“Jake, I think you know I wouldn’t ask you to do this if it wasn’t important. Can’t you do it for me? If Mrs. Windsor is agreeable to an office visit, will you at least talk with her?”
Jake snorted. “I don’t think so. For the second time, what part of ‘I want nothing to do with Sarabess Windsor’ don’t you understand? How many times do I have to say it? I never made a secret about my feelings where Sarabess Windsor was concerned. Mom might have closed her eyes to it all, but mine were wide-open. You put that in your pipe and smoke it, Pop. By the way, Mitzi stopped by earlier to make breakfast for me. Did you know she’s writing her memoirs? I’m going to represent her,” he lied, with a straight face.
Rifkin’s eyes narrowed. “Your aunt has supposedly been writing her memoirs for twenty-five years. I’m sure she hasn’t written a word, and there’s no reason to think she’ll actually sit down on that bony ass of hers to do it now, either. My guess would be that she’s bored and wants to stir up trouble. She excels at stirring up trouble.”
Jake turned belligerent. He hated such discussions with his father. He really hated it when his father turned on Mitzi. For some reason, the old man always made him feel like an errant schoolboy whose punishment he was debating. “Oh, yeah, well, how do you explain the fact that she’s on chapter six? She’s doing it!” he lied again. “What do you think of that?”
“What I think, young man, is, you’re acting like a petulant schoolboy and lying about Mitzi. I wish you’d reconsider and talk with Mrs. Windsor.”
“You do have a one-track mind, don’t you? You’re the one on retainer with the Windsor family, not me. I’m way past the age when you can tell me what to do, Pop. I gotta go now.”
Elway scurried around his ankles. Jake bent down and picked him up. He was stunned when the mangy old cat started to purr. For some reason, Jake felt a lump form in his throat. Mitzi always said every single person in the world needed someone at one point in their lives. He wasn’t sure, but it looked like Elway needed him right now. And he suddenly needed Elway to hold on to, for some strange reason. He made a move to open the door for his father to leave.
Rifkin’s narrowed eyes were now mean-looking slits. “Jacob, would it make a difference to you if I told you the reason Mrs. Windsor wants to see you has to do with your old childhood friend Trinity Henderson?”
There was that name from his past again. Elway was purring so loudly, Jake felt light-headed as he struggled with his father’s words and the cat’s uncharacteristic behavior. He needed to say something and he needed to say it now. “No, it wouldn’t.”
The door was wide-open. Elway could leap out of his arms at any second and be lost to him. He wished his father would leave. He stepped forward, Elway secure in his arms. As Rifkin walked through the door, he said, “You’re turning into a jackass, Jacob.”
Jake knew his mother would be appalled at his response. Mitzi would clap him on the back and say something witty. “Takes one to know one,” Jake muttered under his breath. An instant later, he was sorry. The man was his father, and he owed him a modicum of respect. Just a modicum.
When the door closed tightly, Jake locked it. Only then did Elway leap out of his arms to head for the couch, where he settled down in the mound of pillows and started to groom himself. Jake walked back to the kitchen for a second cup of coffee. If it hadn’t been so early, he would have poured a jolt of Southern Comfort into the coffee. Instead, he added three sugars and some heavy cream.
As he sipped at the coffee, Jake’s mind raced. What the hell was going on that involved Trinity Henderson? More to the point, why was Sarabess Windsor interested in Trinity? Sarabess had to be aware of his feelings where she was concerned. Over the years he’d never made a secret of those feelings, to his father’s chagrin. Yet, Sarabess had sent his father to plead her case. “Well, lady, you can plead till the proverbial cows come home, and I still won’t give you the time of day.”
Jake rinsed his coffee cup, set out some food and water for Elway, and left the apartment. The minute he reached the office he was going to do an Internet search to see if he could locate his old playmate. Something was going on, and he wanted to know what it was.
FERN MICHAELS is the USA Today and New York Times bestselling author of the Sisterhood series, Fool Me Once, Picture Perfect, and dozens of other novels and novellas. There are over seventy million copies of her books in print. Fern Michaels has built and funded several large day-care centers in her hometown, and is a passionate animal lover who has outfitted police dogs across the country with special bulletproof vests. She shares her home in South Carolina with her four dogs and a resident ghost named Mary Margaret. Visit her website at www.fernmichaels.com.
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