in a ball of tears and snot.

  Mama wasn’t crying at all. Not that Carter could see. If there were tears behind her huge, round sunglasses, they weren’t falling. She kept staring.

  Maybe Daddy’s wrong.

  Feeling like a back-stabber made Carter bite down harder. The salty tang of blood seeped across the tip of his tongue.

  Mama would cry. Carter knew it. She was a girl. And Daddy had never been wrong.

  The preacher kept talking about dust and going to heaven and how God called Daddy home. Carter pressed his eyes shut. The blaze of the sun through his lids turned his vision red.

  Couldn’t God do whatever he wanted? What’d he need Daddy for? Daddy had a home.

  He thought about his dad arriving in front of Jesus on a cloud. Everything was white. Isn’t that how heaven would be? He didn’t know.

  The preacher stopped talking, and following a chorus of amens, people rustled. He kept his eyes closed, trying to see Daddy on that cloud. That made more sense than the idea of his father in that box.

  A pop on Carter’s back opened his eyes. He squinted up to see his Uncle Shepard.

  “Come on, boy. We’re heading back to the house. Your mama wants you to ride with us.”

  His uncle was even sweatier than normal. He pulled a tissue from his suit and gave his forehead a wide swipe. Uncle Shepard’s head, puffy and dark like a toasted marshmallow, craned around toward Carter’s mother. She was over talking to the old white man.

  “I wanna ride with Mama.”

  “No. You’re coming with us.”

  The tears Carter fought so hard started to spill. He stopped breathing, thinking they would stop. They didn’t. His chest convulsed as he sobbed. The sound of his screaming filled everything around him. He tried to stop it. He did.

  “Come on, your Daddy wouldn’t want you crying.” Uncle Shepard’s smooth voice grasped for comforting but didn’t quite reach. The lumbering man hitched his pants and kneeled down to look Carter in his watery eyes. “Be a little man now.”

  Carter swallowed. The lump in his throat felt like a porcupine. He didn’t speak. He just followed his aunt and uncle to their car.

  Looking out the window as they drove away, he saw his mother waving her finger in the white man’s face. That finger usually had people shaking. Mama could be scary. But the man stood and stared–tall and rooted like a weed.

  The car lurched and kicked up a swirl of dust on the dirt road leading out of the cemetery, and the pair disappeared.

  1

  Carter

  John Peter Star died trussed up like a Christmas goose and with a ball gag in his mouth.

  He was 90.

  Waves of news crews descended on Dallas to cover the ignominious death of the oil billionaire turned magnate of international business. His death dropped him precipitously from the Forbes list, bumping up friends and some rivals–which would have made John Peter grumble curses through quick puffs on one of his favorite Cuban cigars.

  Police found the elderly man’s body in a five-star hotel room on Christmas Eve after an as-yet-unknown woman called 9-1-1 then split the scene of sexual adventure. Perhaps no one would have known had a tabloid reporter from The Dallas Post not been tipped off by cops and, in the commotion, snuck into the hotel and into the penthouse suite. And snapped a photo. And sold said photo to a national online gossip site.

  Now everyone knew. It was all anyone could talk about.

  I’d thought the entire thing hilarious and recounted each funny fact of the news story with my cackling childhood friends at the barbershop I frequented whenever I came back to town for the holidays.

  When a report notes that police “discovered” you, that alone signals trouble. Dead was, of course, not a good sign. Arms bound. Naked from the waist down. A missing lady friend. The gag.

  I rolled with laughter, doubling over and practically out of the barber’s chair. It was an immature reaction, considering I’d be forty on my next birthday. But wild stories of wealth and perversion served the universal need to bring the well-heeled back to earth. All good fun.


  Then, six months later, I received the phone call.

  “There’s a legal matter I need to discuss with you. Are you available to meet in my Dallas office next Thursday afternoon? It’s vital that we speak,” an attorney informed me.

  “Why?”

  “I’d rather not say over the phone.”

