The phone at his elbow rang and the secretary in the outer office picked it up. He watched the red light blink and then switch off without interest.
Since he’d left Harold Caldwell’s office he’d been unable to think of anything but his meeting with Ann and the proposal he had made to her. And then when he’d checked in with his Miami branch and heard that she’d left him a message there, he’d known that he had won.
She was going to do what he wanted.
It was curious how little satisfaction that piece of knowledge gave him.
After waiting eleven years to take revenge for Ann’s betrayal, he’d thought that the success of his well-planned scheme would taste a little sweeter.
Perhaps the lack of savor resulted from Ann’s defeated air, the obvious fragility of the woman who’d confronted him in the lawyer’s office. She had always seemed delicate—it was part of what had first attracted him to her—but now she looked haunted, ethereal, unhappy. He supposed that it was only to be expected, with her family’s company on the ropes and her brother in jail. But he had still anticipated some vestige of the old, feisty Ann, always ready to take on her father, the town, the entire universe, anyone who might separate her from her down-scale lover across the tracks.
But of course, that image wasn’t the real Ann, or she would never have left him pacing the Big Palm bus station for twelve hours, watching the sunrise and the day begin, looking for her every time the door opened. He remembered the commuters with their paper cups of steaming coffee, the mothers dragging unwilling toddlers toward family visits, the single travelers passing him with closed faces. He’d been unable to acknowledge that she wasn’t coming until he’d finally fallen asleep and woken to the gathering dusk to find himself still alone.
Then he’d sped back to Lime Island on his bike, the tears streaming down his face, to find Ann’s house closed and dark, a padlock on the garage. He’d torn out of the driveway and gone straight to Luisa Sanchez’ house in Hispaniola. Her face expressionless, she’d told him that Ann had transferred to a new boarding school in Massachusetts and her parents had gone to their vacation home in Maine for several weeks. She didn’t know anything more.
Amy Horton was no help; whatever had caused Ann to change her plans, she hadn’t told Amy about it before she’d left.
End of story.
He had joined the navy the next day.
Heath rubbed the bridge of his nose, thinking about that break with Ann, the way it had formed the rest of his life. With his background, it had been difficult for him to trust anyone, but she had somehow slipped inside the barriers his nineteen-year-old self had erected against the world and won his heart.
Then, when Daddy Talbot crooked his imperious finger, she had tossed that heart away as if it were garbage.
What had happened? Had she thought about what it would be like to live without the cushion of the Talbot money and developed cold feet? Probably. Romantic daydreams were one thing but reality was quite another.
And then, of course, there was the payoff. He couldn’t let himself forget about that.
Knuckles rapped on the door of the office. Joe Jensen pulled the door open and stuck his head inside the gap he’d created.
“Heath, we have to talk about the Sea Ray inventory. I’ve got several used twenty-footers that need a markdown, will you come and take a look?” Jensen said.
“Be right there,” Heath replied. He stood abruptly, thinking ahead to his dinner the next night with Ann.
He would marry her, and make her pay for everything.
* * * *
Ann changed three times for her meeting with Heath, not even sure why she was doing it. Some vestige of their earlier relationship made her want to look nice for him, even though she knew that the subject on his mind would hardly be romance. Everything she owned was now too big for her, but she settled on a blue silk shirtwaist that fit reasonably well, wearing it with high-heeled pumps and her mother’s pearls. She brushed out her hair, checked her lipstick for the last time, and finally left her room, her hands blocks of ice from nervousness as she descended in the elevator.
Heath was already seated in the inn’s dining room, a glass of Scotch on the table in front of him. He rose as she approached him and held out a chair for her, his face unsmiling. She sat and looked at him across the table, which was covered with a white linen cloth and illuminated by a candle set in a small hurricane lamp.
“Have you been waiting for me a long time?” she asked.
“For eleven years,” he said.
She looked at him.
“Just a few minutes,” he amended. “Would you like something to drink?”
Ann shook her head. He was wearing a raw silk blazer, obviously expensive, that fit him like a glove, with an ivory shirt, striped tie and brown slacks. He looked every inch the successful businessman, a far cry from the impoverished teenager she had known. But she saw that boy in the features that had not changed—the high cheekbones, the seal-black hair, the almond-shaped amber eyes. Oh, Heath, she thought, feeling the fullness of tears in her throat. She blinked and looked away.
Heath folded his hands on the table and said, “I think you should know there have been a few developments in your brother’s case. I assumed that you wanted to see me in order to agree to my plan, so I took some preliminary steps. First thing this morning I contacted Trevor Hankins in New York, and he called the judge who refused to free Tim on bail. Hankins has arranged for a new bail hearing on Thursday and will be flying in to represent Tim at the proceeding. Hankins feels confident that he can spring Tim within twenty-four hours, and I will put up a cash bond for whatever amount the judge demands.”
It took several seconds for Ann to absorb the information. “You’re very efficient,” she finally said quietly.
