“I know that, dear. And you seem to have convinced Ty of the same. So, I’m the enemy, and Cammie’s the ally?” He glanced at his son for verification, but Ty’s face was granite. An answer wasn’t necessary anyway. Cammie knew her relationship with Ty was too evident to miss. And Samuel Stovall, for all his faults, was an astute man. She glanced down at her blouse, rumpled from their earlier romantic fumblings. Glaring signs. Telltale evidence.
“Why did you come now?” Ty gazed straight into his father’s eyes.
“When Camilla didn’t immediately return, I felt I should—”
“No, I mean, why after ten years? Ten years…and then here you are. All of a sudden.”
“Time passes…” He spread his hands.
“No.” Ty slowly wagged his head from side to side, refusing to give Samuel an inch. “There’s a reason. Bruce was burgled for my address. Tell me why now.”
Cammie’s heart thundered so hard it almost deafened her. Sweat broke out on her back and under her arms. Ty was tough, angry, and implacable. He would never accept that Sam wanted to “reconnect”: her own weak excuse. The web of lies she’d spun couldn’t save her now from the plain truth.
Sam flicked her a look and Cammie stiffened. He had to know she hadn’t delivered Rock Bottom as promised, otherwise Ty would have mentioned it by now. The guillotine was poised, the firing squad at the ready.
She waited in agony.
“Do you mind if I have a brantly?” Samuel asked.
“I’ve got scotch.”
“That’ll do.” Samuel cleared his throat and seated himself on the couch. Cammie’s nerves screamed for him to get on with it. She couldn’t bear the hope that somehow this would turn out all right. It was unfair.
Ty fixed his drink, and, after a brief hesitation, one for himself as well. Without asking, he made a third and pressed it into Cammie’s cold hands. They all looked at each other, and Samuel was by far the most relaxed.
“Oh, stop looking like the apocalypse has arrived,” he growled in exasperation to both of them.
“What prompted this invasion?” Ty reminded him. He gazed without liking at his father.
Cammie swallowed, forgetting to breathe. Her head was airy, her knees jelly. She couldn’t move for fear of falling down. Clutching the scotch, she dimly wondered if it truly contained restorative powers. Deciding there was no harm in finding out, she lifted the glass to her lips. Gulping, choking, and ultimately gasping for air, she swallowed a healthy dose. While Ty and Samuel’s eyes silently dueled, Cammie staggered on unsteady legs to the armchair across from Samuel, collapsing into its depths.
I deserve this…I deserve this…I deserve this…but oh, my God, I can’t bear it!
Ty moved to her side, touching her arm. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she squeaked out.
“It’s the scotch,” Ty told her, not understanding.
“The stuff’s pure poison,” Samuel observed with a smile, sipping his own drink and making a mockery of his words. Ty shot him another look and Sam took a deep breath.
Cammie waited in a dull haze.
“I’ve got a story to tell,” Samuel began. “One you only know parts of, but it’s really what provided the impetus.”
“What story?” Ty propped himself on the arm of Cammie’s chair.
“It’s about you and—Gayle.” He let his words sink in and Cammie gazed at him incomprehensibly. Gayle? What was this? Why wasn’t he bringing up the screenplay?
Samuel lifted his palms, his lips parting. He hesitated a moment, as if searching for the right words, then suggested to Ty, “Maybe this should just be between you and me.”
Cammie’s heart jerked in fear. Bad enough to hear by her own ears; worse to have Samuel explain all the whys and wherefores to Ty without her present.
There’s no hope anyway. None. What does it matter?
“Cammie can hear whatever you have to say,” Ty told him coldly, and Sam inclined his head, as if to say, “It’s your funeral.”
He cleared his throat. “All right. It started ten years ago. Not long after Gayle’s death and just about the time you left.”
“What started?” asked Ty.
“I received a demand for money that I couldn’t ignore,” he stated flatly.
Baffled, Cammie lifted dazed blue eyes. Samuel didn’t even flick her a glance. He looked thoughtful and serious and was embroiled in a story that seemed to come out of left field.
