The Lyon Legacy

by Peg Sutherland

  As he soaked, his mind drifted.

  He wondered how she’d celebrated the day before. What would she be now—twenty—seven? Younger than he’d been then. He remembered when she’d turned nineteen. They’d served a cake at the radio station because she hung out there, making a pest of herself and wrapping everybody around her finger. Paul had planned to go in for a piece of cake when he signed off, thinking he’d say something to make the day memorable for his father’s partner’s kid. Something swell from the Voice of Dixie, something she could giggle over at the Maison Blanche soda fountain with the other Holy Cross seniors.

  By the time his shift was over, most of the cake was gone. She was sitting on Maizie Donnelson’s desk, swinging her legs like a schoolgirl and laughing at something one of the engineers had said. When Paul came into the room, she dipped her head. He noticed how long her legs were, hanging off the edge of the desk, bare from her knees down to the little socks she rolled around her ankles.

  Too bad she’s such a long drink of water, he thought. A beanpole .

  She cut the cake herself and handed it to him on a little plate. When he took it, he noticed, too, that she’d lost her braids, no doubt in honor of turning nineteen. Her hair hung loose to her shoulders now and he noticed the way it shimmered golden in places.

  He ate the cake, and the banter in the room continued. When he was all ready to say something witty, something worthy of Cary Grant or William Powell, she smiled at him and said, “You’re a mess. You’ve got icing on your face, Mr. Voice of Dixie.”

  It flustered him, not because he minded the icing. No, it was her voice that sliced through him. Husky and alluring, not at all the voice of a nineteen-year-old kid who ran errands for the station. He swiped at his face, but he apparently missed, because she slid off the desk and came right up to him. With her pinky, she dabbed at the corner of his mouth. Then, eyes glittering, she touched her finger to his lips, inviting him to suck the icing.

  He did it because he didn’t know how to deny her without making more of it than it was.

  He did it because her silver-blue eyes caught him in some kind of dangerous magic.

  And when he did it, his body told him that little Margie Hollander had graduated from the category of schoolgirl.

  That afternoon he decided to take up with Riva Reynard, the gum-popping receptionist who’d been coming on to him for months. Riva had been around the block. Riva was a safer companion for a twenty-eight-year-old man who had also been around the block. Safer than a nineteen-year-old with a voice and eyes that could grab a man by his privates, and a pair of legs that wouldn’t quit.

  Paul groaned again. His head was slightly better, although it still hurt like a son of a gun. But the water had grown cool. It was time to drag himself back to the bayou before something happened that he would regret even more than he regretted those last two shots of whiskey the day before.

  He stood in the tub and reached for a towel. He wiped his face, burying it in the soft cotton as he momentarily envied the luxuries he’d denied himself. When he withdrew the towel from his face, he realized he was no longer alone.

  A woman stood in the door.

  Startled, he clutched the towel to cover himself. “What the...”

  Then he saw her eyes, those silver-blue eyes that could down a strong man in a matter of seconds. “Margie.”

  “Get dressed, Paul.”

  She turned and walked away. He jumped out of the tub and followed her, wet feet slapping on the hardwood floor.

  “What the bloody hell am I doing here?” he called after her retreating figure.

  She paused at the door and glanced back. “We’ll confer in the library when you’re dressed.”

  She looked so cool she might have faced down an unclothed man in a bedroom every morning of her life. For all he knew, that was precisely what she did. He reached her in a heartbeat and grabbed her by the arm.

  “I want an answer. Now.”

  She glared back at him, tensing her arm. She was still thin, he realized. As thin as she’d been at nineteen. He remembered the way her small breasts had stood high and taut, crying out for his touch, his taste. His mouth went dry. His body went hard.

  Before either of them could react to his arousal, the bedroom door burst open and a little boy burst into the room. “Mama, where are you? I went down for breakfast and...”

  He was dark-haired and fine-boned, a boy with eyes so large and thick-lashed he should have been a girl. He looked startled by the naked man clutching a towel to the front of his body. The little boy’s eyes immediately zeroed in on the hand that gripped his mother’s arm.

  “Mama...?”

  Margie freed her arm and moved to position herself between Paul and the boy. “Go down to Grandmère, André. I’ll be right there.”

  “Yes, Mama.” He hurried off.

  Margie turned back to Paul. When she spoke again, her voice was colder than before. “In the library, Paul.”

  She ordered him as confidently as she’d ordered the boy, then closed the door behind her. Paul stood there with his towel and his withering erection, finding no comfort in the rage growing inside him.

  André Margie’s bastard son, the one she had schemed to palm off on the world as his. Apparently she had succeeded.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MARGARET SAT in a leather chair in the library, facing away from the door, striving for an air of calm.

  She should never have brought him here without telling the family.

  Her hands, she noticed, were clenched in her lap. She willed them to loosen.

  What if someone—Charles or Justine or, heaven help her, Mother Lyon—saw him before she had a chance to talk to him?

  Margaret stood and paced in the direction of her father-in-law’s decanter of brandy and remembered it was barely nine in the morning. She walked to the window overlooking Lyoncrest’s side garden. It was her favorite view, the same one she enjoyed from her bedroom window. This morning, she barely noticed it.

