FALSE PRETENSES

by Catherine Coulter

  Ten minutes later, Jonathan walked from his office. His face was utterly white. Midge jumped to her feet. “What happened?”

  He silently handed her a letter, one she hadn’t opened because it had been marked “PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL.”

  The envelope had no return address on it. It was blank save for Jonathan’s name and address. Her hand was shaking as she smoothed out the single page. She finished reading it, then looked up at her boss’s face. It was no longer white. He was flushed with anger, and his jaw was working.

  “The bastards, the damned bastards,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I won’t let them get away with it.”

  Actually, Midge wanted to tell him, it wasn’t bastards at all, it was a woman, one very big, very powerful woman. Elizabeth Xavier Carleton. And she wanted Jonathan’s company.

  Charles Henkle ordered a Perrier. He never drank during the day, but he sure wanted something stiff right now. His eyes remained trained on the door of La Fourchette. Young men in business suits streamed in, young government men for the most part. This restaurant wasn’t popular with his cronies and he’d picked it for just that reason.

  He saw Brad step toward the hostess exactly two minutes past noon. Punctual bastard.

  He didn’t rise. Brad’s face was a study of concern. “Sir,” he said, and stuck out his hand.

  Charles said, “Sit down, Brad.”

  Brad pulled back his hand and sat down, his eyes carefully studying the older man’s face. Charles looked older, more tired, and Brad could see strain in his eyes. Why all the secrecy and this command performance?

  “You’re well, sir?” he asked, with proper deference.

  “No, I’m not,” said Charles. “Nor am I the least bit hungry. I simply asked you here because I didn’t fancy meeting in some park. I suggest that you order a drink, Brad.”

  Brad ordered a Scotch. What was wrong? Why was Charles babbling about meeting in a park?

  Charles waited until Brad drank a long swallow from his Scotch glass. Then he said very calmly the words he’d rehearsed so he wouldn’t physically assault the young man: “You aren’t going to marry Jenny. Indeed, you’ll break it off with her. I would suggest that you claim you’ve met another woman, you can’t help yourself, you don’t want to hurt her, all that nonsense. I’m certain you can carry it off once you give it enough thought.”

  Brad very carefully set down his glass. His mind was racing. “What is this all about? You know I love Jenny. You know there isn’t another girl.”

  “No, I don’t imagine there is,” said Charles, his voice laced with irony.

  Brad frowned and a small thrill of fear began to travel through him. He said nothing for a moment, his brain frantically sorting through possibilities. He stared at Henkle’s thick wavy white hair and clear blue eyes, imagining cynically that his constituency believed him the epitome of a statesman, an honest and honorable man. In God’s name, what was the old man’s problem?

  “Lunch, gentlemen?”

  Charles shook his head and waved the waiter away.

  “As I said, Brad, you’ll break it off with Jenny. I’ll give you three days to come up with the best story. No longer.”

  This ridiculous old man telling him what to do, just because he was a bigwig in the government? Brad could buy and sell him three times over. “No, I won’t,” Brad said. “As I said, I love your daughter, and she, I might add, loves me.”

  “I know she loves you, more’s the pity. Her heart will mend, however. Don’t make me get dirty, Brad.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Very well.” Charles opened his briefcase and extracted one photograph. He handed it to Brad facedown.

  He watched the young man’s face go slack with shock.

  He watched his mouth work, but nothing came out. Charles leaned forward over the table and said very softly, “Now, you dirty little bastard, you will do just as I said.”

  Brad reacted without thinking. He shredded the photograph.

  “I have five others. Each are quite detailed,” said Charles.

  “How did you get these?”

  He sounded defeated, and scared, scared as hell. Charles felt no pity for him, not an ounce. “I got them, that’s all I need to tell you. Just one thing—have you slept with my daughter?”

  Brad wanted to shout at the old man that he’d screwed Jenny a good hundred times, but he wasn’t stupid. If he said he’d slept with her, there was no telling what Henkle would do. “No,” he said. “I haven’t slept with Jenny.”

