Sharp Edges (22 page)

Eugenia put down the phone and walked back to the glass doors. She saw Rick gesture wildly with the hand that held the soda can. His young face was suffused with anger and pain. Cyrus sat stoically in his chair, feet propped once more on the railing.

She opened the door cautiously.

"I'll tell you how I found out." Rick's voice rose with impassioned rage. "I overheard Mom talking to Dad on the phone. They were arguing about money again. I heard her tell him that she knew you'd forced him to come to my graduation. She said you must have threatened him or something. Is that true?"

Eugenia opened the door wider. "Excuse me, there's a phone call."

Cyrus ignored her. "There was a mix-up in your father's schedule. I just gave him a call and reminded him of the date of your graduation. No big deal."

"That's not what Mom said."

"Your mother did not overhear the conversation I had with your father."

Eugenia tried again. "Cyrus, the phone."

"Dad only came to my graduation because you made him come," Rick said fiercely. "Admit it. He never wanted to be there. No wonder he didn't hang around. What did you do to get him to fly in from L.A. for the day?"

"Let it go, Rick."

A suspicious glitter of moisture appeared in Rick's eyes. He blinked furiously. "I just want to know what it took to make my Dad come to my graduation. What kind of threat did you use? Tell me. I want to know the truth, damn it. Is that asking too much?"

"What your Dad and I talked about is our personal business," Cyrus said without inflection.

"Like hell. I'm involved here, y'know."

Eugenia cleared her throat. "Don't know about you, Rick, but speaking personally, I can tell you that I would have paid someone like Cyrus big bucks and not asked any questions if he had promised to get my father to attend my high school graduation. And I would have paid him double if he could have found a way to get Dad to my brother's and sister's graduations."

Rick jerked in his chair. He turned to glare at her. His face was flushed, his eyes, wary. "Huh?"

"My father didn't come to my graduation because he was assisting his new wife in childbirth classes. He told me on the phone that he wanted to experience every aspect of fatherhood the second time around."

"No shit," Rick said, clearly taken aback.

"He didn't make my brother's graduation because he had to deliver a paper at a sociology seminar on new directions in the American family. And he missed my sister's because it was on the same date as his new son's birthday."

Rick stared at her.

Eugenia turned to Cyrus. "There's a phone call for you. Someone named Quint Yates."

"Right. Daily report time." Cyrus got to his feet.

"What kind of a dad would have to be forced to go to his own son's graduation?" Rick demanded of no one in particular.

"Who knows?" Eugenia said. "Probably the kind who had a bad father, himself. At least, that's the usual explanation. It has to do with repeating bad parenting patterns or something."

Rick frowned. "But if a guy had a bad father, he should figure out that he ought to do things differently with his own kid."

Eugenia was impressed. "You're right. Unfortunately, not everyone looks at things that clearly." She paused. "And sometimes people are just too weak to make the effort to change the pattern. They won't accept the responsibility."

Cyrus paused briefly in the doorway. "At least you two grew up with a father somewhere in the picture. I've never even met mine."

He walked into the house and closed the door very quietly behind him.

Eugenia gaped, dumbstruck.

Rick was equally stricken.

"What was that all about?" Eugenia finally asked.

Rick shifted uncomfortably. "Mom told me once that Cyrus's father took off before he was born. His parents weren't even married. That's about all I know. Cyrus never talks about it."

Eugenia dropped down onto the lounger and picked up her bottled water. She sat for a moment, gazing out over the cold Sound.

"Sort of puts things in perspective, doesn't it?" she said after a while.

"Yeah." Rick grimaced. "Cyrus has a way of doing that."

Cyrus halted at the top of the staircase and glanced at his watch. The glowing dial revealed that it was ten minutes after one in the morning. The house had been quiet since ten-thirty, when its three occupants had disappeared into the privacy of their own rooms.

