“Really? You seemed to be enjoying yourself a minute or two ago. But then, that was when you were asking the questions.”
“You are an annoying woman.” There. It was out.
She said nothing for several seconds. When she did speak, her voice was gentle. “You’re not going to scare me off, Donovan. If you want me to go, you’ll have to send me away—which means you’ll also have to admit, once and for all, that you’re backing out of the fellowship.”
“But I’m not backing out of the fellowship.”
“All right, then. Tell me about your family.”
He was tempted to refuse. If she’d read his books as she claimed, she knew it all anyway. But he had the distinct impression that if he refused, she would only badger him until he gave it up.
So he told her. “My father was never in the picture.”
From where he sat, without shifting his gaze from her face, he could see out the wide front windows. He spotted the headlights of a car approaching down the winding driveway. When the car pulled to a stop under the glow of the bright facade lights, he recognized the vehicle.
A red Cadillac.
He ignored the car and continued telling Abilene what she no doubt already knew. “My mother was a very determined woman. I was her only child and she set out to make me fearless. She was a force to be reckoned with. Adventurous. Always curious. And clever. It was her idea that I should write my autobiography when I wasn’t even old enough to have one. She said I needed to cultivate myself as a legend and an authority. And the rest would follow. She died when I was in my early twenties. A freak skydiving accident.”
Abilene had her elbow braced on the chair arm, her strong chin framed in the L of her thumb and forefinger. “A legend and an authority. I like that.”
“It’s a direct quote from my second book. If you really had read that book, you would remember it.”
“This may come as a shock, but I don’t remember everything I read.”
“How limiting for you.”
She gave him a slow smile, one that told him he was not going to break her. “Did you ever find your father?”
“To find him implies that I looked for him.”
“So that would be a no?”
An atonal series of chimes sounded: the doorbell. Abilene sent a glance over her shoulder and shifted as if to rise.
“Don’t get up,” Donovan said.
“But—”
“Olga will take care of it.”
Abilene sank back to the couch cushions as his housekeeper appeared in the wide-open arched doorway that led to the foyer. Olga cast him a questioning look. He gave a tight shake of his head.
Olga shut the thick archway doors before answering the bell. Seconds later, there were voices: Olga’s and that of another woman. The heavy foyer doors blocked out the actual words.
He heard the front door shut.
And then Olga opened the doors to the living area again. “Dinner is ready,” she announced, her square face, framed by wiry graying hair, serene and untroubled.
“Thanks, Olga. We’ll be right in.” Out in the driveway, the Cadillac started moving, backing and turning and then speeding off the way it had come. Abilene had turned to watch it go. He asked her, “Hungry?”
She faced him again. “Who was that?”
“Does it really matter? And more to the point, is it any of your business?”
Abilene stood and smoothed her skinny little skirt down over those shapely knees. “I can see this is going to be one long, dirty battle, every step of the way.”
“Maybe you should give up, pack your bags, go back to San Antonio and your so-helpful builder friend, who also happens to be the father of your half sister, as well as of your sister-in-law. To the loving arms of your large, powerful, wealthy family. To your father, who loves your mother even though he betrayed her.”
Her eyes went to jade, mysterious. Deep. “I’m going nowhere, Donovan.”
“Wait. Learn. The evening is young yet. You can still change your mind.”
“It’s obvious that you don’t know me very well.”
Chapter Three
Dinner, Abilene found, was more of the same.
A verbal torture chamber. But at least it was brief. She saw to that.
Ben joined them in the dining room, which was the next room over from the enormous living area and had more large windows with beautifully framed views of the desert and distant, barren peaks.
There were several tables of varying sizes, as in a lodging house, or a bed-and-breakfast. They ate at one of the smaller ones, by the French doors to the courtyard, just the three of them. Olga brought the food and a bottle of very nice cabernet and left them alone.
Abilene asked, “Why all the tables? Are you thinking of renting out rooms?”
Donovan raised one glided eyebrow. “And this is of interest to you, why?”
Ben answered for him. “Once, Donovan thought he might offer a number of fellowships….”
Abilene smiled at Ben. At least he was civil. “Students, then?”
“Once, meaning long ago,” Donovan offered distantly. “Never happened. Never going to happen. And I decided against changing the tables for one large one. Too depressing, just Ben and me, alone at a table made for twenty.” He gave Ben a cool glance. “Ben is an engineer,” he said. “A civil engineer.”
Ben didn’t sigh. But he looked as though he wanted to. “I had some idea I needed a change. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was a very good engineer.”
“I saved him from that,” Donovan explained in a grating, self-congratulatory tone. “In the end, an architect knows something about everything. An engineer knows everything about one thing. It’s not good for a man, to be too wrapped up the details.”
Ben swallowed a bite of prime rib and turned to Abilene. “But then, my job here is to deal with the details. So I guess I’m still an engineer.”
She sipped her wine. Slowly.
Donovan glared at her. “All right. What are you thinking?”
She set down her glass. “I’m thinking you need to get out more. How long have you been hiding out here in the desert?”
A low, derisive laugh escaped him. “Hiding out?”
