by Fay Robinson
Restless, she rolled over and punched up her pillow.
He had the same chin as James, slightly dimpled in the center as though someone had stuck a finger there and left a soft impression. And like James, Bret had also inherited his mother’s deep-blue eyes.
But that was where the similarity between the brothers ended. James had been tall, handsome, but thin as straw. Bret was tall and most definitely handsome, but his muscular arms and chest strained against the fabric of his shirt. When he’d dragged her down onto his horse today, his body had felt rock-hard.
An image of his quaint house and vegetable garden off to the side popped into her mind. The garden had a scarecrow dressed in sun-whitened overalls and a plastic Halloween pumpkin for a head. Flowers filled the yard. A nice little farm, but nothing elaborate. His truck was old, and his house was in need of painting and repair. The dirt driveway had potholes.
She’d expected a different lifestyle. Where were the expensive cars? The big house? He’d inherited thirty-six million dollars when his brother died. What had he done with all that money?
HE COULD SHOE a horse, dig fifty fence-post holes by hand in a single afternoon and grow a pretty fair tomato, but he was the worst cook east of the Mississippi. He knew it. Sallie knew it. Even she wouldn’t eat anything he fixed.
So once a week, when his stomach rebelled at the thought of eating another bite of his own cooking, Bret drove to town and ordered breakfast. His mouth started watering when he pulled out of the driveway, and by the time he parked the truck in front of the Old Hickory, he’d worked up a powerful hunger.
Man, oh, man, real coffee, instead of that instant stuff! And gravy that tasted like gravy, instead of lighter fluid! He could already taste it.
He sat down in his favorite booth in the back corner, the one people rarely used because one of the seats was ripped and had been mended with silver tape. He liked the corner because it was far from the jukebox and out of the stream of traffic from the kitchen. He could eat in peace. He didn’t have to nod or say, “Hey, how ya doin’?” to people who passed by his table.
He even liked the smell of this place in the morning, with bacon browning on the grill and coffee perking in aluminum coffeepots, instead of those drip machines.
He ordered his usual, opened his newspaper to the sports section and folded it so he could read and eat at the same time. When his order came and he bit into those perfectly prepared eggs, a bulldozer couldn’t have moved him out of that seat.
He hadn’t counted on a 110-pound bulldozer with a smart mouth.
She sneaked in while he was reading about the Braves, and he didn’t notice her until some guy let out a long low whistle. He looked up to see her threading her way through the tables toward him. She moved with the confidence of a woman who knows she’s beautiful and doesn’t try to pretend otherwise.
The moss-green dress was the same color as her eyes. The skirt stopped at midthigh and swished enticingly around her slender legs when she walked.
She slid into his booth with a cheery “Good morning,” as if they were old friends meeting for a pleasant breakfast. He could feel the envy of every man in the place.
He threw down his fork and it clattered on the plate. He gave her a look that said she was about as welcome as tight boots on a blood blister, but she just grinned at him and stole a piece of his bacon with her fingers.
“What are you doing?” he asked, annoyed at having the best hour of his week ruined by Kathryn Morgan.
“Eating breakfast.” She turned around and signaled to the waitress.
“Not with me.” When she reached over to get more bacon, he covered it with his hand. “And stop eating my bacon.”
She laughed at him then. Laughed at him! As if she found him amusing!
“Okay, stingy, I’ll get some of my own.” She turned to the waitress who had appeared with a menu and coffee. “Hi, Marleen. I’ll have the same thing he’s having, and bring us an extra order of bacon.”
“No,” Bret said.
“No, you don’t want extra bacon?”
“No, I don’t want to have breakfast with you.”
“Oh, don’t be such a grump. Eating with me won’t kill you.”
“Ms. Morgan, why are you bothering me again? I told you I wasn’t going to talk to you. Now leave, or I will.”
“If you want to leave, go ahead, but I’m planning to enjoy my breakfast. I’m absolutely starved.”
She poured cream in her coffee and casually stirred it with her spoon. She had the look of someone who was settling in.
Marleen waited for him to make up his mind. She glared at him, which made him feel like a first-class jerk.
“Bring her the stupid food,” he said with a growl, snatching up his folded newspaper. “And go ahead and start cooking my extra order.”
He’d ignore the pushy ratchet-jawed woman. That was what he’d do. Just pretend she wasn’t there, finish his breakfast and do his errands in town. Maybe she’d get the message and leave if he acted like she didn’t exist.
But that wasn’t easy to do. She had started watching him—no, studying him. She’d propped her elbows on the table and her chin rested on top of her clasped hands. He could almost feel her gaze touch his hair, his chin, his chest, and he didn’t like what it was doing to him.
That he found her physically attractive only increased his irritation with her. That he wondered if she found him attractive made him angry at himself.
He was glad he’d just shaved, had on a pair of his newer jeans and one of his good shirts. And yet he hated being glad. He hated that he could see, even without looking at her, the soft curve of her lips and how her eyes sparkled when she was amused—like now.
The harder he tried not to look at her, the harder it became. When he took a sip of coffee, he stole a glance over the top of the newspaper, and she smiled at him.
