hoppin’ pa’s out with some new piece he’s found – " Gray lunged forward like a snake striking. His fist connected with Amos’s jaw, knuckles smashing against bone, and both Amos and the chair crashed to the floor. The chair splintered into kindling beneath him. With a terrified wail, Scottie burrowed his face harder against Faith’s hip. She was too frozen to even put a comforting arm around his shoulders, and he began to cry. Amos groggily scrambled up from the floor, and staggered to put the table between him and Gray. "Why’d you hit me?" he whined, holding his jaw. "I ain’t done nothin’ to you. Whatever Renee and your pa done, it ain’t my fault!" "What’s all the yellin’ about?" came Jodie’s deliberately sultry voice, the one she put on whenever she was trying to entice a man. Faith looked toward the entrance to the lean-to, and her eyes widened with horror. Jodie posed against the doorframe, her uncombed reddish blond hair tossed back over her bare shoulders. She wore only a pair of red lace panties, and demurely held the matching lace camisole so that it barely covered her breasts. She blinked at Gray with wide-eyed innocence so blatantly false that Faith cringed inside. Gray’s expression tightened with disgust as he glanced at her; his mouth curled and he deliberately turned his back. "I want you gone by nightfall," he said to Amos, his voice steely. "You stink up our land, and I’m tired of smelling you." "Leave?" Amos croaked. "You high-and-mighty bastard, you can’t make us leave. There’re laws – " "You don’t pay rent," Gray said, a cold, deadly smile twisting his lips. "Eviction laws don’t apply to trespassers. Get ou nike air max 180 t." He turned and started toward the door. "Wait!" Amos cried. His panicked gaze darted around the room as if looking for inspiration. He licked his lips. "Don’t be so hasty. Maybe… maybe they just took a little trip. They’ll come back. Yeah, that’s right. Renee’ll be back, she didn’t have no reason to leave." Gray gave a harsh bark of laughter, his contemptuous gaze moving around the room, taking in the mean interior of the shack. Someone, probably the youngest girl, had made an effort to keep it clean, but it was like trying to hold back the tide. Amos and the two boys, who were younger editions of their father, sullenly watched him. The older girl still lounged in the doorway trying to show him as much of her tits as she could without actually dropping that scrap of cloth. The little boy with Down’s syndrome was clinging to the younger girl’s legs and bawling. The girl was standing as if turned to stone, staring at him with huge, blank green eyes. Her dark red hair hung untidily around her shoulders, and her bare feet were dirty. Standing so close to him, Faith could read his expression, and she cringed inside as his gaze swept over the shack and its inhabitants, finally settling on her. He catalogued her life, her family, herself, and found it all worthless. "No reason to leave?" he sneered. "My God, as far as I can tell, she doesn’t have a reason to come back!" In the silenc nike air max plus e that followed, he stepped around Faith and shoved the screen door open. It banged against the side of the shack, then slammed shut. The Corvette’s engine roared to life, and a moment later Gray was gone. Faith stood frozen in the middle of the floor, with Scottie still clinging to her legs and crying. Her mind felt numb. She knew she needed to do something, but what? Gray had said they had to leave, and the enormity of it stunned her. Leave? Where would they go? She couldn’t make her mind start working. All she could do was lift her hand, which felt as heavy as lead, and smooth Scottie’s hair while saying, "It’s all right, it’s all right," even though she knew it was a lie. Mama was gone, and it would never be all right again. Four Gray managed to make it almost half a mile before the shaking became so hard that he had to stop the car. He leaned his head on the steering wheel and closed his eyes, trying to fight off the waves of panic. God, what was he going to do? He had never before been as scared as he was now. Bewildered pain filled him, and he felt like a child who runs to hide his face in his mother’s lap, much as that Devlin kid had tried to hide against his sister’s skinny legs. But he couldn’t go to Noelle; even when he had been a child, she’d pulled away from clinging little hands, and he’d learned to go to his father for reassurance. Even had Noelle been more affectionate, he couldn’t look to her for support, because she would be looking to him for the same thing. Taking care of his mother and sister was his responsibility now. Why had Guy done it? How could he have left? His father’s absence, his betrayal, made Gray feel as if his heart had been torn out. Guy had had Renee anyway; what had she offered that tempted him into turning his back on his children, his business, his heritage? Gray had always been close to his father, had grown up surrounded by his love, had always felt his support like a solid rock at his back, but now that loving, reassuring presence was gone, and with it the foundation of his life. He was terrified. He was only twenty-two, and the problems looming over him looked like unscalable mountains. Noelle and Monica still didn’t know; somehow