  “You’d better be telling me the truth, Carleton. I’ll ask Jenny, you may be sure of that, and she always tells me the truth.”

  Brad gulped. “Very well. We did sleep together, but just two or three times. I always used a condom, I swear it.”

  Charles wanted to kill him. “You lying little slime. You deserve to die.” He lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “If you don’t do exactly what I tell you to do, I’ll see that everyone in the entire world sees these photos. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Good.”

  “If I do as you say, will you give me the photographs?”

  “Worried, aren’t you? Yes, I’ll give them to you.” Charles laughed. “You see, you filthy scum, someone sent the photos to me, anonymously. So someone else knows, knows all about you. You’d best cover your flank. You’ve nothing to fear from me if you break off with my daughter. Now, I’m leaving. You sicken me.”

  Charles tossed a twenty on the table. He handed Brad the envelope of photos. “You might want these,” he said, “for inspiration. Just remember that I have another set.”

  Brad didn’t know what to say. He felt a certain amount of relief, despite his fear. He was aware of the contempt flowing from the senator. What did he know about anything? He swallowed down angry words, and watched Charles walk from the restaurant.

  Brad looked at his grandmother, so proud, so queenly-looking, as was her wont. Queenly. He would have laughed at the thought had he been able. Odd how he never thought of her as old, not really. Objectively, she was ancient, a relic. She should be his little white-haired grandmother, a bit dotty and all that. God, what a joke. He was beginning to believe that she’d live forever, and control all of them until they died off. He glanced toward his Uncle Michael, who was seated near Laurette, his expression one of mild curiosity.

  “Now I suppose you will tell your uncle and me what this is all about?” Laurette asked in her calm, well-bred voice.

  Brad closed the library doors very firmly. “I’m not going to marry Jenny Henkle,” he said.

  Laurette merely arched an eyebrow at her grandson. “May I ask why?”

  Brad pictured Jenny’s face in his mind for a moment, seeing her bewilderment, her shock, then the tears that streamed down her face. Pitiful little female. He realized that he’d cared more for her at that instant than he ever had before. And she loved him, really loved him, at least she thought she did.

  He said, “Jenny broke it off.”

  Michael merely stared at him. “Bull,” he said. “The girl would kill for you.”

  “Why?” asked Laurette, her voice sounding mildly interested, no more.

  “She decided that we wouldn’t suit.”

  Brad knew the moment his Uncle Michael realized the truth. Not all of it, not the nastiness, but enough of it. He sucked in his breath and his face went pale. “It’s just as well,” he said. “Yes, it’s just as well.”

  “Both of you are being ridiculous,” said Laurette. “I want this marriage. You will go through with it, Bradley. If you have already spoken to Jenny, you will call her back . . . no, you will go see her, on your hands and knees, if necessary.”

  “That’s impossible, Grandmother,” Brad said, sending an agonized look toward his uncle.

  Michael shrugged. “She knows,” he said.

  “I know,” Laurette said in a crisp voice, “that you have this unfortunate .
. . propensity for men, Bradley. Is that what Michael is talking about?”

  “Yes, it is. Her father knows and he threatened me with exposure if I didn’t break it off immediately.”

  Laurette closed her eyes a moment. She felt the familiar pain in her kidneys, at least she thought it was her kidneys. It could be anything. It wasn’t fair. There was so much to do . . . so much. At times like this, she wanted to just get up and leave the room, leave everything to Michael. But Michael wasn’t Timothy. He would flounder like a raft in a storm. “I will speak to Senator Henkle,” she said.

  “No, Grandmother, you can’t.”

  “I assure you that I can.”

  “He . . . he has photos.” There, he’d said it. It was out in the open.

  “Show them to me,” Laurette said.

  Michael jumped to his feet. “No, Mother, please, no.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Michael. I assure you that I’ve seen everything there is to see in my eighty-four years. The photos, if you please, Bradley.”

  Silently Brad handed her the envelope. He watched her pull out the photos, one at a time. There wasn’t a sound in the room. Michael had dropped his head into his hands. Brad felt frozen to the spot, his eyes on his grandmother’s face. He felt shame, so much shame that he wanted to choke on it. She showed no expression.

