by Sharon Ihle
"There's nothing simple about this, and I suspect that you know it." With a gesture of defeat, she turned to him. "All right. If you insist on the truth, here it is. Yes, R. T. Savage is the son of a bitch who left me to raise you alone. So what?"
"So what?" Donovan, who generally tried to keep a respectful manner around his mother, struggled mightily to keep a civil tongue in his head. "You've hidden the truth about my father from me all these years, and that's all you can say?"
She just stood there looking at him, unblinking, as if numb to his pain.
Enraged by her indifference, Donovan shouted, "Do you have any idea what it was like to walk into that situation? I didn't have a clue in hell what he was talking about—he actually accused me of coming to him for money."
"From what I understand, he's got a hell of a lot more than he needs. Maybe you should have demanded a small ransom. The bastard owes you that much."
Donovan shook his head with disgust. "Have you no feelings inside you at all?"
"Oh, I have feelings, Donovan. Trust me, I do."
"They're very well hidden." Donovan couldn't keep the sneer off his lips as he added, "Almost as well hidden as the identity of my father. I guess this means that R. T. was one of your Williams, huh?"
Some of Lil's cool veneer cracked over that remark. "It hurt me less that way. In fact, it was after he left me for the last time that I began using that name for my other... friends."
His fingers curled tight, again Donovan had to fight for control of his anger. "Which William were you referring to as my father? You must remember him, the one you said died before I was born."
Lil's steel-gray eyes hardened. "I lied to protect you. Besides, by then R. T. Savage was dead to me."
"But what about me?" Donovan bellowed. "Do I matter at all, or don't my thoughts on the subject count for anything?"
Watching her son's expression darken with rage, Lil backed away from him. "Of course, they count, but you're not considering what I had to go through back when you were born. I never wanted you to find out about R. T., and certainly not the way you did." Lil's voice had grown much softer, less defensive. "I was just trying to protect us both the only way I knew how."
Donovan, who was standing in front of his mother's small pine desk, leaned back against the edge of it to collect himself. More rational now, he said, "I can almost understand why you wouldn't tell a small boy the whole truth, but once I was grown, once we'd moved to San Francisco, where the Savage family practically rules, why didn't you tell me then? Why the hell couldn't you have trusted me with that much of my past?"
"Don't judge me, Donovan," Lil warned, hands on hips. "Don't ever think you can judge me. You have no idea what I went through as a ten-year-old girl when my father dragged me to California to chase a pot of gold along with all the other forty-niners. By the time a claim-jumper killed pa some five years later, leaving me to fend for myself, I'd blossomed pretty well."
Donovan's mother had always been secretive about her early life. After hearing those few things, he had an idea he'd prefer it if she continued that way. "I don't want to know about your transformation into womanhood, Lil. I just want a little more information about my father."
"That's what I'm trying to tell you. Look at me, Donovan." She spread her arms, displaying an amazingly curvy figure and youthful appearance for a woman past forty. "Imagine what I must have looked like thirty years ago, especially to a bunch of love-starved miners."
Lil was a very attractive woman, one who must have been blindingly gorgeous in her youth—but again, this was a subject Donovan did not wish to think about or discuss. "You're beautiful now, and I would imagine, were even more beautiful then, but try to tell me about R. T. without the sordid details, if you can."
She shot him a narrow glance, but went on. "I was a fifteen-year-old orphan with nothing to my name except that beauty and the clothes on my back. It didn't take long for several men to come to my aid, and even less time than that for them to begin fighting over who would win the right to 'take care of me' from then on out."
Donovan abruptly stood up from the desk. "I told you to skip past all that."
Bristling, Lil stomped over to her son. "You can't come slamming in here full up with self-righteous anger, demanding the truth, unless you want to hear all of it—understand? All or nothing. What's it to be?"
* * *
Meanwhile, Goldy was refilling Libby's glass at the bar. "We don't get much call for cherry brandy. How is it?"
