Tangled Web

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  “It was more than that,” Hope admitted reluctantly. “It was the flaunting of wealth and power that got to me.” It reminded her so much of Russell Morris’s family. They’d used every advantage to ruin her life. They’d bought local officials and created a whole campaign against her, insisting she was lying.

  Aware Chase was watching her and waiting for her to go on, Hope said, “I think people in our position have a responsibility to use our influence wisely. We shouldn’t mow down the less fortunate, whether it is someone who is poorer or less athletically inclined.”

  “I agree.”

  “But it didn’t push any hot buttons with you.”

  He thought about that for a moment. “It made me angry. Like you, I planned to talk to someone, but I was going to wait until after the game and do it then, privately.”

  “Without causing a scene.”

  He grinned and acknowledged with a wicked drawl, “Come to think of it, maybe causing a scene was the way to go. It certainly got fast results.”

  It had done that, Hope conceded silently. She offered him a small smile.

  Chase was still studying her. “Were you bullied as a kid?”

  Again, Hope felt the frustration of not being able to tell Chase everything, of not being able to be open with him. But there were things she could talk about, she realized slowly, things that had nothing to do with Russell. “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t bullied. The way I grew up—I was always the new kid in town, struggling to fit in. And there was always someone who couldn’t wait to take advantage of that, someone who resented me.”

  Chase didn’t wonder at that. Hope was very beautiful. No doubt her very presence had created a stir wherever she went. Other girls, especially those who were not as fortunate in the looks department, would have resented her for that reason.

  Hope sighed. “No sooner would we get settled than my parents would decide to try their luck someplace else, so we’d all pack up and move on. Soybeans, wheat, cotton, oranges, grapefruit, tomatoes, lettuce. I think they grew it all.”

  Still, Chase thought, her reaction tonight had been unusually fierce. As if she were reacting not to a lifetime of general oppression and occasional slights, but of something specific that had hurt her deeply, something she wasn’t quite over yet. “How did you handle it?”

  Hope shrugged. “I don’t really remember. I don’t think I ever did anything specific except try to blend in and not be so noticeable, you know?”

  He nodded. He had tried that, too, though for very different reasons.

  “But I never had the right clothes or anything,” Hope continued with a heartfelt sigh. “Mostly, I just wanted to get away.”

  From the stigma of being a tenant farmer’s daughter, he wondered, or the childhood years of poverty and neglect she had hinted at? “Is that why you went to work in Barrister’s?” Chase asked casually. He was hungry to know more about her, to know everything, and yet at the same time, he was excruciatingly aware that drawing information from her was like locating a stack of scattered pins in a haystack.

  Hope grinned. “I went to work in Barrister’s because it was the only job I could get.” She lifted her eyes to his and admitted with a candidness he yearned to see more of, “I only had a high-school education. No money for college.”

  But she had been beautiful enough to sell cosmetics, Chase thought. Every woman wanted to look the way Hope did. Sensual, vulnerable and beautiful. If they thought they could buy those qualities in a bottle, they would. It was no wonder Barrister’s had hired her, and no wonder Edmond had fallen in love with her.

  She walked over to a framed picture of Joey and touched it lovingly. He could see she was still hurting over the discord with her son and embarrassed by what had happened at the game.

  Without warning, an idea came to him. He knew how to make it better. Fast. For all of them. Because he, too, was wishing he could just get away from all the stress and pressure and scrutiny they had been under the past few weeks. He wanted to spend more unfettered time with Hope. “Hope, about letting Joey go camping. Have you given it any more thought?” He wanted to comfort her, but couldn’t risk having that turn into something else. Something as sensual as her elemental beauty.

  Putting a firm damper on his erotic thoughts, Chase said softly, “I promise you, I’d take good care of him. I wouldn’t let anything happen to him. And I meant what I said when I first issued the invitation. You’re welcome to go along, too.” He wanted her to go along, but didn’t want to appear overly anxious.

