by Diana Palmer
He glared at her. "I talked him into it," he corrected her, "because I saw the chance to triple my investment. My finances are not what they once were," he said coldly. "If I do nothing, I will lose what little I have left. This is a perfect investment opportunity, absolutely foolproof. But in order to make it work, I must remain friendly with Philippe. I cannot afford to antagonize him or permit you to do so." He cleared his throat, aware of the building resentment in her young .face. "It is time you married," he said harshly. "Philippe has said that he wishes it. It will be the best way to cement our business partnership."
"Marry him!" she burst out appalled. "Listen, I am not marrying your friend Philippe! He scares me to death! You must surely have heard the gossip about him, about what he does to young girls!"
He turned and looked at her down his nose. "Your mother is quite happy here?" he asked slowly. He smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "She and the child. You wouldn't want anything to... upset her, now, would you?"
As veiled threats went, it was a masterpiece. She felt her body going numb as .she considered what he was hinting at. She knew that her mother was afraid of him and that she was deeply regretting her marriage. Brianne also knew that her mother was vulnerable with the new child. She couldn't really afford to make Kurt madder than he already was, for her mother's sake. But there was no way on earth she could marry that repulsive man, even to save her mother and half brother!
She stood there, defiant but frightened, uneasy, searching for the right words. Pierce could save her. She couldn't tell her stepfather that; her words might inflame him to the point that he would do something desperate to her poor mother. For almost two years she'd blamed her mother for her hasty marriage and equally hasty pregnancy, but blood was thicker than water. She couldn't cause her only remaining parent to come to harm, regardless of her feelings of betrayal.
"You understand me, Brianne?" Kurt continued slyly. "You will do as I say?"
"Do I have a choice?" she replied quite calmly.
He smiled, not a pleasant smile at all. "No," he returned. "So I think we might discuss plans for the wedding. Your mother will be happy to assist you, I am sure."
"Not today," she said, and searched desperately for an excuse. She squared her shoulders and came up with the perfect one. "I'm meeting a girlfriend for lunch at the Lobster Bar downtown."
"A girlfriend?" He was immediately suspicious. "Who is she?"
Her mind would barely cooperate. "My friend Cara, from school," she invented. "She's on a cruise and will only be in town this afternoon. I haven't see her since graduation."
He hesitated, still not quite trusting her. He pursed, his lips and thought for a minute. "Very well. But Philippe has sailed to one of the outer islands and is to arrive back here tomorrow. I will expect cooperation from you."
"Certainly."
She was pale and not as confident as she sounded, but she forced a smile for him and went to dress.
Brianne's mother, Eve, having left the baby with the live-in nurse, slipped into her room as she was changing into jeans and a green silk shirt that matched her eyes.
“Has he spoken to you?" the older woman asked quickly.
"Yes," Brianne replied. She stared at her mother, seeing the new lines in her pretty, soft face, the new haunted look in her pale eyes. "Indeed he has."
Eve twisted her hands together. "I had no idea that he was going to take it this far, Brianne," she said miserably. "I know you don't like Mr. Sabon. I know what people say about him. But he's very rich and powerful"
"And you think money is the most important thing in the world," she replied with cold eyes.
Her mother averted her gaze quickly. "I didn't say that. He could give you anything you wanted, though. And it would make Kurt happy."
"Making your husband happy isn't my main goal in life, Mother," Brianne said with an unfamiliar iciness in her tone. "And if you think I'm going to marry that man to keep Kurt Brauer happy, you are sadly misinformed."
Her mother looked horrified. "You...you didn't say that to him?" she asked with real fear.
"Of course not!" she replied quickly. "Mother, I'm not a fool. He did make certain threats about you, and the baby," she added reluctantly. She and Eve had never been close. At times hike this, it was sad, because they could have confided in each other, comforted each other. Eve had always lied about her age. Brianne's very presence, not to mention her age, was a visible contradiction. Like many pretty women, she had a hard time accepting the advance of her years.
Eve made a helpless gesture with one perfectly manicured hand. The older woman looked vaguely hunted. "Kurt has a very bad temper," she remarked. "I haven't seen it often, of course," she said with a wary glance at her daughter. “But we argued over you, quite badly. That is one reason I agreed when he wanted to send you to school in France. Things haven't been quite calm here for some time, and especially not since he got mixed up with Mr. Sabon."
She brushed back a strand of color-tinted blond hair. Her green eyes pleaded with those of her daughter. "Couldn't you pretend to agree to marry him, just until I can think of something, anything, to do? There's Nicholas, the baby, to consider. I really couldn't bear it if Kurt...well, if he fought me for custody, Brianne. You know I'd lose. I haven't any money of my own. Please! If you won't do it for my sake, do it for Nicholas's! You must know what sort of life he'd have without me."
The sad tiling was, she did. Nicholas would grow up at the mercy of a man who had none. She frowned worriedly as she finished buttoning her blouse over her small breasts. She turned and stared at her mother with sad eyes. "You used to say that all you needed to be happy was a lot of money. Do you still feel that way?"
