by Raye Morgan
Meanwhile Mrs. Van Kirk was busy going through the RSVP returns and setting up place cards for the tables.
“The Five Families are coming en masse,” she announced to everyone, happily running through her cards. “The eligible young woman count is at eleven and rising fast. Once they find out Cameron is up for matrimonial grabs, they sign up without delay. He’s quite popular among them, you know.”
Diana didn’t have to be told. She already knew and she was sick at heart about it. She knew this was the last gasp as far as her relationship with Cam went. His family wanted him to marry a rich lady and that was what he was going to have to do. He might not know it yet, but she did.
He felt guilty for leaving his family in the lurch ten years before. He was ready and ripe for the picking as far as expiating that guilt and doing what would make his family happy and solvent went. He was going to have to marry someone. He just hadn’t faced it in a calm and rational way.
Her mind was made up. She was going to endure this party to the best she could and then she was going to head home and stay away from the Van Kirks for the rest of her life. Every one of them. She would have Penny come and do the weekly flower arrangements and she herself would have no further contact with these people. That was the only way to preserve her happiness and her sanity. It wasn’t going to be easy, but she would keep her allegiance to her baby uppermost in her mind and she would fight through the pain. It had to be.
Cam sat in his car staring at the Van Kirk mansion. He’d been in Sacramento doing some research and he had some news for Diana, who was inside, working on party preparations. He wasn’t sure how she was going to take it. He wasn’t sure how he took it himself.
His grandfather had mentioned the fact that Di’s mother left her at a young age and that no one knew exactly why she might have done such a thing. Was she running off with another man? Had she reached the end of her rope dealing with her drunk of a husband? But if that was the case, why did she leave her child behind? In this day and age, the answers to such questions were a lot easier to find than they had been in the old days before computers and public access to so much government information.
At first Cam had resisted looking into the matter. After all, if Di wanted to know these things, she could have instituted a search herself, years ago. To go ahead on his own was to intrude where he had no right to. And yet, once his grandfather had brought it up, the mystery had nagged at him until he’d had to find out for himself.
His dilemma now was whether or not to tell Diana that he’d done it. And whether or not to tell her what he’d found as a result. What made him think that she actually wanted to know?
But it had to be done. Swearing softly, he got out of the car and started into the house, ready to go looking for Diana. The time of reckoning was at hand.
“Hi,” she said, looking harried. “Listen, I need to talk to you. Ben has been calling me.”
He reacted quickly to that, turning his head to stare at her. “What for?”
“He wants me to commit to selling out my portion of the inherited land.” She appealed to him, a worried look in her large dark eyes. “What do you think? Should I do it?”
He hesitated. He hadn’t been able to find out anything that would make him counsel that she turn Ben down, but something about this whole deal didn’t seem right to him.
“Maybe you ought to wait,” he said.
Diana seemed impatient. “Wait for what? We saw the land. It’s not worth much. And I could use the money.” She patted her rounded tummy. “I’ve got a baby coming, you know.”
“I know.” He smiled at her obvious joy every time she thought of or mentioned her baby. “I’ve tried to find out if there is any reason he would be so hot to have it, but so far, I haven’t found a whisper of anything that would lead in that direction.”
He’d come looking for her to tell her what he’d found about her mother, but as he gazed at her now, he thought twice and decided to hold off. She had too many things on her mind as it was. This business about her mother would just add to her worries and she didn’t need that. He thought for a moment, then shrugged.
“Oh, what the hell. Go ahead and sell to him. Why not?”
“Okay. I’ll give him a call and tell him to write up his proposal. He said he would send me a check once it was signed.” She looked up at him, eyebrows raised in question. “Maybe you could use the money to help with…?”
“Forget it,” he said, but he grinned at her. “The amount we need is way beyond what you’ll be getting. But thanks for the thought. I appreciate it.”
She nodded. “Okay then.” She noted a worried look in his eyes and she frowned. “Cam, how’s the search for funding going? Have you had any luck yet?”
