To Have Vs. To Hold

by MJ Rodgers

  Adam took Chad Bister’s hand but found that Bister kept his fingers splayed, preventing any firm contact. Bister quickly dropped Adam’s hand and turned to Whitney, his eyes lighting up with that particular brand of speculation that predatory males used when they met an attractive woman. He was apparently sizing her up as a prospective sexual partner.

  Adam was finding nothing about this man even remotely tolerable.

  “And who might you be, little darlin’?” Bister asked in a smooth Southern drawl that had obviously just materialized for her benefit.

  “This is Whitney West, an associate of mine,” Adam said. “Ms. West is the court-appointed guardian for any possible unnamed heirs, Mr. Bister. She’ll be conducting this interview. I am here as an observer.”

  “Well, little darlin’, this is a pleasure,” Bister oozed as he took her hand in his.

  Whitney shot Adam a quick, speculative look. Adam knew she was probably surprised by the “associate” title he had given her.

  He was a little surprised at it himself. He had deliberately used it to imply Whitney was one of his staff and, by inference, off bounds to Chad Bister.

  Not that Bister was taking the hint. His eyes were devouring her from top to bottom, as his smile spread from ear to ear.

  Adam was uncomfortable with Bister’s obvious interest in Whitney—but even more uncomfortable with the feelings of jealousy it was provoking.

  What had he once called it—a harmless flirtation? From the instant she had melted into his kiss and into his arms, it had become anything but harmless. It was hot.

  He had set out to prove to her that she couldn’t ignore the fact that he was a man. Problem was, now he couldn’t ignore the fact that she was a woman.

  And when he watched her with Danny D’Amico and Esther Rubin—saw the warm, genuine feelings overflowing from inside her—he found there were other emotions he couldn’t ignore.

  Whitney was making him feel things he hadn’t felt in years. And they were feelings he would just as soon have done without.

  Whitney finally reclaimed her hand from Bister’s grasp and gestured him into a chair on the other side of the conference table. He ignored the one she gestured to and pulled up the chair next to hers.

  “Mr. Bister—” Whitney began.

  “’Chad,’ please,” he interrupted. His smile was all charm. “No need for formality now, is there?”

  Adam could see Whitney’s returning smile was courteous but lacked her normal warmth. If she was affected by the man’s attention, it didn’t show. For a woman with such a communicative face, she could obviously play it cool when the occasion called for it. He was not disappointed that she’d identified this interview as such an occasion. She had her pad and pen out, ready to take notes.

  “Are you a resident of Seattle?” she asked.

  Chad sat back in his chair and threw out his chest. “Born and raised. I gave my address and phone number and all that stuff to the secretary outside. Feel free to call me anytime, Whitney.”

  “For someone from Seattle, it’s odd that you have a Southern accent.”

  Chad smiled. “Well, I did spend a few years working oil rigs down in Texas. I suppose I picked up a little accent.”

  Suppose nothing, Adam thought. This guy turned that phony accent off and on like an oily gusher.

  “Are you married?” Whitney asked.

  Another big smile. “Not currently.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “I own a boat-renting-and-leasing company on Lake Washington with a couple of buddies.”

  “What is your company’s name?”

  “Washington’s Water Wings. Our motto is We’ll Get You Nice And Wet.” The look in Chad’s hazel eyes and the pointed inflection in his voice underlined that motto with overt sexual suggestion.

  Whitney gave no sign that she had received his signal, however. She merely wrote down the name. Adam was rather intrigued to see she possessed this far more formal side than she had previously shown to him.

  Her tone remained cool as she continued to question Chad. “You obviously came to Justice Inc. today with some expectation, Mr. Bister. What is it?”

  “I expect to lay claim to my part of Patrice Feldon’s thirty million dollars.”

  Chad smiled again. But this time it was the kind of smile that said, See how honest I’m being? Adam always mistrusted such smiles. On Chad Bister, he surmised, it was just as phony as his accent.