Libby took a sip, although she had a real good idea how it was by now. "Ummm. Delicious. How long do you think Donovan's going to be in there with that, that woman?"
Goldy laughed. "Who knows? Did you see the look on his face? He was plenty steamed."
"Do they fight a lot?"
"Now and again, like any other partners, I guess. Why are you so interested, sugar?" She winked and leaned across the bar. "Are you sweet on Donovan?"
"No. Gosh, no." Libby raised her glass for another fast sip. "I was just wondering about him and Lil, and if they were, you know, engaged or something."
"Oh, I don't think so. Neither one of them is much for getting tied down, if you know what I mean."
Libby shook her head. "I don't think I do know."
"Donovan for sure isn't the marrying kind—Lord knows enough of us gals have tried to rope him in, and Lil..." Goldy paused, thinking about her employer. "Oh, she fawns over the customers, a course, but I haven't seen her try to cozy up to any man for a good long while."
Or maybe, thought Libby, she's just concentrating on one, and behind closed doors, at that. With a glower in the direction of what she assumed was the manager's office, she shoved her suddenly empty glass toward Goldy.
Donovan sat down on the desk again. "Go ahead then, but do spare me the intimate details."
"I'll do what I can. After picking through that motley lot of miners who wanted to take care of me, I chose a fella named William because I thought he looked more prosperous than the others. He treated me nice and took care of me the best he could. That, by the way, is where I got the name, William." She began to pace the carpet again. "It wasn't long after I moved in with Will that R. T. came along, and I knew somehow that he was a cut above the rest, a man who'd be very successful some day."
"So you left poor Will spinning in your wake and took up with R. T.?"
"That's right." She stopped pacing and turned to confront her son's reproachful gaze. "I was all of sixteen by then to his twenty or twenty-one. I'd never met anyone so dashing or worldly, and I was love cracked for him almost the moment I first saw him. When I became in a family way a couple of years later, I wasn't the least bit upset about it at first. In fact, I was happy to be having the child of a man I actually cared for." Her painted mouth twisted into a frown. "That is, I was happy until I told R. T."
Donovan flinched, as if he might shrug off the sudden ache in his chest. "Not quite up to fatherhood yet, was he?"
Laughing bitterly, Lil said, "Oh, to the contrary. He was quite well acquainted with the joys of parenthood. When I told him about you, he let me in on a little secret of his own—that he was already married, and the father of a young son."
That R. T. had a son older than Andrew caught Donovan by surprise. Trying to recall what little he knew about the Savage family, he thought back to society columns he'd perused and the endless commentaries on R. T. and his vast holdings, but couldn't remember reading much about his children.
"If you think that was a nasty surprise," said Lil, moving forward, "he also admitted that he'd managed to knock his wife up about the same time he got to me. Cute, huh? The very proper Mrs. Savage was expecting their second baby around the same time you were due."
Had that child been Andrew? Donovan wondered with a start. How could fate have been so cruel as to have sat him beside his own half brother, then made him witness the man's death? He felt sick inside at the thought, then recalled the days and nights he'd dreamed of having a real family�
�only the fictional family included a cute, impish little sister with eyes like his and a mop of coppery curls. Now it sounded as if part of the family he'd fabricated for himself had been living just across town for most of his life.
Unaware of her son's turmoil, Lil continued. "There isn't much more to tell. R. T. had a legal wife with legal children, and I was on the outside, looking in. After our horrid fight the day he told me about his other family, I thought I'd never see him again. But he showed up shortly after you were born, then every six months or so for a few years, filling both our heads with promises and tales of the day we'd all be together."
"R. T. was going to leave his wife and family for us?"
Lil laughed again, more bitterly than before. "That's what he kept saying, and fool that I was, I believed him at first because, I guess because I wanted to so badly. By the time his wife had her baby after you were born, making three legal sons for R. T., it finally occurred to me that he was just keeping me on the side, and that he'd never leave her."
