Stranger in the Moonlight

by Jude Deveraux

  “All right,” Travis said. “Get Forester to handle this merger.”

  “But he can’t—”

  “Do it?” Travis said. “I know it but he doesn’t. Maybe it’ll fall through and Dad will fire the ambitious little twerp.”

  “Or maybe he’ll succeed and your father will give him your job.”

  “And you said you didn’t believe in fairy tales,” Travis said, grinning. “All right, where’s this reunion?”

  She gave him the time and address.

  He stood up, looked at his desk, and all he could think of was seeing his mother again. It had been too long. On impulse, he picked up the brass plaque of Kim’s words and slipped it in his pocket. He looked back at Penny. “So what do you call a ‘normal’ car?”

  As she left, she gave him one of her rare smiles. “Wait and see.”

  That evening a Town Car and driver were waiting downstairs for Travis. It stopped at his apartment building, the doorman opened the door, and the elevator was held for him. He spoke to no one.

  His was the penthouse apartment, with views all around. The same decorator who’d done his office had filled his apartment with her idea of good taste. There was a huge antique Buddha in an alcove, and the couches were upholstered in black leather. Since Travis was in the apartment as little as possible, decorating it had never interested him.

  There was only one room that held truly personal items, and he went to it now. It had originally been a walk-in closet, but Travis had requested that it be filled with glass shelves. It was in this small room—which he always kept locked—that he put his trophies, awards, certificates, those symbols of what Kim had taught him about having “fun.”

  It was those two weeks in Edilean, spent with feisty little Kim, that had given him the courage to stand up to his father. His mother had tried, but her sweet nature was no match for a man like her husband.

  But Travis had found that he could hold his own. The first time he saw his father after having met Kim, Travis said he wanted physical instruction as well as academic. Randall Maxwell had looked at his young son in speculation and saw that the boy wasn’t going to give in. An instructor was hired.

  As Lucy had said about her son, he was a natural athlete. For Travis, the strenuous activity was a release from the grueling academic work he was given to do, and as Travis learned what they had to teach, the instructors left and a new one arrived. By the time Travis was college age, he was trained in several martial arts. His nose had been broken twice, once in boxing, once by an instructor’s foot in his face.

  His father had wanted Travis to continue being tutored for college, but Travis said that the minute he was of age, he’d leave and never return. At that time his mother was still living at home. Her life was as isolated as Travis’s, but then, she’d never been a very social person.

  Travis went to Stanford, then Harvard Law, and it was while he was away from the prison that was the only home he’d ever known that he discovered life. Sports—extreme sports—drew him. Jumping out of planes, being dropped by helicopter onto a snow-covered mountain, cliff diving. He did it all.

  He passed the bar exam but had no interest in spending his life in an office. Even though his father demanded that his son work for him, Travis refused. In anger, his father shut down his trust fund, so Travis got a job as a Hollywood stuntman. He was the guy who got set on fire.

  When his father saw that his ploy didn’t work, that he hadn’t made his son knuckle under to him, he turned his attention to his wife and made her miserable. One afternoon Lucy accidently saw a way to intercept a business transaction of her husband’s. With only a moment’s hesitation, she sent $3.2 million into her own account. She then spent about ten minutes packing a bag, took one of her husband’s cars, and fled.

  Randall told his son he wouldn’t go after Lucy if Travis would stop trying to kill himself and work for him.

  Travis would have done anything for his mother, so he left L.A., went back to New York, and worked for his father. Whenever possible, Travis relieved his stress by participating in any violent sport he could find.

  Now, he looked about the room at the trophies, the medals, the souvenirs. On the wall behind the shelves were many framed photos. The Monte Carlo races. His face was dirty and the champagne he’d sprayed when he’d won had made streaks, but he’d been happy.

  There were pictures of some of his more outrageous Hollywood stunts with fire, explosions, leaping off buildings. Interspersed among the pictures of the sports were the ones with the women. Movie stars, socialites, waitresses. Travis hadn’t been discriminate. He liked pretty women no matter where they were born or what they did.

