Children of Dynasty (22 page)

Lyle led Mariah to Wilson McMillan, introduced her, and melted into the gathering.

“So sorry John couldn’t be here.” Wilson moved briskly for his seventy-odd years, taking her hand in both of his. Eyes as keen as an owl’s peered at her from his golf-tanned, leathery face.

“Dad sends his fond regards,” she told him.

“My best to him. And to you, the little lady who is filling his shoes.” He made a sweeping gesture to include his guests. “I’ll introduce you around.”

True to his word, he stayed with her for half an hour, gracefully insinuating his way into conversations and presenting her. With each group, she accepted good wishes for her father’s speedy recovery and made her pitch. “With Dad’s illness, we’re going to have to pull in our horns, temporarily, you understand. We’re thinking of selling some properties before they’re complete. Just too much on our plate.”

She tried to keep it casual, all the while aware of First California’s ticking clock. There wasn’t time for any sales to close in the five working days before the June 6 deadline. She hoped letters of intent would do.

Takei Takayashi of Golden Builders listened to her presentation with more enthusiasm than most. Once Wilson had left her alone, he came up to her. “I’d be interested in talking. I’m not long on cash, but for the right price …”

“We’ll have to see,” she countered his opening preparation for a low bid. “There’s no need for us to rush into anything.”

“No rush?” said a deep male voice behind her. Something sinister and memorable in the tone identified Davis Campbell.

She turned to find him looming over her in a black tuxedo. Gold Cape buffalo studs stared belligerently from his crisp shirtfront, his study of her as bold. “I thought you had to raise some major capital in a week or so.”

It was a gut punch, but, “I don’t know what you mean.”

She was afraid she knew all too well. This was not something she’d told Rory, and no one at Grant Development would have broken confidentiality and talked to him. That left Thaddeus Walker.

“Why, I mean those loans you have to retire at First California.” Davis looked appropriately solemn. “I know it couldn’t come at a worse time, what with John’s illness and your safety problems.”

Takei nodded gravely. “Yes, the safety problem at Grant Plaza.”

“It was an accident,” she snapped. A trembling began inside her.

“Of course, an unfortunate accident,” Davis soothed.

Any sympathy she’d had when John told her of Davis’s love for Catharine evaporated.

People did terrible things for vengeance and what better candidate to have set this terrible chain of events in motion than Davis Campbell?

Staring up at him, she said, “The police have been informed that someone might have sabotaged the cable and the emergency brake.”

Davis crooked a dark brow. “Indeed?”

Her mouth half open to accuse him, she noted Takei’s listening pose. Anyone who would hire a welder to rig the hoist cable and disappear had to expect that someone would die … Tom Barrett had suggested the target might have been her.

She stared up into the coldest eyes she had ever seen and swallowed her words. One did not accuse Davis Campbell of murder in Wilson McMillan’s drawing room. Not without some fine evidence.

With a racing heart, she turned to Takei and attempted to sound steady. “Why don’t we talk about Grant’s properties?”

He inclined his head in a slight bow and preceded her away from Rory’s father. She started to follow.

A hand shot out; Davis’s thumb and forefinger pressed her wrist. She tried to pull away, and his grip tightened into a vice. “You’ve always been the image of your mother. The same passion.”

With her fingers beginning to numb, she jerked free. “You think you ever really knew her?”

The corner of his mouth went down the same way Rory’s had earlier on the balcony outside their rooms. The challenge in his eyes corroborated everything John had told her of Davis desiring Catharine. “Better than you. Do you even remember her?”

Though her palm fairly itched with the urge to slap him, she decided not to make a bad scene worse. Instead, she started away from him as though the back of her skirt was on fire.

A few feet away, she collided with Rory. In a dark tuxedo like his father’s, he cut an imposing figure. His ruby studs were beautiful, but nothing like the one in the ring he’d bought her.