  “How are you related to Patrice Feldon?” Whitney asked.

  “She was my sister.”

  “Why do you believe that?”

  Chad sat forward, resting his huge forearms on the conference table and his eyes on Whitney’s face. “Thirty-two years ago my mama gave birth to her while my daddy was overseas in Saudi Arabia, supervising the construction of some oil wells. Only problem was, my daddy only had one conjugal visit with mama while he was under that two-year contract with that oil company. That visit had been ten months before Patrice was born.”

  Chad leaned back, an amused smile claiming his lips. “Now, my daddy didn’t take too kindly to my little sister coming into the world on that very suspicious schedule. He came right on home to have a heart-to-heart with Mama about the situation.”

  “What happened?” Whitney asked, her voice cool.

  “Mama swore up and down that she had a ten-month pregnancy. It was kinda hard to swallow, seeing as how Patrice only weighed in at six pounds. Still, that didn’t stop Mama from trying.”

  “Your father didn’t believe her?”

  “Not hardly. My daddy ruled our home. He was an autocratic SOB under the best of circumstances. These were not the best of circumstances. I was only six then, but my ears still burn with the names he called her as he knocked her around.”

  Chad paused to chuckle. Adam felt chilled by the flippant way in which he related this incident of his father striking his mother, as if it were some big joke.

  “Anyhow, after Daddy vented his spleen,” Chad continued, “he grabbed the baby and tore out the door with her, saying he wasn’t going to raise any bastard. When he came back a few hours later, it was without Patrice. He told Mama she’d never see her again, and he’d see to it she never cheated on him again, too. Mama collapsed into tears. Daddy made good on both his threats. Mama never even knew what happened to Patrice. She was never the same after that. She caught pneumonia a few years later and died.”

  “Why didn’t she report your father’s physical abuse to the police?” Whitney asked. “They would have helped her find her baby. She could have divorced him.”

  “Darlin’, you’re looking at this situation from the position of a women’s libber of the ‘90s. This was more than thirty years ago. Women were a lot more subservient then. And when I say my father ruled our home, I mean he ruled. He married my mama back in her rural village in Eastern Europe when she was sixteen and then brought her to America. My mother was too afraid of him to ever challenge his authority.”

  “But if your father really believed your mother had cheated on him, why didn’t he divorce her?”

  “Naw. He knew losing her baby was a much worse punishment—as was making her stay married to him and endure a thousand insults a day. He hired sourpuss female guards to watch her around the clock so she didn’t get near another man. He went to prostitutes openly and rubbed her nose in it. No, the old man knew how to inflict the worst kind of punishment. Divorce would have been much too nice.”

  His mother’s infidelity and the cruelty of his father’s retaliation were bad enough to have to hear. But Adam found the way Chad Bister related this sad tale to be more than offensive.

  “What happened to Patrice?” Whitney asked, her tone getting colder with every question.

  “After Mama died, my daddy told me that he’d dumped Patrice on Denise Feldon, his divorced sister up in Spokane. He told his sister to raise the kid and change its last name to Feldon, because he wouldn’t have it carrying his name. He hated his
sister nearly as much as Patrice. He said they were a perfect match.”

  “What was the full name of his sister?” Whitney asked.

  “Denise Dee Bister Feldon.”

  Whitney wrote it down. “And you believe the Patrice Feldon, whose estate Mr. Justice represents, is your sister who was raised by your aunt?”

  “That’s why you’re talking to me, right? Because I knew her name was Patrice Dulcinea Feldon. And that she was born August 2, 1964.”

  “Patrice Dulcinea is an unusual name,” Whitney said carefully. “How did your mother select it?”

  “I don’t know why she chose the name Patrice. But just before Mama died, she told me she called my sister Dulcinea because she had just read Don Quixote, and she felt a kinship to the character Dulcinea.”

  “Losing your mother at such a young age must have been very hard on you,” Whitney said, a note of sympathy entering her voice.

