Paper Rose

by Diana Palmer

  She hung up the phone before Cecily could get the words past her tight throat. So he’d gone that far. He was actually going to marry the horrible woman. She ground her teeth together and slammed the receiver down so hard that it hurt her hand.

  “You’re a worse punishment than even he deserves, lady,” she bit off as she turned away from the phone. “I wouldn’t wish you on my worst enemy!”

  The phone rang again and she picked it up, ready to give Audrey a fierce piece of her mind. But it was a journalist wanting to know if the story in the tabloids was true, about Tate and Cecily being lovers when she was still in school.

  “It most certainly is not,” she said curtly. “But I’ll tell you what is. Tate Winthrop is marrying Washington socialite Miss Audrey Gannon at Christmas. You can print that, with my blessing!” And she hung up again.

  The story hit the papers with the force of a bomb blast, and Cecily had to fight tears every time she saw Audrey’s lovely face on the front page of the paper. The only blessing was that it took the heat off herself. The media, having decided that Audrey was much more photogenic and willing to talk, dumped Cecily like old news. Audrey revealed intimate details of their relationship that made Cecily sick. She refused to read anything else about the forthcoming wedding. Tate had made his choice. He could live with it.

  Matt and Leta’s wedding took place a week later. Colby had heard and phoned Cecily to offer to come back for the event in case Tate showed up, but she wouldn’t let him.

  “I’m not afraid of him, Colby,” she said curtly. “I doubt very seriously if he’ll even show up. You don’t have to rush back on my account, although it’s sweet of you to offer.”

  “You be careful,” he said coolly. “I don’t like the idea that someone planted a bug in your apartment. I still don’t think it was anybody from the media. It worries me.”

  “I’m fine,” she assured him. “I have dead bolts on the doors and I do know how to call the police if I have any problems.”

  He was silent. “Just watch your step. Promise me.”

  “I will.” She hesitated. “Colby, do you know something that you aren’t telling me?”

  There was another pause. “Let’s just say that if you expect trouble, you’re better off. And that’s all I can say for now. Be careful. Be extra careful.”

  “I will. You do the same,” she added with a chuckle.

  “I’m a tough old bird,” he told her. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t still be alive in the first place,” he assured her. “You eat properly and take your prenatal vitamins.”

  “Stop mothering me,” she muttered.

  He grinned. “Somebody has to. See you, kid.”

  “Sure.” She hung up. It was going to be lonely without Colby for company, but she had plenty of work to keep her busy. She wondered where Tate was, and how he was handling the shock waves that had reverberated through his life. Eventually he’d have to accept the truth and get over it. But judging by the condition he’d been in the day he came to her office, he was a long way from acceptance.

  She did go to the wedding, in a pretty blue sheath dress a size larger than she usually wore. It was cold, too, so she could wear her leather coat and a neat little hat over her pixie hairdo. The coat, a trench style that was bulky, made a good disguise for her growing waistline. She entered the church trying to turn a blind eye to the cameras and journalists making a human gate outside.

  Since she wasn’t directly related to anyone involved in the scandal, and especially since Audrey’s engagement to Tate had been announced, the media hadn’t been quite as persistent as she’d been afraid of at first. But she did get phone calls at her office, and at her apartment. She was polite, but firm. She wasn’t telling anybody anything else.

  She’d seen on the evening news how fiercely the media had chased the senator, though. He finally gave in and told the story exclusively to one of the more conservative newspapers. After that, it was a little easier for him to go out with Leta in public. Leta used the publicity to focus on the problems back at the Wapiti Ridge reservation. It was a prime example of turning bad publicity to good, and Cecily was proud of the way Leta used the incident to benefit the reservation. So was Matt, judging by the wide grin on his face as he watched her at the microphones.

