Children of Dynasty

by Christine Carroll

  When the loudspeaker announced the visiting period was over, she looked at the clock with the same reluctance she saw on the faces of other family members and friends. She bent and kissed Dad’s cheek and his pale eyelids trembled like a moth’s wings. As she had each time she’d been forced to leave his side, she memorized his features in case it was the last time. A snippet of a child’s prayer … if he should die before he woke …

  Wiping tears from her cheeks, she went through the wide double doors of the CCU.

  Outside, Rory leaned against the wall.

  Her fist went to her mouth. She should have expected him, but the suddenness was a shock. He looked as though he’d not slept, bluish shadows beneath his eyes.

  Thinking only of protecting her father, she waved him away. “He mustn’t see us together,” she insisted despite the closing doors. “You could give him another attack.”

  Rory straightened. “I didn’t give him the first one.” With a glance at the crowded waiting room, he nodded toward the elevators. “We’ll talk over coffee.”

  She planted her feet. “No.”

  Rory might attract her with a power that left her weak; the only man who made her tremble with need and fulfillment, but how could she trust him?

  “You told your father what hospital Dad was in,” she accused. “Davis called Dee Carpentier at the Chronicle and tipped her.”

  Rory’s jaw set. “I swear to God I have neither seen nor spoken to my father since last night.”

  “How else could he know?”

  “He’s been closeted in his office making calls. You’ll have to blame it on one of his many sources.”

  Mariah hesitated. Once more, she wanted to believe him, but …

  Rory took her shoulders, his hands warm against the hospital air conditioning. “Talk to me. Then, if you still want me to, I promise I’ll go.”

  Her determination weakened at the distress in his dark eyes. He deserved to understand. When he realized how direct a role they’d played in Dad’s heart attack, he’d see they couldn’t go on. With a last look over her shoulder toward the CCU, she let Rory lead her into the elevator.

  In the hospital cafeteria, he bought coffee in paper cups, doctoring hers with the precise amount of creamer she’d always taken. When they were seated at a large round table in the nearly vacant room, he looked at her with concern. “How is he?”

  “Still touch and go.”

  “I’m sorry.” He glanced toward the steam tables. “Have you eaten anything? Slept?”

  His gaze came back to rest on her.

  She ducked her head and tried to straighten her hair.

  He reached, and took an errant strand between his fingertips. For a moment he held it, then tucked it behind her shoulder. “I am sorry about your dad. Ever since this morning when I heard, I feared, too, that something we did …” He trailed off, then went on, “But we can’t really be to blame for John’s illness. Did he watch his diet? Did he exercise? Isn’t he a workaholic?”

  “His work is all that matters to him.” She faced the issue that conspired to drive them apart. “And your father is laughing right now, thinking he’s beaten Dad. Maybe you didn’t tell Davis what hospital, I don’t know …”

  “I did not tell him,” Rory said, too evenly.

  Once more, despite the damning evidence, her instinct said to believe him.

  But not his father. “Davis calling in the Chronicle to make matters worse for Grant Development is despicable.”

  Rory’s expression hardened. “I came here for you,” he said. “And because I needed to see you. Let’s don’t fight.”

  “I’m not fighting. I’m telling you the way it is. I told my father about us, and look what happened.”

  “He could have gotten sick any time, and you know it.” Rory gripped his cup and sloshed coffee onto the table. Looking down at the spreading stain, he reached for napkins. “I’ve already told my father to mind his own business about us. When we go public, it’ll only make it more clear.”

  She’d waited eight years for him to stand up to Davis and win her trust … but with Dad near death, it was too late. “There is no us.”

  “The hell there isn’t.” He crumpled the stained napkins.

  She shook her head. “When he woke up, the first thing he did was start up about you. Don’t you see, every time we try this it goes wrong?”

  “You think what we did last Friday was wrong?” His voice rose. “My God, for me there was never anything more right!”

