The Senator’s Daughter (49 page)

But she was somewhere in the City. With girlfriends like the ones she'd been with at the charity benefit where he met Tony Valetti?

Lyle drummed his fingers on the kitchen counter.

Sylvia might not be at Ice, but he knew someone who might be.

San Francisco would not soon forget Sylvia Chatsworth's reentry into society. For nearly a month, tongues had been wagging, the gossip and speculation wild and far ranging.

Most had thought she was dead. Some expected she had run off with a man, or men. She might have gone on tour incognito with those bikers, engaging in nightly three-ways.

Yesterday's news of her return home, the story circulating that she'd been kidnapped by Tony Valetti, who was in jail, brought up stories of her being kept prisoner, shared by the Valetti brothers. The fact that she had promised to give no information sent the rumor mill into overdrive.

Leaving the raincoat she'd worn over Mom's black dress at the checkroom, Sylvia stepped to the velvet rope and paused, framed by an archway. Like Scarlett O'Hara's entrance to Melanie's birthday party after she'd been caught kissing Ashley Wilkes, without the red dress.

She stood for a moment, her eyes flickering over the big room. A hush fell.

At least two hundred people, some familiar, many strangers, but the strangers knew who she was, stopped dancing, drinking, flirting, and stared.

She lifted her chin, clutched her mother's tasteful evening bag, and stared back.

Then she noticed, here and there, a different look from what she was used to. One of awe, respect, even, for someone who'd been through a life-changing ordeal.

A fellow she'd once played coed basketball with raised his arm. “Hey, Sylvia,” he called. “Looking good.”

Another man chimed in. “And I do mean good.”

Sylvia saw Corrine Walker. The banker's daughter looked as though she'd bitten a lemon.

Then Sylvia saw tall, dark-haired Cliff Ames, whom she knew to be a friend of Lyle. A quick scan of the nearby seats did not reveal him.

Her eyes met Cliff's. Shoving to his feet, he put his hands together.

One clap. Two. Loud against the silence.

Red-haired attorney Shana Weston rose beside Cliff. She began to applaud.

Slowly as first, then like a rising wind, the approbation spread. Those seated clambered to their feet.

A man shouted, “Good to have you back.”

“We love ya, Sylvia.”

Her eyes overflowing with tears, Sylvia waved to acknowledge their welcome.

As soon as the ovation died down, she fled to the ladies' room.

On Ice's rooftop terrace, beneath the outdoor awning, Lyle heard people clapping and cheering inside. He supposed the band must have arrived.

After a glance over his shoulder into the blue grotto, he turned back to Julio Castillo.

“I'm offering you an exclusive,” he told the reporter.

“In exchange for what,
amigo?”

“I'm not your friend. But you have something I need, and I have something you want. I get your camera and airtime at eleven this evening. You get the story I give you.”

“What story?”

“Let's just say it has to do with Sylvia Chatsworth.”

The reporter's dark eyes widened.

Inside the granite-walled bathroom stall, Sylvia blew her nose and tossed the tissue. The last time she'd been in here crying it had been in humiliation. Tonight, she shed tears of joy.

For all the terrible stories, all the bad press, it seemed a lot of people did like her. They really had worried about her.

Reaching for the handle to flush the tissue, Sylvia heard heels tapping on the tile outside.

“It's just amazing,” said Corinne Walker. “Those idiots were applauding her. Don't they—”

Sylvia opened the door. Corinne saw her and closed her mouth. A wonder she didn't bite her tongue.

Shana Weston, her back to the stalls, said to Corinne, “You're making a fool of yourself because you're pea green with envy.”

Sylvia thought about jumping in. Saying something appropriately bitchy… throwing punches and pulling hair like in fourth grade. After all, she had a perfect right.

It wasn't even tempting.

She stepped around Shana, touched her lightly on the shoulder. On her way out, Sylvia noted that Corinne did look a little green.

Back on the crowded club floor, Sylvia headed straight for Cliff Ames. If anybody knew where Lyle was, it would be him. And he certainly had Lyle's cell number on speed dial.