He put out his hands and caught her bare shoulders, his touch defining that she was still shaking from her encounter with his father.

“Let me go,” she said.

“Steady,” he returned softly. “I heard.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

Rory slid his hands down her arms; the caress sent a shudder through her. “You’re no more fine than I am. I heard the way he stripped you down and flayed you.” He murmured at her ear, but his words had the impact of a shout. “Quite clever, the way he drew blood without touching you.” She believed she heard the full force of his battle to be different from his father.

As she dared to wonder if she’d been wrong about his ducking his parents on the upstairs balcony, an acid female voice cut in. “Hey. Dance with the one you brought.” Bold as ever, Sylvia Chatsworth pushed close to Rory.

Like the last time Mariah had seen her, Sylvia wore red, clinging stretch velvet that left little to the imagination.

Extricating her hands from Rory’s, Mariah escaped down marble stairs onto Wilson McMillan’s grounds. The sea air failed to cool her hot face as, heart pounding, she ran until she was out of breath and had to stop with a stitch in her side.

Finally, a breeze started to soothe her brow. Walking more slowly, she wandered gravel paths through a rose garden worthy of a palace. Fountains made music in the deepening twilight, but did nothing to improve her mood. She sank onto a bench, the stone cold against the backs of her legs.

Replaying the ugly scene with Davis Campbell chilled her further. Guilty though he might be of impossible arrogance and dirty tricks, was she truly ready to call Rory’s father a premeditated killer? She honestly didn’t know, but if Davis had done this awful deed, with a senator in his pocket he would have no trouble with SFPD. He belonged to the elite club of those who might be able to get away with murder.

And Rory. His comforting her in full view of his father had set her heart yearning once more, only to watch Sylvia Chatsworth publicly claim him.

Lyle loomed out of the darkness. “You’ve been busy working the crowd.”

“Yes.” She kept her face turned away until she was sure it was composed. “I appreciate your bringing me.”

He stopped her with a palm out gesture. “I saw what happened to you in there. Campbell is a piece of work.”

“Which one?”

“Which … oh, you mean father or son?” Lyle gave a rueful chuckle. “I must admit it sets me back a bit seeing both you and Sylvia Chatsworth hanging on Rory Campbell.”

“I was not …”

His chuckle became a laugh. “Relax. I’m not giving you a hard time about wanting him. I’m just saying I think
la
Chatsworth might be worth a second look.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m sick and tired of watching the Senator’s daughter snag every man in sight.”

Lyle sobered. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”

The onshore breeze picked up, bringing a taste of salt along with the green scent of fresh-mown golf course. Lyle took off his jacket and draped it around Mariah’s shoulders, its folds making her feel like a doll. They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes

Perhaps to make amends for advertising his admiration of Sylvia, Lyle plucked a pink rose and presented it to her. She planted it discretely in the hollow between her breasts.

“What’s the story on you and Campbell?” he asked.

“Rory and I aren’t …” she began automatically.

“Maybe not, but you sure want to be.”

Mariah sighed, for she did not intend to tell Lyle what happened eight years ago. Let him think what he’d seen between her and Rory recently was a passing fancy.

“I know your fathers hate each other.” Lyle selected a yellow rose and harvested it. “But it seems to me there should be a way for you two.”

On his lips, it sounded reasonable, but he didn’t know what it required. Wipe the slate clean of Rory’s denying her at his father’s behest, of his marrying Elizabeth, dating a dozen women, and never once contacting her in all that time. Inviting her to a party, but secretly, then sneaking away to Big Sur for a fantasy getaway, now hiding out on balconies when he was here with another woman. She was supposed to be satisfied with crumbs when she wanted a banquet?

Lyle fingered the rose stem. “On the other hand, maybe he is toying with you. I keep hearing rumors out of Davis Campbell’s office that Rory’s going to marry Sylvia.”

The aromatic flowers suddenly smelled nauseating.

A chime announced dinner.

