White Hot

by Sandra Brown

  “Oh, right. It’s for the taxpayers’ benefit that Huff bribes local law officials.”

  “Everybody benefits from his generosity, Sayre.”

  “Including you.”

  “And you.” He pushed himself away from the tree trunk and walked toward her. “Tell me, would you have rather spent the night in jail those times Red caught you driving drunk. Or skinny-dipping. Or making out on a city park picnic table. Or drag racing down Evangeline Street?

  “On those occasions—and I’ve only scratched the surface of what I’ve heard about your adventurous youth—weren’t you glad that Huff slipped the sheriff a few bills each month so your indiscretions would go overlooked and unpunished? Never mind answering. The answer is obvious. Try looking at the big picture for a change and you’ll see—”

  “What I see, Mr. Merchant, is how neatly you’ve rationalized your corruption. Is that how you manage to sleep at night?”

  He stepped close enough for his pants legs to brush against her shins. As on the piano bench, he was crowding her. She had to either tilt her head back to look into his face or fall back several steps, which she wasn’t about to do. She wasn’t going to give an inch of ground.

  He spoke in a rough whisper. “For the last time, Sayre, call me Beck. And if you want to know how I sleep, consider this an invitation to find out. Anytime.”

  Before she struck him, which she was sorely tempted to do, she turned away and began walking toward the house.

  “He died.”

  Stopping, she looked back.

  “Old Mitchell,” he said. “A couple years ago, they found him in his house. He’d been dead for several days.”

  • • •

  Following the departure of the last guests, Huff went upstairs to his bedroom to exchange his dark suit and dress shirt for more comfortable clothes.

  In the hallway, when he came even with Danny’s room, he paused, but didn’t open the door. Selma had closed off the room, leaving it as Danny had on Sunday morning when he went to church. She would probably wait for a signal from him on when to reopen the room, sort through Danny’s things, decide what to keep and what to give away to charity. That task would fall to her. He wasn’t sure he could look at or touch anything that had belonged to Danny, ever again.

  He wasn’t without regret, but what was done was done. Dwelling on it would be a waste of time and energy, and Huff never squandered either.

  On his way back downstairs, he glanced out the double French doors adjacent to Laurel’s portrait on the landing. The doors opened onto the second-floor balcony. He spotted Sayre and Beck standing on the bank of the bayou in the shade beneath a grove of trees.

  Amused, he anchored his cigarette between his lips, placed his hands on his hips, and stood there to watch. Beck was carrying out his latest assignment and, as usual, was applying himself. Sayre just might have met her match.

  She was a double handful of hotheaded, short-tempered, outspoken female, but Beck had the tenacity of a pit bull. He hadn’t retreated yet, where a lesser man would have waved the white flag after just one of Sayre’s acid put-downs.

  In her whole life, the girl had never done anything without putting up an argument about it first. Even her birth had been a battle royal. Laurel was in labor for twelve hours, twice as long as she’d been with the boys.

  Sayre, her temperament already in keeping with the color of her hair, had emerged from her mother’s body red in the face with anger and screaming in rebellion over the trauma of—or maybe the delay of—her birth. She’d been giving those around her a hard time ever since.

  No doubt she was giving hell to Beck now, although Huff wondered what Beck was saying to her to have kept her in place for even this long. Sayre wasn’t one to stand and listen when what was being said was something she didn’t choose to hear. But they were standing practically toe-to-toe and seemed to be deeply engrossed in their conversation or . . .

  Deeply engrossed in each other.

  That thought gave him pause. He looked at the two with a fresh perspective, and damned if they didn’t make quite a pair.

  Sayre had a smart mouth on her. She never approached anything with less than absolute passion. But Huff assumed that her passion for issues would carry over into areas that would make a man extremely happy, at least content enough to put up with her less desirable traits.

  As for Beck . . . If you were a young woman, what wasn’t there to like about Beck?

