Just Desserts

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

Epilogue

Manhattan

The other attorney leaned forward and fixed Finn Rafferty with a look meant to remind him which one of them had Harvard Law on his side.

“Our own report on outstanding paternity claims against your client came in yesterday,” Hampton Sloan IV said in the clipped and highly enunciated way of those to the manor born.

Finn, whose own background was more blue collar than blue blood, leaned back in his chair and fixed Sloan with a look meant to tell him that he already knew the answer.

“And—?” he prompted. These Ivy League types had a real jones for making you beg.

“To my surprise, the names on your list are no longer an issue.”

Tell me something I don't know,
Finn thought. This wasn't the first time (and it probably wouldn't be the last) that he had been down this road. “No surprise to me. Those names have been vetted more than once.”

He had to hand it to aging preppies with roman numerals after their names. Being wrong didn't even register on Sloan's patrician features. Finn, however, was having a tough time keeping “told you so” from registering on his.

“Glad it all checked out.” He gathered up the signed documents scattered across the top of the cherrywood desk. “Mr. Stiles will countersign and then we can consider the prenup a done deal.”

The smile on Sloan's face should have tipped Finn off but he was already planning his escape route from the city. “As I said, Mr. Rafferty, the original list you provided checked out, but our investigators turned up one more name that seems to have escaped notice.”

“We didn't withhold any names, if that's what you're implying. The list was complete and current.”

“It would seem your investigators didn't go back quite far enough, Mr. Rafferty.” Sloan slid a crisp manila folder across the desk. “I think you'll find this very interesting.”

Finn, who had been hoping to hit the road before rush hour started, looked down at the folder. “‘Maitland,'” he said, reading the label. “What's this?”

“Read the summary page, counselor.” It was never a good sign when the other side's attorney looked that amused.

He flipped open the folder. The summary page was on top of the paper-clipped stack. “Where did this come from?”

“Like I said, our investigators are very thorough.”

“We're talking Tommy Stiles, the man who actually wants to know if he has other kids out there.”

“Then he should be exceedingly happy if this turns out to be a DNA match.”

A graduate of Harvard Law would have tendered an enigmatic smile, slid the folder into his briefcase, then waited until he was safely ensconced in his own cherrywood-and-leather office before he read the contents.

Finn, however, had graduated SUNY Stony Brook and he read it twice while Sloan watched.

He met Sloan's eyes across the wide expanse of antique desktop. “I don't know how in hell we missed this. Our people are relentless when it comes to tracking down paternity claims.” Tommy was probably the only superstar on the planet who was actually disappointed each time a claim was found to be without merit.

Sloan leaned back in his chair and for a moment he looked almost human. “It was a fluke,” he admitted. “The original birth certificate was amended two weeks after the baby's birth to read
Father: Unknown
.”

“That's not uncommon,” Finn said. “Usually the original is destroyed.”

“Not this time.” According to Sloan's people, the hospital in Kentucky had held on to the original records in a basement storage room where they stayed for years until they ended up being scanned into the county's genealogical database two months ago. “Quite clearly a mistake on their part but an interesting turn of events for our respective clients.”

“‘An interesting turn of events'?” Finn said, meeting the other lawyer's eyes. “That's one way to put it.”

The other way was
holy shit
, but he kept that observation to himself.

Midtown traffic was hellacious as usual. It took Finn almost an hour to make his way from West Fifty-seventh across town to the Queensborough Bridge entrance, but he barely noticed it. The Maitland folder was open on the passenger seat and each time traffic ground to a standstill, he read more of the background information Sloan's people had uncovered about Jane Maitland and her daughter, Hayley.

The more Finn thought about it, the less he believed there was anything to the claim. There was nothing unusual about reverting to
Father: Unknown
status. More than likely Jane Maitland and Tommy had come to some kind of understanding about paternity and the issue was dropped. The only reason it was being addressed now was because some overzealous record keeper had saved the original documents instead of destroying them.

Traffic at the entrance to the bridge was at a literal standstill. Finn dug deeper into the file and found a photo of Dr. Maitland. He couldn't quite match up the fiercely intelligent but plain-looking scientist with nineteen-year-old guitarist Tommy Stiles. Call it sexist on his part, but the whole thing just didn't compute. Not even when you factored in the whole older woman/younger man dynamic.

A dead end, he told himself as he waited for traffic to start moving again. Nothing more than a formality.

And then he saw Jane Maitland's curriculum vitae.

She was an oceanographer.

A world-famous, prizewinning, planet-changing oceanographer.

Suddenly it all started to make sense.

He looked more closely at the paperwork. Hayley might have been born in Kentucky but her mother had been teaching at Princeton during the years before and after. Tommy had grown up right outside Princeton.

And there was the ocean…

Two hours ago he had been certain this new prospect would turn out to be a dead end like all the others. Now, the more miles he racked up, the more certain Finn became that the Stiles family was about to increase by two.

New Jersey…the ocean…the timing.

By the time he rolled past the sign welcoming him to East Hampton, he was reconfiguring Tommy's prenup to include the Goldstein girls as legitimate heirs.