She would borrow Cliff's phone, step outside where the patio was deserted due to the weather, and make the call.

But she didn't see Cliff now. If he'd been with Shana, maybe he was in the gents.

It took her a few minutes to work her way over toward where she'd last seen Lyle's friend. People kept stopping her and shaking her hand or hugging her.

“Give ‘em hell,” said more than one person. She assumed they meant when she testified against Andre Valetti.

She remembered now what she didn't like about the club scene. When it was this crowded, a shorter person like her got a little claustrophobic.

There was something going on over by the bar. A commotion and the blue glow of Ice washed out from the camera lights.

It must be Julio Castillo, out doing roving reporting for “On the Spot.” At least his cameraman hadn't filmed her coming in … unless he did it from somewhere in the club without extra illumination.

About ten feet away from whomever he was immortalizing, she started to turn back.

Impossible. The crowd was crushing closer to the spectacle, hoping for a movie star or something. Sylvia stretched on tiptoe. She saw the top of a blond head. She saw the camera held up, the red light come on.

The microphone amplified a male voice. “This is for Sylvia Chatsworth.”

“Lyle?” she said.

“I wanted to do this on the air, like those people who put up a billboard that says, ‘Honey, I love you.'”

The people around Sylvia started to murmur.

Lyle's voice went on. “Sylvia, I just want to be clear …”

The crowd parted like the Red Sea, leaving an open corridor between her and Lyle.

“In front of your parents …”

She saw him, struck anew with his blond splendor. He was magnificent, giving the camera, and by extension her, a look any woman would die for.

“She's here,” someone murmured.

“Right here,” a fellow next to her called, holding up his arm.

Sylvia saw Lyle scan the crowd. Their gazes met, locked.

He pulled the mike closer to his mouth. “In front of God and everybody …”

Her heart slammed. His expression telegraphed his next words, but she waited to hear them without breathing.

“Sylvia. Will you marry me?”

People in the bar begin to clap again.

Lyle handed the microphone to Julio Castillo and gave him a significant look.

Castillo nodded at the cameraman. The red light went off. The bright light extinguished.

Sylvia began to walk toward Lyle. She did it slowly, solemnly, as though the dress she wore were white. It would feel like this, she believed, her throat tight with emotion.

The isolated clapping became applause that was even louder than before. Someone yelled, “Say yes!”

The crowd took up the chant. “Saaaay! Yesssss!”

Sylvia reached Lyle. The chant became a roar.

So this was it. Her heart felt too big for her chest. Wherever they ended up, would it all be worth it? Who could know?

Lyle took her shoulders and smiled down at her. His hopes and dreams shone in his eyes.

Their blue matched the lights behind him.

Her dreams matched his.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

M
ariah Grant hugged her slender body against the deepening chill of the San Francisco twilight. Behind her, music and party chatter drifted out through the French doors of Davis Campbell's Seacliff mansion. Perched on the brink of a precipice, the stucco-walled edifice boasted three wings, handmade clay roof tiles and a two-story wall of glass overlooking the Pacific. Mariah's view from the terrace swept from the Golden Gate Bridge south to the trackless sea, while a line of ships headed for the expanse of open ocean. Their purpose and motion made her wish she were bound for some exotic port, to be anywhere but in the home of her father's most bitter rival.

Only a month had passed since she joined the family company and, due to her dad being under the weather tonight, she represented Grant Development alone for the first time. Her hope this evening was to meet Senator Lawrence Chats worth, former head of the Bay Area Regional Planning Commission, a man whose influence had opened doors for many.

Though she might feel confident invading the Campbell domain for business reasons, she had trouble setting aside her personal feelings. She expected Davis Campbell's son Rory to be here, she counted on it, but the prospect of seeing the man she'd once loved made her chest feel hollow.

As the sun sank into the molten ocean, a salt breeze stirred her hair. She knew she should go back inside and look for the Senator, but instead stood compelled by the rugged San Francisco terrain, achingly familiar, yet now more precious for having spent her college years at UCLA, and four more working in Southern California. Virtual exile from her father, but it had been necessary both to pay her business dues and heal the wound inflicted by Rory Campbell.