by Diana Palmer
It was almost noon before she woke up Sunday. Frequently when she was at home in Chicago, she took Blake to church. But she hadn't attended services since she came to Billings. There was something vaguely disturbing about going into a church when she was taking vengeance into her own hands.
She had made a pot of coffee and was just tying a ribbon to hold back her disheveled blond hair when she heard a knock at the back door. Smoothing down her pink track suit with nervous hands, she stood still, wondering if she could refuse to answer it. But someone knocked again, and again, and she knew who it was before she opened it.
"It's Sunday," Cy said with a cruel twist of his lips. "You don't go to church, I gather?" He'd obviously just been, because he was wearing a very handsome dark charcoal vested suit with his dress Stetson and boots.
"Isn't your mother with you?" she asked.
"I sent her home with one of her church friends for lunch," he said. His dark eyes slid over her with pure malice. "Aren't you going to offer me some coffee?"
"Coffee's all that's available," she said, making her voice firm even though her knees felt like rubber. She stood aside. "Come on in."
His eyes went around the neat kitchen quietly while she poured his coffee and placed it on the table with hers.
"Looking for something?" she asked politely.
He took off his Stetson and sprawled on the chair, elegant even at ease as he studied her across the table. "Not really. You're a good housekeeper. You always were. Mary taught you well, didn't she?"
"She taught me how to cook, too."
He lifted his coffee cup with a long sigh. There were new lines in his face, new silver threads in his dark hair.
"You look worn," she said without thinking.
He laughed bitterly. "I don't sleep." His dark eyes pinned hers. "All I think about is you in my bed."
Her jaw set. "Lust," she said through her teeth. "That's all it is, and you know it."
A rough sigh passed his lips as he fumbled a cigarette out of a pack and lit it, waiting for her to fetch him an ashtray. He pocketed his lighter without looking at it, but Meredith recognized it with a start. It was one she'd given him while they were together six years agoa cheap one, because she hadn't much money then. Amazing that he still used it, even if he seemed totally unaware of its significance.
"You still blush," he said quietly, studying the faint ruddy color on her cheekbones. "You were so shy, in the old days. All wide-eyed innocence and generosity."
"Ignorant and overstimulated," she corrected with a cool smile. "Habits you were kind enough to cure."
"Sarcasm doesn't suit you," he said.
"You'd be amazed how lethal a weapon it can be in the right quarters," she returned, and something in the set of her head, in the flash of her eyes, caught his attention and stilled him.
"Sometimes you become an anachronism," he said absently with narrowed eyes. "I get the impression that I'm not seeing you at all."
She laughed. "Do you really? Perhaps I've just changed."
"Changed, surely. In ways I can't quite comprehend." He blew out a cloud of smoke and stared at her. "I never told you about my father," he said out of the blue. "He was only two years older than my mother, a shrewd businessman with an eye to the main chance, as they say. There was nothing he wouldn't do to make money. He'd come up without it, and he was determined to die a rich man." Cy crossed his long, powerful legs, watching Meredith's face. "You don't understand why I'm telling you this. You will. My father thought nothing of sleeping with an executive's wife to have some leverage with her husband. He'd use any methods, regardless of how unscrupulous, to get ahead. What his grasping philandering did to my mother didn't bother him."
"She stayed with him," she pointed out.
"In her day, women of wealth didn't work. Divorce was a stigma. I don't think she loved him. Her family was poor, and his prospects caused them to push her at him when they saw he was interested. Apparently she was as susceptible to his line as other women, because I was born a month premature."
That was shocking. Somehow Meredith couldn't imagine the very straitlaced Myrna Harden doing anything as unsuitable as getting pregnant out of wedlock.
"My father had one affair after another all his life, and he died in one of his lovers' arms," he said bitterly. "Everyone knew it. The scandal very nearly destroyed my mother's life. What there was left of it, after the damage he did to her pride during almost twenty years."
