Night Whispers (21 page)

A waiter arrived with a bottle of champagne in a silver stand, and Sloan waited for him to finishing serving their drinks while a young teenage couple strolled by, holding hands. "They look awfully young to be dating and holding hands, don't they?" she remarked, and when Paris nodded, Sloan seized on that as the next topic of conversation. "How old were you on your first date?"

"Sixteen," Paris said. "His name was David, and he took me to my sophomore dance. I had wanted to go with a boy named Richard, but Father knew David's family and felt he would be a more acceptable escort."

Sloan was instantly intrigued. "How was it?"

"It was awful," Paris confessed with a smile and a shudder. "On the way home from the dance, he started drinking from a flask; then he parked the car and started kissing me. He wouldn't stop until I finally burst into tears. How was your first date?"

"A lot like yours," Sloan said, laughing. "I went with Butch Bellamy, who was a foot taller than I and couldn't dance. He spent most of the night in the locker room, drinking beer with his buddies on the freshman football team. On the way home, he parked the car and started kissing me and grabbing me."

Laughing, Paris guessed the ending of the story: "And you burst into tears, too, so he would take you home?"

"No. I told him if he didn't let me out of the car, I'd tell all his friends on the team that he was gay. Then I took off my first pair of heels and hiked two miles in my first pair of panty hose. They were not a pretty sight when I got home."

Paris laughed, and Sloan lifted her glass in a toast. "To us—for surviving our first dates," she said with smiling solemnity.

Paris clinked her glass against Sloan's. "To us, and to all girls with first dates like ours."

The waiter appeared just then and handed each of them an open menu. Anxious to maintain the spirit of cheerful closeness that had sprung up between them, Sloan peered over the top of her menu. "What's your least favorite food?"

"Brussels sprouts. What's yours?"

"Liver."

"They say that if liver is fixed with—"

Sloan shook her head. "There is
no
way to fix liver and make it edible. Maybe we aren't genetic sisters, after all. Maybe I was adopted and—Why are you laughing?"

"Because I was only repeating what people say. I
hate
liver. It makes me gag."

"The gag reflex is the ultimate proof. We're definitely related," Sloan happily decreed, but Paris turned very solemn.

"Not necessarily. This is the ultimate test question, so take your time before you answer: How do you feel about tomato soup?"

Sloan shuddered, and they both burst out laughing.

The waiter had put a basket of fresh bread sticks on the table, and Paris reached for one. "Have you ever been married?" she asked.

"No," Sloan replied. "Have you?"

"Almost. I got engaged when I was twenty-five. Henry was thirty-two, and we met in Santa Barbara at a theater party. Two months later, we got engaged."

Sloan paused in the act of selecting a bread stick for herself. "What happened?"

"The day after we got engaged, Father discovered Henry had an ex-wife and two children living in Paris. I wouldn't have cared if he hadn't lied and told me he'd never been married before."

"That must have been awful for you."

"It was at first. Father hadn't trusted him from the very beginning."

Sloan could imagine how little sympathy Paris must have gotten from Carter Reynolds, and she felt a pang of angry sadness that Paris hadn't had Sloan or her mother to help her through it "How did your father discover that?"

"He's your father, too," Paris reminded her with a beguiling smile; then she answered Sloan's question. "When Henry and I began seeing a lot of each other, Father had him investigated, but the report from Europe didn't get back until after we announced our engagement."

Sloan tried not to sound as mistrustful of Carter Reynolds's motives and integrity as she was beginning to feel. "Does he usually have your friends investigated?"

To Sloan's shock, Paris nodded as if that were the most normal thing in the world for a parent to do. "Not just my friends, but other people he doesn't know who start spending a lot of time around us. Father believes it's best to be careful about people you associate with. He doesn't give his trust easily." She glanced at the bread stick in her hand; then she lifted her gaze to Sloan's. "Let's talk about something else. My broken engagement doesn't deserve another minute of our valuable time."

After that, the hours flew past, filled with hesitant questions, honest answers, and warm smiles, as two strangers, who had started out to form a bond, discovered that the bond was already there. Ignoring the waiters, their meals, and the admiring looks of men, a beautiful brunette and an exquisite blonde sat at a sidewalk table beneath a striped umbrella and carefully constructed a bridge to span thirty years.

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S
itting beside Paris in the late-afternoon traffic on the way home from the café, Sloan felt as if the magic of the last few hours had spread its beauty over all of Palm Beach. Overhead, the sky was a brilliant blue, the clouds whiter, fluffier. The ocean was more majestic, the beach prettier. Colors were more vivid, sounds were soothing, and the sea air blowing against her face was a benediction, not just a breeze.

Yesterday, Paris and she had been strangers who thought of each other as adversaries; now they were sisters who thought of each other as allies. She glanced at Paris, and Paris's answering smile was filled with the same wonder and delight that Sloan felt.

"We didn't have time to talk about Paul and you," Paris said as they neared the house. "Are you serious about him?"

Sloan hesitated, struck by the sudden, unhappy realization that this wonderful, fragile new relationship with her sister was going to be jeopardized in the future by the lies she and Paul had perpetrated on Paris. If Paul found no evidence that incriminated Carter, then Paris could at least be spared the truth about their reason for coming to Palm Beach. In that event, Sloan would have to come up with some reason for having kept her job a secret. But if the evidence did turn up, then Paris would soon know the full extent of their deception, and Sloan was afraid of how she'd react.

