Jared's Love-Child

by Sandra Field

  She was going to take Lise’s advice. She was going to disappear from Jared’s life.

  Even though she wasn’t at all convinced Jared would try to trace her, by the next morning Devon had decided to cover her tracks. He’d had her investigated once; what was there stopping him from trailing her this time? So her first step was to give Thomas and Sally two weeks’ leave. Blushing from her duplicity, hoping they’d think she was blushing from embarrassment, she said, “Jared and I have had so little time together, we’d rather like the place to ourselves for a few days… I can arrange bookings for you, if you’d like to go somewhere.”

  Sally smiled, for once looking quite human. “We could go and see our grandchildren in Calgary, couldn’t we, Tom?”

  “You’re sure about this, Mrs. Holt? Mr. Holt didn’t mention it to me,” Thomas said doubtfully.

  “I’ll take full responsibility,” Devon said. “Let me book your tickets for tomorrow.”

  By noon the following day the Holts were gone. In the empty house, Devon wrote a letter to Jared and phoned a courier to pick it up. Her final revision was brief.

  Jared,

  Lise came to see me, bringing the photos I’m enclosing with this letter. They’re self-explanatory; I understand now why you didn’t want me to go to Singapore with you, or even to Manhattan. I only wish you’d told me the truth.

  I’m leaving you, Jared. You see, I did something very silly on our honeymoon—I fell in love with you. In consequence, I can’t bear to share you with another woman.

  Please don’t come after me or try to find me.

  She signed it simply “Devon,” and addressed it to his penthouse. She also wrote to Benson and Alicia, telling them that she was going away for a while, and they weren’t to worry. This letter she decided to send by ordinary mail. After the courier came, she called a cab.

  The taxi took Devon to the train station, where she changed her clothes in the women’s washroom and emerged looking very different. She took another cab to within a block of the bus station and caught a bus that took her onto the Vancouver Island ferry. She spoke to no one during the crossing, and once the bus reached Victoria she found a charming bed and breakfast by the waterfront that would take cash; she registered under an assumed name. All these precautions felt at one and the same time both ludicrous and absolutely necessary.

  Her room was very private, down a little corridor. Devon locked the door and lay down on the bed. All day she’d been fighting back tears. But now that she was alone, the tears wouldn’t come. Her eyes burning, she stared into the darkness, feeling more alone than she had ever felt.

  Jared had been unfaithful to her. Jared didn’t love her.

  Jared was chairing the board meeting in Austin when his secretary brought him a message. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, swiveled his chair round, and unfolded the paper. It must be important; his secretary knew better than to interrupt for anything trivial.

  His valet in Manhattan had phoned. A letter had been delivered by courier from Mrs. Holt in Vancouver. The valet awaited Mr. Holt’s instructions.

  Jared stared at the paper, reading it again, aware of tension tightening his shoulderblades. Why would Devon send a message by courier? She had only to phone if something was wrong.

  The baby. Had something happened to the baby? But a courier message? It made no sense. He pushed back his chair. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and left the room.

  Wallace, his valet, answered the phone on the second ring. “Holt residence. May I help you?”

  Wallace Henty had worked for Benson when Jared was in his teens; Jared trusted his discretion implicitly. “Wallace, will you open the letter from Mrs. Holt, please, and read it to me?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Jared could hear the sound of cardboard tearing. Then Wallace said noncommittally, “The package includes a number of photographs, sir. Of you and Miss Lamont.”

  Jared’s hand clenched around the receiver. “What photos?”

  “Looks like Singapore to me, sir. Three more taken here, and a couple at Giorgio’s disco.”

  Jared said tightly, “Is there a letter?”

  “Yes, sir.” Sounding as placid as if he were perusing the phone book, Wallace read Devon’s letter.

  In a cracked voice, Jared said, “Read it again.” But the words were exactly the same the second time. Devon was convinced he was having an affair with Lise. Devon loved him. Devon had left him and didn’t want him coming after her. He said urgently, “Have there been any other messages from Mrs. Holt?”