“You clean up real nice,” she said as if she’d read his thoughts. “But you need to learn not to grind your teeth when you’re irritated. You’ll give yourself a headache.”
He slammed down the newspaper and gave up all pretense of ignoring her. “You know, for somebody trying to get my help, you sure are going about it the wrong way.”
“Am I?” She cocked her head. “So what would work? I’ve tried asking and pleading.”
“And now you’re up to badgering and aggravating.”
“I’m sorry if you feel badgered. I honestly didn’t come here to be a pest. If I could get the information I need any other way, I’d pack up, leave and never bother you again.”
“So do it.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. I have to finish this book. The good things James did in his life are in danger of being lost. Instead of honoring him as the genius he was, most people remember him only as a drugged-out rock star killed in a plane crash.”
“And you think you can single-handedly change how people remember him?”
“I’m sure going to try. No man’s life should be defined solely by his death, particularly a man like James. Don’t you want to help me preserve his legacy?”
He didn’t answer. He picked up his newspaper and tossed a five-dollar tip on the table. He paid his bill, grabbed his second order from the cashier and went out the door, letting it slam noisily behind him.
He’d parked his truck across the street. He walked to it and opened the passenger door. As he did every Saturday morning, he unwrapped the extra bacon and eggs and spread them on the paper sack for Sallie. He didn’t have to look back to know the annoying woman was watching him out the front window of the grill.
Help her preserve the legacy of James Hayes? Now, that was a laugh. He didn’t want to preserve that legacy. He’d spent the past six years trying to destroy it.
CHAPTER THREE
Chattanooga, Tennessee
“THAT NOSY WOMAN’S going to ruin everything.”
George Conner stopped his frantic pacing to look for the cigarettes he’d carried for fifty of his s
eventy-three years, desperate for something to calm his nerves. The phone call from his stepson had rattled him. Kathryn Morgan. In Alabama. Asking questions. Heaven help them!
He patted his shirt pocket. Belatedly he realized he didn’t have any cigarettes. Marianne had forced him to give them up last year, along with everything else that made life worthwhile. Cigarettes. Booze. Red meat. She even regulated their lovemaking, if you could call what they did lovemaking.
He’d probably live longer, but what for? When a man gave up his pleasures, he might as well be dead. And if that Morgan woman uncovered his lies and he was headed for prison, he preferred to go with a cigarette in his mouth, his pants down and a shot of Jack Daniel’s in his glass.
He flipped open the wooden box on the bar, taking out one of the hand-rolled cigars he kept for friends whose wives weren’t as dictatorial as his own. He held the cigar under his nose and savored the smell. Marianne watched him without comment until he put it in his mouth, then said in that maddening voice she used when she wanted to scold but didn’t want to sound like she was scolding, “I know you’re not seriously considering lighting that.”
He hesitated, knowing he shouldn’t smoke cigars yet barely able to resist now that he’d gotten a taste for them. But then Marianne raised one eyebrow and that small gesture decided the issue. Mumbling a curse under his breath, George tossed the cigar on the bar, not as fearful of having another heart attack as being on the receiving end of Marianne’s wrath for the rest of the day.
He walked to the table where she sat, where she always sat, by the wall of windows that offered a spectacular view of the city far below. This room was her sanctuary in a dark monstrosity of stone, parapets and turrets that jutted obscenely above the trees at the top of Lookout Mountain and had earned the ire of the good citizens of Chattanooga. The Castle, most people called the house, although there’d been other less-flattering names over the years. The Dungeon. Hayes’s Folly.
Marianne hated it as much as everyone else. She had hated it every day of the nearly twenty years they had lived here, but no one other than George would ever know that. James had built the house for her as an expression of love. So she’d never move. That was an issue they had argued and settled a long time ago.
“Darling, sit down and I’ll have Agnes bring you some freshly squeezed juice,” she told him, taking a sip from her own glass. But he was too nervous to sit. He stood gazing out the window with his hands deep in the pockets of his polyester slacks, absentmindedly rattling his keys—and apparently Marianne’s patience—until she’d finally had enough.
“George, please,” she said shortly, drawing his attention. “He said he could handle her and he will. Now come sit down and relax.”
Relax? Not likely. She, on the other hand, looked as if she didn’t have a care. The undisputed favorite in her menagerie of animals had jumped into her lap, and she sat rubbing the old cat with unhurried strokes, pausing to scratch under its neck and feed it a treat from the bowl on the table. They were a matched pair, with their silver-white hair and startling blue eyes. They even had the same expression of cool disinterest.
“That woman is probably worming her way into your son’s house right now, and you’re entertaining the cat,” he told her.
Marianne put the animal on the floor and casually brushed the hairs from her lap. “What do you propose I do?”
“Go down there.”
“That’s unnecessary, I think. She’s probably already gone.”
“And if she’s not? If, in her snooping, she somehow uncovers what I did…”
“She won’t.”
“But he might tell her. Have you considered that?”
Anger flashed in her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. He’d never do anything to hurt his family.”
