by Anne Stuart
She didn’t move. “How long would you have put it off?”
“For as long as I could. I don’t expect it could have gone on forever. Carlos has informed me that Ortega and his men are no more than twenty-five miles away. I expect we’ll have some unwelcome visitors this afternoon.”
“Apart from me?”
His eyes met hers. “I would have rather had a dozen Ortegas show up than you,” he said in a frank voice. “But there’s nothing that can be done about it now. Do you want to see your father or not?”
“He knows it’s me?”
“He knows.”
“And he didn’t want to see me?”
Jake hesitated. “He decided to trust my judgment.”
“Damn him then,” she said in a small, cold voice. “And damn you too.”
He stood very still watching her. “You can damn me all you want. And you can damn Sam, but you’re going to see him, and you’re going to put a good face on it.”
“Or what?” she retorted, moving back toward the bed, determined to sit there and not move until she was good and ready.
She only got two feet. Jake’s strong hands clamped down over her arms, jerking her against him. “I don’t even need to go into the alternatives,” he said with sinister softness. “You’ll do as I say. This isn’t a democracy here, lady. It’s a dictatorship, and right now I’m boss. Do you understand?” He gave her a sharp, painful shake. “Do you?”
She considered kicking him, kneeing him, breaking free of his iron grip and raking her fingernails down that tanned, implacable face. She didn’t believe his threats, any more than Soledad did. But some last trace of common sense stopped her.
“I understand,” she said, determined to keep the sullen note out of her voice.
His hands didn’t release her, his body didn’t withdraw. He stood there, looking down at her, and for a fleeting moment she thought she could see that expression on his face that she’d glimpsed once before.
He was going to kiss her again, she thought. And she was going to struggle, and hit him, and yet there was nothing in the world she wanted more than to have him kiss her. She must be going crazy.
She stood there waiting, waiting for him to make the move she wanted and dreaded. And then he broke away without touching her, spinning away from her before she could see his face.
“I’ll see if Sam’s ready,” he said over his shoulder, and was gone. Leaving her to stare after him, more lost and confused than ever.
CHAPTER TEN
For the first time in the last twenty-four hours all thoughts of Jake were effectively banished from her brain. She had spent the last half hour waiting for his return, and then followed him up the wide, littered flight of stairs to the third floor of the aging hacienda. And now she stood waiting outside the scarred, heavily guarded door of Sam Lambert’s room, about to see her father for the first time in fourteen years.
She wasn’t quite sure what she felt. A little numb, a little frightened, a little angry, and absurdly hopeful. Despite the fact that he’d repudiated her when she first arrived, despite the fact that he’d never answered her letters, she still had a small ounce of hope that he might be her father again, that tall, distant figure with the deep voice and the loving eyes. Her hands were shaking, and she stuffed them in the pockets of her dress.
Enrique was guarding the door, his battered, bruised face a combination of reluctant politeness and sheer rage. He stood to one side of the scarred, bolted door, his eyes straight forward. He had changed his grubby T-shirt from ET to cavorting gremlins. Maddy couldn’t help but think the latter slightly more appropriate.
She could feel Jake behind her, his tall, lean body seemingly at ease, and she couldn’t tell if the tension that permeated the area was only hers or his too. “What are we waiting for?” she asked in a subdued voice, just a decibel over a whisper.
“For Doc to say it’s okay. He’s not having one of his good days,” Jake said in a grim voice.
“Who? Doc or my father?”
“Don’t be cute—it doesn’t become you,” Jake said. “Do you even realize how sick your father is?”
“No.”
“Well, you will soon enough.” The heavy door creaked open, and Henry Milsom emerged, looking pale, hung over, and bad-tempered.
He looked Maddy up and down through red-rimmed eyes, then snorted unappreciatively. “You may as well go on in,” he said abruptly in the gravelly voice that still held a trace of a southern accent.
Maddy made no move. Indeed, she couldn’t with Jake’s heavy hand clamped down on her shoulder.
“Is he any better?” Jake asked.
Milsom shrugged. “No. But at this point I don’t think he’s going to get any better. She may as well see him while he’s still able to manage it. Besides, he wants her now.”
Lines of dread and despair were shooting through Maddy’s reed-slim body, and only the warm force of Jake’s hand steadied her sudden descent into grief. How could she have finally found her father, only to lose him again?
“All right, we’ll go in.” Jake moved forward, but Milsom shook his head.
“No, Murphy. He wants to see her alone.”
Maddy couldn’t help it, she flashed a triumphant smile over her shoulder at the impassive Jake. Her father finally wanted her; for once Jake Murphy took second place.
The hand released her shoulder, slowly, reluctantly, and he stepped back. “I’ll wait for you here.”
“You’re not still afraid I’m going to run away?” she questioned cattily.
Jake’s hazel eyes flickered for a moment to Enrique’s bruised, sullen figure, and then back to hers. It was warning enough. Maddy swallowed, nodding slightly, and moved to the door that was still open a crack. And then she went through into the shadowy room beyond, closing the door behind her with a soft thud.
