by Kay Hooper
“Our mysterious buyer,” Jon said, then realized that Michele and Ian were thinking along different lines. It was in both their faces. “What?” he demanded.
Softly, Michele said, “Six months later, Jon. That’s when her son was born. Six months after leaving here, after being involved with both our father and Ian’s. I wonder if Nicholas Gordon even knows which name is rightfully his.”
After a long moment, Jon said, “You mean we could have a half brother who’s trying to destroy us?”
“We could. Or Ian could. I find it a little unlikely that she could have been involved with a third man at just that time. One of them must have fathered her son.”
Jon began to swear steadily in a low voice and without inflection.
“What about Gordon?” Ian asked Michele. “Can you trace him? He’s still faceless as far as we’re concerned.”
Michele set to work, forcing herself to concentrate because the alternative was too painful. But she couldn’t help thinking that the fortune-teller’s warning had been all too terribly accurate. The seeds sown decades ago had borne a dark and bitter fruit.
The only cause for Helen Gordon’s son to have launched such an all-out campaign to destroy the Logan and Stuart families had to be that he hated them both. Michele was convinced that the blood of at least one side of the feud ran in his veins, and he was prepared to destroy both sides in his bitterness.
Chapter 10
Within another hour, Michele knew she’d lost the trail. Nicholas Gordon South had simply ceased to exist when his mother died ten years before. The family home she had lived in until her death was sold, and her son vanished. If he changed his name, he didn’t do so legally in California; if he held down a job or dealt with any of the myriad institutions requiring valid identification, he did so under another name.
“It’s no use,” she said finally, leaning back and rubbing her tense neck slowly. “He might as well have dropped off the face of the earth.”
“Enough,” Ian said, going around the desk to take her hands and pull her gently to her feet. “You’re exhausted. You haven’t taken a break in hours.”
The telephone on Michele’s desk shrilled abruptly, interrupting Ian and making her jump. After an instant, she leaned over and picked up the instrument.
“Hello?”
“Michele, it’s Jackie. Jon said you might have to work on something today, so I thought—”
“Jackie, what’s wrong?” Her friend sounded shaken, as if she’d been crying.
“I—I went by your house a little while ago. Your father was—I’ve never seen him like that. He was storming around yelling at Leona to pack your things because you weren’t coming back to his house. Michele…somebody told him about you and Ian, that you were together on Martinique. Leona said there was a call, and he just went crazy—”
The phone slipped from Michele’s nerveless fingers, and Jon quickly reached over to grab it and ask Jackie what was wrong.
Ian pulled Michele into his arms and held her gently, his face grim. “Baby…”
“I knew it would hurt,” she said quietly, looking up at him. “I knew that. But not like this.” She felt shattered, wounded, as if someone had reached into her and opened a vein. “How can people…hate so much? He’s my father.”
Ian wanted to reassure her that it would be all right. He wanted to wipe away the anguish in her haunting eyes, shield her from a blow she should never have had to bear. But he couldn’t. All he could do was hold her.
Michele clung to him, not crying because the hurt went too deep for that easy release. This was the risk she had faced, that the cost of her bond with Ian would be the severing of the ties between her and her father. She had known it was possible, even probable, but she had hoped from the beginning that it wouldn’t happen. Even now, she couldn’t quite believe it had happened, and some part of her refused to accept it.
Jon hung up the phone, his face pale. Speaking directly to Ian, he said, “She’d better stay with you. From the sound of it, Dad’s really gone over the edge.” With suppressed violence, he added, “Dammit, this time he’s going to listen to me if I have to knock him down and sit on him.”
Michele turned her head to look at her brother, though she didn’t draw away from Ian. “Be careful.”
Nodding, Jon said, “I’ll call and let you know.” Then he hurried out of the office.
There was a moment of silence, and then Michele looked at Ian and said fiercely, “I love you. No matter what happens, that isn’t going to change.”
“I love you, too, baby.” He held her a moment longer, then reached out to get her coat. “Come on. There’s nothing else we can do now.”
For the first time, Michele realized that it was night, that darkness had fallen while they’d worked. She was very tired, and the pain of her father’s reaction had been encased in numbness. It occurred to her that if it had to happen, better this way; if she had looked into her father’s eyes and seen what he was feeling as he disowned her, it might well have been a sight from which she would never have recovered.
Ian took her back to his apartment, and took care of her. He warmed soup and insisted she eat it, then put her to bed and joined her even though it was still early. And this time, it wasn’t a matter of good intentions. She was exhausted and numb, he was weary, and the comfort they found together was in simply holding each other.
—
“Will you listen to me!” Jon demanded, having to raise his voice just to be heard over his father’s roaring.
Charles Logan wasn’t making sense and hadn’t been for some time. The pressures that had been building inside him over the last weeks, pressures contained by Jon’s own persuasion, had finally escaped. Being told by a whispery voice on the telephone that his daughter had acquired a lover on Martinique would have been enough to upset him terribly; the additional information that the lover was none other than Ian Stuart had been a bone-jarring shock so devastating and enraging that he was in serious danger of suffering a stroke.
