Adam's Daughter

by Kristy Daniels

  “I’ll tell you all you want to know. Let’s leave.”

  Clark pulled free of her arm. “You know this guy?”

  “I met him in Paris.”

  “And?”

  “And, what?”

  “Well, from the way you two were looking at each other, you’d think...”

  Kellen frowned. “Let’s go.”

  “Kellen!”

  Garrett came up behind them. “Where are you going?”

  “This is a bore,” she said, “I’m leaving.”

  “Then so am I.” Garrett glanced at Clark, who simply handed him Kellen’s stole with a smile. “We will talk later,” Clark said to Kellen, and disappeared.

  Garrett placed the stole over her shoulders. Without a word she turned, and he followed her out the door.

  The night was cool and damp but Kellen wanted to walk. They walked slowly along for several blocks, saying nothing.

  “You’re angry with me,” Garrett said finally.

  Kellen bit her lips. She didn’t want to sound possessive. “I expected you...” she began. Finally, she stopped and faced him. “You’ve been here a week.”

  “I got here a week ago, but I had to leave right away for Los Angeles. I have some business down there.”

  “But you called over a month ago.”

  “I told you. Something came up. I couldn’t leave London. Kellen.” It began to drizzle. A couple dashed by them.

  “That was weeks ago,” Kellen said. Suddenly the dam inside her burst. “You were in L.A., for God’s sake. It’s only a couple hours away. A phone call away.” Her dress was getting soaked, and she pulled her stole tight around her. “And now, you just show up tonight without warning.” She stared at him. “Well, go on back to L.A. Go take care of your business or what —-”

  He grabbed her shoulders. “I came here to see you,” he said. “To see you, dammit.”

  He pulled her to him and kissed her. It was a hard kiss. His coat was rough and wet against her skin. She raised her arms around his neck to grasp his wet hair. The rain became harder. When she finally pulled away, she was shivering.

  “This is crazy,” he said. He saw a taxi sitting at the corner and whistled. “Let’s go to my hotel,” he said.

  In his room, they stripped off their wet clothes and made love quickly and hungrily. Then again, with slow and deliberate tenderness. The mad unexplainable intensity that they had shared in Paris was still with them, burning brighter than before.

  At dawn, Kellen raised her head from Garrett’s chest and stared at his face. His eyes were closed. She brushed her lips across his brow, and his hand moved languidly down her back. A meager gray light filled the room and two pigeons fluttered to life outside the window.

  “How long will you stay?” she asked.

  His hand paused on the small of her back. “Until I get what I came here for,” he said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The news meeting ended and everyone scattered back to their posts. Stephen issued some last minute instructions to the sports editor and the man left.

  Only Kellen remained at the far end of the table. He watched her carefully as she drained her coffee and began to gather up her papers.

  “You look tired,” he said.

  “I get up pretty early these days.”

  “You’ve been pushing yourself hard lately.”

  “I’m enjoying it, Stephen. You were right. It’s good for me to learn this way.” She rose to leave.

  “Kellen, stay for a minute,” Stephen said. “I want to talk to you. We haven’t had much chance to lately.”

  Kellen sat down slowly.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said. “You’ve done a good job these last couple weeks. You’ve got good instincts.”

  “I come by them honestly.”

  There was a long silence.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Stephen said. “Ed’s going in the hospital next week. He’ll be out for a month or more. It might be good for you to fill in as city editor.”

  She smiled. “You think I could handle it?”

  He nodded. “It would mean longer hours. And your full attention here. No distractions.”

  Her smile faded. “You’ll have it,” she said evenly.

  There was another long silence. Kellen rose suddenly. “I’ve got some work to do,” she said. “Anything else?”

  “No, nothing.”

  She left, but Stephen remained at the table. He watched her through the glass window for a moment then pulled over the copy of the Times someone had left on the table. It was yesterday’s edition, marked with red ink from the editors’ critique session.

