With Strings Attached

by Unknown

  No love left. Did he hate her? Did a man grimly go into battle for a woman he hated? How was she going to stop him? He said he was going to make Saul pay his debts, but he would only hurt himself with masses of horrible publicity. Saul's carefree innocence was unconquerable.

  Speeding along the Queensway with Patrick's face grim and the car moving too fast, Molly worried, 'You shouldn't speed here. They patrol the Queensway pretty diligently.'

  No answer, just a hard muscle jumping at the point of his jaw. She looked away from him. 'Where are we going?'

  'Ottawa International.'

  'You mean airport?'

  He did not answer, but shortly they were driving past a security guard, coming to a stop beside a hangar. There were two sleek, small jets on the tarmac. Patrick got out of the van and handed the rental car keys to a young businessman dressed in a suit and a helpful face. Her van keys, too, she thought, but she couldn't hear the instructions Patrick rapped out as the young man nodded and adjusted his tie nervously.

  Young yes-man on the way up, she decided, watching them. Then someone touched her arm and said, 'This way, ma'am. It's ready.'

  It was one of the jets. Molly followed the uniformed man inside, sat where she was told and agreed that she would keep her seat belt fastened until they were up.

  'Is this a Lear jet?' It was the only kind of corporate jet she knew of, but the pilot shook his head.

  'De Haviland,' he informed her. 'Beautiful machine. You won't even know it when we're in the air. We'll be in Vancouver before you know it.'

  Vancouver?

  Patrick appeared and belted himself into the chair opposite hers. She said nervously, 'I thought you might send me off into the sunset alone.'

  He did not laugh. If she had any sense, she would stop trying to change that grim expression, but she wished that Patrick would smile at her just once. Wished she could go into his arms and have the power to turn the hardness back into love. She stared out the window. Buildings passing by the windows. 'Is this your plane?'

  'No. It belongs to a company I've got an interest in.'

  'I suppose you've got interests strewn all over the country?' Depressing thought. She closed her eyes and said wearily, 'I suppose you're filthy rich. You must be, to go tearing across the continent in style like this.'

  He sighed. 'Don't swear, Molly. It doesn't suit you.'

  She was not going to cry! She had promised herself she would not cry in front of him, and damn it! She wouldn't.

  'How did you find me?'

  'The Molly Alex books. The publisher. Your agent.' He made it sound a boring piece of detective work. He must care, mustn't he? Otherwise, why all this? Or was it only stubbornness? She grimaced, because he certainly had plenty of that in his nature. Pig-headed right now, she thought. Blindly stubborn, determined to interfere.

  She was never going to stop loving him. It would be with her forever, ready to sneak out and knock her down whenever she thought she'd grown some immunity to the memories.

  Memories. Victoria. Lying sheltered in his arms as the horse clopped along the streets. Watching as he cradled little Tammy in his arms. Listening to his voice as they walked through the darkness under the trees on Gabriola.

  When Ottawa had turned to a patchwork quilt down below, he looked at her and said tonelessly, 'Get some sleep.'

  'How long will it be?'

  'Long enough for you to sleep.'

  She stared at his impassive face, searching for an elusive something she thought she had seen. As if he wanted to make her angry? But why?

  The bed was behind a partition. Molly pulled the thick curtain closed and lay down, succumbing to the dizzy luxury of sleep almost at once. Weeks of sleepless nights, and now for the first time she felt secure, safe. The man on the other side of the partition might be angry, pig-headed, and miles from the tender, wild lover of her dreams. But he was Patrick, and if he was in charge of things, there really wasn't much need to worry. No, she thought groggily. That was wrong, exactly backwards. She must not let... must not...

  She woke in the early afternoon somewhere in the skies of British Columbia. Time had rolled backward, the sun still high in she sky when it should be dark. She got up and tidied herself.

  Patrick was reading what looked like a long corporate report. Not numbers. Words, page after page of words. Molly picked up a magazine from a rack and spent the hour until they landed turning pages and pulling her eyes from one word to another.

