a little while. Sunny was really concerned about that, but the doctor said it was okay. He's allergic to penicillin and he has this monster strawberry birthmark on his rump. He gave up his bottle at eleven months, said his first word at a year. He called me Pop Pop the day he turned one. I got such a kick out of that. He knows who you are because Sunny showed him pictures of you and talks about you to him. You should have seen his last birthday party, Fanny. We laughed ourselves silly over that kid. He has friends on the mountain. Chue's grandkids come over to play all the time. You wouldn't believe Christmas. I honest to God had fun."
"Ash, don't tell me any more."
"Why, Fanny? Aren't you the one who always said look it in the face and go on from there? Time's up, I gotta pick up Sunny. Stay as long as you like or leave if that's what you want to do."
"Aren't you coming back?"
"Nope."
"Ash, you can't do this!"
"Watch me."
"Simon won't agree to this. I don't know how to run this casino. I'm not saying I'm not going to do it . . . Ash, come back here."
"I bet you could turn this place into something spectacular without even trying. Just look what those flowers do for the table."
Fanny ran after the wheelchair. She dropped to her knees. "Ash, would she give those babies of hers up?"
Tears blurred Ash's eyes. "I'd try to stop her, Fanny. I don't know what she'll do after I'm gone."
"I hate your guts, Ash Thornton," Fanny screamed.
"I used to hate yours. I don't anymore. See you around, Fanny."
Fanny beat at the thick carpeting with her clenched fists until her hands were numb. Sobbing, she crawled on her hands and knees to the coffee table. She reached for the vase of roses and threw it at the double teakwood doors. "Do you hear me, Ash
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Thornton. I hate you? I hate you for doing this to me. All you do is take and take and take.*'
Exhausted. Fanny crawled up onto the deep sofa. She needed to call Simon. No. she needed to call Bess to verify Ash's cruel words. She dialed her friend's number and spoke haltingly. "Bess, I'm going to ask you a question. If you know the answer just gay yes or no When I hear your answer. I'm going to hang up. No, I'm not all right. I will probably never be all right again. In the scheme of things I don't suppose it matters very much. Did Sunny tell you and my children that she would never forgive me . . . for not being there for lake?" Fanny sucked in her breath as she waited for Bess's response. "Your answer is yes 0 "
Fanny hung up the phone and drew a second deep breath.
Now it was time to call Simon.
11
Fanny stared at the ringing phone in her hand. She broke the connection as tears dripped down her cheeks. Her life was slipping away, and she was helpless to stop it. She picked up the phone again. She slapped the receiver back into the cradle. How in the world was she going to tell Simon what had just transpired with Ash?
Jackson Matthew Ford. A blue-eyed, blond cherub nicknamed little Jake. Fanny's thoughts whirled back in time to the holdup on the bus where a man named Jake had asked her to hold his money and then disappeared. Now there was a little Jake in her life. A grandson. Her daughter's firstborn child. How could she have been so stupid 0 She thought about the first three years when all the brown envelopes arrived at the ranch with huge scrawled letters across the front. PHOTOGRAPHS—DO NOT BEND. She remembered looking at
them, remembered smiling at the infant's chubby cheeks and commenting to Simon that Jake looked like Tyler. Simon's cold-eyed stare forced her to shove the pictures in a drawer. She had all good intentions of framing them at some point in time. She never had. What was it Ash said? You're a piss-poor excuse for a mother and a bigger piss-poor excuse as a grandmother. Guilty as charged.
Fanny looked at the clock. She closed her eyes and envisioned Simon sitting on the front porch waiting with a bottle of wine in an ice bucket. He'd be sitting on the glider with a clear view of the road. The moment he saw her headlights, he'd run to the road and sweep her in his arms as she stepped from the car. It wasn't going to happen. At best it wasn't even a good dream. If anything it was a nightmare.
Fanny felt a surge of panic. Her mind screamed, Run. Don't let Ash do this to you. Too late; he'd already done it, and she was here, the living proof that once again Ash called the shots. She looked around, her face contorting in rage.
