“But I've already promised David I'd ask Dad about financing grad school.”
“I'll handle David.”
“You'll handle him? Hatch, you barely know him. You haven't been around our family long enough to figure out how to deal with this kind of thing. David's very sensitive.”
“So am I,” Hatch snarled softly, slapping his other hand against the wall on the other side of her head. “You just haven't bothered to take much notice, what with being too busy worrying about everybody else's sensitive nature. One last time. I want to make damn sure I'm not being married so that David and his mother and the moms and your sister are all being taken care of by you as per usual. Got that?”
“You're about as sensitive as a rhino. And stop talking about marriage. We're having an affair and that's as far as it's going to go.” Jessie tried to duck out from under one of his arms and managed to blunder straight into the potted palm. The plant and Jessie both began to topple to the side.
With a muttered oath Hatch caught both palm and woman before they sprawled ignominiously on the floor. He steadied the plant and held Jessie's arm as she spit out a palm leaf.
“I want your word on this, Jessie. I mean it.”
“Look, Hatch…”
“I said, I want your guarantee not to play go-between for everyone in the family, at least until our relationship has been finalized,” he repeated through tightly clenched teeth.
“Finalized?” For a split second, standing there, looking up at him, Jessie felt disoriented. A strange, familiar sense of need hovered just at the edge of her awareness, not her own need, she realized, but something Hatch was experiencing.
“You know what I'm talking about.” Once more he put his hand on the wall behind her and leaned in close.
“This is intimidation, Hatch.” She was breathless and confused all of a sudden. Hatch needed her?
“Damn right. Come on, Jessie, stop wasting my time and your own.”
“All right, I promise.” The words were out before she had quite realized she was going to say them.
Hatch nodded once, satisfied. “I'll see you at dinner tonight.” His fist dropped away from the wall. With one last warning glance he swung around on his heel and stalked back toward Vincent Benedict's office.
Jessie walked toward the elevators on trembling legs. She must have gone crazy there for a minute. She had stood up to him on the matter of the Attwood case. But she'd collapsed completely on this issue. It made no sense.
She sincerely hoped she was not turning into a wimp.
Forty-five minutes later, Jessie parked her car in front of the low, modern building that housed the offices of ExCellent Designs. She opened the car door and got out slowly, not particularly looking forward to the meeting that lay ahead.
Downtown Bellevue was humming with its usual assortment of BMW's and well-dressed suburbanites. Jessie always felt as if she had crossed some sort of international border when she drove over one of the bridges that linked the Eastside with Seattle.
Over here everything always looked clean and trendy and expensive. In Seattle the high-fashion shops and restaurants competed for space with the gritty elements that had characterized real cities since the dawn of time.
Connie glanced up from the design plan she was perusing on her desk when Jessie opened the office door. She smiled. “Hello, Jessie. Is this good news or bad news?”
“A little of both.”
Connie made a face. “Better save it until your mother gets here, then. She just went out to get us some coffee. Ah, here she is.”
“Hi, Jessie.” Lilian Benedict walked into the office carrying two cups of latte. “This is a surprise. I assume you've got some news for us?”
“Dad will give you the money for the expansion,” Jessie said, sinking down into one of the exotically shaped black leather-mesh chairs.
“Fabulous. I knew you could talk him into it. Any serious catches this time?” Lilian removed the top from her latte.
“No, but I had a little trouble with Hatch over the arrangement.”
“With Hatch?” Constance stared at her in astonishment. “Why is Hatch involved in this?”
“He's not, actually. He just thinks he is. To put it briefly, he got very annoyed that I was doing the asking. I don't think he likes me going to Dad with requests like yours.”
“But this is a personal matter between us and Vince.” Lilian frowned. “Does he think the money comes directly out of Benedict Fasteners or something?”
“No, it's not that.” Jessie shifted slightly in the chair, trying to find a comfortable position. Her father was right. Some of this European design stuff looked better than it felt. “It's me being in the middle that bothers him for some reason. I explained to him that I'm used to dealing with Dad, but Hatch doesn't understand exactly how things work, if you see what I mean.”
Lilian and Constance exchanged glances.
“I think we see,” Lilian said dryly.
Constance sighed and sat back in her chair. Her long mauve nails traced the rim of the cup she was holding. “He's quite right, you know. We have all tended to let you handle Vincent for us, by and large. You have a knack for it.”
“Ummm, true.” Lilian studied her daughter. “I wonder why Hatch is interested in that fact.”
“I think he believes I'm being used,” Jessie said carefully.
Lilian's expression tightened into one of deep concern. “Do you feel used, dear?”
Jessie glanced out the window. “No. I did it of my own free will. It was just the way things were. A pattern, as Aunt Glenna would probably say. I guess I felt that as long as I was running back and forth between everyone else in the family and Dad, we were all still linked, somehow. Still a family.”
“Well, it worked, after a fashion,” Constance murmured. “We're all living amicably enough in the same region and we're all on speaking terms, except possibly David. Vince has been difficult, but, on the whole, reasonably fair when it comes to money. And if it hadn't been for you, I doubt that Elizabeth would have nearly as much contact with her father as she does have. I think he would have drifted away from her and everyone else if it hadn't been for you, Jessie.”