  “No, sir.”

  “If there are, you’re to get in touch with me immediately. Have you got that? Immediately.” Then Jared rang off. He dialed the house in Vancouver, letting the phone ring a dozen times before he cut the connection, nor did he get any response from either Sally or Thomas at the cottage. Where the devil was everyone?

  He phoned Alicia and Benson next. “Alicia, it’s Jared. Is Devon there?”

  “No…she’s in Vancouver, isn’t she?”

  It was too late for either tact or discretion. “She’s left me. I don’t know where she is. I’d hoped she’d have been in touch with you.”

  “Left you?”

  “Yes. She thought I was having an affair with Lise.”

  Even as he spoke the words Jared knew that part of his inner tumult was hurt that Devon hadn’t trusted him. But then he, more than most, should know what a convincing actress Lise could be. Put that together with the evidence of the photos, and it was a damning scenario. He wasn’t quite prepared to admit that his own behavior the last few weeks could have had something to do with it, too.

  “Are you having an affair?” Alicia demanded.

  She sounded as fierce as any mother protecting her young. “No, I’m not,” he said roundly. “I’ve never slept with Lise and I never will. I’m going to try and trace Devon, Alicia. And for God’s sake, if you or Dad hear from her, let me know, will you? Wallace always knows where I can be reached.”

  Alicia said, “Jared, do you love my daughter?”

  “I don’t know!” he said, exasperated.

  “I think it’s about time you figured it out. Devon’s been hurt by men before. She doesn’t need you toying with her affections.”

  Toying with her affections? What was that supposed to mean? “I’ll do my best,” he said sarcastically.

  “High time,” Alicia announced. “All women aren’t like Beatrice or Lise. Or even like me in my let’s-get-married-and-have-a-nice-divorce days. Devon can be proud and stubborn. But she can also be very loving.”

  “She fell in love with me on our honeymoon,” Jared heard himself say, and scowled into the receiver. He’d had no intention of sharing that piece of information with anyone. Not until he’d had the time to think about it. Digest it.

  “Don’t you dare break my daughter’s heart, Jared Holt,” Alicia said. Then she put the phone down in his ear.

  Women, he thought savagely, and dialed Information. In the next few minutes he talked to Sally and Thomas at their son’s place in Calgary, and ordered his private investigation firm to get on Devon’s trail. Then he put down the phone.

  Now what? The board meeting was far from finished, and the most important item of business had been left to the end. Briskly Jared walked back into the boardroom.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DEVON must have resolved something during the long hours she’d spent gazing at the ceiling’s gray rectangle in her room in Victoria. The next day, after breakfast, she went for a walk, deliberately trying to calm her mind. She had the baby to think of. She couldn’t afford to get run down or overly emotional. She must forget about the past, about Jared, and think only of the future. Perhaps she’d settle in this charming old-world city for the next few months. There’d be lots of opportunities to do translation work here.

  She bought a couple of novels; she went to a matinee of a movie she’d wanted to see; she ate supper in a vegetarian restaurant, reading one of
the novels. Then she took a cab back to her room.

  There were, of course, no messages.

  She closed the door to her room, spreading her purchases around to make the room look more lived in. Jared, she thought in sudden desperation, oh, Jared, how could you?

  Her storm of weeping was brief. She dried her eyes and got ready for bed. And this time it wasn’t loneliness that was her bedfellow, but desire. All she wanted in the world, she thought in despair, was what she couldn’t have: Jared beside her, his mouth on hers, his hands on her body. Jared faithful to her because he loved her.

  She might as well ask for the moon.

  The next day Devon had afternoon tea at The Empress Hotel, a ceremony that was an institution in Victoria. Her table was close to that of two other women, who were dissecting the marital difficulties of a number of their friends. Devon listened with half an ear, trying to find it funny that she wasn’t alone in her misery: adultery, it seemed, was rampant. Adultery was an odd word, she mused; there was nothing very adult about it.