Slowly rising from the desk, Donovan shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled thoughtfully to the tiny window behind his mother's spindle-back chair. He contemplated the dark alleys and shadowed corners beyond the glass, and how different his life might have been had R. T. been free to marry Lil. Then he shrugged the thought off and turned to face his mother again, understanding her a little better, if still disillusioned by all he'd learned in one short afternoon.
In a hollow voice he asked, "How was R. T. around me? Did he claim me as his son?"
She nodded half-heartedly. "He always wanted to play with you, and tried to get me to change your name from William." She gave a little smirk. "By then, I'd taken to calling him William, like the others. He didn't much like it, but he kept coming around until you were a little better than five."
Memories of his fifth year on this earth were strong to him, and suddenly Donovan had an idea as to why. He remembered the kind man, the one he liked best of his mother's friends, teaching him the finer points of pitching pennies, letting him win one just so he'd know the thrill of feeling the spoils of victory against his palm. Donovan tapped the toe of his boot against his mother's chair now, rattling the coin in the heel, and knew somehow without any clear recollection of the incident, that R. T. Savage had been the one who'd given him that penny.
"Donovan?" said Lil. "Are you still listening?"
"Is there more?"
"Not too much. It was about that time that I decided I just couldn't take his lies anymore, or the way he always got you worked up about being a whole family someday." Lil paused, deep in thought, her brow furrowed with far more wrinkles than she ever allowed to show. "After one of his hurried visits, I packed us up and moved us to San Francisco to get away from him."
Donovan nodded thoughtfully, vaguely remembering the rushed move, the sense of urgency, or maybe desperation, in his mother as she made arrangements for their journey. Something else about that impetuous relocation teased the back of his mind, a dark thing he'd buried good and tight, sealed, perhaps forever. Even if he'd had the desire to break the seal and dig the thing up—which at this point, he did not—Donovan wouldn't have had the chance, as Lil went ahead with her story.
"R. T. lived in Sacramento at the time, so you can imagine my surprise when he struck gold and decided to head for San Francisco, too. I thought of running again, but we were just getting settled, and since I figured he wouldn't be anxious to find us anyway, I decided to stay. I guess I figured wrong."
"I guess you did." Feeling too troubled by today's revelations to discuss the past any longer, Donovan headed for the door. "Thanks for being so honest—at last. I have to go now."
Lil placed a hand on his arm. "All right. I can understand your wanting to go off on your own right now, but would you mind if I ask you a couple of questions first?" Donovan glanced over his shoulder and gave her a short nod. "When R. T, ah, when he talked with you today, did he, ah, ask about me?"
"You bet," he said through a heavy sigh. "He wanted to know if you sent me to him. At first, of course, I didn't know what the hell he was talking about."
"You didn't tell him I'm here in the city, did you?"
He shook his head. "By the time I'd figured out what he was trying to say, I was so shaken up, I just got up and ran out of his office."—which reminded Donovan that he'd left Andrew's satchel behind. "I don't know what R. T.'s thinking about either of us right now—but I have an idea, it isn't good."
"If we're lucky, maybe he's not thinking about us at all." Lil gave his arm a little squeeze. "Two more things, Donovan—one, if you do run into him again, promise you won't ever tell him that I'm here. I couldn't bear it if he knew, if he were to descend from his lofty heights to look down his nose at me."
Still running, Lil?, Donovan wanted to ask. But, since he'd come for information, not to hurt her, he said, "All right. If he asks, your whereabouts are unknown. What else?"
"I want you to swear that you won't try to see R. T. Savage again, that you will never let him become a part of your life and... and let him take you away from me."
This from a woman who was so wrapped up in herself and her fading youth that she couldn't bring herself to admit to the world that she even had a grown son? Donovan swiveled to face Lil head on. "Since when did you get so motherly?"
She started to speak, but looked away from him instead and hung her head.
Lil's veiled expression wasn't lost on Donovan. He'd seen that shuttered look in her eyes many times before, knew that his mother was a woman of many secrets. Until today, he'd never realized how many she'd kept from him, but he did grasp that she was hiding something more now. He knew in his gut there was more to this story than she'd confessed, but whatever it was, Lil had no intention of discussing it now. Probably, never.
