Pleasure Seekers (34 page)

F
aye lay on a deck chair, her face and eyes shielded from the strong Mediterranean sun with a wide-brimmed straw hat and sunglasses. She sat on the sundeck of Bart’s mega yacht that had been their floating hotel for the past two and a half weeks.

The gleaming sailing vessel, custom-built by the Burger Boat Company with steel hulls and fiberglass for speed was considered the Rolls-Royce of yachts; a crew of ten had catered to their every request. The captain, two chefs, steward, first officer, engineer, his assistant and three other crew members moved about the two-hundred-foot-long, thirty-five-foot-wide boat with a top speed of twenty knots almost sight unseen.

She felt movement and opened her eyes. Bart had come on deck, sitting down on the chair next to hers. She’d gotten up early to watch the sun come up, leaving him sleeping soundly in bed. It was to be their last full day at sea before the
Kay-Ann
docked at Marseille, where they would board a jet for the return flight to the States.

Faye offered Bart a warm smile.
“Bonjour, mon chéri.”

Bart returned her smile. He’d been tutoring Faye in
French, and he found her a quick study.
“Bonjour, mon amour. Est-ce que tu as mangé le petit-déjeuner?”

She sat up. “Slow it down, big daddy. You know I—”

“Is that how you see me, Faye, as a father figure?” he asked, scowling and interrupting her.

Faye moved off her chair, straddled Bart’s lap and looped her arms around his neck. She kissed his forehead. “No, I don’t. Even though I initially had issues about your age, I’ve never thought of you that way.”

His frown vanished. “And I’ve never thought of you as a daughter.”

“Are you into younger women?”

“No. I’ve always dated women within my age group.”

“What about your wife?”

Bart’s expression did not change with her query. “What about her?”

“How old was she when she passed away?”

“Forty.”

“How long were you married?”

“We’d just celebrated our eleventh anniversary.”

“What happened, Bart?”

He’d wanted to wait to return to the States before telling Faye about Deidre but knew what he’d had with his wife had to be resolved with his fiancée’s query.

“The short story is I married the boss’s daughter.”

Easing back, Faye gave him a long, penetrating stare. “What’s the long story?”

“One of my professors at Yale got me an apprentice position with a Boston-based architectural firm. I was
there for less than year before I sent my résumé to Dunn Management Sales Group because I felt stymied.”

Faye moved off his lap and stretched out on her chair. “Had you given them a chance? After all, you weren’t there a year.”

Bart shook his head slowly. “The firm was very small and I felt at that time there wasn’t much room for growth. They liked my designs but weren’t so enthused that they used them. Most times I assisted on projects with other more experienced architects.

“Whenever I read architectural or design magazines, the name Edmund Dunn captured my attention. Believing I had nothing to lose, I forwarded my résumé and one of my drawings to his company. A week later I got a phone call from the boss himself. He sent his personal driver from New York to pick me up, and as they say, the rest is history.

“I was hired on the spot, given an outrageous salary, and three weeks after I’d come face-to-face with the infamous Edmund Dunn I moved into an apartment in one of his buildings. He’d asked me what I wanted and I told him that I wanted to go to Columbia’s School of Business. He made it happen with one telephone call.

“I worked hard, Faye, attending classes and working long hours for Edmund Dunn. It didn’t take me long to realize the man was a tyrant and somewhat of a Svengali. Once he did anything for you he owned you body and soul. If he set aside an apartment in one of his buildings for a judge’s son or the police commissioner’s daughter,
then they owed him. And whenever he called in a favor they acquiesced. It wasn’t until after I’d married his daughter that I became privy to his under-the-table deals.

“He thought nothing of sending his goons after the elderly to frighten them so much that they were afraid to stay in their rent-controlled apartments. Once the building was vacant, he razed it and put up high-rise co-ops.”

Bart was unable to ignore what he thought was a reproachful look from Faye. He’d seen the look and overheard the whispered insinuations whenever he’d disclosed that he’d married the boss’s daughter.

“You’d become family, so why would he not trust you? How did you meet his daughter?”

“Edmund hosted a party for me at his summer place along the Jersey shore when I graduated from Columbia, and I met Deidre for the first time. She’d been raised by her maternal grandmother who’d become her guardian the year Deidre celebrated her eighth birthday.”

“What happened to her mother?”

“She died in an automobile accident. To say Deidre was spoiled was an understatement. Whatever she wanted she got.”

“And she wanted you.”

Bart stared up at the cloudless sky. “Yes.”