  He picked up the feature section, turned to Clark’s column and stared again at the photograph he had noticed earlier. It was a picture of Kellen and Garrett Richardson dancing. Stephen reread the paragraph.

  Romantics are wondering which of our fair damsels would win the attentions of English press baron Garrett Richardson. Seems the baron only has eyes for a kindred soul, newspaper heiress Kellen Bryant. Do we sense a merger in the making?

  Stephen tossed the paper aside.

  A copyboy stuck his head in the door. “Paper, Mr. Hillman?”

  Stephen nodded, and the first edition of the Times was set before him with a heavy thud. Stephen reached out and touched the paper. He loved the way the paper came off the press, neat and fresh. It was warm, with a ripe mossy-mechanical smell of paper and still-damp ink.

  He thought about how pleased Kellen was about the city editor assignment, and he felt guilty because he had given it to her partly in the hopes she would be forced to spend less time with Richardson.

  It was for the good of the newspaper, he thought. But also for her own good.

  She was still the impetuous girl who fell in love so easily with everything in life and he was sure this thing with Richardson would pass. Soon, he would leave. But the newspaper would always be here. It would always be the one constant, enduring thing in her life.

  Kellen didn’t understand that yet. It was, he thought, perhaps the most important thing he could teach her.

  The desk was a mess, cluttered with papers, memos, unread newspapers, and a large stack of unanswered telephone messages. Kellen sighed, giving in to her fatigue. Every day, she spent six hours in the newsroom and then went to her office to face more work. Lately, she had been neglecting the executive side of her double schedule, and she knew there were documents that awaited her signature alongside Ian’s. But she just did not have the time or energy since she started working in the newsroom.

  Or since Garrett had reentered her life.

  Garrett...

  In a few hours, they’d be together, alone in the house in Carmel. They had decided to go down for the weekend, to get away from everything.

  She sifted through the papers, looking for the report that she had promised Ian she’d read. He had been nagging her about a big move he wanted to make, and when she insisted on knowing the background he begrudgingly had the report prepared for her. She intended to take it with her to Carmel. Finally, she found the report on her desk and stuffed it in her briefcase. She turned to leave and saw Ian standing in the door, watching her.

  “Did you read that report yet?” he asked.

  She snapped the briefcase shut and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I’ll finish it this weekend.”

  “I told you two days ago, I need to make a decision. The buyer wants to move on this by next week. He won’t wait. And I don’t think we’ll find any other sucker who wants a losing proposition in Seattle.”

  Kellen frowned. “Buyer. For what?”

  Ian shook his head disparagingly. “For the Seattle Dispatch.”

  Kellen stared at Ian in disbelief. “You want to sell one of Daddy’s papers?”

  Ian lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke up toward the ceiling. “They’re not Daddy’s papers anymore,” he said.

  Kellen picked up the briefcase and started for the door. “
We’re not selling any of the papers,” she said.

  Ian grabbed her arm. “We have to. We need the money,” he said. She tried to jerk her arm away but Ian held it firmly.

  Finally, he let go. “Kellen, why don’t you just let me handle things,” he said. “This scheme of yours to try to absorb so much so fast, it just won’t work. You can’t make up in six months what it took Father years to teach me.”

  She tried to move by him but he blocked her way.

  “Don’t worry about Seattle. You’ve got other things on your mind.”

  She glared at him. “You can’t make a move without me,” she said. “And I’ll never sell one of Daddy’s newspapers. So don’t even bring it up again.”

  She started to the elevator.

  “Have a nice time in Carmel,” Ian called out.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Kellen closed her eyes and lay on the bed, her breath coming in short gasps. After a few moments, she opened her eyes and saw her hand, still grasping the edge of the sheet. She released it and slowly moved her hands to where Garrett’s head lay, low on her bare stomach. She began to stroke his hair.

  After a moment, he moved upward, his chest warm and wet against her own. He kissed her, a soft, weary kiss.