Her pulse was pounding, her heart beating rapidly, and her palms were sweaty as she slowly advanced on the hospital bed that took up only a corner of the huge, cavernous room. An abandoned wheelchair stood by the window. It must have been from there that he watched her in the garden yesterday. Watched her and decided not to see her, to lie to Carlos. Hadn’t Jake told her it was for her own good? She had to remember that, block out the feelings of anger and betrayal that still simmered below the surface.
“Allison Madelyn?” He’d always called her by both names. She could recognize that voice from her childhood, even in its weakened condition, slightly patrician, slightly distant, but still her father. She could feel a sudden upsurge of joy rush through her, and she started quickly toward the bed and its shrouded figure, ready to fling herself in his arms in a reunion that was beyond anything she had dared hope.
“Are you alone?” His next words slowed her rapid pace a trifle.
“Yes.”
“Good. Then come here, girl. We haven’t much time, and I can’t afford to waste a moment of it.”
Maddy’s footsteps slowed even more. For a moment she considered telling herself that it was their reunion he didn’t want to squander, but already she knew otherwise. Slowly she came up to the bed, to look down into the pale, autocratic blue eyes and austere, pain-lined face of the father she hadn’t seen in fourteen years. And she waited for some sign that he was glad to see her.
“You look the same,” he said abruptly. “A little older, perhaps. It’s a shame you don’t take after your mother in looks.”
Sudden rage filled Maddy. “Stephen did.”
The sigh that echoed from the bed was shallow and weary. “Tell me what happened to your brother, Allison Madelyn. Your mother never would tell me all of it.”
The grief was as fresh and raw as it had been that day so long ago when the word had come. “He died.”
“Drugs, wasn’t it?” Even in the weakened voice Maddy could hear the sneer.
“So they said.” Her voice was flat and unemotional. “The autopsy said he had a combination of thirteen different drugs in his body. Enough to kill a horse. He l
eft a note, but I never saw it. It was addressed to you.”
Samuel Eddison Lambert didn’t even flinch. “Stephen was a weakling,” he stated.
Maddy’s finely boned hands clenched into fists just out of his range of vision. “Stephen was only twenty-three years old. Don’t you feel any responsibility, any guilt?”
“None,” said the old man, and his blue eyes were clear and unclouded by any emotion other than fanaticism. “It was his choice, his life to squander. Everyone has a calling, and it’s up to them whether they choose to heed it. Are you going to let me down like he did, or are you going to prove to be stronger?”
Bastard, she thought. “How do you want me to prove it?” Her voice was cool and icily detached, and Sam Lambert, the Saint of San Pablo, nodded his approval.
“You’ll do,” he said. “You came here unwanted and unasked, putting everyone in even more danger. You can earn your keep.”
“How?”
“There’s something I want you to take back to the States with you. I want to make sure it gets into the right hands. And that means not your mother’s hands. Did she put you up to coming?”
“She said you were dying.”
Sam didn’t even flinch. “She was right. Sooner than you think. What did she expect you to do about it?”
“Bring you back.” In the face of it the idea was absurd. This sick, ascetic old man had no tie with her apart from an accident of birth. He wouldn’t have gone with her if his life depended on it. As, indeed, it might.
Sam Lambert laughed, a martini-dry sound in the tropical stillness. “She still has no idea what kind of man I am. Why I’m here. Do you?” He eyed his daughter fiercely.
“Of course,” she said. “You’re El Patrón. The Saint of San Pablo.” Her voice was cool and mocking, but Sam Lambert didn’t even seem to notice.
“Exactly,” he said, his pain-thinned voice filled with satisfaction. “And I need you to ensure my legacy to my children.”
That did startle her out of her shell of reserve. “Your children?”
“The people of San Pablo,” he clarified without a trace of shame. “I need you to take the box of candy over there by the window, take it to someone important, someone who thinks as we do. We’ve been too long away from the States, I no longer know who the right people are. I’ll have to trust you to decide.”
“A box of candy?”
“Don’t be obtuse, Allison Madelyn. You never were when you were younger. The candy box contains any number of important things, including a videotaped interview with me. My last interview before I die,” he said dreamily. “In it I make clear just how thoroughly the government of San Pablo has violated human rights. All the proof we need is in that box. There’s no way Congress will keep appropriating the money for Morosa once they find out the truth.”
“You think it will all be that simple?”
Samuel looked up at his daughter’s coolly distant face. “Life is never that simple,” he declared. “This time I’ve made it simple. You’ll take that box, give it to the right sort of person—a congressman, perhaps, or a news reporter—and things will fall in place just as I planned.”
Maddy looked over at the box of Whitman’s raspberry creams sitting beside the wheel chair, then back at her father’s face. “I’ll do it,” she said with cold resignation. “When do I leave?”
“I knew you would. You take after me,” he said with pleasure. “I was afraid you’d turn into a cowardly dreamer like your brother, but I should have known one of you would have some spark of determination in you. You’ll have to be prepared to go at any time. Jake got the Mary Margarets out this morning. You and Soledad will be in the next shift. Sometime in the next couple of days, I imagine.”
