by Lisa Jackson
“You are lucky,” Helene said, tilting her head to admire her work. “Natural beauty.”
Marla cast her a wry look in the mirror where her face was still swollen and slightly bruised.
“Oh, yes,” Helene insisted. “This discoloration will soon disappear and with your cheekbones and eyes—you will be gorgeous. This I know.” She threw up one hand and rolled her expressive eyes. “You should see what I have to work with at times.”
“Thank you,” Marla said, and felt herself blush, warming under the compliment. Tonight, damn it, she’d actually take dinner with the family. So she had to have soup. So she still had the wires. It was her family and she needed to feel part of it, to connect with her daughter and her husband.
And she did look better, she thought, catching her image in a hall mirror as she walked Helene to the front door.
The telephone rang and she didn’t think twice about answering.
“Hello?”
“Marla is that you?” a woman asked.
“Hello?” another voice cut in. Carmen had answered before the second ring.
“I’ve got it,” Marla said quickly. There was a click as Carmen hung up the extension. “Yes, this is Marla,” she said and from the corner of her eye, saw Eugenia, still standing at the doorway saying her goodbyes to Helene, snap around.
“Thank Jesus I finally got through to you,” the caller breathed on a heartfelt sigh. “It’s me. Cherise. I’ve been trying to reach you ever since the accident.”
The front door clicked shut and Eugenia turned, her eyes narrowing on Marla as if she were a stern teacher and Marla was a naughty fifth-grader caught passing notes in class.
“Every time I’ve called I’ve been put off, but Nick said to keep trying and . . . well, the Lord must’ve intervened. How do you feel?” Cherise asked, her voice filled with concern.
“Better.” Marla caught her mother-in-law’s disapproving expression and ignored it. Upstairs the baby began to cry.
“I know this has been hard,” Cherise was saying. “The injuries and the loss of your friend. It’s a terrible, terrible time. The Lord’s challenges are sometimes difficult to understand.”
No kidding.
“The Reverend and I would love to visit you.”
“The Reverend, meaning your husband?” Marla asked.
“Yes. Oh, that’s right . . . I forgot about your amnesia.” There was a smile in Cherise’s voice. “He goes by The Reverend Donald.”
An image of Donald Duck—one complete with halo and angel wings, one she was certain she’d seen sometime long ago—flashed through her mind. The Reverend Donald probably wouldn’t like the comparison. “Come on over.” The baby cried again and Marla cast a glance up the stairs. Where was Fiona?
“How about tomorrow? In the afternoon?” Cherise suggested.
“As it happens, I’m free,” Marla joked, refusing to give in to a sense that she should have checked with someone before inviting guests. This was her house, damn it, and right now, judging from the wails rippling down the stairs, she needed to get off the phone and check on her baby. “I get the wires off my jaw in the morning, so I’ll actually be able to speak clearly again.”
“Perfect. Then I’ll check with The Reverend and we’ll be there between three and four. Maybe I can even talk Monty into tagging along.”
“The more the merrier,” Marla said before hanging up and facing Eugenia’s scowl.
“You invited someone over tomorrow?”
“Just family,” Marla said, rankled at her mother-in-law’s superior, disapproving tone as she headed up the stairs. “Cherise and her husband. The Reverend Donald.”
“Dear Lord.”
“Her words precisely,” she called looking down from the second floor landing. “Her brother might be coming along.”
The baby stopped crying.
“Montgomery. Wonderful,” the older woman intoned through lips that barely moved. “This should be interesting.”
Amen, Marla thought caustically as she started up the stairs to get James. A-friggin’-men!
“Marla’s different.” Nick was slouched in the passenger seat of his brother’s Jaguar as Alex navigated the car down Market Street toward the Bay. The sky was a light gray, the pavement wet from an earlier drizzle.