What’s he doing? Why isn’t he telling the truth about the film? Why is he lying? Who’s he protecting?
“A demand for money? Blackmail?” Ty’s brows lifted. This was clearly coming as a surprise to him, too.
“Gayle’s maid. Or maybe she was a personal assistant, I don’t know. A rather fierce and tenacious woman named Phoebe came to see me straight after Gayle’s death. She had a note with her, in Gayle’s own hand.”
Ty blinked. “A suicide note? I don’t remember a suicide note.”
“It was a letter actually, addressed to me. Phoebe brought a photostat to me. In it, Gayle said good-bye to me, and good-bye to you. She said she was killing herself and her baby because I didn’t love her. She wanted me to know it was all because she’d caught me in our bed with another woman.” Samuel shook his head. “Our bed? Where did she come up with that? I was married to Felicia, and Gayle burst in on us in bed one time! It scared Felicia out of her mind and me, too, for that matter. The lady was plain bonkers!”
Ty’s face was stone. Judgment reserved.
“Come on, Son. You can’t deny that she was a kook! She was always doing something weird. You’d had your fill of her, too, don’t say you hadn’t.”
“You were having an affair with Gayle. She obviously thought it meant something more.”
“I was married to Felicia,” Samuel reported stubbornly, as if that had any bearing on his actions, then or now.
“The woman was a manic-depressive, my shrink said,” Samuel went on. “She had delusions about me, and about you, too. She was always doing something nutty.”
“She wanted you to marry her,” Ty reminded him.
“What?” Samuel laughed. “She jumped on me because you didn’t want her, though I didn’t know it at the time! Later, she transferred her sick desires to me. It was a mess.”
“You didn’t have to sleep with her,” Ty reminded him.
“I shouldn’t have,” he agreed.
“Why did you?”
“I don’t know really. I guess, because she was yours…”
This admission was more than Cammie would have believed possible for the arrogant, egomaniac who’d sired Ty. Her expression must have said as much, for Samuel shrugged. “I’ve faced a few things over the years. I had a few—problems with your success. After years of therapy, I can admit it now. Gayle was a huge mistake.” He grimaced and swallowed half his drink, scarcely reacting to the burn at all. “A huge mistake.”
“She was pregnant,” Cammie murmured.
Samuel narrowed his eyes, obviously not liking to be reminded of that fact.
“Whose baby was it?” Cammie dared to ask the question Ty had been torturing himself with for ten years.
Both men looked at her, but it was Samuel who murmured, “So he told you. I’m surprised. Ty can be awfully touchy about his personal problems.”
“I never did the DNA tests,” Ty said.
“Yeah, well, I did…” Both Cammie and Ty gazed at him in reluctant anticipation. “It was yours,” he told Ty.
“What?” Ty was staggered. “Is this some sick joke?”
“Of course not!” Samuel was affronted. “She tried to say it was mine. Maybe she wanted it to be. But the tests proved differently, and it was all academic anyway since she killed herself and the baby before anyone knew the truth.”
“So, what were you blackmailed over?”
“The whole sordid mess. Me, you, Gayle, paternity tests, suicide…” He grimaced. “What an unholy mess.”
“So, this
Phoebe came to you with a good-bye note. And she wanted money,” Ty took up where Samuel left off.
“She wanted some cash. A solid amount, but not tons. Just enough to send her son, Warren, through law school. I debated. Good God, it was a disaster. Felicia didn’t want the whole sordid story to hit the press, and it sure as hell wouldn’t have helped my career—or yours, for that matter—so I debated fiercely about giving her the money. But it rankled, you know? Like Gayle reaching out from the grave.”
Cammie turned away. She didn’t approve of blackmail, but Samuel’s casual insensitivity curdled her stomach. To him, Gayle and her unborn child were a nuisance, nothing more.
“So, I’d just about decided to kick her butt out of my office when you hightailed it to God knew where!” Samuel glared at Tyler as if the whole thing were his fault.