he had to find the strength to tell them. He had to be a rock for them, and he had to put aside his own pain and concentrate on holding the family finances together, or they stood to lose everything. This wasn’t the same situation it would have been if Guy had died, for Gray would have inherited the shares, the money, and the control. As it was now, Guy still owned everything, and he was gone. The Rouillard fortune could come tumbling down around their ears, with wary investors jumping ship and various boards of directors seizing power. Gray would have to fight like a son of a bitch to keep even half of what they now had. He, Monica, and Noelle had some assets hi their own names, but it wouldn’t be enough. Guy had been giving Gray a crash cou nike air max 2003 rse in managing it all, but hadn’t given him the power to do so, unless he’d left a letter giving Gray his proxy. Desperate hope reared its head. Any such letter, if it existed, would be in the desk in the study. Failing that, he’d have to call Alex and get his help in laying out a strategy. Alex was a damn smart man and a good corporate lawyer; he could have had a much more lucrative practice somewhere else, but he was backed by his own family money and hadn’t felt the need to leave Prescott. He had handled all of Guy’s business, as well as being his best friend, so he knew as much or more about the legal situation as did Gray. God knows, Gray thought bleakly, he’d need all the help he could get. If there wasn’t a letter of proxy, he’d be lucky to keep a roof over them. When he nike ireland raised his head from the steering wheel, he had regained his self-control, the pain pushed to the background nike air max women and nike air max shoes steely determination taking its place. By God, his mother and sister would have a hard enough time dealing with this as it was; he’d be damned if he let them lose their home, too. He put the car into gear and drove away, leaving the last remnants of his boyhood behind on the rutted dirt track. He went first into Prescott, to Alex’s office. He would have to move fast to salvage anything. Andrea broke into a smile when he came in, something women often did at the sight of him. Color heightened a little on her round, pleasant face. She was forty-five, old enough to be his mother, but age had nothing to do with her instinctive female reaction to his tall, muscular presence. Gray automatically returned the smile, but his mind was racing with plans. "Is anyone with Alex? I need to see him." "No, he’s alone. Go on in, hon." Gray walked past her desk and into Ale nike air max 90 infrared x’s office, firmly closing the door behind him. Alex looked up from the well-ordered mountain of files on his desk, and got to his feet. His good-looking face was taut with worry. "Did you find him?" Gray shook his head. "Renee Devlin’s gone, too." "Oh, God." Alex collapsed back into his chair and shut his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I can’t believe it. I didn’t think he was serious. My God, why would he be? He was – " He stopped and opened his eyes, flushing a little. "Fucking her anyway," Gray finished bluntly. He walked over to the window and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down on the main street. Prescott was a small town, only about fifteen thousand citizens, but today traffic hummed around the courthouse square. Soon everyone down there would know that Guy Rouillard had left his wife cheap nike air max 90 and children and run off with the Devlin whore. "Does your mama know?" Alex’s voice was strained. Gray shook his head. "Not yet. I’ll tell her and Monica when I go home." The original shock and pain had gone, leaving behind a ruthless willpower and a certain remoteness, as if he were standing at a distance watching himself go through the motions. Some of that distance leaked into his tone, making him sound cool and steady. "Did Dad leave a letter of proxy with you?" Until then, evidently, Alex had thought only of the personal ramifications of Guy’s defection. Now the legal aspects dawned on him, and his eyes widened with horror. "Shit," he said, lapsing into unusual vulgarity. "No, he didn’t. If he had, I’d have known he was serious about leaving and tried to stop him." "There may be a letter in the desk at home. He may call in a day or so. If so, there’s no problem with the financial side of things. But if there isn’t a letter, and he doesn’t call… I can’t afford to wait. I’ll have to liquidate as much as I can, before news of this gets around and stock prices drop like a rock." "He’ll call," Ale nike air max trainers x said feebly. "He has to. He can’t just walk away from this kind of financial obligation. A fortune is involved!" Gray shrugged, his face a careful blank. "He walked away from his family. I can’t afford to assume that the business m nike air max 1 eans more to him." He paused. "I don’t think he’ll come back or call. I think he meant to w nike air max wright alk away from everything and never come back. He’s been teaching me as much as he could, and now I know why. If he had meant to stay in charge of everything, he wouldn’t have done that." "Then there should be a letter of proxy," Alex said insistently. "Guy was too sharp of a businessman not to have taken care of that."