“Of course she’s different. You haven’t seen her in years.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Nick said, surveying the financial district of San Francisco with more than a slightly jaundiced eye. High-rises of concrete and steel towered to the heavens, traffic clogged the streets and pedestrians hauling bags, briefcases, backpacks and umbrellas hurried anxiously along the sidewalks. Traffic signals blinked as engines rumbled and people shouted. Pigeons and seagulls flapped on the busy sidewalks.
Nick hated it. All of it.
“Well, okay, so Marla is different,” Alex admitted, pushing in his lighter as they stopped for a red light and a stream of people bustled both ways as they crossed the street. “She’s just survived the birth of her second child and a traumatic accident that killed her friend and a complete stranger. Now she’s got no memory, had plastic surgery and her mouth wired shut for nearly two months. You haven’t seen her for years. Yeah, I imagine she seems lots different.” Fingers searching, he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and shook out a Marlboro just as the lighter clicked. He lit up. “I hope she recovers . . . I mean not just physically, but mentally, that she shakes this amnesia.” He braked for a stop light and traffic swarmed around the Jag. “I doubt if she’ll ever look the same.”
“She can have more surgery.”
“Yeah, why not?” He stepped on the gas. The Jag shot forward. “You’ve probably figured out that our marriage had more than its share of problems.”
Nick’s jaw tightened. “Cherise mentioned you split a couple of times. What went wrong?”
Alex cut him a hard glance. “Marla’s not the easiest person to live with.”
“But you are.”
“Yeah, right.” Alex snorted. “I guess it doesn’t matter any more. Things are fine now. I only mentioned it because it was bound to come up and I wanted you to hear it from me.”
Nick didn’t comment. He’d seen Alex and Marla embracing in the sitting room just yesterday.
And in the garden you’d damn near kissed her.
Alex guided his car into a parking garage under a gigantic building located just off the Embarcadero. All steel, concrete and glass, the building abutted the financial district and had housed the offices of Cahill Limited for the past seven years when Alex had decided that the small brick building the company had owned for nearly a century wasn’t prestigious enough.
Nick figured the move was one of the major mistakes that had slowed the flow of black ink and turned it into red. The move alone had cost nearly a million dollars, and that was just the start. The lease was astronomical, an amount even an upscale address couldn’t justify. Not in Nick’s mind.
Alex parked in a narrow, reserved space in the basement garage, then Alex led him to an elevator and they were whisked to the third floor and double glass doors etched with the company logo.
Alex paused long enough to introduce Nick to his secretary and collect his messages, then showed Nick to an expansive corner suite that held a large desk, grouping of couch, table and two chairs, full bar and credenza that angled around a corner. Alex Cahill’s private domain, Nick thought. Behind the desk, a bank of windows made the most of a view of the city. Rooftops in varying elevations allowed glimpses of the Bay through the drizzling fog.
“There are worse places to work,” Alex observed, ridding himself of his coat and scarf.
“Much.”
“I know what you’re thinking. That this is all eyewash, costs too much, and that the offices should move to a low rent district somewhere around the Bay, or maybe at the old place.” He hung his things in a closet that was larger than Nick’s at his house. “Believe me, I’ve considered it, b
ut the convenience of being here, in the heart of the city, the contacts I’ve made in this building alone, the prestige of being a part of the financial district all have their rewards. And I’m close to the house, can be involved with the kids more than I could have before. Now, with Marla recuperating, that’s a real plus.” He shut the closet door and slid behind the desk, automatically flipping on his computer as he motioned Nick into one of the leather chairs.
