by Tami Hoag
Sharon touched his arm, wanting to drag him away. Business always came first with him—unless he was smitten. “Bryce—”
“I said later,” he said sharply.
Sharon bared her teeth at him and glided away with no outward sign of the hurt or the uneasiness that churned inside her. Lucas followed with Uma tagging after him, a finger hooked in the back of his swim trunks and a towel slung over her shoulders to cover her token breasts.
“Have you worked up an appetite yet?” Bryce grinned.
Samantha's lips twisted in a wry little smile as she swung her endless legs over the side of the chaise and sat up. Mona Lisa in Montana, Bryce thought. If she ever realized the power she could wield over men with those secret, amused smiles, she could be formidable. An irresistible challenge. Of course, she was that already; she just didn't know it. The irony only made her more desirable.
“This isn't considered work where I'm from,” she said, swinging her hair back over her shoulder.
Bryce eased himself down on the chaise to sit beside her. He nodded toward Fabian. Oversize pecs glistening with baby oil, the blond male model appeared in deepest concentration as he tilted his sun reflector to direct the maximum rays to the underside of his lantern jaw. “Don't tell him that. He'll make a million doing a calendar if he keeps his tan even.”
Uncertain whether or not he was teasing, Samantha gave him a look that managed to combine skepticism and puzzlement. Bryce reached up and stroked the back of his hand down her cheek, then tipped her chin up. “You could make a million too, if you wanted.”
She laughed. “Me? I don't think so.”
He frowned a little. “You could do anything, sweetheart. No limits—”
“—But the sky,” she finished. “There's a lot of sky in Montana.”
“And plenty of opportunities elsewhere. You're a beautiful young woman, Samantha. You could be the toast of L.A. or New York. All you have to do is believe in yourself.”
“I can't go to L.A. I have a husband.”
“Not in evidence,” Bryce said, not bothering to disguise the disapproval in his voice. She flinched, almost imperceptibly. He pressed harder on the nerve he'd struck, without remorse or pity. “He treats you like a second-class citizen. No, it's worse than that. He doesn't treat you like anything at all.”
Samantha bit her lip and looked away from him, fixing her gaze on the glazed lapis tile that bordered the pool so he couldn't see the tears fill her eyes. Bryce slipped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a compassionate squeeze, pressing a phantom kiss to her hair.
“I'm sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured. “I didn't mean to upset you. It's just that it makes me angry to see the way he ignores you.”
It amazed him a little that he felt so strongly about the girl, when she had been nothing more than a chess piece a week before. He sat there beside her with his arm around her and wanted good things for her. He couldn't remember the last time that had happened. Years. Never. His focus had always been ruthlessly on himself. Now he broadened the scope a little to include Samantha. He could have everything he wanted—the power, the land, Samantha—and give her things too—opportunities, fame—and watch her blossom and know that he was responsible. Heady stuff, playing the part of a magnanimous god. He thought he just might grow to like it.
“You can have so much more than he's giving you,” he murmured, pushing a little harder, reminding her that Will Rafferty was giving her nothing but heartache.
Samantha looked away to the shaded patio tables on the other side of the pool. Uma was devouring a small mountain of fresh fruit. Across the table from her, Ben Lucas dunked a strawberry in a glass of champagne, popped it in his mouth, and flashed a smile. Sharon sat at a separate table, ignoring the others, ignoring the food, paging idly through Cosmopolitan.
“I don't think your cousin likes me very much,” Samantha said softly.
“Sharon?” Bryce shrugged, tightening his arm around Samantha. “Sharon doesn't like anyone. She's very . . . territorial. And that's one of her better qualities.”
“Sounds like you don't like her very much.”
He thought about that for a moment and sighed, stroking his hand absently up and down her arm. “I'm tired of her theatrics, I suppose. But we have a long history, Sharon and I. And she is, after all, family.”
Loyalty would appeal to Samantha, he thought, make him look kind and good when he was generally neither of those things. And it was easier to explain than the truth. The truth would shock her, repulse her. She was too naive, had led far too sheltered a life up here in the mountains, where people still believed in quaint concepts like morality.
