Double Dealing

by Jayne Castle

  All points considered, there hadn’t seemed much percentage in hanging on to Samantha Maitland. There were other equally capable and far more predictable assistants, and there were other potentially more useful wives.

  Jeff Ingram swallowed the subtle warning about being replaced, managing not to grit his teeth too loudly in the process, and leaned forward earnestly to go through the rest of the data in the folder. By the time he had finished, Buchanan seemed quite pleased with progress, and the younger man’s enthusiasm was back in full sail.

  “I’ll get on the last of the details this week. We’re buying the larger parcels through the usual dummy corporations,” Jeff summarized briskly, “and we’ll use a lot of small real estate brokers to pick up the remainder. Didn’t want to send out any ripples of warning on this one, so we’ve been playing it very low key, I see no major problems, sir.”

  “And the restaurant?”

  “The restaurant will be the easiest of all. As I said, rumor has it that the owner wants to sell. We’ll make him a generous offer shortly.” Jeff allowed himself the smallest of assured smiles. Buchanan didn’t like his staff to be overconfident, but he did approve of a certain degree of assured competence. Jeff hoped the smile was right. The son of a bitch could cut you to ribbons for something as small as an overconfident smile. “No problem.”

  With a nod of dismissal Drew watched Jeff walk out of the office. Then he swiveled the padded leather chair around so that he could contemplate the expensive ocean view. The Phoenix project was on line, which meant he could turn his attention to other matters this afternoon.

  Matters such as his date with Carol Galloway that evening. The slow, half smile edged his mouth but never reached the tawny eyes. The smiling eyes were saved for occasions when other people were around. Drew Buchanan had the virtue of utter truthfulness with himself. He was deceptive only with others. It was a crucial factor in his success, and he knew it.

  Carol was beautiful. Blond, classical features, good legs, and high, firm breasts. Much better breasts than Samantha had, Drew decided objectively. Samantha had been much too small for his tastes. He really was a tit man at heart.

  Carol also knew clothes, and her well-bred grace and social contacts were exactly what was needed in the wife of a man who had discovered during the past three years that he liked mingling with the political elite even more than he liked mingling with the corporate elite. The fact that she was a little cold in bed didn’t matter; it was even an asset. He was weary of too much passion in a woman. Passionate women inevitably demanded things like love and passion and fidelity in return. He preferred light, uncumbersome relationships. Another reason why Samantha probably wouldn’t have worked out well as a wife, he decided. He’d always had the feeling she wanted too much from him.

  But most important of all, with Carol there was never that uneasy feeling of not knowing exactly what she was thinking and what she was likely to do. He and Carol understood each other completely. Each had something the other wanted. It was a well-defined exchange of her family’s political connections for his money and clout in the corporate world. A business arrangement, really. He had no fear of being caught off guard in a business arrangement because when it came to business, Drew knew he was damn good. The best. The one in control.

  No doubt about it; Carol’s dowry was going to be her well-connected family. She was the daughter of the man who would almost certainly be the next U.S. senator from the state of Florida. Jake Galloway didn’t have as much money as Victor Thorndyke had had, but that was no longer important now that Drew had enough of his own.

  For Drew Buchanan had learned that there was something even more interesting in life than money. Something called power. Politics was the path which led to real power.

  ***

  The flight back to Seattle was uneventful, even soothing, Samantha decided. From thirty thousand feet one’s problems seemed a little less real, and once back on the ground again there were the welcome distractions of locating her Fiat in the airport parking lot, waiting in line for the ferry which would transport her back to the island she called home, and the rain. It was still raining, just as it had been when she’d left for California.

  The weather suited her mood. California had been too damn sunny and cheerful.

  The old Victorian house awaited her patiently, but it did not wait alone, Samantha realized as she spotted the black Ferrari in the curving drive. Eric was here. Just what she needed after a long, unsatisfactory business trip. She loved her half brother dearly, but his presence didn’t always bode well-for her peace of mind. Then again, she could use whatever interruption Eric Thorndyke might be bringing into her life. The alternative was to spend the evening dwelling on the time with Gabriel.

  She was about as likely to hear from Sinclair in three days as she was to learn how to crochet. The odds were decidedly against either event, she thought morosely as she parked the car.

  “Where the hell have you been? I had to pry open a back window yesterday to get into the house. What happened to the key you always leave in the flower box?” Eric met her at the door with a can of beer in one hand and a bag of natural-style potato chips in the other. He was frowning, the Thorndyke blue eyes brooding and impatient. Samantha had inherited Vera’s eyes, a fact which had always pleased her mother.

  But the son born to Victor Thorndyke and his wife Emily had been a truly legitimate member of the family, unlike his half sister. He had wound up with his father’s eyes, near-black hair, and dark good looks. He was one year younger than Samantha and the only member of the Thorndyke clan she could tolerate for more than five minutes.

  It was probably the fact that he was so much younger than his older, legitimate brother and sister which had initially accounted for his ready acceptance of Samantha. She had been close to his age, and her natural independence had appealed to the rebel in a young boy struggling for his own identity and style in a domineering family. They had mutually agreed to accept each other from the day they had met when Samantha was sixteen and Eric fifteen.