  “What the hell. Every few months my daddy had a new broad living at our place to fuss over me. They all felt sorry for the kid without a mother. Thing was, the older I got, the younger they started getting. That old bastard really lived it up. Still, my mother got her revenge on him in the end.”

  “Her revenge?” Whitney said. “What do you mean?”

  “Daddy got real sick and needed a kidney transplant a few years ago. The hospital asked me to come in to see if I would be a suitable donor. Turned out our tissues didn’t match at all. You should have seen his face when they told him and he realized I wasn’t his kid, either. He died waiting on a donor match that never came through.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, darlin’. The old bastard called me every obscenity in the book when he found out I wasn’t his. Told me to get out, that he never wanted to see me again. Wrote me out of his will the next day. I’m glad I didn’t have a kidney to give him.”

  Adam watched Whitney’s face grow shuttered and remote. “You never knew who your biological father was?” she asked after a moment.

  “I pretty much figured it out after that tissue-donor thing. Daddy was dark. My mama was blond, fair. So am I. So was Patrice. And so was this big, friendly mailman I remember sitting in the kitchen having coffee with my mama and making her laugh. What a cliché, huh? My sister and I look like the mailman.”

  Chad’s smile was big and engaging.

  “How well did you know your aunt, Denise Feldon?” Whitney asked, her voice even tighter.

  “I didn’t. Only time I ever even heard she existed was when the old man mentioned that was where he’d dumped Patrice.”

  “You never tried to see your aunt or your sister?”

  “Once, when I was about twenty-five and found myself up in the Spokane area with some friends. I looked in the telephone directory. No Denise Feldon was listed. I called the Feldons that were in the directory, but no one knew a Denise or a Patrice. Could be they had moved by then.”

  “Mr. Bister—”

  “’Chad,’ darlin’. Please. We’ve already established that my last name is a mere formality anyway, right?”

  “Right,” Whitney said, her voice barely civil now. “Do you have documents of any kind concerning your sister’s birth?”

  “No, ‘fraid not. I went through all my daddy’s things after he kicked. I’m sure he destroyed her birth certificate. I sent a request to King County. They said they had no record. Of course, Daddy had a large chunk of change in the bank around the time Patrice was born. He probably bribed some babe down in records to pull Patrice’s birth certificate and destroy it. He was like that.”

  “I hope you understand that it will be very difficult to substantiate your claim to the Patrice Feldon estate without some verifiable records, proving you are her brother.”

  Chad leaned closer to Whitney and flashed her his best ladies’-man smile. “Yeah, well, I kinda thought maybe you could help me find those records, darlin’. Believe me, I’ll make it worth your while when I get my hands on Patrice’s dough.”

  Whitney moved back. “To be frank, Mr. Bister, I’m not even sure that these records you speak of exist.”

  Chad leaned against the back in his chair, confident and easy. “Oh, they exist. I’m her brother. I can even describe her for you, if you need some convincing.”

  “I thought you said you only saw her as a baby? How could you possibly describe her?”

  “She was a very distinctive baby. She was born with blond curls and violet eyes and she had a dark red birthmark on her upper thigh, right here. It looked just like a question mark, complete with the dot underneath it.”

  Adam sat forward. He had forgotten about that birthmark, until Chad Bister mentioned it. And where Chad was pointing was its exact location.

  Could it be that Chad wasn’t lying after all?

  Chapter Eight

  “I don’t know what to think, Adam,” Whitney said as soon as Chad Bister had left. “He knows Patrice’s full name, her date of birth, her coloring. And this awful story he tells about the relationship between his father and mother has a tragic ring of truth to it.”

  “So you believe him?”

  She sighed, wishing she could deny it. “If he made up this story about a lost sister, he certainly didn’t make himself look any too good in it. The only time he even admits showing any interest in his sister is when he just happened to be in Spokane with some friends and looked up the Feldon name in the telephone book.”

