Unforgettable

by Joan Johnston

  “It isn’t? Then why are you calling? Is mother all right?”

  “Your mother’s fine.”

  “And Oliver and Payne and Riley and Max?”

  “They’re fine, too, so far as I know. I called about the Ghost.” The silence on the other end of the line was a dead giveaway. “Do you have it?”

  “Of course I have it. I borrowed it. Oliver arranged it.”

  “With your mother’s permission?” Bull asked.

  “I think he got her permission,” Lydia said. “Does Mother want it back?”

  She never gave him a chance to answer, just kept talking.

  “Oliver said I could wear it to a charity event next week in Rome, for the publicity it will create and the money it will raise. I’d hate to go back on my promise. I’ll make sure it gets back into the vault immediately afterward. I promise.”

  “You’re sure you have it safe?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  Bull debated whether to tell her about the call he’d received and decided there was no sense worrying her. Someone must have done some fancy photo-shopping and was trying to fleece him. Surely, if the Ghost was missing, Lydia would have admitted it and asked for his help.

  “Just be careful,” he said. “Be sure you have security with you when you’re wearing the Ghost.”

  “I will, Daddy. I promise.”

  “I miss you, sweetheart.”

  “I miss you, too, Daddy.”

  Bull tried to think of an excuse to have her come see him in Paris but couldn’t come up with one. Besides, he couldn’t expect his children to drop what they were doing to come see him just because he was lonely. “Where are you keeping the Ghost?” he asked.

  “In the safe at the Hotel Hassler. It might as well be in Fort Knox,” she said with a laugh.

  The laugh sounded forced, but maybe he was hearing things that weren’t there. “Take care of yourself.”

  “Don’t worry, Daddy. I’ll be fine. There’s someone at the door. I have to go.”

  “About Harold,” he said.

  “Oh, Daddy, please don’t be angry with me. I can’t help how I feel.”

  “I was going to say that whatever you decide is fine with me.”

  He heard a relieved sigh. “Thank you, Daddy. I love you.”

  Bull stared at his dead phone thoughtfully. Either the phone call demanding ransom for the Ghost was a hoax, or his daughter was lying through her teeth. In any event, Oliver didn’t have the right to loan his mother’s jewelry without her permission. He needed to speak with his eldest son.

  Even as he thought the words, eldest son, Bull realized he thought of Oliver in exactly those terms. It didn’t matter that Oliver didn’t share his blood, he loved him as fiercely as any of his other children. However, he wasn’t sure Oliver felt the same way towards him. Despite his efforts, there had always been a moat between the two of them that Oliver seemed reluctant to cross.

  Bull made the call to Oliver’s cell phone, but there was no answer. When he heard Oliver’s voice asking him to leave a message, he wondered if his son had recognized his caller ID and refused to answer, or whether he really wasn’t there.

  Instead of leaving a phone message he texted: “Did you loan the Ghost to Lydia? Call me.”

  Bull pursed his lips. His text read like an accusation and an order. That was liable to put Oliver’s back up and keep him from getting in touch. Not that he was liable to respond anyway. Oliver did what Oliver wanted to do when Oliver wanted to do it. His son was every bit as bullheaded as he was himself.

  Bull realized the supposed theft of the Ghost gave him a valid excuse for contacting Bella. He picked up his phone again, then hesitated. Ever since their abortive meeting on Mother’s Day at the Seasons, he’d realized he should have let her finish speaking that long-ago day, when he’d caught her with her lover, instead of cutting her off. If Bella needed to confess her sins in order for them to reconcile, then he needed to listen.

  After the scare Bella had given him at the hospital, he’d thought a lot about how short and precious life was. He’d tried to find a woman to replace his wife, but every woman he compared to Bella came up short. He’d been in love with her since the first moment he laid eyes on her, and he’d love her till his dying day. If he could forgive—and forget—the past, perhaps there was a way for them to be happy together again.

  He’d been too proud to take the first step toward peace. He was equally certain Bella never would.