For his part, Ty was still coping with the thought that the child had been his, his! He’d never believed it. Never. He’d proved phony paternity claims before. This was just another one. Until now…
“You looked guilty as hell!” Samuel went on.
That broke Ty’s reverie. “Guilty? Guilty of what?”
“Pushing her to suicide!”
“Oh, come on!” Ty slammed his half-finished drink on the table. The amber fluid jumped out of the glass and puddled on the coffee table’s cherry top.
“I wasn’t going to have the scandal,” Samuel declared, “so I paid for her precious son’s law school, not that the slimy little creep deserved it.”
“You’re nuts,” Ty said. “You should have just weathered the storm.”
“You shouldn’t have run!” Samuel’s jaw jutted forward pugnaciously. “I had to pay Phoebe to kill the scandal before it even started, so all’s well that ends well.”
Ty shook his head in disbelief. “You’re the one with a guilty conscience.”
Cammie had to agree with Ty. Only a guilty conscience would bend to such ridiculous, outrageous demands.
With a sigh, Ty said, “That still doesn’t explain why it was suddenly so imperative for you to find me now.”
“Phoebe died last December. Her son, Warren the lawyer,” he bit out, as if the word tasted bad, “discovered Gayle’s note. Apparently, Phoebe kept it in a safe-deposit box with a list of all the payments I’d made to her. He brought it up to me again.”
“You did it to yourself,” Tyler said, torn between horror and disgust. “You paid the blackmail and left a trail right back to yourself!”
Samuel didn’t like his son’s implications, but he was bound and determined to carry on with his tale. Cammie, though rapt, kept wondering when Rock Bottom was going to be brought into the conversation. Or, had the screenplay just been a convenient excuse? A way to approach Ty that, in the end, hadn’t needed to be used?
It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but Cammie was at a complete loss when it came to Samuel Stovall anyway. He was a man pursuing his own goals, and those goals were a mystery, it appeared.
“I thought the little scoundrel wanted to take up where his mother left off, but no, Warren went to the police.”
Cammie’s brows lifted. “The police? Why?”
“Apparently, he felt there was something more to the story. Something I was trying to hide.” Samuel’s mouth tightened with remembered fury. “The bastard didn’t even bat an eye when he learned how his education was paid for. But, by golly, he wasn’t going to be tainted by it! Lilywhite, he is, now that he’s got that damned degree in his tight little fist.”
Samuel’s outrage was almost comical. Cammie swallowed and threw a look at Ty. He seemed as poleaxed as she was. His father couldn’t see that he’d made his own bed—and was now forced to lie in it.
“Warren went to the police,” Ty prompted his father.
“They wanted to know why I’d paid the money. I was furious. Then the flatfoots started asking about you. The DNA tests were brought up. They showed the child wasn’t mine, but it was close enough to be an almost-match. They wanted to know how that was possible. The obvious answer was that the child was yours. You’d been dating Gayle, et cetera.”
“And?” Ty’s eyes were dark, his mouth tight.
Here, Samuel hesitated, coughing into his hand. “They wondered if your sudden flight might have been motivated somehow by these events. Gayle was pregnant, after all. And you’d already fought one paternity suit…”
“And won,” Ty reminded him tautly.
“But they figured that maybe you didn’t want to go through it all again, the legal way, especially since the child could be proven to be yours.”
Samuel’s craggy cheeks seemed to slacken at this admission, making him appear, suddenly, every one of his sixtyodd years.
“You made them think Ty was responsible for Gayle’s death?” she declared, aghast.
“No, no, no!” Samuel was adamant. “They tried to twist it all around, and I wanted to kill that weasel, Warren. It was just speculation and assumption that all got blown out of proportion, but it’s all been put to rest now. Don’t worry, I took care of everything. You’re not wanted by the police.”
“Oh, thanks,” Ty said harshly.
“I’ll accept a certain amount of blame,” Samuel said stiffly, “but I’m not the one who ran away and made myself look guilty! You did that all on your own. And, whether you like it or not, that’s what it looks like.”
“You’re the one who paid blackmail. You made it look that way,” Ty pointed out.
