Crimes of Passion

by Toni Anderson

  He was frowning when she finished. “I don’t see it. There has to be something more.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s too weak.”

  “How? It can hardly help Edison to have it known he fathered an illegitimate child.”

  He agreed thoughtfully, then went on. “Of course, there was the trick marriage.”

  “The what?”

  They stared at each other across the table for long seconds. At last Dante said, “I’m sorry, chère. I thought you knew since your husband told you so much else.”

  She shook her head with slow emphasis. “He only mentioned an affair. Are you saying that Edison went through some kind of fake ceremony with Riva?”

  “Not fake to her, but he was already married to you, so there was nothing to it. It was invalid.”

  “And Erin was born from this bogus marriage?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But how—” she began, then stopped, her gaze moving past him to rest in blind concentration on the river. Long seconds ticked past. When she spoke again, her voice was tight with strain. “I can see how that would be damaging, if there was proof.”

  “I don’t know if there is any. But just the rumor of such an underhanded game, even if it happened long ago, could be ugly.”

  “Yes, I agree.” Anne sat forward. “I think you should know that Edison will do everything in his power to see that this is never made public. Mrs. Staulet doesn’t realize what she’s doing, what she’s asking.”

  “All your husband has to do, the way I see it, is to separate Josh and Erin.”

  “He’ll never do it, not now.”

  “For God’s sake, why?”

  She lifted her hand in a helpless gesture. “Arrogance, ego, stubbornness—call it what you will. He simply won’t give in to an ultimatum. On top of that, he’s almost incapable of bringing himself to believe he can’t control the situation. But once he realizes it, he can be extremely dangerous, totally unscrupulous. I think that he’s beginning to suspect that Riva Staulet is the one person, the one woman, he may not be able to control.”

  Dante’s voice was hard as he said, “What makes you say that?”

  There was a troubling sense of disloyalty inside Anne. She had been married too long for her to be comfortable speaking of her husband and their relationship with anyone else. Still, she had to do something. Josh was her son, too.

  “He intends to counter Riva’s threats by threatening to tell Erin that she is his daughter. I don’t know whether this will be sufficient to return matters to the status quo or not, but I don’t think he will stop there. He wants revenge for being made to sweat this thing. He’ll take it any way he can.”

  “If he tells Erin he is her father, then that will automatically achieve what Riva wants, an end to her daughter’s romance with Josh.”

  “Yes, but Riva must not want Erin to know or she would have told her herself.”

  “No,” Dante agreed, then let his breath out in a sigh. “No.”

  “So Edison will be holding the trump card. The question is: What will Riva do about it?”

  “If she carried through with her threat to expose the past, then Erin would have to know. Knowing Riva, I expect she’ll call his bluff, counter with a promise to carry out her threat by going public.”

  “Edison will stop her.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure. He spoke of highly placed friends. The way he said it wasn’t…nice.”

  “Then I am more grateful than I can say that you came to me. He isn’t the only one with friends.”

  Did he mean that he himself would stand as Riva’s friend or that he had friends as highly placed as any Edison could claim? Anne didn’t know, nor did she care to ask. It was enough that she had delivered her warning.

  “I’m glad,” she said simply.

  His dark eyes rested on her as if in speculation. He tilted his head. “It’s none of my business, and I’ve said it before, but if you have so little respect for Gallant, if you are so doubtful of what he might do, why, in the name of all that’s wonderful, do you stay with him?”

  “He’s my husband,” she protested.

  “There is such a thing as divorce.”

  The words were quietly spoken, but they carried a faint note of censure. She responded to it with a defensive smile. “It’s an easy word to say. But I have so much invested in my marriage, and I see so many difficulties in tearing it apart that it almost seems being widowed would be easier.”

  “It’s not something that’s likely to happen for your convenience.”

  “I know,” she agreed, and felt her smile slip.

  He reached to touch her hand where she had begun once more to play with her cup. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just—”

  “I know. The problem is mine and I’ll solve it as best I can, when I can.”

  She was afraid he might have taken offense at her choice of words. She looked at him quickly, but his attention was on her arm below the short sleeve of the cotton sweater she wore. Glancing down, she saw that he was staring at the new bruises left by Edison’s fingers. She reached self-consciously to pull the sweater sleeve down.

  “He got rough again, that’s why you’re here,” he said abruptly.

  “If you think it’s just to get back at him in some—some domestic quarrel, I promise you—”

  “I never said that,” he interrupted, “or thought it.”

  She met his gaze for the space of a heartbeat before her irritation subsided. “No, I can see you didn’t.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  She only shook her head.

  “So polite, so calm, and yet tonight you will go back and sleep with a man who threatens and abuses women, and would rather see his son commit incest than bow to any will other than his own. How can you do it?”

  “Habit?” She tried for flippancy, but didn’t quite make it.