"Donovan?" As he studied her, he could hardly believe that she suddenly looked old and painted, used up like some of the actresses she hired. "You know I'm not the type to grovel, but in this, I'm begging you. Promise me you'll never go to him again."
He opened the door and walked through it, then slammed it behind him—but still he heard his mother's voice: "Donovan?"
* * *
At the bar, her spectacles still perched on the bridge of her nose, Libby eyed her glass, which was almost empty—again. She wondered briefly what the devil she was doing, sitting here drinking brandy in the middle of the day, but then shoved the snifter toward Goldy anyway. It was all because of Donovan and his secret meetings, she decided, because of Donovan and his private "discussions" with voluptuous harlots in enticing blue gowns. All his fault. As usual.
Her gloved fingers curling into fists, she considered storming the office and demanding that he escort her back to Savage Publishing so she could conduct her business at last. Before she could decide what to do next or act on the plan, from the corner of her eye, she spotted a figure bulldozing his way through the crowd. And he was headed toward the bar. Adjusting the tilt of her glasses, Libby peered through them to better make out his features. It was Donovan, as she'd suspected, looking angry and much the way he had when he'd come bursting through Savage's doors just hours earlier. What the devil was going on with that man—and when was he going to let her in on the secret?
When he reached her, he spoke in the same monotone as before and used almost the same words. "Come on, Libby. We're leaving."
In defiance, she pounded both fists against the pitted bar top. "Just a blasted minute. I'm tired of you saying, 'Come on, let's go,' then dragging me here and there. I demand to know what's going on, and what you were doing for so long in that woman's office."
Donovan moved closer to Libby's little stool and narrowed his gaze. "It's a very private matter, and one I don't want to talk about right now. Why don't we talk about you instead. How many drinks have you had?"
Deeply offended, Libby threw back her shoulders and, in so doing, almost flung herself off the stool. Donovan reached out to break her fall, but by then, Libby had
managed to collect herself. Peering up at him, wondering why his image was so fuzzy even though she was still wearing her glasses, she asked suspiciously, "Have you been drinking? You're all wobbly."
"Oh, hell," he muttered. "You're half shot."
"Am not."
Libby indignantly lifted her chin, but Donovan didn't even seem to notice the gesture. He just reached over and adjusted her glasses, which had somehow gone cockeyed on her. Now she could see him much better, enough to notice that he no longer looked as mad as he had crossing the room. In fact, she'd never seen him looking better. His eyes were all sparkly, both gray and blue, and his mouth was curved at the corners, just the way she liked it. A sudden warmth bloomed in Libby's breast, making her think for a moment of leaning forward and kissing him. She parted her lips and sighed instead, feeling dreamy all over and maybe even a little bit in love.
"Do you know," she whispered thickly, "that you have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen?"
"Oh, Libby—damn..." He rolled those gorgeous eyes, then gripped her elbow. "Come on, let's go."
"In a minute. First I have to tell you that I think..." Recalling what Dell had said about flirting with a man, she batted her lashes, making herself dizzy, and damn near fell off the stool again. "I think you're wonnerful. Just wonnerful, even if you are a lying Willy."
He barked a laugh, or something close to it, then muttered, "You were right, Libby—you're not half shot. You're stinking drunk."
"Am..." She swung her arms wide, deeply and belligerently offended. "Not."
And then, much to her horror, she did fall off the bar stool.
Chapter 6
Libby's eyes were closed when a sudden wave of dizziness swept over her, then her stomach churned and rolled, threatening, for a moment, to erupt. Was she on a boat? Again her stomach churned, this time bringing up an acid taste of bile. The sensation reminded Libby that in her excitement this morning, she hadn't been able to eat a bite of breakfast. The cherry brandy she'd gulped, she realized much too late, had been sloshing around in her empty belly with nothing to do but addle her brain. "Food," she said thickly to no one in particular. "I need some food."