Meredith stared at him without seeing him. She wondered how it would feel to have a husband who was totally without morals, and she knew suddenly how it would affect her. She'd have become like Myrna, all ice on the outside, totally removed from emotion.
"That's why you've never married," Meredith said suddenly, looking straight at Cy.
He shrugged. "Not really. I've never found anyone I wanted to spend my life with," he said with deadly intent, watching her. "But I have learned the hard way that fidelity doesn't exist," he said with a mocking smile. "I don't think I could settle down, even if I didn't find the very thought of commitment repulsive."
She lowered her eyes to his bread chest. "I see."
"I never talked to you about this, in the old days," he said. "You were such a child, little one. Too young to comprehend how cruel life can be. You wanted happily ever after."
"While you only wanted sex without any strings," she replied with weary cynicism. "How uncooperative of me. That was why you proposed, of course," she said, startling him. "Because you knew I'd stop seeing you if I thought all you wanted was a quick affair."
He started to speak and couldn't. He turned his attention to his cigarette. "You were special. More special than you knew."
"But you had nothing to give me." She finished her coffee and fingered the cup absently. "I've blamed you all these years for the way you treated me, for making me nothing but a sex object. I don't suppose in all that time I ever really tried seeing things from your point of view." That was true. Myrna had opened her eyes to the truth. She lifted her eyes to his. "I was just a backwoods country girl with no breeding, no manners, and, it must have seemed to you, no morals. I wouldn't have fit into your world in a million years."
"Any more than you would now," he said bluntly. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound superior. But you have no idea of my lifestyle, of how I live on a daily basis. You were warm and sweet and I wanted you. I still want you. That won't ever stop. But I'm no more oriented toward marriage than I was six years ago. I don't want ties or permanence. I want my freedom more than I want anything else. Even," he added quietly, "more than I want you."
"I understand."
"No arguments?"
She shrugged. "I have nothing to give you, either, Cy," she said in a soft, sad tone. "Nothing except what we had the other day, and that's self-defeating and futile. I'm too old for that kind of live-for-today relationship."
"Yes." His mind tightened, like his body, at the exquisite memory of it.
They didn't speak for several minutes. Meredith felt drained of all emotion. He'd stolen her thunder. She didn't know what to say. He'd just told her that he felt nothing for her but a lust that he was putting in the past, where it belonged, and that he could never settle down. She'd known, but hope died hard. Her secret dreams of a family that included Cy and Blake, were dying in her eyes.
Cy saw the light go out of her and felt guilty. He was fighting a rearguard action against her, just as he had six years ago. She could take him over, own him, with less effort than she realized. But he had to ward it off, to prevent it, because Meredith could become his life. He'd lost her once and barely survived. He knew he could never let her go again. It was so much better not to start things he couldn't finish. She could never fit into his world.
"I wanted you to understand," he said suddenly, lifting his eyes. "I shouldn't have forced you back into my bed that afternoon we went out to the battlefield. I had no right."
That was new, to have him feel guilt at seducing her. He'd n
ever seemed to be aware before that it was seduction.
"It wasn't all your fault," she said honestly, her eyes avoiding his. "I wanted you very much."
"An aberration we both share," he said. "But one with no future. I should never have touched you."
"It takes two." She leaned back and looked at him, feeling vaguely guilty herself about what she was planning for him. Her vengeance, so sweet only a month ago, was turning more sour by the minute. "Give your mother a message for me," she said.
He scowled. "What?"
"Tell her she doesn't have anything to worry about," she replied. "Don't ask," she added when he started to speak. "It's something personal. Just tell her. She'll understand." She got to her feet, looking elegant and somehow fragile. "Goodbye, Cy."
He stood up, too, towering over her. He was hurting in ways he remembered so well from the past. His mouth twisted. "Paradise lost," he said huskily, letting his eyes slide over her body with aching need. "I'll regret you all my life. But to invite that madness a second time is insanity."
"Yes," She went with him to the door and held it open. She didn't look up. "Iwon't be in town much longer."
"Where will you go?" he asked dully.
