by Diana Palmer
Kate sat there dying. It was all over now. When he found Maude, and he would, he’d know the truth. Her eyes studied him, drinking in the sight of him, so big and dark and arrogant. Leaving him would be the hardest thing she’d ever have to do. Tears misted her soft eyes. She’d have to leave, and as soon as possible. At least that way she could avoid the confrontation that would be inevitable. Anyway, he had his Anna now, she thought, he won’t miss me. Tears rolled down her flushed cheeks at just the thought.
“You’re very quiet, Kate,” he said.
She wiped away the tears, careful not to sniff and give herself away. “I was just thinking,” she said, schooling her voice to calmness. “What…what will you do when you find her?” she asked.
“I haven’t quite decided,” he said thoughtfully. He linked his hands on the desk, flexing them. His eyes narrowed. “But I’ll come up with something unique, believe me. I’ll make her pay in ways she couldn’t have dreamed of.”
I already have, she thought miserably. I’ve paid in a way you couldn’t imagine. I fell in love with you, and my punishment will be spending the rest of my life where I’ll never see you, or hear you, again. And death might be kinder. Her eyes traced the lines of his face lovingly, achingly. Oh, I do love you so, she thought.
“You think I’m hard,” he remarked when she was silent.
“No,” she admitted quietly. “I don’t really blame you for feeling that way.”
“I can’t help it, Kate,” he said. “I can’t help wanting to get my own back on her. I’ll have to go through life in this damned darkness, and for what? Because a spoiled brat pitched a temper tantrum on the lake in a boat!”
Kate’s eyes closed. He was right, he was absolutely right, and the pain went all the way to the soles of her feet. But she hadn’t known what would happen. She hadn’t known him. If only she could tell him the truth, make him understand….
She sighed. He’d never listen. She only had one option, and that was to run. But getting off the island wasn’t going to be an easy thing now. She had to keep him from getting suspicious. She had enough money, barely, to get back to her father. She’d saved it carefully. But how to get away long enough? That was going to take some planning. She might be able to get Bart Lindsey to help her.
“What are you plotting, Kate?” he asked suddenly.
She jumped as if she’d been slapped unexpectedly. “Plotting? Why…nothing” she said quickly.
“All right, I believe you,” he laughed. “Come on, honey, let’s finish up this last chapter while I’ve still got a clear head.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kate didn’t sleep. She couldn’t. And it didn’t help that in the middle of the night, there was one whale of an argument in the hall and the voices roared through the cool silence.
It was Anna and Garet. She could tell that without bothering to open the door of her bedroom, and Anna was clearly getting the worst of it. Kate couldn’t make out the words to tell what they were arguing about, but it was loud enough to carry all through the villa. Then, suddenly, there was the sound of a door slamming, and for a few minutes it was quiet. Then there was the sound of the door opening, and slamming again, sharp, angry footsteps, and the sound of another door slamming. Then quiet; an ominous, strange quiet that was suddenly shattered by the sound of a yell. Kate jumped out of bed without bothering to grab for her bathrobe, threw open the door, and ran barefoot down the hall to Garet’s room. She thought as long as she lived she’d never get over that sound in the darkness, that harsh scream of pain that echoed through the villa.
Yama was already by the bed when she got there, his face heavily lined, his eyes frightened as they lifted to Kate’s.
Garet was as white as cotton, his eyes closed, his face strangely relaxed, strangely youthful looking as he lay there against the pillows. His breathing was shallow, erratic. Kate bit her lip, her eyes wincing.
“Oh, Yama, what happened?” she breathed, her eyes never leaving the still figure on the bed, as she stood trying to catch her breath, to cope with the fear.
“Headaches get closer together since we come here,” Yama said worriedly. “He not say so, but I know him and can tell. It why his temper so bad lately. Miss Kate, doctor warn him this may happen if he not rest, and he have fall tonight after Miss Sutton leave. I find him in study and get him to bed. Not know if it cause this or not, but we must get him to a doctor, and quick. I call Pattie. She make arrangements. You stay with him?”