  Giving Joey permission to go camping would make up for the scene she had caused at the ball diamond tonight, Hope knew. With Chase leaving again in July, there wouldn’t be many more opportunities for Joey. Still, she had no intention of letting her son embark on something so potentially exciting and dangerous without her.

  She looked at Chase thoughtfully, appreciating how ruggedly handsome and at ease he looked in the jeans and rumpled long-sleeved cotton shirt. He had done so much for them since he had been back. She no longer knew how she would manage without him. But he had also come very close to kissing her once, in the fur vault. And she’d come very close to kissing him back. She took a deep bolstering breath. “You said something about Bastrop?” She could handle this. She could handle him.

  Chase nodded, his smile alight with anticipation at being in the wild again. “They have a nice state park there. I’ve got some pediatrician friends in the area. We could leave Friday and be back early Sunday afternoon. It’s not long, Hope, but I promise you, it will do Joey a world of good to get away.”

  Me, too, she thought, trying to ignore the close and continual proximity to Chase such an outing would entail. Hope said simply, “You’re on. It’s a threesome for this weekend. Shall I tell Joey or would you like to?”

  Chapter Ten

  “Chase, you’ve got to do something,” Rosemary began early the following morning. “Customers are complaining right and left about the renovation.”

  “It’ll be completed in another week.”

  “And until then, everyone is inconvenienced. The whole store smells like new paint. Customers are tripping over drop cloths and stepladders. And that filmy plastic Hope hung up to section off the areas under renovation looks tacky as hell.”

  Chase put down the camping supply catalog. His mind was full of thoughts of Hope and Joey and the fund-raising efforts for his research. The last thing he wanted to think about was the store. “I know it’s a pain, Mom, everyone does, but it’ll be done in another week.”

  “So? Our customers are unhappy now.” He followed Rosemary from his office. At her insistence, they went down to the second floor together, where what had once been a glitzy novelty area for grown-ups was now being transformed into children’s clothing department. It was hard for Chase to imagine that the customers wouldn’t be delighted with the finished area.

  They continued their tour, going down to the first floor, where similar renovations were also taking place. Behind the plastic curtains, it was just as cluttered as the second floor with workmen, ladders and buckets of paint. Able to see it was a problem, although not the huge one his mother deemed it to be, he turned to Rosemary. “What are you suggesting we do? Shut down the store entirely?”

  “No, of course not. That would be even worse.” Rosemary picked up a demonstrator bottle of Christian Dior’s Poison from the cosmetics counter and spritzed herself with perfume. She continued to rant. “Not that Hope is ever here to see any of it or be inconvenienced herself. No, she is far too busy with her clandestine love life to properly supervise much of anything, never mind something as complicated as this!”

  Although he knew Rosemary was baiting him deliberately, Chase latched on to the words and couldn’t let go. He followed his mother to the Lancôme counter. “What love life?”

  Rosemary turned in surprise. “Didn’t you know? Hope has been seen with Russell Morris twice recently, at Maxim’s. If you don’t believe me, call them. I’m sure t
hey’d be happy to confirm it.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” Chase asked, bracing himself for the commentary on his growing closeness to Hope.

  “I don’t know.” She walked over to needlessly straighten a display of Clinique moisturizer. She gave an eloquent shrug. “I just thought you might be interested. I know I am. I’m determined to find out what is going on between that little tramp and Russell Morris.”

  Chase had no doubt what his mother had told him was true. When it came to social matters, her sources were unflaggingly correct. Determined not to let her gossip get to him, he said, “So she’s had drinks with him. Why should you care?”

  Rosemary whirled, her expression indignant. “I care because she lied! And because she is mercurial and inconsistent. Or had you forgotten the way she behaved when Russell first came to see her here? One minute she won’t give him the time of day and refuses to do business with him, and then the next she takes off work to meet him on the sly. That kind of behavior doesn’t make sense to me.”

  Nor did it to Chase.

  “But then as close as you seem to be getting to Hope,” she continued slyly, “I suppose you already know all about their meetings.”

