Chasing the Truth (The Holden Brothers Book 4) Read online

  Chasing the Truth

  The Holden Brothers 4

  M. S. Parker

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 Belmonte Publishing LLC

  Published by Belmonte Publishing LLC

  Contents

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  The Holden Brothers Reading order

  1. JP

  2. Lake

  3. JP

  4. Lake

  5. JP

  6. Lake

  7. JP

  8. Lake

  9. JP

  10. Lake

  His Inspiration: Preview

  1. Joshua

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  Office romances by M. S. Parker

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  The Holden Brothers Reading order

  Thank you for reading Chasing the Truth, JP’s bonus story in my new series, The Holden Brothers. Each book can be read standalone, but I highly recommend reading the books in this order:

  1. A Billionaire Gentleman

  2. A Billionaire Rebel

  3. A Billionaire Dom

  4. Chasing the Truth (This book)

  One

  JP

  Her life wasn’t supposed to end this way.

  My mother had given me everything, and I would never have the chance to pay her back for any of it. Not that she’d asked me to. She would have never done that. She wasn’t that kind of woman.

  Melissa Ives was the best parent a child could ask for. A single mom, she’d worked tirelessly to make sure I didn’t want for anything. She’d been there for me my entire life, and twenty-four years wasn’t nearly enough time.

  I couldn’t lose her. She was the only family I had.

  The person sitting next to me shifted in her seat, reminding me that I wasn’t going to be completely alone. Lake would always be here, and I was thankful for that, but a best friend wasn’t the same as a mother.

  Mom’s hand rested limply in mine, her fingers already cold from poor circulation. Her eyes were closed, and her body motionless, only the faint rise and fall of her chest telling me that she was still alive. She hadn’t woken since falling asleep last night, and the hospice nurse working today had already told me that it would be any time now.

  I wasn’t ready.

  I’d been with her when she’d gotten the diagnosis, and I would have moved back home if she’d let me. She’d insisted that I keep the apartment that Lake and I shared, telling me that she didn’t want me putting my entire life on hold simply because she was sick.

  I’d tried again when the doctors told her that the treatment wasn’t working and that she only had a few weeks at best. She’d refused, saying that she intended to be independent as long as she could and promised to call in hospice when she couldn’t care for herself anymore.

  That happened last week. I’d known for months that nothing short of a miracle would stop this. She and I had gone over all of her paperwork, and she’d even given me the pre-paid funeral information.

  I still wasn’t ready.

  As I watched, her chest lifted…fell…lifted…fell…lifted…

  Then nothing.

  I made a strangled sound, my hands curling into fists as helplessness and grief swamped me. I wanted to shout at someone to do something. To bring her back. But there was no coming back. Her body simply couldn’t fight any longer.

  And the part of me that wasn’t selfish was glad. She was free now. Free from it all.

  Lake’s arms went around me, and she pulled me to her. She didn’t say a word because she knew all too well that there wasn’t anything to say. Our positions had been reversed ten years ago, and I’d been the one trying to offer as much comfort as I could while she’d sat at her mother’s bedside. She, at least, had her father. I’d never known mine.

  I continued to watch my mother’s chest. Hoping, praying for one last breath, so I could tell her, once again, that I loved her.

  It never moved. And just like that, I became an orphan.

  FOUR MONTHS LATER

  It had only ever been Mom and me, so I’d always assumed that we didn’t have any real secrets. Sure, she’d never told me who my father was, but I’d seen the way her shoulders had gone stiff every time I’d gotten close to the subject. I’d stopped asking because I hadn’t liked her being upset.

  When I was old enough to understand more about the complexities of relationships, I’d wondered if she hadn’t known who he was because she’d had an anonymous one-night stand or slept with more than one person, and that made her ashamed. Or, worse, she didn’t know who he was because he’d raped her. I’d never begrudged her that secret, especially after I’d realized what the possible answer could be to that particular question.

  Of course, there were little things that we didn’t share. I hadn’t told her about losing my virginity to Josie Kendar after junior prom, but she hadn’t blinked when she’d found a condom wrapper in the pockets of my rented tux. Or the time I’d called her after getting drunk at nineteen and not wanting to drive home. She’d picked me up and took me home without asking any recriminations or questions.

  But in the big things, we’d always been straight forward with each other.

  Or so I’d thought.

  When Mom had gotten sick, however, I learned otherwise. The effects of the brain tumor and the treatment had meant I’d needed to take over her finances. That was when I learned something she’d hidden from me my entire life.

  We had money.

  Well, she had money, but she’d had it my whole life, so I supposed that meant, growing up, “we’d” had money. She’d bought our house outright. With cash. The same for all three of the cars she’d gotten over the last twenty-five years. I’d never stopped to think about where it had come from.