  Through the French doors, Huff watched as Beck stepped up closer to Sayre. She was taller than the average woman even in her stocking feet, but Beck still towered over her. They were drawn up tighter than a pair of bowstrings on the verge of snapping, and for a moment Huff thought Beck was going to grab her and plant one on her.

  But Sayre spun away from him and aimed for the house. She hadn’t gotten far, however, before Beck said something that caused her to turn around. Whatever he said must’ve pissed her off good, because when she turned once again in the direction of the house, she was practically marching.

  “This ought to be fun.” Chuckling to himself, Huff continued downstairs and was there to intercept Sayre in the central hallway when she angrily pushed through the kitchen doors. Selma was right behind her, urging her to sit down and have a plate of food.

  But Sayre didn’t address Selma’s nagging. She drew up short when she saw Huff. Selma, ever attuned to the goings-on of the family she served, disappeared back into the kitchen.

  Huff assumed his most intimidating scowl as he looked his daughter up and down. He could tell by the fit of her black dress that her figure hadn’t suffered in the ten years she’d been away. Maturity had chiseled away some fullness in her face. She looked like a woman now, not a girl.

  At the funeral, gussied up in her wide-brimmed hat and dark glasses, she’d looked like a grieving movie star or the bereaved widow of a head of state. She had acquired the classiness that Laurel had always wanted her to have, but she had kept the haughty air she’d been born with. It provoked as well as amused him.

  “Hello, Sayre.”

  “Huff.”

  “You always did call me Huff, didn’t you?”

  “That and a lot worse.”

  He removed the cigarette from his mouth and laughed. “You came up with some doozies, as I recall. Were you going to leave without even speaking to me?”

  “What I had to say to you, I said before I left. Ten years hasn’t changed my mind about anything.”

  “Out of respect for Danny, you could have paid me the courtesy of asking how I’m getting on, how I’m dealing with my grief.”

  “I don’t owe you any courtesy. I don’t respect you. As for your grief, you didn’t even shut down the furnaces today. Danny’s death was tragic, but it doesn’t change the character of this family.”

  “Your family.”

  “I’ve rejected my family. I want nothing to do with you or Chris or your foundry. I came to Destiny to say a personal and private good-bye to Danny at his grave. I was prevented from doing that when you sent your lackey after me.”

  “Beck didn’t toss you over his shoulder and carry you here.”

  “No, but he cleverly baited me with something he knew I couldn’t ignore. The ploy worked. I came. But now, I’ve done my duty. I’m going to the cemetery, then I’m going home.”

  “You are home, Sayre.”

  She laughed, but not with humor. “You never give up, do you, Huff?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Well do yourself a favor this once. Face up to the reality that you have zero influence over me.” She formed a circle with her thumb and fingers. “Zero. I will not heed a single thing you say to me. And don’t bother threatening me. You couldn’t possibly do anything to me that would be worse than what you’ve already done. I’m no longer afraid of you.”

  “Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  He crossed to the door of the den and pushed it open. “Prove it.”

  chap
ter 5

  He had issued a challenge from which she couldn’t back down, just as Beck Merchant had done earlier. It wasn’t within her to stand down. She had inherited some traits from her father, like it or not.

  Acknowledging that she was probably playing right into his hands, she followed him into the den. She had said she was no longer afraid of him. He probably didn’t believe that, but whether he did or not wasn’t important. What was important was that she believe it. She didn’t need to prove her fearlessness to him. But she needed to prove it to herself.

  From over two thousand miles away, it was easy to boast about recovery and indifference. However, the only valid test of one’s mettle was to come face-to-face with the enemy who had dealt you near-fatal blows. Only by doing so would she be wholly convinced that her fear of Huff was long past and that he no longer held sway over her.

  So she followed him into the den. With the exception of the large-screen TV, it looked much the same as she remembered. As she looked about, she tried to recall one pleasant memory associated with this room. There wasn’t one. For her Huff’s den evoked only painful memories.

