Jess arrived a short time later, unaware that any subterfuge was afoot. Ushered into Sterling’s presence by Kate, she quickly agreed that it would be all right if his secretary remained in the room to take notes.
Removing the letters from her purse, she handed them to the attorney. “The one on top is from Ben Fortune to my grandmother, Celia Warwick, who subsequently married George Simpson,” she said. “I found it among my late mother’s things after her death. Her name was Lana. If the information in the letter is correct, she was Ben’s daughter. That makes me his granddaughter, and my daughter, Annabel, his great-granddaughter.
“As I’m sure Lindsay told you, Mr. Foster, the other three letters were written by Lana to Ben. Natalie Dalton’s stepson, Toby, found them in the old boathouse across the lake from the Fortune estate.”
Jess said nothing further as Sterling put on his reading glasses and read the letters without glancing at Kate, who had scribbled some notes on her stenographer’s pad while Jess was speaking and now waited deferentially for further instructions from him.
The process took him several minutes. When at last he’d finished, he asked Jess if he could make copies. She quickly gave her permission.
“Miss…er, Johnson, could you oblige?” he requested, handing them to Kate.
Accepting them from his hands, she quickly left the room. She was gone a long time. Jess began to wonder if the copier was broken or out of order. Perhaps the secretary had been required to change the ink cartridge, and ducked into the loo afterward to wash up.
“My regular secretary’s off today,” Sterling explained, catching the drift of her musings. “Miss Johnson’s a temp.”
Shrugging faintly, Jess didn’t press him for an opinion on the validity of her claim. At last Kate returned, to hand the original letters and her copies back to him. As she did so, with her back to Jess, he unobtrusively searched her face. Her slight nod confirmed that she’d found them authentic. He’d been given the go-ahead.
“Very well, Mrs. Holmes,” he said, giving the originals back to Jess. “I may as well tell you…I consider your letters to be genuine. I’m told you’re seeking bone marrow for your daughter…that you have no wish to press a financial claim against the Fortune family.”
“That’s correct,” Jess replied, with a sudden catch in her throat. “Thanks to my late husband’s broad range of investments, Annabel and I are financially very well-fixed. However, money can’t buy bone marrow. And she’s so ill….”
Despite her best efforts to maintain a serene facade throughout the interview, her eyes filled up with tears.
Though he’d been about to ask her to sign a disclaimer relinquishing any right she might have to the Fortune wealth before agreeing to help her, Sterling held his tongue as Kate handed her a tissue.
A moment later, she’d regained her self-control. “Sorry,” she apologized in her cultivated British accent. “I’m just so worried about her, you see.”
Since Kate approved, Sterling didn’t have a problem with speaking to the family. In truth, he rather liked the pretty young Englishwoman, who hadn’t been consulted about her grandparents’ indiscretion prior to their committing it. “I’ll be happy to do whatever I can to help, Mrs. Holmes,” he said, bestowing what passed for a smile on her as he indicated by his body language that their session was at an end.
Thanking him profusely, Jess got to her feet.
“I like her,” Kate said, relaxing once she was out of earshot. “She has spunk, coming all this way to a foreign country to save her daughter. I say we should do whatever we can to help.”
A few days later, Stephen asked Jess out to dinner. Thanks to the gentle, almost affectionate way he’d treated her since they’d embraced during the height of Annie’s reaction to her chemotherapy, she wasn’t nonplussed. His tact in waiting until her daughter’s condition had improved sufficiently for her to spend some time relaxing away from the hospital was very much appreciated.
“I’d be very happy to have dinner with you, Stephen,” she replied, her brown eyes shining with an unaffected pleasure in his invitation that warmed his heart.
Neither of them had forgotten the spontaneous kiss they would have shared if they hadn’t been wearing the necessary masks to guard against transmitting infection to Annie and Lindsay hadn’t walked into her hospital room seconds after Stephen took Jess in his arms. Each of them guessed a more appropriate opportunity for kissing would arise during their evening together. They were both looking forward to it.
