“Tracy!” Liz called, when she was just set to return to the bathtub with her booty. “Mind if I order up a drink?”
“Not at all.”
“Want something?”
“Sure. Kahlua and cream.”
Tracy returned to Blake. They played sea monsters with his toys, and she began to worry that her idea hadn’t been so terribly brilliant—Blake seemed more wide-eyed awake than ever.
But though he stayed that way while she dried and dressed him and told him to brush his teeth, he suddenly left the bathroom while she was still hanging towels.
She came out to find him curled up on her bed and sound asleep. Smiling, she adjusted his weight to pull down the covers and tuck him in. Then she went back out to join Liz in the salon.
Their drinks had arrived. Liz had her bare feet up on the coffee table and was sipping her drink. She arched a brow to Tracy and asked, “Did he conk out?”
“Yes. He’s sound asleep.”
Liz nodded. “I expected it. Kids are so funny! They go a hundred miles an hour and you think you’ll never make it—then wham, they’re out like lights.”
Tracy sat down and picked up her drink, smiling as she sipped it. “He’s a wonderful little boy. Very unaffected.”
Liz smiled. “He is a nice kid. I envy Leif.”
“You don’t have any children?”
Liz shook her head, smiling ruefully. “No, and it seems unlikely now that I ever will. The old biological time clock, you know. I’ll be forty next year.”
Tracy smiled encouragingly to her. “Well, I’d say you’ve still got a little time. I’ve another half brother who is only two, and my mother is forty-three.”
“Yes, but she’d already had you. Besides”—Liz laughed—“I’m not even seeing anyone seriously at the moment!” She shook her head in weary wonderment. “It’s really not terribly fair, you know! I admit, I was a lot like the guys way back when they got started. I can still remember it. Leif and I were just kids when Dad went to London to oversee the construction of the new hotel. The next thing I knew, Leif, Tiger, Sam, and Jesse had gotten together. Everyone thought they were ‘cute’, that it was a phase. Some phase! They lasted twenty-five years! I was just on the fringes, but being there, I wasn’t about to settle down. And now—well—I get to be a wonderful Aunt Liz to Blake, but probably never ‘mommy’ to anyone!”
“I wouldn’t give up yet,” Tracy replied cheerfully, for lack of anything else to say. She smiled. “Blake’s resemblance to Leif is remarkable.”
“That’s impossible—” Liz began, but cut herself off quickly.
“Why?”
“What? Oh, why? Well, I—uh—-just don’t see the resemblance, I guess,” Liz murmured. She stood and walked around the sofa, going to the balcony, walking back and yawning. She smiled at Tracy again. “I really hope you don’t mind being put out like this! How strange, though—after all that time that Leif spent looking for you, you pop up out of nowhere!”
Tracy shrugged, but asked Liz, “Why was Leif looking for me?”
“He was concerned after Jesse’s death. For you and Jamie. I don’t really know quite why he seemed so frantic —maybe it was just that he and Jesse had been so close for so many years. It unhinged him for a while, I think. Well, I don’t know, who wouldn’t be? He lost Celia one year, and Jesse the next. Of course, he’d always known about Celia.”
Tracy tensed at Liz’s words, her brows knitting across her forehead. “I’m sorry, Liz. I’m lost. What do you mean about Leif’s always knowing about Celia?”
“Why, her heart condition, of course. Oh, they did everything, but she wasn’t eligible for a transplant— something about the nature of her heart’s weakness. But he knew how ill she was; they both knew when he married her.” Liz sighed. “I miss her dearly—she was a lovely woman. So good for Leif! They met right after he came out of the service, and she soothed him through a lot of nightmares. I don’t know if you remember it or not—so much that is pure trash has been written up about these guys—but she just walked out on him one day. No one understood it. Anyway, she’d found out about her condition, and she’d left him because she’d loved him so much. She came back—to explain. And that was when Leif insisted they marry anyway. Oh, well, that’s all in the past now. And I’m awfully glad that you’re here and that you’re coming to Connecticut. I’ve always known about you—and Jesse really did adore you, you know. Well, I guess I’ll go pick up my nephew and remove him from your bed!”
