Whispers and Lies

by Diane Pershing

  Unless this was how he treated whatever current woman was in his life. The doubting voice was clear and intrusive. And he hadn’t said the words to her. Had, in fact, declared he would never say the words, not to anyone.

  Should she say them first? Would that help him to feel free enough to tell her the same thing?

  Or would Lou be like that poor woman on the phone yesterday? Would the words I love you place her in that same helpless, powerless position she’d felt so often where Will Jamison was concerned?

  As though all her dreaded fantasies were coming true, she heard knocking on Will’s front door, followed by a murmur of voices—Will’s and a woman’s, hers growing louder, angrier.

  Gripped by some insane impulse, Lou threw back the covers, grabbed Will’s terry cloth robe hanging from a hook on the door, threw it on and ambled out of the bedroom.

  Will stood at the doorway with a tall, slender, blond woman who was dressed casually in designer jeans and a silk sweater.

  “Will?” Lou said, yawning delicately and scratching her head. “What’s going on?”

  Both Will and the woman turned toward her. The tableau was extremely interesting, Lou thought—Will, surprise and some trepidation on his face; the woman also surprised and not at all pleased. If looks could kill, came to mind.

  When neither spoke, Lou tied the robe belt tightly around her waist and made her way toward them, the hem dragging around her toes as she did. She offered her hand to the stranger. “Hi,” she said with a smile, “I’m Dr. Louise McAndrews. Excuse my appearance.”

  Speechless, the woman ignored her hand, gave Lou an up-and-down perusal, then turned to Will with a deep frown. “Will? Who is this person?”

  “I believe she just introduced herself. Lou, this is Barbara Haverford, and—” he took the blonde by the elbow and opened the door for her “—she was just leaving.”

  “But I thought we’d—”

  “Whatever you thought, Barbara, you neglected to ask me if it was all right. As you can see, I have company.”

  The woman’s frown deepened and she glared at Will. After shooting a look with daggers at Lou, Barbara huffed and walked out the door.

  When he’d closed the door, Will shook his head. “Sorry. We went out a few times. Barbara’s something of a control freak and seems to think two or three dates means she owns me.”

  “But I thought you told me how much fun it can be to date,” Lou said dryly.

  “Did I?”

  She nodded. “When we had dinner last week back home.”

  “Yeah.” He scratched his head. “I guess I thought that. Then. At the moment, it’s not sounding so terrific.” He put his hands on her shoulders and said, with utmost sincerity, “I’m embarrassed. It looks like I have a harem and it’s not true, Lou. Trust me.”

  “Hey, ease up on yourself. You can’t help it.”

  “What can’t I help?”

  “You’re what they call a babe magnet, Will. You always have been and probably always will be. Any woman who cares about you has to know that.”

  “And do you?”

  “Do I what?” she asked.

  “Care about me?”

  “Well, of course I do,” she said lightly, even as her pulse skipped a turn. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

  “Whew,” he said, mock wiping his brow. Then with that off-center grin of his, he observed, “That was some entrance you made.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I couldn’t help it. I didn’t like how she was talking to you.”

  “Well, it did the trick. I think she’ll be leaving me alone from now on. Let’s get dressed. I want to take you out for a terrific brunch.”

  They sat in the sunshine at the Georgetown Waterfront and devoured Belgian waffles, sausages and champagne. Passing overhead occasionally were planes banking in low for the approach to National Airport. It should have felt loud and intrusive, but it didn’t.

  Lou drank in every movement Will made, hoping not too much adoration showed on her face. As he mopped up the last of the syrup with a biscuit, she asked, “Do you always eat like this?”

  “Yup.”

  “And yet you’re not an ounce overweight.”

  “Metabolism. Runs in the family. My dad ate half a chicken at a sitting.”

  “I guess if he was as busy and overworked as you say, he had to fuel that.”

  “Yeah, I guess he did.” He became thoughtful for a moment, letting his gaze wander out across the river.

