Change of Heart

by Jude Deveraux

  “You never told me any of this in your letters to me,” Eli said, sounding hurt.

  “I know. I didn’t want to get your hopes up. The letters I wrote to your mother told her what I was doing.”

  “But she didn’t read them.” Eli nodded to the unopened letters piled on the table.

  “No, she didn’t,” he said sadly. “I don’t think she wants me, and there’s nothing else I can do. By now, she’s probably forgotten me.”

  Eli lifted his head to stare at Frank. “I don’t think she has. Sometimes I hear her crying at night. What if that’s because she misses you?”

  Frank raised one eyebrow. “I don’t think so. A woman scorned, that sort of thing. I found out a long time ago that if you leave women, they never forgive you. They might say they have, but they get you back in other ways.”

  “But what if she’s not like that? What if she loves you too and she would understand if you explained to her that you were frightened and a coward?”

  Frank made a sound that was half chuckle, half a scoff. “You’re making me feel worse. Okay, so maybe I was a coward. I’d fall on my knees to her and declare my undying love, but based on these letters, I’m sure she’d turn me down. You have any suggestions?”

  “Let me think about it. We need something Mom can’t refuse.”

  “All right,” Frank said, “let’s change the subject. What do you want for Christmas? Computer equipment?”

  “No,” Eli answered. “I haven’t done much work lately.” Suddenly, his eyes widened. “Can you ride a horse?”

  “Rather well, actually.”

  “Do you own a black one? A big black stallion?”

  Frank smiled. “I think I can find such an animal. I didn’t know you liked horses.”

  “It’s not for me. My mother was paying the bills last week, and she said that we had to face the facts. No handsome man was going to ride up to the front door on a big black stallion and rescue us, so we’d have to make ends meet another way.”

  “And you want me to ride up on a black horse and beg your mother to forgive me?”

  “Yes,” Eli said with such conviction that a light came into Frank’s eyes.

  “A black stallion, eh? And I guess I should do it tomorrow, on Christmas Day?”

  “Yes, definitely. But maybe you’re busy with your family on that day.”

  “Somehow I doubt they’ll miss me. Besides, the idea of me humiliating myself would greatly amuse them.” He paused to think about the idea. “Shall I wear a black silk shirt, black trousers, that sort of thing?”

  “I think my mother would like that.”

  “Okay, tomorrow at ten a.m. Now that that’s settled, what do you want for your birthday?”

  “The password to tap into the Montgomery-

  Taggert data banks.”

  At that Frank laughed harder than he had in months. “Come on, let’s get something to eat. And I’d have to adopt you before I let you tap into that.”

  “Would you?” Eli asked as they left the office. “Adopt me, I mean?”

  “It would be my greatest honor.” Before them was the raucous office party and they stood there staring at it. Frank looked at Eli. “I know a great hamburger joint. Want to go?”

  “Yeah . . . Dad,” Eli said, and Frank put his arm around Eli’s shoulders and they got on the elevator.

  “My brothers will want to put some muscle on you. Think you can stand that?”

  “Yes,” Eli whispered as the doors slid shut, and he slipped his hand into Frank’s.

  6

  Eli,” Miranda said, exasperated, “why are you so nervous?” Since early that morning, while Miranda was up to her elbows in cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, every few minutes Eli had been going back and forth to look out the window. “If you’re searching for Santa Claus, I don’t think he remembers where this house is.”

  She’d meant to make a joke, but it fell flat. This year she hadn’t been able to afford much in the way of gifts, and she was constantly worried about how she was going to support them in the coming months.

  She stopped herself from thinking of the bad things, such as money and where and how. She also wouldn’t allow herself to think of Frank Taggert, the rotten—

  Calm down, she reminded herself.

  “Is Chelsea coming over?” she asked. She felt some guilt over having separated them for so long, but after she’d returned from the cabin, she’d been so angry she hadn’t been coherent. It hadn’t taken a lot of work to find out what her son and Chelsea had been up to. Eli kept files on everything—and she’d read them in horror.