“No, no, Liz, leave him! That’s a king-sized bed—we’ll be fine in there.”
“Oh, no, that isn’t fair—”
“I don’t mind at all. Leave him.”
“Well, then, thanks, Tracy. Then I’ll be turning in—I feel like I’ve been awake for a month! Good night.”
“Good night, Liz,” Tracy told her.
Liz disappeared into the suite’s second bedroom; Tracy finished sipping her drink, still puzzled by Liz’s insistence that Blake didn’t look like his father.
Then she remembered that Blake’s father had made a travesty of her life that night. She winced, wondering what the morning papers would say. Then she shrugged, clicked her glass down on the table, and stood, stretching. She wandered over to the balcony and stared out at the night, still horribly wound up by the events of the night.
She shivered suddenly, feeling queasy inside. Celia Johnston had been sick all along. Celia had left Leif because she loved him so much—and Tracy had moved in because she’d been such a brat! Tracy winced, wishing once again with all her heart that she could go back and undo the past. But she couldn’t.
She turned around and walked quickly back to her own room. Blake hadn’t moved; he was still curled in a little ball on her bed. She smiled, quietly collected her things, and went into the bathroom for a quick shower. She left the bathroom light on and just halfway closed the door over, thinking that Blake might awaken a little frightened and disoriented in the night.
Then she lay down on the other side of the bed, several feet away from him. It hurt to be there; the light reflected on his beautiful blond hair and she couldn’t help but think that her own son would have been his age and that, as Jesse’s grandson, he too might have had a wonderful cap of blond curls.
Then she was ashamed of herself, because Blake was Celia’s son, and Celia had not survived to see him grow.
And then she was thinking about Leif again—all these years later.
She felt as if time and events hadn’t really passed between them at all. Seeing him again—she might never have been away. But she had. Eons of changes had taken place. Still, it was just the same. Looking at him, feeling his touch. Knowing his scent, just as she recognized a sea breeze or jasmine, the musk of a forest, or the whisper of pine.
She had come to see Jamie—because she’d felt absolutely compelled to do so—but nothing was going as she had planned. And every hour seemed to drag her more and more deeply into something for which she was not at all prepared.
She wanted to know who had conspired to kill her father. With a total sense of grief and outrage, she had to know. Leif, it appeared, wanted the same thing. They had been working in parallel positions, but he knew more than she did, and she was frightened, because she felt that she was rushing head-on into a nightmare.
And you’re agreeing to it all, like an idiot, she warned herself! Leif had told her mother that they were living together; she hadn’t disputed him. He’d pulled her onto a stage, and she had gone. He’d implied to half a dozen photographers that they were having an affair—and all that she had done was call him a few unkind names!
How was he getting away with it?
She sighed softly and tightly closed her eyes. She didn’t know. She wasn’t sure if she was so terribly desperate to know about her father or if…
Or if, after all these years, she wasn’t still compelled by a look that went right through her, a whisper that sent shivers up her spine, a voice that beckoned her, even in anger
.
Fool! Maybe she was already trapped, and just didn’t realize it. She glanced at the clock by her bed. It was almost five. She groaned softly and closed her eyes, determined to sleep.
Leif quickly discovered that neither Liz nor Tracy was in his and Jamie’s suite; he naturally assumed that Liz had Blake in Tracy’s suite.
Naturally, the door was locked, and Leif found himself staring down at the street again as he crawled from balcony to balcony once again wondering if they weren’t all crazy.
He was startled and experienced just a bit of panic when he opened the first bedroom door and saw that his sister was sound asleep—without Blake. He softly closed her door, then hurried on to the next, his heart beating a little erratically. In the next room, however, he did find his son—sweetly sleeping with his thumb in his mouth and his little rump curled next to the woman beside him.