  She’d been banished from it when she was a little girl having to compete for Huff’s attention. Chris and Danny had been allowed, even welcomed, into this inner sanctum, but rarely had she been, and it was an exclusion based solely on her gender.

  It was in this room that Huff had explained to her and her brothers how sick their mother was. Acting as spokesperson, she had asked if Laurel was going to die. When he told them yes, she and Danny began to cry. Huff had no patience for tears. He told them to buck up, to behave like grown-ups, like Hoyles. Hoyles never cried, he told them, and he held Chris up as their example. You don’t see him crying, do you?

  But she had cried in this room on one other occasion. She had cried copiously, hysterically, begging Huff not to do what he had ultimately done. That was the night she couldn’t forgive. That was the night she had come to hate him.

  His footsteps sounded heavy on the hardwood floor as he crossed to the bar and offered her a drink.

  “No, thank you.”

  He poured a whiskey for himself. “Want me to have Selma get you something to eat? She’s itching to feed you.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “And even if you were starving, you wouldn’t eat food paid for by Hoyle Enterprises. Isn’t that right?” He sank into his recliner and looked at her over the rim of his glass as he took a sip of bourbon.

  “Is that your opening volley, Huff? Do you want to see which of us can score the most points against the other? Batter each other with words until one of us concedes? Because if that’s what you have in mind, I don’t want to play. I’ll never play any of your damn games again.”

  “Your mother would not have approved of that kind of language.”

  She leveled a condemning stare on him. “My mother would not have approved of a lot of things. Should we talk about some of those?”

  “Still sassing me, I see. Well, I can’t say as I’m surprised. In fact, I think I’d have been disappointed if you’d lost that sass.” He reclined his chair, reached for a box of matches on the side table, and lit a cigarette. “Sit down. Tell me about your business.”

  She sat down on one of two matching sofas that faced each other, separated by a coffee table. “It’s doing well.”

  “One thing I can’t stomach, Sayre, is false modesty. If you’ve done it, you’ve earned the right to brag about it. I read that piece about you in the Chronicle. It was quite a spread. Pictures and everything. Said you were the decorator of choice for San Francisco’s wealthy and elite.”

  She didn’t ask him how he’d learned about the newspaper feature story. He was capable of anything, even spying. He probably knew more about her life in California than she even suspected. Beck Merchant probably gathered information for him.

  “What did you have to pay that old queen to buy out his business?” he asked. “Bet you paid too much.”

  “That ‘old queen’ was my mentor and dear friend.”

  She had interned for the renowned decorator while attending classes to earn her degree. Upon her graduation, he’d made her a full-fledged employee. But she was more than just someone who earned a commission on anything she sold from his home design studio. From the outset, he had groomed her to take over his business.

  He had sent her on shopping expeditions for fabrics in Hong Kong and antiques in France, implicitly trusting her instincts, her business acumen, and her taste. He had forty years of experience along with a directory of valuable contacts; Sayre contributed fresh and innovative ideas. They had made a great team.

  “When he decided to retire,” she continued, “he made the terms of sale very easy for me.” Under her management, the business had grown. She had paid off her debt within three years, half the anticipated time. But she didn’t tell Huff that, considering that her financial affairs were none of his business.

  “Hanging window curtains makes you quite a chunk of change.”

  He was deliberately belittling her business, but she didn’t take the bait. “I love my work. I would almost do it for free. Fortunately, it’s turned out to be lucrative as well as enjoyable.”

  “You’ve earned back your investment several times over.” He rattled the ice cubes in his glass. “So those marriages of yours weren’t so terrible after all, were they? If it wasn’t for the cash settlements I insisted on in the prenups, you wouldn’t have been able to buy out that fairy and do the work you love so much.”

  In order to speak, she had to relax her clenched jaw. “I earned those cash settlements, Huff.”

  “And there are worse ways to make a living,” Chris remarked as he sauntered into the room. “Making a career of divorcing rich men has its perks.” He sat on the opposite sofa and smiled at her across the coffee table. “Not a bad career path at all.”