Faye’s gaze narrowed as she removed her sunglasses. “Did you want her?”

He lowered his head, meeting her quizzical stare. “At first I tried to stay as far away from Deidre Dunn as I could because she was the daughter of the man who not
only signed my paycheck, but at that time held my future within his grasp. A few of my designs had won several awards and I later discovered Edmund had been a major player in those final decisions.

“My relationship with Deidre began with invitations to dinner and segued to spending time at her family’s summer home. Once I let down my guard I found out that she wasn’t a snob. She had a wicked sense of humor that I found charming and refreshing. Once we began dating seriously I discovered that she was a frightened, insecure young woman who was always seeking approval. If it wasn’t from her father, then it was from her peers. A week after her grandmother passed away I proposed marriage because she’d cried nonstop about not wanting to be alone. Edmund wasn’t what one would call a hands-on father. There were times when I believe he even forgot that he had a child.”

“Were you in love with her, Bart?”

There was a beat of silence before he said, “Not when I married her. But within the first six months of our marriage I couldn’t remember when I hadn’t. We decided not to wait to start a family and the day Deidre told me she was pregnant was the happiest day of my life. Three months later, she’d miscarried.

“We waited two years and tried again. This time she made it past the first trimester before she lost our second child. The doctor cautioned Deidre about trying again, but she refused to listen.

“She begged me to try one more time, promising to stay
in bed for the duration of her pregnancy. I gave in and it happened again. She’d suffered three miscarriages in nine years, and with each one she’d become more mentally unstable. I thought about a vasectomy, but before I could schedule the procedure, Deidre told me she was pregnant again. She’d waited until she was three months along before telling me.”

Bart closed his eyes. “I lost it, Faye. I went off on my wife for the first time in eleven years. I told her that she was thoughtless and selfish because she’d been willing to risk her life and our future together to bring a child into the world when there were thousands of children waiting for adoption.” He opened his eyes. “I told her that I’d planned to have a vasectomy and she threw a tantrum. She told me that she hated me and ordered me to get out.”

“Did you?”

He nodded. “Whenever Deidre became hysterical it was impossible to reason with her.”

Faye lifted her eyebrows. “It wasn’t her first tantrum?”

A wry smiled parted Bart’s lips. “No. I packed a bag and checked in to a hotel.”

“What did your father-in-law say?”

“I never involved Edmund in my marriage. He’d made me an equal partner and Dunn Management Sales Group became the Dunn-Houghton Group. I’d been out of the apartment two days when the housekeeper called to tell me that she’d found Deidre in the bathroom, hemorrhaging. I got to the hospital minutes after she’d been taken into
surgery. Her doctor informed me that she’d undergone a hysterectomy because they couldn’t stop the bleeding.

“She lapsed into a deep depression when she realized she would never have children, and I took her to Oahu because we’d honeymooned there. Two days after we returned to the mainland, Deidre swallowed a bottle of painkillers. By the time I found her, her heart had stopped. The EMTs were able to revive her, and she was placed on a respirator.

“I had her examined by one of the country’s leading neurosurgeons and his prognosis was that she’d suffered irreversible brain damage. Legally she was brain dead.”

Leaning over, Faye rested her hand on Bart’s fisted one. “How long was she on the respirator before she died?”

His fist tightened as he exhaled a long sigh. “She’s still on the respirator.”

Faye placed a hand over her mouth. Eyes wild, she stared at him, unable to believe he’d planned to marry her when he still had a wife. A wife who was alive!

“You lying bastard! How can you ask me to marry you when you’re still married?” She jumped up as if propelled by a powerful force.

Bart stood up, seemingly in slow motion, and caught her upper arm. “Come with me, Faye.”

She tried pulling away, but he’d tightened his hold. “Where? In case you haven’t noticed we’re in the middle of the ocean.”

Lowering his head and his voice, he said quietly, “I don’t want to fight with you. Not here.”

“Why?” she spat out. “You don’t want your crew to think ill of their boss?”

The blood darkened Bart’s face under his deep tan, making his eyes appear lighter than they actually were. “I really don’t give a
fuck
what they think of me,” he ground out between his teeth.

Faye was stunned. The curse had slipped off his tongue as naturally as taking a breath. She’d forgotten that under the tailored clothes and acquired refinement Bartholomew Houghton had clawed and scratched his way out of poverty to change his life. And that he could revert to his humble beginnings in the blink of an eye.

“Okay,” she conceded. “Downstairs.” It was her turn to talk between her teeth.

