Angel With an Attitude

by Carly Bishop

  She wanted to understand Candless. Her natural bent, to find that one redeeming quality, persisted.

  But she had only to remember his adultery and feel the same withering control over herself that he had inflicted on his adult children, for her compassion to fade into oblivion.

  Making her gaze strong and sure, she agreed that what he had said was true. “I am enamored of your son, Mr. Candless. I couldn’t love him more if he were my own.”

  “Well, you see, that’s a little troubling. He is not your son.”

  Where was he going with this? “I know that.”

  “But you would not think of trying to steal my son away.”

  She fought off the shiver that possessed her. “I—”

  “Because, you see,” he interrupted her, tossing Seth gently into the air, his tone anything but gentle, “my son Bruce came to me this morning with tales of Harry blubbering in the night.”

  He paused. Isobel’s heart all but stopped.

  He tossed Seth into the air again. The baby squealed in delight. Isobel cringed at the distance Seth fell before his father plucked him from the air.

  “And what do you suppose the blubbering was about?” Candless queried.

  “Don’t trouble yourself inventing a lie, Ms. Avedon. Bruce confessed to me that Seth’s mother attempted a shameless extortion. It now seems sweet Harry is wildly asserting that you are of a like mind.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Isobel’s heart knocked painfully beneath her ribs. Why hadn’t Angelo known this?…but, of course, they had been making love on the beach when Harry must have gone to see Bruce. And later, when Bruce took the story to his father, Angelo was finally admitting to her that he had survived to see her death. And why it was that his vengeance was so fierce she would not want it visited upon a flea.

  In the instant she understood what had happened, Angelo materialized, visible only to her, behind Ian Candless and Sinjin. He had heard the conversation in every detail, and Isobel suspected he knew, as well, her desperate train of thoughts.

  She thought it would have been a fine time to create a small time warp, to give her time to think how she should respond. Angelo, apparently, did not.

  “Just defend yourself, Iso,” he warned. “Anyone would be flustered. They expect it.”

  Aware of Sinjin studying her, Isobel met Candless’s granite-hard stare straight on. “Harrison is mistaken.”

  “Am I to take your word over my son’s?”

  “As to my intentions, yes.”

  “Why would Harry invent such a wild-eyed tale?”

  “I don’t suppose he invented all of it, if Gina made such demands.” The truth was that Harrison Candless lived a paranoid existence, and that his father had instilled that brand of craziness in his son at an early age. With less at stake, she would have called Ian Candless on his own responsibility. Instead, she tempered her response. “Harrison’s fears of me are groundless. He is mistaken if he believes I came here with any thought of blackmail.”

  “Yet we have not discussed the matter of your compensation.”

  Was he saying that he didn’t believe her? Isobel met Angelo’s eyes. To Candless and his son-in-law, she must have appeared to be staring off into space.

  “He’s nervous, Iso,” Angelo said softly. “He can’t fathom your purpose in saving Seth’s life. He is deeply skeptical, paranoid. St. John has almost certainly insisted that you are not to be trusted. That you have some other agenda.”

  Isobel took a deep breath. She had scolded Angelo days ago for thinking her naive. She wasn’t. She knew the evil that existed, had known it from the moment Angelo’s own jackbooted brother had struck him a killing blow. And still, still, most of the time she forgot to think what ulterior motives moved in the hearts of human beings.

  She had none herself, but she’d better learn—and learn fast—to look at reality with open eyes.

  Angelo approved her resolve. “The only thing Candless wants is to be reassured that you were not connected with Gina, and that you knew nothing about any plan to extort money from the heirs. Remember, you know none of this. Wait them out. Even now he has other reasons for having this conversation with you. Just keep to your line.”

  The exchange between them had taken no real time. She brought her focus back to her employer. “Mr. Candless, you offered me anything I desired in exchange for returning your son. If I had wanted money—any amount of money—wouldn’t I have simply taken it then? Or if I had wanted to steal Seth from you, why would I have even come forward?”