"I haven't decided."
"To the man waiting in Chicago?" he taunted, his temper kindling at the thought of some other man giving her what he couldn'tmarriage, children.
The sarcasm touched her on the raw. "Why not?" she asked. "There are men in the world who want permanence."
"Fools," he said.
"No. Just ordinary men, who are tired of living alone."
"I don't have to be alone, honey," he said with a cool smile. "All I have to do is snap my fingers."
"I know." She searched his hard face. "As long as the money lasts, that's right. But who would sit with you when you were sick, if there was no money? Who would read to you if you went blind, hold your hand if you were dying?"
His eyes closed briefly, and he could hardly stand the pain. Meredith would have done all those things, because she'd loved him. But he couldn't, he wasn't capable of returning that kind of feeling. He didn't dare
"I have to go," he said harshly. He didn't look back. He walked straight to his car and got in, starting it viciously. Meredith watched him drive away before she closed the door. She should be grateful to him, she supposed, for making the break for her. Now she could get on with her plans, with her life, without dreaming any more impossible dreams. Now she saw exactly how impossible they'd been.
She needed desperately to get away for a day or two, and there were business meetings with clients that she couldn't put off. She phoned Mrs. Dade at home and begged for Monday off to see about the sale of Great-Aunt Mary's house. It wasn't the truth, but it was enough to get her out of work.
Minutes later she phoned for the Tennison jet to be sent out to collect her. She put on the wig and the expensive coat two hours later, called a taxi, and was waiting at the airport when the chartered jet came in for a landing. That afternoon she was safely home, with Blake wrapped tight in her arms. She had time, at least a little time, to come to grips with Cy's final rejection. She was going to use it to her best advantage.
CHAPTER TEN
» ^ «
Blake sat in Meredith's lap that night while she watched the money segment on the twenty-four-hour news channel, her eyes keen on the stock market report and the company stock quotes. Her son. She felt warm and feminine just looking down at him. Cy had said that he didn't want children. That was a pity. He'd never know the joy of seeing generations of his family in Blake's face or of being loved by the child. Meredith adored him, now more than ever. He was all she'd ever have of Cy.
"Mommy, why do you watch that boring stuff?" he asked.
She started at the interruption to her thoughts and laughed, "My darling, that boring stuff helps me keep the edge on the competition, like my Wall Street Journal and the Forbes magazine and Fortune magazine I subscribe to."
"Are you a businessman, Mommy?" he persisted.
"I'm a businesswoman," she corrected. "You know that."
"I guess so. I got a hundred in spelling," he volunteered. "But I throwed a block at Betty, and I had to go to the office and see Mr. Dodd."
She whistled. "Did he call here?"
"He called Mr. Smith," Blake replied. His eyes twinkled. "Mr. Smith said two bad words and told him that if Betty hit me again, I should throw another block at her. He told Mr. Dodd that if he fussed at me again for fighting back, he'd go and feed Mr. Dodd a knuckle sandwich. Mr. Dodd was very nervous the next day."
Meredith had to smother a laugh. Mr. Smith had that effect on most normal people. "You shouldn't hit girls, all the same."
"Why not, if they hit me first?"
The phone rang, sparing her an answer, and Smith stuck his head in the door. "It's McGee. He wants to know if you'll be in the office tomorrow."
"Tell him yes, and ask him Never mind, I'll ask him myself," she murmured, putting Blake gently aside. She ruffled his hair. "Back in a minute, sport."
"Sure," he said on a long sigh, knowing she wouldn't.
She had McGee, her first vice president, set up appointments with her officers and several clients, determined to make the most of her time in town.
The next morning she was at the office before it officially opened, using her master key. She looked every inch the lady executive, from her dark suit and white silk blouse to her no-frills black pumps and leather bag. Her hair was in a neat chignon, very little makeup and small earrings completing her executive look. Dressing frivolously or in a flashy manner had a way of undermining a woman's authority. She'd taken a course on how to dress and how to behave in predominantly male company. It had worked. Nobody thought Kip Tennison was a marshmallow. Except, perhaps, one gentleman back in Montana, who was shortly to be disabused of that impression.
