Battling Destiny (The Piper Anderson Series Book 6) Read online

  Battling Destiny

  The Piper Anderson Series

  Book 6

  Danielle Stewart

  Copyright Page

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictionally. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locals, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  An Original work of Danielle Stewart.

  Battling Destiny Copyright 2014 by Danielle Stewart

  Books By Danielle Stewart

  Piper Anderson Series:

  Book 1: Chasing Justice

  Book 2: Cutting Ties

  Book 3: Changing Fate

  Book 4: Finding Freedom

  Book 5: Settling Scores

  Book 6: Battling Destiny

  Piper Anderson Extras:

  Choosing Christmas - Holiday Novella - Chris & Sydney's Story

  Betty's Journal - Bonus Material(suggested to be read after Book 4 to avoid spoilers)

  Saving Love – A Piper Anderson Series Novella

  The Clover Series:

  Hearts of Clover - Novella & Book 2: (Half My Heart & Change My Heart)

  Book 3: All My Heart

  Book 4: Facing Home

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  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  Books By Danielle Stewart

  Dedication

  To the mothers. My mother and all of the mothers of the world. For every hour of sleep you’ve given up, every tear you’ve shed, and stretch marks you wear. However a child has come into your life whether by birth or by you opening your heart to one who needs you, know that you are a hero. You have the power to shape a mind, warm a heart, and change a life.

  Be someone’s Betty…

  Synopsis

  Michael Cooper has his life together. He is the successful lawyer all his friends turn to when they find themselves in trouble, and he and his beautiful wife just welcomed their newborn daughter to the world. In just under two years, he went from a cocky bachelor to a quintessential family man with a close-knit group of friends. Yes, Michael Cooper has his life together. Until the news that his father has died forces him to return to his hometown in Ohio.

  Any feelings of grief and loss over his father are overshadowed by the idea of having to step back into a world he has spent years trying to forget. He knows, all too well, the reach of his mother's manipulation and the grip of his father's spiderweb like empire. It took everything he had to leave Ohio all those years ago and make a life for himself in Edenville, NC. Now, in the wake of his father's death, will he have the strength to leave it all behind again? Will Jules, the one woman who understands him the most, stand by him when the truth about his family comes to light? Can Michael battle the destiny that’s been thrust upon him and make his way back to the simple life he’s fought so hard to build?

  Prologue

  Growing up I never thought I’d be the kind of man who didn’t grieve his father’s death. But how can I pay my respects to a man who lost my respect years ago? Yet, no matter how little I feel for him, the same driving force that shaped most of my actions when I was younger somehow is overtaking me once more. The unwavering need to keep up appearances was drilled into me at an early age. That’s what my family has always been about. No matter how deep the secret or how ugly the truth, we’d polish ourselves up, put on our public faces, and pretend we had it all.

  It’s why I continue to go through the motions even though I don’t feel an iota of sadness at the news of my father’s sudden passing. The only emotion I muster is annoyance. His death has taken me away from the life I love, from my wife and daughter. I’ve never missed anyone the way I miss them right now and every minute I’m gone I’m creating a rift that won’t be easy to repair. I’ve thrown my marriage into flux just to come to my birthplace to bury my father, and it makes me hate him even more.

  I sling my small travel bag over my shoulder as I exit the airport and wave off the man offering to cart my luggage. I have no luggage because I’m not staying. I will not be here long enough to unpack. I’ll buy a suit, or wear one of the ten I’m sure my mother has had tailor-made for me. She’ll likely have that many because she doesn’t know my size, considering we haven’t seen each other in nearly seven years.

  It would be easy for me to have a car service drive me to my parents’ house. They’d know the way. Everyone in this city knows where my parents live. Or I could have easily called my mother and had one of her drivers retrieve me from the airport, but on principle I go to the noisy curb and hail a cab. It’s a statement I’ll be making to my mother. I am not like my family anymore. I don’t need every flashy accessory or their lifestyle perks. I’m happy with simpler things. That’s where joy lives in this world, between the lines and underneath the flashy superficial. Life happens when you connect with people, not constantly working to be better or have more.

  Leaving my wife and daughter without so much as a word to come out here is eating me alive. But I don’t regret it. Whether Jules ever forgives me or not, I know I made the right choice. I’m keeping them safe.

  Chapter One

  “I’ve known her half my life and she’s never gone this long without talking. I didn’t even think she was capable of the silent treatment,” Bobby whispered with a grimace but not quietly enough.

