Adam's Daughter (38 page)

He stopped and held her shoulders. “What about you? Are you pleased?”

“Of course. You’re very good at pleasing me, Mr. Richardson,” she said.

They walked on, Kellen thinking about his puzzling move. Surely he hadn’t bought a home just to be near her. He had never made even an oblique reference to their future. He had always said he intended to remain in San Francisco only until his business was finished. He said he was researching investment possibilities in North America for his father’s corporation and had spent the last six months commuting to Canada. Two months ago, he had finally purchased a newspaper in Toronto and was now considering buying a printing facility and mill in Vancouver. And he still made an occasional trip to Los Angeles, though he never mentioned what that entailed.

“Well, I’m not so sure I’ve pleased you this weekend,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “You’ve seemed preoccupied about something. What’s the matter?”

Somehow Garrett had sensed her anxiety about Ian wanting to sell the Seattle paper. She walked on, staring at the sand.

“You know, we made a breakthrough back there when you told me about your family,” Garrett said. “Tell me what’s troubling you.”

She found his remark strange. Could he also possibly want to delve below the surface of their relationship? She
told him about her conversation with Ian, but stopped short of revealing her concerns about the state of the entire Bryant corporation.

“Is the Seattle paper financially sound?” Garrett asked.

Ian’s report came to her mind. She had spent an hour reading it last night. It detailed how the
Seattle Dispatch
was facing strong competition from another newspaper and how it was suffering a loss of market share.

“I think it has a few problems,” she said.

“Then it might be a good move to unload it.”

She shook her head slowly. “I couldn’t. It was one of my father’s first newspapers.”

“You’re being sentimental,” he said. “There’s no room for sentiment in business.”

It was almost dark and they had reached the steps leading up to the deck of the house. She started up the steps ahead of Garrett then turned to face him.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “It’s part of my family. I’d never sell it. No matter what happened.”

He looked up at her, then out at the dark ocean. “It’s getting cold,” he said. “Let’s go in, and I’ll make you some dinner.”

Over dinner, conversation turned to one of their favorite subjects, the differences between British and American newspapers. Garrett told witty stories about the eccentric characters of Fleet Street and the trials of his newspaper’s reporter who covered the royal family.

“
I can’t believe you treat the royal family as serious news,” Kellen said, shaking her head.

“
They sell papers. The royals, sex, and murder. In that order.”

“You have no scruples,” she
said, smiling at him over the rim of her glass.

“
I admitted that the very first night we met.”

It was quiet except for the crackling of the fire and the muffled sound of the surf. Kellen’s eyes held Garrett’s. “Tell me about yourself,” she said suddenly.

Garrett set down his glass. “There’s nothing much to tell,” he said, smiling easily. “My father is Sir Arthur Richardson -—”

Kellen arched an eyebrow.

“Yes, a title. It sounds nice, but it doesn’t mean much. It was a gift from a grateful prime minister who liked my father’s editorial policies.” Garrett paused. “Actually, my father’s story is very much like that of your father’s. He started as a reporter on a newspaper in Leeds and worked his way up. He bought his first newspaper at thirty and built it into a string of them. He became quite wealthy.” Garrett paused. “And then quite preoccupied with all that came with that. He sent me to the right schools and then Oxford to prepare me for my future. In April, I turned thirty-four. I’m a Fleet Street publisher’s son. His only son. Someday, I’ll take up where he leaves off.”

“That’s a resum
e, not a life,” Kellen said.

“So you want
details.” He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “I play the piano. I’m quite good. I wanted once to be a jazz pianist. I live alone in a town house in Redcliff Gardens, and my one regret in life is that when I was a boy I never had a dog. I like historical biographies, American football, Haute Brion wine, and older women who can make me laugh.”

“But I’m a younger woman,” Kellen said.

“I try to keep myself open to new experiences.”

Kellen shook her head. “Why do I feel like I know you so well without really knowing anything about you?”

“I tend to hold people at arm’s length.”

“You haven’t mentioned anything about being married,” she said
. “For all I know, you could have a wife or two stuck away somewhere.”

He toyed with the stem of his glass. “I was married,” he said, without looking at her. “When I was twenty. She was a presenter for the BBC, an anchorwoman, you’d call it.” His face was curiously neutral. “We were married for two years. We had twins
...boys.”

Kellen’s imagination conjured up a portrait of a pretty young woman on a television screen and two miniature dark-haired replicas of Garrett. She felt a pang of envy.

“She was killed in a car accident in Wales,” Garrett said. “We were going on a holiday. I was delayed in London, so she went on ahead with the boys. They were killed, too. Hit by a drunken lorry driver.” He paused. “They told me they were killed instantly, that no one suffered. I’ve never been able to figure out how in the world anyone ever knows that.”

Kellen sat in silent shock. “Garrett, I’m so sorry,” she said finally.

A small, distant smile came to his face, and he reached out and took her hand. “A long time ago,” he said.

A log fell into the fireplace,
echoing in the quiet room and making Kellen jump, but she kept her eyes on Garrett’s face.

“Well, I’ve certainly thrown a blanket over things,” he said, his smile growing warmer. “Tell me something about yourself.”

“You know all there is to know. I’m an open book.”

“That I’ll read, and reread and read again and never understand. Tell me a dirty little secret about your past.”