  He closed the door, leaned back against it for a moment, and looked around him. He would turn thirty this year and he was tired from all of it. Tired of being under his father’s control, tired of making money for a man who had too much of it.

  His mother had been right to run away and hide, but he knew how guilty she felt that Travis was protecting her. But the way he saw it was that she’d spent a lifetime protecting him, so he owed her.

  Right now Travis’s worry was that his mother was marrying some man just to release her son. His fear was that his mother’s guilt was overwhelming her, and she was going to start the divorce proceedings just to give her son freedom.

  But Travis knew that his mother had no true idea what she was asking for if she went for a divorce from Randall Maxwell. Ruthless was too mild a word for the man.

  On the other hand, there was no way Travis could describe how much he’d like to have his own life back. Even though the last four years had worn him down, before he got out, he wanted to make sure that his mother wasn’t walking into something just as bad as her marriage had been.

  Travis left the trophy room and locked it securely. Only he knew the combination, and none of his many girlfriends had ever seen inside it.

  He went to his bedroom, a sterile place with no personality, and into his closet. One side contained his sports clothes, the other his work suits. At the end were what Penny would call “normal” clothes, jeans and T-shirts, a leather jacket. It took only moments to throw them into a duffle bag.

  He stripped down to his briefs and glanced at his body in the mirror. He had almost no fat on him and he worked to keep his muscles strong. But his skin was marked with scars from burns, punctures, surgical repairs. He’d broken his ribs more times than he could count, and under his hair was a deep scar from where a misfired piece of steel had come close to killing him.

  Minutes later, Travis was dressed and ready to go to dinner with a man who needed some reassurance that the business he’d started from scratch would continue. Travis knew that what the man really needed was a shoulder to cry on. With a sigh, he left the apartment.

  It was 8:00 P.M. and Travis had been driving for hours to reach Edilean. The car Penny had bought for him was an old BMW. The engine sounded good, but he could barely get eighty out of it. No doubt that was Penny’s idea of how to keep him from exceeding the speed limit. She’d put a packet of hundreds in the glove box, and he’d had to smile. If Travis used a credit card, his father would know where he was. He well knew that his father kept close watch on him. It was one thing to have charges in Paris but another to have little Edilean, Virginia, show up on the statement.

  “Just until Mom is safe,” he said aloud as he downshifted. At least Penny hadn’t insulted him by getting an automatic. She’d let him have some fun!

  At the thought of that word, Travis thought of last night. Trying to comfort a man nearing seventy hadn’t been easy. But Travis knew that if he didn’t attempt it, no one else would. His father often said in disdain that Travis didn’t have a shark’s heart. It had been meant as a put-down, but Travis took it as a compliment.

  He’d managed to get away from dinner by eleven. He wanted to sleep because he planned to leave early for Edilean.

  But the next morning, just as he was ready to leave, his cell rang. It was his father. It
was 7:00 A.M. on a Saturday morning but his dad was at work.

  “Where are you?” Randall Maxwell demanded.

  “Leaving town,” Travis said in a cold voice that matched his father’s.

  “Forester can’t handle this deal.”

  “You’re the one who hired him.”

  “He’s a good number cruncher and he sucks up to the clients. They like him.”

  “Then when he tells them their jobs are gone, he can hold their hands,” Travis said. “I have to go.”

  “Where is it this time?” Randall muttered.

  “Watch the sports pages.”

  “If you get yourself killed,” Randall said, “I’ll—”

  “You’ll what, Dad? Not attend my funeral?”

  “I’ll say hello to your mother.”

  For a moment Travis froze in place. Why had his father spoken of her now? Had he heard something? That a Lucy Cooper had been mentioned in a Richmond newspaper hadn’t been enough to alert him, had it?

  Travis decided to brazen it out. “You’re pulling out the big guns this morning. You must want something bad.”

  “I need you to go over this deal. There’s something wrong in this contract, but I can’t figure out what it is.”

