FALSE PRETENSES

by Catherine Coulter

  What to do about Jennifer Henkle? Odd how losing to Jonathan Harley wasn’t foremost in her mind, at least for the moment. She wondered now how she’d managed to get Jennifer Henkle out of her mind before. Probably because she’d realized quite early that there was nothing to be done.

  Then Catherine had come, stirred everything up again. Made her see, made her feel guilty, as if she’d been partially responsible, which, she supposed, she had.

  How, Elizabeth wondered, could Laurette Carleton force such a marriage? Obviously to save Brad from being uncovered as a gay, probably to keep him from getting diseased, to save the family from more scandal. There’d been a change in Brad over the past months, she realized now. He’d withdrawn, become more of a cipher. No, she wouldn’t feel sorry for him.

  She’d just have to give it up again, dismiss it from her mind. If Senator Henkle didn’t care enough about his daughter to . . . To what? Create a horrendous scandal that would ruin all their lives? No, the senator had had no choice.

  Think.

  Leverage. That was the operative word. It sure hadn’t worked on Jonathan Harley, but . . . Surely there was something she could do. Her mind went blank. In disgust, Elizabeth rose from her chair and walked automatically toward her piano. She stopped cold and stared at it.

  I won’t. I can’t. Who cares about Jennifer Henkle? She’s nothing to me. Nothing, nobody. But she’d know her if she saw her in the street, from the photographs.

  She said to the piano, “You beat me, Jonathan Harley. You made me feel a total fool. Europe, you said. Switzerland, probably. And none of us considered that. Smart, slippery bastard.”

  There was a buzz from Gallagher downstairs.

  Kogi emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron. Flour, everywhere. Even on his watch. For an instant Elizabeth stared at Kogi’s watch as he carefully wiped it with his sleeve, a frown on her brow. Timothy’s watch. Something . . . something wasn’t right.

  “It’s Mr. Harley,” Kogi said, coming over to her. “He’s downstairs and wants to see you.”

  More gloating? No, he hadn’t gloated, not the way she would have thought. He’d kissed her, angrily.

  “Please ask him what he wants, Kogi.”

  She heard Kogi’s voice but couldn’t make out his words.

  “He say he has a surprise for you,” Kogi said.

  “A time bomb?” she said aloud, then shook her head. “Oh, very well, let him come up.”

  She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said “ Musicians Play at Love.” She was barefoot, her hair tied back in a ratty ponytail. Who cared?

  She heard Kogi greet him at the front door, heard his footsteps coming toward the living room.

  She rose finally, to face him. He’d changed out of his business suit and was also wearing jeans, a sport shirt, and a corduroy jacket.

  “Mr. Harley, what do you want?”

  “Didn’t your man tell you I had a surprise for you?”

  “Yes.”

  Jonathan thought she looked wonderful. No makeup, no severe chignon, no sexless business suit. She looked fresh, very young, and wary. As if she were afraid. Of him?

  “May I sit down?”

  “I suppose you must.”

  “Such graciousness.”

  “From the loser, what would you expect? Champagne? Caviar?”

  “Coffee would be just fine.”

  She nodded toward Kogi.

  “I’m sorry I attacked you this morning.”

  She merely looked at him. Like I’m some sort of insect, he thought. “Well, not really sorry. Just out of place. I’m just sorry that I did it there, in your office. You made me mad.”

  “You’re a man,” she said, shrugging.

  His eyes fell to her breasts at her movement. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mr. Harley, I’m not some sort of sexpot for your review. Just get on with it or get out.”

  He nodded and drew a sheaf of folded papers from his breast pocket. “Come here,” he said, not looking up at her as he spread the sheets of paper on the coffee table in front of him.

  Intrigued, Elizabeth sat down beside him, keeping some distance between them. “What’s all this?”

  “Computer companies. I found three that are in excellent shape. Great growth potential, given ACI’s management system and influx of capital. More important, they want to sell, if the offer’s right. I know two others that could be acquired, but they would be unfriendly.”