  In Vancouver, Patrick delivered her in silence to the twentieth floor of a building in the financial district. Soft carpets, a string of long names announcing what had to be an outrageously expensive firm of barristers and solicitors. Past normal office hours, but downstairs there had been a security guard to sign them in.

  In the twentieth floor office, Patrick stood at a full length window, staring out at the skyscrapers while the lawyer took her through a mess of paperwork. Molly listened through to the end, then she stared at the forms, not at the lawyer or at Patrick, and announced grimly, 'I'm not taking legal action against my own father. I won't.'

  The lawyer used his million-dollar voice. 'Miss Natham, this claim counters the government's charge against the property. Your property, not your father's. The settlement of the tax liability is a separate issue which these forms do not address.'

  Molly folded her hands in her lap. 'It's the government's property. They've got a right to it. I don't care about the cabin.'

  The lawyer's eyes met Patrick's over her head. 'The issue would simplify if we abandoned claim to the property.'

  Patrick shook his head. 'No. It's hers. It was given to her.'

  Molly thought that there wasn't a chance the courts would see things Patrick's way. She leaned forward and pointed, 'I'm not signing that one.'

  'Miss Natham, you're mistaken if you feel your father can get away with this. He's far too well known a figure, with showings all over the western world. His paintings will be seized. Governments work together on these things, you know.'

  She did know. She couldn't believe that Saul didn't know as well, but it was Patrick that she wanted to protect if she could.

  The lawyer warned, 'Your father is in grave danger of being prosecuted criminally. Tax evasion is no trivial matter.' His eyes brushed over her to the man standing by the window. 'I've been retained to represent both you and your father in this matter. Your cooperation will help everyone involved, your father included.'

  She looked at Patrick, the nausea washing over her. He was going to try to bail Saul out. She asked quietly, 'Can I stop you?'

  'No.'

  She rubbed a harried hand along the worry line that was turning into a permanent part of her forehead, then hugged herself tightly and said miserably, 'I don't want you to get hurt trying to straighten out my life.'

  It was the first time in two days that he had looked at her without anger in his eyes. He said quietly, 'You don't have any choice in this, Molly. Just sign the papers.'

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sarah greeted Molly with a hug, a gesture of affection that was nearly Molly's undoing.

  'You look terrible,' Sarah said warmly. 'Exhausted. Patrick, you get her bags. Edward, we'll put her dinner on a tray. She's too tired to make conversation. Thank goodness Jeremy and Sally are asleep, or they'd be all over her!'

  Sarah led Molly to one of the guest rooms upstairs. 'I wish we could have you downstairs, but the twins have filled everything up. And up here, there are guests crawling everywhere now. Sorry, but it's May and that's life. Just ignore them, will you, and for goodness sakes don't let that man at the end of the corridor trick you into doing his laundry for him.'

  Sarah bustled around the guest room, turning the bed back, pulling the chair out from the desk. 'You can eat here. Unless you prefer Pandemonium downstairs? Tammy and Terry are turning colicy. Not tonight, I think, eh?'

  'I'm not really hungry at all.' Molly chewed on her lip. 'Sarah, you don't need to wait on me. I- Patrick really shouldn't h
ave brought me here. I don't know why he did.'

  Sarah said warmly, 'Where else would he bring you? I know he's in a terrible temper, but you don't need to worry about anything. Pat's very good at looking after problems.' Sarah frowned and said decisively, 'You've got to eat, Molly, hungry or not. You look terrible. I don't suppose my brother has helped any, ranting and raving all over the continent.'

  Patrick came into the bedroom with Molly's suitcase at that moment, and Sarah swung on him. 'You listen to me, Patrick Dougall McNaughton! You're leaving Molly alone until she's had a good rest!'

  Personally, Molly thought he was glad to leave her in Sarah's hands. He had what he wanted. The power of attorney, his right to fight for the cabin she would never be able to live in again. There was no love left. Not even hate, just anger.

  She did not understand his anger. Was it some self-destructive urge to fight battles that weren't his? That didn't sound much like the Patrick she knew, the quiet fighter who knew what he wanted and kept his strategy behind laughing eyes.