  Though she wanted to go into his arms and let him unravel the hard knot of hurt in her, she couldn’t shake the image of her father’s relief when she had promised not to see Rory. “I can’t upset him like this. I told him we wouldn’t be together again.”

  The lines beside Rory’s mouth carved deeper; a crease slashed between his brows. With horror, she watched the shutters she knew so well in his father come down over his eyes.

  “Very well,” he said.

  Miserably, Mariah watched him shove his way between tables and pass through the outside door.

  CHAPTER 9

  Nine days later, Mariah’s father came home from the hospital. She arranged for Mrs. Schertz, a kindly retired nurse, to take care of him while she spent days at Grant Development. To cover night duty, she moved back home, calling it “temporary.”

  Though she’d visited often in the intervening years, now she found the bungalow somehow shrunken, as though the walls of her old bedroom were closer together.

  On the first Saturday morning after he came home, Mariah dressed in her oldest well-washed jeans and tired sneakers. “I’m going to take care of your plants and get those weeds out of your garden.”

  “You’re a stickler for perfection like me.” He moved toward his recliner with evident care for the stitched-up incision down the center of his chest. If she found the house smaller than she’d remembered, that was nothing compared to the way the past few weeks had changed him. At least fifteen pounds lighter, his pajamas and robe hung on him. The furrows beside his nose cut deep grooves.

  While he rested, Mariah tended to his houseplants, taking the smaller ones to the sink for a deep watering. She dusted the leaves of his rubber plant and picked fallen impatiens blossoms from the carpet without disturbing John’s pile of papers and magazines on the floor. The Chronicle stories of Dee Carpentier continued to run as a series.

  Though construction was a dangerous business — personal injury lawyers advertised on billboards to handle on-the-job accidents — and fatalities did happen, Dee wrote, the Grant accident was different in its spectacular nature. People related on a visceral level to free-falling from great height. Especially so for John Grant, the paper suggested, who had a heart attack after burying one of the victims.

  Mariah wished she could censor his reading material.

  The one strange note was that neither Dee nor “On The Spot” had gone public with anything on her and Rory. After the reporter’s prediction that her private life was about to be aired like soiled laundry, she read the Chronicle each morning with trepidation and watched the news show every evening, expecting images of Rory shutting Julio Castillo down at Charley’s viewing, or of her driving into Rory’s garage.

  She could only hope his threat of lawsuits was keeping them at bay. Yet, there were other possibilities. The most benign was that the media’s spying had discovered she and Rory had not seen each other again. For, after he had walked away from her in the hospital cafeteria, she had not heard a word. And, of course, with Dad still so ill, she would not contact him.

  The other, more dire scenario was that the reporters were biding their time, following Rory. One of these days, Julio Castillo might get his payback with a juicy story on roving playboy Campbell, using footage of him and Mariah as well as Sylvia Chatsworth, or whatever woman he had now taken up with.

  Despite that she and Rory could never be, the thought of him with another woman brought tears, blurring the ivy plant she was setting down nea
r her father’s recliner. Quickly, before he could see, she grabbed up an African violet and took it into the kitchen.

  On the Monday morning after her father’s homecoming, three weeks after the accident, Mariah entered her office early as usual. Crossing to place her purse in the desk drawer, she suddenly stopped and looked around.

  Something prickled her skin.

  She told herself not to be silly. Just because she was one of the first at work was no reason to imagine she was vulnerable. The company had cardkey access security; she had presented her own to get a green light onto the twenty-ninth floor.

  Mariah stood in her office filled with morning light and tried to breathe normally. Feeling spooky was normal after witnessing Charley and Andrew Green’s death, and getting chased by reporters.

  Reassured, she walked forward around her desk and nearly stepped on several CDs scattered on the carpet. She recognized them as ones she’d left loose on her desktop last Friday, some plans sent over from an architectural firm.

  Opening the side desk drawer, she remembered the Zaragoza CD was in her bag. She stopped, unsnapped a brass clasp and drew the unmarked plastic case from the side pocket of leather.