  Elizabeth was too stunned to say anything. She picked up the neatly typed pages and looked at them. She knew of all three companies, indeed, she and her management team had discussed the pros and cons of each. But she didn’t tell him that, not now. She was much too interested in his motives, whatever they were.

  “Why?”

  He looked at her then, his eyes serious. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. Then he shrugged. “I got it all together last night.” He didn’t tell her that he’d had his own plans to buy before she’d blasted into his life, and had had most of the figures at his disposal long before last night.

  “Well, that’s honesty of a sort, I suppose,” she said, her head cocked at him.

  Kogi brought in the coffee at that moment and deftly served it.

  “Is this the Yale way, Mr. Harley? Give the loser a bone to save face?”

  “No. I usually have a ball when I win. This, well, this is different.”

  “Why?”

  “You.”

  The small word sounded utterly sincere, and for an instant Elizabeth felt something warm and glowing deep inside her. But only for an instant. Then she felt wary and very cold.

  “I’m a very wealthy woman, Mr. Har—”

  “Jonathan, please.”

  “Yes, well, I am.”

  “What does that have to do with the price of conch shells? I’m not exactly on skid row myself.”

  “Mr. . . . Jonathan, I appreciate this gesture. It’s quite a surprise, truly, but—”

  He cut her off, his hand slashing through the air. “Now that we have all this damned garbage out of the way, I want to see you. No more business, no more jockeying to see who can best the other, just a man and a woman.”

  Elizabeth reached for her coffee cup, not to drink, but to warm her suddenly cold hands. “What if I had won, Jonathan? Would you still have wanted to see me?”

  “Good question,” he said, his voice rueful. “I guess not. I probably would have put a contract on you.”

  “What makes you think I won’t do that to you?”

  He laughed. “You want to know something? I think maybe you’ve done some pretty rotten things since you took over ACI. To survive, you would have had to. It’s made you wary and I understand that, but hear me, Elizabeth, I have no reason to want to hurt you, not now in any case. I want—” He broke off, staring at her, afraid of what he would say.

  Elizabeth didn’t want to hear what he had to say either. She jumped to her feet and turned her back to him, hugging her arms around herself. She said, “My life is a mess right now. There are so many things, so many problems—”

  “Rowe Chalmers is out of your life. As far as I could tell, he was the biggest problem.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” she said quietly. She slowly turned to face him. “Why would you want to see me when you believe I murdered my husband?”

  “I don’t. Think you murdered your husband, that is. No way on God’s green earth could you have done something like that.”

  “You sound so certain. Too bad I didn’t know you then. What a character witness you’d have made. Also too bad that Mr. Moretti believed so ardently that I was a cold-blooded bitch. Still believes, for that matter.”

  “Moretti’s an ass.”

  “A very angry ass.”

  “Is there anything else you’d like to ask me, Elizabeth? To test me out, I guess?”

  She rubbed her palm against her hair, dislodging the rubber band. A strand of it sto
od straight up on her head. Jonathan thought it endearing. He vaguely heard the phone ring.

  Elizabeth didn’t know what to say, and she was saved from trying to come up with something when Kogi appeared. “Excuse, please, ma’am, but Dr. Hunter is on the phone. He wants to know what time to come for dinner.”

  She saw Jonathan stiffen up like a poker.

  Like an angry rooster who’d just spotted another rooster in his hen yard.

  “Tell Dr. Hunter that seven o’clock will be fine, Kogi,” she said very calmly.

  Kogi nodded and left the room.

  “Well,” Jonathan said, rising to his feet. “I guess that sort of answers everything, doesn’t it?”

  “Not really,” Elizabeth said, defeated.

  “Just what does that mean, lady?”

  “Jonathan,” she said, “please. Thank you for your victor’s gesture.”

  “Shove it,” he said, and walked away from her, not looking back. She heard the front door slam.

  She raised her hand, an unconscious gesture, then slowly let it fall.

  “Brad, what’s wrong?”

  He wanted to yell at Jenny that he couldn’t get it up, it was as simple as that.