  She ran her tongue over her lips. “I taste like you.”

  “Us,” he said.

  They lay silent for a moment then he raised his head to look at her. “We can’t keep this up,” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t know. You’ve been doing a pretty good job of keeping things up.”

  “I love it when you talk dirty.”

  “You bring out the worst in me.”

  Garrett rolled onto his back and shut his eyes. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Just think, they’ll find our bodies stuck together and wonder how we died. That will really give Enid something to talk about.”

  “I have to sleep.”

  “And if I want you again?”

  “You haven’t let me sleep since we got here.”

  “Now you’re saying I’m forcing you to do this?”

  He reached down to pull the sheet over them. “Yes,” he whispered against her neck. “I have absolutely no free will in this matter. I will go on making love to you forever. Until we’re both dead. But now, be quiet and let me sleep.”

  She closed her eyes and was soon asleep. She was awakened by the glint of the late afternoon sun reflecting off the ocean, pouring in through the large bedroom windows. She glanced around and saw Garrett sitting out on the deck. She put on a robe and went outside.

  “It’s late,” she said. “You should have wakened me.”

  “You needed to sleep. You won’t admit it, but you’re exhausted.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said with smile.

  “You were tired before you even saw me. I could see it in your eyes when you picked me up last night.”

  She sat down on the edge of his chair, and he put his arm around her. She stared out at the ocean, breathing in deeply.

  “Maybe,” she said, “but I’m fine now. Coming here always makes me feel good.” She glanced at Garrett. “Your being here with me makes it perfect.”

  “Are you hungry? I can manage a fried egg or something.”

  “No, not yet.” She rose. “I’ll get dressed and we’ll go for a walk. It’s going to be a spectacular sunset.”

  The Carmel house was set on an acre of cypress trees, facing a cove with a long crescent beach, guarded on either side by rock jetties. Adam had bought the house for Elizabeth because it was so insulated from the outer world. That was precisely how Kellen felt now as she walked down the beach with Garrett.

  She glanced over at him as they walked. She had become so familiar with every physical detail about him. The square jut of his jaw, the slight crook of his nose, the texture of his thick black hair, the quizzical knit of his brows. She knew every plane and contour of his body. His tapering waist and powerful arms. The L-shaped pink scar on his lower back from a childhood accident.

  But she knew almost nothing about what was inside him. From the start she had taken him purely at face value, never questioning who or what he was. Lately, she had thought of trying to get below the surface but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was there. He was still a mystery, and she knew herself well enough to know that she was intrigued by the unknown.

  He reached over and took her hand, and she looked at him. The muscles in her pelvis still ached with the memory of him moving inside her.

  Sex. It had never been so consuming with any other man. But what would happen when that waned? Would there be anything there to replace it?

  They had reached the south end of the beach. They climbed up the rocks and sat down. Below, on a small spit of sand, a mother seal and three pups lay basking in the last rays of the sun. Out in the water, the snouts of other seals bobbed up and down in the kelp.

  “The last time I was here I asked my father if I could take a seal home,” Kellen said.

  “Did you come here often with your parents?”

  “Only a couple times.”

  The setting sun was turning the sky into liquid pastels. “Tell me about your family,” Garrett said.

  After all these months, their talks seldom ventured beyond surface banter and playful sexual sparring. But now, he seemed genuinely interested. She began slowly, telling him about growing up in the big house on Divisadero, about how, for a brief time, it had been a joyful place. Her recital gained momentum and she told him, as honestly as her pent-up emotions would allow, about her mother’s death and the scandal. She told him about Tyler, and about her feelings toward Ian. And she told him about her father and how he had built his newspaper empire.

  Garrett listened without interruption. She hadn’t intended to tell him so much but it had flowed from her. When she was done she was unable to look Garrett in the eye. She felt suddenly very naked.

  The sunset had deepened into a blistering bruise of reds and purples. “Now you know all about me,” she said softly.