  Looking from it to the mess on the floor, her chill returned. What if it hadn’t merely been a bad weekend for the cleaning staff? What if someone had been in here pawing through her things? Looking in particular for a CD that wasn’t on the company network.

  “Hey, there,” said a deep voice from behind her.

  Mariah jumped and turned from gathering the fallen discs to find Tom Barrett in her doorway. Although John was doing better, Tom still looked so bad she worried he might follow his friend into the hospital. She wondered if he struggled like her with the recurrent sense of the bottom dropping out, of being poised on the verge of a screaming acceleration.

  Leaning a big shoulder against the jamb, Tom looked at the CDs as she placed them on the desk, or perhaps his eyes just followed the movement of her hand.

  Despite that they were in the office and should be businesslike, Mariah went and hugged him.

  “Ready to face the new week?” he said over the top of her head.

  “Ready,” she lied.

  When the Monday morning meeting began, Arnold Benton gave his usual self-important report. Using a series of number slides, he showed that all was well on the financial front. To hear him talk, you’d think nothing had happened to the company’s reputation.

  Impatient to hear about the Grant Plaza inspections, Mariah said dryly, “Thank you, Arnold. I’m sure all our loans are being serviced and our bills paid. Let’s hear from Ramsey about the accident.” She turned to Grant’s chief engineer.

  Ramsey Rhodes crossed his burly arms over a pocketful of pens and pencils. “I’m afraid I’ve got nothing new this week. The metallurgy lab is backed up analyzing an oil tanker spill on the north coast, the one that polluted a federal preserve.”

  “People died at Grant Plaza,” she protested with a regretful glance at Tom. “It should take priority.”

  Ramsey’s usually studious look sharpened. “I was told by the head of the lab that Senator Chatsworth contacted them personally to emphasize the priority of the environmental issue.”

  “Chatsworth?” she echoed, her mind racing. “He shouldn’t be able to interfere. Time’s wasting, and the police can’t pursue a criminal inquiry without lab results saying there was something suspicious about the accident.”

  Arnold Benton put down his coffee cup with a clatter. “Sounds like you believe in looking for bogeymen under the bed.”

  Ramsey said in his patient, engineer’s tone, “Before we jump to conclusions, we have to wait for test results. The best that could happen for Grant’s reputation is to have the investigation point to a design flaw. Unfortunately, that would mean a lot of workers all over the world are at risk using the same model hoist.”

  Tom looked stricken. “I hate to think of other men’s sons in the same peril.”

  April Perry spoke up. “The hoist company is now pointing the finger at Grant. They want to know exactly how many sheets of glass were on board.”

  “The last thing we need to find out is that the car was overloaded,” Ramsey said.

  Charley had stuck out his arm and warned her away. “Weight limit.” If it were so close that a hundred-fifteen pounds would have made a difference …

  Mariah straightened her back and looked around the table.

  April brushed a lock of coppery hair from her forehead. “At least we have one thing going for us. The longer it takes, the better chance the press and public move on to other stories.”

  But, was that true? While Davis Campbell’s senatorial chum held up the metallurgy work, the press’s interest in Grant Development had not flagged.

  That night, Mariah could not sleep. Long days at work, evenings spent cooking homemade soups and baking bread for her father — none of it served to keep her mind off Rory. A month had passed since he invited her to his father’s house, and while part of her wished she had torn the invitation to shreds, in every restaurant, on every lunchtime walk on Market Street, her eyes were alert for a dark head that stood above the crowd. Soon it would be June, the time of school’s end and looking forward to a new life, the anniversary of a Sausalito Sunday when she and Rory had rushed headlong from strangers to lovers.

  For eight years, she’d never forgiven him for caving in to his father and marrying a woman Davis must have thought suitable. Yet, hadn’t Rory spoken the truth when he accused her of refusing his calls? And couldn’t he now say she’d gone to Ventana, made love with him, and turned away because of her father?

