by Diana Palmer
"Join the club."
"I'm serious." She put down her cup and saucer and clasped her hands on her lap. She felt her age for once, and finding the right words was difficult. "Cy, I paid Tony Tanksley to rob the safe and implicate Meredith," she said tightly. "I gave him the combination."
He didn't seem to react at all. He stared at her with slow comprehension, his dark eyes steady and unblinking. "You did what?" he asked.
She swallowed. "I set her up, is that the right terminology? Cy, she was eighteen and hopelessly naive and unsophisticated"
"I didn't know she was eighteen," he said roughly. "Not until you and Tony confronted her that day. She told me she was twenty."
That was news. She hesitated. "I didn't realize."
"I felt like ten kinds of a fool when I knew the truth," he said with quiet regret. "I had no right to hurt her the way I did." He looked at his mother with bitter comprehension. "Did you know she'd run?"
"I had a pretty good idea that she would," Myrna said, her face paling. "You see, she was proud and she wouldn't have asked you for help afterafter you believed the lies Tony and I told you about her."
"She didn't need help, did she?" Cy asked. "You gave her enough money to get out of town, I gather?"
"Yes." She brushed back the hair from her cheeks, feeling old and worn. It was harder than she'd dreamed. "But she sent it back to me, along with all the things you gave her, and I never told you. The jewelry, all of it, is in one of my dresser drawers."
He stared straight ahead, his mind whirling with the anguish of it. "How could you have done that to her?" he asked. "Didn't you know how badly I'd already hurt her?"
"I was afraid you meant to marry her, Cy," she said. "God forgive me, I wanted a debutante for you, someone of good family, good breeding, with money andand respectability. I'd sacrificed so much to get us in society, to keep us there" Her eyes closed. "I thought you'd get over her."
"So did I," he said dully. "But I never did."
She saw the pain in his eyes and flinched. "In the end, I almost couldn't go through with it. I wouldn't let you prosecute Tony for fear that he might tell you the truth, and I gave him a plane ticket and had him taken to the airport before you could question him. Even then I was afraid you might go after her."
"I did," he said. "I hired private detectives. But she vanished."
"Yes. Ihired some of my own," she confessed, smiling at his surprise. "I felt so guilty about what I'd done. I couldn't live with not knowing if she was all right. Especially under the circumstances."
The insinuation went right over his head. "That's what she was holding over your head, wasn't it?" he asked.
"That was part of it," Myrna replied. She paused, hoping for a reprieve, but his steady gaze was formidable. "Cy, when she left Billings, she was pregnant."
He didn't think he could keep breathing. His lungs seemed to be paralyzed, like his mind, his heart. He felt the horror of those words in every cell of his body as he stared helplessly at his mother. Pregnant. Meredith was pregnant. Pregnant with his child!
Myrna moaned, burying her face in her hands. "Forgive me," she whispered. "Cy, forgive me! I must have been mad. I'll never forgive myself for what I've done."
"You sent her away, knowing she was carrying my child?" he asked hoarsely. He stood up, his face white, his eyes almost black with feeling. "You let her go, like that?!"
She cringed from the contempt in his face. "You said you didn't want marriage, or children!" she cried.
"You thought I wouldn't want my own child?" he demanded. A little boy's face flashed in front of him, a child dressed in pajamas and dragging a stuffed rabbit. He gasped as it sank in. "Oh, my God, that little boy in her house isn't Henry Tennison's son. He's mine!" The reality was more than he could bear. No wonder Meredith hated him! The child's face burned into his brain, and he didn't understand how he could have looked at hair and eyes like his own and not have realized it.
Myrna's shoulders slumped in defeat. "Yes," she said heavily. "He's yours."
His fists clenched at his sides. He started to speak, and the words choked him. He whirled on his heel and went out the door without looking back, his brain on fire with what he'd just learned.
Myrna ran to the door to stop him. She didn't know what he might do. He'd looked murderous. Surely he wouldn't go and attack Meredith?