He shook his head briefly and gave her a fleeting smile. “No. With the economy the way it is, no one wants to take a chance.”
She hated to see defeat in his face. “What about your business in San Diego? Have you thought about…” She almost gulped before she dared say the word. “Selling it?”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried that?” He ran a hand through his hair, regretting that his response had been a bit harsh. “Of course I’ve thought about it. I’ve even put it on the auction block. So far there have been no takers.”
“Oh.” She was beginning to realize that this was really not looking good. It just might be that the Van Kirks were going to lose their family home and all the land they’d held for over a hundred years.
Funny how that sent a shiver of dread through her. What did she care, after all? These were people who had scorned her and her family all her life, until very recently. While she and her father had scrimped and clawed their way to a bare bones existence, the Van Kirks had lived a wealthy life of ease and comfort.
Or so it had seemed from afar. Once she got to know them better, she realized they had their own problems, their own demons to deal with. With wealth, your priorities changed, but the obstacles were very much the same. Life was no bed of roses no matter what side of the fence you lived on.
“You mean that darned old Freddy Mercury knew what he was talking about?” Cam said when she tried to explain to him how her thinking was running.
“Only if the Van Kirks end up as champions,” she retorted, giving him a snooty look. “No time for losers, after all.”
He put his forefinger under her chin and lifted it, looking down into her face. “We’re going to come out of this okay, Diana,” he said firmly. “I promise. Somehow, someway, I’m going to save the family farm.”
She couldn’t help but believe him. He had always been her champion, after all.
It was two days later that Cam came to her in a hurry just as she arrived at the estate. She’d barely risen from her car when he came rushing up.
“Diana, I need your help,” he said without preamble. “Please. Find Janey and get her to take my mother downtown.”
“What for?” The request was a little surprising, as Mrs. Van Kirk hadn’t set foot off the grounds since her accident.
“Find some excuse. We’ve got to get her out of here. We’ve got appraisers and bank people coming to take a look at the house. It’ll kill her if she sees that. She’ll put two and two together and get…zero.”
“Why are they coming?” Diana asked, not too good at putting two and two together herself.
“Why do you think? They want to take measurements and do evaluations.” He gave her a dark look as he turned away. “Let’s just say the vultures are circling.”
That was an ominous thing to say and she shuddered every time she thought of it. But she did find Janey and prompted her to convince her mother to go into town for a bit of window-shopping. The real thing was off the budget for the foreseeable future. She watched as they drove off in Janey’s little sports car, Mrs. Van Kirk complaining about the tight fit all the way. Just as they disappeared down the driveway, a limousine drove up and disgorged a group of businessmen who reminded her of a scrum of ravenous sharks.
Cam went out to meet them and began to take them on a tour of the grounds, talking very fast all the while. She wondered just what line of fantasy he was trying to spin. Whatever it was, they seemed to be listening attentively.
It wasn’t until he brought them into the house that she began to realize something was wrong. She heard shouting and as she ran toward the front of the house where the noise was coming from, she began to realize it was Cam’s grandfather who was causing a ruckus.
Old-fashioned cuss words were flying as she burst into the library where Cam was trying to quiet the older man. The bankers and appraisers were shell-shocked, gathering against the far wall of the room like a school of frightened fish.
“Get out of my house,” Cam’s grandfather was yelling. “I won’t have you bloodsuckers here. I’d rather die than give in to you thieves. Where’s my shotgun?”
“Get them out of here,” Cam told her as she skidded to a stop before him, pointing to the group of visitors. “I’m going to lock him in here.”
She shooed the men away, then turned back. “I’ll stay here with him,” she heard herself say, then gaped in horror at her own suggestion. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was stay here with this raving madman, but at the same time, she couldn’t see locking him in here all alone. He was too old and too honored a member of this family to be treated like that.