They went up the garden steps to find Rory and Sylvia at a patio table. The dark beauty’s head was thrown back, laughing at something he said. Mariah turned away before she could fully see and feel the pain.

The evasion was no use. She wanted to rush up and claim Rory, and knowing she could not without making a scene was enough to make her rage.

Taking a steadying breath, Mariah returned Lyle’s coat. Rory gave her a disapproving look that deepened into a scowl at the rose between her breasts.

The McMillan dining room was as large as the one at Hearst Castle, the single long table seating at least fifty. Hunting tapestries lined the walls. Place cards at each setting directed the diners to their seats. To Mariah’s dismay, she and Lyle were seated across from Rory and Sylvia.

Over lobster bisque, served with a buttery Chardonnay, Mariah became more animated. She flirted unabashedly with Lyle. With the arrival of the main course, medallions of elk with a raspberry Zinfandel reduction, Sylvia fed Rory a taste from her fork. By the time a chocolate crème cake was carried in, Mariah had lost all appetite.

All she could think was that Lyle had to be wrong about them getting married. She couldn’t bear to read another of Rory’s wedding announcements in the newspaper.

As dessert was served, it was all Rory could do to stay in his seat. Across the table, Lyle acted like he owned Mariah, bending close to hear what she whispered, touching her arm from time to time. Just the thought of him slipping that rose into the neckline of her dress made Rory want to mess up his perfect face.

Beside him, Sylvia burbled on, oblivious to his misery. Once you got past the tough girl act, she was a good person who didn’t deserve to be mixed up in Davis Campbell’s schemes. Unfortunately, her fate had been sealed when she was born.

Rory looked down the table to where Senator Chatsworth sat next to Sylvia’s mother. Publicity had informed him that Laura Cabot Chatsworth had the blueblood background and soft polish that came from a southern education at Sweet Briar. Both the Senator and his wife wore the pleasant, practiced expressions of career politicians.

Toward the other end of the table, Davis held court while Kiki picked at her food. With her bright hair and stylish clothing, she could pass for a younger woman, but only at a distance. Rory searched for the face of his mother, but she’d lost it years ago. In her forties, she’d gained weight, and her chin had bloated. By fifty, she’d dieted and found a stringy chicken neck beneath an angular jaw. Last year she’d had the tuck beside the ear and the eyelids lifted. The well-dressed woman looked youthful, but the mother he remembered was gone. Looking at her sitting miserably beside her husband, Rory couldn’t see bringing any woman into the hell his family was becoming.

Mariah had experienced a taste of Father’s cruelty this evening, blindly fleeing the field when she ran into him. What he’d overheard when his father confronted her was disturbing, that business of loans at First California. DCI didn’t bank there, and Davis shouldn’t have known their business. Yet, Thaddeus Walker had been the one to call with the news of John Grant’s heart attack.

Worse was the suspicion that had been growing ever since his father spoke to Mariah of her mother. Everything, from the intensity that strung Davis taut as wire when speaking of her mother’s passion … all of it suggested that John and Davis’s enmity might have begun in a battle over the same woman. The only other time in his life his father had been this unreasonable was the first time Rory had taken up with John Grant’s daughter.

Across the table, Mariah looked as miserable as he felt, prodding listlessly at the chocolate crème. Eyes that Rory knew could be fantastic lacked luster.

On impulse, he slipped off one of his patent leather tuxedo shoes. Reaching carefully with his foot, he first encountered the table leg and then explored further. His sock-clad toes touched the top of her sandal.

He felt her flinch. With a glance at Lyle, she appeared to rule him not guilty. She didn’t appear to consider Henry Sand, the retired developer who sat at her other elbow.

She looked at him; their gazes locked. He expected her to pull away, but she did not.

Sliding his toes up the silky slick surface of her pantyhose to her calf, he explored. How was it possible that just this forbidden touch tightened his groin, while Sylvia no longer excited him?