  “What’s in your head today?”

  “Funny you should bring up my dad. Sitting here, eating, I’ve been thinking about him. How he used to cook us breakfast on Sundays and let Mom sleep in.”

  “So he actually had a day of rest.”

  “Not every Sunday, but often enough. While he was cooking, he would tell us these absolutely awful jokes. Nan and I used to bust a gut laughing. He thought we were appreciating his sterling sense of humor, but we couldn’t believe how bad they were.”

  “Sunday mornings. Pancakes and bad jokes. Sounds nice,” she said wistfully.

  Meeting her gaze, he nodded. “It was, actually. Now that I think of it.”

  “Which means your dad wasn’t absent all the time.”

  “Only most of the time.” Will sat back and raked a hand through his thick hair. “Ah, hell, who knows? Memory’s a funny thing. I think sometimes we tend to exaggerate the negative stuff that happened in our childhoods and forget about the good times.”

  “Or the reverse. I seem to remember what was good and forget the bad.”

  “You’re better off, trust me. The glass-is-half-full outlook.”

  Overcome with tenderness toward Will, she reached over and took his hand. “Will.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You’re not your dad. I know you work hard and put in long hours, but with me, you’ve been more than generous with your time. I haven’t picked up any sense that you’re constantly thinking about the article or dying to be hard at work at your computer instead of with me.”

  He frowned momentarily, then waved away the observation. “Yeah, well, this is unusual, trust me. The women I’ve dated? They all complained that I didn’t pay enough attention to them, that whatever I was working on was more important than they were, that part of me was always absent.”

  Again, she allowed her heart that little leap of hope. “Then I guess the fact that none of that has been true with me can be taken as a compliment.”

  “Works for me.”

  He could say it now, Will thought. Right now. I’m in love with you, you know, he could say casually, so that’s why it’s different this time.

  But, no. He caught himself. Not yet. Way too soon to make that kind of declaration, if ever. The words were too major, too potentially earthshaking and world-changing. He hadn’t planned on this happening, needed to think it through.

  Instead, he looked down at her hand and rubbed a thumb across the soft skin. “I don’t want you to go.”

  She seemed surprised by his change of topic. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “No, I mean tonight. Why do you have to go home?”

  “My clinic.”

  “You have someone subbing for you, right? A friend who loves the mountains and appreciates the pay, isn’t that what you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long has it been since you had a vacation?”

  “Let me think. Wow, this is actually the first time I’ve spent more than two days away from the clinic since beginning my practice.”

  “There, you see? And not only that, Harry will be calling me tomorrow with whatever he’s dug up. Don’t you want to be here, to find out what you can?”

  Lou’s insides were so filled with elation, she could hardly swallow the joy leaping upward into her throat.

  Will wanted her to stay.

  Will cared about her, more than cared about her, she was sure of it. For a brief moment, she allowed herself to indulge in a fantasy about a future life with
him. And, yes, maybe her dreams were foolish; still, there was hope, wasn’t there? Look how much he was opening up to her, letting her in. Eventually, wouldn’t he realize how good they were together, that he could bury old ghosts about being too much like his father and have a full, loving life?

  With her?

  She smiled at him. “Let me check with my friend. If she says yes, I’ll stay.”

  The next morning, having gotten the green light for three more days of vacation, Lou announced she was going clothes shopping. Will declined to join her and spent the time making phone calls and transcribing his notes. Lincoln—who had yet to surface—was still on his mind, and he was about to call an old-time politico when his cell phone rang.

  It was Harry. “Nothing yet about the birth records, but I have two operatives on it. I was able to get Rita Conlon’s Social Security number, then tracked down her work record.”

  “Let me have it.”

  The number, no surprise, was totally different from Janice McAndrews’s. And the very last W-2 issued to Rita Conlon, thirty-four years earlier, had been filed by a corporation named Floridala, Inc. Harry had dug further, peeled back the corporate layers, and had discovered that Floridala, Inc. was part of the holdings of Jackson DeWitt, then a corporate lawyer in private practice in Boca Raton.