  One thing Travis knew about his father was that his instincts were infallible. If he thought there was something wrong, there was. In the last four years there’d been a hundred times when Travis had wanted to say there was nothing wrong, that no one was trying to put one over on him. Travis couldn’t help thinking that if he screwed up, his father would let him out of his devil’s deal. But he knew that wouldn’t happen.

  Randall knew when he was pushing his son too far. “Give me this morning and you can take a couple of weeks off.”

  Travis was silent as he thought that his father knew him too well. But then, Randall Maxwell was a brilliant judge of character. Many years ago he’d rightly judged that Miss Lucy Jane Travis would be too afraid of him to do anything but comply with whatever he told her to do.

  “Take three weeks off,” Randall said. “This deal will take that long. Just figure out what they’re trying to put over on me in this contract and you’re free.”

  The last thing Travis wanted was to leave his father in anger or suspicion. The rage would come later when Travis helped his mother in the divorce. “Send the contract to me.”

  “There’s a man waiting outside your door now,” Randall said.

  Travis couldn’t see his father’s smile of triumph, but he felt it. The only thing in life that really mattered to the man was winning.

  It had been two in the afternoon before Travis got away. He’d wanted to call his mother and tell her he was coming, but he didn’t have a throwaway phone, and he didn’t dare use his cell.

  In the end, the second he finished with the contract, he left. He called his father from the car. “That old man is as big a crook as you are,” Travis said. “Page 212, last paragraph, says that if you don’t agree to his terms you’re in default and the company goes back to him.”

  “Terms?” Randall shouted. “What terms?! What’s he talking about?”

  “I have no idea. You’ll have to ask old man Hardranger that.”

  “You have to—”

  “No I don’t,” Travis said. “Get Forester to find out what the old man wants. Or sic Penny on him. Anybody but me. See you in three weeks,” he said, then clicked off the phone. “Or not,” he added.

  It was difficult for Travis to imagine that possibly—maybe—he was about to get out from under his father’s thumb. If his mother had had enough time to get up her courage to actually go through a divorce, Travis would be free.

  The thought made him smile for most of the drive down to Edilean.

  It was eight o’clock on a Saturday night, and as far as he could tell, the town was dead. Every store was closed, no all-night drugstore, no one sauntering by walking a dog. All in all, he thought the little town with its old buildings was a bit eerie, rather like a sci-fi B movie where all the inhabitants had been abducted by aliens.

  It wasn’t easy finding Aldredge Road, but when he saw the sign he smiled more broadly. He knew Kim didn’t live on the road but her relatives did, and the ancestral home, Aldredge House, was there.

  But Aldredge House wasn’t where he was going. His mother had rented an apartment in the home of Mrs. Olivia Wingate, which was just behind where Kim’s cousin lived. Travis’s original plan was to arrive there in the afternoon and see his mother. Since he didn’t want anyone knowing who she was or who he was, he planned to park along the road and call her on the cell phone Penny had sent him that morning. After he’d seen her and made sure she was all right, he’d find a hotel.

  He hadn’t changed his plan, but it was growing dark and he didn’t like her walking out alone. He’d have to meet her close to the house.

  Travis was thinking about this as he drove down the tree-lined road when a big teenager wearing a yellow reflective vest and carrying a flashlight stepped out of the bushes in front of him. As Travis slammed on the brakes, he thanked his years of race car driving for his quick reflexes.

  There was a tap on his window and another kid was motioning for him to put down the window.

  “You wanta slow down, mister?” the boy said. “There are kids around here, and besides, people are leaving. Park over there by the Ford pickup.”

  “Park?” Travis said. “I wasn’t planning on going to—” He didn’t finish, as he didn’t want to tell anyone his business. He could hear music and see lights through the trees to the left. It looked like there was a party going on. Travis thought of turning around and leaving, but there was a car behind him. A U-turn would draw too much attention to himself.

  “You take any longer, mister, and the place will be empty. You already missed the wedding cake,” the kid said.