  The church was sparsely occupied, mostly by friends of Matt’s from Congress who’d braved the press to support him. Cecily hesitated just inside the door, and Leta and Matt Holden came forward to greet her. Matt still had a mark on his cheek from the fight with his son, but he almost glowed with happiness in his formal suit, and he was holding Leta’s hand as if he thought she might escape. Leta herself wore an oyster-colored suit and a fancy hairdo. She looked elegant. Cecily told her so as they embraced.

  “He won’t come,” Leta said sadly. “We sent him an invitation, but he’ll ignore it.”

  Cecily knew she meant her son. She patted the older woman’s shoulder reassuringly. “Well, I came.”

  Matt studied her, looking so much like his son that Cecily felt her heart jump. “Are you okay?”

  “As good as can be expected,” she said wryly. “I had hoped that Tate might show up and I could talk to him.”

  “Fat chance,” Matt said gruffly. “I guess you heard what happened?”

  She nodded. “Good for you,” she replied with a smile.

  He grimaced. “I never meant to lose my temper like that.” He slid a protective arm around Leta. “I just made things worse.”

  “They couldn’t get worse,” Leta murmured. “Look out the door and you’ll see what I mean.”

  “At least we’ve got police officers keeping them out of here,” Matt inserted. He turned toward the altar, saw the priest in place and smiled. “Here goes,” he added, smiling gently at Leta. “Come on.”

  She clung to his hand, pausing to smile at Cecily. “Wish us luck.”

  “You don’t need it,” Cecily returned warmly. “I’m glad things worked out for both of you.”

  “We’re not out of the woods, yet,” Matt said. “But we’ll have to talk about that later. We’re going over to the Carlton for lunch with a few senior members of Congress who came to lend support,” he added, waving a hand in the general direction of several dignified-looking men in the front pews. “Want to come?”

  She shook her head. “Thanks, but I begged off just long enough to come to the ceremony. Dr. Phillips is out of town and I’m expecting a delegation at the museum to talk about future exhibits.”

  “Don’t let them talk you into anything you don’t like, and tell Phillips I said so,” Matt instructed. “As a major private contributor to the museum, I think I have a little say over the direction it takes.”

  “Okay.”

  She sat down in the back pew while they went to the altar and the small, tasteful ceremony began.

  She wasn’t sure when she realized that she wasn’t alone. She’d heard a louder murmur from the crowd outside, but she hadn’t connected it with the door opening. She looked over her shoulder and saw Tate standing against the back wall. He was wearing one of those Armani suits that looked so splendid on his lithe build, and he had his trenchcoat over one arm. He was leaning back, glaring at the ceremony. Something was different about him, but Cecily couldn’t think what. It wasn’t the vivid bruise high up on his cheek where Matt had hit him. But it was something…Then it dawned on her. His hair was cut short, like her own. He glared at her.

  Cecily wasn’t going to cower in her seat and let him think she was afraid to face him. Mindful of the solemnity of the occasion, she got up and joined Tate by the door.

  “So you actually came. Bruises and all,” she whispered with a faintly mocking smile, eyeing the very prominent green-and-yellow patch on his jaw that Matt Holden had put there.

  He looked down at her from turbulent black eyes. He didn’t reply for a minute while he studied her, taking in the differences in her appearance, too. His eyes narrowed on her short hair. She thought his eyelids flinched, but it might
have been the light.

  His eyes went back to the ceremony. He didn’t say another word. He didn’t really need to. He’d cut his hair. In his culture—the one that part of him still belonged to—cutting the hair was a sign of grief.

  She could feel the way it was hurting him to know that the people he loved most in the world had lied to him. She wanted to tell him that the pain would ease day by day, that it was better to know the truth than go through life living a lie. She wanted to tell him that having a foot in two cultures wasn’t the end of the world. But he stood there like a painted stone statue, his jaw so tense that the muscles in it were noticeable. He refused to acknowledge her presence at all.

  “Congratulations on your engagement, by the way,” she said without a trace of bitterness in her tone. “I’m very happy for you.”