She sat down in the chair by the bed and took his limp, cool hand in hers, her eyes eating him. “Oh, yes,” she breathed, “I’ll stay with him. Miss Sutton…left?”
“Very fast,” Yama told her. “She upset him and he tell her to go. Finally show good sense, now this happen! I make call.”
She sat beside the big man, watching him breathe, willing him to live. If only she knew what was wrong, if she could do something!
Her hand tightened on his. Her doing—it was all her doing. And if he died, what use would living be, and that would be her fault, too. Oh, what a horrible day it was when she got behind the wheel of that boat and gave vent to her temper. She’d have given ten years of her life to undo it. She’d have given her life. He couldn’t die. He couldn’t!
It seemed an eternity before Yama came back, quiet and solemn.
“Pattie calling doctor now,” he said. “I call charter pilot and he standing by at airport. Also call hotel, manager sending men up to help get him into plane. I go with him, Miss Kate.”
Tears rolled hot and wet down her cheeks. “Oh, Yama,” she whispered brokenly, her hands grasping that big one of Garet’s tightly.
“It be all right,” Yama said, awkwardly patting her on the shoulder. “Boss tough. It takes more than this to get him down. Miss Kate, I think it best you come with us back to States. Must refuel in Atlanta, can leave you there to go back to lake house and wait, okay?”
She could barely think at all, and was dimly grateful for somebody to tell her what to do. She only nodded through the tears, her eyes never leaving Garet.
“He’s so pale,” she whispered.
“I know. You pack, Miss Kate. I stay with him.”
“Yes, Yama.” She got up slowly, her eyes showing the hurt as plainly as if she’d screamed it the width of the room. She let go of his hand, but it was letting go of life.
Kate hardly remembered the rest of that horrible night. Everything seemed to happen all at once. The hotel employees came to lift the big man onto a stretcher, and they transported him in a station wagon to the waiting Learstar. Kate sat beside him on the plane, holding his hand, her eyes burning with tears, her mind numb with fear. He was still breathing, but he hadn’t regained consciousness, not for an instant. She’d never been so afraid before. If he didn’t make it….
“He be all right, Miss Kate,” Yama said from beside her. He handed her a key and a wad of bills. “You rent car, go back to lake house. This key. It be good idea also if you get Hunter out of kennel to stay with you.”
“Yama, I thought I might go home….” she began.
“No, Miss Kate,” he shook his head emphatically. “Boss do better if he know where you are. Also, Pattie and I can get to you better. Please, Miss Kate, not to argue.”
She sighed. “All right,” she said wearily, “I’ll do it.”
Besides, she thought, it would give her the opportunity to check on Maude’s cabin. If Maude was no longer in France, there was a good possibility that she’d come back to the lake, anyway. And Kate was too tired, and too heartsick, to argue anymore.
Her eyes went back to the husky figure on the stretcher. Please live, she pleaded silently. Please, live, even if it’s only to get even with me for doing this to you!
It seemed so long ago that she’d had the run-in with Cambridge on the beach, so many weeks since the accident. And in that length of time, she’d come to know the man behind the power, and she liked what she found. He wasn’t the tyrant she’d thought him. He was simply a
man; a very lonely man who was, despite his black temper, the only man she would ever love.
Nine
They landed in Atlanta, and Kate watched them take Garet away to a waiting charter plane with a sense of emptiness.
“I call you soon as I know something,” Yama had promised. “He will be all right, Miss Kate.”
“Oh, Yama, I hope so,” she whispered as she watched the plane take off, shading her eyes with her hand. “What will I do if he…” She swallowed on the thought and turned slowly away toward the terminal.
It had been a while since she’d driven, but she got to the lake house with barely an effort. Now that there was time to think, she wondered about Bart Lindsey and what he’d think when he discovered that she’d gone in the middle of the night. Not that she really cared; he’d pumped her for information pretty hard, and she still wondered if he really was a travel writer. But when her mind went back to Garet, so still and white on that stretcher, Lindsey went right out of her thoughts again.