Tracy.
Leif moved quietly across the room, staring down at the two of them. Tracy had an arm around Blake’s tummy, and Blake was very contentedly clinging to it with one hand. There was something entirely innocent and entirely endearing about the two of them. Tracy’s silky dark hair feathering across the pillow, her encompassing flannel gown adding to the innocence. Blake, golden, small against her, so trusting.
Leif eased himself down to sit on the side of the bed— it was a massive thing, plenty of room. For a moment he smiled, entranced by the sight of the two of them. He looked at Tracy’s face, at her skin, so smooth and clear, at the elegant lines and planes of her features. Her lips, full and sweet and slightly parted as she breathed.
Then his jaw twisted and hardened as he began to think. He had to make her talk. One way or the other. He knew that she didn’t ever intend to tell him anything— but if he didn’t have just a little more to go on, he couldn’t pursue the accusations he intended to make. He believed with all his heart that she knew nothing about his suspicions.
And if he was right? What would she feel then about her mother, grandfather, and stepfather? If she realized what they had done to her, mightn’t she be willing to accept the fact that one of them had most probably conspired to murder her father.
He sighed softly, thinking that he could be wrong.
No—he wasn’t wrong. It had taken him years to realize the truth—but then, it took years for children to grow and change, and he hadn’t been in the temperament to suspect anything at first.
He closed his eyes tightly, fighting back the urge to reach over his son’s body, grasp her shoulders in fury, and shake her awake—to demand to know the truth.
Chills settled over him. Maybe she knew the truth. Maybe that was why it was so easy for her to be here now, asleep beside his son, so tenderly, so naturally.
She stirred slightly and he sensed that she was about to waken—and that she’d probably scream, finding a man in her bedroom. He placed his palm over her mouth just as her eyes opened and then widened in alarm.
“It’s just me!” he whispered.
She didn’t scream; she shook off the touch of his palm with annoyance. “ ‘Just you’ can get out of here!” she whispered vehemently.
“I came for Blake.”
“Why? He’s fast asleep—he’s fine.”
The light reflecting from the bathroom touched upon her eyes; they were so very blue, deep and stunning. She was wearing her hair a little shorter now; there was still an abundance of it, thick, rich, and dark against the pillow. He swallowed quickly, and he swallowed down pain. How bitterly he had resented her for what she had done. He’d felt such a miserable tangle of emotions; horror that he had fallen prey to a seventeen-year-old, and that girl the daughter of his best friend. Anger at the absolute fool he had been; fury—against her, for having used him.
And still… the caring.
Love was something that began in caring and grew. They had been passionately involved, totally committed to one another for that fantasy interlude.
Admittedly, he hadn’t been much of a bargain in his twenties. He’d lived in the fast lane and he’d learned its dangers and its fallacies. He’d been in bed with scores of women whom he would never recognize if he were ever to see them again. But not only had that all been years before he had known Tracy, he had never known anything like the feelings he had experienced with her. The wonder of her innocence, something that made her seduction of him of all the more sweet. The touch of her, the feel of her, the scent of her—they were all things that had lived with him. Things that had plagued him—despite the massive guilt he had endured at first.
He had loved Celia. Tenderly, dearly. They’d lived together before she had left him; she had been soft-spoken, sensitive, gentle. He’d never in a thousand years have hurt her; losing her had been like taking away a part of his soul—the better part. But even loving Celia, he had often dreamt troubled dreams of Tracy.
“Will you go away, please,” she asked him with a yawn, casting her arm over her eyes to shield them from the light that exuded from the bathroom. “It’s almost morning. And you’ve done enough for one day! You’ve destroyed my life.”
“Oh, I did not, Tracy.”
“You did! My picture—”
“Shush! Whisper!”
Tracy bit her lip, remembering that Blake slept between them. She wasn’t done with Leif—but she was determined to keep her voice down.
