TO HAVE AND TO HOLD

          Damien Kennedy suppressed a shiver that had nothing to do with the afternoon thunderstorm raging all around him. For a moment, he remained as if rooted to the spot, staring at the elaborate scrolls carved into the heavy oak door before him. A door he’d promised himself he’d never pass through again… At least, not while his grandfather was alive.

          ‘I should have come back here only for you, Mother… Only to see you…’

          But he’d sworn never to let himself be locked inside the walls of Kennedy Mansion again. Damien had thought he had all the time he would need to make his absence up to his mother. But fate slapped him hard…

          In his youthful ignorance, he hadn’t realized everything he’d be giving up to uphold his vow. Now he was back to honor another vow, a promise to see that his mother was taken care of.

          The thought had his stomach roiling. He looked around and saw that the cab had already left, so he knew there was no turning back now. On a day plagued by steamy, ferocious southern thunderstorms, Damien certainly wouldn’t be walking the ten miles back to where he was staying, no matter how much he dreaded this visit.

          Shaking off the feeling of nausea, Damien reached for the old-fashioned iron knocker shaped like a lion’s head. His uneasiness almost vanished as he reminded himself that he wouldn’t be here for long. Only as long as necessary.

          Knocking again, he listened intently for footsteps on the other side of the door. It wasn’t really home if you had to wait for someone to answer. He’d walked away with the surety that only comes with untried youth.

          Now he returned a different man, a success on his own terms. He just wouldn’t have the satisfaction of rubbing his grandfather’s nose in it. Because Theodore Kennedy was dead. The knob rattled, then the door swung inward with a deep creak.

          A tall man, his posture still strong despite the gray hair disappearing from his head, blinked several times as if not sure his aging eyes were trustworthy. Though he’d left his childhood home on his eighteenth birthday, Damien recognized Briar, the family butler.

“Oh, Master Damien, welcome! We’ve been expecting you,” the older man said.

“Thank you, Briar,” Damien returned with polite sincerity, stepping closer to look into the butler’s faded blue eyes.

          Lightning cracked nearby and thunder almost immediately boomed with wall-rattling force, the storm a reflection of the upheaval deep in Damien’s core. Still studying his face, the older man opened the door wide enough for Damien and his luggage.

“Good to see you,” Briar said, shutting out the pouring rain behind them. “It’s been a long time, Master Damien.”

          Damien searched the other man’s voice for condemnation but found none.

“Please, leave your luggage here. I’ll take it up once June has your room ready,” Briar instructed.

          So, the same housekeeper, the one who’d baked cookies for him and his brothers while they were grieving the loss of their father, was still here, too. They said nothing ever changed in small towns. They were right.

          He swept a quick glance around the open foyer, finding it the same as when he’d left, too. The only difference was an absent portrait that captured a long-ago moment in time. It was the one with his parents, himself at about fifteen, and his younger twin brothers about a year before his father’s death.

          Setting down his duffel and laptop case and shaking off the last drops of rain, Damien followed Briar’s silent steps through the shadowy breezeway at the center of the house.

          The gallery, his mother had always called this space that opened around the central staircase. It granted visitors an unobstructed view of the elaborate rails and landings of the two upper floors.

          Before air-conditioning, the space had allowed a breeze through the house on hot, humid South Carolina afternoons. Today the sounds of his steps echoed off the walls as if the place were empty, abandoned.

          But his mother was still present somewhere in the old mansion. In her old rooms, probably. Damien didn’t want to think of her, of how helpless her condition rendered her. And him.

          It had been so long since he’d last heard her voice on the phone, right before her stroke, two years ago. After the car accident made travel difficult for her, Damien’s mother had called him once a week, always when Theodore left the house.

          The last time he’d seen Kennedy Mansion’s phone number on his caller ID, it had been his brother calling to tell him their mother had suffered a stroke, brought on by complications from her paralysis. Then silence ever since.

          To Damien’s surprise, Briar went directly to the stairway, oak banister gleaming even in the dim light as if it had just been polished. Most formal meetings in the house were held in his grandfather’s study, where Damien had assumed he’d be meeting with the lawyer. He’d just as soon get down to business.

“Did the lawyer give up on my arrival?” Damien asked, curious about why he was being shown to his room first.

“I was told to bring you upstairs, Master Damien,” Briar replied, not even glancing back.