  “And now that he thinks she’s left some money he can get his hands on,” Adam added. “Still, he knew about the red birthmark on her thigh.”

  Whitney bit her lip. “I hate to say it, but it looks like I’ll need to hire an investigator in order to have Chad Bister’s story checked out.”

  Adam’s eyes drew to her face. “Why should you ‘hate’ to say it, Whitney? Emotionalism has no place here. The only way to approach this situation is to clearly and calmly review the facts of his claim to determine if it is legitimate.”

  Whitney came forward in her seat. “Come on, Adam. Even when the claim is presented by a lowlife like Chad Bister?”

  Adam was looking at her intently, his expression as smooth and controlled as his voice. “I believe Mr. Bister was doing his best to charm you. Am I to understand he failed?”

  Whitney crossed her arms over her chest. “You think I’m charmed by a man who obviously tries to make every woman he meets?”

  “Perhaps if he offered you a romantic gift—”

  “I am not a woman who can be persuaded by gifts. Or by charm. I’m insulted that you should think so.”

  “Are you?”

  “Bister has as much depth of feeling as an oil slick. You heard the way he talked about his parents’ relationship with such a lack of human warmth. He was totally untouched by the pain and suffering in that nightmare marriage. And while we’re on the subject of Chad Bister, I am not your associate, Adam Justice. What did you think you were doing introducing me that way? Protecting me from the Big Bad Wolf?”

  “Something like that could have crossed my mind.”

  Whitney leaned across the conference table toward him. “Well, get your mind uncrossed. I told you before I can fight my own battles. I am not Little Red Riding Hood, and I’ve had my fill of overprotective, overbearing older brothers. It was downright irritating when I was sixteen. It’s damn intolerable at thirty-two.”

  Adam smiled. “Rest assured, Whitney, I do not feel at all brotherly toward you.”

  His smile was dazzling, his eyes a warm liquid blue as they suddenly-locked with hers.

  Whitney’s anger was swept away along with every ounce of breath from her lungs. She was vaguely aware of a pounding in her ears and knew it was her heart. Here she had just proclaimed that she couldn’t be charmed, and Adam was charming her with just a look.

  In the next moment he was beside her, his arms wrapped around her, kissing her with a gentle fervor that fired her blood. God, he smelled and tasted so good. Her whole body seemed to sigh in pleasure as she m
elted into the strength of his arms and heat of his lips.

  His hands caressed her back in long, lingering sweeps.

  Ever so slowly he began to feather kisses across her cheek and beneath her ear until finally he had turned her back to him, swept aside her hair and was kissing the sensitive skin of her neck. Exciting tendrils of warmth and desire dove down her spine.

  He seemed to know exactly where and how to touch her. She closed her eyes and let herself go limp within the muscular arm that wrapped around her waist, anchoring her closely against his chest. He held her tightly to him, possessively. He whispered in her ear, the heat of his breath sending new waves of excitement down her spine.

  “I thought I’d be able to keep this cool and light, Whitney. But now that I’ve kissed you and touched you, I know better. I want you. But I don’t want complications. If you can accept this physical pleasure as just that and nothing more, then we can let this happen. If it is not enough, I will stop now.”

  She twisted around so she could see his face. He released his hold on her immediately and held her gaze instead. His eyes were so electric blue she felt their heat burning deep inside her.

  “You can just turn it off?” she asked.

  “I can control myself, Whitney. I suspect the strength of our physical attraction is as surprising to you as it is to me. I do not intend the heat of a moment to lead either of us into something we might regret later.”

  She stared at him and tried to assess what she was feeling. But the problem was that she was feeling so much—and so much of it was new—that it was difficult to assess it all. Only one thing was clear. She was disappointed he wanted her only physically. She understood they hardly knew each other, and she had no right to expect his feelings for her to be more than physical. But she did expect them to be more than physical-because she expected more from him. He wasn’t a Chad Bister. He shouldn’t be acting like one.