Either way, Sloan was trapped. She couldn't say anything that might impede Paul's investigation, so she resolved to stick as closely to the truth as possible so that Paris would have fewer reasons to feel duped no matter what happened to Carter. "The truth is we're just friends. I was… uneasy… about coming here. Paul convinced me I should, and he… volunteered… to come with me."

"For moral support," Paris concluded. "He's so nice. He's someone you just know you can trust."

Sloan made a mental note never to rely on Paris's judgment of men. "What about Noah and you?" she said, eager to shift the focus away from herself. "Carter told me the two of you are practically engaged."

"Father is determined to make it happen. I've told him I don't want to marry Noah, but he just can't understand."

"Why not?"

Paris flashed her a winsome smile. "Probably because Noah is gorgeous, brilliant, and incredibly rich, and women make fools of themselves over him. However, Noah doesn't want to marry me either, and so we made a secret deal that solves the whole problem."

"What sort of deal?"

"Noah
isn't
going to propose," she said with a laugh as she turned into the driveway. The gates opened automatically, without Paris stopping to press the call button or using any kind of electronic opener. Sloan's attention switched to the house's security system out of concern for Paris's safety, and then because she realized the information might also be vital to Paul and her. "Aren't you ever afraid here?"

"Of what?"

"Thieves. Prowlers at night. This place is the size of a museum. If I were a thief, I'd figure there were lots of things inside it worth stealing."

"We're very safe," Paris assured her. "Besides the fence, we have infrared beams all around the perimeter of the property. They're turned on automatically with the alarm system at night. Also, there are ten cameras positioned around the property. Are you afraid here?"

"I—I guess I always think about security and safety," Sloan said, trying to stick as closely to the truth as possible for the sake of her future relationship with Paris.

"That's why you took a self-defense course," Paris concluded, and immediately tried to reassure her with more information. "If you get worried, you can turn on any television set in the house and see whatever the cameras are seeing. Tune to channel ninety, then go right on through to channel one hundred. That will show you all the camera views of the property. At least, I think those are the right channels, but Gary will know for sure. I'll ask him. Father had Gary arrange for the new security system."

"Thank you—" Sloan said lamely.

"Also, if you hear or see something that really scares you, you can pick up any desk-style phone in the house, press the pound key, and hold it down. But don't try that unless you really think there's a problem. I did it accidentally once when the system was first installed. I was trying to open the gates from the house, but I forgot to press the intercom button before I held down the pound key."

"What happens when you do that?"

"Everything," Paris said with a giggle. "An alarm goes directly to the police station, the sirens on the house start screaming, and all the lights on the property, inside and outside, turn on and start flashing."

Sloan thought that sounded rather like the integrated telephone-security setups that had caused Karen Althorp and Dr. Pembroke so much embarrassment in Bell Harbor.

Paris drove around the side of the house to a six-car garage, and one of the garage doors opened automatically. "I haven't seen you use a gate opener or a garage door opener," Sloan said.

"There's an electronic gadget hidden somewhere on our cars. When you drive up to the garage, the gadget on the car talks to the gadget on the correct garage door and opens it. The same gadget opened the gates for us when we turned into the drive just now."

"It sounds like no one who shouldn't be here can get in or out," Sloan observed as Paris parked the car in her garage stall.

"Anyone can get out once Nordstrom has let them in. There are sensors under the pavestones that open the gates when the weight of a car rolls over them. Otherwise, Nordstrom would have to be on hand to open the gates every time a delivery truck or servant needed to leave."

"You are truly part of the electronic age," Sloan told her with a smile.

"Father is extremely security conscious." Sloan was afraid he probably had more than one reason for that.

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G
ary Dishler materialized in the hallway from a room by the stain as soon as Paris and Sloan walked past it. "Mrs. Reynolds has been asking for you," he told Paris. "She's upstairs in her room."

"Is she feeling all right?" Paris asked worriedly.

"If she's suffering from anything, it's boredom," he reassured her.

While Paris confirmed that television channels ninety through one hundred showed the images from the security cameras, Sloan studied the butler, who was nearby. Nordstrom was well over six feet tall, with blond hair, blue eyes, a ruddy complexion and a muscular physique. On the way upstairs, she confided her thoughts. "He looks more like a security guard than a butler."

"I know," Paris returned with a smile. "He's really huge."

They were still smiling as they walked into Edith Reynolds's bedroom. The old lady was seated on a fringed, maroon velvet sofa at the end of a room that was nearly the size of Sloan's entire house and filled with so much dark, very ornate furniture that Sloan felt a little claustrophobic.

Mrs. Reynolds scowled as she took off her glasses and laid her book aside. "You've been gone all day," she accused. "Well," she said to Paris. "How was Sloan's golf lesson?"

"We didn't go to the club," Paris said.

Edith's white brows snapped together, but before she could say anything Sloan spoke up. Trying to simultaneously shield Paris from the old woman's displeasure as well as improve her mood, Sloan deliberately made a joke of her refusal to play golf. "Paris tried to make me play golf, but I begged her for mercy; then I refused to get out of the car. She tried to drag me out of it, but I'm stronger than she is. She tried to clobber me with a putter; then I reminded her that you do not approve of public spectacles, and she had to give in."

"You are being impertinent," Edith declared, but she was having trouble maintaining her dark scowl.

Sloan let her amusement show. "Yes, ma'am, I know, but I just can't seem to help it."

"I told you to address me as Great-grandmother!"

"Yes, Great-grandmother," Sloan quickly amended, sensing that yielding on that point would accomplish her goal. She was right. Edith Reynolds's lips were twitching with reluctant laughter.