She sensed his need for lightness. “Well,” she began, “once, in Paris, I agreed to a blind date with this British fellow, a member of Parliament no less. The man turned out to be a grade-A stuffed shirt.” She playfully intertwined her fingers in Garrett’s. “You know how Brits can be.”

“Indeed.”

“When he came to pick me up, his first words to me were that I could expect no commitment from him. He was absolutely devoted to the wife, of course.”

“Of course.”

“But then he asked me to change into something sexier so he could parade me in front of his friends. So I changed, put on my leather coat, and off we went. When we got to the Lipp and he offered to take my coat, I told him I had nothing on underneath it. All night, he sat there staring at me, his face beet red, sweat dripping down his face. His friends thought he was having a heart attack.”

Garrett laughed. “The French have a nasty word for your kind of woman...
une allumeuse
.”

Kellen smiled. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me something no one else knows about you.”

“Let’s go in to the fire first.” They moved to the sofa near the fire.

“True confessions,” she prodded.

He hesitated. “I’m adopted,” he said. “That’s the secret no one is supposed to know, not even me.”

When he saw her puzzled expression, he decided to go on. “My parents never told me,” he said. “I found out the truth by
accident when I was fifteen. I found some papers in my father’s desk.”

“And you never asked them about it?”

“I wanted to. But as I grew older, I realized they had some peculiar need to pretend it was otherwise. My mother was very concerned with appearances. I suppose she wanted to project the image of a perfect family and I was needed to complete the picture. Even as young as I was, I somehow understood how important it was to her.” He paused. “So I acted out my part, as they did theirs. It was, for all appearances, a perfect family.”

He smiled suddenly.
“What would your born-and-raised think if they knew the descendant of their precious seaman, William Richardson, was actually of unknown lineage?”

“I don’t care what any of them think,” Kellen
said. She settled back into the crook of his arm.

The fire was burning low and the house was growing cold. Garrett looked over at the sofa where Kellen lay. She hadn’t wanted to admit how tired she was but finally she had just drifted off. He had covered her with a blanket, poured himself a brandy and sat down in a chair across from her.

As he watched her sleep, he
wondered why in the world he had told her about his adoption.

He had never revealed it to anyone. Neither had he planned to tell her about Susan and the twins. He had not intended to give her more than the usual flippant answers he gave women when they began to probe. But something had made him want to tell her about himself and it had all simply come out.

The urge, he was sure, had risen only from the alchemy of the moment, the tangy night air, the wine, the lingering sexual aura, the lulling sense of comfort.

Giving away his secret, letting a woman venture close. He had not done that since Susan’s death. It had been impetuous and for a moment liberating. But now he felt unprotected and the urge to withdraw was
strong. He could see himself falling in love with Kellen. And couldn’t afford to get too close to any woman right now.

Not now, he thought. There’s too much to do.

The room was growing cold. He got up, put two logs on the fire and prodded the blaze back to life. He felt chilled so he pulled his robe tighter, and sat down on the floor in front of hearth.

His thoughts drifted to his most recent conversation with his father.
Even over the telephone, Garrett had heard the impatience in his father’s voice. How are things going in Toronto? What are you doing in San Francisco? And, I think you should come home for a while so we can discuss this plan of yours. He was yanking his leash, and Garrett knew he’d have to go home to defend his plan anew.

H
is father was sixty-four and stubbornly refused to relinquish any real power to Garrett. And he obviously still did not trust him when it came to business.

Garrett thought back to two years ago, when he had first proposed to his father that they buy the Toronto newspaper. His father dismissed the idea, but Garrett had argued that a Canadian paper would establish a North American foothold from which the Richardson Newspapers could expand. His father reluctantly allowed Garrett to proceed.

Garrett had moved ahead quickly and confidently. Before even approaching his father, he had studied the Canadian market and readership habits. Then, he had researched the ailing Toronto paper and determined it would be the prime place to start. It was Arthur Richardson’s money that had made the Toronto purchase possible, but it was Garrett’s ideas and ambition that had put it into action.

It was as if he had spent his life preparing for such an opportunity. He had made it a point to observe the people on the street and lea
rn what they liked to read about. He watched them on buses and listened to them in pubs. He knew what titillated and moved them. Garrett loved the newspapers, all the more so because he believed that Arthur Richardson had ceased to truly care about them except for what profit they could bring.

Over the years, his father had developed a strangely schizophrenic attitude toward
his newspapers. On one hand, he ruled over them like a dictator. But influenced by his wife, he was also increasingly embarrassed that his fortune had come from such a tawdry source.

But Garrett loved the tabloids precisely because of their negative status. To
him, within the tabloids pulsed the passions and lifeblood of regular, everyday people.

A college friend, a psychologist, had once told Garrett his love of the tabloids
was a symbolic rebellion against his father’s gentry airs. Garrett guessed the reason probably had more to do with his deep-seated curiosity about his true parentage.

Plucked out of an orphanage at age two by Arthur and Helen Richardson, he had no idea who his real parents were and never would. Helen was as colorless as crystal, and it had always been easy for Garrett to fill
in the void by conjuring up dreams of his real mother.

She was, he was sure, just a shop girl
—- young, beautiful, passionate, and desperate enough to give up her infant boy so he might have a better life.

But somehow, he had never been able to imagine his real father. Unlike Helen, Arthur was too real, too big, and he overshadowed everything, even daydreams.

Which was why the North American expansion plan had to work. Garrett knew that the only way he could get out from under his father’s shadow was to find his own sunlight.