Page 3 of Sutton and the CEO Forever

“Are you sick?” I asked.

She looked at me, but a little of the sparkle that usually shone back at me was somewhat dimmed. It was the last time we ever watched TV under the table in our blanket fort. It was also the last time my mama took me to Town Days. I went later on as a teenager when Mama was either high or entertaining someone.

But it never was the same again.

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Sutton - Present Day

“Hey, are you doing okay?” Mark asked as he slipped his arm around my ever-increasing waist and kissed my temple.

I nodded, shaking away the memory of the last time I had been to Otterville Town Days with my mother. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

I lifted my face for a kiss, which Mark happily supplied. “I am wonderful, just waiting on Martha with the shirts.”

Martha, my former arch nemesis, was now in her late seventies. She was married to Earl, a man who, for years, I had thought was a drunken fool that crashed at my trailer when his crazy wife had thrown him out.

What I hadn’t known was that Earl and Martha had been servants for my mother and her abusive ex-husband. They had helped her escape and then stayed on to help protect the two of us.

It wasn’t until a couple of dead bodies popped up and shook our entire town and information was revealed that my mother wasn’t just a trailer park crack whore. She had once been part of a wealthy family and been a rich man’s wife. She’d even found love for a short time here in Otterville Falls.

The first dead body that turned up was Gabe, my old boss at a rundown bar called Abberly’s. I have to admit there was no love lost there. After Gabe, there was Max, an old family friend, followed by Justin, my mother’s biological brother. The worst part was that Knox, the town sheriff, didn’t have enough evidence to charge anybody.

Mark waltzed into my life with this crazy story about how my mother had hooked up with billionaire Hollingsworth Sutton III and gotten pregnant with me. Apparently, my father hadn’t even known I’d existed until he was on his deathbed. Instead of the crack-addicted prostitute, I thought I had buried, my mother had been a trust-fund baby

To make a long story short, I’m a modern-day Cinderella story. Poor girl finds out she’s worth millions, falls in love with the prince (aka Mark), and lives happily ever after. Only our ‘happily ever after’ has been fraught with one death after another.

To make matters worse, we still weren’t sure who the murderer was. There was only one thing consistent with the cases: they were all somehow connected to me. If that stress wasn’t bad enough, I felt like I had been pregnant for at least ten years. The last trimester was killing me.

“Hey there!” Martha came in with a large bag in her grasp. “Here are the shirts.”

She shoved the bag in my direction. Luckily Mark caught it before it fell to the ground. Did I mention that Martha was now a businesswoman? After Gabe’s death, we found that his mother, Ruth Ann, had left Abberly’s to me. His mama was a good woman who took me under her wing when Mama died. I didn’t need the old place, so I was thrilled to turn it over to Martha and Earl for all of the years they’d sacrificed for me. It turned out Martha really enjoyed running the place. She had converted it into more of a diner instead of just a rundown bar. And she even planned on hosting an event at Otterville Falls Town Days.

“What can I do?” I asked.

Martha blew a strand of hair out of her face and consulted with her clipboard. “Can you and Mark pass out the Abberly’s t-shirts to those working the booth? I want us to look professional.”

“Sure,” I said automatically.

Martha sighed in relief. “Thank you, I feel like a chicken with its head cut off.”

Mark opened the bag. His gasp was worth a thousand words.

“Before you say anything,” she added defensively, “I got a good discount on the color.”

I stared at the murky green color, then at Mark, who clearly was not impressed. I tried to paste a smile on my face. “They’re great.”

Martha’s face soured. “You are a terrible liar.”

Laughing, I took the bag from Mark, and we proceeded to pass them out to Brian, Candice, Joe, and a few others. Excitement began to build inside of me.

Mark tugged on his t-shirt, trying to read the tag. “What are these made out of? Sandpaper?”

I laughed. “You sound like a snob.”

He grumbled something underneath his breath but then swooped in and twirled me around. I was amazed that, at nearly nine months pregnant with twins, he could still lift me.

I giggled and threatened to puke on his head until he put me down.

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