Wild Hawk (9 page)

And it was rare enough that anyone faced him down this steadily that he made a sudden decision. He yanked off his coat, tossed it on the bed behind her, pulled a chair out from the small table beside the window, and sat down, swinging his booted feet up to rest on the bed.

“All right, Mother Goose. Tell me the tale.”

Her mouth twisted. “Actually, I’m feeling rather Grimm at the moment.”

He grinned at the awful pun; he couldn’t seem to help it. He heard an odd sound, as if she had taken a quick, deep breath. Or had lost one. He leaned back in the chair, raising his arms to clasp his hands behind his head.

“A fairy tale by any other name,” he said. “Now’s your chance. Go for it.”

She looked at him silently for a moment, clearly taking in his casual posture, his insouciant expression. Her gaze shifted to the book then, as if it could tell her how to begin. She caught one side of her lower lip between her teeth and worried it gently. Jason watched her for a moment, feeling that odd sense of light-headedness again. He’d meant to make it as hard as he could for her, but it was becoming harder on him. He spoke hastily.

“Go on.”

“And of course you’ll listen with an open mind,” she said dryly.

“And deprive you of the challenge of convincing me? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

She gave him a rather sour look, but he knew she was going to try. He settled back to listen, thinking that if nothing else, he could watch her as she spun the silly tale. That alone would be worth it.

IT HAD BEEN easy, after all, Alice thought. She’d been afraid after all these years that he might have changed his methods, or his line of work, or perhaps even finally met his match and be in prison. Or dead. But the cryptic message she’d left at the old phone number had worked. And he’d called her back with a promptness that would have been flattering in anyone else, but from him only succeeded in making her edgy.

When he suggested they skip the formalities, being as they were very old friends, she was quick to agree.

“You are still . . . working?” she asked.

“What can I say?” His voice, a voice that seemed familiar despite the years since she’d heard it, echoed with blithe cheer. “I love what I do.”

“I need something done.”

“I assumed that, but I’m afraid I’m very busy right at the moment—”

“Too busy for me?” she interrupted. “The person who gave you your start?” He obviously needed some reminding about who was in charge, Alice, irritated at his cavalier tone, thought. And about whom he owed.

“Well, there is that,” the breezy voice conceded. “I guess, in a way, I do owe you.”

“Yes, in a way, you do.” She’d begun him on a career she knew, if what he’d charged her was any indication, had to be very profitable.

“I suppose I can rearrange my schedule. If the problem is serious enough, of course.”

She knew what he was asking, knew what her answer would tell him. He was a man who didn’t deal in petty problems. But she didn’t hesitate.

“It is. Very serious.”

“All right. I’ll be on my way as soon as I can. I’ll contact you when I arrive.”

He hung up without further ceremony. While she was not used to being dispensed with so abruptly, Alice consoled herself with the knowledge that the solution to her problem—one that would be very final if she ordered it so—was forthcoming.

She’d had enough of waiting for something to happen. For too long she had had to settle for being the power behind the scenes, manipulating instead of ordering, and she was tired of it. Now she would make it happen, and she would make it happen her way.

Ever since the day she’d found out Aaron was dying, and she had realized this was her chance to finally have the public power and authority she’d always craved, she’d been planning for this. Before that, even, for that matter. She supposed, in some way, she’d been planning for this since the day she’d finally had to admit that her husband didn’t—and never would—love her. He’d wasted what capacity he had for that emotion on that slut, who had thought she could force his hand by giving him a child. And on Kendall Chase, who would soon learn Alice Hawk wasn’t to be trifled with.

A lesson Aaron had learned the hard way.

Seized with a sudden restlessness, she began to pace. But soon that wasn’t enough to ease her tension. She glanced at her diamond watch. Although it was late, she knew she was far too restless to sleep. But there was nothing more she could do, not tonight. She’d begun her extreme measures. She should be satisfied, knowing she had the power to unleash such a fate. But she wasn’t. She was in no mood to feel satisfied. She was in no mood to sit back and wait. And she was certainly in no mood to sleep. She was far too angry.

