Donovan Read online

  DONOVAN (THE BILLIONAIRE CLUB)

  Book 1

  By Vanessa Stone

  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 © 2015 Vanessa Stone

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  Chapter 1

  Donovan

  I left the guests of my party downstairs after receiving a message from one of my house staff that I had an emergency phone call. The get-together at my home on Long Island was a success, but then, they usually were. I enjoyed having small get-togethers at my house, where I could mingle freely among friends and acquaintances and not have to worry about business, decisions, or competition. I had been especially pleased to see one of my best friends, Damien, in attendance with a young law student with whom he seemed to be developing a serious relationship, whether he realized it yet or not.

  At the landing of the stairs, I turned right and headed down a short hall. The last door on the right was my personal home office. It was a warm, welcoming room and I enjoyed working there. One wall was lined with bookshelves. The other, facing my desk, was equipped with a widescreen TV and Surround Sound speakers recessed into the wall. My large oak desk sat at the other end of the room. I sank into the comfortable leather office chair as I reached for my "old-fashioned" landline telephone. While I certainly had a cell phone and was technologically advanced enough to have the newest and latest, as well as the greatest devices and gadgets on the market, I felt more comfortable using my old-fashioned landline telephone in here. Sometimes, conversations with clients lasted an hour or more and I didn't like using my cell phone for such long discussions.

  I didn't often get emergency phone calls. However, as I owned a number of gyms in New York City, as well as several out-of-state, and continually attempted to expand my business as a gym owner and developer from the east coast to the west, I dealt with emergencies frequently enough that I didn't feel especially concerned with this one. Probably a glitch in the deal I had recently made in Montana. I picked up the phone, leaned back in my chair and announced myself. "Donovan Sanderson here. Who am I speaking to, and what's the problem?"

  "Donovan."

  The voice instantly got my attention. I hadn't heard it in years, eight years to be exact. The voice belonged to Shane, my younger brother, named after my parents' whimsical adoration of the movie by the same name. Shane was two years younger than me, but I also had an older brother, Cameron, who was two years my senior. I had two younger sisters as well, Julie and Tammy.

  "You do know who this is, don't you?" the voice on the other end asked.

  Recovering from my surprise, I instinctively nodded. "Yes," I said. "Hey, Shane. How did you get my number?"

  "Doesn't matter," he replied. "I have some news."

  I instantly sensed that something was amiss. "What is it?" I asked, not sure I wanted to know.

  "Dad’s dead."

  Mention of my father sent a myriad of emotions rushing through me, but I felt too stunned at the moment to take them all in. "What? When?"

  "This afternoon," Shane replied. "They think it was a heart attack."

  I sat back in my chair, stunned by the news. "How's Mom?"

  "As you can imagine," Shane said. "Then again, maybe you can't."

  I closed my eyes at the jab and sighed. I had left home eight years ago, and hadn't spoken to my father, my brothers or my sisters since then. I didn't want to recall the incident that had effectively estranged me from my family all those years ago, but I did worry about my mom. I had spoken to her occasionally, keeping her up to date on my whereabouts, sometimes my business ventures, and calling her on special occasions and holidays. I wasn't sure if she related my calls to the other family members, and at the moment didn't really care.

  "Will you come home for the funeral?" Shane asked.

  "When is it?" I asked, numb and trying to wrap my mind around the fact that my dad was dead.

  "Friday," Shane said. "You coming or not?"

  I almost said no, but something in me decided not to. Eight years had passed since I had last spoken to my dad or other members of my family. Was it time to let bygones be bygones? None of us live forever, and perhaps it was time to bury old disagreements and grudges - just as my father was soon to be buried. I had a feeling that my sudden reappearance in town for the funeral might cause some family dissension, and I certainly didn't want to cause any more upset than was already in the works.

  "Will I be welcome?" I asked bluntly. Silence on the other end. "Well?" I heard a heavy sigh.

  "I think that it's time for you to come home," Shane said. "No one would expect you to stay, but personally, it’s the least you can do, in my opinion. What you do after that, I don't much give a shit.”

  I paused several more moments, and then spoke. "I'll be there, Shane. Give the rest of the family a heads up, will you? I wouldn't want to show up unannounced and cause more awkwardness than necessary."

  "Kind of late for that, isn't it?"

  I didn't answer, but concluded the phone call. "I'll be there on Thursday," I said. "I’ll book a room at a hotel——"

  "Mom said that if you decided to come, you'd be staying at the ranch. No ifs, ands, or buts, and those were her words, not mine. I’ll drop off your truck at the Amarillo airport. See you Thursday."

  With that, the phone call disconnected. I slowly replaced the receiver. To say I was shocked at the news was an understatement. While I haven't spoken to my dad or other members of my family in nearly ten years, I still loved them and thought of them often. Unfortunately, pride had gotten the best of me. I had always felt it was my dad's place to make the first move, but knowing my dad, he probably thought it was mine. Well, it was too late now, for both of us.

  I felt a great sadness rush over me. Lost chances. Lost years. No way to get it back. All of a sudden, our disagreements seemed so silly, and yet now it was too late to admit it. We had both been stubborn, a Sanderson trait for sure, but now more than ever, I regretted my long absence from the ranch.