  Yes, he’d done good things, but the danger of his illegal acts was frightening. She’d separated the two kids, not allowing them to continue. She’d also shredded all the stationery they’d collected and had forbidden anything like it to be done again.

  And in one harrowing, terrifying episode, she’d at last confronted her terrorist of an ex-husband—and won. No more giving him money to pacify him. And no more fear that he was going to take Eli away from her.

  For all that she had accomplished some things, the last months had been hell. But on the other hand, they’d also been good for her. Sometimes she thought she was at last growing up. The things she’d talked about to . . . him—she couldn’t even bear saying his name—made her see how vague her life had been. Because of him, she’d decided to take charge of her own life.

  She was sorry for the unhappiness she saw in Eli, but she knew the changes she was making were for the better.

  As for “him,” she’d returned his letters unopened. She wasn’t even curious as to what was in them. An offer of money to assuage his guilt? Apologies for taking advantage of her?

  Whatever he had to say, she didn’t want to hear it.

  The fact that she now bore the consequences of their “meeting” was beside the point. That she dreamed of him at night and remembered him during the day meant nothing.

  “Not now,” Eli said, and Miranda almost didn’t remember what she’d asked. “Later—” He broke off as his face suddenly lit up in a grin. In fact, his whole body seemed to light up. He gained control of himself, and doing his best to appear calm, he went to sit on the sofa and picked up a magazine. Since it was a copy of Good Housekeeping, Miranda knew something was up.

  “Eli, would you mind telling me what is going on? All morning you’ve been looking out that window and—” Halting, she listened. “Are those hoofbeats? Eli, what are you up to? What have you and Chelsea done now?”

  He gave her his best look of innocence.

  “Eli!” Miranda said. “I think that horse is coming onto the porch!”

  When her son just sat where he was, his head down but looking as though he were about to burst into giggles, Miranda smiled too. She had an idea that she was going to open the door to find pretty little Chelsea on her pony, her hair streaming down her back, a Christmas basket in her hand. Miranda decided to play along with the game.

  Wiping her hands and putting on her best stern face, she went to the door, planning to look surprised and delighted.

  She didn’t have to fake the look of surprise. Shock would be more like it. She didn’t see Chelsea’s pony but an enormous black horse trying to fit itself onto her little front porch. A man, dressed all in black, his face turned away from her, was on its back, trying to get the animal under control without tearing his head off on the low porch roof.

  “You have any mares around here?” the rider shouted above the clamor of the horse’s iron-shod hooves on the wooden porch.

  “Next door,” she shouted back, thinking that she knew that voice. “Could I help you find your way?” She stepped back from the prancing hooves.

  After a few powerful tugs on the reins and some healthy curses muttered under his breath, the man got the horse under control, then turned to look at her. �
��Miranda,” he managed to say.

  She could say nothing. Turning, she went inside the house and bolted the door behind her.

  Frank was off the horse in seconds, not bothering to tie the animal but leaving it where it was and going to the closed door. “Miranda! Please listen to me. I need to talk to you.”

  Miranda, with her back to the door, squinted at her son, who was bent over the magazine as though it were the most interesting thing he had ever seen. “Eli! I know you are somehow involved in this and I demand to know what’s going on.”

  Outside, Frank spoke through the glass-paned door. “Miranda, I must talk to you.”

  “Over my dead body,” she shouted back. “And get your horse off my porch!” She looked at her son. “When I get through with you, young man, you are going to be very sorry. This is an adult problem and adults are handling it.”

  Eli bent more closely over the magazine, fascinated by what was going on around him, and straining to hear every word that was being said. How he wished Chelsea were here!

  Maybe it was the clothes, maybe it was because it was Christmas, or maybe it was because Frank was sick of doing things the proper way, but he picked up a flowerpot from the porch and threw it through the glass of the door, then reached inside and opened the lock.