Lilian nodded. “Vincent is like a Missouri mule. You have to keep hitting him over the head with a big stick to get his attention. But when you do have it, he's a decent man.”
“I've been the stick,” Jessie said.
“For better or worse, I'm afraid so,” her mother agreed. “In a very real way, you've been what Glenna likes to call the caretaker in the family, haven't you? The one who holds things together.”
“I think Aunt Glenna calls it being the family enabler,” Jessie muttered.
Lilian frowned. “I'm not sure I like the fancy new words the psychologists use these days to describe the old nurturing skills. They demean them somehow. And I'm not at all sure ‘enabler’ is the right word here anyway. But it's obvious Hatch now wants you out of the role, whatever it is.”
“He says he doesn't want me marrying him because I'm under pressure to do so,” Jessie said slowly.
Constance pounced on that remark. “He's asked you, then?”
“No, not exactly. He's just sort of assumed we'll get married. You know how men like that operate. They're like generals. They set a goal and they just keep driving toward it until they've achieved their objective.”
Lilian eyed her curiously. “Does that strange expression on your face mean you're contemplating the same objective Hatch has in mind? Are you finally thinking seriously about marriage?”
“No, dammit, I am not. I seem to be involved in an affair with him, but that's as far as it's going to go.”
“But, Jessie, why?” Constance stared at her, perplexed. “If you like him enough to have an affair with him, why not marry him?”
Jessie looked away and suddenly she was crying. “Dammit, I will not spend the rest of my life fighting for a man's love. That's one pattern I will not repeat.”
&nb
sp; “Jessie. Oh, Jessie, honey, don't cry.” Lilian leapt to her feet and stepped around her desk to crouch beside Jessie's chair. She put her arms around her and held her close, rocking her gently the way she had when Jessie had been a child and Vincent Benedict had canceled yet another outing on account of business. “It's all right, dear. It's going to be all right.”
Jessie groped blindly for a tissue, disgusted with her loss of control and frightened by what it signified about the depth of her feelings for Hatch.
There was silence in the office for a while. Jessie blinked back the tears and blew her nose a couple of times. Then she gave her mother a watery smile. “Sorry. I've been under a lot of pressure lately.”
“Being in love can do that,” Constance observed gently. “It's quite all right, Jessie. Your mother and I understand. Every woman understands.”
“I'm not going to marry him, you know.” Jessie wiped her eyes, crushed the tissue, and hurled it into the stylish black cylinder that served as a trashcan. “I am going to enjoy an affair with him for as long as it lasts and then I will walk away. It's highly probable he will walk away first when it finally dawns on him that he's not going to get what he wants.”
“You really believe he wants to marry you only because of Benedict Fasteners?” Lilian asked quietly.
“No,” Jessie admitted. “It's a hell of a lot more complicated than that. He admires Dad. Wants to please him. And then there's the business angle. We all know that marrying me would be an excellent business move for him. And I admit, there's a physical attraction. I think what it boils down to is that he's satisfied with the package deal.”
“Jessie, I think Hatch's feelings run a lot more deeply than that. Whatever else he is, he's simply not a superficial kind of man. Even I know that much about him,” Lilian said firmly.
“He doesn't say he loves me,” Jessie sniffed sadly. “He says he thinks he can trust me. Says he thinks I'll be loyal. His first wife was running off to meet another man when she was killed, you know. His mother left him and his father when Hatch was only five. Loyalty is very important to Hatch. A lot more important than love, I think. I'm not sure he'll ever trust in love again.”
“Frankly, it sounds like the two of you have an excellent basis for a relationship, Jessie,” Constance stated.
“Trust and attraction and a couple of good business reasons are apparently enough for Hatch. But they're not enough for me.”
Lilian pursed her lips thoughtfully as she got to her feet. “Are you sure you're not romanticizing this whole thing a bit too much, Jessie? You're twenty-seven, not seventeen. How much can you realistically expect from a man?”
Constance nodded. “Your mother's right, Jessie. You're old enough not to need rose-colored glasses. I hate to break this to you, but having trust and physical attraction between yourself and a man is about as good as it gets. A lot of women never get that much. What are you holding out for?”
“I don't know,” Jessie whispered.
The office door opened and Elizabeth ambled into the room. Her brown hair was anchored with two colorful clips and her glasses were slightly askew on her small nose.
“Hi, everybody. What's going on?”
“Hi, Elizabeth.” Jessie blinked back the remaining moisture in her eyes. “I'm just sitting here sobbing my heart out for no good reason.”
“PMS, huh?”
Constance groaned. “This is what comes of sex education in the schools.”
“I didn't hear about that at school. I heard about it from you,” Elizabeth informed her mother. She sauntered over to Jessie. “I bet you're crying on account of Hatch, aren't you?”
“Afraid so,” Jessie said.
“Why don't you just punch him out instead?”
“That would probably be a much more satisfying approach to the problem,” Jessie said. “But he happens to be a lot bigger than I am.”