  “This isn’t the silent treatment,” Jules interjected as she struggled to fasten Frankie’s diaper with one hand and grab a pacifier with the other hand. She’d already been feeling like things were too much for her and now she might have to start doing this alone. It was great timing, she supposed, as she imagined her life as a single mother. Maybe that was being dramatic but she couldn’t help it. “I have nothing to say. There is a difference.”

  “You always have something to say. It’s genetic.” Bobby tentatively stepped across Betty’s sitting room and took a seat next to Jules as she laid Frankie down on her play mat on the floor. The rhythmic humming of the mat’s music had comforted Jules as many times as it had driven her nearly to the brink of insanity. Much like Michael.

  “What is there to say? Michael is gone.
One phone call and he’s gone. It’s not like I’m stupid. I can see the writing on the wall. It’s my own fault really.” Jules knew this would draw the disagreement of everyone in the room, but she didn’t care. Since Bobby had told her Michael had left, she’d spent every second trying to understand what had happened. How it happened. But now she knew.

  “Don’t say that, Jules,” Piper insisted, the first to try to make her feel better about the disastrous situation. “You don’t really know what’s going on. None of us do.”

  “You’re making my point for me.” Jules slipped her hands into the sleeves of her oversized sweatshirt and pulled her legs up as she curled into the corner of the couch. “I don’t know what’s going on with my own husband and that’s my fault. I realized something wasn’t right with Michael’s relationship with his family, but I ignored that. I never asked a single question. Shouldn’t I have pushed the topic, demanded to know why I hadn’t met his parents and sister? Why they hadn’t come to meet Frankie, for goodness sake? What do any of us really know about Michael? Next to nothing. I tried to pretend everything was fine, and I got what I deserved for that complacency. Now his father is dead, and he takes off for Ohio as though I don’t even exist. I might come from a simple place but I’m not a simple person. I’m no fool.”

  “You need to trust him.” The demand in Bobby’s voice felt like a prickly cactus running across Jules’s already too fragile emotional state.

  “The only thing I need to do is take care of Frankie and get my life back together without Michael. I was foolish to think this was what he really wanted in his life. I’m sure if it weren’t for the baby he’d have left months ago. How could a man like him ever settle for this?” Jules motioned around the tiny room as though nothing in it would be worthy of Michael’s standards.

  “Jules, Michael loves you and Frankie more than anything in this world. I don’t know why he left like he did without saying anything to you. Maybe he was distraught. He just lost his dad.” Piper’s overly soft voice was as grating as Bobby’s insistent one.

  “Do not make excuses for him. There is nothing that makes leaving like that acceptable. It’s been three full days, and I haven’t heard a word from him. Not a single word. Message received. It’s time for me to pick up the pieces and realize Michael has something in Ohio I know nothing about and I have no interest in finding out what it is.”

  “Oh please,” Bobby huffed with a roll of his eyes. “You can act as tough as you want, but we all know you’re going to hunt him down and demand answers. That’s how you work. You aren’t going to just sit here and wait.”

  “You’re damn right I’m not going to sit here and wait. I’m going to get on with my life and figure out what the hell we’re going to do. I’m going to pack our stuff at Michael’s apartment and move Frankie and me back in here. I’ll get a job and take care of my child.”

  “No you won’t,” Bobby scoffed, and his arrogance pushed Jules to want to strike him across the face just to get a reprieve from his words. “I’ve known you a long time. I know you can’t help yourself. You’re going to go kick in doors until you get answers. You fight for what you want.”

  “Bobby, you knew me as a child. I’m not a child anymore. I’m a mother, and that changes everything. She is the only thing in my life that matters now.” Jules gestured down at the crystal blue eyes of her daughter that were mirror images of Michael’s, and it tore at her heart. “I will not act like a petulant child or a scorned woman. I’m a mother. I’m her mother. That’s the only way I’ll act. Michael made his choice to take off, and I made my choice to ignore the truth right in front of me. I can’t change either of those things. But I can choose what I do next.”

  “You’re going to find that man,” Betty said flatly as she stepped into the doorway of the sitting room and folded her arms across her chest in that way that punctuated an argument.

  “Ma, please don’t. You of all people should understand what it means to put your child first. I’m not leaving her here just so I can go chase someone who clearly doesn’t want me there.”

  “Did you want Michael to come after you when you took off like a mad woman to New York with Piper?”

  “This is different.”