She refused to let him off the hook. “Months, at least. Right? Out here a hundred miles from nowhere, with your cook and your housekeeper and your engineer.”
“Are you going to lose your temper again?” he asked in that so-superior way that made her want to jump up and stab him with her fork.
“No. I’m not.”
“Should I be relieved?”
She glanced to the side and saw that the corners of Ben’s mouth were twitching. He was enjoying this.
Abilene wasn’t. Not in the least. She was tired and she was starting to wonder if maybe she should do exactly what she’d told everyone she wouldn’t: give up and head back to SA. “I’m just saying, maybe we could go out to dinner one of these nights.”
“Go out where?” Donovan demanded.
“I don’t know. El Paso?”
He dismissed her suggestion with a wave of his hand. “It’s a long way to El Paso.”
“It’s a long way to anywhere from here.”
“And that’s just how I like it.”
“I did go through a small town maybe twenty miles east of here today.”
“Chula Mesa,” said Donovan in a tone that said the little town didn’t thrill him in the least.
Abilene kept trying. “That’s it. Chula Mesa. And just outside of town, I saw a roadhouse, Luisa’s Cantina? We could go there. Have a beer. Shoot some pool.”
“I’m not going to Luisa’s.”
“You’ve been there before, then?”
“What does it matter? I’m not going there now. And as for Chula Mesa, there is nothing in that dusty little burg that interests me in the least.”
“Maybe you could just pretend to be interested.”
“Why would I do that?”
�
��Sometimes you have to pretend a little, Donovan. You might surprise yourself and find that you actually do enjoy what you’re pretending to enjoy.”
“When it comes to Chula Mesa, I’m not willing to pre tend. Wait. I’ll go further. I’m not willing to pretend anywhere. About anything.”
She really did want to do violence to him. To grab his big shoulders and shake him, at least. To tell him to grow up. Snap out of it. Stop acting like a very bright, very spoiled child. She took a bite of prime rib, one of potato. Dipped an artichoke leaf in buttery sauce and carefully bit off the tender end.
Donovan chuckled. “Fed up with me already, huh? I predict you’re out of here by morning.”
Ben surprised her by coming to her defense. “Leave her alone, Donovan. Let her eat her dinner in peace.”
Donovan’s manly jaw twitched. Twice. And then he grunted and picked up his fork.
They ate the rest of the meal in bleak silence.
When Abilene was finished, she dabbed at her lips with her snowy napkin, slid it in at the edge of her plate and stood. She spoke directly to Ben. “Would you tell the cook the food was excellent, please? I’ve had long day. Good night.”
“I’ll tell him,” Ben replied pleasantly. “Sleep well.”
“My studio,” Donovan muttered. “Nine o’clock sharp. We have a lot of work to do.”
She let a nod serve as her answer, and she left by the door to the interior hallway.
In her rooms, she changed into sweats and then sat on the bed and did email for a while. The house had wireless internet.
Really, it was kind of a miracle. Way out here, miles from nowhere, her cell worked fine and so did email and her web connection. She would have been impressed if she wasn’t so tired and disheartened.
What she needed was sleep, but she felt restless, too. Unhappy and unsatisfied. All these months of waiting. For this.
She knew if she got into bed, she would only lie there fuming, imagining any number of brutal ways to do physical harm to Donovan McRae.
Eventually, she turned on the bedroom TV and flipped through the channels, settling on The History Channel, where she watched a rerun of Pawn Stars and then an episode of Life After People, which succeeded in making her feel even more depressed.
Nothing like witnessing the great buildings of the world rot and fall into rubble after a so-enchanting evening with Donovan McRae. It could make a woman wonder if there was any point in going on.
At a few minutes after ten, there was a tap on her sitting room door.
It was Ben, holding two plates of something sinfully chocolate. “You left before dessert. No one makes flourless chocolate cake like Anton.”
She took one of the plates and a fork and stepped aside. “Okay. Since there’s chocolate involved, you can come in.” She poked at the dollop of creamy white stuff beside the sinfully dark cake. “Crème fraîche?”
“Try it.”
She did. “Wonderful. Your boss may deserve slow torture and an agonizing death, but I have no complaints about the food.”
They sat on the couch and ate without speaking until both of their plates were clean.
“Feel better?” He set his plate on the coffee table.
She put hers beside it. “I do. Much. Thank you.”
Ben stared off toward the doors to the darkened courtyard. “I started working for him two years ago, before the accident on the mountain. At the time, I really liked him. He used to be charming. He honestly did.”
“I know,” she answered gently. “I heard him speak once. He was so funny. Funny and inspiring. He made it all seem so simple. We were an auditorium full of students, raw beginners. Yet we came away feeling we were brilliant and accomplished, that we could do anything, that we understood what makes a building work, what makes it both fully functional and full of…meaning, too. Then, after he spoke, there was a party for the upperclassmen and professors, with Donovan the guest of honor. I was a freshman, not invited. But I heard how he amazed them all, how fascinating he was, how full of life, how…interested in everything and everyone. We all wanted to be just like him when we grew up.”