  She still said nothing as she replaced the photos in the envelope. “Does Henkle have copies?”

  “He told me that he did. He told me he would give them to me once I’d broken off with Jenny.”

  “I believe him,” she said. She continued thoughtfully, “Now, of course, the important thing is, where did he get the photos?”

  “I don’t know. He said they were sent to him anonymously.”

  “Elizabeth,” she whispered.

  Michael started. “Come now, Mother, really. Not Elizabeth.”

  “Both of you are fools. Just because she’s a woman, just because she has no business experience, you discount her. You know as well as I do that she found out about Rowe Chalmers and, shall we say, neutralized him. She’s growing stronger by the minute. Come, Michael, you know that she has taken over ACI. Now this.”

  She looked at the envelope for a moment, then placed it in a drawer of her desk. She locked the drawer.

  “First things first,” Laurette said, willing the pain to subside. She despised painkillers. They numbed and slowed her mind. “Henkle,” she said. “Our dear Senator Henkle.”

  “It’s over,” said Michael.

  “I’m beginning to think that Catherine, despite all her wildness, has more guts than you do, Michael, and you, Bradley. Now, you will indeed break off with the fellow in those photographs. No, don’t argue with me, Bradley! Break it off. Then you will arrange to see Jenny again.”

  “But why, Grandmother? You know as well as I do that Senator Henkle would act.”

  “Photographs,” she said very gently, “don’t have to be the doing of only one person. No, indeed.” Timothy had taught her that many years before. She couldn’t remember the details now, but it had worked. Timothy had laughed and rubbed his hands together, and she had learned that ruthlessness was the key to the game.

  Brad stared at her, at first not understanding. When he did, he wanted to puke. “I can’t,” he said.

  “You will do as you’re told,” said Laurette, out of patience with him now. “You will call Jenny and convince her that breaking off with her was a mistake. To convince her of your love, you will take her to a motel that we select in advance. You will make love to her very thoroughly. I trust you will be able to manage that with aplomb. Then we will pay a visit to Senator Henkle. With photos of our own.”

  A week went by. There was nothing about a breaking of the engagement of Bradley Carleton and Jennifer Henkle.

  “I don’t understand,” Elizabeth said.

  Rod sat back in his huge leather chair, his expression thoughtful. “I don’t either, yet.”

  They did, that afternoon. Elizabeth withdrew photos from an unmarked envelope. They were of Bradley and Jennifer Henkle, naked, in various positions. Some of them were on a bed, some on the floor. The close-up details were devastating. That poor girl, Elizabeth thought, hating herself in that moment for starting the whole thing. Jennifer Henkle was innocent, and now this.

  There was a note enclosed that said only, “If you publish the photos of Bradley Carleton, these will also be published. They will ruin Senator Henkle and his entire family.”

  “Hardball, Elizabeth,” Rod said softly.

  “That’s one to Laurette, isn’t it?”

  “Unless you want the Henkles on your conscience.”

  Elizabeth rose from her chair and unconsciously smoothed down her wool skirt. “No, you know I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “I wonder what the senator will do,” Adrian said aloud.

  The wedding date of Bradley Carleton and Jennifer Henkle was announced the following day. Just one month after Rowe Chalmers would be married.

  Elizabeth’s OBC project died on the spot. “But only until we can come up with something else,” she said. “He’ll make a mistake, a big one. Then we’ll strike.”

  That evening, Christian wondered what was wrong with her. She was withdrawn, silent. He began kissing her, the first time drawing her tightly against him. She did nothing, didn’t react one way or the other.

  “I’ve got to do something, Christian,” she said at last when he released her.

  Christian sighed inwardly. “Something I can help you with, Elizabeth?”

  She wanted to say yes, to pour it all out, but she didn’t. Rowe had taught her well, too well. “Forgive me,” she said, trying to soften her words. “It’s something quite foolish, really, Christian. Nothing that should concern you. I’m sorry to be such a pain.” She gave him a big smile and hugged him. “You’re so important to me,” she whispered against his shoulder.

