CLOSE TO YOU: Enhanced (Lost Hearts) (19 page)

             
Carol finally wound down and presented the plaque. George and Evelyn posed with her for the photos, then George indicated that everyone should quiet down. "I was proud to be the man who escorted Evelyn to the prom twenty-five years ago, and I'm more proud now to know her compassion and caring. Let's all toast my

wonderful
wife, Evelyn Oberlin!" He lifted his glass and saw the tears sparkling on her eyelashes.

             
Because she really did believe in education for poor kids, and she really was grateful he helped raise the money for the program. Why wouldn't he? It looked damned good to the public.

             
Governor Grant lifted his glass. "To the Oberlins-may they enjoy another twenty-five years of wedded bliss!"

             
Everyone at the party raised their glasses and drank, then applauded politely as Governor Grant descended the bandstand and made his way through the crowd, shaking hands and making political hay. If George had needed proof of his own importance, here it was—the most popular governor in a dozen years courting his favor. He hoped Kate noticed.

             
But damn Ramos. He had that expression on his face, the one a guy got when he was blindsided by lust. George usually liked to see that expression on other men, because men could be led by their peckers and blackmailed by their affairs. But he didn't like to see a Mexican looking at his sweet Kate that way.

             
In fact, his sweet little Kate seemed to be trying to get away from Ramos. She'd walk away, and Ramos would follow like a junkyard dog. She circulated among the legislators, held a conversation with Senator Martinez . . . but while Ramos spoke to the models who flocked to his side, he didn't flirt, and he never let Kate out of his sight. Never. It was enough to make George lose his temper—and that had happened only once before.

             
Only once before.

             
"Senator." Governor Grant shook his hand. "Congratulations. The wife and I are off to another social gathering. Thank you for your hospitality."

             
George accepted other congratulations on his long marriage. He smiled so much that when he got done with this evening, he would be a candidate for an Academy Award, and all the while he was hating Teague Ramos and lusting after Kate Montgomery.

             
"Excuse me, sir." The butler's smooth, English tones intruded on George's obsession. "Jason Urbano is here. I showed him to your office."

             
"Urbano?" George moved to the foyer for privacy. "Here now?"

             
"He says he wants to negotiate." Freddy was impassive.

             
"Urbano . . ." George reflected on the man he'd taken such care to blackmail and use. "Tell him I'll see him."

             
"Yes, sir." Freddy bowed and retreated.

             
George had had Freddy for more than a year now Freddy had claimed on his application that he was seventy years old, although George thought he looked more like eighty. George didn't care. Freddy came with impeccable references; he had an English accent, a bald head, nineteenth-century ideas of the proper way to run a household, and the authority to enforce his requirements. Furthermore, he provided George with such a facade of respectability all of Austin envied him, and George considered the exorbitant salary he paid the man a fair exchange for the status Freddy brought.

             
George ordered another round of champagne— champagne had a way of making guests ignore the disappearance of the host—and headed for his study. Entering the room, he shut the door behind him. "Urbane, good to see you. Thanks for responding to my invitation."

             
Urbano lifted his head.

             
George laughed aloud at his savage expression. Sobering, he said sternly, "I assume you showed up at my party with important news, or you wouldn't be here."

             
Urbano was large, broad-shouldered, about forty-five, and a former hockey player. His nostrils flared. His brows lowered.

             
It was like holding a slathering pit bull by a chain, and watching him choke himself on the iron collar around his neck. The sense of power George got from holding that chain couldn't be duplicated. "Well?" he prodded.

             
"Yeah. I've got news. Zack Givens's oldest daughter just turned eight, and she's having some kind of "— Urbano's fingers made quotation marks in the air— "
identity crisis
. So I spoke to Hope."

             
"Dear little Hope." The oldest Prescott daughter, the one who had been a thorn in George's side since the day she'd married Zack Givens. She had been fifteen when

her
parents were killed. She'd seen her nine-year-old sister Pepper sent to a foster home. She'd seen her foster brother Gabriel returned to Texas state custody. And she'd cried when her baby sister Caitlin had been taken from her.

             
George should have guessed Hope would be a problem, but he had thought—naively, he now knew—that sending her to the far end of the country, to Boston where everything was alien, where she had no money, no family, no high school diploma, would neutralize her.

             
Nothing stopped that bitch. She had overcome every obstacle to marry a Givens, and not just any Givens. Zack Givens, the son and grandson of New England industrialists. She had made a shrewd move, trading her preacher daughter's virtue to a man who could help her find her siblings. George didn't know what magic she hid between her legs, but she'd kept Givens in such thrall he'd pursued her family as diligently as if it had been his own.

             
She'd found Gabriel right away, but she'd had no luck with the other two.

             
Of course not. Pepper had been rebellious and wild, and ugly to boot. George had sent her to Seattle, the far opposite corner of the country, and eventually she'd disappeared from the face of the earth.

             
George hoped she was dead. That would serve Hope right.

             
Hope had tried to trace her siblings through the records in the courthouse, but a fire had conveniently destroyed them.