And there wasn’t anyone to vent her anger at.

But she could appease the need for some kind of action. When she’d been searching Aaron’s office, car, and safe here for the copies of the codicil—he’d stubbornly refused to rely on digital copies only—she’d found the keys to his office at Hawk Manufacturing. She’d been infuriated when he’d had the locks changed and refused to give her a set of those keys, fobbing her off with some feeble excuse about plant security after a break-in. Especially since it hadn’t been a break-in at all; she had been the late-night visitor who had gone through the files. She had every right to that information whether Aaron saw it that way or not.

And she had every right to go there now. She needed to see those files; they would help her marshal her forces, plan her strategy. Knowledge was power, and she needed what Aaron had kept from her. She had to move quickly, solidify her position, take over so swiftly and thoroughly that the thought of questioning her right to it could never be reached.

She snatched up the keys and her coat and left the house. Resentment built inside her as she drove through the night toward Hawk Manufacturing. She shouldn’t have to be going through this at all. She’d put up with Aaron and his faults and unfaithfulness for all these years, and now that everything was in her hands, as it should be, she was going to have to fight yet again to keep it. And that she was going to have to fight the likes of Kendall Chase and Aaron’s bastard only made it worse. The girl was merely a nuisance, but the boy . . .

She would teach them both a lesson they would never forget. And if the lesson had to be a final one, then so be it. In the end, all that mattered was that she kept what was hers. She’d worked too hard, endured too much, and she would not see it lost now. She had a lot of years left to her, and she intended to live them as she wished, as she was meant to.

Even if it meant stealing a lot of years from the two who would dare to try to stand in her way.

“LET ME GET THIS right,” Jason drawled. “The family legend says that some prehistoric Hawk saved the life of some wizard. Is that right?”

Kendall sighed. He knew she was tired, he could see it, but the whole thing was so absurd he had to make her go through it again.

“Back then, any . . . questionable arts were construed as magic,” she said.

“Right. And in gratitude, the man promised that the Hawk name would never die out.”

“And created the means by which the promise was kept. A book that appears when it’s needed.”

Jason’s mouth quirked. “You say that like it materializes out of thin air.”

“For all I know, it does.”

“Kendall,” he began, but stopped when she lifted a hand.

“All I can tell you is what Aaron told me. According to the legend this book has been in the Hawk family for centuries.”

“Centuries? It’s old, but not that old.”

Kendall sighed. “If you’re going to question everything I say, this is going to take all night.”

Her words sent another burst of heat through him as he thought of ways he’d like to spend all night with this woman. His voice was husky when he said, “I missed my plane, remember? I’ve got all night.”

Color stained her cheeks, as if she knew what he’d been thinking. But he guessed she wouldn’t say anything about it; his words had been, after all, perfectly innocent and true. Only that annoying break in his control of his tone had made them anything other than that.

After a moment, her blush faded, and she picked up the book. For the first time, she opened it past the patterned flyleaf page. She paused at the drawing that was so like a photograph, then glanced up at him. He waited, wondering as he had with the flyleaf if she would notice anything out of the ordinary. She turned her gaze back to the book, and turned another page. And then another.

And she began to smile, a gentle curving of her lips that was touched with wonder.

“It’s just like he said,” she whispered, turning the book slightly to read the family tree that stretched on unbroken through generations. “From the beginning, centuries ago. All the Hawks. All those years.”

He stayed silent, watching. It wasn’t the family tree that concerned him; there was nothing unusual about it, other than perhaps the uninterrupted length of it. It was what came in between, at various points in the genealogy, that had him unwillingly curious: why were one or two Hawks every century not just listed on the tree but pictured, along with what seemed to be a detailed account of their lives, ending with a story of the way those Hawks had found the women they eventually married?