          Did he view the prodigal son with suspicion, an unknown entity who would change life as Briar had lived it for over forty years? You bet! He had every intention of using his grandfather’s money to move his mother closer to her sons and provide her with the best care for her condition, much better than he could give her personally.

          He’d sell off everything, then hightail it back to his business in New York City. He had nothing more than a hard-won career waiting for him there, but at least it was something he’d built on his own. He wanted nothing to do with Kennedy Mansion or the memories hidden within its bleak walls.

          Having followed blindly, he abruptly noticed Briar’s direction. Uneasiness stirred low in Damien’s gut again. His and his brothers’ old rooms took up the third floor.

          To his knowledge, dated though it was, only two sets of rooms occupied the second floor: his mother’s and his grandfather’s suites. Neither of which was he ready to visit. His mother’s, after he’d had time to prepare himself. His grandfather’s… when hell freezes over.

          The lawyer, Stanton, had said Theodore died last night. Damien had been focused on packing and getting here since then. He’d address what the future held after talking with Stanton.

          Damien directed his question to Briar’s back as they neared the double doors to his grandfather’s suite, his tone emerging huskier than he would have liked.

“Briar, what’s going on?”

          But the other man didn’t reply. He just took the last few steps to the doors, then twisted the knob and stepped back.

“Mr. Stanton is inside, Master Damien.”

          The words were so familiar, yet somehow not. Damien drew a deep breath, his jaw tightening at the repeated use of Briar’s childhood designation for him. But it beat being called Master Kennedy.

          They shouldn’t even have the hated last name, but his mother had given in to old Theodore’s demands. The Kennedy name had to survive, even if his grandfather could only throw girls. So, he’d insisted his only daughter give the name to her own sons, shutting out any legacy his father might have wanted.

          Damien shook his head, then pushed through the doorway with a brief nod. He stepped into the room, warm despite the spring chill of the storm raging outside. His eyes strayed to the huge four-poster bed draped in heavy purple velvet.

          That same moment, his whole body recoiled. Watching him from the bed was his grandfather. His dead grandfather. The rest of the room disappeared, along with the storm pounding against the windows.

          He could only stare at the man he’d been told had ‘passed on’. Yet there he was, sitting up in bed, sizing up the adult Damien with eyes piercing despite his age. His body was thinner, frailer than Damien remembered, but no one would mistake his grandfather for dead. The forceful spirit within the body was too potent to miss.

          Damien instinctively focused on his adversary.  He knew the best defense was a strong offense. That strategy had kept him alive when he was young and broke. It did the same now that he was older and wealthier than he’d ever imagined he’d be when he’d walked away from Kennedy Mansion.

“Well, well… I knew you were a tough old bird, Theodore, but I didn’t think even you could rise from the dead,” Damien said.

          To his surprise, his grandfather cracked a weak smile.

“You always were a chip off the old block.”

          Damien suppressed his resentment at the cliché and added a new piece of knowledge to his arsenal. Theodore might not be dead, but his voice wavered, scratchy as if forced from a closed throat.

          Coupled with the milky paleness of his grandfather’s once-bronze skin, Damien could only imagine something serious must have occurred. Why wasn’t he in the hospital? Not that Damien would have rushed home to provide comfort, even if he’d known his grandfather was sick. When he’d vowed that he wouldn’t set foot in Kennedy Mansion until his grandfather was dead, he’d meant it. Something the old man knew only too well.

          Anger blurred Damien’s surroundings for a moment. He stilled his body, then his brain, with slow, even breaths. His tunnel vision suddenly expanded to take in the woman who approached the bed with a glass of water.

          Theodore frowned at her, obviously irritated at the interruption.

“You need this,” she said, her voice soft, yet insistent.

          Something about that sound threatened to temper Damien’s reaction. Wavy hair, the color of golden honey, settled in a luxuriant wave to the middle of her back. The thick waves framed classic, elegant features and movie star creamy skin that added beauty to the sickroom like a rose in a graveyard. Bright blue-colored scrubs outlined a slender body with curves in all the right places… Not that he should be noticing at the moment.

          Just as he tried to pull his gaze away, one perfectly arched brow lifted. She stared Theodore down, her hand opening to reveal two white capsules. That’s when it hit him.

“Invader?”

          He didn’t realize he’d said it out loud until she stiffened. Theodore glanced between the two of them.

“I see you remember Regina...”