She moved then, upending the glass-topped coffee table. Stark alabaster figures sailed through the air, shattering the mirrored walls. She kicked and gouged at the leather furniture with a gold letter opener. Stuffing spilled everywhere. Pushing and shoving, she managed to topple the chrome shelving that held stereo equipment and a monster television set. When the glass remained intact on the television, she slammed a crystal lamp into the middle. Glass scattered everywhere. The portable bar on wheels with every liquor known to man along with crystal glasses skidded across the room to topple over in a pile of broken glass. The window treatments puffed and billowed as she yanked and ripped. The neon night outside the building glared at her.
Hate and despair drove her to the phone. She dialed from memory. "This is Fanny Logan. Turn the power off at Babylon. Do it NOW!'' She yanked at the phone wire, the phone spiraling across the room to land in a pool of brandy.
Fanny squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them a second later, she was standing in darkness. She made her way
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across the room before she crumpled to the floor, her outstretched hand grappling for the phone. She plucked at the receiver. There was no dial tone. She cried then because she didn't know what else to do.
What seemed like a long time later, Fanny wiped at her tears when she heard someone hammer on the double doors. Her head high, she smoothed back her hair and straightened her dress. Slipping and sliding in the broken glass, she made her way to the door. A circle of light slapped her in the face. She turned her head. "Yes, what can I do for you?"
"The power went off in the casino. Is Mr. Thornton here? He's needed on the floor."
"Mr. Thornton doesn't live here anymore," Fanny said.
The beam of the flashlight arched around the interior of the room. "Mrs. Thornton, did something happen here? Are you all right?"
"I guess you could say something happened. Do I look all right to you?"
"Yes, ma'am. What should I tell the staff? No one knows how to work the generators except Mr. Thornton."
"Is that so? You are of course referring to those three-million-dollar generators?''
"Yes, ma'am. What should we do?"
"Go home and go to bed. That's what I'm going to do. Don't disturb me again tonight." Fanny slammed the door shut in the man's face.
Fanny made her way to the bedroom, where she fell across the bed. She was asleep in the time it took her head to touch the pillow.
Fanny bolted from the bed when she heard sharp banging on the door. She was appalled at her reflection in the floor-length mirror. She'd slept in her clothes. What was worse, she looked like she'd slept in her clothes.
Fanny opened the door. Ash's heavy hitters. The second, third, and fourth string in the chain of command. "Yes?" She
stood aside for the men to enter the apartment. She offered no explanations or apologies for the condition of the room.
"Mrs. Thornton, we need to speak with your . . . with Mr. Thornton," the second string said. The third and fourth string bobbed their heads in agreement.
"Mr. Thornton vacated the premises yesterday."
"Is there a way to reach him?" the second string queried.
"No."
1 'The power's off in the entire building. We're losing money, Mrs. Thornton. We're the only casino with a power loss. By any chance, did you turn the power off?"
"As a matter of fact I did. I was making a statement."
"A statement," the first, second, third, and fourth strings said in unison.
"Uh-huh. When I'm ready to make my coffee I'll turn the power back on. I
s there anything else this morning?"
"Well ... do you want housekeeping to, ah ... ?"
"Not at this time. You can send a telephone repair man up here immediately. Have all the employees assembled in the ballroom at noon for a company meeting."
"Is Mr. Thornton coming back?" the fourth string asked.
"No. Good day, gentlemen."
Fanny finished showering and dressing just as her telephone was repaired.' 'It must have been some party,'' the man quipped as she signed her name to the work order.
"I was having a bad hair day," Fanny said.
"Uh-huh," the man said, backing out the door.
Fanny picked up the phone and dialed the power company. ''This is Fanny Logan." She gave her password and said,''You can turn the power back on."
You need to call Simon now and explain why you're still here.
The phone in her hand started to ring. She waited till it grew silent before she picked up the receiver. "Bess, I know it's early, but could you come over to the penthouse and have coffee with me? I really need to talk to you. Fine. I'll be waiting."