  But the years were taking their toll. The love between them was slowly but surely being ground to dust, stuck between a rock and a hard place. It was time—past time—to move on, to reconcile or divorce. He wanted this awful life of pain to end.

  Bull picked up the phone and called his wife.

  Chapter Nine

  Oliver read the text from his father and forcefully deleted it. He hadn’t been in contact with his father for more than a year, and that was all Bull had to say? Bloody hell! It’s a pearl necklace. Irreplaceable, but not a matter of life and death. Why couldn’t you just ask me how I am?

  He didn’t owe Bull an explanation for anything he did, but especially not for loaning the Ghost to Lydia. His mother had given him control of the vault at Blackthorne Abbey, trusting him to use that power wisely. He always had. Or he thought he had. What was going on with the Ghost?

  Oliver shivered. He was in Argentina, and it was the beginning of winter on the other side of the hemisphere from Paris. But it was the cold he felt on the inside, rather than the weather, that left him feeling chilled. He had to admit Bull Benedict had never treated him any differently than any of his biological children. But Oliver had known from a very early age that he wasn’t like his siblings. It was his eyes, of course, that gave him away. They weren’t just brown, they were such a dark brown that there was no way to hide the stain of his birth. Somewhere out there was a brown-eyed man who’d had sex with his violet-eyed mother, and then cut and run.

  He knew his mother well enough to believe that if Bella had wanted to be married to the man who’d planted his seed, she would have made it happen. He’d heard the rumors about how Bull had been forced into marrying Bella because she was only seventeen when she’d gotten pregnant. But he knew Bull well enough to believe that if he hadn’t wanted to marry Bella, he would have found a way out of it. It would have been simple, considering the fact that the child in Bella’s womb didn’t even have the same blood type as the man whose name was on Oliver’s birth certificate.

  Oliver had spent his entire life looking into the eyes of every man who said hello to his mother, wondering Is he the one? He’d thought for sure his biological father’s identity would have come out ten years ago, when his mother had bedded her former paramour again. But Bella had separated from Bull rather than telling her husband the name of her lover.

  It had taken Oliver a long time to make peace with the fact that he was probably never going to know who had sired him. Although making peace was not exactly how he’d dealt with the matter in boarding school. He’d fought anyone and everyone who’d suggested his mother was a whore and his father was a dupe. He’d made use of his sharp tongue to avoid fighting whenever possible. But he’d also gotten good with his fists. As he’d matured—he was taller and broader in the shoulders than any of his brothers—he’d found his size alone was often enough to keep mouths shut and fists in pockets.

  Bull had wanted him to come into the banking business with him, but Oliver knew he’d die if he found himself caged in a glass-walled building. Bull had given each of his children—including Oliver—a substantial trust fund, so they could either choose a career or not work at all.

  Oliver had suggested to his siblings that they form a foundation with their trust funds. They’d all agreed, and they met by Skype quarterly to discuss what good work the Castle Foundation was going to support. Each of them had a stipend from the foundation, but it wasn’t enough to live the life of complete leisure they would have had if they’d
kept their money for themselves. It had become necessary for each of them to find something to do with their lives.

  Oliver had fallen into his occupation accidentally. A painting had been stolen from a museum that was supported by the Castle Foundation, and Oliver had begun investigating who might have taken it. The trail had led across several European countries and eventually two continents, and he’d found the chase exciting. Oliver hadn’t bothered capturing the thief, he’d merely stolen back the painting and arranged for it to be replaced in the museum, with no one the wiser as to how it had been returned.

  He liked the anonymity of his work, which gave him the freedom to move about without his true objective being suspected. Lately he’d focused on items that were stolen during World War II. He had good resources for locating a missing item, but recovering the art or artifact and getting it back across borders to its original owner was often a serious challenge.

  Right now he was on the trail of a Russian triptych that had disappeared from a Greek Orthodox church during the occupation of Stalingrad. Considering how badly that battle had gone for the Germans, whoever had taken it had to be somebody important enough to get out of the city before the Germans were finally forced to surrender.