  “Get out!” Miranda said when he was inside. “Or I’ll call the police.”

  He caught her before she reached the telephone. He was sure there were words he should say, but he couldn’t think of them. All he could think of was how glad he was to see her again. He grabbed her in his arms and kissed her. When he stopped and she started to speak, he kissed her again.

  When he stopped kissing her, Miranda was leaning against him, her full weight borne by him. “Now listen to me, Miranda Stowe, I may not know how to be a hero out of a book, but I know that I love you.”

  “Our lives . . .” she whispered.

  “I know,” Frank said, “but if you’d read my letters, you’d know how hard I’ve worked to change things so we’re more alike.”

  “Are you referring to my boring, middle-class life?”

  “Yes,” he said. She tried to pull away but he wouldn’t let her. “I am going back to who I am, to my family. I realized that what I want is what I once had.”

  “I heard what Julian said.” It was hard to think with his arms around her. “I don’t fit in your life. I doubt if they make designer ball gowns in a size twelve.”

  Frank laughed. “I have missed you. When Eli—”

  This time, she did pull away from him. “You and Eli again did this?”

  “Mom!” Eli said as he jumped up. “He loves you, he told me so.”

  “I don’t think this—”

  Frank caught her hand. “I want you to listen to me. I love you and I love Eli, and I have for a long time. I may not be any good at being a father or a husband, but I’ll do my best and that’s all I can promise. And I—”

  Suddenly all the bravado left him, and he held her hand. There were tears in his eyes. “Marry me, Miranda. Please, please marry me. I’m sorry for how I acted when I first met you. Sorry for what I said later. The truth is that I thought I could forget you, that maybe it was all due to the moonlight and the trees and your strawberry pancakes.”

  “What was it?”

  “You made me see what I was missing and what I truly wanted.”

  Before Miranda could say a word, Eli yelled, “Yes! Yes, she’ll marry you. Yes, yes, yes.”

  “I can’t—” Miranda began, but Eli, behind her back, started kissing the back of his own hand. Frank was so fascinated with this pantomime that he almost didn’t understand what the boy was trying to tell him to do. He took the boy’s suggestion and didn’t let Miranda say another word but kissed her again. “Think of your son,” he said.

  “But I’m not sure this could work between us. Our lives are so different.”

  He kissed her again. “I’m changing mine and I love you. Don’t you love me some?”

  Miranda smiled. “Yes, I do. You don’t deserve it, but I do.” She leaned back away from him. “What about Julian? You weren’t very nice to him.”

  “I think that was my first taste of jealousy. You smiled at him too much. He was bored to death after weeks without me, so I hired him back at half again his salary. But now he likes me even less than he did. Miranda, please marry me.”

  At that moment a siren went off in the next block and scared the horse, which ran inside the house for safety. It collided with Frank, Miranda, and Eli, who all tumbled into a startled heap on the couch.

  “Stupid animal,” Frank muttered as the horse nudged his pockets, looking for apples.

  “Whose idea was the horse?” Miranda asked.

  “Mine,” the two males said in unison.

  And it was that unison that made Miranda know what to do. From the beginning Frank had reminded her of someone, and now she knew who it was: Eli.

  “Yes,” she said, her arms going around his neck. “But I think I should tell you that I’m going to have a baby.”

  “Oh,” Frank said. The horse was pushing at him.

  “If you don’t want this . . .” Miranda began.

  Eli flung himself on top of both of them. “It’s okay, Mom, he’s a coward, but if you give him a chance, he can become your hero on a black stallion.”

  Frank was recovering. “I do. You can’t be angry at a man for being slow-witted, can you? In fact, I think it may be illegal.”

  Eli hugged them both. “I got exactly what I wanted for Christmas and my birthday,” he said. “And I’d rather go to Cambridge than Princeton.” But his mother and Frank didn’t hear him because they were kissing again.