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Call Simon. By now he knows something is wrong. Call him.
The phone rang again. Fanny ignored it as she measured coffee into the wire basket. She chain-smoked until she heard the last plop-plop and the electric pot shut itself off.
The phone continued to ring. Fanny continued to ignore it. When she couldn't stand the continual jangling a moment longer, she took the receiver off the hook and disconnected the answering machine.
Now, if she could just remember where her purse was, she could make her second call. It was on the kitchen counter, right where she'd left it. Fanny rummaged until she found her address book. She flipped through the pages, memorized the number as she spieled it off to the operator.
The receiver was picked up in a faraway place by a sleepy voice. The sleepy voice became wide-awake the moment Fanny identified herself and apologized for the early-morning time difference. "I can be there by four o'clock your time, possibly sooner. Reschedule your meeting for five o'clock. With Bess, you, and me. we can handle anything. Take a deep breath and call Simon."
On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Billie Coleman turned to Thad. "Fanny needs me, Thad."
He asked no questions. "Then we better get cracking so I'm first off the runway."
As Billie and Thad packed their bags, Bess Noble was ringing the doorbell at the penthouse apartment in Babylon Towers. She linked her arm with Fanny's as she pretended not to see the destruction all about her.
In the kitchen, Bess listened to her longtime friend until she stopped speaking, breathless with the effort. "And you haven't called Simon? Fanny, that's not like you. Regardless of what's going on in your life, you have to be fair to him. You can't know Simon won't agree to come here."
"There are some things in life that are a given, Bess, and this is one of those givens. Simon left this town when he was sixteen. He hates it with a passion. He told me once nothing in the world could make him live here. I think Simon is lost
to me now. We've come to the end of our particular road, Bess. I know it in my heart. You know it too, so don't pretend with me. You and I always used to say we had choices and options. Mine all ran out yesterday."
''Fanny, I am so sorry. I know you don't want to hear this, but Ash is right about Sunny. As for Ash himself, he's doing what he has to do. It sounds like he's finally . . . What's that tired old cliche, seen the light?"
"And once again he's left it up to me to carry on. I'm tired, Bess, I can't keep doing this. What about my life? Somewhere, someplace, somehow, I must have earned some small measure of happiness. Is that all I get, a few lousy years? I could count the happy days on both hands during those years."
"I think you might be selling Simon short. He won't let you get away from him. He loves you too much. When you find people you can trust you can have them take over the casino."
"It's not that kind of business, Bess. Owner-operated means owner-operated. The Strip is full of sharks and barracudas. Right now the word is out, and they're gathering. The smart money is saying I can't do this and the dumb money ... well, there isn't any dumb money. That's the bottom line. I want you to help me run this casino. I called Billie, and she'll be here by four this afternoon. Which reminds me, I have to reschedule the meeting. Are you in, Bess? Do you have to talk to John first? It's going to be different from Sunny's Togs and Rainbow Babies."
"I'm in, Fanny. No, I do not have to talk to John, but I will. ST and RB run so smoothly it bothers me to take a paycheck. Now why don't you call Simon, and I'll start cleaning up the living room?"
"I don't want you cleaning up the living room. I need to live with that mess for a while so I don't ever forget the rage that attacked me last night. I never thought it was possible for me to ... go berserk like that. Who knows, I may never clean it up."
Bess made a fresh pot of coffee while Fanny called downstairs to the office to reschedule the meeting.
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"Sunny will never forgive me, will she, Bess?"
"At some point she will. A mother-daughter bond is very strong, Fanny. She's going through a lot right now. Time heals all wounds. We both know that."
"The scars never go away. Both of us know that, too. How could I have been so stupid? Do you know the middle names of your grandchildren?"
"It's not the same thing, Fanny."