  Oliver had tracked down the son of a German general, whom he believed was the culprit. The young SS officer had been sent back to Germany from Stalingrad on a diplomatic mission around the time the triptych had gone missing and had fled to Argentina before the end of the war. He was now a very elderly man living with his elderly son in a walled hacienda outside Buenos Aires. Oliver had been scoping out the hacienda for the best way to retrieve the stolen artifact when he’d received the text from Bull.

  Oliver realized he wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on the job at hand until he’d satisfied his curiosity about why Bull had inquired about the Ghost.

  He faded back into the pampas and phoned his sister. He realized it must be early evening in Rome and wondered if she was in some club where she couldn’t hear her phone.

  “Oliver! What a surprise!” Lydia said when she answered.

  “Where’s the Ghost, Lydia?”

  Utter silence.

  “Bull called me and asked if I’d loaned you the necklace. Why would he do that?”

  “He called me, too,” Lydia said breathlessly. “I have no idea why he’s asking about the Ghost, Oliver. I told him I have it and it’s fine. I wore it two nights ago, and I’m planning to wear it again next week.”

  Lydia had told him that she had their mother’s permission to borrow the necklace, and he’d believed her. Now he wondered if she’d lied. He didn’t know his youngest sister well, since he and his brothers had been at different boarding schools from her all their lives, but he’d given her the benefit of the doubt.

  Had Bella come looking for the necklace, discovered it missing, and not known where it was? But that wouldn’t explain why Bull had called, instead of Bella, asking about the Ghost.

  Unless his mother used the missing necklace as an excuse to get in touch with his father.

  “I presume you’re taking good care of the necklace,” he said.

  “It’s in the Hotel Hassler safe,” she assured him. “Don’t worry, Oliver. I’ll be sure it’s returned to the vault at Blackthorne Abbey right on schedule.”

  He heard a male voice in the background and asked, “Who’s that with you?”

  Silence again. And then, “I don’t ask you about your love life, Oliver. I don’t appreciate your asking about mine.”

  Oliver chuckled. “Watch out for fortune hunters.”

  “I don’t have a fortune anymore,” she said pertly. “I gave it to the Castle Foundation.”

  “Be careful, kid. The Duchess will have a fit if anything happens to that necklace.”

  “I’m always careful,” she said. “Have you spoken to Mother lately?”

  Oliver scowled. “I sent my regrets to her on Mother’s Day. Other than that, no, I haven’t been in touch. Why do you ask?”

  Instead of answering his question, she said, “I’ve got to go, Oliver. Is there anything else?”

  I miss you. I love you. Take care of yourself.

  “That’s all,” he said. “Be good.”

  Lydia laughed. She’d been in more trouble in boarding school than all of the rest of them combined. “Goodbye, Oliver.”

  Oliver found himself listening to a dead phone. He tucked it back in his pocket as he tried to remember the most recent time he and his brothers and sister had all been together in one place. He had to go back a long way, to Christmas fifteen years ago. The last time they’d Skyped, he’d been in Argentina, Riley had been in Hong Kong, Payne had been in Greece, Max had been in London, and Lydia had been in Rome. Richmond, Virginia, was a long way for any of them to go in response to a summons from Bella. Which is why, he supposed, none of his siblings had made the trip.

  There was a good reason, other than distance, why he hadn’t gone. It was simply too painful to be anywhere near his mother when she was in so much pain from being estranged from Bull. The past ten years had been miserable ones for all of them. He wished his parents—the only parents he knew—would figure out a way to bury the hatchet, because their misery kept him and his siblings from gathering at Blackthorne Abbey for Christmas as they used to do.

  The sad truth was, however much he felt separated by his birth when he was with his brothers and sister, he desperately missed spending time with them.

  Oliver gritted his teeth so hard his jaw muscle flexed. He still had no idea why Bull had asked about the Ghost. Apparently, Bull had talked with Lydia, who’d reassured him she had the Ghost. There was no reason for him to contact Bull. But he was the only father Oliver had, and he owed him the courtesy—and the respect—of a response.