He had lain on the top of his bed, staring at the ceiling for a while, and thought about how Eugenia had gone off to bed without giving him a clue to her mood. He had not even been able to tell if she wanted him to go to her room.

One thing had become clear as the minutes ticked past. She had no plans to come to his room.

He decided that, as a trained detective, it was simple to deduce two possibilities. The first was that he and Eugenia had experienced a glaring failure to communicate. The second was that she had deliberately used Rick's presence in the house as an excuse to hide out in the safety of her own room.

Last night she had wanted him. She had left him in no doubt on that point. But he also knew that she was wary of getting involved with a man who did not fit her image of a suitable mate. A man whose motives she did not entirely trust. A man who could make her lose control.

Yeah, now that he thought about it, it was obvious why she was avoiding him tonight.

On top of that, Rick was pissed at him, and Zackery Elland Chandler had hired a private investigator.

And just to finish off the list, he was afraid that he was no closer to finding the Hades cup than he had been when he arrived on the island.

All in all, not one of his better days.

The brooding feeling had grown steadily heavier as the night deepened. When he had finally accepted the fact that he was not going to get any sleep, he put on a pair of pants and his blue pineapple shirt and decided to do something productive. Like check the house locks.

He went down the glass block staircase barefooted, listening to the sounds of the night. He did not need the flashlight he had brought with him. Moonlight streamed through the wall of windows that overlooked the Sound. It formed colorless pools on the floor and glimmered on shiny, reflective surfaces.

At the bottom of the stairs he crossed the cold tiles to the front door. The security-coded lock was set.

He turned and walked methodically through the shadowy rooms. One by one he checked windows and doors.

He was in the front room, trying the French doors next to the mirrored fireplace, when he heard the soft movement behind him. He knew that it was Eugenia who stood there even before he turned around and saw her revealed in a puddle of silvery moonlight.

"Cyrus?" She held the lapels of her bathrobe closed at her throat with one hand. "I thought I heard you in the hall. Is anything wrong?"

"No. Just checking the locks. You must have been awake if you heard me leave my room."

"Couldn't sleep."

"Thinking about Nellie?"

"No." Her eyes were mysterious, shadowed and deep. "I was thinking about you."

This was good, Cyrus told himself. Thinking about him had kept her awake. This was a very encouraging sign.

"What about me?"

"I was wondering what happened when you finally tracked down your father."

He should have seen that one coming, he thought. But he hadn't. He'd been too busy wondering if she had followed him downstairs in order to invite him into her bed. So much for his ability to detect clues. Probably ought to go back and reread chapter thirteen of the detective manual.

He walked to the next set of French doors. Checked the lock.

"What makes you think I traced him?" he asked.

"Let's just say that I can't see you
not
looking for him. You would have wanted to find the answers. Close the books."

He stood looking out through the glass panes of the French door. "I guess you could say that he was my first missing persons case. I went looking for him a few months after my grandparents died. I was two years older than Rick is now. I didn't know how to do things efficiently in those days. Took me a while. A year and a half."

"But you finally located him?"

"He lives in Southern California. Used to be a partner in a big law firm. Married. Two kids. Both went to private schools. Both became lawyers. Just like their father."

"I see."

"He belongs to a country club where some of the stars play golf. His family had money, and his wife's had even more of it. So he went into politics."

"Do I know his name?"

"Zackery Elland Chandler."

Eugenia whistled softly. "The congressman?"

"Yeah. He's running for the U.S. Senate at the moment. Right from the start of his career he based his campaigns on his support for old-fashioned family values and the need for individuals to take personal responsibility."

"Ouch."

"Sort of ironic, isn't it?"

"Did you introduce yourself?" she asked.

"Didn't seem to be much point in it. He never came looking for me so I figured he'd just as soon I didn't show up on his front doorstep."

"From what I've read, Chandler is in a very tight race."

"Yeah."

"You'd be one heck of a threat to his political career. I can see the headlines now:
Conservative candidate's abandoned son holds press conference
."