  They sat silently for a few minutes. “Let’s start back,” he said finally.

  They went back down the beach. “I’ve got something to tell you,” Garrett said. “I’ve bought a house. In Tiburon.”

  She looked up at him in surprise. “But why?”

  “Because I like it here and have decided to stay for a while. I suppose now, if I wanted to, I could look across the bay and see that monstrous white house of yours.”

  “Well,” she said. “This should make you even more popular among the socialites. The born-and-raised will be pleased.”

  He stopped and held her shoulders. “What about you? Are you pleased?”

  “Of course. You’re very good at pleasing me, Mr. Richardson,” she said.

  They walked on, Kellen thinking about his puzzling move. Surely he hadn’t bought a home just to be near her. He had never made even an oblique reference to their future. He had always said he intended to remain in San Francisco only until his business was finished. He said he was researching investment possibilities in North America for his father’s corporation and had spent the last six months commuting to Canada. Two months ago, he had finally purchased a newspaper in Toronto and was now considering buying a printing facility and mill in Vancouver. And he still made an occasional trip to Los Angeles, though he never mentioned what that entailed.

  “Well, I’m not so sure I’ve pleased you this weekend,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “You’ve seemed preoccupied about something. What’s the matter?”

  Somehow Garrett had sensed her anxiety about Ian wanting to sell the Seattle paper. She walked on, staring at the sand.

  “You know, we made a breakthrough back there when you told me about your family,” Garrett said. “Tell me what’s troubling you.”

  She found his remark strange. Could he also possibly want to delve below the surface of their relationship? She told him about her conversation with Ian, but stopped short of revealing
her concerns about the state of the entire Bryant corporation.

  “Is the Seattle paper financially sound?” Garrett asked.

  Ian’s report came to her mind. She had spent an hour reading it last night. It detailed how the Seattle Dispatch was facing strong competition from another newspaper and how it was suffering a loss of market share.

  “I think it has a few problems,” she said.

  “Then it might be a good move to unload it.”

  She shook her head slowly. “I couldn’t. It was one of my father’s first newspapers.”

  “You’re being sentimental,” he said. “There’s no room for sentiment in business.”

  It was almost dark and they had reached the steps leading up to the deck of the house. She started up the steps ahead of Garrett then turned to face him.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “It’s part of my family. I’d never sell it. No matter what happened.”

  He looked up at her, then out at the dark ocean. “It’s getting cold,” he said. “Let’s go in, and I’ll make you some dinner.”

  Over dinner, conversation turned to one of their favorite subjects, the differences between British and American newspapers. Garrett told witty stories about the eccentric characters of Fleet Street and the trials of his newspaper’s reporter who covered the royal family.

  “I can’t believe you treat the royal family as serious news,” Kellen said, shaking her head.

  “They sell papers. The royals, sex, and murder. In that order.”

  “You have no scruples,” she said, smiling at him over the rim of her glass.

  “I admitted that the very first night we met.”

  It was quiet except for the crackling of the fire and the muffled sound of the surf. Kellen’s eyes held Garrett’s. “Tell me about yourself,” she said suddenly.

  Garrett set down his glass. “There’s nothing much to tell,” he said, smiling easily. “My father is Sir Arthur Richardson -—”

  Kellen arched an eyebrow.

  “Yes, a title. It sounds nice, but it doesn’t mean much. It was a gift from a grateful prime minister who liked my father’s editorial policies.” Garrett paused. “Actually, my father’s story is very much like that of your father’s. He started as a reporter on a newspaper in Leeds and worked his way up. He bought his first newspaper at thirty and built it into a string of them. He became quite wealthy.” Garrett paused. “And then quite preoccupied with all that came with that. He sent me to the right schools and then Oxford to prepare me for my future. In April, I turned thirty-four. I’m a Fleet Street publisher’s son. His only son. Someday, I’ll take up where he leaves off.”