  My dad owned the Rocking S ranch outside the tiny town of Stinnett in north Texas, north of Amarillo. The ranch had been in my dad's family for over eighty years, and he'd wanted me to take it over for him with my brothers when he got too old to run it, but I hadn't wanted to. He had imagined my brothers doing the nitty-gritty hands-on work while I ran the financial end, since I always had a head for numbers and business. I had my own dreams at the time, and they didn't involve sticking around in a Podunk town like Stinnett for the rest of my life.

  Eight years ago, I was definitely looking for something more adventurous and stimulating than making promises that I knew I didn't want to keep. My brothers, Cameron and Shane, seem to prefer small town life, but it wasn’t for me. Cameron was an auto mechanic and owned his own, or at least he had, automotive shop in Amarillo, the last time I heard. Shane still lived and worked the ranch. I don't know what my sisters Julie or Tammy were doing. Both should have graduated from college by now, but I didn't know if they had come back to Stinnett, or even in fact where they had gone to college, if they even had. I wasn’t sure if either was married, or if I had any nieces or nephews.

  The thought made me reflect on my lack of communication with the family. We had grown up close-knit. My brothers and sisters all got along very well, and we were like the Three Musketeers plus two. Always getting into trouble, laughing, and just horsing around. None of us had ever gotten into serious trouble, nothing involving the law or anything like that, but my mother always swore that we were responsible for all the gray hairs on her he
ad. I smiled at the thought of my mother, Lisa. She was a gentle soul, a nurturer by nature, and while she certainly had her hands full with all of us, she seemed to have balanced her responsibilities as a mother, a ranch owner's wife, who more often than not was fully involved in the decision-making and running of the ranch, as well as her home-based career as a painter.

  My mother's painting had brought in extra money to the ranch during lean years, and, glancing across my office, I admired one of her paintings that hung on my wall. It was a scene of the Texas plains, the wind blowing gently through knee-high buffalo grass while in the distance, a lone, old, and stalwart tree defied the ravages of the worst that North Texas weather could bring to bear against it.

  I had no doubt that my mother would welcome me back, as she loved without condition and was slow to cast judgments on others. How my brothers and sisters would react to my reappearance was something else entirely. I had left when I was twenty-seven years old. In fact, after eight long years, it would be like visiting a house full of strangers. Julie had just turned sixteen and Tammy had just turned twenty the year I left. Shane had just turned twenty-five. Cameron had let me know in no uncertain terms how he felt about my refusal to help dad with running the ranch, along with my desire to start my own business as an entrepreneur and move away from the isolation of the north Texas plains.

  In the past eight years I had become quite successful, and was now a billionaire. Of course, my family didn't know this, as I certainly wasn't one to go bragging about my business acumen or success when the ranch that my parents ran barely eked by an existence year after year. Still, the ranch was their life. It had been my dad's passion, and in all my years of growing up there, I hadn't heard him complain once. Raising cattle, horses and alfalfa, corn, and wheat was what he loved to do. He always told me that he was a cattleman in his blood, a trait passed down from generations. While dad was out on the range most of the time, my mom took care of the ranch house, the chickens, pigs, goats, and her massive summer gardens. For all intents and purposes, the ranch was self-sustaining, and the only thing Dad ever needed to buy that the ranch itself didn't produce were seeds for some of Mom's garden plants every season.

  While Mom had never said anything, I wondered, as Dad had grown older, if the ranch had become too much, or if they were breaking even anymore. A rancher's life is hard, and breaking even was a goal that every rancher in the region, or indeed any rancher or farmer anywhere, could hope for. Profits were icing on the cake, but it wasn't as if I could actually ask my mom about the financial aspects of the ranch. No matter what the answer, even if the ranch was suffering, she never would've said a word.

  I had tried to send her money once in the form of a check, but she had sent it back stating neither she nor my dad needed anyone's charity. She had been gentle about her admonition, but that was the way they were. They'd make it on their own or not at all. I guess I could honestly say that it was my dad who instilled within me the urge to be successful and to do my best at anything I set my mind to. He had always told me if I was going to do something, to do it right. If it wasn't right, I was to do it over again until it was. That had always stuck with me… a lesson that had served me well over the past eight years as I gradually developed my brand of gyms not only in New York, but throughout the United States. I doubted if my family knew of my success, as my gyms were not associated in any way with my name. Ownership and the gym franchises were designated through my corporation, Fit Bodies.

  A burst of laughter from downstairs reminded me that a party was underway, but I was in no way interested in rejoining the group. For the first time in a long while, I felt a heavy shroud of guilt settle on my shoulders. I knew that I had a lot to deal with in the coming days. This funeral for Dad was in three days. That left me little time to organize my affairs, pack, call around to funeral homes in Stinnett to see if funeral arrangements had been made, and paid for, and arrange for travel and transportation.

  Reaching for the phone, I called my assistant downstairs, overseeing my party. I told him to come upstairs and meet me in my office. Plans had to be made and there was no time to waste.

  I still couldn’t believe it. My dad was fucking dead.