“I don't think he'd hit you back,” Elizabeth said, thoughtful. “At least, not very hard.”
“Of course he wouldn't hit me back. Which is exactly why I can't start pounding on him,” Jessie explained patiently. “It wouldn't be fair, you see. He couldn't retaliate in the same way.”
“So what does that leave?” Elizabeth asked.
“I don't know,” Jessie said. “I'm still trying to figure that out.”
“What it leaves,” Lilian said deliberately, “is common sense.”
Constance smiled. “We know you'll do the right thing, dear. You always have.”
Somewhere halfway across the bridge it came to Jessie that what she wanted from Sam Hatchard was proof that he could love her enough to choose her over Benedict Fasteners or anything else on the face of the planet if it ever came to that.
But Constance and Lilian were right. It was totally unrealistic to even contemplate such a scenario. What could she do? Tell him she would marry him if he walked away from the business arrangement he'd made with her father? That would be blackmail. Even if he did it, he would be disgusted with her for demanding such a sacrifice when there was no legitimate need for it. And she would be disgusted with herself for doing it.
As she had told Elizabeth, a woman had to fight fair.
A small, distinct sense of dread washed over her. There was a dark gray fog lying just beyond the edge of her awareness, as if the future held some bleak danger.
If this was what it was like to have premonitions or intuition or some other psychic ability, Jessie decided, she did not care for the sensation.
Hatch let himself warily into Jessie's apartment at eight o'clock that evening. He was not certain what kind of welcome to expect after the scene that had taken place in the hall outside Vincent's office door that afternoon.
He got a strong hint about what was in store when Jessie barely glanced up from the couch where she lay reading a book.
“Hi,” she said without looking up from her book.
“Hello.” Hatch closed the door and set down his briefcase. He noticed the lights were off in the kitchen. “Did you want to go out to get a bite to eat?”
“I already ate an hour ago. I told you, I don't serve dinner this late.”
“I see.” Hatch realized he was starving. “Any leftovers?”
“It was ravioli again. You weren't here, so I ate the whole package. You can't expect me to hold dinner for you, Hatch. Not when you don't even bother to call and let me know you'll be late.”
Hatch felt a wave of chagrin. “I don't think of eight o'clock as being real late.”
“I do.”
“It's been a long time since I had to call home to tell someone I'd be late for dinner. Guess I'm out of the habit.”
“Uh-huh. Well, don't let it worry you.” Jessie turned the page in her book. “You don't have to account for all your time to me. We're just sleeping together. It's not like we're married or anything.”
“You're really pissed about this, aren't you?”
“No, just realistic.”
He winced inwardly and walked over to the couch to stand looking down at her. “Would it help if I said it won't happen again?”
She slanted him an uncertain look out of the corner of her eye. She was obviously taken aback by the offer. “Is that a promise?”
He hunkered down beside her, not touching her. “It's a promise, Jessie.”
She sat there gnawing on her lower lip for a while and Hatch knew she was recalling all the similar promises her father had given her over the years. Casual, meaningless promises that nine times out of ten wound up being broken.
“I guess I could make you a peanut-butter sandwich or something,” she said, tossing aside her book. She got to her feet and headed for the kitchen.
Hatch heaved a silent sigh of relief and followed. He knew he had come very close to disaster that time. And all because he had been a little late for dinner.
“Jessie, one more time for the record. I am not a carbon copy of your father. I don't break my promises.”
She glanced up, her eyes
meeting his over the refrigerator door. “I know.”
Hatch realized they had just passed a major milestone. He was grinning like an idiot. “Say that again.”
“Say what again? I know?” She opened the peanut-butter jar and reached for a knife.
“The whole thing. Say you know I am not a carbon copy of your father and that you know I don't break my promises.”
She swirled the knife inside the jar of peanut butter. “I know you are not a carbon copy of my father and I know you don't break your promises.”
“Damn right,” Hatch said. “I'm glad we got that much straightened out. You got any bread for that peanut butter or do I have to eat it off the knife?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The phone rang that evening just as Jessie was reaching for her nightgown.
“Hello?”
“Jessie, it's me, Alex.” Robin's voice was bubbling with excitement. “Listen, you're never going to believe this, but I think I've found Susan Attwood.”
“You what?” Jessie sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed, clutching the nightgown. Hatch came out of the bathroom and eyed her questioningly.
“It's true, Jessie,” Alex said quickly. “I've been watching to see what kind of passwords and access codes are being used to enter the different files. One of the codes is matched with the name Attwood. She's updating the climate program right now. Plugging in some new temperature numbers. And that reminds me, I've got something else to tell you. My friend at the university got back to me a half-hour ago.”
“And?”
“First, he knew something about Edwin Bright. Said the guy is one of those characters in the scientific community who always operate way out in left field. He hadn't heard much about him in recent years. Bright's theories and calculations are not accepted by any reputable people.”
“Ah hah.”
“Second, he said that it was clear that some of the important numbers in this climate-projection program are phony. Says Bright must be making them up. He also implied it wouldn't be the first time.”
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