  “Yeah, sure,” Travis said and pulled in beside the truck. Wedding? he thought and couldn’t help grimacing. Was it Kim who was getting married? After all, it was the Aldredge House so it could be.

  As he got out, he put his hand up to block the light from the next car, and also to hide his face.

  A very large man was standing outside a truck that unless Travis missed his bet, had been revved up to illegal street use. He was looking at Travis as though trying to figure out who he was.

  “You with the bride?” he asked as he opened the door to help his pregnant wife out.

  “Colin!” she said. “You’re off duty now, so stop interrogating people.” She looked at Travis. “Welcome to Edilean,” she said, “and please go inside. Let’s hope there’s some champagne left. Not that I’ll be having any.”

  “Sure, thanks,” Travis said.

  As the two of them walked toward the house, the big man gave Travis a look up and down.

  “Great,” he mumbled. It looked like he’d raised the suspicions of an off-duty cop. More people walked past, most of them leaving, and looked at Travis. It was then that he realized that all the people he saw were in their finest. He was wearing a gray shirt and a pair of jeans.

  For a moment Travis contemplated what he should do. Leave? See his mother tomorrow?

  On the other hand, he thought that it was possible that his mother was at the wedding. He didn’t think so, as she had always been a quiet, retiring woman, but maybe so. It was even possible that the man she was thinking of marrying would be there too.

  He had a vision of the two of them sitting in a corner holding hands and whispering sweet words to each other. It might be a nice thing to see.

  And maybe Kim would be there—if she wasn’t the bride, that is. Not that he could introduce himself to her again. Not that he hadn’t seen her as an adult, but it had been a while. She’d been a very pretty little girl and she’d grown into an even prettier woman. The vision of her riding down the hill, her auburn hair flying out behind her, would stay with him forever.

  Maybe he could change into some more appropriate clothes and maybe he could go and see
the wedding. Not stay. Just look, then leave.

  He opened the trunk of the car.

  Two

  “So how are you and the new boyfriend—Dave, is it?—getting along?” Sara Newland asked as she sat down across from Kim. Each table had a different color cloth on it, what the bride called “Easter colors.” The band was taking a break, and the big dance floor was empty. Overhead, the tent was strung with tiny silver lights that cast pretty shadows everywhere.

  Sara’s twin boys were now a year old and were at home with a babysitter. The wedding was a rare night out for her and her husband, Mike.

  “We’re doing great,” Kim said. She had on her bluish purple bridesmaid dress, with its low, square neckline and swishy skirt. Jecca, who was the bride as well as Kim’s best friend, had designed it for her, and Lucy Cooper had made it.

  “Think it’s permanent between you two?” Sara asked.

  “It’s too early to tell, but I have hope. How are you and Mike doing?”

  “Perfectly. But I’m not making much progress in taming him into a domestic life. I wanted him to help with the garden. Know what he did?”

  “With Mike, I can’t imagine.”

  “He chased off the guy who runs the backhoe, taught himself how to use the big machine, and he’s cleared a strip about two acres long for the new fence. You should have heard him and the owner of the backhoe yelling at each other!”

  Kim smiled. “I would have liked to have been there. I spend most of my life with salesmen. Every word they utter leads back to me buying more from them.”

  Sara learned forward and lowered her voice. “So how was Lucy Cooper with your dress?”

  “I never saw her,” Kim said. “Jecca did the one and only fitting.”

  “But you saw her dancing with Jecca’s dad a few minutes ago, didn’t you?”

  Sara and Kim were cousins, the same age, and they’d played together since they were babies. For the last four years they’d talked about how odd it was that Lucy Cooper, an older woman staying at Mrs. Wingate’s house, ran away whenever Kim appeared. Other people saw her at the grocery, the pharmacy, even in Mrs. Wingate’s shop downtown, but when Kim showed up, Lucy hid. One of her cousins had snapped a photo of Ms. Cooper and shown it to Kim, but she saw nothing familiar in the face. She couldn’t imagine why the woman avoided her.