by Sandra Brown
“I appreciate the offer, Mom, but she’s my daughter.”
“And this could mean the election,” Eddy argued, raising his voice.
Jack stood and hiked up the waistband of his pants, as though he was about to engage in a fistfight. “I agree with Eddy one hundred percent.”
“One speech isn’t going to cost the election. Dad?”
“I think your mother had the most workable solution. You know I don’t put much stock in shrinks, so I wouldn’t mind a bit going to hear what this one has to say about my granddaughter.”
“Carole?”
She had let the dispute revolve around her without contributing anything to it, which was uncharacteristic. As long as Tate had known her, she had never failed to express her opinion.
“They’re both terribly important, Tate,” she said. “It has to be your decision.”
Eddy swore beneath his breath and shot her a glance of supreme annoyance. He would rather her rant and rave and fight to get her way. Tate felt the same. It had been much easier to say no to Carole when she was being obstreperous and inflexible. Lately, she used her dark, eloquent eyes to express herself more than she used a strident voice.
Whatever his choice, it would be met with disapproval. The deciding factor was Mandy herself. He looked down into her solemn little face. Even though she couldn’t have understood what the controversy was about, she seemed to be apologizing to him for causing such a fuss.
“Call them back, Eddy, and graciously decline.” Carole’s posture relaxed, as though she’d been holding herself in breathless anticipation of his answer. “Tell them Mrs. Rutledge and I have a previous engagement.”
“But—”
Tate held up his hand to ward off a barrage of protests. He gave his friend a hard, decisive stare. “My first obligation is to my family. I was guaranteed your understanding, remember?”
Eddy gave him a hard, exasperated stare, then stormed out. Tate couldn’t blame him for being pissed. He didn’t have a child. He was responsible to no one but himself. How could he possibly understand divided loyalties?
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Tate.” Nelson stood and reached for Zee’s hand. “Let’s go try to calm down our frustrated campaign manager.” They left together.
Jack was just as agitated as Eddy. He glared at Carole. “Satisfied?”
“Enough, Jack,” Tate said testily.
His brother aimed an accusing finger at her. “She’s manipulating you with this good-mother routine.”
“What goes on between Carole and me is none of your damned business.”
“Ordinarily, no. But since you’re running for public office, your private life is everybody’s business. Whatever affects the campaign is my business. I’ve devoted years to getting you elected.”
“And I appreciate everything you’ve done. But today I’m taking an hour off for my daughter’s sake. I don’t think that’s asking too much, and even if it is, don’t give me an argument about it.”
After casting another hostile glance at Carole, Jack left the suite, slamming the door behind him.
She came to her feet. “Is that what you think, Tate? That this is just a good-mother routine?”
The hell of it was that he didn’t know what to think. Since his first sexual conquest at age fifteen, Tate had exercised control over all his relationship with women. Women liked him. He liked them in return. He also respected them. Unlike most men to whom romantic encounters came easily, his friends among the female sex numbered as many as his lovers, although many in the first category secretly lamented that they’d never joined the ranks of the second.
His most serious involvement had been with a San Antonio divorcée. She sold commercial real estate, very successfully. Tate had lauded her success, but didn’t love her enough to compete with it for her time and attention. She had also made it clear from the beginning that she didn’t want children. After a two-year courtship, they had parted as friends.
Jack did most of the hiring and firing at their law firm, but when Carole Navarro had applied, he had solicited Tate’s opinion. No living man could look at Carole impassively. Her large, dark eyes captivated his attention, her figure his imagination, her smile his heart. He had given her his stamp of approval and Jack had put her on the payroll as a legal assistant.
Soon, Tate had violated his own business ethics and invited her out to dinner to celebrate a case the jury had found in favor of their client. She had been charming and flirtatious, but the evening had ended at the door of her apartment with a friendly good-night handshake.
For weeks, she had kept their dates friendly. One night, when Tate had withstood the buddy system as long as he could, he had taken her in his arms and kissed her. She had returned his kiss with gratifying passion. They made a natural progression to bed, and the sex had been deeply satisfying for both.
Within three months the law firm had lost an employee, but Tate had gained a wife.
Her pregnancy came as a shock. He had quickly and agreeably adapted to the idea of having a child sooner than they had planned; Carole had not. She complained of feeling shackled by an unwelcome responsibility. Her engaging smile and infectious laughter became memories.
Her sexual performance had turned so obligatory that Tate didn’t miss it when it was suspended altogether. They had had blistering arguments. Nothing he did pleased or interested her. Eventually, he gave up trying to and devoted his time and energy to the election, which was still years away.
As soon as Mandy was born, Carole dedicated herself to getting her figure back. She exercised with fiendish diligence. He wondered why. Then the reason behind the zeal became apparent. He knew almost to the day when she took her first lover. She made no secret of it, nor of any of the infidelities that followed. His defense was indifference, which, by that time, was genuine. In retrospect, he wished he had gone ahead and divorced her then. A clean break might have been better for everybody.