  Her inclination was to get up and storm out, but she knew that would only amuse him. Giving her older brother that satisfaction would be worse than enduring his snide grin. “You’re as insufferable as ever, Chris. But you’re right about the perks of divorcing rich men. I’m sure your ex-wife would agree.”

  His grin slipped a little, but he said smoothly, “You’ve got your facts wrong, Sayre. Mary Beth refuses to divorce me.”

  She had assumed that the noticeable absence of Chris’s wife from the family fold indicated that her brother’s turbulent marriage had finally come to an end. “Why isn’t she here?”

  “She lives in Mexico now. In a house overlooking the blue Pacific. We were vacationing down there. I imbibed a few too many margaritas on the beach one afternoon. Mary Beth has an uncanny knack for seizing an advantage. I woke up the next day a hungover homeowner. All according to her plan. She got the house with the servants first, then announced that she wanted a separation. Indefinitely,” he added, shooting Huff a glance.

  Sayre hadn’t known her sister-in-law because Chris had married after she left, but she reasoned that, for putting up with him, his missus probably deserved a staffed house on the Pacific coast. She doubted that marriage had put a stop to his countless affairs.

  During Chris’s explanation of his wife’s absence, Huff had remained reclined in his chair, puffing on his cigarette. But he wasn’t relaxed. He was vexed. Sayre noticed now that he was holding his highball glass so tightly his thick fingers had turned white. Huff was unhappy over Chris’s marital status, and suddenly Sayre realized the reason for his displeasure.

  “No children.”

  Huff swiveled his head like an owl, switching his baleful gaze from Chris to her. “Not yet. But it’s not over.”

  Chris’s strained expression turned into a smile as he glanced beyond her. “Come on in, Beck.”

  “I don’t want to interrupt.” He spoke from behind Sayre, near the door. She didn’t turn around.

  “Please do,” Chris said. “I welcome the reprieve. This family is yet to have a gathering that would leave any of us with a warm
fuzzy.”

  Sayre heard Beck approach. He rounded the end of the sofa and said, “Red’s here, Huff.”

  “He left an hour ago.”

  “He’s back, and this time it’s in an official capacity. Wayne Scott is with him. They want to talk to us.”

  “What about?”

  Beck looked at him, and his frown said, What do you think?

  “How long will it take?” Chris asked. “I’m tired of the funeral atmosphere and hoped to go out for a while.”

  Sayre was dismayed by his self-absorption, although she shouldn’t have been. He had always thought about Chris first. He was interested in something only insofar as it affected him, his plans, his wishes. His selfishness, which had been honed by Huff’s indulgence of him, knew no bounds, extending even to the day he had buried his brother.

  Unable to bear his company any longer, she stood up. “I’ll go now and leave you to your meeting with Red.” Looking at Huff, she said, “Danny was unarguably the best of us. I deeply regret the loss.”

  Looking down at her surviving brother, she said, “Chris . . .” Beyond that, she could think of nothing to say to him that wouldn’t have been hypocritical. “Good-bye.” She turned toward Beck Merchant. For him she had only a curt nod.

  But as she tried to go around him, he touched her arm. “Red would like for you to stay.”

  Before Sayre could recover from her surprise enough to speak, Chris asked, “Why her?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “He must have said something,” she argued.

  Beck looked down at her with asperity. “He said just what I told you. He’d like for you to stick around. Should I show them in, Huff?”

  “This is a damn bother. Like Chris, I’ve had it up to here with thinking and talking about death. I’m sick of it. But we’d just as well get this over. Bring them in, Beck.”

  Sayre had no intention of staying and would tell Red Harper as much. Beck disappeared only long enough to escort the veteran sheriff and a younger man into the room.

  She went on the offensive immediately. “Sheriff Harper, I’m trying to make a late flight out of New Orleans. I’m already pressed for time.”