He’d reached that realization when he’d gotten to the third photograph and accompanying tale. It had made his lip curl with aversion; he had little time or patience with people fool enough to believe in love, the biggest fairy tale of them all.

Kendall turned another page, coming to another of the unusual pictures. Jason saw her eyes widen, flick to his face, then back to the picture. He knew what she was thinking. He’d thought it himself. At the airport he’d gone through the book from picture to picture, reluctant to admit what he was seeing. She did as he had, jumped forward through the pages to the next picture. Again she looked at him. Then she repeated the action, and again stopped, reading for a moment the story accompanying this picture, then lifting her head to stare at Jason again.

“It’s you,” she said. “The last Hawks . . . they all look like you. Or you look like them. Even more than you look like Aaron. This man could be your twin brother.”

“I noticed,” he said, his voice tight. “Now will you explain what the hell you mean by this ‘last Hawk’ stuff?”

“That’s when the book appears. The only time it appears. When the line has dwindled to one surviving Hawk.” She looked over at him again. “You.”

“I’m not a Hawk.” He sounded dogged even to himself.

Kendall sighed. “You can deny it all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re a Hawk. The legend says the book follows the blood, legitimate or not, recognized or not.”

She gestured at the picture before her, of the man who looked enough like him to be a twin, and a tall, willowy woman who might be considered plain if not for the spirit, life, and pure joy that glowed in her eyes. They were dressed in what appeared to be clothing of the post Civil War era, the man in a dark coat and pants, the woman in a pale gown trimmed with lace. A wedding gown, Jason had belatedly realized after staring in shock at his mirror image for several minutes.

“Joshua Hawk,” Kendall read aloud. “He was the last Hawk, then. Look at when he was born. He must have been too young to fight in the Civil War. But his family wasn’t. They were all killed, except for his grandfather. Leaving him as the last.”

“So what’s the point?”

God, he thought, he was treating this like it was for real, like it made any kind of sense. He must be losing it. But Kendall answered him as if the question had been genuine.

“The point is the promise that the Hawk name would never die out.”

“So you said.” Damn, this was crazy. And what was craziest is that she seemed to believe it all. Maybe she wasn’t as smart as he’d thought. “Pretty sexist, isn’t it? The patriarchal tradition of having a son to carry on the family name?”

She smiled, a sudden flashing smile that made him wonder if this room, too, had some kind of problem with its air system; it seemed suddenly in short supply.

“It would be,” she agreed, “if the starting point of the legend wasn’t that the first Hawk, the one who started it all, was a woman.”

The first picture, he thought instantly. The woman with the intense, vivid eyes he’d been so impossibly certain were blue. She’d certainly looked capable of starting a legend that would last for centuries. And for a moment he couldn’t summon up his sarcastic doubts.

“She passed on the name?”

Kendall nodded. “Back in a time and place where written history didn’t exist or was lost in some kind of vague mist, she was responsible for a large clan of people who were in danger. She couldn’t save them alone, so she found a champion, a warrior with no name . . . and in the end he took hers.”

An image of the man beside the woman in the drawing flashed through his mind. A warrior. The appellation didn’t seem nearly as fanciful as it should have.

“It was the foundation of the Hawk dynasty. Your ancestors.”

His rationality returned in a rush at her words. “Nice bit of make-believe,” he said. “You tell it well.”

She shook her head. “Those were Aaron’s words, not mine. He told me the stories.” He gave a disbelieving snort. “I know,” she said. “But it’s true. He used to talk for hours, toward the end.” She stopped, took a deep breath, and lifted the book from the bed. “He said to tell you to read this. And believe. That it was the legacy you should have had from the beginning.”

“You’re telling me he never saw this book, but he told you to tell me to read it? Why?”

She gave him a steady look that made him shift his feet uncomfortably. “Do you always look for an ulterior motive?”

“Only because I always find them,” he said. “So I repeat, what’s the point? What does this”—he jabbed a finger at the book she was holding—“have to do with anything?”