  Smiling, Eli untangled himself from the two adults and the horse and ran to his room to call Chelsea and tell her the news.

  Robin and Marian Les Jeunes had struck again.

  Part Two

  * * *

  7

  Edilean, Virginia

  Twenty years later

  2014

  And get some bottles of champagne,” Eli said as he put his hands on the bar and bench-pressed six reps with over two hundred pounds.

  His assistant, Jeff, tapped the note into his phone. “What kind of champagne?”

  As Eli sat up and wiped the sweat off his face, he gave him a look.

  “Right,” Jeff said. “You have no idea. How about the kind that has pretty flowers painted on the bottle?”

  “Keep it up and I’ll make you hold the pads.”

  Jeff groaned. The gym they were in was big and smelly and full of people who were so physically different from him they might as well have been another species. In the boxing ring was a woman with a fantastic body wearing red boxing gloves and hitting the hand pads held by a kid who made grizzlies look small.

  Those were the pads Eli was threatening him with. All 130 pounds of him would have to stand there with those things on his hands while Eli hit them very hard. Once was enough!

  He watched Eli do more reps while lying under a bar that could come down and crush his neck—something Jeff was sure would happen to him so he never touched it. But Eli said that a man didn’t join the Taggert family and not get into iron. “Iron” as in picking it up and putting it down.

  “Okay,” Jeff said, “what else should I get for the beauteous Chelsea? Flowers? Candy? Condoms?”

  Again, Eli gave him a look to stop it.

  “Got it,” Jeff said. “Chelsea the Pure. Chelsea the Innocent.” He lowered his voice. “Even if you haven’t seen her since she was a kid, and you know she’s had a lot of boyfriends, you still think she is an angel come to earth.”

  Eli took a couple of forty-five-pound dumbbells from the rack and went to an incline bench to do three set of flys. When he’d finished, he sat up and looked at Jeff. “I know I’m being ridicul
ous, but I want this visit to be a good one. Get whatever you think will make her feel comfortable. I’m doing abs, then hitting the shower. I’ll meet you at the car.”

  Gratefully, Jeff started for the front door, while mumbling, “And the objective in all of this is to persuade her to stay for the entire summer. Or maybe a lifetime.” He didn’t mean to be so negative, but he thought Eli was putting too much hope into the coming meeting. And he feared that Eli was going to be seriously hurt when it failed. He’d worked for Eli for seven years, and while his boss had had a few girlfriends, none of them had stayed around for long. But then, when there was a choice between work and a girl, Eli always chose work.

  For all that Jeff was only five foot eight, skeletal skinny, and had a face like a mischievous boy’s, women liked him. He said his secret was that he made them laugh.

  But Eli was shy around women. If Jeff got him to go to a bar, Eli would sit there drinking his beer until he’d eventually take out his ever-present notepad and start creating something. There were times when Eli had excused himself and later Jeff had found him outside in the car doing calculations while his pretty date waited inside. Only women who were very determined made it past Eli’s work barrier. But eventually they all left because, although he’d often grow fond of them, he never came close to giving them the love they wanted.

  But about a year ago things had changed. One morning Jeff had shown up at his boss’s small apartment as usual, and Eli said, “I’m going to take next summer off.” Jeff had nearly choked on the bagel he was eating.

  “Take off? As in, not work?” Jeff was shocked.

  “Yes. I’ve been thinking about it. When my biological father died, his will said he wanted to be buried near his father’s family in Edilean, Virginia. When I went to the funeral, I saw that it’s a pretty little town, and it’s just outside Williamsburg. I think I’ll go there.”

  “Ah. Right,” Jeff said. “It’s near Langley.” He went back to eating. Eli might be planning to do the unthinkable of taking time off, but he wouldn’t be far away from government offices if he was needed. If the president called him—which had happened several times—and asked him to, you know, save the world—something else that Eli had done a few times—he’d be nearby.