  “No, I’m curious to know. What is it about him that makes you stay or that once made someone like Riva go away with him? Is he so charming in private moments? Is he so wonderful a lover?”

  She laughed. She couldn’t help it. It came bubbling up out of her with a derision so bitter she thought it would burn her throat.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  There was a pause. In the midst of it, she raised her lashes to look at him and could feel the naked anguish she had kept hidden inside for so long laid bare. He did not look away but reached to clasp her hand in his, holding it with warm strength.

  “You are a beautiful woman. There’s no need for you to live without love. As I said before, if there’s ever any way I can be of service, I hope you will let me know.”

  In his voice was an undercurrent of meaning that had not been there when he had first made that offer in the courtyard of his house. The sound of it made the breath catch in Anne’s throat. There was no time to answer, however, for they were interrupted by shrill and childish cries coming from a few yards down the deck.

  “Mr. Dante! ‘Ello, Mr. Dante!”

  A pair of children had just emerged from inside the building. As they called out, they broke into a run. Their mother, burdened by a tray of Cokes and hamburgers, followed more slowly.

  “Pietro,” Dante said, his features dissolving into a wide grin as he got to his feet. “And Coralie. What are you doing here, you little scamps?”

  “Erin said to us that we should see the Riverwalk while we were here,” Coralie answered, though her gaze strayed to Anne.

  “So you should,” Dante said, adding as the children’s mother came closer, “And I see you’re trying our American cuisine.”

  There were enthusiastic assents. Afterward came the inevitable introductions. Anne could feel her face flaming as Constance Staulet surveyed her with irony in her large dark eyes. Anne kept her polite smile, however, and was glad of the training that allowed her to extend a greeting that was both cool and cordial.

  “You can hav
e my place at the table,” she went on, looking around for her packages. “I have to be getting back to the hotel.”

  “I’ll come help you find a taxi,” Dante said.

  “Don’t bother, I’m sure I can manage,” Anne said. “You’ve done enough just giving me lunch.”

  “No bother,” he said with polite insistence as he reached to take the dress on its hanger once more.

  Constance, busy setting out food, said pleasantly, “It was nice to have met you, Mrs. Gallant. Dante, you must return to join us for another cold drink. I’m sure the children would enjoy it if you would give us your company.”

  Amid the cries of joy and excitement, Anne saw Constance and Dante exchange a long unsmiling glance. It was moments before she could recognize the emotion that look aroused in her, and then she was horrified. It was jealousy.

  SIXTEEN

  RIVA FOUND DANTE AT THE HOUSE WITH Constance and the children when she returned from the office that evening. It was a cozy scene. Constance and Dante were having a drink on the back gallery while the children sprawled on the cool brick floor nearby busily peeling stickers and applying them to the special albums bought to hold the collection they had started that day. Riva greeted them all, then looked to where Boots was sitting by himself at the other end of the gallery with a drink in one hand and his feet propped on the railing. She walked over to her brother-in-law.

  “How are you doing, Boots?”

  He saluted her with his drink. “‘S’ fine.”

  She had never seen him quite so close to being drunk. His eyes were red-rimmed and his face flushed. His body lay in the chair in such a loose fashion it was a wonder he didn’t fall out of it.

  “You don’t look just fine,” she said frankly.

  “How’m I s’pposed to look when my wife been out givin’ it away?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There I went, tearin’ off to beat the hell outa my cousin, and you know what? He laughed at me. Laughed! Said I was a fool. Said it wasn’t even good putain, which was prob’ly why she was offerin’ it around.”

  Riva looked hastily behind her to see if Constance or her children had heard. That Boots could use such language in front of her was a distressing sign of how loaded he was. His language was usually squeaky-clean, at least in female company.

  No one was paying them any attention. She turned back. “If you’re a fool, it’s for believing Edison.”

  “Yeah? You don’t know. I been hearin’ how wonderful he is for years. Years and years. I guess maybe Margaret did give ‘im some.”

  There was no point in arguing with him in his state. “Where is Margaret now?”

  “Upstairs, resting.”

  “Is she all right?”

  He shrugged. “Says she’s got a headache, but she felt up to goin’ to town today. I think she just don’t want to have nothin’ to do with me.”

  “I’ll check on her after I change.”

  Riva moved back into the house. It had been a hot day, and though she had been in her air-conditioned office and her suit had the built-in comfort of natural linen, she felt stale and stifled. Anyway, she could never relax and put aside the business aspect of her life until she had taken off her business clothes and put on some kind of lounge-wear.

  She heard Dante’s chair scrape back after she had passed where he was sitting. He caught up with her on the stairs.

  “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

  His voice was flat. Riva gave him a searching look. She did not like the look of the anger she saw simmering in his eyes. With a short nod, she led the way to the sitting area in the upstairs hallway. It was not particularly private, but the two of them could not be overheard if they kept their voices low. Anything that might encourage Dante to keep his voice down seemed appropriate.