  Samantha had always known her father’s name, of course, and clearly understood why her last name wasn’t Thorndyke. Vera had made no secret out of it, nor had she seen any reason to pretend for the child’s sake that her father had died. Samantha had been forced to learn pride very quickly in the face of the cruel questions of the other children in school. Pride and a fierce defensiveness of her mother. Vera had told her, too, that Victor Thorndyke had another family and Samantha would never be a part of it. Vera explained very carefully that Samantha didn’t need her father.

  To a large extent, Samantha supposed, that was true. Her mother gave her everything; an excellent education, maternal devotion which, though of a somewhat unconventional nature, was nevertheless quite intense, and the ability to stand on her own two feet. Invaluable gifts for any child.

  But even when she had been very young, the curiosity was there, moving about occasionally in the back of Samantha’s mind and generating a kind of restlessness. She comprehended the fact that her father didn’t even know of her existence, and she understood when her mother explained that a man in Victor Thorndyke’s position would not be at all pleased to learn he had an illegitimate daughter after all these years.

  Vera even explained that the legitimate members of the Thorndyke family had rights. Samantha was told early on that it wouldn’t be very pleasant for Victor’s wife and children to have inflicted on them the knowledge of a daughter born to another woman. And it wasn’t as if Victor had deliberately gotten Vera pregnant and just abandoned her. It was Vera who had terminated the affair once her goal of conceiving Samantha had been accomplished.

  “Didn’t you ever think of asking him to divorce his wife and marry you?” Samantha had asked naive y one

  day at the age of twelve.

  “I had no right to do such a thing!” Vera had retorted at once and had then gone on to deliver an enlightening lesson on the subject of taking responsibility for one’s own
actions. She had also added a salutary fillip on the topic of the rights of other people such as Emily Thorndyke. “I knew what I was doing when I had the affair with Victor, Samantha. I also knew from the beginning that marriage was not possible. To tell you the truth, I would not have married him, anyway, even if it had been a possibility. Marriage would have stifled me, dear. It would stifle any independent, creative woman. It is an archaic institution which has never benefited women. The only ones who ever got anything useful out of marriage were men. It is basically an economic institution, Samantha, but one which no longer provides even financial security for women. You don’t need marriage.”

  The nagging curiosity about her father had persisted, however, driving her eventually to the public library at the age of sixteen. There, with the help of a reference librarian, she had looked up the Thorndyke name in a huge book which listed all major U.S. companies. There, under the “T”s was a corporation called Thorndyke Industries. Victor Thorndyke, President.

  For several weeks Samantha hugged the newfound information to her, telling herself it was enough and that she could stop there. But all too soon she wanted more. She wanted to meet Victor Thorndyke.

  At last, unable to keep her need secret any longer, Samantha had dared broach the issue to her mother. She had started out with a lot of carefully detailed reasons as to why she should be allowed to meet her father and had ended up in tears, begging Vera to make the phone call which would inform Victor he had another daughter. Sensing that if she didn’t step in and monitor the situation Samantha would make some wild attempt on her own to achieve the contact with Victor, Vera had reluctantly taken on the task of delicately initiating it.

  No one could have foreseen Thorndyke’s response, least of all Vera, who had expected to be immediately rebuffed by her ex-lover. Instead he had recovered almost immediately from his astonishment, and then he had demanded to be introduced to his offspring. He never doubted the child was his. He’d known Vera well enough to realize she would never lie about a thing like that. The question in his own mind was how much money she was going to want to keep Samantha’s existence a secret. He had taken a plane east, using business as an excuse less than a week after Vera’s call.

  The eventual meeting had totally unexpected ramifications. Thorndyke had walked into the Maitland home half-expecting to fend off a cheap blackmail attempt and had stayed to be enchanted by his unbearably tense, terribly frightened daughter.

  No one could have guessed at the instant rapport which blossomed to life immediately between father and daughter, especially not Vera. Thorndyke had seen at once the resemblance to himself which went far deeper than a superficial molding of features. It was a way of thinking, a way of reasoning, and a natural aptitude for business which made Samantha his true heir in a way duplicated only in his youngest son. He accepted Samantha completely. She was an extension of himself, just as Eric was.

  For a time the news of Samantha’s existence was kept between the three involved parties. Whenever his business took him east, Thorndyke arranged a visit with his daughter. Samantha had never known for certain whether or not her father and Vera had ever resumed their affair. There was no doubt but that the attraction still flared between the two adults, but they were both far too discreet to involve Samantha in that aspect of their lives.

  Then one day Victor had announced his intention of acknowledging Samantha to his California family. Vera had protested angrily, pointing out the trauma it would cause everyone, but Thorndyke had been insistent. In the end, Vera could only demand that Samantha not be forced to face the other Thorndykes in a confrontation scene. Victor had understood and respected that request.

  He had flown back to California, and the next time he came east he was accompanied by his youngest son. Fifteen years of age, Eric had been as curious about his new sister as Samantha was about him. They had gotten along from the first.