  When I’d expressed my concern to her regarding medical bills, she’d dismissed my concerns, saying that we would always have what we needed. Her constant deflection frustrated me, but after the first round of chemo had failed to shrink the tumor and we’d been told that there wasn’t anything else that could be done, I’d only cared more about the time Mom and I had left.

  After she was gone, I’d put off digging deeper into her finances, especially since Mom had already taken care of her own funeral arrangements. Now, though, it was time to start making decisions about what I wanted to do with the house and Mom’s things.

  Lake had offered to take off work to go through all the files and paperwork with me, but I’d told her to come by after work. She was my closest friend and knew how hard this was going to be for me, but when I went inside for the first time since Mom’s death, I wanted to do it alone.

  That was how I found myself standing in our kitchen with my mom’s fireproof box sitting on the table. I’d opened it already, and what I’d found had been…interesting. Investment information I’d never seen before. Money market accounts. One of which held a familiar name.

  Mine.

  Sort of.

  Jude Holden.

  My name was Jude Platon Ives, but I’d always gone by JP. Now, a comment that Mom had made in one of our last conversations came back to me. A conversation where she’d said that I’d been named after a man who meant a lot to her and was responsible for our life together.

  I didn’t know if that meant he was my father or just someone she’d known from before I was born, but either way, he could have answers for me.

  I needed to find Jude Holden.

  END OF AUGUST

  “Something’s off about all of this,” I said again. “It’s like my mom didn’t even exist before she arrived in Maine, pregnant with me.”

  I didn’t expect Lake to have an answer. She and I had gone round and round about this over the past couple months. Once my search for Jude Holden had turned up more people than I wanted to track down one at a time, I’d decided to narrow things down by figuring out where my mom had lived before I’d come along. Except I couldn’t find a single clue anywhere.

  She’d never been big into social media, so no trail that way wasn’t really a surprise, but I’d assumed I could find something somewhere. Prior place of employment from her resumé. A landline phone number. High school diploma. Previous bank accounts. A driver’s license from another state.

  Nothing.

  There were other Melissa Ives in the world, but none of the women connected to that name were my mom. Granted, my research skills were far from PI level, but I should have been able to find at least a small clue.

  Lake had thought that my mom had been in witness protection until I’d pointed out that the US Marshalls probably would have reached out after she died. Now, Lake was convinced that Mom had moved to Maine to get away from someone.

  Maybe my father.

  Jude Holden.

  “I think this is him,” Lake said finally. She tucked her brandy-colored hair behind her ears. “Your mom’s accent was Texan, and this Jude Holden would definitely have enough money to have set you both up for life.”

  I sighed and sank back into the couch. “I just don’t understand why Mom
kept all of this from me.”

  Lake’s dark green eyes held sympathy as she put her hand on my knee. “I may not know the details of what happened in your mom’s life, but one thing I have always known about her is that she would do whatever it took to protect and provide for you.”

  Lake was right.

  “Do you think I should just let this go?”

  She thought for a moment and then shook her head. “Your mom planned everything, including her own funeral. If she hadn’t wanted you to find any of this, she wouldn’t have kept it. She wasn’t sick for long, but it was long enough for her to have cleaned all of this out.”

  And my friend was right again.

  “Something tells me that Mr. Holden isn’t the sort of man who talks to random strangers on the phone.” I closed my eyes, my head thumping against the wall behind the couch. “Especially if said random stranger is possibly the result of an affair that he tried to cover up by sending his love child and mistress away and paying them off.”

  “JP.” Lake waited until I opened my eyes and looked at her. “You’re rambling.”

  “I know.” I rubbed my forehead. “I need to go to Houston and talk to Mr. Holden face-to-face. Even if I thought he’d talk to me on the phone, I’d want to see him in person. I think it’d be harder for a man to lie to his potential son while looking him in the eye.”

  Maybe that was a bit naïve of me, but I refused to let this twist make me cynical. I would still be the man my mom raised me to be, one who saw the hope in the world and strived to make it a better place.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Lake asked. She pulled her feet up under her, angling her body toward me.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”

  She scowled, the expression rare on her normally carefree face. “I don’t know how much time I can take off work.”

  “It’s all right,” I assured her. “I can do this alone.”

  “Hey.” She grabbed my hand. “You are never alone. I am always here for you. Go to Houston, but if you need me, I will be there. I can find another job. Being a good friend comes first.”

  I smiled, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and giving her a sideways hug. She was right. As long as Lake Duggan was in my life, I’d never be alone.

  I didn’t know what I’d ever do without her.