  “Did I do something wrong? Are you angry with me?”

  Did she always have to be such a wimp? “I’m not angry at you, Jenny,” he said, and rolled over onto his back. He looked up at the motel-room ceiling. Why had he brought her here anyway? He felt her hand tentatively slide down his stomach to his groin.

  “Don’t,” he said. He heard a small sob, and felt like he’d just kicked his puppy. He turned back onto his side, facing her, his fiancée, the woman he was supposed to marry and spend the rest of his life with.

  “Look, Jenny, I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve got a lot of things on my mind right now. It’s really got nothing to do with you, okay?”

  Jennifer nodded, of course. She wondered if he wanted her to go down on him. He liked sex that way, very much, but she was afraid to do it. She felt miserable and didn’t know what to do about it. She said softly, “I think I’ll go shower. We should be back to your grandmother’s house in an hour.”

  Brad grunted, relieved when she rose from the bed and went into the bathroom. He wished he had someone he could talk to. He wished he could see Evan. Evan would understand, he always did. But Evan was in Greece, probably screwing every young man he could find with the buy-off Laurette had provided.

  You and Trent should change places. That was what Catherine had told him. Let old Trent come back here and be under Grandmother’s veined hand. Why not? He wasn’t poor, he could skip out, he could do anything he pleased.

  There wasn’t even the pleasurable thought of destroying Elizabeth any longer. They’d been found out and all major leaks were shut off. He ran his companies, sure, but now he was under Elizabeth’s hand just as much as his grandmother’s. He’d been coasting the past couple of months, existing really, nothing more.

  He rose from the rumpled bed. He heard the shower shut off. He prayed Jenny wouldn’t come out naked. He didn’t think he could stand it.

  He was going to break it off. First, Grandmother. He was smiling when Jenny, wearing a towel, emerged from the bathroom.

  The ballroom in the Dickerson mansion in Back Bay glittered under the chandeliers. The guests and the myriad flower arrangements were stunning, the noise level sedate. Jewels shimmered, men and women danced to the band. Catherine shook Mrs. Dickerson’s hand, murmuring, “Thank you so much for having me on such short notice. You’re very kind.”

  “Certainly, my dear. Our pleasure. How is your grandmother?”

  “She’s fine.”

  Another couple came up behind Catherine, and Mrs. Dickerson patted Catherine’s hand, saying, “Go enjoy yourself, my dear. You already know many of the guests.”

  Oh, yes, Catherine thought, walking slowly into the ballroom, but there’s only one I want to see, must see.

  She took a proffered glass of champagne from a silver tray held toward her by a Dickerson servant, and sipped it.

  She saw Amanda Montgomery, the center of attention in a small group of people. Rowe wasn’t with her. Then she spotted him with a group of businessmen next to a potted palm in the corner. He looked very solid, trustworthy, and Catherine knew she’d been right to come. She set down her empty glass on a tray and made her way through the crowd to him.

  She lightly placed her hand on his arm. He turned in mid-sentence, surprise and something else in his expression. He just stared at her.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said gaily. “I have come to take Mr. Chalmers away to the dance floor.”

  “What a ludicrous surprise. May I ask what you’re doing here?” Rowe wasn’t at all amused. He realized. on a gut level that she looked good, so good that he’d like to haul her out to the balcony and make love to her, but that was ridiculous, of course.

  “I was invited. Can’t you just say hello to me, Rowe, like you’re glad to see me for once?” Catherine placed her hand in his, her other on his shoulder. “Dance,” she said, pressing against him.

  He began to move automatically. “Catherine, if you don’t stop doing what you’re doing, I’m going to have to turn my back on everybody.”

  “I get to you that much, Rowe?”

  “Bitch, you know exactly what you’re doing.”

  “Dance, Rowe.”

  He sighed. “What is it this time, Catherine?”

  She tilted back her head to look at his face. “You want to know something? I don’t have anybody I can talk to, that I can trust. Except you, as odd as that might sound.”

