Silver Miracles (9 page)

Wearing a charcoal-gray warm-up suit that was slightly damp with sweat, Chase looked arousingly healthy and vitally alive. His silver hair was tousled, and his eyes were a warm blue, absorbing her into their depths.

"Mommy, Mommy!" She turned to find that Stephanie and Tray had run up to her. "We need to go get Ant’ony. We neeeed him!"

Trinity laughed at her daughter’s exaggeration. "Why, honey?"

Tray answered the question. "’Cause we need someone to bury in the leaves."

"Why don’t you take turns getting covered, then?"

"That’s no fun," Tray protested, his chubby little arms planted firmly on his hips, obviously convinced that his Aunt Trinity didn’t fully understand the situation. "We want to do it together."

"Oh." She thought this predicament out, then turned to look at Chase, barely able to keep a straight face. "I bet Mr. Colfax would just love to play with y’all and let you cover him with leaves."

The kids let out squeals of excitement. "Really, really?" They started running around the two adults in circles. "C’mon, c’mon!"

Chase’s face twisted into an expression of irritated amusement as he looked at Trinity. "One of these days. Trinity Ann Warrenton ..." he growled, shaking his fist.

"Yes, Mr. Colfax?" she questioned innocently, at the same time grabbing his arm and pulling him over to the nearest pile of leaves.

An hour later. Trinity fell exhausted onto a mound of leaves beside a sprawled-out Chase. He had been amazingly natural with the two children, playing with them on their level, and she felt wonderfully contented.

"Where did the kids go?" she questioned breathlessly.

"They probably wandered off to find someone new to torment," he said in a tone of long suffering.

"Idiot!" She turned over into his arms and nestled her head on his shoulder. Why couldn’t they always be this peaceful? Why did there have to be so much tension between them? "Why did you come over, by the way? Did you run out of playmates over at your house?"

"That’s the problem!" Chase pouted teasingly. "You refuse even to go over there anymore, and Mangus is no fun. He keeps encouraging me, in the politest ways possible, of course, to either go run my frustrations off or to fly back to Dallas. He has actually hinted that I’ve gotten rather hard to live with lately."

"Gee, I can’t understand that!"

"Hush, Trinity." He put a finger on her lips. "I really came over to tell you that there’s a party I want us to go to tomorrow night."

"So what else is new?" Trinity complained wearily, looking up at the canopy of leaves over their heads. "As much socializing as those people do in Dallas, it’s a wonder they ever find any time to make money."

"I don’t like it any more than you do," Chase assured her, "but some party-going is necessary. I’ve closed several of my biggest deals at parties." His breath tickled her ear as he turned to watch her. "Just say the word, though, and we’ll stay home tomorrow night. . . alone . . . in front of a roaring fire." His tongue had begun to trace circles inside her ear.

"We’ll go!" Trinity declared decisively, jumping to her feet and running off to find Tray and Stephanie.

This sort of passionless truce that had existed between the two of them for the last few weeks couldn’t possibly last much longer, of course. It was bound to come to a head sooner or later, and then some decisions would have to be reached. Chase knew it, and so did she.

#

The next evening, Trinity donned a length of sheer jade silk chiffon that she had cut on the bias and fashioned into an intriguing pareu. The material had been a gift from Larry and Sissy, and it was exquisite. Because of the thinness and cut of the cloth, it was hard to wear much, if anything, under the pareu without its showing through. Trinity settled for wearing bikini panties and a pair of gold-strapped high heels with it.

She never attempted to outdress the women at these parties to which Chase escorted her. She didn’t have the means or the inclination. But her simple, sometimes homemade, clothes never failed to draw admiring stares and compliments from one and all, and this evening was no exception.

As Trinity strolled around the large room, the dress moved seductively against her, revealing the clearly outlined curve of her full, firm breasts and the golden-brown length of her legs, exposed by the thigh-high slit in the front of the skirt.

She had come to know a lot of Chase’s business acquaintances and friends during these last few weeks. Most of them were sincere, well-meaning people who just happened to have a lot of money, and Trinity had no trouble finding something to talk to them about, holding her own in any conversation, usually with Chase at her side.