  “That’s where you become disingenuous, Ms. Avedon,” Sinjin charged. “It takes money to disappear—and get away with it. You know Mr. Candless would have tracked you to the ends of the earth. He would have given you almost any amount of money, but never his son. You could not have both Seth and the amount of money necessary to pull off a clean escape without following in Gina’s footsteps.”

  Isobel tilted her head. Something in Candless’s expression, in his manner, in the way he eyed his sonin-law, betrayed Sinjin’s charges. The attorney clearly believed in the possibilities he spouted, but Candless? Nearly certain that she was being manipulated, that Candless was the disingenuous one, that he was toying with both her and St. John, she took another deep breath and saw that it was true.

  Ian Candless had not entertained the notion for very long at all that she had ever intended to carry out Gina’s plan on her own behalf—which could only mean he had set up this encounter to toss a gauntlet at the feet of St. John.

  Angelo nodded slowly. “I agree, Iso. You’re not the target at the moment.”

  Playing peekaboo with Seth as he sat on Candless’s lap, she braced herself. “Mr. Candless, why don’t you just say what you want from me?”

  “You see, Sinjin? Our Ms. Avedon is nothing if not straightforward.” He gave a great, hearty belly laugh. Startled, Seth began to whimper. “Oh, what is it, wee one?” Candless crooned, handing him over to Isobel. “I couldn’t be sure, you know,” he said to her. “I had your references checked. I knew you were exactly what you claimed to be—”

  “Perhaps too perfectly what you claimed,” Sinjin interrupted.

  Angelo had every base covered, but of course neither Candless nor St. John could imagine that Isobel was none of what she claimed. She said nothing, knowing there was nothing she could say that wasn’t a half-truth of its own. Angelo stood silently by, approving her silence.

  It didn’t matter. The real clash was going on between Candless and Sinjin. “Perhaps,” he mused, coming to the point of the charade he had created here, “it is the other way about.” He turned sharply on his son-in-law. “Perhaps it is you, Sinjin, and the others, my devoted children, who are so willing to be rid of another heir as to imagine Isobel would take such a bribe.”

  A weaker man would have crumbled under Candless’s pointed accusation. Unfazed, comfortable against all odds, St. John shook his head. “I warned you, Ian, that bringing Seth into this household would crack the family wide open. You have no one but yourself to blame for inflaming the insecurities of your legitimate heirs. What’s more, you know it.”

  Candless turned away, toward Isobel, his back to Sinjin. “You cannot begin to imagine, Isobel, the ways in which the specter of money will change people. A fender bender becomes cause for a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. A disgruntled employee blows the whistle, seeking damages for God alone knows what.”

  Was he expecting her to sympathize with the plight of the wealthy, the unpleasant realities that made them the targets of the greedy poor, or was he merely trying to justify his own paranoia?

  He looked from Emory St. John to Isobel and back again, then went on. “Of course, I am certain I will never find that my son-in-law and legal counsel has been less than loyal to me. Or that you are anything other than a nanny who’s simply head over heels about my son. Forgive me. I had to ask.”

  Then he left, and St. John stayed. She watched the clothing magnate cross the rolling, manicured
lawn until he disappeared from sight.

  Candless’s show of asking her forgiveness took nothing away from Isobel’s anger. A part of her berated herself. She was, after all, in his home and in the bosom of his family under still falser pretenses than even he had begun to suspect. But Ian Candless’s manipulation—the subtle clubbing, the threat underlying his certainty that he would never find her more or less than she claimed to be—made her blood boil. This was the tyranny that Bruce, Conrad, Harrison and Kelsey had grown up with, that his wife must inevitably have suffered over the years.

  Laying Seth on his tummy with the beloved armadillo, she turned to St. John, who remained seated on the stone bench watching her.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “I expect we’re all a bit more than you bargained for.”

  “I didn’t know what to expect,” she replied. “And the only bargain I wanted was to take care of this baby.”

  Sinjin’s eyes narrowed, following in the direction of his father-in-law’s departure. “He didn’t tell you the rest of Harry’s wild tale. Did he have a gun when he confronted you last night?”