Meredith sat down behind her huge oak desk and read through the latest mining reports on molybdenum and its enhanced military uses thanks to a new discovery in superconductivity. She smiled. This was a good time to get back into production; the corporation had given up its mines during a glut of moly. It had been a good business move at the time, but now was a good time to buy more. Those mineral leases of Cy's would stand the corporation in good stead with its military hardware contracts. And with the situation in the Middle East, it wouldn't hurt to step up domestic oil production and fund more research in the corporate labs on alternative fuel sources.
As she worked, fielding telephone calls that came in two a minute, or so it seemed, her mind wandered to Cy's little speech. He was giving her up because she couldn't hold her own in his world. She permitted herself a tiny smile. What would Cy say when he learned that he might not fit into her world?
The possibility that his refusal to budge on those mineral leases might require a complete takeover of his company began to bother her. Was she only doing it out of revenge? Was she doing the right thing for the corporation or for herself? And if she had to force Cy to give up the company he'd worked all his life for, could she live with it? Don had said that she could get those leases elsewhere, and she probably could. But what he wasn't considering was the cost of production. In Montana, where the corporation owned land and had processing facilities, mineral leases would involve very little cost for transportation. The railroad ran through their holdings and to the leased properties she wanted, and back to the processing plant. If she mined moly in any other state, it would require either cutting another company in on the profits to get the mineral processed or shipping it to one of their processing plants in Montana. That cost would put them in the red. Perhaps Don didn't know it, but Meredith did. She'd left nothing to chance in her preliminary examination of the project.
No, Don was wrong, she decided. She had no choice but to proceed. She'd spent too much money already to back out now.
McGee, a tall, balding man with a brain like a steel trap, knocked briefly and walked in, closing the door gently behind him.
"Today," she said. "Perhaps tomorrow, if I call in sick. Never mind," she added when he frowned and started to ask why she had to call in sick. "I've got clients coming in at eleven, one, two, three, and four. What do you want?"
"To know if you've realized how much time your brother-in-law spends at this office and what he's pulling out of your files."
"Do you realize exactly what you're saying?"
"Certainly. I'm saying that Don Tennison is working against you at every opportunity. You've put a weapon into his hands with this Harden Properties fight, and he's going to blow you up with it if you're not careful."
Meredith's gray eyes narrowed. So her suspicions weren't totally unfounded. "Tell me more."
"He's belittled you for your absence, told clients you're on holiday, diverted queries to his own office, bribed your old secretary to come to work for him, and in his free time he's been cultivating your executives at cocktail parties. And he's been going down the line on those Harden Properties stockholders, talking to each one, not just the ones you asked him to approach."
She let out a whispering breath. "Toward what end, I wonder?"
"I think you know," McGee replied grimly. "We think he's going to ask for a no-confidence vote at your next directors meeting. And he may very well use this fight with Harden Properties to do it."
"Will he get a no-confidence vote?" she persisted.
"Not from me. Your profit record is hard to ignore, even if these mineral leases are iffy. I'm with you. So are five others. But Don's got a lot of weight with some of the rest, and he's throwing it around. Watch out."
"I'll do that." She stood up, gazing out the window at the misty city. "The mineral leases are necessary, you know," she said. "I've been working on a memo to explain my position. I'll leave it with you. Make sure all the directors get a copy. I don't want anyone thinking I'm on a revenge kick." She turned to face him. "I had reasons to want Cy Harden ousted. But I've dealt with them. Now it's business. Strictly business. He's refused me mineral leases I have to have in order to fill upcoming military contract obligations. The cost of transporting ore from other states to our processing plants would be exorbitant if I have to go outside Montana for it. Besides that, Harden has no legitimate reason for refusing me the leases, and his directors are aware of it. I can push hard enough to make him let go of them. And I'm going to, Don or no Don."