He was pacing his study, his movements violent and uncontrolled, so wrapped up in his own bitter fury that he was barely aware of Jon’s presence. “I won’t have it,” he muttered, his voice hoarse from all the yelling. “I’ll ruin the bastards, both of them. I’ll see them lose everything they have. And her! How could she do this to me?…She knows what they are, she knows. I’ve taught her—”
Jon grabbed his father’s arm and quite literally pushed him into a chair near the big desk. “Taught her?” His voice was bitter. “Oh, you did your best. You did all you could to teach both of us to hate. And you almost succeeded. I hated Ian so much it was like a sickness, eating away at me—until my bright, beautiful sister had the guts to make me wonder why.”
Charles stared up at him, a flash of bewilderment momentarily showing in his eyes. “Why? For God’s sake, Jon—”
“God had nothing to do with it,” Jon snapped. “And Ian had nothing to do with it. Just you. Just you and five hundred years of hate. Before I was even old enough to understand what hate was, you were filling me with it, making the Stuart name a curse so dirty it burned in my throat.”
“They’re our enemies!”
“No.” Jon grasped the arms of his father’s chair and leaned down, no more than a foot separating two furious faces. “We pick our enemies, Dad. And we choose our friends. Only our families are chosen for us. But you couldn’t stand that, couldn’t bear to think I might not hate where you did. So you didn’t wait to find out if your enemy was mine—you made sure of it. And I’ll forever regret the fact that I let you, even though Ian has never done one single damned thing to make him my enemy.”
“He’s trying to stall the project, him and his father—”
“Are you so blind with hate that you can’t see the truth no matter how big it is? Who sabotaged their building, Dad? Who planted a bomb hours ago that just missed killing Michele, me—and Ian? Do you have an answer for that?”
For the first
time, Charles Logan was silenced, bewilderment growing stronger in his eyes because he didn’t have an answer.
Jon straightened slowly and stared down at his father. With his first real chance to get through to the older man, he made every word count. “For weeks, I’ve been trying to convince you there was someone after us and the Stuarts, but you wouldn’t listen. Even when it was so obvious there was no other answer, you still wouldn’t listen. But you’re going to listen now, Dad. And when I’m finished, if you still intend to disown your only daughter because she had the courage to fall in love with Ian Stuart even though she knew what it would cost her—then you’d better get ready to disown me, too.”
“What? You can’t mean—”
“I’ve never meant anything more. I couldn’t live with myself if I turned my back on Michele just because she fell in love. And I sure as hell couldn’t stay here and watch you pretend she didn’t exist. There’s been too much hate, and I’m tired of it. I don’t give a damn what started the feud. All I know is that it’s over. Ian and I won’t fight.”
“You’ll fight,” Charles said harshly. “When he hits, you’ll hit back. And he will. It’s in his blood. It’s in your blood. Neither of you can escape it.”
Jon heard a hollow laugh and realized it was his own—a sound of defeat; he didn’t know what it would take to end his father’s hate, but he doubted now that words would ever be enough. He leaned back against the desk and spoke quietly, without force or emotion.
“You want to talk about blood? Fine. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about the older half brother I probably have.”
Charles stiffened, his face flushing suddenly with a new anger. “What are you talking about?”
Studying his father dispassionately, Jon said, “Yeah, I thought so. You knew. You knew Helen Gordon was pregnant when she left Atlanta.”
“Pregnant with his bastard,” Charles muttered, “not my child.”
“His bastard—or your child? That’s a fairly useless distinction considering that neither one of you married her. Did it ever occur to you in all these years to wonder whatever became of a son that might have been yours? Did you stop and think just once that the hate you and Brandon Stuart poured all over that poor woman might possibly come back to haunt you one day?”
For the first time, Charles couldn’t meet his son’s flat eyes. He was a little pale, clearly disturbed that Jon was quite obviously scornful of his behavior. A proud man, he had never received anything but respect from his son, and it shook him now to see and hear the contempt Jon didn’t try to hide.
“You don’t know how it was,” he protested, attempting to work up the righteous anger that had never failed to accompany that bitter memory. Until now.
“I’m listening,” Jon said evenly. “And you’re going to tell me exactly how it was. Because we’re out of time, Dad. What goes around comes around. Unless we find a way to stop him, there’s a good chance we’ll all be destroyed by a man who doesn’t seem to give a tinker’s damn which one of you is his father.”
—
Michele was awakened by the phone for a second morning, and just as the day before, she again lay sleepily listening to the rumble of Ian’s voice without really hearing the words. The last echoes of some kind of rhyme were fading in her mind, and though she felt an impulse to concentrate on it, the effort proved too much.
When her pillow moved, she murmured, “ ‘The Lady of Shalott,’ ” and frowned because that couldn’t be right. She lifted her head and stared at Ian.
He was smiling a little, his eyes warm.
“It’s a poem,” she clarified.
“Tennyson,” he agreed gravely. “What’s the connection?”
She thought about that, but if there was a connection, it totally escaped her. “I wish,” she said ruefully, “my subconscious would talk louder.”