Cy got into his low-slung Jaguar and spun gravel getting out of the driveway. He wasn't thinking or feeling, he was numb from the neck down. Meredith had been carrying his child, and his venomous parent had known it. She'd framed Meredith, run her out of town, and his own fear of commitment had helped her destroy the younger woman's life. If he'd been less wary of permanence, Meredith might have felt confident enough to tell him she was pregnant. If she had, he'd have married her at once, despite his misgivings. But he hadn't even been given the chance. Myrna had made sure that Meredith got out of his life, out of reach. And fate had placed her within Henry Tennison's grasp.
He had a son who didn't know him, a son who bore the Tennison name and would be raised a Tennison. Meredith knew and hadn't told him. But how could he blame her? She was the real victim in all this, the innocent sacrifice. She'd been used and cast aside, hurt and hounded, all because his mother didn't think she was good enough to become a Harden.
He wheeled out onto the main highway without any real idea of what he was going to do. He had to come to grips with it, he had to deal with what he'd been told. Years of anguish, of loneliness, missing Meredith and wanting her. Now she'd come back, and he'd been banking everything on a second chance at making things right. But she was playing games with him. No longer a child, she was an executive in her own right, with enough power to take his company right out from under him if he wasn't careful.
Did she hate him? God knew she had every right. She must have planned this takeover bid carefully, worked it so that she could spring her trap without the Hardens being any the wiser. It had almost worked, too, except that Meredith's brother-in-law wanted power more than he wanted mining leases. He was the key to Cy's own victory.
He remembered the way the child had looked that morning in Meredith's arms, a little dark-haired boy with eyes like brown velvet. Something inside him twisted at the memory. He'd never really thought much about children. Now he realized how empty his life had been. He'd listened to his executives talk about their kids, about the routine of family life, and he'd felt superior because he was free to do what he liked. But despite the glamour and wealth of his lifestyle, he was totally alone except for Myrna. His heart had grown cold since Meredith's defection, and now he had to face the fact that he'd run her off for all the wrong reasons. He'd hated the hold she had on his emotions. That had been the real reason he'd let himself believe she was guilty. In his own way, he'd been running, too.
He'd accused her of being mercenary, of selling him out. He'd really believed she could stab him in the back like that. And all the while she'd been pregnant with his baby and couldn't even tell him.
He groaned out loud, gunning the engine furiously. How could Myrna have done that to Meredith? It was the shock of learning Meredith's real age that had blinded him to the rest of the liessomething that shamed him so much that he'd never even admitted the shock to himself, much less to anyone else. He'd cold-bloodedly seduced a teenaged girl, not the woman he'd thought, and his conscience had put him on the rack for it. His head had been spinning wildly with guilt, and he hadn't been quite lucid. But after Meredith was gone, and he realized what he'd lost, her age had no longer mattered. He'd missed her beyond bearing. He hadn't really believed that she'd stolen from him. Despite Tony's so-called confession and the evidence, he'd never bought it, because Meredith had loved him.
Love. He'd never said the word and meant it. But when Meredith lay moaning in his arms, he felt it. What she gave to his starved senses was beyond price. She made everything all right. She made him feel safe and wanted. He hadn't wanted to call it love. He'd branded it an obsession
and hated himself for giving in to it so fiercely. He'd hated being prisoner to that blind ecstasy. But its hold on him was unbreakable. For six years it had held him in thrall. It still did. He had only to look at Meredith and he knew that he'd die to have her. Lust? Not likely.
He had to make Meredith understand that. He had to show her that he genuinely cared for her. Not because she was Kip Tennison and held enough proxies to jerk his company out of his hands. Not because she had wealth and power. But because she was the only woman he'd ever really cared about, and because she'd borne him a child.
There had to be a way to convince her that he'd changed. He wanted commitment now. He wanted to get to know his child, to learn how to be a father to their son. He knew Meredith had lied when she'd said it was all just part of her plan for the takeover, when she'd slept with him. She loved him. He could make her forgive him, if he worked at it. Love didn't die. Oh, God, he thought, it couldn't! Hadn't Meredith been his whole world all these long, empty years?