  Chapter 2

  Memphis

  I entered Dori's beauty salon, owned and managed by one of my best friends, Dori Stevens. We had been best friends since high school, and in a little town like Stinnett, it wasn't hard to make friends that you kept for life. Dori had worked at the place through high school, and, coupled with additional summer jobs and hard work, had bought the shop five years ago when the owner announced she was retiring. I had been coming here ever since to have Dori take care of my hair. But Dori's was more than just a beauty salon. It was a place, like many small towns, where friends could gather, enjoy a cup of coffee, and chat. Much like an old-fashioned barbershop, Dori's was the go-to place for the ladies of Stinnett to catch up on gossip, news, or with old friends.

  "Hey Memphis!" came a cheerful voice from the back of the shop.

  I smiled as I strode past the counter holding the cash register and appointment book and offered a short wave to Dori, who at the moment swept wisps of hair from under the chair at the last station. The beauty shop wasn't large, but was big enough for four cutting stations, a sink and a reclining type chair for shampoos, two automatic hair dryers, and of course, the cash register and appointment stand up front. Both long walls of the beauty shop were lined with mirrors, each station divided by a staggered partition wall decorated with what I liked to call do-dads and gee-gaws. In other words, anything that Dori could get her hands on from local yard sales and antique shops. The décor was a mish-mash of old copper cow bells, harness and tack, small farm tools, and antique photos of former residents, some dating back to the turn of the twentieth century. The shop was bright, cheerful, and always welcoming, whether the heat of the north Texas summer blazed down on you, or cold winds from the north brought in frigid weather, ice, and snow.

  "You can have this chair," Dori gestured to the chair and station she had just cleaned.

  I glanced over my shoulder to make sure no customer that had arrived at the shop before me was waiting, and then nodded, making my way to the last station. Two of the other stations were busy, and I offered a silent hello to the girls, busily snipping hair. One of the beauticians was giving old man Garrett his usual crew cut, while the other gave Melanie Hansen, a town matriarch, her weekly trim. I smiled and gave a small wave when Garrett saw me and offered a boisterous hello. He could've gone to the barber shop just down the street of course, but Dori and all the ladies who came here knew that he enjoyed coming in, listening to the female gossip, and of course, admiring the ladies who not only cut his hair, but those reflected in the mirrors behind him. He was a harmless old man, always ready with a smile, a joke, and, if you let him, he could talk your ear off for hours.

  "I'll be done in just a sec," Dori said, bending down with a dustpan in one hand, the broom in the other.

  I nodded and sat down at the last station as Dori finished with her sweeping and put the broom and the dustpan away, then disappeared behind a door to quickly wash her hands. I leaned back in the chair and put my feet up on the bar that extended out from under the front of the chair, staring at my reflection in the mirror. My shoulder-length blonde hair was giving me fits, and I was ready for a change. I decided I wanted to go ash brown. I needed a change, and although I knew that my proposed changes were merely superficial, I hoped that they would make me feel better.

  I was still reeling from Frank Sanderson's death. I'd been working for old man Sanderson for the past six years, doing his books for him. He had gotten so busy with the running of the ranch. His wife, Lisa, was no spring chicken herself, already overwhelmed with her chores, and with what I thought might be some form of mild dementia. Years ago I had offered to take over the accounting and finances for the Rocker S Ranch and Frank had wholeheartedly agreed, stating that none of his kids could count without using their fing
ers. Oh, I supposed Shane could have done it, as he still lived on the ranch – the bunkhouse and not the main house – but he always admitted, with a laugh, that math and finances were definitely not his strong suit. He had been more than happy to relinquish any of that responsibility to me. Shane liked to be outside, winter or summer, riding the horses, cutting and branding the cattle, out on the range.

  I had known the Sandersons since I was little. I had dated Donovan Sanderson, the middle brother, all through high school, and had stayed true to him when he went off to college in Ohio. He had come home several times during his college breaks and I had always hoped that he would come back to Stinnett for good when he was done. It wasn’t to be. Gradually, I had noticed that he was pulling away. Not from me so much as from the expectations that his father had for him to take over the running of the ranch. I had been around enough to hear many of the familiar arguments that occurred between father and son before Donovan had skipped town for good nearly eight years ago.

  "How you doing today, Memphis?"

  I shrugged. "Ready for a change." I gazed up at Dori's reflection in the mirror. Our eyes met. "Did you hear about Frank?"

  Dori shook her head. "No," she said. "What's up?"

  "He died day before yesterday," I said quietly, fighting back the tears that threatened to spill over my eyelids at the words. I had come to adore, even love, Frank over the years, and felt just as close to Lisa, who now wandered around the ranch house as if in a daze. The night Frank passed away, I had stayed at the ranch house, along with Shane and Cameron, to offer Lisa whatever support and comfort I could. Julie and Tammy had also come to visit, but didn't stay overnight, as they had their own obligations and responsibilities. The only person missing from the family gathering that night had been Frank, of course, and Donovan.

  I hadn't seen Donovan in eight years, and every time I thought of him I was rather surprised that he had never come home once since that morning he had left so long ago. It was as if he had just dropped off the face of the earth—