"I don't think I'll be holding a press conference."

"No," she said. "Well, at least you know who he is. He's not a total mystery."

Cyrus studied the way the trees shouldered together to prevent the moonlight from reaching the forest floor. "Funny you should say that. There's a lot of mystery left."

"What do you mean?"

"I found out today that Chandler sent a private investigator to my hometown. I think he's trying to find me."

Eugenia was silent for a while. "Do you want to be found?"

"I don't know. I may not have a choice. The real question is, why is he looking for me now, after all these years?"

"Any ideas?"

"I've been thinking. There's one possibility that leaps to mind."

"What's that?" Eugenia asked gently.

"Something has happened to make him believe that I'm a potential threat to his political future. He may be trying to find me in order to try to deal with me now rather than have the situation blow up in his face."

"Deal with you? What do you mean?"

"Maybe he'll offer me money to deny the relationship. There's no paperwork that can link us. My mother did not put his name on the birth certificate. She died without revealing it to my grandparents or anyone else."

"There are genetic tests," Eugenia said.

Cyrus smiled grimly. "Maybe he wants to pay me not to submit to them."

"You're working on sheer speculation here, Cyrus. Maybe it's not what you think. Maybe your father is looking for you because he wants to get to know you."

"If he had wanted to know me, he would have come looking long ago. There's a reason why he's searching for me now. I need to know what it is."

"All right, I understand. But in the meantime, why don't we go to bed?"

He turned around to face her. "What?"

She smiled and held out her hand. "It's late. Let's go upstairs. You need your sleep, and so do I."

He felt the warmth seep back into him. It drove out the cold that had settled deep inside. "Are we talking one bed or two?"

"One bed."

He started toward her, aware of his erection pressing hard against his zipper. "Yours or mine?"

She laughed, a soft, welcoming sound that flowed over him like a sparkling stream.

"Surprise me," she said.

"Thought you'd never ask." A fierce, exultant sensation cascaded through him. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her out of the front room.

Eugenia smiled again as he started up the elegant staircase with her. "I think I saw this scene in a movie once."

"Yeah? The guy have as much style as me?" The sexy alchemy of feminine anticipation gleamed in her sultry eyes. She touched the front of his pineapple aloha shirt. "Not by half," she said.

She awoke at dawn, aware that Cyrus was sitting up on the edge of her bed. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was the vicious scar on the back of his shoulder. She had felt it with her fingertips during their lovemaking, but this was the first time she had actually seen it. Yesterday morning when she had left his bed the sheet had still covered him.

"Cyrus." She levered herself up on her elbow and touched the old wound very gently. "This was where Damien March shot you, isn't it?"

"You know about that, too?"

"Yes. The information came with the other data Sally Warren dug up on you."

He caught her hand, turned it over, and kissed her wrist. "I told you I'd once had a nasty experience with a gun."

"Nasty is right. It must have been incredibly painful."

He grimaced. "And not especially sexy. I should have worn a shirt to bed."

"Don't be ridiculous." She sat up and folded her legs, tailor-fashion, beneath the sheet. "If I had an old wound like that, would the sight of it bother you?"

He looked startled. "No, of course not."

"Then you know how I feel about seeing your scars," she said impatiently. "What bothers me is realizing how much it must have hurt. This is the first time I've seen the extent of the damage. It's a miracle you weren't killed."

His face relaxed. "It's all right. It was a long time ago."

"It was only three years ago."

His smiled. "Calm down, I'm okay."

"He shot you in the
back
, Cyrus. He not only tried to kill you, the bastard did it in the most treacherous, cowardly way possible."

"Hush." Cyrus put his fingertips over her mouth. "You'll wake Rick."

"But—"

He took his fingers away from her lips and kissed her until she fell back against the pillows. He followed her down, crushing her gently into the bedding. The solid, warm weight of his body sent delicious tingles of awareness all the way to her toes.

"Remember what I said about how you could never control me with sex?" she murmured.