  During the next several years Samantha had had a great deal of contact with her father, although she had never met any other member of his family except Eric. Thorndyke had been the one to guide her when she selected a university which would provide her with a good grounding in business. He had been the one to assist in finding her the first job after graduation.

  Vera, to her credit, had learned to accept this new influence in her daughter’s life, certain that, having had her to herself for sixteen years, she’d done a solid job of instilling the important tenets Samantha would need to survive as a woman and as a socially conscious member of society. Vera had even been objective enough to realize that Samantha’s talents lay in the business world, and she didn’t try to force her daughter into the academic environment.

  “You can do just as much good on the front lines as you can from the ivory tower, perhaps more,” she’d enthused to Samantha. “Capitalism needs to be tempered by a social conscience.”

  Victor Thorndyke had taken great pleasure in helping plan his daughter’s career, especially because he was discovering at the same time that he was going to be denied that pleasure with Eric. Eric was going off on an unexpected tangent, a direction which Victor considered a deplorable waste of talent. Eric had turned into a computer freak.

  After helping Samantha choose a school and a first job, Victor had also assisted in the decision to move Samantha on when the position proved limiting.

  “Timing is everything in a business career,” he’d told her. “Knowing when to move is more important than knowing when to stay.”

  There was an up-and-coming development firm down in Florida, he told Samantha one afternoon on a periodic trip to the East Coast. Perhaps she should look into it. Working for a dynamic, fast-moving company such as the Buchanan Group provided plenty of opportunity for high-achievers like Samantha. He had not foreseen the possibility of his daughter falling in love with the chief executive officer or that Drew Buchanan would manipulate her as easily as he was manipulating his business ventures.

  The eventual meeting with the rest of the Thorndyke clan had occurred two years ago when Samantha had been summoned for the reading of Victor’s will. Distraught at the loss of her father, she had been unprepared for the scene in the attorney’s office when she came face-to-face with the full weight of her actions that day in the public library when she’d looked up the Thorndyke name.

  The resentment and disdain on the part of Victor’s widow, Emily, his eldest son, Victor Junior, and his other daughter, Amanda, was a palpable wall against which she had floundered the moment she entered the room.

  Samantha had reacted with a savagely cool, defensive arrogance which would have done Vera proud. She’d turned down the money which had been left to her as if it amounted to peanuts instead of a fortune and had walked out of the room without a backward glance.

  For some odd reason she knew her refusal to take the inheritance had irritated the Thorndykes as much if not more than the fact that she had been included in the will in the first place. It was as if, by walking away from it, she hadn’t proved herself to be the mercenary little bitch they had all been certain she really was. Only Eric had appreciated the gesture. Anything which flew in the face of natural Thorndyke dominance appealed to him. He had envied Samantha’s sheer guts in the matter. Looking at him now, Samantha realized she was rather glad to see him again.

  “I haven’t left the key in the flowerpot since the last time you were here and lectured me about the stupid security habits of the female of the species,” Samantha quipped lightly to her half brother as she climbed out of the car and started up the steps with her suitcase. “Do any damage to my window?”

  “Nah, it’s fine. Your phone’s been ringing off the hook.” Eric took her bag from her hand as she entered the house. He had a pleasant fire going in the old brick fireplace and a sportscaster’s voice boomed from the television set in the corner. The remains of a box of takeout fried chicken littered the coffee table. “Where have you been, Sam?”

  “I had business down in California.” Automatically she walked over
and flipped off the TV. She hated having it on. Someday she would simply toss it into the trash can. To date, however, she hadn’t been able to work up the nerve. It seemed wrong, somehow, to cut herself off from any potential source of information when her whole line of work was based on collecting just that. “Did you answer my phone?”

  “Nope. I knew who was calling. I listened in while your recording machine took messages.”

  “You computer freaks are born snoops, aren’t you?” she grumbled, slipping off the black leather jacket. “Have you left anything for dinner?”

  “Sure. I went shopping. What were you doing down in California?” He traipsed after her as she made her way into the kitchen and watched hopefully as she surveyed the shambles he had made of the room. Samantha knew she wasn’t a model of neatness, but Eric could not give her pointers.

  Eric could afford the best, as was evidenced by his beloved Ferrari, but he had his image as a maverick computer wizard to maintain. The jeans he wore were old and faded, the gaudy leather belt scarred and worn. He steadfastly refused to wear a suit to work, maintaining that genuine computer wizards simply didn’t do that sort of thing unless they happened to work for IBM.

  “I wanted to discuss business with a… a client who lives down there.” Samantha opened the refrigerator door, forbearing to comment on the chaos in the kitchen. She found herself wondering what Gabriel would say if he saw the place. He’d probably go into shock.

  “There’s a pizza in the freezer. I picked it up yesterday. Why don’t we have that?” Eric offered helpfully as he watched her standing morosely in front of the denuded refrigerator.

  “I guess it’s either that or we go out to dinner, and I don’t feel like doing that,” Samantha muttered. “I expect you to replenish my larder before you leave this time, Eric. After your last visit I had to restock completely, and it cost a small fortune!”

  “I needed a lot of energy while I was playing with that sort program on your computer. I don’t see any bugs crawling in the program. Had any trouble with it?”