  I rolled my eyes and geared up to tune the man out, reviewing figures on my computer screen. “Well, then I guess you’d rather I not be there. I’m not in Dallas, as my phone number might indicate to you, and have a business to run.”

  Dallas wasn’t home anymore. I’d lived in Raleigh for years.

  The man persisted. “This is a conversation best had in person. If you’d like me to come to you, I can bring the necessary paperwork, but…” Silence and a sigh. “This has to do with a confidential matter of high importance. Trust me. It’s going to be worth your while. And I’d prefer to talk with you and your siblings at the same time.”

  Trust him? All he’d said was his name was William Traynor, an estate attorney. What did he know about Jasmine and Nate? If this was family business, he could deal with me or Mom, but he wasn’t calling about my mother, clearly.

  “You’re going to have to explain yourself if you want an appointment. I’m a busy man.”

  I worked for a top commercial and residential real estate developer and had projects stretching coast to coast. My time was literally money. Lots of money.

  The guy acquiesced. “Okay. Can we meet in person tomorrow? I’ll fly out.”

  “Fine.”

  So he did. He flew to North Carolina to meet me at my office with shocking news and a nondisclosure agreement.

  Now, here I was a week later, using up vacation days and walking out of the private executive elevator at the J.P. Star Energy corporate office.

  The Stars wanted the meeting in their boardroom, and William was obliging them. The family members stood outside the doors of the meeting room–all donned in black and whispering. They slid their furtive glances at me with lips pressed tight. Anger? Grief? Probably some of both. But I couldn’t quite tell. I didn’t know these people.

  I’d heard of them. All of Dallas had. Their names had been on the lips of every person in the country for months.

  The executive floor looked like I would expect. Endless mahogany panels. Photos of oil fields throughout the years with the famous face of John Peter Star staring out at various ages. Four desks lined each side of the reception area opposite the express elevator–two by two. Only two were staffed, and one of the women stood as I stepped onto the floor.

  The other woman eyed me then looked quickly away with a raised brow, tapping away on her keyboard.

  “Good afternoon. You must be Carter. I’m Hannah Carlsson, Theresa Star-Hunter’s assistant.” The older, icier blonde woman moved forward.

  “I must be.”

  My taut grin excited a plastered smile from the woman that cracked for a second as we shook hands.

  “Theresa and the rest of the family are in the boardroom. I’ll walk you back.”

  I followed through reception to the broad hallway extending to the left.

  One after the other, more pictures came into view all the way down the hall. In one, a younger version of the old man stood arm-in-arm with T. Boone Pickens–a tick shorter and slighter but, somehow, he still filled the frame. The brim of his straw hat half shaded his face, so only one crystalline eye was visible as if he were a Western pirate. The man’s angled jaw formed a clean-shaven foundation for his pointed features.

  This bony redneck?

  Hannah deposited me at the doorway of a huge, paneled room with a massive, burled-wood table in the center and seating for over twenty.

  Five nervous people already sat clustered at the far end of the room. One wall of floor-to-ceiling glass overlooked all of downtown, peeking over every high-rise except the green-lit building opposite them across the city center.

  I barely looked at them. Over their heads, dominating the wall, was a portrait. It had to be at least five feet high.

  The thin, sharp-cheeked white man stared back in a black suit and bolo tie. A black cowboy hat with a feather perched forward on his head, framing sharp blue eyes. The man’s wide smile curled, flexing like a crossbow poised to launch.

  The news of the past week floated through my head again, less funny and more stomach-churning.

  Grandma Etta must have been out of her mind to get mixed up with him. This pervy, fucking liar. This conniving, double-dipping prick. This manipulative, sneak-down-to-the-quarters piece of shit.

  My grandfather.

  2

  Carter

  “Have a seat.”

  The silky, Southern tone of an older woman drifted toward me as I walked into the room. I patted the burgundy silk pocket square tucked in my dark gray suit jacket. Like me, it was one of Grandma Etta’s creations.