F
aye followed Bart down the narrow staircase to their stateroom. The door stood open and a crew member busied herself making the bed. The woman glanced up, meeting Bart’s thunderous gaze.

“Out!” She put down the pillow and rushed out of the stateroom, closing the door behind her.

Resting her hands on her hips, Faye glared at the man to whom she’d pledged her future. “Not only are you duplicitous but you’re also a bully.”

Bart threw up a hand. “Don’t start, Faye. Please don’t start a war you have no chance of winning.”

Her temper exploded. “Is this how it’s going to be once we’re married? You give the orders and I lockstep and salute you!”

He took two long steps, reaching out and pulling her to his chest. “No! That’s not the way it’s going to be,” he countered, his voice considerably softer, almost conciliatory. “All I want is for you to hear me out. Please, baby.”

Faye bit down on her lower lip to still its trembling. She wanted to hate Bart but she couldn’t. Not when she’d fought her feelings the moment she turned to face the
man who’d arrogantly ordered a drink for her. Not when he’d provided her with the means to appeal her brother’s conviction. Not when he’d intervened to protect her position with BP&O. And not when his gentleness, generosity, patience, passion and humility helped her overcome her biases about his race.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me? You used me, Bart. You made me fall in love with you when I didn’t want to, and you made me trust you when I swore never to trust another man.”

Bart steered her over to the bed, sitting, and pulling her down with him. “Please don’t give up on me. Not until you hear what I have to say.”

She heard the pain in his voice, saw it in his eyes. The seconds ticked off as they regarded each other warily. “Okay, Bart. I’ll listen.”

Bart sucked in a lungful of breath before releasing it slowly. “It was my fault, Faye. My fault that she got pregnant so many times, my fault that I didn’t listen to her doctor when he told me that Deidre would never carry a baby to term, and it was my fault that I delayed going through with the vasectomy. I could’ve had the procedure, not told her and pretended that she couldn’t get pregnant again because she’d lost too many babies. I could’ve and would’ve lied to her if it meant saving her life.

“I should’ve seen the signs that she was losing her grip on reality, but I was too wrapped up in my own egotistical shit to make the Dunn-Houghton Group number one. Day in and day out I told myself that one false slip and I’d
be back at the trailer park, son of the mop jockey and a factory worker, the nephew of uncles who preferred three hots and a cot in a six-by-eight cell to getting a real job.

“So if I’ve kept a woman hooked up to a machine because I’m too much of a coward to let her go, then blame me. And if I’m going against her written wishes not to resuscitate if anything ever happened to her, then blame me for that, too. Blame me, Faye! Blame me for falling in love with you, for asking you to trust me when I don’t deserve your trust.”

Faye felt a fist of pity squeeze her heart when she saw the tears in his eyes. Collapsing against his chest, her arms went around his neck. “Bart.” His name was torn from the back of her throat.

“Forgive me, forgive me, baby,” he chanted over and over.

“There’s nothing to forgive. Nothing,” she whispered. “I love you, Bart. I fell in love with you when I didn’t want to. I fell in love with you even though I knew it wasn’t the best thing for me to do. I kept asking myself how could something that was so wrong feel so right?”

“I wanted to tell you, Faye. I swear I wanted to tell you.”

She placed her fingers over his mouth. “Don’t swear.”

Grasping her wrist, Bart pulled her hand down. “The moment I knew I wanted to marry you I realized I had to let Deidre go. It’s time I honor her wish not to keep her alive with tubes and machines.” Tears streamed down his face.

Faye closed her eyes, unable to watch him cry. “Where is she, Bart?”

“I had her transferred to a small private facility not far from where I grew up. Once we get back I’ll sign the order to disconnect her feeding tube. But I’m going to need your help. I can’t do this alone.”

Faye realized Bart would have to grieve twice—once when Deidre Houghton was declared brain dead and a second time when he disconnected the machine that had kept her heart beating.

She buried her face against the side of his neck. “I’ll wait for you.”

Bart nodded. He needed to hear that Faye would be there for him. He’d asked himself many times why he hadn’t given the order to take Deidre off the respirator and disconnect the feeding tube but knew it was because of guilt, guilt that he hadn’t listened to the doctor, that he hadn’t followed through on the sterilization procedure, and guilt because he knew if he hadn’t married Deidre Dunn he would’ve never become CEO of the Dunn-Houghton Group.

“Thank you.”

They held each other, offering comfort, understanding, then as if on cue they left their stateroom to go back up on deck.