  “Yes it is, but don’t leapfrog yourself here, child. Don’t jump to the conclusion that Michael doesn’t need you. I don’t know his reasons and I don’t agree with the way he did it, but I’ve had a good look at his heart and it’s not capable of the things spinning in your head right now. If you’re worried about your daughter and you’re trying to give her the best life possible then go find her daddy and help him. Because I believe he needs you, even if he thinks he doesn’t. “

  Jules choked back the tears she’d been fighting since Michael left. She promised herself she wouldn’t waste a minute crying over this, but her mother’s words were shoving her toward the edge of losing that battle. “Ma, I just don’t want to leave her right now. I don’t want both Michael and me to be gone. I don’t want her to think we abandoned her.” And with that thought clamping down on her heart the tears began to fall. “She needs me.”

  “She needs both of you,” Betty insisted, though her tone was softer. “He’s gone after you before. He’s shown up when you needed him to. Do the same for him.”

  “And if I get out there and don’t like the answers I find? If he’s not the man I thought he was?”

  “Then you’ll never have to ask yourself again if you are making the right choices for your daughter. You’ll never have to wonder if digging your heels in and being angry hurt her more than helped her. If you face this now you’ll be able to move forward knowing you are doing right by her, either way.”

  “I still don’t want to leave her,” Jules croaked as she slid off the couch and lay on the floor next to her cooing baby girl.

  “I’ll go with you,” Piper said so quickly and loudly that Jules jumped slightly. “Frankie can come and I’ll watch her while you sort things out. I’ll be right there with you and so will she.”

  “Wait,” Bobby cut in with a wave of his hands as though this situation had just spun out of control. “I can’t come. I don’t have any time off work, and I’m not sure it’s a great idea for the three of you to go out there on your own since you don’t know what’s going on with Michael. With our track record it could be anything. I’m not comfortable with this.”

  “Well get comfortable, boy,” Betty said with a threatening grin. “You ain’t the boss of these girls, and if they want to go, you know damn well they’ll go. I think you should save your breath.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Piper assured Bobby as she crossed the room and sat next to him. Normally she’d slide her hand into his, but Jules had begun noticing they weren’t touching nearly as much since Michael left—as though their happiness contrasted too starkly with her agony.

  “You’re talking about the three most important people in my life hopping on a plane and walking into something we know nothing about. I’m not going to be able to get right with that. We need some other solution. Someone else needs to go too. Someone we trust. Someone competent.”

  “I’m sorry, are you implying we aren’t trustworthy or competent?” Jules bit back, channeling all the anger she’d been bottling up.

  “You’re clouded by emotion and Piper will be focused on Frankie. If something is going on out there you’ll both be distracted.”

  “Well, Jedda, Crystal, and Clay are busy at the restaurant. Willow and Josh are in New York, so who exactly did you have in mind?” Piper’s question was almost as infuriating as Bobby’s inference of their incompetence because she was entertaining the idea that he was right.

  “What about my partner, Lindsey? She’s on leave from work right now. She hurt her leg in a foot pursuit and I think she has two more weeks before she goes back on duty. I can ask her. I’m sure she’s bored out of her mind right now. If we put her up in a hotel for a few days I’m sure she’d keep an eye on you.”

  “Could
you stop talking like we’re silly little girls who haven’t ever done anything in their lives? We did just fine in New York by ourselves,” Jules reminded him with a raised, attitude-laden eyebrow.

  “Yes, right up until the point you almost got yourselves robbed and killed in an alley.”

  “Go to hell,” Jules shouted as she kicked her foot at Bobby’s shin and her tears turned to angry ones. “We don’t need your hot little partner coming with us.”

  “She’s not hot,” Bobby said with a light kick back at her, like two children arguing over a toy. “She’s like one of the guys and maybe if you weren’t taking Frankie I wouldn’t even bring it up, but Piper won’t be able to be there for both of you. At least if you need help with something there will be an extra person out there.

  “She is hot,” Piper snickered with a bump of her elbow to Bobby’s ribs. “But I actually agree with you this time. It might not hurt to have someone else with us. This way, if I have to bail you out of jail for kicking Michael’s ass, the baby won’t have to come with me.”

  The plausibility of that scenario was enough to open a crack in Jules’s hardened stance. She wanted Frankie with her, but she knew there might be moments she’d want to shield her. Having someone else there, someone they trusted, could come in handy. “Fine,” she acquiesced as she handed Frankie the toy she was reaching for.

  “Now we just have to figure out where exactly Michael is. I’ll be honest I don’t know much about his family in Ohio or where exactly he’d have gone.” Bobby leaned back on the couch and pulled out his phone. After typing in a few things he grimaced. “There are a lot of Coopers in Ohio. We’ll need to narrow this down somehow. What else do you know, Jules?”