Ian raised his head and kissed her. “I love you,” he murmured huskily.
“I love you, too.” She smiled at him, but then her smile faded as the events of the day before surfaced in her mind. She felt a throb of loss inside her. “Was that…Jon on the phone?” she asked.
Nodding, Ian said quietly, “He sounded pretty exhausted. Apparently, he and your father were up most of the night.”
“And?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear.
“And—by the time Jon got through with him, he was quite a bit calmer about you and me. The subject of Helen Gordon seems to have taken most of the fight out of him, at least for now. I got the feeling Jon was pretty rough with him.”
Michele wasn’t surprised. “I always figured one day Jon would have to fight Dad about something important. What your father told you about strong-minded men breeding strong-minded sons is true, but Dad’s never had to oppose that strength in Jon.”
“He has now.”
“I wonder what the result will be.” Michele sighed. “And I wonder if Dad’ll be able to accept us.”
“He’s at least accepted the fact that what happened thirty-five years ago has come back to haunt us all. Jon got the story out of him, but he thinks I should get Dad’s side of it before we compare notes.”
“I’ll bet both sides are radically different,” she mused wryly.
“No doubt of it. Anyway, I need to talk to Dad face-to-face and pry it out of him. He usually works in the office on Sunday, catching up on paperwork. I can see him there.” He paused, then added, “Will you humor me and get some rest while I’m gone?”
Michele looked at the clock, and said, “I’ve been sleeping for nearly twelve hours.”
Ian had obviously expected a protest. “I know,” he said patiently, “but you’ve been under a hell of a strain, and one good night’s sleep isn’t going to ease that. I know you’re worried; I am, too. But until we get all the facts, there’s really nothing we can do about Nicholas Gordon.”
Steadily, she said, “The message said today would be dangerous.”
“Baby, every day is going to be dangerous until we stop this. I’ll be careful. But I’d feel a lot better if I knew you were here watching a dumb movie on television or reading a book.”
Michele was reluctant, but she saw the sense of what he was saying. Though he hadn’t used the argument of her pregnancy, she knew he was concerned about that as well, and since she still felt tired despite the sleep, taking things easy was a good idea.
By the time Ian left the apartment a couple of hours later, she was ensconced on the couch with soft music playing and several books within reach. At first, it was peaceful, and she managed to concentrate on the novel she was reading. In fact, she became aware of her tension only when the phone rang and she jumped a foot in surprise.
“And it’s not even a horror novel,” she muttered to herself, picking up the receiver from the end table. “Hello?”
“You sound annoyed,” Ian noted.
“I am. The phone made me jump.” She glanced at the clock, adding, “You’ve been gone an hour.”
“Dad’s being difficult,” he explained. “He’s talked a lot and hasn’t said a damned thing. Now he wants to go over to the building and take another look at the damage. I didn’t want you to worry if it took longer than I expected.”
“Just be careful,” she pleaded.
“I will.”
After she’d hung up, Michele sat staring into space for several minutes, conscious of something nagging at her. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t focus on it. It was like having a tune running through your head and knowing there were words to it lurking just out of reach.
Deciding that it wasn’t going to come to her because she was trying too hard, she returned to her book and concentrated on absorbing those words. It was nearly half an hour before she got back into the story, and she jumped when the phone rang again.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Michele.” Jon sounded tired, though a faint thread of amusement ran through his voice. “I just wanted you to know that your clothes are back in the closet.”
The relief she felt was almost numbing. “Jon, what on earth did you say to him?”
“A lot. A hell of a lot, in fact. He isn’t happy about it, Misha. That would be too much to hope for. The idea of Ian Stuart as his son-in-law makes him choke. But once I convinced him that being disowned wouldn’t make a dent in your determination, he was pretty well forced to accept the idea.” Gently, he added, “He loves you, you know.”
Michele had a sneaking suspicion that it had been as much Jon’s loyal support as anything else that had swayed her father, but she was too grateful at the results to care. “I never wanted to hurt him. I hope you told him that.”
“I did.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” Jon sighed, then said restlessly, “As for the rest, it’s not a pretty story. Has Ian gotten his father’s version?”
“He’s working on it now. At their building.”
“I think I’ll go over there. If Brandon Stuart’s reluctant, maybe the shock of a Logan in his building will jar something loose.”
Michele had to laugh. “Just be careful.”
After she hung up for the second time, she caught herself brooding again. Even with her father’s grudging acceptance of her relationship with Ian, she knew there were still likely to be storms from him; Charles Logan had hated too long to be able to put all his bitterness behind him, not overnight anyway, and not without a great deal of reluctance. Michele realized that, and she was prepared to face trouble when it came.
She wanted to hear the details of what had happened thirty-five years ago, but she thought she already knew enough to guess what had happened.
What occupied her mind now was the same nagging feeling of something overlooked, some vital piece of information that she had seen but not really taken notice of. She found herself on her feet, pacing the room, a tune in her mind she couldn’t find the words for.
When the phone rang a third time, she answered almost absently. “Hello?”
“Michele, it’s Jackie. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
