by Sandra Brown
“I got rather carried away, I’m afraid.”
“You were priceless.”
“What’d you think, Les?” Jeff asked excitedly.
“It was okay.”
“I don’t even think we need reverse questions,” Jeff said.
“I’ll leave it up to you,” Les said.
“Dad, are you all right?” Lyon came up behind Andy to ask.
“I’ve not had so much fun in years. Some of those stories I didn’t even know I remembered until I started telling them. Imagine me thinking of them after all this time.” He chuckled again, lost in his private thoughts. Then his eyes became misty, and he clasped his son’s hands. Looking up at Lyon, he said quietly, “It wasn’t all bad, Lyon. Now that I think on it, it wasn’t.”
“We’d better get you back to the house,” Lyon said and started the motor on the wheelchair. He walked at its side, a protective hand resting on his father’s frail shoulder.
“What do you think he meant by that?” Les asked Andy as they followed the others up the incline.
“Meant by what?”
“Don’t go stupid on me, for God’s sakes, Andy. What did he mean by ‘It wasn’t all bad’?”
“Just what he said, I guess. He was telling funny stories. He meant that all his war experiences hadn’t been gruesome.”
“It was more than that, and you know it,” he hissed angrily.
“All I know is that unless you draw blood, you’re not happy. Well, I am. I think the interviews went great. If you were looking for some deep, dark secret to come out that would blacken an old man’s reputation, then I’m sorry. You’ll have to do without this time.”
She marched ahead of him and got to the patio at the same time as the general in his wheelchair did. Lyon was holding the door for him, but the general detained him. “Just a moment, Lyon. I want to speak to Andy. I may not see her again before she leaves.”
With her eyes she asked Lyon’s permission, and he reluctantly backed away. The cruel lines around his mouth devastated her. She would leave him unforgiven for what he saw as her duplicity.
She knelt beside Michael Ratliff. He took her hand between the two of his and squeezed it hard. “I know you’ll think this the wistful daydreaming of an old man, but I had a feeling about you before I ever heard you lurking outside the door that day. You became very real to me that night Lyon ranted and raved about your tenacity, your gall. As angry and uncomplimentary as he was about you, I think his meeting you had a profound effect on him, Andy. I think you were supposed to come into our lives.
“I ask you bluntly. Old men don’t have time for tact. Are you in love with my son?”
She laid her head on his bony knee and squeezed her eyes against the tears she could feel welling up in them. She nodded her head, then raised it to look up at him. “Yes, yes, I am.”
His wavering hand stroked down from the crown of her head to her cheek. “I hoped as much. I prayed as much. You’ll be good for him. Don’t fret over the present. Think in terms of the future. If this love you have for him is true, things will work out. I promise.”
She knew otherwise, but she didn’t want to dampen his optimism. She stood up only to lean down and kiss him softly and lingeringly on the cheek. They didn’t say goodbye, but stared at each other pensively until Lyon came forward to assist him into the house.
It had been prearranged that the crew would drive the van to the bunkhouse, pack their gear, and then guide Les to the Haven in the Hills as he followed in the car he had rented in San Antonio. Andy would come after them in her rental car as soon as she was packed.
She scanned the room quickly, checking to see if she’d forgotten anything. She wouldn’t think about what leaving meant. If she thought about it, she’d die. So she’d wait until later, when she’d have the luxury of wallowing in her misery alone.
Knowing she had postponed her leavetaking too long, she went to the door of the bedroom and opened it. Lyon was standing on the threshold. His face was expressionless. No anger. No victory. No love. As void and empty as she felt on the inside.
“My bags are ready. I was just going down,” she said hastily, thinking that he might have come upstairs to boot her out.
He didn’t say anything, but backed her into the room and closed the door behind him. She took two more steps backward. “Your father? How is he?”
“Extremely tired. I called the doctor to come out and take a look at him. He’s with him now.”
“I hope today wasn’t too strenuous, but …” Her voice trailed off. Why couldn’t she think of anything to say? She certainly didn’t want to increase Lyon’s fury by reminding him that he was the one who had insisted on having the interview this afternoon.
He took a few steps toward her until they were only inches apart. Taking one of her wrists in each of his hands, he pulled her around until her back was to the door. He pinned her hands on either side of her face at shoulder level.
“It looks like you’re well on your way to a big network job, Ms. Malone. It’s a shame you don’t have that earthshaking story you hoped for. I hate for you to have gone to all the trouble you did and go away empty-handed. Here’s something to take with you.”
She expected his mouth to be hard and abusive, but it was soft and persuasive. He was using the oldest tactic in the strategist’s manual: Placate the enemy, give him misplaced confidence, treat him kindly, and then go in for the kill. Even though she knew what he was up to, she was powerless to defend herself.
Her mouth opened against his like a flower, and he wasted not a motion in taking all of it. He sipped her slowly. His fingers around her wrists relaxed, and his open palms slid over hers. Fingers intertwined and locked.
His tongue delved between pliable, yielding lips. His hips ground against hers as he pressed her into the door. He found a satisfying position and drummed against her with his hips even as his tongue pumped into her mouth.