  What had she been thinking, walking in on him like that? The image of him stepping out of the tub had taken hold of her mind and refused to let go. He was lean, leaner than he’d been before, although he looked to be firmer now. More of his wiry body was muscle. And it was brown from the waist up. Hard and brown from living in that ridiculous fishing shanty on Bayou Sans Fin. Hard and brown and slick with water.

  Her cheeks burned. “Curse the man,” she muttered.

  She should have taken greater care to keep André away from him, too.

  “Who was that man in your room, Mama?” he’d asked as she’d buttoned his jacket before he left for school.

  She’d cast about for a way to avoid lying to her son. “You don’t know him,” she’d said, the evasion tasting bitter. But what else could she have said? Your father. Your father, who doesn’t want to see you, who wants nothing to do with you.

  The answer hadn’t satisfied the boy. He’d pressed for more. “But you do?”

  Sighing, she’d kissed him on the forehead. “Yes. I knew him when I was younger. He’s been away for a long time.”

  “Like Papa?”

  Thinking back, Margaret despised herself for being unable to tell him the truth. But she wouldn’t expose him to Paul’s rejection. She’d seen the bitterness in Paul’s eyes the moment they’d lit on the seven-year-old boy. She knew what Paul believed. But she would convince him otherwise.

  In fact, she might have to do that first if she were ever to persuade him to work for the family again.

  She drew a deep, shaky breath. Were things never to be easy? Apparently not for a woman who wanted more than what society dictated. Her hands shook. Maybe she should have that brandy, after all. Maybe she should have worn the soft pink dress with the white lace collar, the one she saved for taking André to Sunday morning mass, instead of this navy dress with its high collar and long sleeves. But she had a staff meeting today and that demanded navy, not pink. Although she knew that some women believed th
e way to get on in a man’s world was to use feminine wiles to good advantage, Margaret had never played that game. Those women were probably right, she thought now. After all, she was the one about to get the boot. She, who’d been a trooper all during the war, when there weren’t enough men to do the work necessary to keep WDIX radio running.

  And it was Margaret who was no longer needed now that the men were back. And, of course, her father’s death meant she was no longer protected by her status as daughter of the co-founder of Lyon Broadcasting.

  She seethed for a moment, remembering the weasel-faced little solicitor explaining her father’s will. “Mr. Hollander was confident that, as mother of Alexandre Lyon’s first grandchild, your future was secure. He believed it simpler to bequeath his share of the company to his partner, Alexandre, where it would pass on to young André at the proper time.”

  Oh, yes, her future was secure, all right. As long as she was willing to stay home and run charity fund-raisers and host bridge parties for society matrons. As long as she was willing to keep her mouth shut when she saw her shortsighted, stodgy in-laws squander Lyon Broadcasting because they wouldn’t see that the future...

  She heard footsteps on the stairs. She resisted the impulse to rush into the foyer. She waited for him, counting the blushing blossoms on the Lenten roses spreading along the ground in the shade of the massive magnolia. She denied the urge to smooth her hair or check the seams in her stockings. She—

  The front door slammed shut.

  With a cry of outrage she dashed to the door. She caught up with him on the walkway. Her legs were long enough to match his stride, though her high heels made it difficult. Why was being a woman always so accursedly inconvenient?

  “Paul, we need to talk.”

  “I think not.”

  “You have to listen to me.”

  He flung open the front gate between the sleek bronze lions on their pedestals and stalked through it, not even pausing to close it. His jaw was set and there was a frown line between his eyes that looked permanent.

  She remembered, for a moment, the time when she’d had the power to capture his attention. Could it work again?

  No, she was a businesswoman now, contrary to what her in-laws believed, and not a coquette.

  She set off after him, leaving the iron gate creaking out a slow complaint beneath the predatory gaze of the bronze lions. Her mother-in-law would hear it and be very displeased. Margaret rarely pleased her mother-in-law.

  She caught up with Paul at the corner. He turned toward St. Charles. She had one block before he reached the streetcar line.

  “Let me call Paddy. He’ll drive you.”

  “Is that what you did? Sent Paddy after me?”

  His voice was the menacing growl the networks had broadcast across the country during the war. It was a voice that had brought the war home for Americans, that gave expression to their pride in sending their sons, their husbands, their sweethearts off to fight for hearth and home. It was a voice that had made Paul Lyon trusted and revered—and famous.

  It was that voice Margaret now wanted. And not because she remembered with equal clarity how that same gruff voice could caress and seduce.

  “Don’t snarl at me, Paul,” she snapped, irritated with her weak, foolish thoughts. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  She heard the clang and rattle of the streetcar. They would reach St. Charles about the time the car rolled up. God help her, she had to speak up and she had to do it now. No time to plan her strategy, to think about precisely what to say and how to say it.

  “He’s your son, Paul. I know you don’t believe—”

  He stopped dead in his tracks. “If you ever bring that up again, I’ll vanish so deep into the bayou that no one will ever find me again. You can take that to the bank, Margaret Hollander.”