His heart brightened as he considered the possibilities. It could all work out, if he kept his head. He wouldn't think about his mother, not just yet. It was going to be a long time before he could forgive her for the years she'd cost him, for the time he could have been with his son and Meredith. Right now the only thought in his mind was how quickly he could get to Meredith and tell her how he felt, ask her to give him one last chance.
The Jaguar purred as he threw it around a last deep curve and down a long hill. Just a few more minutes
Even as he was thinking it, the glare of another car's headlights startled him. He jerked the wheel, but too late. The lights splintered into terrible darkness, and he saw nothing else.
Myrna Harden was pacing the living room minutes after Cy had left the house, her nerves tangled as she wondered where he'd gone. Probably he was on his way to see Meredith, to talk to her. Myrna didn't know how she was going to live with his contempt and hatred now that he knew the truth. But she'd had no choice about telling him. As she'd told Meredith, she did owe him that.
Her fingers worried a handkerchief. She was still crying. The look on her son's tormented face hurt. She'd have given all her good intentions to turn the clock back and let Cy live his own life, but it was too late. She'd done so much damage. And he still didn't know everything
The doorbell rang. Usually she let Mrs. Dougherty answer it, but she was strung out on nervous energy. She went to answer it.
Two Billings policemen stood on the porch, with quiet, solemn faces.
"Mrs. Myrna Harden?" one of them asked..
She clutched her bodice with shaking fingers. "Yes. Is it Cy? Has something happened to my son?" she asked with cold foreboding.
"I'm afraid so, ma'am," the second officer replied. "You'd better come with us. We'll drive you to the hospital."
"Is he alive? Please, is he alive?" she asked frantically, tears streaming down her cheeks as she grabbed her purse and followed them out the door.
"He was when the ambulance got there, ma'am," the younger officer replied. "I'm sure they'll do all they can."
She let them put her in the patrol car, her hands clutching her purse in a death grip. Cy was going to die, and that, too, was her fault. She'd let him go, after having destroyed his peace of mind. Had Meredith been right after all? Would silence have served a better purpose? Had she killed him?
The questions tormented her during that wild ride to the hospital. She rah into the emergency room and stood by, shaking, while the admissions clerk asked question after question about Cy. She answered them blindly, waiting for someone, anyone, to tell her something about her son.
Dr. Bryner, the attending physician, came out to talk to her five minutes later. He sat down beside her in the waiting room.
"Cy is alive," he said, alleviating her worst fears. "But he's in critical condition. His spine is badly bruised and there are internal injuries, along with some torn ligaments and nerve damage. I can't even tell the extent just yet. If you'd like to leave your number, we can telephone you as soon as we know something."
"I won't go home," she whispered. "I can't."
"Do you have any family that we could call for you?" he continued, his face sympathetic.
She shook her head. Then she realized that she did have family. Sort of. Cy had a family, even if he'd only just learned about it. "Yes. Yes, I have," she said.
Mr. Smith had just put Blake to bed. Meredith was sitting in the kitchen when the telephone rang.
"Ignore it," he said. "Go to bed."
She smiled wearily. "It's probably Don. I can't afford to ignore it." She lifted the receiver. "Hello."
"Meredith?"
It sounded like Myrna Harden. "Yes," she said, her tone curious.
"Meredith, there's been an accident," the older woman said tearfully. "I'm at the city hospital. Can you come down here, please?"
Meredith felt sick to her stomach. She sat down, all but gasping for breath. "Cy?" she asked. "Is he dead?"
"No," Myrna said. "But he'she's very bad. Please, can you come?"
"I'll be there in five minutes," Meredith said. She hung up. "It's Cy. He's been hurt."
"I'll get Blake dressed and we'll drive you. No arguments," he added when he saw her face. "Get a coat."
She did it automatically, letting Mr. Smith take charge, as he always did in emergencies. It was wonderful not to have to worry about how to get things done. Before she knew it, he had them in the hospital waiting room, where a frightened, tearful Myrna Harden was waiting for news.
Meredith left Mr. Smith to take care of Blake while she sat down next to Myrna. "Tell me what's happened," she said, and listened, white-faced, to the particulars.