             
She'd tried sending investigators to Hobart to talk to the people who remembered the Prescotts. But George had a grip on the town, and no one dared cross him. No one would talk. Most of them didn't even know what had really happened.

             
Actually, none of them knew for sure, not even Evelyn.

             
But Hope knew too much.

             
If she went public with her suspicions . . . well, no amount of influence and bribery could cover up all his actions.

             
He had been trying to figure out what he could do to divert their attention when they made a mistake. They sent Jason Urbano to do some underground investigation of him.

             
George had so many connections he'd caught on to Urbano's snooping almost at once, and he had hired an investigator to look into Urbano's past.

             
George still held Urbano's dossier under lock and key as one of the most precious documents in the world, equal in worth to the original copies of the Guttenberg Bible and the United States Constitution.

             
It turned out Urbano had been the legal counsel for Givens Industries since he'd graduated from law school. He was a good friend of Zack Givens, and Givens had a thing about loyalty. If he discovered Urbano had been skimming money out of the companies for almost as long as he'd been working there, Givens would have him strung up by his short neck. Added to that, Urbano had enjoyed a number of indiscretions, and his wife not only had a great prenup but an explosive temper. Of course, she didn't vent her anger in public, but when a man had enough money, influence, and the right investigator working for him, he could get all the information he needed.

             
Which was just as well, because George had suffered from the Boston Connection long enough.

             
George fixed Urbano with a cold eye. "So tell me what Hope said about her daughter's identity crisis."

             
"She said they're taking Lana to Europe—"

             
"Lana?" George swayed. "The kid's name is Lana?"

             
"Yes . Why?"

             
George poured himself a straight shot of whiskey, and downed it in one swallow. Hope's mother's name had been Lana. "So they're taking her to Europe?"

             
"Hope insisted that Zack go, too." Urbano's voice dropped to a low tone, as if he feared someone would hear. "Zack is leaving the company in my hands."

             
"So this is it." Slowly, George turned on Urbano.

             
"Yeah, this is it." Urbano swallowed and tugged at his tie. "With hints placed in the proper ears and a little judicious juggling of the books, I can topple the Givens empire."

             
"When I give you the word," George coldly reminded him. "You do nothing until I give you the word."

             
The clock struck midnight. The noise at the party hit an inebriated high and stayed there. The guests danced and laughed.

             
After a final survey, Teague decided none of these people were Kate's stalker. As they drank, they all became less interested in her and more interested in themselves. They were, after all, politicians.

             
Beside him, Kate held his arm and took off one shoe, then the other. She stood on the cool marble next to him in her bare feet. "Nice," she sighed.

             
Her scent rose in subtle wafts from her hair.

             
He leaned close and inhaled, and imagined that scent mingling with his as they made love. The warmth of her hand seeped through his coat sleeve, and he visualized her heat against his, her eyes closed in bliss as he slipped into her welcoming body.

             
He leaned close to Kate's ear and spoke, and despite the cacophony around them, he knew she heard every word. "Let's get out of here. Let's go someplace where we can be alone."

             
And as he had imagined, she followed him without protest.

ELEVEN

             
Jason Urbano moved through his hotel room, discarding his coat, loosening his tie. He rubbed his eyes as if he were exhausted by his confrontation with Oberlin. With a curse, he pulled his cell phone out of the pocket, and dialed his wife. "Hi, honey," he crooned, his frown the exact opposite of his tone. "How are the kids?" He rolled his eyes as he pretended to listen. Then he said, "Yeah, everything went well. I should come home pretty soon. Yeah, honey, really. Nothing's wrong. Everything's great!"

             
If he did say so himself, he gave a masterful performance as the lying husband for the camera hidden behind the mirror. The camera he theoretically didn't know anything about.

             
Oberlin had great power, and no one could stop him when he wanted to place an observation camera in a hotel room. On the other hand, nothing could stop Zack Givens when he decided to sabotage Oberlin's efforts.

             
Stepping out of the lens, Jason kept talking, the kind of soothing nonsense a cheating man would give his stupid little wife.

             
Luckily for Jason, he wasn't really talking to her. The line was closed; he popped open his laptop, logged onto the cordless connection, and waited until he saw Gabriel's face on the monitor. Gabriel was in the next room tapping into Oberlin's system with the expertise of a man who had learned his business with revenge in mind; Gabriel was the Prescotts' foster son.

             
Gabriel inserted a tape that fed pretaped video and audio into the camera behind the mirror, then gave Jason a silent thumbs-up. The picture Oberlin now saw was of Jason, pacing back across the room, cell phone pressed to his ear. The sound he heard was Jason talking to his wife.

             
In reality, Jason pulled up the program that gave him a live video connection to Zack's study in the Givens mansion in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

             
Zack's face came on first. Jason's wife said Zack was too handsome for his own good, and God knew Jason agreed. With black hair now threaded with silver and piercing dark eyes, Zack sent shivers of fear down the spine of every employee in Givens Industries . . . except some of them who had discovered he had developed a kind streak after fifteen years of marriage to Hope. "How did it go?" he asked tersely.