“Not consciously but—”
“Not ever! He’d never betray us, so stop this nonsense and get hold of yourself.”
George blew out a breath in exasperation. Arguing with her wouldn’t do any good. Marianne had always been blind when it came to the children. Bret’s jealousy of his brother was nothing more than sibling rivalry in her eyes. And James had been unhappy for months before Marianne could admit he’d become disenchanted with the success he had worked so hard to achieve.
Even Ellen, the child they shared, was perfect. Marianne refused to see that their daughter’s repeated relationships with men who abused her were a form of self-imposed punishment.
“Fine, M. You sit here with your head in the sand and wait for everything to fall apart,” he said, walking to the door and jerking it open, “but don’t ask me to.”
“Where are you going?”
“The country club.”
“But Agnes will have lunch ready in a few minutes.”
“I plan to drink my lunch.”
“George Conner, don’t you dare,” she called after him, but George had already decided he damn well did dare and kept walking, not bothering to respond.
WHEN THE ELECTRIC GATE at the end of the yard clanged shut and she could no longer hear her husband’s car winding down the narrow mountain road, Marianne allowed herself to give in to the fear she’d hidden from him.
She’d fought numerous threats from unscrupulous writers over the years, writers whose half-truths and lies about James has caused more pain than any family should have to endure. But this biographer, Kathryn Morgan, had a reputation for honesty and integrity, for uncovering the truth. And that made her more dangerous than all the others combined.
If this woman looked deeply into their finances, saw how they’d used the money from James’s estate and the several million in royalties his music continued to produce each year, she could become suspicious. But was she smart enough to figure out what they’d done? And why?
Unsure, Marianne went to her desk in the study, unlocked the bottom drawer and removed the thick file she’d commissioned more than a year ago on Kathryn Morgan. The folder’s front cover had a photograph attached, but she only glanced at it. What interested Marianne were the newspaper clippings, the stories the woman had written as an investigative reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times.
Reading everything took nearly an hour. Finishing the last article, she closed the file with a trembling hand and sat back in her chair to consider what she must do. She’d gotten them into this mess. The responsibility fell on her shoulders to get them out of it. But how?
She had hoped strongly worded letters from her attorney and the refusal of requests for interviews would discourage the biographer from writing this book, or at least from digging deep enough into their past to reveal their complicity.
But no, this woman was not so easily dissuaded. She had been a gifted child, and gifted children became gifted adults. By forgetting that, Marianne had committed a grievous error and put everyone in jeopardy.
A memory from long ago came to her: the old house on Tennessee Avenue and the secondhand piano with its yellowing keys that had occupied a corner of the den. In the memory, Jamie was only three or four and sat on the stool at the piano, his legs still too short to reach the pedals.
He couldn’t yet read, but he was already composing. He played for hours every day, determined that the music coming from the keys would match the music he heard in his head. That intensity, that obsessive need to perform perfectly, had been difficult for her and David to watch in their young son.
As Jamie grew older, his obsession for music and his need to perfect it hadn’t lessened. He’d quickly mastered several instruments and by the time he turned fifteen was composing music that would make him famous.
This writer was equally talented, and although it was with words and not music, she possessed a similar intensity and obsessive need to finish what she started. She wouldn’t quit like the others.
Marianne returned the file to the drawer and took out the small black-and-white snapshot she also kept there. The photograph was creased, slightly out of focus and more than twenty-five years old, but she treasured it for the
bittersweet feeling it always gave her when she looked at it.
“Say, ‘Weasels want weenies on Wednesday,”’ David had told the boys just before she’d snapped their picture, sending them into a fit of giggles. At the time, she hadn’t known it would be the last photograph of the three of them together.
Less than two weeks later a car had struck and killed David as he crossed the street in front of the foundry where he worked. Jamie had been ten and Bret five. She’d struggled financially and emotionally to raise them alone until George Conner had given her a job as a receptionist in his dental office and married her a few months later.
Loud knocking on the door of the study and their housekeeper’s voice jolted Marianne out of the past and into the present. “Mrs. Conner, lunch is ready, ma’am.”
“Thank you, Agnes. I’ll be there in a minute.”
She put the photograph back and started to close the drawer, but David’s face drew her gaze again. Dear sweet David who had thought her flawless and had vowed to love her always. He’d never have believed her capable of such deceit.
“What would you think of me now,” she whispered to his image, “if you knew I sacrificed one of our sons to save the other?”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SMELL WAS the first thing Kate noticed—manure and urine, mixed with other odors of the animals penned in the large metal building. She’d never been to a horse sale before, had never touched a horse until yesterday, when Hayes had jerked her rudely down from the limb of that tree and onto the back of one.
This place was full of horses, and they could be looked at, stroked, even ridden if she cared to do so. She didn’t. She wasn’t that brave. Or crazy. But before she left tonight, she intended to at least rub one to see what it felt like. That she was brave enough to do.
Glancing around, she suspected right away that she’d chosen the wrong thing to wear. The pristine white slacks and top were cool but impractical for the dirty barn. They made her stand out like a beacon in a sea of denim, boots and western shirts.