  His eyes bore into her, rock hard and unflinching, and she knew he meant every word he said. Then he took off again. She stood for a moment, watching the long, sure gait she had sometimes never expected to see again. She felt like giving up, but that lasted only a second. She never gave up.

  “Margaret Lyon,” she corrected him as she caught up with him again. “And you can believe whatever you dam well please about that. But if you let that get in the way of being part of a revolution, you aren’t the man America thinks you are.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  Wryness touched his voice, but she ignored it. “I’m going to bring television to New Orleans, Paul. Not just entertainment, either. News. Television news, Paul.”

  She caught the split second of hesitation in his gait and knew she’d grabbed him. Her heart gave a glad leap. “But I need you to make that happen. Nobody else can do it. Nobody else has the voice. The authority. You’ll make people sit up and notice.”

  The rumble of the wooden streetcar drowned out the last of her words, but she knew he’d heard enough to at least pique his interest. Her hands began to tremble with excitement. Looking at them, she realized she’d come out of the house without gloves. Her mother-in-law would have a conniption.

  They were all going to have a conniption before she was through.

  “We can turn them on their ears, Paul.”

  He leaped onto the streetcar, not even looking back. The car began to move off and she hurried along beside it, calling to him through the open windows. “Four-thirty today, Paul. We’re still on the waterfront.”

  The car was moving faster now. Margaret began to run, wondering which of Minna Lyon’s society friends would see her making a spectacle of herself and report back to her mother-in-law.

  “Be there, Paul! I’ll show you the future.”

  Then he was gone and she could only pray he would come. What would she do if he didn’t? What could she do but sit back and watch someone else live her dream?

  Being a woman was so accursedly inconvenient.

  PAUL WATCHED the Garden District roll by through the open windows of the streetcar. The scene was familiar. He’d watched it all his life, from the time he was old enough to take the streetcar into town and wander down to the old converted warehouse near the riverfront that had been Lyon Broadcasting since 1921.

  It was all part of the fabric of his life—or had been, until he’d walked away from it in 1941. The gracious mansions along St. Charles, the little shops where merchants catered to the wealth and influence of Garden District families. The old warehouse where, as a boy barely old enough to run errands, he had first understood the magic of sending voices through the air to people sitting in their kitchens and living rooms. The maze of windowless rooms where he’d monitored the news teletype as a teenager and memorized the complicated control panels that made the magic possible. And the stuffy little booth where finally he’d been the one whose voice floated over the airwaves. Broadcasting. It had been in his blood for decades. But no more. No more than Margie Hollander was still in his blood.

  “What’d she mean, mister?”

  He looked into the eyes of a schoolboy on his knees in the seat ahead of him. The boy rested his arms on the back of the wooden seat and stared at him intently. He was about the same age as the other schoolboy Paul had seen that morning, wearing a similar Catholic-school uniform.

  The boy pressed when he got no answer. “About showing you the future, I mean.”

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you, children should be seen and not heard?” Paul said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then do what your mother says.”

  The boy continued to stare for a moment, then faced forward again. Paul turned back to the passing scenery to distract himself.

  He’s your son, Paul.

  She still thought she could make him dance to her tune as easily as she had all those years ago. Well, Paul Lyon was a changed man. Paul Lyon had seen boys torn apart on battlefields and troops fleeing Paris and walking skeletons in German death camps. Paul Lyon could no longer be taken in by a pair of smoky eyes and
a set of endless gams.

  Neither of his passions—for broadcasting or for her—ran in his blood any longer. If Margie was counting on either of those things, she was going to be damned disappointed.

  The streetcar lurched to a stop and Paul realized he was now on Carondelet, only a block from Canal Street. End of the line. He hadn’t intended this. He’d meant to take the car in the other direction, past Audubon Park, to the fringes of town, then make his way back to the bayou. But with Margie snapping after him, he’d taken the first car that pulled up when he reached St. Charles. And here he was.

  Old familiar territory.

  Canal Street was busier than ever. Cars, many of them new and shiny now that the war was over and production in Detroit was finally up and going again, clogged the wide boulevard. People bustled past on their way to work or shop. Some jostled him in their rush, never knowing they brushed shoulders with a man whose voice they had probably relied upon for news of the war.

  Despite himself, Paul thought about what Margie had said. Television. Picture boxes right in people’s homes, so people could see where the voices came from. He wondered for a moment what it would be like if all these people bustling past knew his face as well as they knew his voice.

  Ridiculous, he thought. Television. A flash in the pan. A fad. Everybody knew that. Why buy a box with a tiny picture for your living room when the movie houses had huge pictures? The almost breathless enthusiasm in Margie’s voice came back to him. She believed in it.

  He walked the streets, telling himself he would soon turn back along St. Charles and take the streetcar out of town. Or hail a taxi. Soon. But he kept looking. At diners where he’d sat with others in broadcasting, soaking up their cynicism and their romanticism, all a part of the same paradoxical package. At corners where the destitute had sold apples in 1935 and soldiers still in uniform gathered to talk of jobs in 1945. At familiar department store windows, with their displays of the long, flowing dresses that women had turned to since the war. He stopped and ate lunch at one of the diners, and never saw a soul he recognized.