  “Bull.”

  “All right. I wanted to tell you that I spoke to Elizabeth the other day. I apologized to her, at least I tried to. I’ve never seen her look more surprised.”

  He stared at her, nonplussed. “Why did you do that? You hate her guts.”

  “No, not anymore. I needed to know something, but I knew she couldn’t help. You want to know something else? I believe that if she could help, she would.”

  “I believe the world is going flat. This is the evil woman who murdered your father, remember?”

  “I was wrong. I’ve been a fool.”

  He eyed her. “That makes two of us,” he said. “What changed your mind?”

  “You, a bit, then Christian Hunter, then Elizabeth herself put the lid on it. I guess I needed someone I could see to blame. And Elizabeth was the obvious person to have done it. Now, not knowing who did it, thinking that could be a member of my family—” She broke off, seeing Amanda over Rowe’s ‘shoulder, staring at her. God, if a look could kill . . .

  She said quietly, “If I’m no longer a bitch, does that mean you’re no longer a bastard?”

  “You can’t change the past, Catherine.”

  “No, but you can change the future, and learn to live with the past.” She smiled a bit. “I think Dr. Hunter said something of the sort to me. He’s right, you know.”

  The music stopped, and they stood there unmoving, looking at each other.

  “Well, what’s this? Catherine Carleton? What are you doing here?”

  Rowe released Catherine slowly, easily. “I see you remember Catherine, Amanda. She’s here because she was invited and happened to be in Boston.”

  “Hello, Amanda. Lovely diamonds you’re wearing.”

  “Thank you. Why don’t you go somewhere and play, Catherine? With someone else. Rowe, our dance?”

  Rowe wasn’t at all surprised when, at one o’clock in the morning, he returned home and found Catherine waiting for him in her car. She joined him at the front door and smiled. “Amanda did tell me to go play, Rowe.”

  “It’s late,” he said, turning the key in the lock.

  “May I come in?”

  “It’s not a good idea, and you know it, Catherine.”

  She grabbed his lapels and kissed him. He finally pulled her hands away. “You do that again, and we’re going to end up in bed.”

 
; She kissed him again. “Isn’t that why you came here? Alone? You knew, didn’t you, that I’d be here?”

  He kissed her.

  “Delicious dinner, as usual,” Christian said, patting his stomach and sitting back in his chair.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said automatically, her thoughts still on Jonathan Harley.

  “You’re a million miles away tonight, sweetheart.”

  She flinched at the endearment. “Forgive me, Christian. Business problems, always, more of them, jumping out at the oddest times to make me crazy.”

  “Well, I want you to drop them, all right? I have something important to ask you, Elizabeth.”

  Oh, no, she thought, staring at him. Please, no.

  “Here’s Kogi with your favorite coffee, Christian.”

  While Kogi poured, Elizabeth’s eyes were drawn again to his watch—Timothy’s watch, which Christian had said he’d seen and admired.

  Something nagged at her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it, something she should remember. Lord, Jonathan Harley had turned her into an idiot.

  “What are you thinking now, Elizabeth?”

  “I was just thinking that I had to be wrong about something. Nothing important, not really. Shall I play for you, Christian?”

  “Very well.”

  She played until he stopped her. He said very gently, standing behind her at the piano, “Marry me, Elizabeth.”

  She became very still.

  “I love you, Elizabeth, have loved you for the longest time. Marry me.”

  “I can’t, Christian,” she said, turning on the piano bench to face him. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. You are my dearest friend, you know that. But I don’t love you, not like I should to marry you.”

  “Is there someone else?”

  “No. Oh, Christian, can’t we continue as we have? You’ve done so much for me and—”

  “Yes,” he said, “I have. I lied for you. I lied for you because I loved you, even then. I have tried to protect you. If I hadn’t involved myself, you might still be with Rowe Chalmers, and the Carletons would have had their revenge.”

  She stared at him, but she realized she wasn’t surprised, not really. “You sent me that anonymous letter about their meeting, didn’t you?”