The French doors to the house swung open and Reisa, his housekeeper, trundled out. The woman had the body of an oil drum and a face with the shape and expression of a frying pan, but she could cook and she spoke little English, two essential requirements for the job. Marilee Jennings trailed in her broad wake. Bryce felt his interest shift and heighten, like a bird dog going on point.
“Marilee!” he called, rising from the chaise and drawing Samantha up with him. He herded the girl around the end of the pool to meet his newest guest.
Mari tried to muster a smile, a monumental task after spending two hours in the company of Sheriff Quinn and his deputies. The sheriff had been none too pleased to find her in the company of a corpse.
Bryce showed no outward signs of having received a distress call from a buddy. If he knew anything about the judge's demise, then he was as cold-blooded as the lizards that had given up their hides for his belt. He graced her with his brilliant smile. The sun shone down like a benediction on his high forehead.
“I'm glad you decided to join us after all,” he said. “Have a seat. I'll have Reisa get you something to drink.”
“This isn't exactly a social call,” Mari said, her gaze skating across the faces of the assembled personalities and coming back to rest on Bryce. “I thought you should know—since you were a friend of his—MacDonald Townsend is dead. He killed himself sometime last night.”
Bryce's features folded into an appropriate expression of grim disbelief. “Jesus, you're joking.”
“My sense of humor doesn't run that black. He's dead.”
Ben Lucas shoved his chair back, legs scratching against the flagstone, and rose to come stand beside Bryce. Shoving his sunglasses on top of his head, he scowled at Mari as if she had been the one to pull the trigger. “Townsend is dead? Christ, what happened?”
Mari shrugged. Her hands found the pockets of her baggy jeans and slipped in, fingers knotting into tight fists. A gentle breeze swept across the terrace, blowing a chunk of hair across her face. She tossed it back with a jerk of her head. “I couldn't say. I don't think he left a note. I stopped by his place this morning because, well, he knew Lucy and I thought we could just talk, you know. I found him in his study.”
“That must have been terrible for you,” Bryce murmured. He closed the distance between them and hooked an arm around her shoulders, steering her toward a seat at the table where Sharon sat stonefaced, her eyes narrowed.
“Sit down.” He looked over his shoulder at the housekeeper hovering near the French doors. “Reisa, will you bring Ms. Jennings a cognac?”
“No, thanks,” Mari said. The scotch she'd consumed at Townsend's had long since burned off. Her mind was achingly clear, and she intended to keep it that way as long as she was in this snake pit. “Just a Coke would be fine.”
Bryce frowned a little, but nodded to the woman.
“I wonder if the police have called Irene,” Lucas said to Bryce. He cut a glance at Mari, his mouth set in a tight line. “Mrs. Townsend,” he explained. Before she could acknowledge that in any way, he focused on Bryce again. “I'll call her. It's better if this kind of news comes from a friend.”
“Yes, of course. Use the phone in my office,” Bryce said, rubbing his chin. “In fact, I'll come with you. I'd like to offer any help I might be able to give.”
The
two disappeared into the house. Mari curbed the urge to follow them. She wasn't sure what she had hoped to gain by breaking the news. Bryce didn't strike her as the sort of man who would break down under the weight of an overloaded conscience, and confess. Nor was she about to confront him with any of her nebulous suspicions. That would be a good way to get dead if he turned out to be an evil overlord, a good way to make herself a powerful enemy, in any event.
A strained silence descended on the pool-party crowd. Samantha Rafferty slid down into the seat Lucas had vacated and pulled the oversize man's shirt she wore close around her. Her dark eyes were wide with uncertainty now that Bryce had left her side. Sharon sat stiffly in the chair across from Mari, an ice sculpture in St. Tropez swimwear. Across the way, the bimbob rolled over on his chaise and flexed his buttocks.
“MacDonald Townsend,” Uma said as she picked up half a dozen slices of star fruit off her plate and crammed them all into her mouth at once. Her face pinched into a knot as she chewed, an expression that might have been concentration or a commentary on the tartness of the fruit. She wiped the juice from her over-inflated lower lip with the back of her hand. “Did he used to be on Days of Our Lives?”
