“Yeah.”
“How much older is he than you?”
“About five years.”
“Jordan looks more like you than his father.” In fact, she thought, if not for the obvious difference in the age of the photographs, a person could easily mistake Jordan in his football uniform for the teenaged J.T. in his uniform.
He set two plates on the table with more force than necessary. “Jordan and—Tate aren’t part of your interview or your book, remember?”
As he slid into a chair, she claimed the seat across from him. “Sorry. I’m more than a little fascinated by families.”
“So write about your own.”
“I don’t really have one. It was always just my father and me.”
“You didn’t have a mother? Guess that proves my theory that reporters aren’t born. They’re created in a lab somewhere.”
“I had a mother,” she said with a faint smile. “She died when I was six. I just have a few memories of her.”
“Sorry.” He said it brusquely, but she suspected he was sincere. “What about grandparents? Aunts and uncles?”
“My father was an only child who wasn’t close to his parents. My mother was the youngest of four children, but her family resented my father for taking her away. After she died, we never had any contact with them.” She glanced at her plate, at a ham sandwich too large by half for her appetite, a pile of potato chips and two home-baked chocolate chip cookies. J.T.’s plate held the same, plus an additional sandwich. “You know, I’m supposed to be asking the questions, not answering them.”
“So ask.”
She chewed a bite or two before leading into her first question. “I understand that your father—”
“Chaney was a sperm donor, not a father. Call him whatever you want, but not ‘father.’”
Natalie nodded in agreement. “Senator Chaney tried to establish a relationship with you some time back, but you refused to return his calls or answer his letters. Sounds like a pattern, doesn’t it?”
“Sounds like you people from Alabama are pushy.”
“Some of us more than others,” she replied with a smile. “At least he didn’t show up on your doorstep.”
J.T. wasn’t the least bit amused. “If he had, I really would have called the sheriff.”
“Aren’t you even curious about him?”
“No.”
“There’s nothing you want to say to him? No answers you’d like to get from him?”
He shook his head.
“I think he’s very curious about you. I think he regrets not acknowledging you all those years ago—not claiming you and giving you the same sort of privileged life the rest of his children had.”
“I’m not a possession to be claimed.”
“No, of course not. But you understand what I’m saying.”
“If the good senator has any regrets,” he said snidely, “I imagine they have to do with leaving office and losing some of that power and constant media attention. I think that’s the whole reason behind this book, and the whole reason for sending you here. His illegitimate son is the only surprise the old man has left to get people’s attention.”
Natalie disagreed with him, though she didn’t say so. She truly believed Chaney wanted to meet J.T., to know what kind of son he and Lucinda Rawlins had produced together. He’d made his own attempts and had been rebuffed, and so he’d turned to her to get the information for him.
“You’re very close to your half brother, Tate, and your nephew, Jordan.” When she paused, a wary look turned his brown eyes a few shades darker and cranked up the intensity in his gaze a few notches. “You have eight half brothers and sisters and seven nieces and nephews on your fa—on the Chaney side of the family. Do you have any interest in meeting them?”
“You’ve met them, haven’t you?”
She nodded. She’d had the dubious pleasure of spending weeks with every one of them.
“Do I have anything in common with even one of them?”
As far as she could recall, not one of the Chaney offspring had ever held a job. Oh, they’d been given titles in the family business and positions in their father’s campaign, but they were empty titles, responsibility-free positions. None of them had actually worked at anything beyond enjoying life to the fullest as one of the privileged elite. They partied. They indulged their every whim. They spent their father’s money as if the supply was inexhaustible—as it seemed to be. They carried on scandalously and considered themselves above the dictates the rest of the world lived by.
“Other than the brown hair and eyes, no,” she admitted. Then she smiled. “Of course, I don’t know that much about you yet.” But she knew enough to be certain that he wasn’t the typical lazy, self-centered, greedy narcissist the rest of the Chaney children were. She knew they would have no more interest in claiming him as their half brother than he had in being claimed.
“Are your mother’s parents still alive?”
The abrupt subject change made her blink. “I—I don’t know.”
“Why haven’t you found out?”
“I don’t even know where they lived.”
“You know their names?”
“Yes, but—”
“You found me, when I would have preferred to remain lost. Surely, if they’re still living, you can find them.”
“And what would I say?”
“How about starting with, ‘I’m your granddaughter’? Then moving on to ‘I’m fascinated by families and thought it was time to get to know my own.’”
Natalie’s laugh felt choked and phony. “Remember—I ask the questions and you answer them.”
His shrug was every bit as enticing as it had been earlier by the truck, with his shirt off. “Have you never even thought about tracking them down?”
“No.”
“Why not? Their problem was with your father, not you. They would probably be thrilled to meet their youngest daughter’s only child.”
Maybe, she admitted to herself. But her father would go ballistic if he ever found out. He’d made it clear enough when she was a child that her loyalties belonged to him, no one else. His parents, her mother’s parents—who needed them? They had each other.
But she had never really had him.
She cleared her mind. “Back to the Chaneys…”
“Let’s stick with the Grants, or actually…what is your grandparents’ name?”
“Stevenson.”
“You have a whole family out there somewhere. Wouldn’t you like to meet the Stevensons?”
“Wouldn’t you like to meet the Chaneys?”
“Aunts, uncles, cousins…”
“Half brothers, half sisters, stepmothers—several of whom are just about your age.”
“You think I’d be interested in one of the old man’s ex-wives? How sick would that be?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Not in the Rawlins family.”
Natalie