  No, he hadn’t known about them and it bothered him that he hadn’t. Not wanting his mother to see the hurt and betrayal he felt, he turned away from her, ostensibly to study the new Estee Lauder line for men. “No, I didn’t know.” Turning back to her, he girded himself for battle. “Not that it’s any of your business if it is social, as you suspect. Hope’s a grown woman, free to do as she pleases.” He shouldn’t give a damn, either. But he did.

  His mother regarded him smugly. “Her calendar for those meetings was marked ‘outside business appointment.’”

  Chase struggled between his curiosity and fury. His mother was dogging Hope’s every move. Wasn’t it enough that Rosemary was at the store every day, stirring up trouble? How much further did she think she had to go to make Hope’s life, and inadvertently his own, miserable? “How do you know that?” he asked. His calm voice betrayed none of his inner turmoil.

  Rosemary smiled smugly and touched a hand to her impeccably coiffed hair. “The same way I know everything about her,” she countered in absolute triumph. “I checked.”

  Chase sighed. He hated these cat-and-mouse games his mother liked to play. So had his father, if memory served him correctly. “What is your point?”

  “My point is,” Rosemary countered, “that she might be working out a deal with him on the sly. A deal that will earn them both money and leave Barrister’s out in the cold.”

  Or maybe, Chase thought as all the little details he had seen came together, she was being blackmailed. That would explain Hope suddenly selling her jewelry. Then again, maybe he was making too much of this. Maybe she was seeing Russell because she wanted to, because they’d rekindled whatever they’d had.

  Rosemary paced back over to the Lancôme lipstick display. Examining it critically, she said, “Regardless, I know something unsavory is going on there and I’m going to find out what it is.” She started in the direction of her office, her detailed examination of the cosmetics all but forgotten.

  Chase followed her to the elevator and stopped her with a touch on her arm. “What are you doing?”

  “Going back to my office so I can call a private investigator, of course.”

  He stepped in front of her, his tone firm. “No. You’ve got no right to invade her privacy that way.”

  Rosemary tried, unsuccessfully, to push him aside. “I do if I have evidence she’s trying to defraud our store.”

  “Which you don’t—”

  “Yet.” Rosemary paused. “But I will get it. I’m going to find out what she’s hiding. I’m going to find out about her past and expose her for what she is if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “No,” Chase said. He knew there was only one way to put a stop to his mother’s interference, underhanded and despicable as it was. “I will.”

  HOURS LATER, Chase still didn’t know why he’d volunteered to act as supersleuth. It wasn’t like him to want to pry, but his mother was right. There was too much about Hope’s recent actions that didn’t make sense. Her rift with her family, for instance. He didn’t buy her lame excuses. Maybe there was a rift but it should be mended. Otherwise, she’d feel the same deep lament and irrevocable loss and shame he had when his father died. And yet he knew because of the circumstances such a feat wouldn’t be easy. Something very serious had torn her family apart if it had caused a rift that had continued for over a decade.

  And as for the rest of the mystery…he had seen the way she looked at Russell Morris with utter loathing, fear and distrust. Yet according to Rosemary’s sources, which were unfailingly accurate, the two were now meeting on the sly. If Russell was holding something over Hope it had to be because of something that had happened in the past, when she’d known him years ago.

  But what could that be? He had no answers. But Hope knew and so did Russell and probably so did her family. Part of him wanted to let it go. But he knew if he didn’t unearth the mystery and put the pieces of the puzzle together first, his mother’s lackeys would. There was no doubt in his mind she would use whatever negative information she was able to uncover to hurt Hope, in the most public way possible.

  UNFORTUNATELY, his meeting with Hope’s mother, Louise, proved anything but uplifting. She met him at the screen door of their small ranch house. In a gingham shirt and slacks, her faded beauty was evident, but she had none of Hope’s inner generosity or warmth.