Sharon rolled her eyes. The bimbob made no comment.
“Do you think she knows about the phone call?”
Bryce swiveled his chair behind his massive teak desk, elbows on the armrests. “It doesn't make any difference. The call will be a matter of record. All anyone has to do is check Townsend's phone bill to see that call was made. On the other hand, no one can prove I ever received the message.”
He plucked up a microcassette from the desktop and tossed it to Lucas. “Damned answering machines. Always on the blink.”
Lucas walked the cassette between his fingers. “No one would expect you to answer a call in the middle of the night. There's no staff on at that hour to take it for you.”
“Just that damned machine,” Bryce said, practicing his frown. “I've been meaning to get a new one. Maybe if I had . . . well, I suppose I would have been too late in any case.”
“Nice.” Lucas nodded. “A small show of conscience and regret. Very believable.”
“I could have been an actor,” Bryce conceded, “but it wouldn't have been nearly so exciting.”
There was no question he would have been too late to save Townsend even if he had made the effort. He had listened to the tape first thing that morning. After a tearful, rambling monologue of confession and accusation had come the sound of a small explosion. Townsend had left his suicide note on the answering machine and recorded his own death. Self-destruction in the age of technology.
“He never had any nerve,” Bryce said without compassion. “I detest a man with no nerve. It's just as well he's dead. I couldn't have stood watching him grovel and whine much longer.”
Lucas tossed the cassette up and caught it with the same hand. “As long as he didn't leave behind anything that might be incriminating to the rest of us.”
“He didn't have anything on anyone. He wanted to be a player, but he had no leverage in the game.”
“He might have left behind a signed affidavit for all we know,” Lucas said, a small line of worry digging in between his brows. It was the same look he used in court to put doubt in the minds of jurors. He tossed the tape up again.
Bryce rose from his chair and snagged the cassette in one fluid move. He gave the attorney a steady look. “He didn't.”
With a flick of the wrist he pulled the tape out of the cassette, set it ablaze with a twenty-four-carat-gold lighter, and dropped it into the Baccarat ashtray on his desk.
CHAPTER
23
BRYCE PERSUADED Mari to stay. He was the only one who made any effort to do so. She declined the offer of a swimsuit. It didn't seem wise to get half naked with this crowd. For one thing, she didn't consider herself to be in the bikini league, bodywise. Her self-esteem was already reeling from Rafferty's rejection. She really didn't need to compare belly buttons with the likes of Uma Kimball or Sharon Russell. Especially Sharon, whose figure belonged in a Frederick's of Hollywood window display.
Besides, with the possible exception of Samantha, she trusted none of them. Lucas tracked her every move with his shark eyes. Sharon's gaze was clinically cool, like that of a scientist watching a mouse in a maze. The bimbob was on another planet and Uma was from another planet. Mari felt as if she'd fallen into an alternate reality, one that was littered with corpses and shadowed with menace.
Bryce played host with a subdued air. He chose to sit with her in the shade, Samantha to his right side and an untouched glass of scotch in front of him.
“He was distraught over Lucy's accident,” he said, tracing patterns in the condensation on the glass. “I suppose that was part of it.”
“They were that close?” Mari asked, her eyes on his bony hands as he fondled the tumbler. The action seemed borne of impatience rather than a need to soothe some inner restlessness.
Bryce's eyes cut to her sharply, though he didn't move a muscle. His voice was perfectly calm. “He gave Lucy the money to buy the ranch. She didn't tell you?”
“I suppose I didn't really want to know. I'm not a big advocate of illicit affairs.”
Samantha shifted uncomfortably in her chair, ducking her head as if she wanted to make herself very small and disappear. She had gone in and dressed with obvious attention to detail, like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother's closet. It somehow made her seem just as vulnerable as she had looked in the bathing suit. Mari thought of Will and bit her tongue for punishment.