  His eyes met hers evenly. “That isn’t what you told the press,” he said in a cold undertone. “I’m amazed that you’d go to such lengths to get back at me.”

  “What lengths?” she asked.

  “Planting that story in the tabloids,” he returned. “I could hate you for that.”

  The teenage sex slave story, she guessed. She glared back at him. “And I could hate you, for believing I would do something so underhanded,” she returned.

  He scowled down at her. The anger he felt was almost tangible. She’d sold him out in every way possible and now she’d embarrassed him publicly, again, first by confessing to the media that she’d been his teenage lover—a load of bull if ever there was one. Then she’d compounded it by adding that he was marrying Audrey at Christmas. He wondered how she could be so vindictive. Audrey was sticking to him like glue and she’d told everyone about the wedding. Not that many people hadn’t read it already in the papers. He felt sick all over. He wouldn’t have Audrey at any price. Not that he was about to confess that to Cecily now, after she’d sold him out.

  He started to speak, but he thought better of it, and turned his angry eyes back toward the couple at the altar.

  After a minute, Cecily turned and went back to her seat. She didn’t look at him again.

  He stood alone in the back of the church, with his resentments making a cocoon around him. He hated the man who was his real father, he hated his mother for lying to him his whole life, he hated Cecily for being a party to it. He didn’t know why he was here at all, except that it had seemed the right thing to do, despite his fury.

  He glanced at Cecily with narrowed eyes. He’d noticed immediately that she’d cut her hair, just as he’d cut his own. He wondered why. His excuse was grief, but he doubted she had similar feelings. She was spending plenty of time with Colby. Maybe he liked it short. The thought of Cecily with another man, after what they’d shared, hurt. Lately everything did. Something inside him was glad to know the truth of his parentage at last, but it couldn’t get through the rage of betrayal. He glanced down at the floor while the murmur of voices buzzed around his ears like bees. He wondered if the pain would ever stop.

  Minutes later, when the priest pronounced Leta and Matt Holden man and wife, Cecily was careful not to look toward the back of the church as she drifted down to the front of the altar to congratulate them.

  Matt hugged her, too, before he looked over her shoulder and his eyes began to darken. “Just what I need,” he muttered. “That!”

  Cecily’s eyes followed his disgusted stare and her heart jumped as she saw Audrey clinging to Tate’s arm. So that was why he’d been so uncommunicative. He was waiting for Audrey. Cecily felt loss to the soles of her shoes. Now she knew that Audrey had been telling the truth about their relationship. They gave one last look toward Leta and Matt before leaving the church. Tate didn’t even look back. Audrey did, with a smug little smile on her lips that Cecily was meant to see.

  “At least he came,” Leta said, trying to sound cheerful. “It was nice of him, under the circumstances.”

  Matt looked as if he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. He caught Leta’s hand in his and ignored the back of the church.

  Three weeks passed with incredible slowness. Tate had apparently gone out of the country again and Cecily didn’t hear from Colby, either. One Friday afternoon, as she was fielding complaints from a group of indigenous people from Montana, sleet began to pepper the grass outside her office window. She was tired already as her pregnancy advanced. But after lunch this Native American delegation from Montana had gathered in her office, protesting an exhibit that had been given to the museum by the elders of their tribe. They weren’t members of the tribal council, and they had militant connections. But Cecily was able to reason with them by promising some much-needed publicity when the exhibit formally opened. This surprised them. Having had dealings with other bureaucrats, they were expecting excuses and dismissal. But Cecily spoke with intimate knowledge of their problems.

  One positive thing that had occurred in the past few decades was the renewed pride of the Native American people in their heritage and its legacy of stewardship of the land. The resurgence of pride had resulted in native peoples speaking out in favor of sovereignty, demanding change, demanding accountability from the agencies that had jurisdiction over them. Things were getting better, little by little. More Native Americans were studying law as well, and at least one organization was quite active in the defense of indigenous people who ran afoul of the courts.

