The Golden Chance

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “Yup.”

  Reed was grimly amused. “You might be interested to learn that I didn't know diddlysquat about genteel politeness until Eleanor married Burke thirty-six years ago.”

  “Eleanor taught you everything you know?”

  “Goddamn right. Burke said we needed a real lady to get us all shaped up so we could mingle with the money crowd. We were raking in the dough, you see, but we didn't have the manners to go with it. Burke and me, we were just a couple of shitkickers with too much cash for our own good at that point.”

  “The money didn't buy you into the right crowd?”

  “Money only takes you so far, even out here on the West Coast. Burke went looking for a genuine lady and when he found Eleanor, he married her.”

  “And Eleanor took you all in hand?”

  “She did her best. Sometimes we don't all live up to her standards, but she keeps workin' on us. She's devoted to the project. Making Castletons and Lightfoots socially acceptable is her mission in life. I reckon if Darren gets to be governor, maybe she'll figure she's finally succeeded.”

  “Why did Eleanor marry Burke if he wasn't up to her standards to begin with?”

  “You want to get real down and dirty, don't you?”

  “I'm curious.”

  “Then you ask her why she married him. I'm not going to satisfy your goddamn curiosity, Philadelphia. I don't see that the answer is any of your business.”

  “You're probably right.”

  “I know I'm right. I'm always right. Now keep quiet while I tee off.”

  “No wonder you and Nick have a hard time communicating,” Phila mused as Reed readied his swing. She waited until Reed's club started its descent before concluding, “You both seem to have developed the same nasty habit.”

  “Goddamn it, woman, can't you keep your mouth shut while I'm hitting the goddamn ball? Look what you made me do. I'm clear out in the rough. Jesus H. Christ.” Reed slammed the wood into his bag. “What nasty habit?”

  “Each of you thinks he's always right. You're both as stubborn as a couple of bricks.” Unperturbed by Reed's furious glare, she started off in the direction in which his ball had disappeared. “I think it landed over there behind that bush.”

  “What kind of a fairy tale did Nick tell you about his divorce?” Reed demanded, overtaking Phila in four strides.

  “We haven't discussed it in great detail but I'm sure we'll get around to it eventually.”

  “You're sleeping with my son and you haven't even bothered to find out why his marriage went on the rocks? If you don't know that, then there's sure as hell a lot more you probably don't know, either. It'd think a smart cookie like you would find out the details before she got too involved with a man like Nick. Which bush?”

  “Over there.” Phila pointed.

  Reed shielded his eyes under his palm. “Goddamn. I'm going to lose two strokes on this hole thanks to your mouthiness.”

  “Do you always look for someone else to blame when things go wrong?”

  “Take some advice. If you want to make it back to the clubhouse in one piece, you will keep your mouth shut while I get this goddamn ball back onto the fairway.”

  “Why don't you just pick it up and throw it back on the grass?”

  Reed did not dignify that with an answer. In fact, he didn't speak again until he had shot the ball onto the green.

  Phila decided to keep quiet for a while, at least until Reed lined up his tee shot on the next fairway. Then she said, “Are you hoping Nick will marry again?”

  “Why should I care one way or the other if my son marries again?” Reed concentrated on the ball.

  “I thought maybe you'd like some grandchildren, your kind being so family oriented and all. I mean, what's the good of founding an empire if you haven't got a dynasty to leave it to, right?”

  “For Crissake, you're not thinking of trying that old trick, are you?”

  “What old trick?”

  “Trying to get a permanent piece of the action by marrying into the families. If that's your game, you're barking up the wrong tree. Don't think for one moment that if you get pregnant, Nick will feel obliged to marry you.” Reed took a powerful swing at the ball and sent it sailing a good two hundred yards down the fairway.

  “If I get pregnant,” Phila said, her tone very even, “Nick will damn sure meet his responsibilities.”

  Reed's head came around abruptly, his eyes unreadable under the brim of his hat. “What makes you think so?”

  “He feels as strongly about family as you do,” Phila explained patiently. “He'd want his child. In fact, he'd demand it.”