“That's the irony, you know,” Bryce said on a sigh as he rattled the ice in his scotch. “Townsend wasn't either. He was obsessed with Lucy, but he carried around a lot of guilt because of it. He wouldn't leave his wife for her, even though he and Irene haven't had much of a marriage in recent years.” He took a sip of the drink, just enough to taste the smoky quality of the liquor, and stared off across the pool. “Foolish, hanging on to something meaningless when he could have started fresh.”
Again, Samantha's chair rattled against the flagstones as she shifted positions. “Maybe he still loved his wife,” she said quietly. “Maybe he just couldn't help himself.”
Bryce gave her a long, level look. “We can always help ourselves, sweetheart.”
The girl's eyes filled. Mari wanted to hug her and tell her Will still loved her, that he was worth hanging on to, worth fighting for, but she didn't know that. Not really. It was just a feeling, and feelings had already gotten her in trouble with the Rafferty brothers. Still, she couldn't just sit there and watch Bryce try to lure an innocent into his fold. It would have been like standing by with her hands in her pockets while satanists made off with the village virgin. She was here and she was accountable. In her heart she had made her commitment to this land, a commitment that had nothing to do with ownership and everything to do with personal integrity.
“If people could always help themselves,” she said, “then Betty Ford wouldn't have a clinic. There's a lot more to people's problems than weakness.”
Bryce's small mouth tightened. Mari ignored him and met Samantha's pain-filled gaze, trying her best to communicate the personal applications of her statement through mental telepathy.
“That's a very romantic notion: to think that everyone is redeemable—or worth redeeming,” Lucas said. Apparently feeling near nudity was an affront to the memory of the dead, he had changed out of his Speedos into a pair of loose black lounging pants and a wood-block print shirt worn open à la Bryce. “Rates of recidivism in our prisons dispel your theory, Marilee.”
“We're not talking about hardened criminals. We're talking about a good man who made some bad choices.”
Ostensibly Townsend, though Bryce knew the conversation had passed beyond the judge. He couldn't call her on it without making another strong attack on Will Rafferty, and clearly Samantha was not ready to hear it. He sighed and tipped his head, conceding the point to Marilee,
and reevaluating her status as a threat.
“You have a very naive view of humanity,” Sharon said, raising a margarita to her lips. She sat between the two men, still in her bathing suit with a sheer black cover-up falling back off her angular shoulders, not covering much of anything.
“I prefer to think of it as optimistic,” Mari countered with a brittle smile.
“Stupid,” she pronounced bluntly. Her attention had shifted to Bryce, who was captivated by Samantha, who was staring down through the glass-topped table at her toenails. “Everyone is out for their own selfish interest. The smart ones climb over anyone they need to to get what they want. The ruthless ones wear cleats. The fools are trampled and left for dead. It's every man for himself.”
Mari raised her brows. “Well, you'd know more about that than me,” she said pleasantly. “I've led a very sheltered life,” she added as Bryce's cousin began to redden around the gills.
“Stick around,” Sharon said, rising. “You'll learn fast enough.”
“Fun girl,” Mari murmured, rolling her eyes as the statuesque blonde dropped her cover up on the tile apron and dove into the pool. Her long body sliced into the water like a knife. “I'll bet the film-noir crowd thinks she's a million laughs.”
“Sharon learned the hard way that life can be exceedingly cruel,” Bryce said. “She's had to develop a survivalist's perspective.”
“Hmm.” Mari pictured Bryce's cousin in eye black, a chic camouflage jump suit with an M-16 in her hands. It really didn't seem much of a stretch.
From the front side of the mansion came the sound of a truck engine with no muffler, a loud roaring that even managed to rouse Fabian from his concentrated sunbathing. Everyone looked toward the side gate expectantly.
“Delivery truck,” Bryce grumbled, rising. “For what they charge to come out here, they should be able to afford gold-plated exhaust systems.”
He let himself out the gate and came flying backward through it a moment later. The tall, weathered wood gate slapped against the stone wall with a resounding crack, and Bryce landed on his ass on the terrace. Everyone at the table came to attention as one, like a herd of wildebeest ready to bolt and run.