"Don't try and make me feel better. Ash was right. All I was concerned about was my happiness. That's a laugh in itself. I had to work at pretending to be happy. Look what those years have gotten me. Yesterday I wanted to take a handful of Ash's pills and end it all, but I was too much of a coward. Ash is going to die. Sunny's prognosis isn't good but she's handling it in true Sunny fashion. She's close to Ash now and he needs her as much as she needs him. I'm grateful for that. Birch is going away to .. . contemplate his life. Billie is so wrapped up in the business half the time she doesn't know what day it is. Sage is polite to me. I feel like a stranger in my own family."
"Think of it as temporary, Fanny. There's light at the end of the tunnel. You just haven't gotten far enough into the tunnel to see it."
"If I had one wish, do you know what it would be, Bess?"
"That Simon would pop up on the doorstep saying he's always wanted to live in a penthouse."
"Not even close. I don't even think Simon loves me. He plays a good game of pretend, but that's what it is, a pretend game. I feel so stupid. I'd wish Sunny would bring Jake here so I could get to know him. I think Ash loves that little guy more than he loved his own kids when they were little. He knows everything about him. He must have gone to Sunrise a lot. I never knew that. No one ever told me. Ash isn't the same anymore. It's not just the death sentence he's living under either. The change must have started when Jake was born. If only I could unring the bell."
"You can't, so stop torturing yourself. Go in the bedroom and call Simon. Til make us some pancakes."
In the bedroom, Fanny kicked off her shoes before she snuggled between the periwinkle-colored sheets. Her hand trembled as she dialed the operator to place the call. She wasn't surprised when it was picked up on the first ring. ''Simon, it's Fanny."
"Fanny! Thank God. Are you okay? Did you break down along the way? I've been chewing my nails here. I planned to give it one more hour and then I was going to start out to look for you. We need to get a phone for your car. Damn, I keep forgetting you're driving a rental. Why didn't you call, Fanny? I waited up all night for you. I didn't think it was possible to miss someone so much. Where are you? When will you get here?"
Fanny clenched her teeth. He sounded like the old Simon, the Simon she'd fallen in love with. Underneath, though, she could hear the anger.
"Simon. Oh, Simon ... Ash is dying. He doesn't have long. A year, maybe a little longer. Ash puts his own spin on everything including his death. Sunny ... oh, Simon, I've made such a mess of things because I let yo
u dictate to me where my family is concerned. It's not all your fault, I went along with it. What I'm trying to say is, Ash dumped the casino on me. I had no other choice. I need to hear you tell me you understand."
"I can't do that because I don't understand. What in the world are you talking about? Ash wouldn't dump his casino on anybody. He thinks it's his. How do you know this isn't just another one of Ash's schemes?" Fanny shuddered at her husband's frosty voice.
"Give me some credit, Simon. I know."
"What are you trying to tell me, Fanny?"
"I'm trying . . . what I'm trying to say is ... I can't come back to the ranch. If I do, I won't be able to leave. You had too much of a hold on me. I can't allow that to happen again. I have to stay here. I have to take over for Ash. He's doing what has to be done for Sunny. I have to respect that. If he doesn't have that much time left, I need to do what I can. Please tell me you understand. It's my family, Simon. I turned my back on them once. I'll never do it again."
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"Fanny, you don't know the first thing about running a casino. Ash can hire qualified people. He's jerking your strings, and you're allowing it. I didn't sign on for this. Fanny. At the risk of repeating myself, your children aren't kids anymore."
''No, Simon, this time he is not jerking my strings. A family business cannot be run by outsiders. I didn't know anything about the clothing business in the beginning either. I can learn because I have to learn. Don't you see, I have to try and make it right for even one?"
"Fanny, listen to me. Sell the damn casino. If you don't, it's going to destroy us. Jesus, you know how much I hate that business and that town."
"I can't do that either. I am so sorry. I think I always knew this was going to happen at some point. Is there anything I can say to make you want to come here and run the casino with me?"
"Not if you paid me my weight in gold."
Fanny's voice was a bare whisper. "I know. You always knew my family would come first. You tried to rob me of them. Simon. I'm having trouble dealing with that."
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