Instead of collecting her from the hospital, Stephen picked her up at her hotel. She’d arranged to meet him in the lobby, by its famous fountain, which featured a suspended marble sphere. Striding in via the main entrance to collect her, he caught his breath as, radiant in a red Valentino suit with a relatively short skirt that showed her shapely legs to advantage, she arose from the bench where she’d been sitting to greet him.
“You look absolutely lovely tonight…did you know that?” he asked in a low voice, drinking in a whiff of her perfume as he dared to place a light kiss on her cheek.
For Jess, the affectionate contact was electric. She could feel goose bumps skittering down her arms. At no time before or during her marriage to Ronald Holmes had her late husband ever snared her in such a dazzle of anticipation. She could only imagine what it would be like to make love to the tall, ruggedly good-looking blond doctor who—for that evening, at least—was definitely within her reach.
“Whereas you look very handsome in a sports coat and dress slacks instead of your hospital garb,” she replied, declining to take a backward step.
His blue eyes glinted at her willingness to prolong their light embrace. While there was no guarantee anything more intimate would transpire between them that evening or in the future, he sensed that Jess wouldn’t be averse to it. Since he’d met her, his every impression of her save one—that of the night when she’d been so worried about Annie—had hinted that she’d be both emotionally and physically affectionate.
“How would you like to leave the car here at the hotel and walk to the restaurant?” he suggested on the spur of the moment. “It’s only a short distance. And the weather’s beautiful.”
The place he’d chosen, a French-style bistro with what she’d heard was legendary food, was situated on the ground floor of the Foushay Tower complex, where she’d visited Sterling Foster in his legal office. A secluded table with a leather banquette on one side had been reserved for them near one of the windows.
Jess liked his selection at once—the glittering bar, the echoing terrazzo floors and the thirties decor, even the exuberant din of conversation and the hurrying waiters in their long white aprons. Twin spots of color glowed in her cheeks as she and Stephen took their seats. She was only half listening as their server recited the plats du jour and invited them to draw on the paper tablecloth with the crayons provided while they sipped their drinks and waited for the food to arrive.
Dreamily leaning her chin on her hand, she asked Stephen to order for her when their server returned with pad and pencil. He did so with pleasure, choosing coq au vin, which was one of the bistro’s better-known specialties. There was something about her that brought out his protective streak, even while he admired her courage and quiet strength in dealing with Annie’s illness.
A shadow crossed his expansive mood as he considered that, despite his skill as a physician, his ability to protect her from the thing she most feared was only partial, at best. Though they’d tried everything known to science, he and the superb oncologist who’d been his son’s primary physician hadn’t been able to pull David back from the brink.
“So…” he said, willing his memories of loss to subside, so as not to color their evening. “You know something about me—what I do for a living, at least. Tell me about you, what your life was like in England.”
Though Jess noticed he’d referred to that life as if it were firmly in the past, she gave no indication. Instead, she described growing up in a
London suburb, her days at the university, her career to date as an investment banker at a London firm, and weekends at the Sussex cottage inherited from her mother, which she and Annie both loved, drawing little maps and cartoons on the paper tablecloth to illustrate.
The salads arrived, followed by the coq au vin, which was so tender it fell from the bones. At his prompting, she continued her monologue, touching briefly on her marriage to Ronald Holmes and the fact that he’d died in a car accident, without alluding to the infidelity that had marred their union almost from the first.
“That must have been difficult…losing your husband and, so soon afterward, learning of Annie’s leukemia,” Stephen remarked sympathetically.
He’ll never know how difficult, Jess thought. She shrugged. “Life can be like that.”
A brief silence ensued, in which he reflected that his curiosity about one aspect of her past, at least, hadn’t been satisfied. He decided to seize the moment, and ask. “Who’s Herkie?” he said.