“Money talks,” he replied shortly. “I’ve also contacted the board of directors at ScriptSoft to see if I can make a loan to the company in exchange for their dropping the mismanagement suit against your brother. I’ll buy up the existing stock if I have to, bring in a reorganization team, whatever is necessary. I’m confident something can be arranged.”
Ann watched him, waiting.
“That won’t get rid of the feds, of course, the SEC is a law unto itself. But Hankins has a colleague who specializes in white-collar crime and I can assure you that Tim will have the best defense money can buy if the stock tampering case comes to trial.”
Ann swallowed. “Thank you.”
He took a sip of his drink, rattling the ice in the glass. “I keep my promises,” he said.
The emphasis on the third word was not lost on her. “And in exchange for all of this you want... ?” Ann said.
“You. Just you,”
“Can’t you let it go, Heath?” Ann asked softly. “I’ll find some way to pay you back for all of this, but a marriage that will make us both miserable seems—” She broke off, at a loss.
“Too high a price to pay?” he suggested.
A waiter arrived with a platter of appetizers and he set it down between them, oblivious to the mood of the diners.
“I took the liberty of ordering something for us,” Heath said, taking another small swallow of his drink.
“Will there be anything else at the moment, sir?” the waiter inquired.
“No, thank you. We’ll order later.”
The waiter left and Heath looked around expansively. “Lots of memories in this place, huh, Princess? Well, out in the parking lot, at any rate.”
“Heath, don’t.”
“Why not? Are we going to pretend that none of it happened? That’s a pretty tall order, don’t you think?”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“I see. You thought that leaving me walking in circles in the Big Palm bus station waiting for somebody who never came was going to make me happy?”
“You don’t know what happened that night, you never have!” Ann protested.
He sat back and surveyed her cynically. “Wh
y don’t you inform me? I know you’re just dying to tell me your sanctified version, it should be very interesting.”
Ann ignored his tone and said, “My father interrupted me in the middle of the night as I was packing to go and meet you. Luisa had overheard a conversation I’d had with Amy and alerted him that I was leaving. He told me that if I tried to leave town with you he would have you arrested for statutory rape.”
Heath’s face was unreadable. “And?” he inquired, raising an eyebrow.
“Isn’t that enough? If I didn’t promise to transfer to that school in New England and never see you again, you would have wound up in jail!” Ann said heatedly.
“Ah, I see. Very noble of you. Self-sacrifice and all of that. Just like Romeo and Juliet. Or was it Laurel and Hardy?”
Ann stared at him in consternation. It was clear he didn’t believe her.
“How can you sit there, all prim and proper with your bare face hanging out, and lie to me like this, Princess?” he said, his tone deadly. Dangerous.
“I’m not lying!” she said, amazed that he could doubt her. “That’s exactly what happened!”
He picked up his glass again and drained it. “I guess I never told you about my father’s sister Elsie, did I?” he said neutrally.
Ann gazed at him, bewildered. What on earth was he talking about now?
“My father was the black sheep of his family. The rest of his siblings actually work, go food shopping, take showers, remain vertical after 4:00 p.m. You know, they do the normal things. My Aunt Elsie, for example, worked as the secretary to a trust officer in a Miami bank. As luck would have it, the very bank where your daddy did the bulk of his business.”
Ann waited, sure that there was a point to this ramble and sooner or later Heath would get to it.
“Now I was fond of Elsie—she was the one relative who lived near enough to visit and take the occasional interest in me. She happened to arrive the day after your abrupt departure on one of her periodic checks to see if my father was still alive, and I’m afraid in my distress I blurted out the whole ugly tale of our somewhat star-crossed relationship. So Elsie was very interested when, one week after you decamped, she found herself typing up forms for her boss that released to you the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. The person countersigning the form was none other than your father.”
Ann looked back at him, baffled, trying to follow him. What the devil was this?
“Quite a payoff for dumping the boyfriend, wasn’t it, Princess? I knew you were desperate to get away from your father, and taking off with me was one way of doing it, but in the end it must have been impossible to give up all the fine things that the Talbot money could buy.... Why settle for a Georgia hut with a teenage mechanic husband when a plush boarding school in stately New England awaits you, with the cushion of a hundred grand to make dumping the grease monkey worth your while? You found a way to get away from your old man and actually have him finance your exit! I applaud your ingenuity, Ann. I never would have guessed you had it in you.”
Ann was speechless, trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle. Suddenly, she remembered.
“You’re talking about the trust fund,” she said.
He studied her, his expression glacial.
“My grandmother had set up a trust find to finance my education and made my father the trustee. The tuition at the Hampton school was much higher than at my previous school and so my father petitioned the trustee to release the money to me, on condition that I use it for my boarding school tuition and put aside the remainder for college, which I did.”
He said nothing.
“Don’t you see? He wanted to pack me off but he didn’t want to pay for it himself. Invading the trust fund was his neat, financially sound solution. The timing of it was just a coincidence. I didn’t know his plan for footing the bill. My father didn’t pay me off to leave you, Heath, he was just using my grandmother’s money to stash me away in Massachusetts! If I had tried to use a penny of it to get back to you he would have been on the phone to the police in a second. I’m sorry if you thought the money was a bribe, but that simply isn’t true.”