  “You sound pretty goddamn sure of that.”

  “I am sure of it.”

  “Is that right?”

  “The real question,” Phila continued thoughtfully, “is whether I'd lower myself to marrying into this nest of ultraconservative right-wing pit vipers. Would you mind if I tried hitting the ball a couple of times?”

  Reed looked momentarily baffled by the switch in topics. When he saw her enthusiastic expression, he finally nodded brusquely and handed her a club.

  “No, no, you don't clutch it like a stick,” he said as he stood over her. “Your thumb goes along the grip like this. That's it. Okay, take it back like this. Real easy. The backswing is slow and controlled. Don't rush it. All right, bring it down nice and easy. I said, easy, damn it.”

  Phila ignored the last bit of advice and swung the club with all her might, eager to drive the ball as far as Reed had. There was a nice sensation of power, a satisfying whoosh and a loud, despairing groan from Reed.

  She paid no attention to the groan, certain that she had hit the ball halfway down the fairway. When she couldn't spot it, she glanced down and saw that the little white ball had gone about three feet.

  “Slow and easy, I said. Do you always rush into things that way?” Reed asked as he repositioned the ball.

  “What way?” Phila planted her feet for another swing.

  “Full speed ahead, no holds barred?”

  “I guess so, why?”

  “You're going to drive Nick crazy.”

  “Might be good for him. He needs to loosen up a bit. Now stand back. I'm going to try this again.” She swung this time with even greater enthusiasm. The ball dribbled about four feet from the tee. “Well, damn.”

  “I told you, Phila. Slow and easy does it. You really believe my son would stand by you if you got pregnant?”

  “Of course. After all, he is your son, isn't he? Would you walk out on a woman you'd gotten pregnant?”

  “There's a word for people like you.”

  “Liberal? Left wing? Commie sympathizer?”

  “No. Naive. I hate to shatter your illusions, Philadelphia, especially if Nick is playing on them in order to get the shares back from you. Hell, I want those shares back in the families, too. But the fact is, I think you would be very foolish to put too much stock in Nick's sense of obligation.”

  “Mr. Lightfoot, I may not play golf very well, but I've had a lot of experience dealing with different kinds of families. Many of them not very nice. Believe me, since the age of thirteen, I've been able to tell the good guys from the bad guys at a glance. It's one of the reasons I used to be very good at my job.”

  “Who taught you a neat trick like that when you were thirteen?” Reed asked, brows arching derisively.

  “Crissie Masters.” Phila smiled. “She always said I had a lot of natural ability, though. She claimed that all she did was fine-tune it a little for me.”

  Nick went to lounge in the Gilmarten doorway when he heard the Mercedes pull into the drive. Sending Phila off with his father had been a calculated risk. He was curious to find out the results.

  As the convertible came to a halt, Phila waved and smiled at him. She looked good, he thought, cheerful and exhilarated. He had an overpowering urge to take her to bed right then and there and sample some of that sweet, sexy enthusiasm.

  “How was the game
?” he forced himself to ask politely as he opened the door for her.

  “I nearly strangled her on the third, sixth and fifteenth greens,” Reed said. “She's a mouthy little thing, isn't she?”

  “Yeah. But you get used to it after a while.”

  “I resent that,” Phila announced.

  “I let her try a few shots,” Reed said. “But she has a bad habit of rushing her swing. She'll have to learn to slow down a bit if she ever wants to be able to play.”

  “I'm working with her on the problem,” Nick said calmly. A hundred miles per hour.

  Reed's eyes were cool and curious. “She seems to think you're one of the good guys. Did you know that?”

  “A good guy?”

  “The kind of man who'd marry her if she got pregnant, for instance.”

  Nick glanced at Phila and saw the color staining her cheeks. “Did she tell you that?”

  “Yup. Real sure of herself. Seems to think she can tell the sonsobitches a mile off.”

  “She's just bragging. Did she mention that she threatened to come after me with a gun if she gets pregnant?”