  She’d died twenty years ago, but I had rows of them neatly folded and rolled in a closet drawer at home and in my suitcase here. This one featured her favorite flowers, tulips, embroidered in yellow connecting along the edges. A cluster of blooms dotted each corner with her signature, an E and a tiny cross swirled together in the foliage. Yellow tulips meant remembrance. She’d taught me that.

  I felt calmer with that square of scrap fabric at my chest. She made the pocket squares with material left over from the interior design business she’d run with a partner until she died. He’d then retired, not wanting to continue after the artistic soul of the business was gone. Maybe he had more information about my grandmother who had suddenly transformed from a clever, hardworking, and reliable matriarch into an enigmatic woman with secrets.

  I stared down the side of the twenty-person board room table to the end where the family sat.

  Two women anchored the head of the table—one with a platinum blonde puff and the other with a bright auburn bun sitting high atop her head. The difference in hair distracted from the mirror image of their faces. I couldn’t tell which had spoken.

  “Yes, Carter, have a seat.” William pointed to an empty chair opposite him. A couple of empty chairs buffered him from the family—or maybe it was the other way around. He had already told the Stars about me. The family didn’t introduce themselves, so I said nothing and sat down.

  Flanking the two older women were two younger ones. One had a sleek, unnaturally black bob, and the other had pulled her straight, light brown hair back into a low ponytail. I recognized them from my week’s worth of online Star research—Willa Samson née Gale, daughter of Marie Gale, and Reese Star-Hunter, daughter of Theresa Star-Hunter. Marie and Theresa were J.P. Star’s twin daughters and my father’s half-sisters.

  I glanced down my side of the table and saw a young man and a young woman, but I didn’t have a chance to examine them before William cleared his throat with a low-pitched hack.

  “If this is all of us for today, we can get started. I know this is an awkward situation, but I’m hoping we can get through this as civilly as possible.”

  “Where’s Jude?” Reese asked.

  Marie’s auburn bun didn’t move as she turned to face Reese before answering the question about the missing grandson. “He couldn’t get away.”

  A disgusted, masculine chortle rumbled in the corner, and I leaned forward to glance on my right. I recognized the only other male relative in the room from the occasional TMZ reports that came across my newsfeed. Anthony Star-Hunter. The oil baron’s entitled, drunken grandson partied with starlets and models, burning through his inheritance until the old man had allegedly cut him off a year ago.

  The woman with hair like a thinly gilded cloud gave the kid enough maternal stink eye to warrant a gas mask. That was definitely Theresa Star-Hunter.

  William forged on. “I should start by saying John Peter was very specific in his wishes. As difficult as his revelation is, eh, to the family and to you, Carter, he had hopes that you would all find a way to accept each other.”

  Anthony
grumbled again. “Not likely. Can we get to it? We’re here to discuss Grandfather’s estate, not for a therapy session.”

  William removed his glasses and placed them on the table in front of him, folding his hands. “You may want to pay attention to these terms, son. And if you need therapy to meet the requirements of your inheritance, that can be arranged. Theresa, your son—” William started to address the blonde, but she cut him off.

  “Nevermind him, William. Continue.” The exasperation in her voice veered toward boredom. Theresa was the power player. All the chaos bearing down on her family because of its own secrets and lies, and she had the nerve to sound put out.

  Her twin and the other family members pressed their lips together, looking between William, Theresa, and Anthony with glints of suppressed irritation.

  Marie raised a brow. “It has been terribly embarrassing, Theresa. His behavior is appalling.”

  Theresa’s voice crisped like winter air. “Quiet. Let William say what he needs to say.”

  Marie pinched her features tighter and tighter, tamping down rage. Her eyes narrowed as Willa’s widened to near perfect, terrified circles. Her inky black bob shimmied with every head turn as she followed the angry banter.

  I struggled to keep the corners of my mouth from curling up. This stellar family was a mess like any other.

  Ignoring her sister and niece, Theresa tilted her chin up and prompted William to speak.