This night, however, Chase had apparently staked out the bar as his own personal territory, nursing a drink, holding desultory conversations with various people who sought him out and, annoyingly, showing no desire to join her.

The only real indication that Chase hadn’t forgotten that he had brought her with him was his eyes. Intense, brooding and very blue, they followed her every gesture, noted her every breath and observed each whispering movement of the jade-colored silk.

Trinity stopped in one corner of the room to talk to an older couple of whom she had grown particularly fond. They had a passel of grandchildren and they both seemed extremely interested in hearing about the quilt that Trinity was currently working on. Her hands were enthusiastically sketching the pattern in the air when Chase captured her arm in an iron-firm grip. "Excuse us, Mary, Hector. Trinity and I have to be going now."

The speed at which he managed to get them across the floor, out the door and into the private elevator that whisked them to the garage level was nothing short of astounding.

"Chase! Why on earth did you do that? I think Mary and Hector were just about to give me an order for a quilt."

"Damn it, Trinity! That man is chairman of the board of one of the largest banks in Texas. Besides which, you don’t have to sew quilts to make a living."

"I haven’t the vaguest idea of what you’re talking about, Chase. I’ve told you how handy that extra money is."

"We’ll talk about it when we get home." His flat, angry edict kept Trinity quiet for the short car ride "home," which turned out to be his penthouse apartment.

Once there, Trinity wandered to the couch and sat down, shaking her head in silent refusal to Chase’s terse question, "Drink?"

Chase took one, long drink of Scotch, then put the glass down. Turning, he walked slowly over to her, until he was standing just a short distance away. Shoving his hands in the pockets of his black evening suit, he regarded Trinity thoughtfully for a minute.

At last, in a voice that was low and restrained, he commenced. "Nothing I have done these past weeks has made the slightest impression on you, has it?"

Trinity didn’t answer. Somehow, she knew that it was a rhetorical question. Instead, she waited, the clear green of her gaze never wavering from him.

"You refuse my gifts. Hell! You refuse half the flowers I send you." Chase began to pace back and forth in front of her, his accusatory words slicing through the air, nearly puncturing her heart with their sharpness. "You’re living on a farm, with no help, barely eking out a living, yet you turn down everything I try to give you.

"I take you to the most expensive restaurants, the most exclusive parties, the newest "in" places, and you not only manage to fit right in, you have some of the richest people in the country eating out of your hand." Chase paused in his pacing and looked straight at her, skewering her with his hard-bitten eyes. "And you’re no closer to my bed than you were weeks ago."

Chase drew a deep breath, looking at her and appearing to choose his next words very carefully. "I want you more than ever, Trinity, and I’m willing to settle a great deal of money on you, enough to make you independent for the rest of your life, if you come back to my bed. The money can be in any account you choose by noon tomorrow."

Trinity bolted from the sofa, moving quickly over to the huge window. The magnificent view of the night lights of Dallas blurred before her eyes. She knew the room was maintained at a comfortable temperature, yet suddenly she felt cold—so very, very cold. She hugged herself, rubbing her arms with her hands, trying to instill some warmth in them, until she heard Chase come up behind her. Then her hands ceased their nervous movement, and Trinity waited quietly for his next blow to fall.

"Trinity?" His voice was coaxingly soft as he turned her around to face him. "I have great power and even greater wealth. Come to me and I promise I’ll use it all to make you happy."

At first, Trinity wasn’t sure she would even be able to speak. Her throat seemed to be completely clogged by tears—tears that formed a vast ocean of unexpressed pain. And when she finally did, her voice was not recognizable. It was strained, and the words were croaked out. "For how long?"

"I don’t know," he gritted. "All I know is that, having had you once, I must have you again."

"I see. And love doesn’t enter into it?"

"Love is a schoolgirl’s fantasy. I’m not sure I believe in it."

"What do you believe in, Chase?"

"You . . . me . . . and what we can make each other feel." He reached out and ran the back of his hand down the side of her face.