For months they occupied the same house, but lived separate lives. Then, one night, she had visited him in his room, looking her sexiest. He never knew what had prompted her to come to him that night—probably boredom, maybe spite, maybe the challenge of seducing him. Whatever her reason, sexual abstinence and imprudent drinking with his brother during a poker game had caused him to take advantage of her offer.
During the blackest hours of their estrangement, he had considered resuming his affair with the realtor or cultivating another relationship just for the physical release it would afford him. Ultimately, he had denied that luxury to himself. A sexual dalliance was a pitfall to any married man. To a political candidate, it was an inescapable abyss. Falling into it and getting caught was career suicide.
Whether he got caught or not, vows meant something to him, though they obviously didn’t mean anything to his wife. Like a dolt, he had remained faithful to Carole and to the words he had recited to her during their wedding ceremony.
Weeks after that night, she had belligerently announced that she was pregnant again. Although Tate had seriously doubted that the child was his, he had had no choice but to take her word for it.
“I didn’t want to be stuck with another kid,” she had yelled.
That’s when he knew he didn’t love her anymore, hadn’t for a long time, and never could again. He had reached that momentous conclusion one week to the day before she boarded Flight 398 to Dallas.
Now he shook his head to bring himself out of his unpleasant reverie. He was going to ignore her question about the good-mother routine, just as he had ignored her claim that there had never been a child. He was afraid of the old bait-and-switch con. He wasn’t going to commit himself one way or the other until he knew that Carole’s recent transformations were permanent.
“Why don’t you order up lunch so we won’t have to go out before our meeting with Dr. Webster,” he suggested, changing the subject.
She seemed just as willing to let the matter drop. “What would you like?”
&nbs
p; “Anything. A cold roast beef sandwich would be fine.”
As she sat down on the bed to use the phone on the nightstand, she mechanically crossed her legs. Tate’s stomach muscles clenched at the sound of her stockings scratching together.
If he still distrusted her, why did he want to have sex with her so badly?
She deserved an A for effort. He would grant her that. Since coming home, and even before, she had done her best to reconcile with him. She rarely lost her temper anymore. She made a concerted effort to get along with his family, and had taken an unprecedented and inordinate amount of interest in their comings and goings, their habits, their activities. She was the antithesis of the impatient, ill-tempered parent she’d been before.
“That’s right, a peanut butter sandwich,” she was saying into the receiver. “With grape jelly. I know it’s not on the room service menu, but that’s what she likes to eat for lunch.” Mandy’s unwavering love affair with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches was a joke between them. Over her shoulder, Carole flashed him a smile.
God, he wanted to taste that smile.
Recently, he had. Her mouth hadn’t tasted of deceit and lies and unfaithfulness. The kisses she returned were sweet and delicious and… different. Analyzing them—and he had done that a lot lately—he realized that kissing her had been like kissing a woman for the first time.
What should have been familiar had been unique. Their few kisses had jolted him and left indelible impressions. He had exercised monastic self-discipline to stop with a few, when what he had wanted to do was explore her mouth at leisure until he found an explanation for this phenomenon.
Or maybe it wasn’t so phenomenal. She looked different with her hair short. Maybe the plastic surgery had altered her face just enough to make her seem like an entirely different woman.
It was a good argument, but he wasn’t convinced.
“They’ll be right up,” she told him. “Mandy, pick up the crayons and put them back in the box, please. It’s time for lunch.”
She stooped to help her. As she bent over, the narrow skirt of her suit was pulled tight across her derriere. Desire ripped through him. Blood rushed to his loins. That was understandable, he reasoned quickly. He hadn’t been with a woman in so damn long.
But he didn’t really believe that, either.
He didn’t want just any woman. If that were the case, he could solve his problem with a single phone call.
No, he wanted this woman, this Carole, this wife he was only now becoming acquainted with. Sometimes, when he gazed into her eyes, it was as though he’d never known her before and the antagonism between them had happened to someone else. Impossible as it was to believe, he liked this Carole. Even more impossible to believe, he had fallen a little in love with her.
But he would deny it with his dying breath.
* * *
“I’m glad you came with us,” Avery said, giving Tate a tentative smile. A receptionist had seated them in Dr. Webster’s office to await their private consultation.
“It was the only decision I could make.”
The psychologist had been with Mandy for almost an hour. Waiting for his prognosis was taking its toll on them. The idle conversation was an attempt to relieve their nervous tension.
“Will Eddy stay mad at me for the rest of the trip?”
“I spoke with him before we left the hotel. He wished us luck with Mandy. I guess Mom and Dad calmed him down. Anyway, he never really gets mad.”
“That’s odd, isn’t it?”
Tate consulted his wristwatch. “How long does his session with her last, for crissake?” He looked at the door behind him as though willing it to open. “What did you say?”
“About Eddy never getting mad.”
“Oh, right.” He shrugged. “It’s just his temperament. He rarely loses control.”
“Iceman,” she murmured.
“Hmm?”
“Nothing.”