  “No.” Reed gave Nick a thin smile. “But she did say the real question wasn't whether you'd marry her, it was whether she'd lower her standards far enough to marry into our family.”

  Phila drew herself up to her full height, her eyes gleaming with irritation. “If either one of you continues to discuss me as if I were not present, I will hand over my shares in Castleton & Lightfoot to the Revolutionary Workers Brigade of America. I'm sure they'll make quite an impression at the annual meeting in August.”

  Reed glared at Nick. “Goddamn it. Do something about her. Fast.”

  “Yes, sir.” Nick quickly removed his hand from the car door as the Mercedes shot forward.

  “It's very tacky to discuss someone as if she weren't present,” Phila announced as she turned to march into the cottage. “I'd have thought Eleanor would have taught you all better manners than that. By the way, your father certainly swears a lot, doesn't he? Eleanor should have cleaned up his language by now, too.”

  Nick followed her over the threshold. “You and Reed discussed the possibility that you might be pregnant?”

  Phila was already in the kitchen, rummaging through the refrigerator. “He brought it up, not me. I think he felt he had a gentlemanly obligation to warn me not to use pregnancy as a means of getting a piece of the precious Lightfoot family pie. I wonder where he got the idea that the Great American Dream is to become a Lightfoot or a Castleton.” She removed some carrots from the crisper. “Arrogant redneck.”

  “Dad?”

  “Sure. He may drive that fancy Mercedes and dress in designer polo shirts, but deep down he's just a redneck cowboy. I'm surprised he doesn't wear a six-gun on the golf course.” She went to the sink and began peeling the carrots.

  “The holster would probably interfere with his golf swing. You told him you didn't think I'd walk out on you if you got pregnant?” Nick was fascinated with the way she wielded the peeler. Little strips of carrot flew into the chipped enamel sink.

  “You're not the type to walk out.”

  “You know the type?”

  “I'm an ex—social worker, remember? One who specialized in children? I've hunted down more deserters than the U.S. Army. If there's one thing I know, it's the type. Want a carrot?” She held one out to him. “Your cheap father only bought me a cup of coffee and a Danish at the clubhouse before we went out on the course. Said he had a scheduled tee-off time and we couldn't stand around eating.”

  Nick took the carrot and crunched down on one end, his eyes never leaving Phila's face. “If I'm not the type to walk out, what was that business about threatening me with the gun yesterday morning?”

  “I said if you'd gotten me pregnant, I'd come after you with a gun. I didn't say I expected you to run.”

  Nick finished his carrot. It occurred to him that when a man took a calculated risk, he expected either success or failure. Having the whole business go off on some crazy, unforeseen tangent was a novelty. Nick was dumbfounded. “Sounds like you and my father had a very interesting morning.”

  “Uh huh. Why did you send me off with him, anyway?”

  “I didn't send you off with him. It was your decision to go to the course.”

  “Come on, Nick, this is me, Phila, remember? Sell that bridge to someone else.”

  He smiled faintly. “All right, when he showed up at the door I figured it was a good opportunity for the two of you to get to know each other. You wanted to get to know Castletons and Lightfoots, remember?”

  “There's more to it than that,” Phila said. “Did you hope he'd bully me? Did you think he'd make me mad the way Hilary did when she offered to buy the shares?”

  “It was a possibility,” Nick admitted.

  “I'll just bet it was. Why did you want him to try to push me around?”

  “So you'd get really stubborn. I don't want you turning the shares over to him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he's letting Hilary vote his shares these days, and I don't want her getting her hands on any more shares than she already controls.”

  “Got it.”

  “Speaking of not getting pregnant—” Nick continued and broke off as Phila began choking on the carrot. He slapped her helpfully on the back until she could swallow properly. “I picked up a package of condoms in town yesterday afternoon.”

  “Oh, fine. Why don't you just broadcast the fact on the local radio station? Buying condoms in a town the size of Port Claxton at a drugstore where the clerk has probably known you since you were born is real subtle, Lightfoot. What are you trying to do? Sink my reputation completely?”

