The Princess Bride

by Diana Palmer

  She drew an indignant breath. “I’ll file a complaint,” she snapped back.

  “Go right ahead,” he invited. “I’ll call the tabloids and give them a story that you’ll have years to live down, after they do a little checking into your background.”

  It was only a shot in the dark, but she didn’t know that. Her face went paper white. She actually shivered.

  “Your severance pay will be waiting for you on the way out,” he said shortly.

  He went out the office door, almost colliding with King.

  “I’ve just fired your damned secretary!” Harrison told King with uncharacteristic contempt. “And if you want a divorce from my daughter so you can go chasing after your sweet little paramour, here, I’ll foot the bill! The two of you deserve each other!”

  He shouldered past King and stormed away down the hall, back into his own office. The walls actually shook under the force with which he slammed the door.

  King gave Carla a penetrating look. He walked into the office, and closed the door. Harrison had beaten him to the punch. He was going to fire Carla, but first he wanted some answers.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s have it.”

  “Have what?” she faltered. She moved close to him, using every wile she had for all she was worth. “You aren’t going to let him fire me, are you?” she teased, moving her hips gently against his body. “Not after all we’ve been to one another?”

  He stiffened, but not with desire, and stepped back. “What we had was over long before I married Tiffany.”

  “It never had to be,” she cooed. “She’s a child, a little princess. What can she be to a man like you? Nothing more than a new experience.”

  “You phoned and said there was a labor dispute,” he reminded her. “I can’t find a trace of it.”

  She shrugged. “Tom said there were rumors of a strike and that I’d better let you know. Ask him, if you don’t believe me.” She struck a seductive pose. “Are you going to let him fire me?” she asked again.

  He let out a harsh breath. Harrison was breathing fire. Apparently he’d got the wrong end of the stick and Carla had done nothing to change his mind.

  “You’ve made an enemy of him,” King told her. “A bad one. Your behavior at the wedding is something he won’t forget.”

  “You will,” she said confidently. “You didn’t want to marry her. You didn’t even check about the flowers or a silly bouquet, because you didn’t care, and she embarrassed you by wearing a suit to get married in.” She made a moue of distaste. “It was a farce.”

  “Yes, thanks to you.” He stuck his hands into his pockets and glowered at her. He wondered how far out of his mind he’d been to get involved with this smiling boa constrictor. She’d been exciting and challenging, but now she was a nuisance. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you another job. But not here,” he added quietly. “I’m not going against Harrison.”

  “Is that why you married her?” she asked. “So that you could be sure of inheriting the whole company when he dies?”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe it’s why she married you, too,” she said, planting a seed of doubt. “She’ll have security now, even if you divorce her, won’t she?”

  Divorce. Harrison had said something about a divorce. “I have to talk to Harrison,” he said shortly. “You’ll work your two weeks notice, despite what he said, and I’ll see what’s going at another office.”

  “Thank you, sweet,” she murmured. She moved close and reached up to kiss him. “You’re a prince!”

  He went out the door with a handkerchief to his mouth, wiping off the taste of her on his way to his partner’s office.

  Chapter 9

  Harrison just glared at King when he went into the office and closed the door behind him.

  “I don’t care what you say, she’s history,” Harrison told the younger man. “She’s meddled in my daughter’s affairs for the last time!”

  King scowled. He didn’t like the look of his partner. “I haven’t said a word,” he said softly. “Calm down. If you want her to go, she goes. But let her work out her notice.”

  Harrison relaxed a little. His eyes were still flashing. He looked deathly pale and his breathing was unusually strained. He loosened his tie. “All right. But that’s all. That silly woman,” he said in a raspy voice. “She’s caused…Tiffany…no end of heartache already, and now I’ve got…to cause her…more…” He paused with a hand to his throat and laughed in surprise. “That’s funny. My throat hurts, right up to my jaw. I can’t…” He grimaced and suddenly slumped to the floor. He looked gray and sweat covered his face.

  King buzzed Harrison’s secretary, told her to phone the emergency services number immediately and get some help into Harrison’s office.

  It was terribly apparent that Harrison was having a heart attack. His skin was cold and clammy and his lips were turning blue. King began CPR at once, and in no time, he had two other executives of the company standing by to relieve him, because he had no idea how long he’d have to keep it up before the ambulance came.

  As it happened, less than five minutes elapsed between the call and the advent of two EMTs with a gurney. They got Harrison’s heartbeat stabilized, hooked him up to oxygen and rushed him down to the ambulance with King right beside them.

  “Any history of heart trouble in him or his family?” the EMT asked abruptly as he called the medical facility for orders.

  “I don’t know,” King said irritably. For the second time in less than a week, he couldn’t answer a simple question about the medical backgrounds of the two people he cared for most in the world. He felt impotent. “How’s he doing?” he asked.

  “He’s stabilized, but these things are tricky,” the EMT said. “Who’s his personal physician?”

  Finally, a question he could answer. He gave the information, which was passed on to the doctor answering the call at the medical center.

  “Any family to notify?” the man relayed.