She’d stopped by the kennels on the way and picked up Hunter. The big shepherd was actually glad to see her, whining and licking her hand and wagging his tail furiously. She opened the cottage door and let him inside first, following him half-heartedly. The cabin held such memories—of that first morning when Cambridge had asked her to move in with him—of that night when she’d gone in to see about him when he had the headache, of the morning he’d announced that they were going to St. Martin….
She turned, her eyes on the telephone. She picked up the receiver to make sure it was still connected, and was reassured when she heard the dial tone. She put it down again and stared at it. Yama said the specialist Garet saw was in New York. Had they had time to get to New York? Surely they had. Was he already in the hospital? What would the doctor do?
She put her bags in the bedroom and went back to get the groceries she’d picked up out of the car. It was going to be a long wait, even if it only took an hour or two more for Yama to call her. Every second would seem like hours, every hour like a day. She wanted the phone call and dreaded it at one and the same time. Oh, please, let him live, she prayed silently. Please let him live, and if having him hate me is the price I have to pay, then that’s all right, too, but please let him be all right!
She fed Hunter and poured herself a bowl of cereal. It had been almost half a day since she’d eaten anything, but she wasn’t hungry. It was just a way to keep body and soul together, that was all. Her heart wasn’t in it.
The weather was misty outside and there were dark gray clouds on the horizon, hanging ominously over the lake. Kate sat on the porch where she used to eat breakfast with Garet and watched the shadows play on the lake. Something in the rain was vaguely ominous, foreboding. The sudden ringing out of the phone made her jump.
She ran to answer it with trembling hands. “Hello?” she mouthed.
“Kate? This is Pattie,” came a pleasant, soft voice on the other end of the line.
“Hello, Pattie. How is he?” Kate asked quickly.
She held her breath until she heard the reply.
“He’s still with us,” Pattie said gently. “Although it’s going to be touch and go for a few days.”
“Is he conscious? What happened? What did the doctor say?” Kate fired away.
“No, he’s not conscious, and none of us are quite sure what happened,” Pattie replied. “The doctor says the fall could have caused additional pressure on the optic nerve, and then he went into a spate of technical jargon about exactly what he planned to do, and lost me completely. All I got out of it is that Mr. Cambridge will live.”
“Oh, thank God,” Kate whispered. Her eyes closed and she smiled through a mist of tears. “Oh, thank God. I’ve been so worried!”
“Yama told me to call you the instant I knew something,” the secretary told her gently. “He was pretty upset when he found Anna Sutton in the boss’s apartment here. Of course, she made a beeline for the hospital.”
It was like the end of the world. Kate felt suddenly empty and alone. “Oh,” she murmured.
“I hear she bombed in on you at St. Martin, too,” Pattie probed. “And that the boss threw her out. She never gives up.”
“So I noticed.” Kate stared at the floor. “She only likes the size of his wallet,” she muttered.
“I know,” came the reply. “And so does he, Kate. Don’t think she’ll fool him a second time. He isn’t stupid—although he does occasionally give that impression.”
Kate laughed in spite of herself. “I noticed that,” she said. “Is…is there anything I can do?”
“Yes. Sit right there and wait for him to come home,” Pattie told her with a smile in her tone. “The doctor says if he does okay, he may be out of here in a couple of weeks.”
“Two weeks,” Kate murmured. She sighed. She wouldn’t be here then. She had enough sense of self-preservation left in her to run, before that private detective made the final connection for her sightless boss, before he threw her out into the street. She thanked Pattie again for calling, and put the receiver gently back in its cradle. Then she sat down, buried her face in Hunter’s silky fur, and cried like a baby.
The next morning, she took Hunter and walked down the beach toward Maude’s cabin. How long ago it had been since she walked this beach and saw the big, solitary man standing on the beach and was ordered off in no uncertain terms. She’d never have dreamed that she’d go to work for him, that she’d fall in love with him. Fate, she thought, was unpredictable.