  Heaven knew, she could be wrong. She was obviously no judge of other people, at least not of Gabriolans. She would have sworn Sarah would turn wary and suspicious when Saul's troubles rained down on Molly, but instead her hostess was rustling around with trays and concern and protective motherly clucking.

  They were all treating Molly like a child. Even Edward's dry humour was a little more careful the next morning, a little more than vaguely worried. And Patrick was nowhere in sight.

  Molly kept expecting him to turn up. She persuaded Sarah to let her help make up the guests beds, but she tensed every time she heard a door opening or closing downstairs.

  He came in the evening, demanding quietly, 'Molly, come into the office.' Edward's office, she supposed, or Sarah's. Molly was uncertain who did the paperwork in this bed and breakfast. The labour was divided between Sarah and Edward in a haphazard fashion that worked like clockwork.

  Patrick closed the door to the office, walked to the desk and stared out the window. 'Sit down, Molly. I want contacts. Places. The people your father knows in the art world. The places he has showings.'

  She chewed on her lip, wondering if he could find Saul without her help. Patrick turned his head and considered her silence.

  'Molly, you can't stop me. Why not give up this passive resistance tactic of yours?'

  'Tactic? I- I didn't ask you to do battle for me,' she pointed out reasonably. 'It isn't your affair.'

  He clicked the pen in his hand absently. 'You asked me not to smother you, told me to get out of your life.' His eyes lifted to imprison hers. 'If you want free of me, you'll speed up the process by cooperating now. Once I've got Saul to clear up the tax situation so that you've got your property back-' He shrugged and finished carelessly, 'then I'll let you go.'

  Let her go. The words hurt, although Molly had pinned no dreams for the future on this mission of Patrick's. She had to swallow several times before she could manage to speak. 'It's not really my cabin. You have to understand Saul. He... well, he just doesn't think.'

  'He'll think next time, I promise you!' Patrick bit off a curse. 'He's your father! He's supposed to love you, care for you- not dump you in this kind of trouble!'

  Molly leaned forward and put her hand on his arm. Under her fingers, his muscles were rigid. 'Patrick, it- I know he seems... well, uncaring, but it isn't that. It's something to do with the way he is, part of what makes him such a brilliant artist. Whatever he's looking at, that's what fills his mind and his heart. Nothing else matters.'

  'He just doesn't see consequences,' explained Molly. Patrick's face looked even more grim as he violently snapped the pen in his fingers in half. 'And he doesn't believe in taxation,' she added weakly.

  'I plan to teach him,' said Patrick harshly. Where is he, Molly?'

  'I don't know.'

  Patrick stared at the broken pen. How many times had Molly had to make excuses to herself for her father? Was she lying to protect him now?

  'Molly, are you going to help me?' She swallowed and he said quietly, 'I'm trying to keep him out of jail, Molly.'

  She hugged herself, a gesture that always made him want to put his arms around her, to shelter her and love her.

  'Patrick, I don't want you in this mess,' she said finally. 'I-I-' She knew from his face that it was no use. She sighed and closed her eyes and said quietly, 'Yes. What do you want to know?'

  'You don't know where he is?'

  'I think he's somewhere in Europe, but I'm only guessing.'

  'What about your aunt?'

  Molly shook her head. 'He'd never tell her anything. The only thing they ever agreed about was that I should go live with Carla and her husband when I was twelve.'

  Patrick took Carla's telephone number anyway.

  'He has a showing in Paris in September,' Molly said. 'He sends me invitation cards to his showings. Sometimes. Last time in Paris, it was the Sevres gallery. How can he have got his paintings out of the country with this going on, though? Except Babette- '

  'Who's Babette?'

  'She came and got his paintings a couple of days after I arrived at the cabin. You remember? Saul phoned for me to pack up his paintings. You were there.' Rather amazingly, Molly remembered Babette's telephone number. 'But it's just an answering service. I think she's with Saul.'

  Maybe, thought Patrick, but answering machines could be accessed remotely, and Patrick thought he could lay a trap on an answering machine that would catch a vain, scatter-brained artist.