  “I’m his son-in-law,” King said grimly. “My wife is in Jamaica. I’ll have to get her back here.” He dreaded that. He’d have to tell her on the phone, and it was going to devastate her. But they couldn’t afford the loss of time for him to fly down there after her. Harrison might not live that long.

  The ambulance pulled up at the hospital, and Harrison, still unconscious, was taken inside to the emergency room. King went with him, pausing just long enough to speak with the physician before he found a pay phone and called the hotel in Jamaica. But more complications lay in store. Mrs. Marshall, he was told, had checked out that very morning. No, he didn’t know where she’d gone, he was sorry.

  King hung up, running an angry hand through his hair. Playing a grim hunch, he telephoned Harrison’s house instead of his own. A maid answered the call.

  “This is Kingman Marshall. Is my wife there?” he asked.

  “Why, yes, sir. She got in about two hours ago. Shall I get her for you?”

  He hesitated. “No. Thank you.”

  This was one thing he couldn’t do on the phone. He told the doctor where he was going, hailed a taxi and had it drive him to Harrison’s home.

  Tiffany was upstairs, unpacking. She paled when she saw King come in the door. She hadn’t expected her father to be at home, since it was a working day. She hadn’t expected to see King, either.

  “Looking for me?” she asked coolly. “I’ve decided that I’m going to live here until the divorce.”

  Divorce! Everything he was going to say went right out of his mind. He’d left her after the most exquisite loving of his life. Hadn’t he explained the emergency that had taken him from her side? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t planned to fly right back. He’d had no idea at all that Carla had manufactured the emergency.

  “Tiffany,” he began, “I flew back because there was an emergency…”

  “Yes, and I know what it was,” she replied, having phoned the office just a while ago. “M
y father fired your secretary, and you had to rush back to save her job. I’ve just heard all about it from the receptionist, thanks.”

  “The receptionist?”

  “I wanted to know if you were in. She talked to someone and said I should call back, you were in the middle of some sort of argument with my father…”

  He let out a short breath. “We’ll talk about that later. There’s no time. Your father’s had a heart attack. He’s in the emergency room at city general. Get your purse and let’s go.”

  She grasped her bedpost. “Is he alive? Will he be all right?”

  “He was seeing the doctor when I left to fetch you,” he replied. “Come on.”

  She went out with him, numb and shocked and frightened to death. Her life was falling apart. How would she go on if she lost her father? He was the only human being on earth who loved her, who needed her, who cared about her.

  Through waves of fear and apprehension, she sat motionless as he drove her Jaguar to the hospital. When he pulled up at the emergency entrance and stopped, she leapt out and ran for the doors, not even pausing to wait for him.

  She went straight to the clerk, rudely pushing in front of the person sitting there.

  “Please.” She choked, “my father, Harrison Blair, they just brought him in with a heart attack…?”

  The clerk looked very worried. “You need to speak with the doctor, Miss Blair. Just one minute…”

  King joined her in time to hear the clerk use her maiden name. Under different circumstances, he’d have been furious about that. But this wasn’t the time.

  The clerk motioned Tiffany toward another door. King took her arm firmly and went with her, sensing calamity.

  A white-coated young doctor gestured to them, but he didn’t take them into the cubicle where King had left her father. Instead, he motioned them farther down the hall to a small cluster of unoccupied seats.

  “I’m sorry. I haven’t done much of this yet, and I’m going to be clumsy about it,” the young man said solemnly. “I’m afraid we lost him. I’m very sorry. It was a massive heart attack. We did everything we possibly could. It wasn’t enough.”

  He patted her awkwardly on the upper arm, his face contorted with compassion.

  “Thank you,” King said quietly, and shook his hand. “I’m sure it’s hard for you to lose a patient.”

  The doctor looked surprised, but he recovered quickly. “We’ll beat these things one day,” he said gently. “It’s just that we don’t have the technology yet. The worst thing is that his family physician told us he had no history of heart problems.” He shook his head. “This was unexpected, I’m sure. But it was quick, and painless, if that’s any comfort.” He looked at Tiffany’s stiff, shocked face and then back at King. “Bring her along with you, please. I’ll give you something for her. She’s going to need it. Any allergies to medicines?” he asked at once.

  “Aspirin,” King said. He glanced down at Tiffany, subduing his own sorrow at Harrison’s loss. “Are you allergic to anything else, sweetheart?” he added tenderly.

  She shook her head. She didn’t see, didn’t hear, didn’t think. Her father was dead. King had argued with him over Carla. Her father was dead because of King.

  She pushed his hand away. Her eyes, filled with hatred, seared into his mind as she looked up at him. “This is your fault.” She choked. “My father is dead! Was keeping Carla worth his life?”

  He sucked in a sharp breath. “Tiffany, that wasn’t what happened…”

  She moved away from him, toward the cubicle where the doctor was waiting. She was certain that she never wanted to speak to her husband again for as long as she lived.