  Isobel nodded. “Only one bullet though.” Sinjin laughed shortly. Though she had made a joke, the subject wasn’t funny and he apparently sensed that she didn’t take it lightly. “I went to the kitchen to brew a cup a tea. I found him there with his gun and a bottle of tequila. To be fair to Harrison, it’s not as if he came looking for me with murder on his mind.”

  “Do you believe he meant to harm himself, that he was playing some twisted game of Russian roulette?”

  Isobel shrugged. “I don’t know. The bullet wasn’t even in the gun when I first arrived. He seemed consumed with guilt.”

  “Guilt?” Sinjin looked at his hands. “Over what?”

  “Maybe you can tell me.”

  He scowled deeply. Behind him, Angelo laughed softly. “I don’t like games, Ms. Avedon.”

  “I love games, Mr. St. John, but not this sort. I feel as if I’ve come late to the party, into the middle of some truth-or-dare match where the stakes involve Seth’s life.”

  St. John laughed unpleasantly. “Truth-or-dare would not be an accurate description. The truth tends to be buried in this family, only to be dragged up when the corpse is rotting.”

  Isobel shuddered inside at his graphic confession. Every instinct in her wanted to snatch Seth up from the blanket and run as fast and as far as she could. She had to make herself sit there, touching the babe, reassuring herself that this minute, at least, the baby was not in any danger. She had a dozen or more questions. Perhaps Sinjin was in a mood to answer some of them.

  “Is it true that Gina attempted to blackmail Harrison and the others?”

  He shrugged as if he’d had no prior knowledge of this. “I believe Bruce. Harry’s a bit off the wall.”

  “What about Kelsey? You would know if your wife—”

  “If she were about to pay off a blackmailer?” he interrupted. “I would be the last person to know what my wife was doing.” He grimaced. “Kelsey is devious in the extreme. If it came to a question of my opinion or Conrad’s—even Bruce’s—opinion of her, she would inevitably choose her brothers’ regard. Don’t get me wrong, Isobel. I love my wife, all the more, perhaps, for her familial foibles. Patrice refers to this as my particular Achilles’ heel.”

  “Patrice? Does she think so little of her own daughter?”

  St. John sighed heavily. “Let us simply say that Patrice has no illusions as to the shortcomings of her children.”

  She began to reply, when Angelo suggested, “Ask again, Iso, if it can possibly be true that he knew nothing of Gina’s blackmail—or if Candless was on the right track.”

  She studied her hands a moment, feeling inexplicably nervous about challenging St. John. Angelo gave her a nod. She straightened her shoulders.

  “Sinjin, I don’t believe it’s possible that you didn’t know what Gina was up to. Was he right just now?” she asked, angling her head in the direction Candless had taken. “Was it the heirs offering a bribe and not Gina demanding extortion money?” Her voice came out more softly, with less certainty than she wanted. Maybe, though, it was more nannylike, maybe safer with a shark like Emory St. John, than if she’d managed to sound more assured.

  He gave her a sharp look nevertheless, then took a deep breath and sent his gaze far out onto the horizon of the glittering ocean. After a moment, he returned his attention to her. “I have no knowledge of a bribe offered to Gina Sellers. As I started to say, Isobel, when I suggested that this family was more than you bargained for, you have no idea of the turmoil the existence of this child has caused.”

  Isobel swallowed hard. “Seth was meant to die along with Gina in that drive-by shooting, wasn’t he?”

  St. John scowled. “Again, I have no knowledge of that whatsoever.”

  “Then what do you mean?”

  “Perhaps if I lay all the cards on the table, you can make a more…informed choice as to whether you wish to stay.”

  She began to protest that there was nothing he could say that would cause her to choose any option but staying with Seth. Angelo forestalled her. “Let’s hear what he believes he must tell you, Iso, and then decide how to respond.”

  She nodded, indicating she would listen to St. John. “All right.”