  “Great work, Harry,” Will said. “Keep on the adoption angle, get back to me as soon as you can.”

  After he hung up the phone, Will sat back in his desk chair and thought, hard. He wasn’t really surprised by the W-2 information. There had to be a connection to the DeWitt family somehow. And the fact that the senator hadn’t recognized Rita Conlon’s name when he’d mentioned it didn’t mean anything, not really. There were several businesses under Floridala, Inc., with a hundred or so employees. DeWitt couldn’t have been expected to remember, or even know, all of them, especially from so long ago.

  Still, Will couldn’t help wondering just how much the senator did know about his brother’s various private and business dealings. There was only one way to find out. He picked up the phone and called DeWitt’s office, but was told the senator was engaged in urgent government business and was unavailable to talk to him. Which Will knew was or was not the truth. He left word, stressing that it was important.

  He’d just hung up when Lou burst through the door, and her appearance made him smile. Shopping bags dangling from both arms, a floppy pink hat on her head, she wore a huge grin on her face. He felt something in his chest lightening and filling up at the same time.

  Throwing her bags onto the floor, she ran over to him and hugged him.

  “Wow,” he said. “Shopping agrees with you.”

  She pulled away and faced him, glowing with happiness. “Not usually. It’s so different when you can fit into a normal size. I mean, there are so many choices then. And it’s not ‘Does it fit?’ or ‘Does it make me look fatter?’ No, they all fit, and they all look pretty okay, so I get to choose which one I actually like. I don’t have to settle. Do you know how many years I’ve had to settle?”

  “I guess I don’t.”

  “All my life. How’s that?”

  “Wow, all your life. Such a very long time.”

  She punched him lightly on the arm. “Don’t make fun. This is a major, historical moment. I did the girl thing, went shopping and came home with lots of stuff. I can’t tell you how…normal I feel, for once.”

  “Oh, honey,” he said, pulling her to him again and hugging her, “there’s nothing normal about you, which is why I like being with you so much.”

  “Well, then, yes, I’m not normal. Just today, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  As he released her, she glanced down at the yellow pad on his desk. It was filled with notes. “So did you talk to Harry? Anything new?”

  “Nothing yet on your background, sorry. But I got Rita’s work record, and her last job was with something or someone connected to the DeWitt organization.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Only that Rita Conlon was most likely a nurse/nanny in the employ of Jackson DeWitt thirty-three years ago.”

  “For his family?”

  “Not Jackson’s. He and his wife apparently had some trouble starting a family. They didn’t start adopting their own little rainbow coalition until five years after Rita disappeared. No, a more probable conclusion is that you were Lincoln’s baby with an as-yet-unknown mother, and the nanny’s employment was run through Jackson’s corporation, a common enough practice for families. For tax purposes, perhaps. Or, more likely, to keep an illegitimate birth a secret. Back then, Lincoln was married to a Florida socialite with whom he had no children. A businessman with a mistress and a bastard child would have been more of a disgrace than it would be today.”

  “True.”

  “Also back then, older brother Jackson DeWitt was just beginning his political career and wouldn’t have wanted even a hint of a scandal associated with him.”

  “But values are so different today,” Lou said. “So why, when you talked to the senator, did he say he didn’t know anything about Lincoln’s old liaisons or about Rita Conlon? I mean, why bother keeping it a secret now?”

  Will nodded. “Yeah, something’s off here, but we don’t have all the facts yet. Here’s what we do know. Rita was a nurse/nanny at the time of your birth for someone in the De-Witts’ circle, so it’s safe to assume she was your nanny. For reasons unknown, she took you, ran away and raised you as her own. I don’t know if it was because she wanted a child so badly she stole you, which is a strong possibility, or if there was some other reason. I don’t know if you were legally adopted or just spirited away.”