  The next few days were a total black void. There were the arrangements to be made, a service to arrange, minor details that somehow fell into place with King’s help. The Blair home became like a great empty tomb. Lettie came to stay, of course, and King did, too, in spite of her protests. He slept in a bedroom down the hall from Tiffany’s, watching her go through life in a trance while he dealt with friends and lawyers and the funeral home. She spoke to him only when it became necessary. He couldn’t really blame her for the way she felt. She was too upset to reason. There would be plenty of time to explain things to her when she’d had time to recover. Meanwhile, Carla was on her way out of the office despite her plea to work out her notice. On that one point, King had been firm. She had her severance pay and a terse letter of recommendation. If only he could have foreseen, years ago, the trouble it was going to cause him when he put her out of his life, all this anguish with Tiffany might have been avoided. But at that time, Carla had been an exciting companion and he’d never considered marrying anyone. Now he was paying the price for his arrogance.

  Undaunted by her firing, Carla showed up at the funeral home, only to be escorted right back out again by King. She made some veiled threat about going to the tabloids with her story, and he invited her to do her worst. She was out of his life. Nothing she did would ever matter to him again, and he said so. She left, but with a dangerous glint in her cold eyes.

  She didn’t come to the funeral service, Tiffany noted, or to the graveside service. Apparently she’d been told that it wasn’t appropriate. Some people, Lettie had said huffily, had no breeding and no sensitivity. She said it deliberately, and within King’s hearing. He didn’t react at all. Whatever he felt, he was keeping it to himself.

  The only chip in his stony front came the night of the funeral, when he sat in Harrison’s study with only a lamp burning and downed a third of a bottle of Harrison’s fine Scotch whiskey.

  Lettie intruded long enough to ask if he wanted anything else from the kitchen before the housekeeper closed it up.

  He lifted the glass toward her. “I’m drinking my supper, thanks,” he drawled.

  Lettie closed the door behind her and paused in front of the big antique oak desk, where his booted feet were propped on its aged, pitted surface.

  “What are you going to do about the house?” she asked abruptly. Her eyes were red. She’d cried for Harrison almost as much as Tiffany had. Now her only concern was the girl’s future.

  “What do you mean, what am I going to do?” he asked. “It belongs to Tiffany.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Lettie said worriedly. “Harrison was certain right up until the wedding ceremony that you weren’t going to go through with the marriage. He wanted Tiffany provided for if something happened to him, and he didn’t want her to have to be dependent on you. So he went to see his personal accountant about having everything he owned put in trust for her, including the house and his half of the business.” She folded her hands at her waist, frowning worriedly. “But the accountant couldn’t be located. Then Harrison found out that the man had been steadily embezzling from him for the past three years.” She lifted her hands and spread them. “Just this week, he learned that a new mortgage had been taken out on the house and grounds and the money transferred to an account in a Bahamian bank.” She grimaced as King lowered his feet to the floor and sat up. “He’d hired a private detective and was to see his attorney this afternoon after filing a lawsuit against the man before he skips the country with what’s left of Harrison’s fortune. If you can’t stop him, Tiffany will be bankrupt.”

  “Good God!” King got to his feet, weaving a little. “No wonder he was so upset! Lettie, why the hell didn’t you say something before this?”

  “Because I wasn’t sure that I had the right to involve you, except where the business is concerned,” she said flatly. “You must know that Tiffany doesn’t want to continue your marriage.”

  His face was drawn taut like a rope. “I know it.”

  She shrugged. “But there’s no one else who can deal with this. I certainly can’t. I can’t even balance my checkbook. I wouldn’t know how to proceed against the man.”

  King leaned forward with his head in his hands. “Get me a pot of strong coffee,” he said through heavy breaths. “Then I want every scrap of information you
have on the man and what Harrison planned.”

  Lettie brightened just a little. “We’ll all miss him,” she said gently as she turned toward the door. “But Tiffany most of all. He was both parents to her, for most of her life.” She hesitated. “She needs you.”

  He didn’t reply. She didn’t seem to expect him to. She went out and closed the door behind her.

  Tiffany was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, looking pale and worn. Her eyes were red and she had a crumpled handkerchief in her hand. The long white gown and robe she was wearing seemed to emphasize her thinness.

  “Child, you should be in bed,” Lettie chided softly.

  “I can’t sleep.” She stared at the study door. “Is he in there?”

  Lettie nodded.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Getting drunk.”

  That was vaguely surprising. “Oh.

  “I want to know why my father had a heart attack,” she said grimly. “The receptionist wouldn’t let me speak with King the day Daddy died because he and my father were arguing. Then at the funeral, one of his coworkers said it was a pity about the blow-up, because it was only seconds later when he collapsed. I know he fired Carla. Was that why King argued with him?”

  “I don’t know. Tiffany,” she said, approaching the girl, “this is a vulnerable time for all of us. Don’t say anything, do anything, that you’ll have cause to regret later. King’s hurt, too. He respected Harrison. Even if they did argue, they were friends as well as business partners for a long time.”

  “They were friends until I married King.” Tiffany corrected her. “My father thought it was a mistake. He was right.”

  “Was he? It’s early days yet, and some marriages can have a rocky beginning. It’s no easy thing to make a life with another person. Fairy tales notwithstanding, even the most loving couples have to adjust to a shared coexistence.”