  Then her attention sharpened. “If I had to choose,” the younger woman was saying, the one wearing a beaded turban, “I’d take Derek any day. He doesn’t say much, but he’s kind of solid. You can trust him. Harold, now—oh, Harold’s charming, cute as all get out, but I wouldn’t take one word he says to the bank. No way. Go for Derek, Marcy.”

  Devon sat frozen, a petit four halfway to her mouth, which was open. Harold sounded like Lise, charming, decorative, and out for number one. Whereas Jared—he didn’t say much, just like Derek. But when he did try and talk about his feelings, he was doing his best to tell the truth.

  One by one the pictures flashed through Devon’s brain. Jared telling her about Beatrice and Turnip, the ugly orange tomcat whom he’d loved. Jared’s face when he’d covered her with his big body in bed at the bungalow, the tenderness in his eyes the night they’d made love on the beach. Even his anger when he’d railed to her about business, his jealousy when she’d mentioned the dinner with Patrick. All there. Above board. Out in the open.

  Yet Devon had put her trust in Lise. Not in Jared.

  “Is everything all right, madam?”

  Devon put the cake down and gave the waitress a bemused look. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is. In fact, it’s getting better by the minute.”

  She’d been a fool. She’d taken the photos at face value. She’d allowed Lise—a famous Broadway actress—to drive her away from her own husband. To send her into hiding and cut herself off from the man she loved.

  She was going back to Vancouver. As fast as she could. And then she was going to find Jared, and tell him face to face that she loved him and was willing to wait for however long it took for him to fall in love with her.

  He would fall in love with her eventually…wouldn’t he?

  It was dark when Devon got back. The house looked deserted and unfriendly. The trees had long ago lost their leaves, their branches bony against the sky. Frost had killed the last of the flowers, and Thomas, of course, was away instead of being here to clean them up. She paid off the cabbie and went inside, very aware of all the empty rooms, of her footsteps echoing on the parquet floor.

  At the door of the sunroom, she stopped and looked around uneasily. She hadn’t left the phone book out like that, had she? And her papers had been neatly piled on the desk, not scattered all over it.

  Her heart fluttering like a trapped bird, she went upstairs to the master bedroom. Drawers had been pulled out, her closet door gaped open, and someone had sat on the bed. Jared? It had to be Jared. Otherwise the security system would have alerted the police.

  But he wasn’t here now. No suitcase, no other signs of occupancy, not even in the kitchen, which was just as she’d left it. If he’d been here, he’d gone again.

  He hadn’t bothered leaving a note.

  Briefly Devon contemplated spending the night in a hotel. But the thought of the phone calls to get a reservation, and of making another journey, defeated her. She’d be fine here.

  She went downstairs, staring dubiously at the panel of the security system. She was pretty sure it was set right. She didn’t want to start playing about with it, because if she did something wrong and set it off the police would come roaring up the driveway.

  She didn’t need that.

  Switching off all the lights, she trailed upstairs, discovering within herself a strong dislike of sleeping all alone in the kingsized bed in the master bedroom. She’d done that while Sally was here; Sally wouldn’t have approved the mistress of the house using one of the guest bedrooms. But Sally was in Calgary. She, Devon, could do as she pleased. She pushed open the door of the smallest of the guest rooms, with its bay window that overlooked the woods, and its attractive brick fireplace. She’d sleep here. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel so lonely.

  Devon put her case on the bed and picked up the phone. Chewing on her lip, she dialed Jared’s penthouse, desperate for him to answer, longing for his deep baritone to calm all her fears across the many miles that separated them. But on the fourth ring, the answering machine clicked in. “Jared,” she said tremulously, “it’s Devon. I’m back in Vancouver. Will you phone me as soon as possible, please?” She took a deep breath. “I love you.” Then she put down the receiver.

  He should be home now, shouldn’t he? In between his trips to Texas and San Francisco?

  Maybe he was out with Lise.