She fiddled with the strap of her handbag, weighing the advisability of pursuing the subject. Irish had advised her to learn as much as she could about these people. Her career had been built on her ability to pose pertinent questions, but to phrase them subtly. She had been adroit at squeezing information out of people who were sometimes reluctant to impart their secrets. She decided to test her talent and see if it was still intact.
“What about women?”
Tate tossed aside the magazine he had just picked up. “What women?”
“Eddy’s women.”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t discuss them with me.”
“He doesn’t discuss his sex life with his best friend? I thought all men swapped success stories.”
“Boys might. Men don’t need to. I’m not a voyeur and Eddy’s not an exhibitionist.”
“Is he heterosexual?”
Tate hit her with an icy blast of his eyes. “Why? Did he turn you down?”
“Damn you!”
The door swung open. The two of them guiltily sprang apart. The receptionist said, “The doctor is finishing up with Mandy. He’ll be in shortly.”
“Thank you.”
After she withdrew, Avery leaned forward from her chair again. “I’m only asking about Eddy because your niece is throwing herself at him, and I’m afraid she’ll get hurt.”
“My niece? Fancy?” He laughed with incredulity. “She’s after Eddy?”
“She told me so the other night, when she came home with a battered face.” His smile disappeared. “That’s right, Tate. She picked up a cowboy in a bar. They got high. When he couldn’t maintain an erection, he blamed it on Fancy and beat her up.”
He expelled a long breath. “Jesus.”
“Didn’t you notice her black eye and swollen lip?” He shook his head. “Well, don’t feel too badly. Neither did her own parents,” she said bitterly. “Fancy’s like a piece of furniture. She’s there, but no one really sees her… unless she’s behaving outrageously. Anyway, she has her sights fixed on Eddy now. How do you think he’ll reciprocate?”
“Fancy’s just a kid.”
Avery gave him an arch look. “You might be her uncle, but you’re not blind.”
He rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. “Eddy had his share of coeds while we were at UT. He visited the whorehouses in Nam. I know he’s straight.”
“Is he currently seeing anyone?”
“He goes out with some of the women who work at headquarters, but it’s usually a platonic, group thing. I haven’t heard any scuttlebutt that he’s sleeping with one of them. Several would probably be willing if he asked.
“But Fancy?” Tate shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t think Eddy would touch her. He wouldn’t get involved with a woman almost twenty years his junior, particularly Fancy. He’s too bright.”
“I hope you’re right, Tate.” After a thoughtful pause, she glanced up at him and added, “And not because I’m interested in him myself.”
He didn’t have time to comment before the doctor opened the door and entered the office.
Twenty-Five
“Don’t feel too bad, Mrs. Rutledge. Your guilt over past mistakes won’t help Mandy now.”
“How am I supposed to feel, Dr. Webster? You’ve all but said that I’m responsible for Mandy’s retarded social development.”
“You made some mistakes. All parents do. But you and Mr. Rutledge have already taken the first step toward reversing that trend. You’re spending more time with Mandy, which is excellent. You’re praising even her smallest achievements and minimizing her failures. She needs that kind of positive reinforcement from you.”
Tate was frowning. “That doesn’t sound like much.”
“On the contrary, it’s a lot. You’d be amazed how important parental approval is to a child.”
“What else should we do?”
“Ask for her opinion often. ‘Mandy, do you want vanilla or chocolate?’ Force her to make choices and then commend her decisions. She should be made to vocalize her thoug
hts. My impression is that up till now she’s been discouraged to.”
He regarded them from beneath rust-colored eyebrows that would have better befitted a cattle rustler with a six-shooter strapped to his hip than a child psychologist with a benign demeanor.
“Your little girl has a very low opinion of herself.” Avery pressed her fist to her lips and rolled them inward. “Some children manifest low self-esteem with bad behavior, drawing attention to themselves in that way. Mandy has retreated into herself. She considers herself transparent—of little or no significance.”
Tate’s head dropped between his shoulders. Bleakly, he glanced at Avery. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She was apologizing for Carole, who didn’t deserve his forgiveness.
“It’s not all your fault. I was there, too. I let lots of things slide when I should have intervened.”
“Unfortunately,” Dr. Webster said, directing their attention back to him, “the airplane crash only heightened Mandy’s anxiety. How did she behave on the flight here the other day?”
“She raised quite a ruckus when we tried to buckle her into her seat,” Tate said.
“I was having a difficult time buckling my own seat belt,” Avery confessed honestly. “If Tate hadn’t talked me through it, I doubt I could have stood the takeoff.”
“I understand, Mrs. Rutledge,” he said sympathetically. “How was Mandy once you took off?”
They glanced at each other, then Avery answered. “Come to think of it, she was fine.”
“That’s what I figured. See, she remembers you fastening her into her seat, Mrs. Rutledge, but doesn’t remember anything beyond the crash. She doesn’t remember you rescuing her.”
Avery laid a hand against her chest. “You’re saying she blames me for putting her through the crash?”
“To an extent, I’m afraid so.”
Shuddering, she covered her mouth with her hand. “My God.”
“It will be a real breakthrough when she allows her mind to live through that explosion again. Then she’ll remember you rescuing her.”