  When they were seated, he leaned forward with his hands clasped between his knees. “You really haven’t trusted me, have you, since you found me in bed with that other girl twenty-some-odd years ago?”

  Riva had considered a great many things that he might want to say to her but somehow never this. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said on a surprised laugh. “Of course I trust you; there’s no one I trust more.”

  “I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, I think that you would never have seen me again, never have spoken another word to me if I hadn’t come barging back into your life before you could forget me.”

  She shook her head with a smile at the memory. “You barged in with a fistful of moss roses stolen from the garden of the Ursuline convent after you scaled the wall. It’s a wonder you weren’t arrested. Or excommunicated. How could I forget someone who would do that?”

  “I was trying to apologize, and I didn’t have the money to buy flowers.”

  Dante had come back into her life not long after Noel had left, at a time when she had needed a confidant with just Dante’s blend of care and concern. He had apologized for not coming to her wedding. He never received the invitation, he had said, never heard of it until the girl who was living with him had flung the news in his face before she walked out on him. By degrees, then, they had grown close again, bound by mutual pain. Cosmo had liked him, trusted him also. Unlike his son, he had never seen a rival in Dante.

  Now she said, “It worked, didn’t it? We’ve been friends.”

  “I thought so, but apparently not.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “From that time to this, you’ve allowed me to hover around the edges of your life, but never really to know what you think, what you feel. And the important times, the important things, you keep to yourself.”

  “That isn’t so!” she protested.

  “Then why, in God’s name, did I have to learn from someone else that you are trying to blackmail Edison Gallant?”

  “I’m not,” she said, her brows snapping together in a frown.

  “I don’t know what else you’d call it. Oh, I’ll grant that your reasons are pure enough, but I don’t know why you couldn’t have told me what you meant to do and let me help you.”

  “What could you have done? Edison is not a man who accepts advice.” Her voice was taut with irony.

  “I have connections, friends who owe me favors. Believe me, I could have persuaded him.”

  “Connections,” she echoed, staring at him. She had never asked him about his mafia friends; there had never been any need. Now a chill moved through her.

  He threw up his hands. “I don’t mean I could have had somebody—what’s the phrase? Lean on him? Though come to think of it, it’s not a bad idea. I mean I know people who have what Edison wants, which is political influence. He would have sent his son to Timbuktu for it, but that was before he figured out that Erin is his daughter.”

  Was Dante telling the truth? Something about the way he spoke made her uneasy in spite of his assurances. Then again, it might only be in her mind. She felt off balance, caught between past and present, truth and falsehood, wrong and right. She had felt that way really since this whole thing began.

  Abruptly, the exact words he had used penetrated. She sprang to her feet to stand over him. “Who told you that he knows, anyway?”

  “Anne Gallant,” he said, and rose slowly to face Riva. “She was…concerned.”

  “I’ll bet!”

  “I don’t mean she’s vindictive; there was never any suggestion of that. But she is Josh’s mother.”

  His words were quiet and even. Riva realized that it was she herself who was making the most noise during this encounter, when she had thought she would have to see that he kept quiet. It was sobering. She swung away from him, wrapping her arms around her upper body.

  “What does she intend to do?” she asked.

  “Anne? Nothing that I know of.”

  The answer brought no relief. “She told you so, I suppose. I didn’t know you two were such friends.”

  “We aren’t. For some strange reason she thought that I might know what you intend
to do now.”

  She ignored his sarcasm. “I don’t know what to do. We seem to be more or less at a standstill, Edison and I. But I do know that it isn’t your fight.”

  “Even if I want it to be?”

  “Even so.”

  “You see? You always hold me at arm’s length.”

  “There were reasons for that,” she said, turning to face him.

  “I know,” he answered, his dark gaze steady, “but now he’s dead.”

  “There were others. You remember—”

  “I remember,” he said, his voice harsh as he cut across her words. “Twenty-four years is a long time, but it’s one failure I’m unlikely to forget.”

  She was handling this badly, but she couldn’t seem to help it. “Oh, Dante, why bring it up after all this time? We were all right as we were.”

  “Things change, people change. Do you want my help or not?”

  “Does it carry a price?”

  He stared at her long seconds while the skin around his mouth whitened. “I guess that means no.”

  Her face twisted as she felt his pain somewhere deep inside. She cried, “I want your support, but I don’t need your help!”

  “Then you don’t need me,” he said.

  He swung away from her and walked down the hall.

  Riva watched him go, and it was as if one of the columns of the house had given way. The roof itself might hold, but there was a serious weakness in the structure.

  What had she done to make him go? What could she have said to make him stay? She knew, of course, but could not think why it was suddenly so important to him that their relationship become something different.

  He had as good as said that she had used him, giving nothing in return. Was it true? Had she been that selfish? If she had, it was because she had thought he was happy as they were, good friends with the added warmth of an old attraction.

  She could not believe he would not return. Still, he had never been so distant before or seemed so determined.