Maddy slowly crossed the room, retrieving the candy box. It still looked factory-sealed, and if it was slightly heavier than it should be, it wasn’t such a great difference that anyone would notice. Besides, she had the feeling she wouldn’t be traveling through San Pablo customs when she left.
From across the room she looked back at the small, shrunken figure of the man who had been her father. “Did you ever get my letters?” she said suddenly, cursing herself for needing to know.
“Your letters?” His voice was querulous, momentarily confused.
“I wrote you after you left. For the first year I wrote you. I never got an answer. I don’t even know if you received them.” She could feel the pain creeping into her voice, and carefully she snuffed it out. “I wondered whether Mother might have intercepted them.”
Sam Lambert didn’t even flinch. “I remember your letters now. Adolescent maunderings. You were an atrocious speller, my dear. I hope you’ve improved in the ensuing years.”
“Did you answer them?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Of course not. You and your brother were part of a life I left behind me. I had more important things to concentrate on. The emotions of two ordinary children don’t mean much when weighed against the lives of thousands of San Pablans.”
“No, to you I suppose they don’t,” she said softly, clutching the candy box in icy fingers.
“Jake agreed with me.”
Maddy knew a sudden sinking in the pit of her stomach, just when she thought she was already hollow inside. “Jake?”
“You sent him a letter too.”
“Did he show it to you?”
“He refused. I could well guess how it read though. That pitiful passion you conceived for him was no secret, Allison Madelyn. I’m sure you were foolish enough to commit it to paper, equally misspelled.”
“He must have had an amusing time at my expense.”
“You haven’t learned much about human nature in the last fourteen years, Allison Madelyn, if you think that. You were always Jake Murphy’s tiny little island of innocence, his moment of sanity. The one part of his adult life that was untainted with guilt. At least, I presume he didn’t taint you?” There was only the trace of distant curiosity in his voice.
“No, Father. It was up to other people to shatter my innocence.”
He looked at her sharply. “I don’t know if I’m convinced that it’s gone. But I can’t be bothered to find out.” He closed his eyes, suddenly weary. “I think you’d better leave me now. If I feel up to it I may have you come back this afternoon. There’s something else I want to tell you.” He sighed, and a moment later the heavy breathing told her that he’d fallen asleep.
Maddy looked down at him for a long moment, clutching the candy box in nerveless fingers. “Tell me that you love me, old man,” she whispered. “Tell me that for one moment in your miserable, holy crusade you felt a trace of human love for your daughter.”
But Sam Lambert slept on, the lines of pain etched deep into his pale face.
Damn it, she was not going to cry, she told herself fiercely as she headed back toward the door. He wasn’t worth it. She’d always known what he was like. This shouldn’t have come as any surprise to her.
The sunlight in the upstairs hall blinded her for a moment when she stepped out of the shaded bedroom, and it took her a moment to reorient herself. Jake was leaning against the railing, smoking a thin brown cigarette, and his expression was hooded. And with a sudden, childish embarrassment Maddy remembered what Sam had said.
The eyes that missed nothing glanced down at the candy box in her hand, then away as if it were of no importance. Maddy wasn’t fooled for a minute. He took her arm, though today it was slightly less of a manacle and more of a polite gesture. She knew it could change back the moment she struggled.
“How was he?” He was leading her away from Enrique, back down the stairs, and the feel of his hand on her arm was stupidly soothing.
She moved down the stairs, her sandaled feet scuffing slightly. “The same.”
For a moment she thought his hand tightened on her arm, then she realized she must have imagined it. “I’m sorry,” he said, and for a brief second she was transported back fourteen years before, and Jake Murphy was everyt
hing she ever wanted. And then she remembered how explicitly she’d told him just that in the letter she’d sent him. Adolescent maunderings, Sam had called it. Her pitiful passion that everyone had known about. It must have given Jake a good laugh, that first year of exile, to know just how enamored she’d been.
The subject of letters was a dangerous one, but she couldn’t help herself. They were heading down his deserted hallway when she finally spoke.
“He never wrote to me.”
“I know,” he said gently.
“I used to think Mother destroyed his letters, rather than let me see them. I was sure he couldn’t just ignore my letters.” Her voice was weary and on the edge of tears. An edge she was determined not to cross.
“He didn’t ignore them, Maddy. He just thought it was better not to answer, not to encourage you. He knew there was no chance he was coming back, no way he could make a normal life for you.” The rough warmth of his voice soothed her until she realized that he wasn’t talking about Sam Lambert at all. He was talking about them.
He was perfectly right, of course. He’d chosen exile. There was no room for a girl nine years younger than he to go along. No room, and no rightness in it. So why did she still feel so bereft?
They were alone in the dimly lit hall, the heat of approaching midday beating through the thick plaster walls. “Sam said my letters were horribly misspelled.”
He’d released her hand when they reached his door, and he was standing there, looking down at her, the faint glimmer of a smile breaking through his distant face. “True,” he allowed. “I still didn’t have any trouble recognizing what you were saying.”
His voice was husky, almost caressing in the stillness. Maddy ran a nervous tongue over suddenly dry lips. “I’m a much better speller than I used to be,” she said.