  Two

  Lake

  Staying in Arundel while JP went to Houston was difficult, to say the least. We’d been apart before, a few weeks at a time, and while it’d never been fun, I’d never felt this uneasy with it.

  Then again, this wasn’t like other times. It wasn’t a vacation or me deciding to spend two years at the University of Maine before I wised up and admitted that college wasn’t my thing.

  JP was trying to find his father.

  I’d told him that it was okay for him to go without me, but the moment I said it, I’d regretted it. Going through something like this, he needed his best friend.

  We’d met each other on the first day of kindergarten.

  It had been raining, and I’d worn these ugly plastic boots that went over my shoes. Then, when I’d been walking into school, this snotty little brat of a girl had said something about how my boots were ugly, and so was I.

  Of course, I’d pulled back my foot to kick her with my ugly boot, and this boy stepped in front of me. It had been too late for me to stop, and I’d ended up kicking this blond-haired, blue-eyed boy right in his knee.

  One of the grown-ups heard us and came over, asking what had happened. The girl said that I’d kicked the boy who’d “saved her” from me, but the boy had refused to back her story, claiming that it’d been an accident. I’d given him my homemade oatmeal cookies as a thank you, and we’d been friends ever since.

  The memory made me smile, but there was a sadness to it too. He’d had my back for nearly twenty years, and a time when I should have had his, I’d made up an excuse.

  Because that’s all it had been. An excuse.

  For the last few years, I’d been working at The Gilded Lily, a high-end specialty boutique that sold lingerie, female-based erotic toys, and other similar items. I’d met the owner, Teagan Young, while I’d been working at a retail store after coming home from my second year of college, and the two of us had hit it off.

  While no one would ever be closer to me than JP, I considered Teagan a friend. If I’d asked her for an undetermined amount of time off because JP needed me, she would have done it without a second thought. Mostly because she was my friend, but also because she was a total romantic.

  And I’d had a crush on JP since I knew what it meant to have a crush.

  Not that I ever expected to act on it.

  He was my best friend, and I refused to lose that. I could survive not having a romantic relationship with the person I wanted the most, but I couldn’t survive losing him completely. Maybe, one day, I’d change my mind, but not today.

  Then again, maybe one day, I wouldn’t need to change my mind because JP would realize that he felt the same way about me as I did about him.

  He’d wake up one morning, and when he came into the kitchen, instead of heading straight for the coffee I always made sure was ready for him, he’d pull me to him and kiss me. A long, deep kiss. The sort of kiss that would make my knees go weak. He’d tell me that he’d been a fool to not realize sooner that we were perfect together.

  Then, he’d lift me onto the counter and untie my robe – I always wore my non-existent robe in this particular fantasy – to find nothing underneath. He’d slide his hands up my ribcage until they covered my breasts. He’d say that they were beautiful and perfect and not too small like my asshole ex had said when I’d broken up with him. His mouth would be hot and wet as it closed around my nipple and his fingers would slide inside–

  “Earth to Lake.” Teagan snapped her fingers in front of my face.

  “Sorry.” I hoped my face wasn’t as flushed as it felt. “My mind wandered.”

  “Mm-hm.” The look in her hazel eyes said she knew exactly where my mind had gone on its little trip.

  “Inventory’s done.” I reached for the tablet I’d set down on the counter and held it out. “I ordered more of the red lace garters, and I set up a tailored event with Ellie Maxwell for the first weekend in October.”

  “I’m surprised she’s available that soon.” Teagan took the tablet. “Usually, I have to book her six months in advance.”

  “She had a cancelation, and since we’re, in her words, ‘the best clients in the eastern United States,’ she was thrilled to book with us.”

  “Are you finally going to have her make you a corset?”

  Instantly, my mind went to my fantasy about JP. This time, instead of a robe, I pictured myself in one of Ellie’s black leather corsets and matching crotchless panties, JP’s light blue eyes dark with desire–

  “You’re doing it again,” Teagan said, her amusement as clear in her voice as it was on her face. “Any particular reason JP is on your mind more now than usual?”

  I sighed. “He’s in Houston looking for more information on his father.”

  A shadow crossed my friend’s face. She and I didn’t talk much about our families growing up, but I knew that she’d been raised by her grandparents, which made me think that JP’s search for his father might have made Teagan think of something from her past.

  “I’m surprised he didn’t ask you to go with him.”

  “He doesn’t know how long he’ll be gone.” I gave her the same excuse I’d given him.

  She rolled her eyes. “You know I’d let you take whatever time you needed.”

  One of our customers slash members chose that moment to come into the store, which saved me from having to admit that she was right. Admit it to her, at least, because I already knew that I’d been making excuses.