  He texted: I had the Ghost sent to Lydia in Rome. She will return it to the vault at Blackthorne Abbey after she wears it to a charity event next week.

  Then he disappeared into the tall grass.

  Chapter Ten

  Emily held out the phone to Bella, who was resting in a lounge chair on a stone patio in Santorini, Greece, and said in a shocked voice, “It’s your husband, Your Grace.”

  Bella stared at the phone without touching it. Despite all the wishing and hoping she’d done, Bull hadn’t phoned her in ten years. He’d surprised her by showing up at the Seasons on Mother’s Day, but his visit had been cut short when she’d had that episode with her heart that had landed her in the hospital in Richmond. Panic attack. Ha! The only panic she’d felt was terror that Bull would find out her secret. Bella put a fist against her chest, fighting for breath.

  The truth was she was dying.

  “Your Grace,” Emily said with alarm. “Do you need oxygen?”

  Bella forced herself to take several slow, deep breaths. “I’m all right, Emily.” But her heart was racing.

  After all this time, the most likely reason Bull had called was because something had happened to one of their children. Bella put a hand to her chest, to remind herself to stay calm, then took the phone with a trembling hand and said, “Hello, Bull.”

  Her voice came out raspy, sexy. She fought the knot in her throat as she asked, “Are the children all right?”

  “As far as I know,” Bull replied.

  Bella heaved a relieved sigh. Her voice was still sharp with the fear she’d felt as she said, “Then why did you call?” Was he ready, at long last, to hear her explanation for what had happened ten years ago?

  After a brief hesitation he said, “I’m calling about the Ghost.”

  That statement was so far from what Bella had hoped to hear that she was stunned into silence. She rose and walked to the edge of the patio overlooking the sea, so Emily wouldn’t hear the disappointment in her voice as she asked, “What about it?”

  “Did you loan it to Lydia?”

  “No. Why do you ask?” And why are you calling me to talk about a necklace when we have so many more important things to discuss. Like
the separate lives we lead. Like whether we can ever find a way to forgive each other and be husband and wife again.

  “I’m asking because I got a strange call this morning from someone who disguised his—or her—voice asking me to pay a twenty-five million dollar ransom if I wanted the Ghost back.”

  Bella frowned. “That makes no sense. The Ghost is in the vault at Blackthorne Abbey.”

  “Let’s take this one step at a time. First, did you loan the Ghost to Lydia.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I just spoke to her in Rome, and she claims to have it. She’s wearing it to a charity event next week.”

  “How did she get it?”

  “Apparently Oliver arranged to have it sent to her.”

  “He has access to the vault,” Bella said. “And my complete trust.”

  “Then Lydia must have told him she had your permission to wear it.”

  “Surely not.” Even as she spoke the words, Bella realized it was entirely possible Lydia had hedged the truth to acquire the necklace. “She must be frantic if it’s been stolen from her,” she murmured. “Especially since she never got my permission to borrow it.”

  “When I called Lydia to ask about the necklace, she swore that she had your permission to wear the Ghost, and that she was keeping it in the safe at the Hotel Hassler,” Bull said. “We know that half that sentence was a lie. I’m wondering if she might have lost the Ghost—or had it stolen—and is afraid to admit what’s happened.”

  Bella wasn’t sure what to say. “Why did you call me, Bull? This seems like a matter for the police.”

  “I thought you might want to help me find out the truth.”

  “I have a private investigator I can call—”

  “No, Bella. I thought the two of us might do some investigating. Together.”

  Bella recognized the olive branch Bull was extending. It wasn’t an apology, but it was an offer to spend time together, which might be a first step toward reconciliation. She was tempted to reach out and take it.

  And ignore the elephant in the room? What about Bull’s accusation that I cheated on him with Oliver’s father? Should I pretend all is forgiven? Is all forgiven?