  “Everyone already assumes we're sleeping together,” Nick pointed out gently.

  “Well, everyone's wrong. You're sleeping on the couch, remember? A one-night stand does not constitute an affair or even a short-term shack-up.”

  “Does this mean you don't have any immediate plans to seduce me again in the near future?”

  “My immediate plans are to take a book down to that little cove at the bottom of the hill. I've had it with Lightfoots this morning.”

  “That little cove is full of rocks, not nice, soft sand.”

  “Life is full of rocks. With a little practice you get used to sitting on them.”

  The book was good, a thriller in which the hero, an aging ex-hippie from the sixties, halted a fanatical, power-hungry, right-wing businessman who was secretly financing a band of guerrillas with the intention of taking over Texas.

  Phila was halfway through the story when she realized she was concentrating on it in the old, familiar way. Reading had always been a secret pleasure for her, a treasured escape. But ever since the Spalding trial and Crissie's death, she'd had trouble keeping her attention on any book, even a very good one. It was a relief to sense she was getting back to normal in some areas of her life.

  She squirmed a bit on the small patch of rough sand she had managed to find in the cove and resettled herself against a large, sun-warmed boulder. Gulls wheeled over-head and several long-legged wading birds darted back and forth in the foam of the retreating surf.

  A high-pitched, childish screech of delight mingled with the cries of the birds, and Phila glanced up to see Jordan Castleton running across the wide beach toward the water at full speed. He was wearing a tiny pair of shorts and a shirt that flapped around his waist. His mother was right behind him.

  “That's close enough, Jordan,” Vicky called as her son showed every sign of charging straight into the waves. “We have to stay on the beach. That water is cold.”

  Jordan protested vociferously until his attention was caught by the sight of Phila sitting near the tumble of rocks in the cove. He stopped complaining to his mother and stared at Phila. Then he waved both arms excitedly and dashed toward her.

  “Hi, Phila. Hi, Phila. Hi, Phila.” He got sidetracked by a pile of wet seaweed. Seeing it, he halted immedia
tely and squatted down to investigate.

  Victoria turned to see what had first captured her son's attention. She hesitated when she saw Phila, then she started toward her.

  “Good afternoon,” Victoria said with restrained politeness as she came close to Phila. “I didn't realize you were down here on the beach.”

  “I had a hard morning playing golf with Reed. I decided to rest this afternoon.”

  Jordan now came running to join them, a long length of seaweed in his hands. “Look, Phila.”

  “Hi, Jordan. How's the world treating you today? Why, thank you. Just what I've always wanted,” she added as he triumphantly placed the seaweed in her hand. She put it on display on the rock behind her. “There. How's that?”

  Jordan cackled in delight. “Pretty.”

  “It's beautiful. Does wonders for that rock.”

  He nodded in ready agreement and started looking for more seaweed to add to the collection. Victoria hesitated and then put a towel down on a nearby rock. She sat on top of the towel.

  “You went golfing with Reed?” Victoria finally asked.

  “In a manner of speaking. I've never played before, and I'm afraid Reed was a tad impatient with my backswing.”

  “Hilary never plays with him.”

  “I'm sure he'd rather play with men.”

  “Eleanor says Nora, his first wife, learned. She used to go around with him sometimes in the evenings when the course was quiet.”

  “Reed was happy with his first wife?”

  “According to everything I've ever heard. She died shortly before I was introduced to Darren. Eleanor says when she first met Nora, the poor woman didn't know where to shop for her clothes or which glass to set where at a formal dinner. But Reed was madly in love with her. It's too bad he got stuck with Hilary for a second wife, but I imagine he felt he didn't have a choice.”

  Phila decided to bite. “Why didn't he feel he had a choice?”

  “He felt duty bound to marry her after she found out she was pregnant. Nick made it clear he wasn't going to take responsibility.”

  Phila's mind went totally blank for a split second. She accepted another bit of seaweed from Jordan and placed it carefully on the rock next to the first piece. “Hilary was pregnant when she married Reed?”