  “Yes,” he said, kissing her hair. “I want to be.” He wondered if she were thinking of Rowen Chalmers, and bit his lower lip in rage. But he couldn’t ask her.

  12

  “I want to know what you want, Catherine. You’re twenty-four years old. You graduated from Harvard. I want you to tell me what you want to do with your life.”

  Her granddaughter looked thin, the flesh of her face drawn too tightly over the bones. There were dark shadows beneath her expressive eyes, attesting that she wasn’t sleeping well. Laurette wondered if perhaps Catherine were still ill. Ill, she thought with a wince at her ridiculous euphemism. Catherine had spent nearly two weeks in a private sanatorium in Vermont, and supposedly had no more addiction to cocaine. But she was still irritable, still nervous, her body flinching at any unexpected sound.

  Laurette said softly when Catherine didn’t answer her, “I want you to be happy, my dear. But you must be strong now. You must search for your direction.”

  Catherine laughed, but it wasn’t a healthy sound. “My direction,” she mused aloud, staring away from her grandmother. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

  “I remember how well you did in mathematics, my dear. You were the top of your class, remember?”

  It seemed a century ago to Catherine. “Yes,” she said, “I remember.”

  “I even remember when you wanted to become a wildcatter,” Laurette said, giving Catherine her special smile. “You were five years old and you’d just gotten a kitten. You heard your father talking about oil drilling and announced that that was what you wanted to do if you could find more cats like Marvin.”

  Catherine grinned at that. “Goodness, Grandmother, I hadn’t thought about that in years! I remember you laughing and kissing me.”

  There hadn’t been much laughter or kissing of late, Laurette thought. Life had become so complicated. She said gently, coming back to the present, “You did so well in your first three years at Harvard.”

  “Yes, until . . .”

  “Until you decided to be a flighty, useless rich girl.”

  Cath
erine sucked in her breath, her eyes flying to her grandmother’s face. “That’s cruel.”

  “Perhaps, but it’s the truth. You’re no longer five years old, Catherine. You’re a grown woman. It’s time you acted like one. It’s time you did something with yourself. A life without goals is a sorry excuse for existence. Do you remember your Great-Aunt Marion? She had face-lifts every couple of years, bought clothes until she had to have more closets built to hold them. But she had no goals, Catherine. She wasn’t ever a happy woman.”

  “I don’t suppose so,” Catherine said. “I remember Father saying she was crazy.”

  “No, she was a woman who elected to live her life through other people. Through her husband and perhaps through me, her older sister. All those ghastly rules about women and what they should and shouldn’t do. She never got beyond those strictures, never saw herself as free to be what she wished.” Laurette paused. She must be getting old, all these memories, all of them set in concrete now. There was the present and Catherine and she had to help her. She said abruptly, “Now, my dear, Chad Walters is dead, as is your unfortunate drug habit. It is time to face up to things.”

  Catherine didn’t reply. That pain, that never-ending elusive pain, continued to gnaw at her. She hadn’t loved Chad, but his death had come as such an awful shock. She was tempted to laugh about her drug addiction. But she felt too awful. She needed to buy more coke, had to. She said finally, “Look at Jenny Henkle, a woman of the new millennium. She went to a good school, if I remember correctly. She won’t do anything except have babies and buy clothes and order servants about. Once she’s a Carleton, that is. She’s just like Great-Aunt Marion, isn’t she?”

  “Not really. She has no particular talent or desire to be something beyond what is offered. Do you consider yourself like Jennifer?”

  “No, Jenny’s so sweet and innocent.”

  Laurette pictured those photos of Brad and Jenny in her mind, and winced just a bit. At least Brad had promised no more men.

  Catherine rose to her feet, unable to sit still any longer. She loved her grandmother, occasionally feared her, as did every other member of the family. But Laurette couldn’t help her with this. God, she needed some coke. She couldn’t seem to think about anything else. Her direction, for God’s sake!