The cabin still looked empty, but two of the windows were open, and Kate caught Hunter by the collar and started toward the front porch, almost running in her haste to find out if Maude was really home.
She ran up onto the porch. “Maude!” she called excitedly.
The thin little figure who came running out onto the porch was a welcome sight. Without thinking, Kate went straight into her arms and wept as if she were a hurt child.
“Are you really that glad to see me?” Maude asked, rocking the younger woman in her arms.
“I really am,” Kate sniffed, stifling the sobs that rose to her throat. “Did you get my telegram? I sent you one….”
“It didn’t catch up to me, baby,” Maude said apologetically. “Dad and I left Paris and I dropped him off at my aunt’s on the way back here. He wasn’t able to stay alone, although he’s much improved…anyway, when I got here and there was no sign of you, I called your father. He told me where you were.” She drew back and looked straight into Kate’s misty eyes. “What happened?”
Kate moved away, wiping her eyes. “I hit Garet Cambridge with the boat and hurt him…blinded him,” she said painfully, closing her eyes on the memory of that horrible accident.
“I thought you were working for him!” Maude exclaimed. “Why would he hire you when…?”
“You’d better sit down,” Kate told her.
“All right, so sit down and I’ll bring some coffee. Then you can explain it to me.”
Ten minutes later, sipping coffee in the living room, Kate told Maude what had happened in the last few weeks. When she was through, Maude just sat there shaking her head.
“You mean, he hired you, knowing what you’d done to him?” Maude exclaimed.
“No,” Kate replied miserably, wrapping her slender fingers around her coffee cup. “He doesn’t know I was responsible. Once or twice, I was tempted to tell him, but at the last minute….”
“Oh, Kate, I warned you,” Maude groaned. “If only you’d listened to me. Do you have any idea what that man will do to you when he finds out?”
“A pretty good one.” Kate looked at her old employer wearily. “He’s hired a private detective, and they’ve traced me to you.”
Maude seemed to go white. “A detective? Oh, Kate!”
“That’s right. Has anyone talked to you at all about me?”
“No,” Maude sighed. “But it’s only a question of time. What are you going to do?”
“Well, he won’t
be back for a couple of weeks. I’ve got that long to make a decision.” She left her coffee sitting and got up to pace the floor. “I guess I’ll go home to Austin for a while. I hate to just walk out on you like this….”
“Don’t worry about me,” Maude said firmly, “I’ll manage. It’s you I’m concerned about.”
“I just hope he doesn’t decide to take out his hatred for me on my poor dad. I’ve been a constant headache to him lately.”
“Poor dad, my foot,” Maude said. “Poor you, Kate, I’m so sorry.”
“Why? I brought it on myself. If I hadn’t tried to take out my temper in the boat….”
“That isn’t what I meant,” Maude said kindly. Her pale blue eyes were compassionate. “You love him very much, don’t you?”
Kate met that level look and sighed achingly. “Oh, Maude, I love him more than life,” she admitted quietly. “I’d gladly give him my own eyes if I could! At first, he could see blurs and shadows a little, and they thought his sight might come back. But now, even that little glimmer of hope is gone. He’s permanently blind, and it’s my fault, and when he finds out, he’ll hate me. I can’t even blame him for it, but I’m so afraid of what he’ll do.”
Maude went over to put her thin arm around the younger woman. “That fact that you stayed with him all this time, and looked after him might carry some weight. Kate, he isn’t totally heartless, you know. He may decide….”
“I don’t think so,” she murmured. “Even if this hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have had a chance with him. A man that powerful, that rich; Maude, if he’d been able to see, he wouldn’t have had anything to do with me, anyway. Look at how fast he ran me off his property that day.”
“My darling,” Maude said softly, “don’t you know that those kind of differences don’t matter? Men like Garet Cambridge make their own rules as they go along. They don’t conform the way we lesser mortals do.”