  She stifled this ugly little thought as quickly as she could. She was going to trust Jared. That was what she’d decided to do in Victoria, and the fact that he wasn’t home in the middle of the night in New York wasn’t going to change her mind.

  Swiftly Devon went into the bathroom, where she showered and put on a pretty nightgown to give herself courage, then she got into bed. Pulling the covers over her head so she wouldn’t be so aware of the huge, empty house that surrounded her, she closed her eyes.

  Within five minutes, she was asleep.

  Devon woke from a dream in which she was maid-of-honor at a wedding. She replayed it in her mind, not sure whether to laugh or cry. Aunt Bessie was playing ragtime on the organ, and all Alicia’s husbands were lined up as ushers. Devon was marrying Steve and Jared was marrying Lise, whose bouquet was a huge bundle of skunk cabbage. And then Steve dropped the ring, which landed in an empty champagne glass, shattering it into a thousand pieces.

  Glass tinkled to the floor downstairs. A man’s voice said something indistinguishable, then a door snapped shut and footsteps crossed the hardwood flooring. Devon sat up, her eyes widening with panic, her heartbeat almost deafening her. She hadn’t dreamed that. No, that had been real. Someone was in the house. As quietly as she could, she picked up the phone beside the bed, dialled 911 and whispered, “Burglar—hurry,” when the woman answered. Then she slipped out of bed and glided over to the door. The small gold bolt was more decorative than useful. But the bureau beside the door was solid mahogany. She put her back to it, panic giving her strength, and shoved it in front of the door, wincing as it scraped across the floor.

  Through the door she heard the sound of rough voices, then someone’s shoulder crashed against the panels. Biting her lip to stop herself from screaming, she added her own weight to that of the bureau. Leaning back on it as hard as she could, she closed her eyes and prayed that the police would hurry.

  Jared took a cab from the Vancouver airport. Thomas and Sally were still in Calgary; he’d told them to stay put because there was nothing they could do at the house. He didn’t really know what he was doing back in Vancouver, unless it was obeying a deep, irrational need to be as close as possible to the last place Devon had been seen.

  She hadn’t used her credit card, hadn’t made a plane or hotel reservation under her own name, hadn’t been seen on the train going east. She’d taken a cab to the station and then she’d dropped out of sight.

  The message was obvious. She didn’t want to be found.

  So why was he back here looking for her? And why did he feel as st
rung out as if he were about to fall flat on his face in the biggest deal of his whole career?

  As clearly as if he were already there, he could picture the mansion overlooking the mountains and the bay. He’d ordered the furniture almost a year ago, sight unseen; the walls still cried out for paintings; the floors were bare of rugs. He’d never put any thought into the house, any of himself. Yet he’d dumped Devon there without a second thought, miles from her family and even more miles from Manhattan, because he’d had this vague idea of her making a home out of the house.

  Without him. He hadn’t even slept with her there.

  I’m lonely, she’d said. I’m lonely for you, Jared. And he’d shrugged her words off, because he’d had more important matters on his mind.

  The cab pulled up at a red light. She could be staying half a mile from the house, for all he knew. Or she could be out of the country. She must have a lot of overseas friends from all her travels.

  He’d never bothered asking about her friends. He’d been too busy taking her to bed. Too busy making money.

  Blame and discouragement sat like lead weights on his shoulders. Not to mention exhaustion: he hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep since Wallace had read him Devon’s letter. Did you never truly value what you had until you’d lost it? Jared wondered, gazing out the window as the cab started to move again. Devon had fallen in love with him on their honeymoon. But had he noticed? No, sir. Not him. He’d been too worried about forgetting his own rules, about being totally out of control; he’d hated being at the mercy of a woman with sea-blue eyes and hair like silk. Her feelings hadn’t entered into it. He’d had no room for them.

  He’d been a self-centered bastard, he thought bitterly. And what if it was too late? Even if he found Devon, he couldn’t force her to come back to him. She didn’t want his money. And if she couldn’t bring herself to trust him, they were done for.