  He wondered what the status of art was with the customs officials of France and Canada. He could think of ways Saul Natham could be in trouble that Molly had not even dreamed of; but he wasn't about to tell any of them to Molly. Saul Natham might not know it, but he had run his daughter's emotions ragged for the last time. It might be impossible to make a fifty-year old man grow up, but Patrick would make damned sure that the artist would think twice and three times before he ever did anything to hurt Molly again.

  For the first two days of Molly's stay at Sarah and Edward's bed and breakfast, Patrick turned up for breakfast each morning, then drove away. She assumed that he went to his offices in Nanaimo.

  He came for supper each evening, eating with the family in the kitchen, not with the guests in the dining room. He seemed calmer after that first meeting in the office, more the quiet and purposeful Patrick she knew; except that there were no smiles and he avoided speaking directly to Molly- except for those nightly sessions in the office, asking questions of her, making notes on that pad.

  He questioned her about the telephone numbers in Saul's address book. The book itself was sealed up in the cabin, but Patrick insisted that Molly could remember some of the numbers if she tried. Patrick himself had a mind that collected numbers and filed them accurately for future retrieval. He insisted that somewhere in Molly's mind must be stored the numbers she had dialled in her search for Saul.

  'One of those numbers got through to him,' Patrick insisted.

  She couldn't remember the numbers, but on the third session in that office, she realized that she still had the telephone bill she had paid for Saul in her purse.

  She didn't realize until the next evening that Patrick must have found what he wanted among the European numbers on that telephone bill. For the first time, he didn't come to the Hollisons' for dinner.

  Afterwards, when the dishes were cleared away and the guests gone upstairs to their rooms, Molly slipped out into the darkness. The Hollison's yard light took her almost to the place on the trail where Patrick's lights illuminated. His yard light was on, but his car wasn't there and the windows were dark. She wondered if his door was locked, but could not bring herself to find out. If he had locked the doors of his house, it might be a symbol of what he had done to the heart that had once loved her.

  Why had she come? What had she intended to do if Patrick had been here. Go to him? Into his arms? If he felt anything for her, it would have to wait until the anger faded. Maybe longer, b
ecause although he had stopped breaking pens and growling at her, there was no warmth anywhere.

  She followed the path on from his house, but the darkness overcame the trees before she got to the cabin. Best that way, she decided. Seeing the lock on the door and the official notice there wasn't going to help anything. She had belongings inside that house, her music collection and clothes. She supposed Patrick's lawyer would spring them free, but in her heart she did not believe that even Patrick could get her cabin back. She really didn't understand why he was so determined to try. Even the lawyer had been doubtful of success. A property transfer made for the purpose of evading tax liability had to be null and void. She knew Saul wouldn't have thought of it in that cold-blooded light, but that didn't change reality or the law. Her father believed you could alter reality by believing in fairies. Where did that leave Molly, who believed in dragons and dinosaurs? And Patrick, who believed he could put any problem right.

  She went back to the Hollisons' house to lie in the guest bed and listen for the sound of Patrick's car. It didn't come.

  The next morning, David came into the kitchen through the back door in his work clothes. 'Don't want the guests to see me,' he told Molly. 'They'll think this is a farm instead of a luxurious island hideaway.'

  He handed her two flats of eggs and passed the message to tell Patrick to call when he returned. 'I'll bring him round eggs and milk when he's back from Europe.'

  Europe. And she had told Patrick that Saul was probably in Europe. Had he found something from those telephone numbers?

  Molly cornered Sarah in an empty guest room. Sarah was stripping the bed and Molly took the bundle of linen from her. 'Where's Patrick? Where in Europe? Has he gone after Saul?'

  'Yes.' Sarah took the linen back. 'Don't worry. It's going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine.'

  Molly sank down on the bed. 'He's gone after Saul.' She closed her eyes. 'How did he find him? What did he do about Trouble?' She hadn't seen the cat yet, but Patrick had told her it came every day to his house for feeding, then ran back into the bushes.