It was meant to be a debasing and insulting embrace, but somewhere in time it changed character. He was no longer moving against her with contempt, but angling against her with need. The stroking of his body along hers quit its quick, brutal quality and became sustained and sensual. He whispered her name, and it was as if the word had been ripped from his throat.
She whirled in a vortex of emotions, hating him for reducing her to the mindless creature she became at his touch, yet wanting him, craving him, loving him. He absorbed her. All she knew or cared about was Lyon. Lyon Lyon. Lyon.
Just as suddenly as he had seized her, he released her, throwing her from him as if she were something revolting. His breathing was like that of a man who had run a long way. “Now, go tell Les all the details of that. I’m sure he’s waiting for a full report.”
Mortification and agonizing pain boiled to the surface as consummate rage. “You—” She sucked in air. “You sanctimonious, stubborn fool. You think—”
“Lyon! Lyon!”
They heard the panic in Gracie’s voice and rushed out onto the landing to see her puffing up the stairs. “Lyon, Dr. Baker says to come quick. Your father …”
Chapter Nine
The wind tore at her hair and dried the tears as soon as they fell from her eyes. She was driving with the window down, praying that nature would find a way of anesthetizing her heartache.
With only a few snatches of clear memory Andy pieced together the confusion and despair of the last hour.
She and Lyon had raced down the stairs. He had gone into his father’s bedroom while she comforted a weeping Gracie. The doctor came out of the room, shaking his head sadly in response to their inquiring eyes. After what must have been a half-hour Lyon had come out of the room, dry-eyed but haggard. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t see anything as he conferred quietly with the doctor. Soon after that the ambulance arrived, and Andy watched with horror as the draped body of General Michael Ratliff was loaded into its sterile confines. Lyon followed it in his car down the winding drive.
She had left
Gracie still sad, but setting about to do all the hundreds of things that would have to be done. Lyon would have her support and love. That was good.
Arriving at the motel while the sky was turning a deep indigo, Andy assumed the crew and Les had gone to dinner. She checked into the room they had reserved for her. It was dismally similar to the first one she’d occupied.
She locked her door, took her telephone off the hook, and curled into the bed. For the next eight hours she pretended to sleep.
“General Ratliff, the last surviving five-star general of World War II, had lived in seclusion on his ranch near Kerrville, Texas, since his early retirement in 1946. The general died peacefully at home after a long illness. Private funeral services will be held at the ranch tomorrow.”
Andy watched the anchorman on the morning news show as he dispassionately read the story. She wondered when Lyon had officially notified the news services of his father’s death.
“The President, after hearing of General Ratliff’s death, had this to say.”
Andy listened to the President of the United States as he acclaimed the retired general, but the person he spoke about in terms of heroics and medals had no relevance to the old gentleman she knew. Only yesterday she had talked to him of his son and how she loved him. He had taken her hand and held it firmly, pressing it between his two frail ones, telling her with his eyes that he wholeheartedly endorsed her love for Lyon.
“Let me in.” Andy jumped when Les pounded on the door.
“Just a … minute.”
There was no sense in delaying what was to come. She found her robe at the foot of her bed and pulled it on, wishing it were a suit of armor. She went to the door and opened it.
“When did you find out about it?” he demanded without preamble.
“Last evening.” There was no redemption in lying. “He died just as I was leaving.”
“And you didn’t see fit to tell me?” Les roared.
“What good would it have done?”
“What good? Damn, I’d like to shake some sense into you.”
She ignored his tantrum. Going over to a chair, she folded herself into it and raised her knees to prop her forehead against them. She was remembering how General Ratliff had looked at her the last time. He had known he was about to die. His good-bye had been a silent one.
“Andy, what the hell is the matter with you?”
When Les’s brash, insensitive question had penetrated her mind, she lifted vacant eyes to him. After several seconds his image swam into focus. “Les, a man I admired is dead. How can you possibly ask what the matter is?”
He shifted his eyes toward the curtained window that let in no sunlight. “I know you admired him, but he’s still a man who means news, and we’re news people. You didn’t see that announcer crying just now, did you? Andy, have you thought that we’re sitting on a gold mine?”
She shook her head. Les had gone to the window and whisked open the draperies. The sunlight hit her full in the face. She shaded her eyes against it. “What do … a gold mine?”
“Think, Andrea, for God’s sakes! We’ve got the only interviews General Ratliff granted since he became a damn hermit. Now he’s dead, and we’re sitting on hours of tape of him. Do you know what that can mean?”
Lowering her knees and standing up, she walked to the window and looked out onto a gorgeous day. It wouldn’t be gorgeous for Lyon. He’d have to arrange a funeral.
“Andy?”
“What?”
“Are you listening?”
She ran a hand through her tangled hair. “You asked if I knew what having the tapes of General Ratliff could mean.”
Les cursed under his breath. “Let me spell it out for you, then. You may have been sitting on the knowledge that the old general had croaked for personal reasons, and I’m likely never to forgive you. But I intend to sell those tapes to the network and for a helluva lot more than our first bargaining price. This is our way in, and with or without you I’m going to take it.”