Jess stared at him in surprise, then laughed, a dimple flashing beside her mouth. “Annie’s Scots terrier, Herkimer McTavish III,” she replied, unaware of how pleased he was to learn of the dog’s existence. “They’re great friends, and she misses him terribly. She has been going on about him a bit!”
For dessert, they had coffee and miniature chocolate éclairs. At last, given the early hour Stephen usually reported to the hospital, neither of them could come up with an excuse to linger.
They held hands as they strolled the four blocks or so that separated the little bistro from her hotel. As they did so, their shoulders brushed. Their eyes kept meeting. Their mouths curved with pleasure in each other’s company. Yet both of them knew that the sudden deepening of their relationship—unexpected bliss that it was—was fragile still. One wrong word, a wrong move, could shatter it. Immersed though they were in the warm glow of a budding romance, each was posing unasked questions.
Before either was ready to do so, they’d reached the brightly lit hotel entrance. I should have kissed her good-night in the shadow of some darkened building, where we could have merged to our hearts’ content without an audience, Stephen told himself as the uniformed doorman gave them the smile he reserved for lovers and held open one of the huge plate-glass doors for them.
Come home with me tonight, he longed to beg. I’m aching to make love to you. It was too soon for that, he knew. It was easy to see that Jess wasn’t the kind of woman to conduct casual affairs. And they were still getting to know each other.
“Well…” he murmured, pausing by a potted palm as he debated whether to kiss her there in the lobby, or suggest seeing her to her room. Neither course of action appealed to him. If he chose the latter, she might feel pressured to ask him in for a nightcap.
He was going to say good-night with a peck on the cheek. Or, worse still, a handshake. That nurse’s aide was right after all, Jess thought, tormenting herself. He is unavailable.
Though she was crestfallen and worried that their first date would be their last, she had the presence of mind to let her hands rest trustingly in his. “I’ve had a wonderful time with you this evening, Stephen,” she said softly, her big brown eyes full of liking and acceptance as she gazed up at him. “Thank you so much for asking me….”
He’d be damned if he’d let the evening end like this. He was going to kiss her, at the very least—in a setting that would afford them a modicum of privacy. He couldn’t survive another night without a taste.
“Mind stepping this way with me for a moment?” he said, tugging her toward a little-used lounge area off the lobby that was likely to be vacant at that hour.
To his relief, all the tables in the lounge area were empty. Just a single lamp had been left burning.
“What’s…this about?” Jess asked, suddenly afraid he was going to tell her something negative about Annie’s prospects.
She barely managed to get out the words before his mouth was descending on hers. His tongue parted her lips, so strenuous and loving that it almost broke her heart. Strong arms dragged her against a hard wall of muscle.
Imagined so many lonely evenings as she’d sat beside Annie’s bed in a darkened hospital room, his kiss drew Jess into a maelstrom of passion and pleasure so intense she thought her bones would melt. She hadn’t known so much feeling existed in the world. That at least half of it was flowing forth from her only made her discovery that much more earthshaking. Never before had a man made her want to give him everything—come out of hiding to share her private lusts, her deepest secrets, with him. It boggled her mind that one who’d seemed so self-contained and hesitant to get involved would be so Viking-fierce and precipitate in his lovemaking.
How delicious, how womanly, she felt! With a helpless little groan that acknowledged just how far his defenses had slipped, Stephen cupped the seat of her shapely red skirt and hauled her more tightly up against him. It was as if the drought of the past two years had ended in a cloudburst, a vast outpouring of need that met fertile ground instead of parched earth. From the depths of his being, he longed to ravish and protect.
In that intimate embrace, Jess could feel the rod of his desire pressing against her. Layers of clothing separated them. Yet her body responded, shuddering in a little explosion of need as she opened her deepest portals to his plundering.
Abruptly, it was over. A hotel employee armed with a vacuum and other cleaning equipment had wandered in, muttered a quick apology and left again, but not before they became aware of his presence. The slight distraction had been enough to bring Stephen to his senses.