Trinity shrugged away from the caress and moved to the middle of the room. "And marriage, Chase? Do you believe in marriage?"

"I travel very fast through life. You know that, Trinity. I don’t want or need a lot of excess baggage. If we do it my way, I can give you and Stephanie the security that you deserve, without a bunch of legal obligations to hold us together."

Trinity turned to face him, hoping that the deep hurt she felt didn’t show. Very softly and very clearly, she uttered one word. "No."

Chase didn’t say a thing. And he didn’t really have to. His eyes said it all. They were as frozen as an Arctic winter, with the ice in them as thick as a glacier. He looked at her for one, long, endless minute and then walked out of the room, quietly shutting the door behind him.

It couldn’t have been too long after that, for Trinity was still standing in the middle of the room, that a man she had never seen before walked in the front door of the apartment.

Tall and intelligent-looking, he addressed her solemnly. "Miss Warrenton? I’m John Phillips, Mr. Colfax’s executive assistant. He just reached me at our office down the hall. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you home."

And he did. Silently and competently, he flew her back to east Texas, and Trinity didn’t need to be told that she would never see Chase again. It was obvious.

The next weeks were not the easiest Trinity had ever lived through—but she did it. She had Stephanie, the farm and her quilting to keep her busy, and if, for the first time in her life, she found her days empty, she tried not to notice.

One morning over coffee, Trinity broke down and told Larry everything that had happened between her and Chase, from the first night down by the pool to their final confrontation, where he had offered her a great deal of money. To her surprise and chagrin, Larry took the news with a great deal more equanimity than she had expected.

"And you refused?" Larry’s brows were raised interrogatively and there was an unexplained amusement in his voice.

"Of course I refused!" Trinity glared at her brother-in-law, failing to see any humor in the situation. "Who does Chase Colfax think he is, anyway? If I took his money and had an affair with him, I would be no better than a prostitute. And if I refused his money but had an affair with him anyway, I . . ." Her words came to a halt.

"You’d what?" Now Larry was actually smiling!

"I don’t know," she cried, suddenly feeling very defeated and extremely confused. Consequently, Trinity did the only logical thing she could do— she took it out on Larry. "Why don’t you go home and murder someone off in your latest book, instead of hanging around here and bothering me!"

Larry laughed uproariously and kissed her goodbye. His final sally—"Maybe Chase Colfax has finally met his match"—was too cryptic for her to even bother thinking up a retort.

The first week in December, Stephanie came down with a severe case of the flu, which promptly became complicated by bronchitis. Stephanie felt so bad that she couldn’t bear to have her mommy out of her sight for a minute, only seeming to rest when Trinity was holding her, and of course, Trinity gladly obliged—her daughter’s pain had immediately become hers.

The trouble was that she hadn’t been able to get much sleep while Stephanie’s breathing was so labored, so she’d been making do with catnaps whenever she could.

As a result, when the phone rang late one dark afternoon, Trinity had to drag herself to the phone.

"Yes?"

"What’s wrong?" The deep, velvet-sharp voice of Chase temporarily paralyzed Trinity. She would have bet her last penny that Chase wouldn’t call her again.

"What do you want?"

There was a distinct pause on the other end of the line and then, "You sound terrible! What’s wrong, are you sick?"

"No"—Trinity sighed wearily—"it’s Stephanie. She’s been sick for about a week, now, and so far hasn’t responded to the medicine the doctor has given her."

"Have you talked to the doctor about it?"

"Yes. He switched antibiotics yesterday morning and feels I should see some change in her condition pretty soon." Why was she telling him all of this? She must be even more tired than she thought.

"I’ll be right there."

"Chase!" The line went dead with a very definite click.

He hadn’t even said whether he was in Dallas or at his farm. What was she going to do? The house was a mess, and she couldn’t even remember if she had combed her hair yet today. Heavens! She hadn’t even gotten dressed. She was still wearing the old winter robe that she had put on this morning. Just as she was thinking that perhaps she would have time to get dressed, a plaintive, "Mommy!" put an end to the notion, and Trinity went back to her daughter.