The older woman paled. "I was tired of being poor," she ^replied bitterly. "Of having
nothing and working all hours. Your father had no ambition at all!"
"No, but he had a kind-heart and a generous soul," Brianne replied quietly. "He would never have raised a hand to you." Her face hardened as she looked at the woman who'd raised her but never loved her or cared what happened to her. Certainly Eve hadn't treated her as she treated the baby, cuddling him and kissing him and rushing to satisfy his every whim. It was a painful reminder that she hadn't been really wanted, or loved.
"You repaid my father's love and loyalty by leaping into Kurt Brauer's arms barely a month after his funeral," Brianne said, thinking aloud, "You can't imagine how I felt about that."
Her mother's face was a study in shock. She put a hand to her throat. "Why...Brianne," she said huskily. "You never...you never said a word."
"What would have been the use?" Brianne's face was as sad as her voice. "You didn't care about my feelings, or my grief. You wouldn't wait and risk losing Kurt and all his money."
"How can you speak to me in such a way?" Eve asked huskily. "You're my own child!"
"Am I?" she asked with real pain. She searched her mother's brittle, beautiful face. "I don't remember that you ever cuddled me or held me when I cried, or did anything except criticize me and wish me out of the way."
Eve, for once, didn't have a comeback. She looked confused, unsettled.
"My father loved me," she said with icy pride. "He kissed the hurt places and took me to see art shows and concerts even when he could barely afford it. You did nothing except complain that he was spending time with me that he could have spent working his way to a promotion."
Eve frowned, searching the face of this stranger in the room with her. "I didn't realize that you wanted to be with me," she said uncomfortably. "You never seemed to like me very much."
"Nor did you like me. I wasn't beautiful." The words came out much more forcefully than Brianne meant them to, but mere were years of pain behind them.
Eve swallowed. She clasped her hands at her waist, which was still a little full despite the baby's age. "If you had your hair properly styled and used makeup and wore the right kind of clothes..."
"You might love me?" Brianne asked with a hollow laugh.
Eve actually winced. She took a single step forward with her hand lifted, but it was too late. Years too late. The barely perceptible gesture of conciliation was completely ignored.
Brianne gathered her purse from her bed and snapped it shut. She couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Where are you going?" Eve asked helplessly.
Brianne glanced at her. She didn't dare risk telling her mother the truth. "My friend Cara from school is in town just for the afternoon. I promised to meet her for lunch."
"Oh. Oh, that's fine, then," Eve said. She forced a smile. "Now, don't worry. Everything will be all right here. It's just this business deal upsetting Kurt. He'll be fine once the pressure is off, once he's got what he wants." She was the picture of a stubborn woman rationalizing an untenable situation. "He loves me. He does. He loves the baby, too. He won't do anything to hurt us, no matter what he told you," she added.
“Good. Then I won't have to marry Philippe Sabon to keep you safe, will I?"
The question took all the color out of the older woman's face. She moved forward quickly, almost frantically. "Brianne, you must think carefully about this," her mother said frantically. "You mustn't make any snap decisions!"
"I won't." She turned her purse in her hands, all too aware that she looked like an Amazon next to her pretty little mother. Brianne had nice legs and pretty hair, but she fell far short of Eve's idea of what her daughter should be.
Eve seemed to sense that. She reached out, hesitantly, and for the first time in years, she touched her daughter, touched the long, thick, straight blond hair and felt its clean texture curiously.
"You do have such lovely hair," she said slowly. "My stylist could do wonders for it.
And you have the body for couture. I never noticed how elegant you are."
You never noticed me at all until I could help you tuck some more pretty feathers in your nest, Brianne thought resentfully, but she didn't say it. She stepped back and her mother's small hand fell.
She went quickly to open the door and paused to look back at the doll-like face of her mother with sorrow and pity. "I'm only twenty and I know that happiness can't be bought. Why haven't you learned that in almost forty years?"
Her mother's pretty face closed Up. "I'm barely thirty-five," she protested with a false laugh. "And besides, I like nice things."
"You must. You're going to pay a very high price for yours."
"It isn't so much to ask, that you marry one of the richest men in the world, Brianne. Think of all I've done for you. Think of what Kurt's done for you," she added quickly when she remembered how little she could claim to have contributed to her child's well-being, "He sent you to a very expensive school in Paris, and he's even supporting you now. You owe him something for that, Brianne," she added, trying to regain the upper hand. She smiled that empty, cold, social smile she used to impress Kurt's business associates, a frightening group of people whose exact connection to her husband was something she still couldn't quite figure out. "I know you'll do the right thing, once you've thought about this."
Brianne didn't say anything else. It was pointless. The two women had never had much in common, and now they had even less. Her mother wasn't going to let go of Kurt and his money regardless of what it cost her, she'd just said so. She was even willing to sacrifice Brianne to keep it.