“Wait, Les.” She held up one hand while rubbing her aching head with the other. Why was he bothering with this now? “They’re not even edited yet. No music—”
“What the hell do we care? Let them produce them the way they want to. They want them on their evening newscasts tonight. I’ve already contacted a producer. He about wet his pants, he was so excited. We’re to send the tapes air express to New York pronto. I guess we’ll have to drive to San Antonio, so hustle it.” His hand was already on the door knob.
“Les, please, slow down and let me think.” She went back to the bed and sank onto the mattress. “I never thought of airing the interviews after the general’s death. I never intended them to be an obituary.”
“I know that.” She could tell by Les’s grating tone that he was fast losing patience but was trying not to fly off the handle. “That’s the way it turned out, Andy. You knew the old, uh, general was going to die soon.”
“Soon, yes, but not while I was there to see it.” She covered her face with her hands. “It seems so cold somehow, so disrespectful to air them now.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Les shouted and slapped his hands against his thighs. “What’s happened to you?”
Lyon. Lyon. Lyon had happened to her. And General Michael Ratliff had happened to her. The story she had gone to do had diminished in importance when compared to the men they were. But what about the interviews would be detrimental to the general’s memory? Nothing. She had kept them that way. So if she went along with Les on this, he’d leave her alone for a while.
“All right,” she said wearily. “Do whatever you have to do. But I’ll follow you to San Antonio later. I want to stay here a while.”
“You bet you will. I want you to do a follow-up report outside the gates of the ranch. We’ve got the crew here. The place will be crawling with press by noon, we can get a jump on everybody. While I drive the tapes to San Antonio and put them on a plane, you and the guys can go back out there—”
“No. Absolutely not,” she said, slicing the air with her hands. “I’ll go along with selling the tapes because I’d like the American people to see the way he was during his last days. But I’ll not be a vulture at a funeral.”
“Andy, for God—”
“I won’t, Les. That’s final.”
“I wish to hell you’d gone ahead and slept with that cowboy and gotten him out of your system. Maybe then you’d be acting like the Andy Malone I’ve known all these years. I assure you he’s got the same equipment all the rest of us have.”
“You’re going too far, Les.” She stood with her hands clenched at her sides, her posture perfectly erect. The golden eyes gleaming at him were those of a lioness confronting a potential predator of her young. He got the message loud and clear.
“Okay, okay.” He went to the door. “I’ll send the crew out to shoot some video. Someone else can record a track onto it later. Jeff said you had the interview tapes. Where are they?”
The tapes were labeled and stored in black plastic cases. Andy had them all in a canvas bag. She was holding it out to Les when he asked, “Is the release in there, too?”
Her mind went on a rapid hunt, looking in each corner of her brain for the time and place when she had had General Ratliff sign the permission form that would allow them to air the interviews on television. Such a scene couldn’t be found. One hand tightened around the canvas bag while the other came up to cover her mouth. “Oh, Les,” she breathed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Th—the release form. I never had Michael Ratliff sign one.”
She shrank from the murderous cold blue glint in Les’s eyes. “You can’t mean that, Andy. Try to remember. You’ve never done an interview in your career that you didn’t get the release first. Now, goddammit, where is it?” By the time he reached the last word, he was screaming.
“I don’t have it,” she yelled back. “I remember that when we started taping, I wanted to hurry bef
ore the general got tired. Gil’s cord had gone dead, remember? And we’d had to delay. I remember thinking that I’d get it later. I never did.”
He slammed his fist into his palm, and she heard words she’d never heard him use before, and she’d thought she’d heard them all. He rounded on her. “You’re not lying are you? Is this some ruse—”
“No. I swear it, Les. I never got a release form signed.”
“It’d be just like Lyon to sue our asses for all we’re worth if we ran them without one. And even if he didn’t know he had that power, the network would, and they’d never take the chance. You’ll just have to go out there and get him to sign one.”
“No.”
“What do you mean no?”
“I mean no. Not until after the funeral.”
“That’s tomorrow,” Les shouted.
“That’s right. I’ll not go out there until then. Lyon may not even let me in.”
Les looked at the bag she held in her hand. He was gnawing his lip and flexing his fingers. “Forget taking these tapes by force or faking a release. I’d telephone the network myself and tell them what you were trying to pull.”
“It never crossed my mind,” he said with a feral smile.
“Yes, it did,” she said, not smiling. “Go call your contact and tell him he won’t have the interviews until after the funeral. Then leave me alone for the rest of the day.”
He stood at her door, hands on hips, looking at her for a long time. He shook his head in wonder. “You’ve changed, Andy. I can’t understand what’s happened to you.”
“That’s right, Les. You can’t understand.”
The remainder of the day was spent lying on the bed with a cold compress over her eyes. She locked the tapes in her suitcase and hid the key. She also kept the door to her room locked and the chain latched. She swore to herself that she trusted Les, but actions spoke louder than words.
Since she had slept little the night before, she dozed off and on during the day. As she hovered between sleep and wakefulness the scenes that were acted out in her mind fell somewhere between dreams and fantasies. She and Lyon were the featured players in all of them.