As Alex glanced at the stock quotes on the computer screen, Nick noticed an array of pictures displayed on the credenza. Pictures of Alex shaking hands with the governor, standing in front of a Lear jet, in golf attire with a group of men, and then there was the family portrait. Marla, Cissy and Alex, taken over ten years ago, against a pure white backdrop. Cissy wasn’t quite a toddler and rested, in full, frilly, pink regalia, on Marla’s lap. Round-eyed and innocent, with apple cheeks and raised eyebrows, the baby had curiosity abounding in her expression. In direct opposition to her father. With one hand on Marla’s shoulder, Alex, dressed in a black suit, stood behind her, his pose proprietary, his spine stiff, pride oozing from his smug, well-practiced smile. But Nick’s gaze was drawn to the woman in the center of the photo. Not a lock of rich, mahogany hair was out of place. Her arms surrounded her daughter and her eyes, vibrant green, twinkled. Her smile offered just a hint of white teeth as she posed, the perfect corporate wife in a sedate black dress, creating an illusion that Nick knew hid the real woman deep inside.
“That was taken on Cissy’s first birthday,” Alex observed. “Twelve years ago.”
“The happy family.”
“Most of the time.”
“You’ll have to have another one taken.”
Alex’s eyebrows drew together for a second as if he didn’t quite catch on. “Oh, because of the baby. Right. I suppose so.” Tenting his hands under his chin and leaning back in his desk chair, he scowled. “Guess with all my other problems, I wasn’t really thinking about a photo shoot. Now, I’ve told the staff that you’re to have full access to anything you need and you can either work in the boardroom, or I can find a spare office.”
“The boardroom’ll do as long as I can take files out of the office.”
Alex scratched his chin. “On the condition that you move into your old room in the house. I’d rather not have company records at the hotel, lying around for anyone to see, or move, or maybe even steal. It’s not that I don’t trust you, you know, but it’s a matter of security.”
“You already gave me some of the files,” Nick said, not buying the excuse for a second.
“I know. I’ve had second thoughts.”
“Bullshit.” Nick’s jaw slid to one side and was reminded that his brother, before joining the family business, had been a successful corporate lawyer. “Why are you and Mother so hell-bent that I move into the house?”
Alex hesitated.
“It’s a control issue, isn’t it? Not over the files, but over me.”
With a snort, Alex said, “You’ve always been a suspicious bastard.”
“That’s why I’m on the payroll. So that you can put my suspicious brain to work. Or is it?” Nick demanded. “What is it you really want from me, Alex? You could have hired any one of a dozen reputable troubleshooters in this city. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the way to save money is to cut overhead and raise prices, create a higher profit margin or sell more product at the same one. And as far as your family situation is concerned, you could have hired governesses, nurses, companions for Marla and Mother and the baby to free your time. You really didn’t need me down here.” He eyed his brother in his crisp tailor-made suit and two-hundred dollar tie. “So why the hell did you think it was necessary to drive all the way to Oregon to plead your case?”
Alex’s lips rolled in on themselves and he paused either for theatrical effect or because he was hesitant to speak the truth. He glanced at the pictures on the credenza. “Because of Marla.”
There she was again. Caught between the two of them. As always. Unspoken insinuations seemed to creep across the thick carpet and slide against the walnut and brass fixtures.
Alex leaned forward and his chair squeaked. “I knew there was a good chance she would lose her memory. Dr. Robertson had warned me about that. I also knew that seeing you might jog it. With everything going on, I wanted you here.”
“You’ve never wanted me here.”
“Maybe I’ve changed.”
“Not until hell freezes over.” This was all wrong. Alex was the last person on earth to pull a one-eighty.
“Marla might not snap out of this . . . malaise. It started before the accident, a couple of weeks before James was born, and it has something to do with you, Nick, whether you like it or not.”
“I don’t see how.”
“There was something between the two of you and we both know it. Marla’s always had a ‘thing’ for you and even though she married me, it was never quite over.” He sighed and tugged at the knot of his tie. “It was your name she said before she woke up. Not mine.” He frowned thoughtfully, then shrugged. “I thought you might help her heal.”