“You had—”
In a like whisper, Leif interrupted her flatly. “It was necessary.”
“Necessary?”
“Go back to sleep, Tracy. I want to leave here by noon.”
She yawned again, and he was convinced she wasn’t really awake at all, only halfway so.
“Where’s Jamie?” she asked him, a sleepy slur to her voice.
“In bed.”
“With whom?”
“Himself.”
“Thank God. I’d hate to see him turn out like my father and you.”
Irritated, Leif found himself looking at Blake again. His son slept soundly, curled to Tracy. Curled so trustingly that it caused Leif another pang. His son, and Tracy. Tracy looking so soft and feminine and lovely and very vulnerable in her tousled state…
He cleared his throat and remembered her words. “I resent that. I was a very faithful husband.”
Tracy struggled to open her eyes again; his tone had a bitter and chilling quality to it that dragged her back to awareness. But in the poor light, she could read nothing at all in the dark, dark mystery of his eyes or the shadowed line of his mouth.
“And your father wasn’t that bad. He didn’t marry your mother because your grandfather wouldn’t allow it. But he stayed with Jamie’s mother for ten years—”
“During which he cheated,” Tracy interrupted wearily.
“How do you know?”
She hesitated, but then she was so tired that it didn’t seem to matter. “I don’t know. But I think that my mother saw him during that time. Oh, God! Would you just go away, please?”
“How could you have known that? You only saw him once during those years, and that was when Jamie was a toddler.”
Tracy rolled around, presenting him with her back.
“There were times when he was supposed to see me. When he was supposedly coming. He never showed up— but my mother disappeared. Now—will you please leave me alone?”
Leif didn’t say anything else. But he didn’t leave, either. He’d suspected himself that Jesse had seen Audrey now and then over the years—it would explain why the two of them had been close enough to come after Tracy together when they had realized that their little runaway was with him.
He opened his eyes again, about to speak. He didn’t; he closed his mouth instead, aware that Tracy had let out a shuddering little sigh and that her breathing had become a deep and easy pattern. He started to rise, when Blake’s little eyes suddenly opened.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I’m here, son.”
Blake closed his eyes again, but his hand slipped into Le
if’s and held tightly. Leif tried to extricate himself; the little fingers closed more tightly around him.
Leif shrugged and leaned back, one hand in his son’s, the other cast behind his head for support. He lay there next to them both, awake, for a long time. Thinking over the past. All the sins, all the travesties—all the lies.
It all felt as if a storm were brewing, with high winds to sweep away the shadows and the webs. He had coiled a tension in him, so that he was very glad of it all.
He wanted the truth, naked, cold, and brutal. It was the only way that any of them could ever go on.
He had meant to slip away from his son’s hold eventually, but he didn’t. Dawn was breaking over the city, and he slept.
* * *
“Some hot and heavy affair!” Jamie complained, laughter in his throat. “Will you look at that! Ma and Pa Kettle is more like it!”
Tracy fought her way out of a fog of sleep to blink and see her brother standing at the foot of the bed, grinning down at her. She struggled up to her elbows with a frown furrowed into her features, then saw that Leif—fully clothed except for his shoes—was curled up on the other side of Blake. He was already awake and staring at Jamie with his features harsh in a mask of weary irritation.
“Jamie—didn’t anyone ever tell you about knocking?”
“Now that from a pair of people who crawl from balcony to balcony! Rude, I do say.”
“Jamie-—is Leif in there?” Liz, a little more refined than Jamie about her entrances, appeared tentatively at the door. She chuckled softly then. “They do look like Ma and Pa Kettle, Jamie.”
Tracy stared at the lot, then slammed her pillow against Leif’s head; he caught it, and gave her a more deadly glare than he had offered Jamie.
“For God’s sake—”
“Hey, Ma and Pa, thought you all just might like a glance at the morning paper!” Jamie announced.
The paper landed on the bed; they both reached for it —Tracy grabbed it.
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