He made the turn onto Greenleaf Path on autopilot. The toughest part would be getting Tommy alone so they could talk. The place was usually bursting at the seams with family, friends, friends of friends. Sometimes the only way they could get any work done was to head down to the beach and talk business while they walked the shoreline.

Tommy's place didn't look like much from the road. Two stories of sprawling sun-bleached shingles set on what passed for a hill in the Hamptons. The house sat so close to the water that it was practically built on beach sand. There were times when it seemed like a stiff breeze would send it hurtling into the Atlantic. It wasn't until you wound your way up the driveway that you got a real sense of the place. Ten bedrooms, twelve full baths, and two guesthouses tended to make an impression.

The first time Finn saw the place, he was a scared sixteen-year-old kid with no family and enough baggage to fill the hold of a 747. Tommy Stiles was his father's best friend, and when Jack and Mary Ann died, it was Tommy who opened up his heart and his home to Finn.

And how did Finn repay him? He had done his level teenage best to throw it all back in the guy's face.

The Hamptons were another planet to the kid from a small town in central New Jersey. The people were aliens who might as well have been sporting antennae and wearing shiny silver jumpsuits. Tommy's kids—and there were a hell of a lot of them—all had one thing in common: they hated the ocean. When the winds kicked up they retreated deeper into the house, hiding beneath headphones and loud music, counting down the minutes until the sun came out again.

Not Finn. The briny smell, the percussive sound of the waves breaking along the shore, the silvery glint of sunlight against the dark, unknowable ocean. It got into his blood fast and hard and before long he loved it the way Tommy did.

It seemed like another lifetime. He could barely remember the angry, lonely kid who had shown up on Tommy's doorstep with his father's Stratocaster, an old leather jacket, and what was left of his heart.

Tommy wasn't like anyone Finn had ever known. You couldn't get a rise out of the guy. You couldn't make him angry. The house had reverberated with enough teenage rebellion and adolescent angst to fuel a thousand TV movies, but during it all Tommy's gut-level goodness carried them through.

Everyone loved Tommy Stiles. Even his exes loved him. The place looked like a Mormon family reunion on holidays and birthdays, what with the former wives and girlfriends and kids who flew in from far and wide to be with him. A man had to be doing something right to be loved like that.

Definitely not the kind of guy who'd cold-bloodedly ignore his firstborn child.

Willow's Porsche was angled at the head of the driveway near the path that led to the front porches. Willow was young but she knew how to mark her territory. As the presumptive next Mrs. Tommy Stiles, Willow was also making sure the others in line to the throne understood exactly how important she was in the hierarchy.

Zach and Winston, Tommy's teenage sons by LeeLee James, a backup singer with a smoky alto and world-class legs, were staying at the house this semester. Their matching black Highlander Hybrids were tucked in behind Willow's sports car. The Toyotas were expensive carrots being dangled in front of their teenage noses by Tommy, who hoped that the prospect of wheels would inspire them to knuckle down and hit the books. They were good kids but academia wasn't their strong suit. Both of them wanted to follow in their father's footsteps and go out on the road as musicians, but Tommy was hanging tough on the subject of college.

There were a few cars Finn couldn't identify parked off to the side and an LIPA repair truck near the garage. A quiet day for once. He claimed his usual spot across from the mailbox.

The entrance foyer was an enormous, light-filled room with marble floors the color of beach sand. The walls had been hand-painted by artisans flown over from Italy who knew how to turn bare plaster into a sunny day. Twin staircases flanked the foyer. One led to the guest wing. The other led to Tommy's nominally private space. The concept of privacy wasn't big on the rocker's list of life's necessities. Left alone in a room, Tommy would make friends with a houseplant.

A hot-pink tricycle lay on its side at the foot of the guest staircase, a naked Barbie under the front wheel. He had learned to expect the unexpected when Gigi, Tommy's youngest, or some of the grandchildren were in residence. It wasn't unusual to find Barbie headfirst in one of the nine full baths or a Darth Vader action figure in the microwave.

He performed his civic duty by plucking Barbie from danger, then dropping her into the basket suspended from the handlebars. He then righted the trike and pushed it to a safer spot against the wall. Friends who were parents claimed that was like trying to save the
Titanic
by plugging the hole in the ship with your finger, but he didn't have kids so he gave it a shot anyway.

Music blared from the media room. Kids' laughter rang out from one of the game rooms. He heard the
click-click
of high heels along the upstairs hall and the sound of someone practicing on a tenor sax.

Anton was sitting at the table in the sun-filled kitchen, de-veining shrimp. Some musicians went into detox before a major tour. Anton, the After Life's drummer, cooked.

“You staying for supper?” Anton greeted him.

Finn grabbed a Coke from the Sub-Zero fridge. “Depends what happens after I drop a bomb on TS.” He took a long pull from the soda bottle and waited for the sugar rush to hit his bloodstream.

“You mean like the bomb he dropped on us yesterday?”

“This would be what, his third farewell tour?” Finn took another gulp of Coke. “I don't see him hanging it up before Springsteen or Joel, do you?”

“I don't know,” Anton said, popping the tail off a large crustacean. “You've gotta admit there's something in the air around here. Even Willow's thinking about swapping modeling for writing kids' books.”

Finn wisely decided to keep his opinion on Willow's literary future to himself.