“I keep waiting,” Ben said, “for the day I wake up and he’s changed back into the man he used to be. But it’s been a while now. And the change is nowhere on the horizon.”
She asked the central question. “So. What happened to him? Was it the accident on the mountain?”
Ben only smiled. “That, I really can’t tell you. You’ll have to find out from him.”
She scoffed. “I don’t think I’ll hold my breath.”
“He likes you.”
That made her laugh. “Oh, come on.”
“Seriously. He does. I know him well enough by now to read him a little, at least. He finds you fascinating. And attractive—both of which you are.”
Was Ben flirting with her? She slid him a look. He was still staring off into the middle distance. So maybe not. “Well, if you’re right, I would hate to see how he treats someone he doesn’t like.”
“He ignores them. He ignores almost everyone now. Just pretends they aren’t even there. Sends me or Olga to deal with them.”
She gathered her knees up to the side. “This evening, before dinner, someone arrived and was sent away, someone in a red Cadillac. I didn’t see who, but I heard a woman’s voice talking to Olga at the door….”
Ben shrugged. “People come by, now and then. When they get fed up with him not returning their calls. When they can’t take the waiting, the wondering if he’s all right, the stewing over what could be going on with him.”
“People like…?”
“Old friends. Mountain climbers he used to know, used to partner with. Beginning architects he once encouraged.”
“Old girlfriends, too?”
“Yes.” Ben sent her a patient glance. “Old girlfriends, too.”
She predicted, “Eventually, they’ll all give up on him. He’ll get what he seems to be after. To be completely alone.”
Ben’s dark eyes gleamed. “With his cook and his housekeeper and his engineer.”
She told him gently, “I didn’t mean that as a criticism of you.”
He smiled. A warm smile. “I know you didn’t.”
“I just don’t get what’s up with him.”
“Well, don’t worry. You’re not the only one.”
“How will he live, if he doesn’t work? This house alone must cost a fortune to run.”
“His books still make money.”
“But an architect needs clients. We’re not like painters or writers. We can’t go into a room and lock the door and turn out a masterpiece and then try to sell it….”
“I know,” Ben said softly. He admitted, “Eventually, there could be a problem. But not for a few years yet, anyway….” There was a silence. Ben was gazing off toward the courtyard again.
Finally, she said, “You seemed pretty stuffy at first.”
He chuckled. “Like the butler in one of those movies with Emma Thompson, right?”
“Pretty much. But now I realize you’re not like someone’s snobby butler, not in the least. You’re okay, Ben.”
He did look at her then. His dark eyes were so sad. “I was afraid, after the way he behaved at dinner, that he’d succeeded in chasing you off. I hope he hasn’t. He needs a little interaction, with someone other than Anton, or Olga. Or me.”
“A fresh victim, you mean.”
“No. I mean someone smart and tough and aggressively optimistic.”
“Aggressively optimistic? That’s a little scary.”
“I meant it in the best possible way.”
“Oh, right.”
“I meant someone able to keep up with him—I could use someone like that around here, too, when you come right down to it. Someone like you…”
“I wouldn’t say I’m exactly keeping up with him.”
“Well, I would.”
She drooped back against the couch cushions. “Okay, I’m still here. But it�
��s going to take a lot of chocolate, you know.”
“I’ll make sure that Anton keeps it coming.” He got up. “And I’ll let you get your rest.”
She waited until he reached the door before she said, “Good night.”
“’Night, Abilene.” And he was gone.
“It’s not a horrible arrangement of the space,” Donovan announced when she entered the studio the next day. He was already at his desk, staring at his computer screens.
She saw that her design for the center was up on the computer at the desk she’d used the day before—which meant he was probably looking at the same thing on his two ginormous screens.
Just to be sure, she marched down the length of the room and sidled around to join him behind his desk.
Yep. It was her design. Up on display like a sacrificial offering at a summoning of demons. Ready to be ripped to shreds by the high priest of darkness.
He shot her an aggravated glance. “What? You do have a desk of your own, you know.”
She sidled in closer, and then leaned in to whisper in his ear. “But yours is so much bigger, so much…more impressive.”
He made a snarly sound. “Did I mention you annoy me?”
“Yes, you did. Don’t repeat yourself. It makes you seem unimaginative.” He smelled good. Clean. With a faint hint of some really nice aftershave. How could some one who smelled so good be such an ass?
It was a question for the ages.
“You’re crowding me,” he growled.
“Oh, I’m so sorry….” She straightened again, and stepped back from him, but only a fraction.
“No, you’re not—and I don’t like people lurking behind me, either.”
“Fair enough.” She slid around so she was beside him again, put her hand on his sacrificial slab of a desk and leaned in as close as before. “I slept well, surprisingly. And I’m feeling much better this morning, thank you.”
He turned his head slowly. Reluctantly. And met her eyes. “I didn’t ask how you slept.”
“But you should have asked.”
“Yeah. Well, don’t expect a lot of polite noises from me.”
She heaved a fake sigh. “I only wish.”
“If you absolutely have to lurk at my elbow, pay attention.” He turned back to the monitors, began clicking through the views. “Have you noticed?”
Donovan's Child Page 3