"You were right. I should never have told him," Myrna whispered miserably. "I wouldn't listen He'll die, and that's my fault, too!"
"Stop that," Meredith said firmly. "He won't die."
"He's so badly hurt"
Meredith got up and asked to speak to the attending physician.
"I'm Dr. Bryner," he introduced himself, shaking hands with her. "Are you a friend of Mr. Harden, Mrs. Tennison?"
"A very old one," she replied. "What can be done?"
He gave her an abbreviated version of Cy's injuries, including the preliminary findings, more serious than he'd thought at first. "Immediate orthopedic surgery is indicated, before his condition deteriorates. We have an orthopedic surgeon, but he feels that a neurosurgeon should do the procedure. It's very involved."
"Who's the best person in the field?" she asked without hesitation.
He smiled. "Dr. Miles Danbury, of the Mayo Clinic."
"Can you get him?"
"If you can afford the fees and get me a chartered jet, yes."
"Get on the phone," she replied.
It was amazing, she thought, what money and influence could accomplish. In minutes Danbury had agreed to take the case and Meredith had a Tennison corporate jet waiting at the airport to bring him to Billings.
"You've just improved his chances of walking again by seventy percent," Dr. Bryner told Meredith.
"Anything you need," she told him. "Anything at all. Money is no object."
"We'll keep you informed. You'll be with Mrs. Harden, I gather?"
"Yes," she said. "Thank you."
He smiled. "Thank you. I'm fond of Cy myself."
Myrna had watched the scene with rapt, quiet eyes. "You're very efficient," she said hesitantly. "Iwouldn't have known what to do."
"I'm used to organizing," Meredith said. "It's just a matter of doing what needs to be done."
"I could have managed the fees, but the corporate jet" Myrna shrugged. "We'll pay you back, of course," she added with cold pride.
"Cy is my son's father," Meredith said, equally stiff. "I'm as much to blame for the wreck as you are."
"He was furious at me." Myrna's voice was quiet, her eyes sad and red-rimmed. "I don't blame him. But he may never speak to me again."
"I'm sure he'll get over it, in
time," Meredith replied. "I'm in the same boat you are. Not only have I withheld his son, I've tried to rip off his company. I guess on points, I'm a few ahead of you."
The older woman smiled faintly. "If he gets well, I won't care if he hates me."
Meredith returned the smile. "Neither will I."
"Mommy, I want to go home," Blake grumbled, moving close to lay his cheek on her lap.
"Mr. Smith can take you, darling," she said softly, kissing his dark head.
"No, Mr. Smith can't," muttered the older man. "How do you expect to get home?"
"I'm not going home until this is over," Meredith said, her eyes sparking at him. "I'll be here for the duration. Put Blake to bed and you get some sleep, too. You'll have to look after him while I'm away."
"You can't sit in a waiting room all night!" Mr. Smith exploded.
"Yes, I can," Meredith said shortly. "I'm not leaving until I know how he is, until I'm sure he's all right."
"Women!" Mr. Smith snorted.
"Men!" she snorted right back. "Go on."
"All right," he muttered then he sighed roughly. "I hope it goes well," he added.
"So do I." She hugged Blake and kissed his cheek, aware of Myrna's steady, hungry gaze on the child. "Sleep tight, chicken," she whispered. "Mommy will be home in the morning, okay?"
"Okay." He let Mr. Smith pick him up and carry him out.
"He's a beautiful child," Myrna said gently.
"Yes. Inside and out. He's not spoiled, either," she added. "No designer toys and outlandishly expensive clothes and other luxuries. I want him to grow up understanding that money won't buy everything."
"A wise precaution," the other woman replied. "I wish somebody had told me that when I was younger. I've only just learned what a curse money can be."
"Or a blessing, in this case," Meredith said quietly, thinking of the chance Cy would have because of her own wealth.
"He'll be all right, won't he, Meredith?" Myrna asked with almost pathetic vulnerability. "He'll live?"
"Of course he will," came the firm reply.
They sat quietly, drinking black coffee and talking listlessly, while the hospital routine carried on around them.