“I did what I felt was best. Anyway, it’s all over and done with now. Gayle’s death was a suicide. There was no evidence of foul play. She threw herself out of a window because she was mentally unstable. She wanted a Stovall, any Stovall. She had us mixed up together. You should read the note.”
“No, thanks.”
“So, this is why you wanted to find Ty?” Cammie asked him, a flick of anger burning inside her at the way everyone had been used, even herself.
“I have a lot of reasons to see my son again,” he reminded her tautly, his taut gaze loaded with extra meaning. “But after that go-around with the police, I decided it was high time to get over this nonsense,” Samuel admitted. “What good does it do to hide out here anyway? It’s ridiculous and melodramatic. It’s time you grew up and came home.”
Ty just stared in disbelief at his father.
Samuel clasped his hands together. “If you came back now, it would have great impact, fabulous resonance. All would be forgotten as soon as you reappeared and started making films again.”
Cammie couldn’t believe it. “Gayle committed suicide. She killed herself and her baby. Ty’s baby,” she told him intensely. “And just when that all came crashing down on him, he learned his father had been having an affair with his woman, and that, furthermore, the baby might be his father’s. And all you can say is that his return would have fabulous resonance?”
“I don’t need your sarcasm,” Samuel declared.
“Get out,” Ty growled.
Cammie, once started, couldn’t be stopped. “It’s an ugly, tawdry tale! And you don’t seem to grasp its significance. You contributed so much to Ty’s reasons for leaving, and now you just think everything’s ‘all better’! You want him to come back, so he should come back. End of story!”
“Stay out of this, Camilla,” Samuel warned.
“Your son has a battered soul, Mr. Stovall, and he’s spent a lot of years trying to mend it,” Cammie stated tautly. “Whatever your reasons for coming here, they’re clearly not in Ty’s best interest.”
“Get out,” Ty ordered again, staring his father down. “You remind me of every reason why I left.”
“Tyler, there’s more.”
There’s more…
The words were prophetic. She’d heard them from Ty’s own mouth, and they, too, had involved Gayle. The tragedy of her death haunted like the notes of a half-remembered song.
“I don’t care what it is.” Ty moved toward the door, his stern, steady gaze silently inviting his fath
er to accompany him.
Sam, however, took no notice of his son’s warning. He remained where he sat, albeit tensely, as if he knew he was pushing too hard. “Even though the police have put the case to rest, I’m afraid there’s been some interest by the press.”
“Oh, God…” Ty shook his head in disbelief. “Why would you think I would ever want to come back?”
Cammie’s heart sank. Any good she’d done, any bit of encouragement to get Ty to rethink his reasons for leaving, were being slammed down by Samuel’s story. If Ty’s father had really wanted him to take the role in Rock Bottom, he was burying the chance before it even saw the light of day.
“Do you know what you’ve left behind?” Samuel asked him rhetorically.
“Oh, yes.”
“I don’t think you do. People struggle all their lives for one smidgen of the fame you hold in your hands—and you’re not even trying!”
“Fame—or her perception of its worth—destroyed Gayle,” Ty stated flatly. “If either you or I had been a—small-time real estate speculator in a Canadian coastal town, say”—his eyes glinted with ironic humor—“then she would not have hitched her wagon to our stars. Simple.”
Samuel gestured impatiently with one hand. “Gayle was Gayle. It’s over, and that’s it.”
“You just said the press wants to make something of it.”
“Well, of course they do! They’re always scrounging for something. My point is…” He hesitated, as if realizing his next words wouldn’t be taken in the vein he wanted them to be. “My point is that this is an opportune time for you to return.”
“You mean, use this! This publicity!”
Ty’s horror couldn’t be disguised. Cammie, too, felt completely affronted.
“How horrible!” she declared.
“It’s going to be there anyway—the whole publicity,” Sam said with a dismissive shrug. “Don’t you see? This story’s been percolating for ten years. It’s going and going and going, and no matter when you come back, it’ll bite you. I’m just saying that you might as well use it. That’s all.”
Someday Soon Page 27