But Brianne wasn't going to be sacrificed. She was going to the one person who could rescue her.
Pierce, fortunately for her, was at home. He was on the phone with his security chief, but what he was hearing made him uneasy.
"We had an attempt on the rig last night," Tate Winthrop said in his deep, unaccented voice. "We foiled it," he added, before the explosion he could hear forming on the other end of the line. "But I don't think it will be the last. And I've heard some new rumblings about Sabon's country. They say one of his poor neighbors is stockpiling weapons from a sympathetic nation and is considering an attack to capture the drill rigs in Sabon's first oil fields. He was right about the oil, you know. They've hit pay-dirt, or so my sources say."
Pierce stretched lazily, and his eyes went to the white beach beyond the confines of the
swimming pool where he was lounging alone. He sipped his whiskey sour. "I wonder if letting them prevent the development wouldn't be the best thing," he said after a minute. "Brauer will set up the fields without safeguards or any regard for the ecology if he has his way."
"If they attack and get beaten back, the first thing they'll probably do is set fire to the oil," Tate pointed out.
Pierce whistled softly. "What a disaster that would be. That wouldn't make them any friends in Washington."
"Speaking of Washington," Tate said quietly, "there's a rumor that Brauer is about to try to pull some strings and get the U.S. involved in this."
"You're kidding!"
"I used to work for the CIAI don't have a sense of humor."
"Sorry."
"Brauer went to school with one of the senators on the foreign affairs committee," he continued. "He's been in touch. I understand he's due in Washington soon to lobby for U.S. aid."
"He wants Uncle Sam to help him build an oil field?" Pierce drawled.
"Not at all. He wants Uncle Sam to protect it while it's being built."
"Saboi is a millionaire and he owns half the country, not to mention its king and most of its ministers. Why can't he protect it himself?"
"He's wealthy. His country isn't. Odd duck, Sabon," he added. "He has a reputation for perverse sexual habits, but the funny thing about it is that no charges have ever been brought against him, and nobody's ever found any of his discarded lovers."
“Curious."
"Brauer labels him as a money-grubbing assassin, but that isn't the reputation he has among the people in his own country." There was a pause. "Why would a man deliberately picture himself to the world as a debaucher?"
"Beats the hell out of me. I've been wondering why he wanted Brauer as a business partner."
"Nobody else has any clout with the United States," Tate mused. "Think that might have any bearing on it?"
"Very possibly, but he couldn't have picked a more dangerous ally. Brauer's done so many immoral things in his lifetime that he makes Sabon look good."
"I'll drink to that."
The other man sounded offhand, distant. "You sound preoccupied," Pierce said suddenly, because he knew the man's mind wasn't on the subject they were discussing.
"A...personal problem, nothing I can't handle," Tate said quietly. "Look, I'll talk to a few people about Brauer and see who he knows in Washington. If you hear anything new, get back to me."
"I'll do that. Sabon was in town yesterday, but he's gone now."
"That was a quick trip. Why was he there?"
Pierce's dark face hardened. "Brauer has a twenty-year-old stepdaughter. Sabon wants her, apparently."
"Good God!"
"You know what he'll do with her if he gets her," Pierce said coldly. "She's spirited and
smart, but she's no match for a man like Sabon." :
"Want me to come over?"
"I can take care of her," he replied. "I'm not over the hill yet."
There was a rare, deep chuckle on the other end of the line. "Nobody who watched you
knock Colby Lane
to his knees on that drilling platform would ever say you were."
"Speaking of the devil, how is he?"
“Colby linked up with another group of mercenaries and went to Africa, but I hear he's come home and he's working for Uncle Sam now. He's changed so much lately that I don't know him. That damned woman!"
"It's not her fault that he can't give her up and let her settle with her new husband," Pierce reminded him. "If he will get drunk twice a month and start fights, he can expect someone to knock him around eventually."
"Nobody was game to try it until you came along."
"Not even you?" Pierce chided.
"Oh, he knew better than to pick on
me," he said carelessly. "Didn't you notice that big white scar on his jaw?"
"You rogue, you."
"He caught me at a bad time."
"I'd like to see anyone catch you at a good one lately. Speaking of men with chips on their shoulders, we could talk about yours," he added.
"Not today. I've got work to do. Watch your back. Sabon doesn't like you any more than
Brauer does, but he's supposedly got more money than Brauer and he's devious. I'd hate to get a call at three in the morning, telling me you'd washed up on a beach over at Freeport."
"You won't. Keep in touch."
"Sure."
Pierce hung up and reflected on what he'd learned. It was unwelcome news. The oil business had always been boom or bust It was more complicated man it looked to an outsider, as well. There were a thousand worries that included oil spills, leaks, explosions, fires and disgruntled employees mad enough to cause accidents. There were funding problems and quarrels over who absorbed which costs, and squabbling between the oil companies footing the bill and the construction outfit building the rigs and pipelines. It was an ever-changing pattern of problems, and Pierce was where the buck stopped.