  All the joy from Lou’s shopping trip was now gone from her large, chocolate-colored eyes. “And then there’s the ultimate question.”

  “Which is?”

  “Who and where is my birth mother?”

  Chapter 12

  Lou picked up a stuffed mushroom appetizer and bit into it, then glanced up at the chandelier over their heads. “Wow, this is some classy place.”

  They were at the Capital Grille, right in the heart of where all the action was, on Pennsylvania Avenue about halfway between the Capitol and the White House. It looked and felt like the classic macho Washington restaurant she’d seen in countless magazine spreads, with dark red walls, dark leather booths, a huge mirrored bar and gigantic steaks. All around them were diners in business suits who, as Will had pointed out when they’d been shown to their table, were mostly politicians, lobbyists, lawyers and other seekers of power, plus a sprinkling of tourists.

  “Nothing but the best for my lady,” he said lightly, then gazed around and smiled. “More deals have been struck here than in the back rooms of Congress.”

  “Well, I’m impressed.”

  “Good. And have I told you lately how gorgeous you look?”

  A small, pleased smile curved her mouth. “Just a time or twenty.”

  “Then let me say it again. The new dress is perfect and so are you. You are one pretty lady.”

  This was rewarded by a large, happy sigh. “I won’t argue. I actually feel pretty. And I would break into a song that expresses just that, but I think I’ll spare your ears.”

  “Let’s drink to neither of us singing.”

  “An excellent new tradition for our list.”

  As they clinked glasses, someone said, “Will?”

  The voice, familiar but not immediately placeable, came from behind his left shoulder. Will turned in his seat and found himself staring up at a smiling Jackson DeWitt.

  The senator hadn’t gotten back to Will all day; now here he was, showing up at the restaurant at which he and Lou were dining. Coincidence? Possible—everyone on the Hill came here at least a couple of times a month. But Will thought not.

  That meant he and Lou had been followed, their whereabouts reported, just so this moment could occur.

  Antennae on high alert, Will stood, shook DeWitt’s hand and said, “Senator,
good to see you.”

  Smile firmly in place, the older man said, “I recommend the T-bone tonight.” He patted his stomach as though it bulged, which was not true. Jackson DeWitt was as fit as a man half his age. “Nothing like red meat to feel like you’ve actually dined out, huh?” He turned his attention to Lou. “Unless the lady only eats fish or chicken. I sincerely hope not.” This was followed by another of his great smiles—warm and welcoming and always seeming utterly sincere.

  “Senator Jackson DeWitt,” Will said, “I’d like you to meet Dr. Louise McAndrews.”

  The senator bowed, an old-fashioned, courtly gesture. “A pleasure, ma’am. Or should I say Doctor?”

  Lou’s answering smile was welcoming; Will could tell she was immediately taken by the senator’s winning personality. “Just Lou will be fine, sir. I’m a veterinarian. We’re a bit more casual about how we’re addressed.”

  “A vet, huh? A noble calling.”

  “I like to think so.”

  DeWitt turned back to Will. “Sit, sit. I didn’t want to interrupt your dinner.”

  Will did as he’d been told. “I don’t mind in the least. I’ve been showing Lou all around D.C. and telling her how important I am. By coming over to say hello, you’re backing up my claim. I thank you.”

  DeWitt chuckled. “You are important, you know that.” Again, he turned his gaze on Lou. “Will here’s one of those pesky reporters all of us love to hate, but the truth is, he’s always played straight with me, so he’s not on my do-not-take-calls-from-no-matter-what list.”

  Lou darted Will a mischievous look. “Yes, I’ve pretty much found Will to be a straight shooter, myself. Mostly.”

  The senator raised an eyebrow. “Mostly?”

  “Just a private joke,” Will said.

  DeWitt didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave, and it occurred to Will that he was waiting for an invitation to sit down with them. Curiouser and curiouser, as the saying went. “Would you care to join us, Senator?” he asked.