  Trying hard not to make any premature judgments, Chase stepped inside the cluttered, unkempt house. “I had hoped to talk to you and Mr. Curtis about Hope—”

  “As far as Hope’s concerned, Henry hasn’t got a daughter,” Louise said sourly. She motioned for him to take a seat on the lumpy plaid sofa next to the door. Like everything else in the house, it had seen better days. “I only agreed to see you when you telephoned,” Louise continued in the same pained tone, “because I figured you wouldn’t leave us alone until you did.”

  She was right about that, Chase thought. Now that he’d seen this much, he had to know more. “About Hope—”

  “I know she married some rich man.” Louise sank into an armchair opposite him.

  “My father,” Chase admitted.

  “And he died.”

  “Yes.”

  Louise squinted at him suspiciously. “You trying to take her money away from her?”

  No, but my mother is, he thought. So far his first emotional reaction to Louise Curtis’s home had been identical to Hope’s—to get the hell out and never look back. Chase twined his hands loosely together and let them rest between his spread knees. He had come this far; he might as well go the whole nine yards. “I’m here because I think Hope might be in some sort of trouble.” This information neither surprised nor fazed Louise. Encouraged by her lack of immediate comment, Chase went on carefully, “There’s a man she used to know, years ago. His name is Russell Morris.”

  Louise shut her eyes and looked ill. She got up, ran both hands agitatedly through her gray hair and paced the length of the room. “Doesn’t that girl ever learn?” Although she revealed nothing more to him, she seemed very angry and upset.

  With effort, Chase remained in his seat on the sofa. “What was her relationship with him?”

  Louise narrowed her gaze suspiciously. “Didn’t she tell you?”

  Chase only wished she were that open. “She won’t talk about it,” he admitted honestly.

  Louise harumphed. “Doesn’t surprise me,” she muttered. “Well, I don’t want to talk about it, either.” She moved toward the door, as if ready to show him out.

  Desperate to know more, Chase took his time about getting up from his place on the sofa. “Was he a threat to her?”

  “More like the other way around.” Louise’s lips thinned unpleasantly. “But Hope’s scheme to ruin his family didn’t work. Instead, it ruined us. And I’l
l never forgive her for that.” She turned to Chase, her eyes blazing. “We got thrown off their tenant farm in the middle of the growing season because of Hope. Lost darn near everything we had. And why? Because that stupid, money-grabbing girl of ours didn’t have enough sense to stay away from those rich boys.” Louise shook her head disparagingly. “She always did want more than we could give. I guess she finally found it.” Louise looked sharply at him. “That is if she can hang on to it,” she said astutely.

  Chase moved slowly toward the door, more aware than ever his time there was severely limited. The Hope Louise was describing was nothing like the Hope he knew. Was it possible he had misjudged her all this time? Was it possible she had changed over the years? Or simply that they had never known and understood their daughter the way he was beginning to? “What do you mean, scheme?” Chase asked.

  Louise held up her hands to ward off further questions. “I’ve said enough.”

  “Wait. Do you have any interest in seeing her?” Chase asked as she pushed open the screen. To his mounting horror and disappointment, he saw no love or traces of lingering affection in Louise’s eyes. Just cold contempt.

  “I think you’d better go,” Louise said gruffly. And this time she did show him the door.

  THE MEETING with Hope’s mother haunted Chase. He understood now why she’d cut her ties with her family and moved on. They didn’t love her, didn’t even care enough to ask how she was. Such indifference was foreign to him. Despite their difficulties, he had always known he could talk to both parents, that they would welcome him if he went home. He had always known they loved him. For Hope, that obviously wasn’t the case. He doubted she would be welcome there, for even five minutes. And she had Joey’s feelings to consider. She wouldn’t want to expose him to her mother’s bitterness and her father’s indifference. So she kept her distance from her folks. But at what cost? What were she and Russell discussing so clandestinely?

  He wanted to talk to Hope about what he had learned. Even if he drove straight through, he wouldn’t arrive in Houston until Thursday evening, and it would be far too late to approach her. And he didn’t particularly want to get into any of this with his mother before he set off on a camping trip with Hope. For that reason, he would have to avoid his mother entirely, at least until after he returned from his camping trip with Hope and Joey.