“I’m not buying this. None of it. If she needs to get well, you can hire doctors or shrinks or whatever it takes, but dredging up something that happened fifteen years ago isn’t going to help. No,” Nick said, feeling guilt wrapping around his lungs, making it hard for him to breathe. True, he and Marla had been lovers but that was before Alex and she had married. Slowly he pushed himself to his feet, but his gaze never left Alex’s eyes. “There’s something more goin’ on here. More than you’re saying. I can feel it.”
“And what would that be?”
“I don’t know,” Nick admitted, “But I sure as hell intend to find out.”
Marla realized a little too late that she should never have come down to dinner. The entire family had collected around an expensive linen-covered table replete with china, crystal and silver. Candles had been lit, soft music played and a centerpiece of freshly cut roses, irises and daisies had been placed beneath a chandelier that had been turned down low. Alex was at the head of the table, she at the opposite end. On one side Cissy sat next to her grandmother, on the other Nick had taken a chair, sent her a cold glance, then appeared to merely tolerate the conversation around the clink of silver and soft music. Prime rib, potatoes with parsley, thin spears of asparagus garnished each plate, the aromas blending deliciously.
Marla felt completely out of place with her bowl of specially concocted bisque. This was the first formal meal she’d taken with the family and it felt wrong. Maybe it was the amnesia, or the prescription she was taking, she thought, grasping at anything that would explain her feeling of separation, from this, her family. Maybe it was paranoia returning. Or maybe it was because she remembered meeting Nick in the garden and wanting him to kiss her.
Awkwardly using a spoon she took a sip of her shrimp bisque and her stomach, tight with nerves as it was, felt worse.
The conversation had been stilted, stiff as a corpse. Alex had brought up the stock market and the business while Eugenia had mentioned Cahill House and the problems they were having trying to find a supervisor. Cissy, mostly quiet, had endured it all with long-suffering sighs and a bored expression. Marla hadn’t blamed her. Nick had kept his comments to one-word responses and sliced into his slab of prime rib.
You were involved with him. He’d said as much. They’d been lovers. She felt her cheeks burn because she could well imagine it. Though she had no memory of making love to him, not one glimmer of his naked body in her mind’s eye, she believed it. There was something about him she found irresistible. Unconventionally handsome, weather-beaten, with a cutting sense of humor that was downright irreverent, she found him sexy as hell and hated herself for it. Surely it was the drugs, her own state of confusion, this damned amnesia that screwed up her thinking, and yet, as she noticed the stony set of his features, his tanned skin stretched taut over high cheekbones, a broad forehead and sq
uare jaw, she felt that same pull she’d felt in the garden and in the hospital room.
She took another sip of soup, tried to concentrate on the conversation and didn’t hazard another glance his way. Her stomach rumbled at the sight of real food and she couldn’t wait to get the damned wires off. Just one more day.
“Mother says you invited Cherise and her husband to the house,” Alex finally said on the other side of the flickering tapers.
“That’s right. She called. They’re coming over tomorrow.”
“Do you think that’s a wise idea?” Alex was cutting the fatty edge off his prime rib. He sliced off a morsel then dipped it into a mound of horseradish.
“You know how I feel about guests,” Marla said.
“But . . . well, Cherise and Montgomery, they aren’t really friends.”
“They’re family.”
Eugenia set down her fork. “There’s some bad blood, you see.”
“Oh, brother.” Cissy took a long gulp of water from a crystal goblet where ice cubes and a slice of lemon danced.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Alex said as he glanced at his daughter.
“Yes, yes, of course.” Eugenia flushed. “No reason to bring it up at the dinner table.”
“Why not?” Nick asked.
“Cissy doesn’t want to hear it.” Eugenia forced a smile and reached for her glass of wine.
“That’s right, I don’t.”
“I think it’s a good thing they’re coming by,” Nick said, leaning back in his chair, his eyes a darker blue in the dimmed light. “Maybe it’ll clear the air.”
Alex scowled and shook his head. “It’ll just be trouble. It always is. Even after I tried to help Cherise’s husband out and gave him the job down at Cahill House—”