  Cecily was proud that she understood enough about their problems to speak with authority about the methods which might be used to improve conditions on their reservation. She even made suggestions that delighted them.

  One of the older members of the tribe actually grinned at her on the way out of her office.

  “You’re not half-bad,” he murmured.

  She grinned back, recognizing this as a compliment. “Thank you.”

  The sleet kept coming down. It wasn’t such an odd thing for November in Washington, but Cecily hadn’t listened to the weather reports and now she was sorry. She was wearing slick-soled little stacked-heel shoes and it was going to be the very devil to get to her car in the parking lot.

  She wondered if Tate had gotten the message she’d left on his answering machine, about the stories in the paper. She wanted him to know that she hadn’t given such a sensational lie to the press, but she also wanted him to know that Audrey had told her about the wedding. She’d only passed along what she’d heard from the woman. It probably wouldn’t make any difference, but she wanted to clear her name. She wasn’t vicious enough to do something like that to him, knowing how sacred his privacy was to him.

  She never saw the dark car that had been sitting in the parking lot for several minutes before she came out the door. She didn’t know that its driver had been studying her movements all week.

  When she started toward her car, the vehicle with its engine idling suddenly shot into gear and sped toward her, its chains holding it in the ruts made by other departing cars.

  Cecily, her mind on the pleasant end to the meeting in her office, was watching her feet. She heard the car, but only when the noise became disturbing did she look up, just in time to see it heading straight for her, with its headlights blinding her.

  She threw up an arm and gasped, leaping to one side just in the nick of time to avoid being hit head-on. Her feet, predictably, went right out from under her on the slick ice coating the pavement. She cried out as she fell over the concrete bar of an empty parking spot and went careening down the small rise that bordered the parking lot and right into the path of an oncoming car. The last thing she remembered was the horrible squeal of tires on slick pavement.

  She came to in the emergency room. Her hands went immediately to her belly and she looked around for a doctor, a nurse, anyone who could reassure her.

  A nurse caught her eyes and smiled. “It’s all right,” she said gently. “The baby’s fine.”

  Cecily let out the breath she’d been holding. Thank God for miracles!

  “But you’ve got some nasty bruises and a sprained wrist,�
�� the nurse continued. “The doctor wants you admitted so that we can observe you overnight. You were concussed, you know.”

  “I’ve got a dreadful headache,” Cecily murmured, shaken.

  “He’ll give you something for that presently. Slipped on the ice, did you?”

  Cecily hesitated. “Sort of.” She didn’t want to say what had really happened, not until she had a chance to talk to Matt Holden. The car had deliberately tried to hit her. If she hadn’t jumped in time, she might have been killed. As it was, falling into the path of traffic had almost cost her her life anyway. She was too upset to discuss it now.

  The nurse smiled. “Is there someone we can notify for you? Any family?”

  Cecily’s eyes closed as the drugs they’d given her began to work. “I have no family,” she mumbled drowsily. “None at all.”

  It was true, although Leta would have been astonished to hear her say it. Leta would have come right over, but Cecily wasn’t doing that to her, not on her honeymoon. She and Matt had slipped off to Nassau for a few days, and Cecily wasn’t going to be the cause of bringing them back. Besides, she thought, the baby was her family now. She placed her hands over her thickened waist with a dreamy smile, pushing to the back of her mind the reality of what had almost happened.

  Two days later, they let her out, after a battery of tests and with a bandage on her wrist to keep it straight while it healed. Fortunately it was her left hand, not her right one, so she would be able to get on with her work.

  The reporters hadn’t come looking for her in the hospital, thank God. But then, there was a juicy new scandal going on in Washington, and Matt Holden’s wicked past had just been relegated to history.

  Cecily did wonder where Tate had gone. Probably he’d taken Audrey off to some hideaway. It was something of a statement of intent that he’d brought her to his parents’ wedding. Every time she thought about that, for the rest of her life, Cecily was going to see Tate turning away from her. Nothing had ever hurt quite as much.