Brenda Jackson - A Silken Thread

A SILKEN THREAD

ISBN: 978-1-4268-8780-2

Copyright 2011 by Brenda Streater Jackson

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the products of the authors imagination, and are not to be construed as real. While the author was inspired in part by actual events, none of the characters in the book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

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Acknowledgments

To the love of my life, Gerald Jackson, Sr.

To everyone who loves to escape between the pages of a good book. This one is for you. Happy reading!

Dear Reader,

I was born and raised in the largest city in FloridaJacksonville. I often wondered how it would be to live in a smaller town where most of the people knew each other and everyone had a secret they never wanted told. That curiosity propelled me to write about a fictitious town in the northwest called Hattersville, Ohio.

I officially want to welcome you to Hattersville, where over the next books you will get to meet some of its town folks. Each has a different story to tell, some of survival, of belonging and others of wanting some things you just cant have. Hattersville is being revitalized. New residents are moving in and in some areas, old residents who swore when they left they would never come back are returning. And it seems that love, sex, divorce and revenge are on some peoples minds. A new generation is determined to put the city on the map, while the old want to keep things as theyve always been.

A Silken Thread explores how love can survive when threatened by vengeful secrets from the past and how two couples refuse to be denied the happiness they deserve and are determined to share a love that has no boundaries. This story is a very special one and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Happy reading!

Brenda Jackson

Love endures long and is patient and kindit takes no account of evil done to itpays no attention to a suffered wrong.

I Corinthians 13:4, 5

Contents

Chapter One

S o, tell me. Have wedding jitters taken a toll on you yet?

Erica Sanders glanced across the table, thinking that only April, her close friend since junior high school, would have the nerve to ask her something like that with a straight face. April North knew her so well. She could tell Ericas anxiety and stress were mounting, only a couple of weeks from the engagement party at which the couples families would officially meet. Erica was so not looking forward to that affairunless her mothers attitude changed drastically.

Yes, Im a little stressed, she admitted. My sanity is barely holding up. But its to be expected of every bride, isnt it? She figured if anyone should know, surely April would. After all, her best friend had walked down the aisle three times already. Umm, a little stress is to be expected of every bride. But in your situation April left the words unsaid.

Ericas mother was driving her crazy.

With one breath Karen Sanders would rant and rave about Brian Lawson not being good enough to marry her daughter, and with the next breath shed give the wedding planner hell because she intended for Ericas wedding to be the social event of the year.

It would be a wedding befitting the great-great-granddaughter of one of the founding fathers of Hattersville, a small town of seven thousand, noted in the history books as one of the first cities for freed blacks in Ohio. Erica had lived in Hattersville all twenty-seven years of her life, except for her college years in Wisconsin. Living in another city those four years had opened her eyes to a lot of things, especially how closed-minded and snobbish some of the residents of her hometown were. But not all of the citizens were privileged. Her friend April had been born on the other side of the tracks, in the Fifth Wardsomething Ericas mother liked to remind her of every chance she got. But to Erica, what side of the tracks someone was born on didnt matter, and her close friendship with April had always been special. Besides, April, who had always been a beautiful person, had gone from rags to riches and was now a world-famous model. That proved that anyone who put her heart and mind to it could become successful, despite her humble beginnings.

Needing to escape the oppressive atmosphere of the town even more than Erica did, April had traveled west to attend UCLA, where shed met husbands one and two. Husband number three, whom shed divorced a year ago, was someone shed met in Great Britain.

You know as well as I do, April continued to say while eating her salad, that Ms. Karens idea of a dream marriage is one between you and Griffin.

Erica knew that was true. Griffin Hayess family, like hers, represented old money in Hattersville. Naturally some people, especially her mother, assumed she and Griffin would grow up and marry. There were those, again namely her mother, who figured that doing such a thing was not only politically correct, but would destroy some curse reputed to have been placed upon the two families that could only be broken by a marriage between them.

Unfortunately, nobody bothered to inform her and Griffins hearts, since they just werent feeling it. Their families had thrown them together so often when they were growing up that eventually they began thinking of themselves as sister and brother, rather than as a couple whose lives were destined to end in holy matrimony.

Although theyd tried dating while in high school, the fire was simply not there. Griffin had recognized it and so had she. That was when theyd made the decision to be nothing more than friends.

Mom might as well get used to the idea that I will not be Mrs. Griffin Hayes, Erica said. I most certainly have. Trust me. Brian is all the man I want and need. She doubted anyone, even April, knew just how much she meant that.

Will he be flying in this weekend?

A huge smile spread across Ericas lips and she held up two crossed fingers. Lets hope. Theyve hired two more attorneys at his firm but he still has a large caseload.

She and Brian, an attorney at a prestigious law firm in Dallas, had met last summer while vacationing in Myrtle Beach. He had been out fishing on the pier one morning and she had been jogging along the shoreline. They had struck up a conversation, and he had invited her to breakfast the next day. A few weeks later, they had become lovers.

When the summer ended they decided to keep the affair going and, beating the odds, their long-distance romance had survived. Over the Christmas holidays Brian had asked her to marry him. She had accepted and now looked forward to her August wedding and her move to Texas.

Her mother had been in an uproar at the thought of her only child marrying someone other than a Hayes and moving away. Even now, months later, there were days Karen Sanders had problems coping with the inevitable.