  She switched on her bedroom light and took out the ruby ring. Neither had its fire, nor had the ache in her diminished as she remembered him slipping it onto her finger. Turning the gold band in her hand, she knew she should return it. It was far too valuable a piece to keep.

  But, as light shimmered in the stone’s facets, she knew she wasn’t ready yet to part with it. Call her sentimental, but as long as she had it, she felt there was some connection with Rory.

  Early the next morning, she went to Grant Development’s bank, First California, and rented a safe deposit box.

  “Would you like to use the privacy booth, Miss?” asked the older gentleman helping her.

  “Thank you, no,” she said. “This will only take a minute.”

  Taking the ring from her purse, she clenched it for a moment in her hand. Then she put it away into darkness.

  Tuesday evening Rory drove toward his parents’ house, hoping there had at least been a truce in their recent state of war. The part of him that would always be a child longed for them to find peace.

  He wished for it, too.

  After he had walked away from Mariah in the hospital cafeteria, Rory recalled that the gossip rags said he was good at exit scenes. Maybe they and Sylvia Chatsworth were right, but if he wanted to get technical, his leaving Mariah had not been his exit.

  She had sent him away.

  In the parking garage, he had jerked open the door of his Porsche and got in. A savage turn of the key and a heavy foot brought the engine from silence to a throaty growl. Gripping the steering wheel with one hand, he shifted rapidly with the other. He was driving on instinct, his old habit of escaping whatever troubled him by clearing his mind.

  It hadn’t worked. How could he argue with the guilt trip Mariah was on? What if John’s daughter joining the enemy camp had caused his attack?

  Rory exhaled a heavy breath and parked his car in his father’s drive. After suffering the usual indignity of having to knock and be let in by Anna, he started toward the family room. His heel strikes echoed in the tall stone and glass foyer.

  “Rory!” his mother called.

  He followed her voice to her sunroom on the far end of the house from her husband’s room full of trophies. Beyond the wall of windows, the molten ball of sun hung over the darkening sea.

  “Hello, darling.” Wearing a silk c
aftan, Kiki rose from an overstuffed armchair and came to Rory with open arms. “Here’s my best boy.”

  He chuckled at the greeting she’d given him since he was three.

  Everything in this room was the antithesis of Davis’s rough masculinity, from the flowered chintz couches to the collection of china figurines Kiki had collected over the years.

  With these most exquisite, intricate, and breakable porcelains he’d ever seen, he wondered how the family and the help had managed to avoid knocking off a shepherd’s crook, angel’s halo, or a hummingbird’s needle of beak. When he was a little boy and was allowed into this room, his father spent the entire time cautioning, “If you break something, you’re going to have a talk with me in the library.”

  That was enough to skewer him to the edge of a white damask chair like a butterfly with its wings pinned.

  Now, he reached a hand and stroked the painted head of golden hair on a delicate statue. It reminded him of Mariah, as she must have been as a girl, coltish, kneeling barelegged in shorts and a sleeveless shirt on the beach, a big seashell held to her ear.

  From the corner of his eye, he noted that his mother almost cautioned him and then restrained herself. These fragile little figures were like Kiki, Rory thought, although anyone who met his mother casually might disagree. The flamboyant dress and bright hair hid a vulnerable and easily wounded lady.

  Reaching to the side table, she refilled her wine glass.

  Rory glanced at the tea set on a tray with matching pot and cups that looked like roses and pansies. It wasn’t his taste, but usually when Kiki was in this room, she had a pot of aromatic Earl Grey at her side. “No tea today?” he asked mildly.

  After a generous swallow of what the wine label revealed to be a Chilean Cabernet, she gave Rory a direct look. “No tea.” She drank again, and he checked the level in the bottle, more than half empty.

  As he bit back suggesting it was a bit early in the evening, her green eyes filled with tears. “So, he took the call right there at Sunday brunch in the Marin club. It was some goddamn woman, telling him when and where.” She rolled her eyes. “I threw my glass of wine at him and said I hoped she makes him happy. God knows, I never have.”