He stared back at her stonily. She might as well have been talking to herself.
“You still don’t believe me, do you?” she said sadly. “You haven’t really changed at all. Eleven years ago you could never quite accept that I would throw in my lot with you, and when I didn’t show up the night we had planned to run away, you were only too willing to jump to conclusions and think the worst of me.”
“So it’s all my fault now?” he said. “You’re a blameless angel and I’m the bastard who had no faith in you?” He laughed bitterly and looked away, shaking his head, as if she were just too ridiculous to credit.
“I loved you, Heath. I have never loved anyone like that again. The only thing that could have separated me from you was fear for your safety. If you choose to think otherwise, there isn’t much I can do about it, is there?”
He signaled for the waiter to bring him another drink. “It’s interesting how you’ve made yourself the heroine of our grim little drama,” he said. “It’s even more interesting that nobody is left alive to contradict you. Hardly more than a decade has passed and, except for us, all the major players have died—your father, your mother, even poor, deluded Luisa.”
“Amy is alive.”
“Amy will say anything you tell her to say.”
Ann gave a brief, mirthless laugh. “You don’t know Amy very well.”
“Apparently I didn’t know you very well, either. I fell lite a ten-ton weight for your poor-little-rich-girl act and you used me for your own purposes until you got exactly what you wanted.”
“And what was that, in your estimation?” Ann asked quietly, her eyes never leaving his face.
“Escape!” he said. “Escape from Casa Talbot, where your crazy old man ruled you and your mother like Draco.”
“Escape to a boarding school in New England that was more like a jail than an institution of higher learning! I would rather have been in a tar-paper shack with you, Heath, and that’s the truth.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it was hell,” he said sarcastically. “I’ve seen pictures of that place they sent you. I remember the layout—lots of grass, lots of trees, a green campus dotted with white-columned mansions separated by brick pathways. It sure looked like marine boot camp to me.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Ann said.
The waiter appeared with a fresh drink for Heath and said, “Ready to order now?”
“I’ll call you when we’re ready to order,” Heath snarled, not looking at him.
The waiter looked startled, glanced sidelong at Ann, then beat a hasty exit.
“Look,” Heath said, “I’m not going to sit here and listen to you defend what you did, especially when you characterize it as a selfless gesture to keep me out of jail. Actually, I can’t believe you have the nerve to try to pass this bogus story off as the truth. You must think I’m still as stupid as I was back when I thought that old Harley and you were all I needed to be happy. This highly inventive tale must be an example of your writer’s imagination.”
“You know I’m a writer?” Ann said.
“I have your first book.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I’ve always kept track of you, which is obviously more than you can say about me.”
“It was too painful to hear anything about you, Heath. The only way I could survive was by burying all of it.”
“Here’s to the buried past,” he said, saluting her with his liquor glass.
Ann pushed her chair back from the table. “Heath, this is pointless. You don’t want to hear anything I have to say.” She picked up her purse.
“If you leave, I will get on the phone and cancel everything I did for your brother this morning,” he said calmly. “All it takes is a word from me and he stays right where he is.”
Ann resettled in the chair. “It must be wonderful to have s
uch power,” she said.
“I earned it,” he replied. “Since you seem anxious to leave, I think I should lay out the terms of our agreement.”
“Oh, by all means.”
“We will be getting married on Friday afternoon of this week,” he began.
“Friday?” she gasped. “So soon?”
“Do you need time to buy a trousseau?” he asked dryly.
She said nothing.
“I have already arranged an appointment with the clerk’s office for the ceremony. We can do the blood tests tomorrow. Joe Jensen and his wife can serve as the witnesses at the wedding.”
“Joe Jensen of Jensen’s Marina?”
“He works for me now.”
“So you didn’t forget all of your old friends.”
“Only the ones who forgot me,” he shot back.
Ann sighed and bit her lip. How much more of this could she take? More importantly, could she take it every day? But the alternative was too horrible to contemplate. She was trapped.
“You will keep up appearances,” Heath went on. “Serve as my hostess for the annual Christmas party for my employees, accompany me to the social functions I must attend in consideration of my position as CEO of Bimini. No one is to know how things really stand or I will consider it a breach of our pact.”
Ann listened dolefully, not looking at him.
“And in case you’re loath to raise this delicate subject, I want to make something clear. Ours will not be a marriage in name only. You will sleep with me anytime I want, in any place I want, just like a dutiful little wife.”
“That is a marriage in name only, Heath. Without a relationship to back it up, sex alone doesn’t make a marriage.”
“Giving advice to the lovelorn now? Why don’t you write a column for the papers, like Dear Abby? You apparently have the talent for it.”
“What else?” she asked tersely, ignoring the gibe.
“You will live with me in my house, and not take off every five minutes for visits to relatives or whatever else you can think of to get away from me. I expect you to be around and available, do you understand?”
“Where do you live?”
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