  He gnawed a moment at the inside corner of his lip, then began. “I knew Gina Sellers fairly well—or I should say, I came to know her. After Ian was…done with her, I leased the condo for her, arranged for her to move in there, then gave her several thousand dollars to help her get on with her life.”

  Isobel frowned. Hadn’t Kathryn Weston told them that dealing with the aftermath of Candless’s affairs was his son Bruce’s province?

  “What is it?” Sinjin demanded.

  “Nothing. I only thought Bruce had done that for Gina.”

  St. John gave a short, barking laugh. “Who told you that? Surely not Bruce?”

  “Who else?”

  He waved off the issue impatiently. “Ian was scrupulously discreet. It’s true that when he got to be a certain age, Bruce came and went with his father’s…liaisons. I believe he did as asked with the intention of protecting his mother from the indignity of knowing of the affairs, which is inevitable when the chauffeur knows more of your husband’s whereabouts and extracurricular activities than you.”

  Isobel felt her stomach sour. Ian Candless’s affairs galled her; his son’s attempts to protect his mother were just as inevitably futile. A woman knows—Isobel believed that with all her heart. What could Bruce have been thinking? Surely his complicity had hurt Patrice almost as much as her husband’s infidelities.

  St. John must have read the distaste in her expression. “Ian Candless has many fine qualities. His business ethics are of the highest order. Unfortunately, loyalty to his wife isn’t among his attributes.”

  “Or regard for his children.”

  “Quite true. No one knows that better than I, Isobel, I can assure you. You would have to understand the miserable circumstances from which he came in order to have even the remotest sense of what he has overcome in his life to be able to provide this kind of life-style for his family. He is, at the very least, an elegant provider.”

  “I’m sorry, Sinjin. I don’t believe that things compensate for the rest.”

  “Which is why you are ill suited to manage here, Isobel.”

  On the contrary, she thought fiercely. That was why she must stay, if Seth must belong to this family. Precisely so that she could provide the precious baby the love he wouldn’t get from anyone else.

  St. John resumed his story. “In any case, I knew that Gina Sellers was pregnant long before her condition began to show. She told me herself. She indicated to me that she was several weeks along—as many as twelve or sixteen. I knew the date of her first encounter with Ian, which was only seven weeks prior to our discussion. Ian could not be the father. She wanted to go back to Utah after the baby was born. I told her that I
would see to it that once her lease was up and the baby was born, she would have the necessary money to relocate.”

  Isobel’s heart thumped. “If Seth isn’t his—”

  “She lied.”

  “She lied? To you? Why would she do that? Why wouldn’t she tell you Seth was Candless’s baby from the start?”

  He shook his head. “I wish I knew. The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is that she wanted to keep her options open. If she confessed too early that the baby was Ian’s, she would close off any other avenues she might have had.”

  Angelo whistled softly. The baby, who could also hear him, grinned and turned toward the sound. Isobel sat stunned. “That could only be true if Gina assumed Candless would want Seth!”

  “Nonetheless, Isobel, it is what it is. Trust me on this. It was the first of a couple of nasty surprises to me.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Allow me to explain. It was only after Seth was born, in fact three months later, when the lease on the condo was set to expire, that she told me Seth was Ian’s son. That she was afraid to say so earlier. Naturally, I didn’t believe her. She had told me how far along she was in the beginning, and there was no way Ian could have been the father.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I arranged for paternity testing. Ian was ecstatic at the possibility—the first of the nasty surprises to me—but I thought little of it. However thrilled he was at the prospect of an infant son, nothing would come of it. I knew he could not be the father.”

  “But the paternity testing proved that he was?”

  “Imagine my surprise.” St. John snorted. “I had hired the most reputable lab in the country. There could be no dispute. Seth was, to a ninety-nine-pointnine-percent certainty, the son of Ian Candless.”

  Whatever hope had caused her heart to thump died in Isobel’s breast. “What did you do then?”

  He shrugged. “I conveyed Ian’s offer to Miss Sellers. The one he spoke of on the television the night of her death.”

  “What did she say? What did she do?”