“Jess…forgive me,” he whispered, holding her now in a protective embrace. “I shouldn’t have let things get so out of hand.”
She gazed up at him, her pupils swallowing up her irises until they appeared fathomless. The palms of her hands continued to rest against his lapels. “It seems to me, Stephen,” she said in her perfectly modulated British accent, “that we both did. As for whether we shouldn’t have, that’s a matter of opinion.”
His passion subsiding, though it would have taken just the smallest spark to reignite it, Stephen felt gratitude and liking flow into its place. The corners of his mouth turned up. “Personally, I think what we just did together was pretty damn wonderful,” he confessed, so emphatically that he had her smiling, too. “If you’re willing, and you wouldn’t consider it a conflict of interest with Annie in my care, I’d like us to see more of each other.”
He wasn’t going to withdraw from her. They would date. That being the case, she didn’t have the slightest doubt that they’d become lovers, though in her heart of hearts she sensed there were barriers still to be erased.
“I’d like it, too,” she answered.
“Then it’s settled.” Considering himself highly fortunate, he kissed her again with hard-won restraint. A moment later, he was stepping back to put an arm about her waist. “C’mon, darlin’,” he added with a husky edge to his voice. “Since I don’t trust myself to see you to your room, I’ll walk you to the elevator.”
Jake was in luck. The judge assigned to preside at his preliminary hearing had known Sterling for years. Though they weren’t friends, they moved in the same social circles. At different times, he and the Fortune family lawyer had attended the same university, graduated from the same law school. He also knew Jake’s reputation, and his ties to the community, firsthand.
It turned out that he knew Aaron Silberman, too—if not with the liking of friendship, at least with respect for his legal prowess. He listened with keen attention to the criminal attorney’s contention that, by itself, the circumstantial evidence gathered by the state wasn’t enough for the case to be bound over for trial, as well as his rationale that Jake had too much to lose by skipping town if he was granted bail—to wit, his close relationship with his children and his executive position with Fortune Industries.
As was his right, the assistant county attorney assigned to the case spoke in rebuttal, repeating the arguments he’d
advanced at Jake’s arraignment. Further, he proposed that a man who’d murdered once might be expected to do bodily harm again, and should be kept behind bars.
Finally it was the judge’s turn to speak. He quickly ruled that the state had amassed sufficient evidence for a trial to take place. Somewhat reluctantly, given that evidence, he’d decided to accede to the defense attorney’s plea for bond.
“I’m setting it at one million dollars,” he warned Jake sternly. “You will be required to remain within the limits of Hennepin County until your trial. Any attempt to evade this jurisdiction will, in itself, be looked upon as a crime. You’ll be returned to jail forthwith.”
Stunned, Jake glanced from Aaron Silberman to Sterling. Was he really free to go? The family attorney nodded. A moment later, wearing street clothes for the first time since his arrest, Jake was brushing aside reporters’ questions as he walked with the two men from the judge’s chambers into an adjoining hall. His children and grandchildren were waiting for him. To his surprise, Erica was there, too, keeping somewhat in the background, as befitted their separation. He was both embarrassed and touched.
Natalie, the daughter who’d arrived at the family’s lakefront estate on the night of the murder in time to see his bloody, torn shirt, and had kept her promise never to tell anyone—except Sterling—of what he’d babbled in his drunken state about his confrontation with Monica, threw herself into his arms.
They both blinked as several strobe lights flashed. “I baked your favorite cookies, Dad,” she informed him with tears in her eyes, turning her face away from the battery of cameras and microphones that were being thrust at them. “Chocolate peanut-butter chip. They’re waiting for you at the house.”
His other children followed. At last it was Erica’s turn. Coming forward somewhat hesitantly, she shielded her face from the photos that were still being taken as she offered Jake her hand. “I’m awfully glad you got out,” she said in a low voice as he took it and, for a heartbeat, tightened his grip. “You didn’t belong in that place any more than the county attorney does. I…just wanted to say that I believe strongly in your innocence. If there’s anything I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
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