Read Online Never Again Good-Bye by Terri Blackstock - Free Book Online Page B

it. Laney had let herself hope today for the first time in years. And in one fell swoop her fragile, newly constructed world had come crashing down. All it took was a child’s denial. All it took was the frost in a pair of green, grieving eyes.

    N either the grief nor the anger had subsided a week later when Wes’s sister burst into his office. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”
    Wes looked up from the books spread out on his desk and rubbed his hands over his tired eyes. “Leave me alone, Sherry,” he told her as she leaned in the doorway with her arms crossed judgmentally. “I’m in a bad mood.”
    “Of course you’re in a bad mood,” she said, walking toward him, her abrupt footsteps jarring the walls of the tiny trailer they worked in. “You should be.”
    “I mean it, Sherry,” he warned. “Don’t provoke me today.” He really didn’t think he could take it. Ever since he had told her about Laney and the night she had made spaghetti, his sister had been hounding and badgering him. “Provoke you?” Sherry said, pushing her shoulder-length, blond hair back from her face. “I ought to shoot you! You’re digging your own grave, Wes. She called again!”
    Wes’s eyes snapped to attention and that wariness Sherry had grown so used to crept back into them. “I told you, I don’t want to see her or talk to her.”
    She let out a disgusted breath and set her hands on her hips, trying to steady her voice. “Wes, Laney Fields is a very determined woman. She’s getting impatient with you. I’m really worried about what she might do.”
    “Do you honestly think I’m not? Birth mothers file suit against adoptive parents every day. And sometimes they win, regardless of the best interests of the child.”
    Sherry sat down knee to knee with him. “Wes, if she does file suit, you don’t have the money to fight it. But you could cooperate a little and avoid all of this.”
    Wes looked down at his books, at the figures that told him the office building his company was just finishing was way over budget, at the notices from hostile creditors breathing down his neck, at the hospital bills that would have broken a rich man. He had never been rich.
    “Just let her see her again,” Sherry said. “Just a harmless little visit.”
    “I can’t cooperate at Amy’s expense,” he said.
    “But, Wes, if she gets you in court and it comes out that you can’t even pay your grocery bill these days, how do you think that’ll look?”
    His arm flailed across his desk, knocking the books and papers off with a loud clatter. “I have no choice!” he shouted, the tendons in his neck straining against the skin.
    Sherry’s silence was all the condemnation he needed for his outburst. He steepled his shaking hands in front of his face, and his eyes softened as he looked at his sister who had literally prayed him through the despair and depression in the toughest times of his life. Even now, she worked for him for free when she wasn’t waiting tables or attending her fashion designing classes because he hadn’t been able to pay his secretary. “I’ll do what I have to do, Sherry.”
    “I’m just saying that maybe you have alternatives,” she said quietly.
    He dropped his head down and cupped his hands over the back of his neck. “Sherry, you don’t have a child. You don’t know what it’s like.”
    “I have a niece,” she reminded him.
    He squeezed his eyes shut. She’s afraid I’m going to give her back to Laney. She doesn’t understand, and she doesn’t trust Laney. “I can’t make her spend Sundays at the zoo with a woman who threatens her security. I’d sell everything I have if I could keep Amy from getting hurt and being afraid.”
    Sherry only studied him for a long moment. Finally she leaned across his desk and dropped a kiss on his forehead. “And I’d sell everything I have to keep from seeing my brother so scared,” she whispered. “But I don’t have anything except a stack of IOUs