“Really?” Cam looked at the end of his rope. “Great. Thanks, Di. I’ll make it up to you, somehow.”
He took off after the others, locking the door behind him, and Diana turned to look at the grandfather.
He’d finally stopped yelling and he sagged down onto the couch, his face turning an ashen shade of gray. She quickly got a glass of water from the cooler in the corner and handed it to him. He took a long drink and seemed to revive somewhat. He turned to look at her and frowned.
“They want to take my house away,” he told her shakily. “I can’t let them do that.”
“Cam is going to try to fix it,” she said, wishing she had more faith in the fact that a fix was possible. “I think these men are just here to gather some data.”
He didn’t answer and for a moment, she thought he’d forgotten she was there. Then he turned, gazing at her from under bushy eyebrows.
“Let me tell you a story, girl. A story about family and friendship and history.”
She glanced toward the door. Surely Cam would be coming back to rescue her soon. “Well, if it’s only a short one.”
“Sit down.”
He did have a way with words—a strong and scary way. She sat down.
“I’m sure you know all about the Five Families, how our ancestors all worked together to establish a decent community for our loved ones here. Those bonds were still strong back when I was young. Through the years, they’ve frayed a bit. But two of us remained true friends, me and Jasper Sinclair. Some called our friendship historic. We were the only remaining descendants in our generation of a group of close friends who had struck out together for the California gold fields in the mid-nineteenth century, men who found their fortunes, and founded a pair of towns rimming the Gold Dust Valley.”
He shook his head, his foggy gaze obviously turned backward on ancient scenes.
“Me and Jasper, we were raised to feel it our duty to maintain area pride in that culture and history. The other families sort of dissolved for one reason or another. Oh, they’re still around, but their kids don’t really have the pride the way they should. The Van Kirks and the Sinclairs, though, we’ve still got that Gold Rush story running in the blood in our veins.”
Diana nodded. She knew a lot of this already, and she knew that it was a Sinclair girl that Cam had been expected to marry ten years ago.
“Jasper’s gone now, but he had a passel of granddaughters. I always said, if Cam can’t decide on one of those pretty girls, he just ain’t the man I think he is. You see, I promised Jasper I would see to it that we kept the old ways alive. Traditions matter. That’s what keeps a culture intact, keeps the home fires burning, so to speak.”
Diana took a deep breath and made a stab at giving her own opinion on the subject. “You know, in this day and age, it’s pretty hard to force that sort of arranged marriage on young people. It just doesn’t fit with the way we live now.”
He fixed her with a gimlet eye. “Some of those arranged marriages turn out better than the ones people fall into by themselves,” he said gruffly. “Look at your own parents. They married for love. That didn’t turn out so well, did it?”
Diana had just about had it with his casual interest in giving out his view of her family affairs.
“Mr. Van Kirk,” she began stiffly.
But he didn’t wait to hear what she had to say.
“Did you know that your dad and my son, Cam’s father, were good friends back before the two of you were born? Drinking buddies, in fact.”
That stopped her in her tracks. “No,” she said softly. “No, I didn’t know that.”
He nodded solemnly. “I used to blame him. Your dad, I mean. But now I realize they were both weak, both with addictive problems. Funny, isn’t it?”
“Tragic is more like it,” she said, but the words were under her breath and he didn’t hear them.
He glared at her. “Anyway, I just hope you understand that Cam has got to marry one of them girls. There’s no other way. It’s either that, or we are over as a family.” He shrugged as though dismissing her. “Sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
Cam returned before he could go on and she rose gratefully, leaving him to take his grandfather back up to his room. She felt numb. She knew what the old man had been trying to say to her. He needn’t have bothered. She knew Cam would never marry her. As far as he was concerned, she was pregnant with another man’s child. Besides, he didn’t want to marry anyone. Didn’t the old man know that?
But if all that was true, why was she crying again?
Cam sat in the darkened library staring out at the moon and wondering how things had gotten so crazy. He held a crystal glass filled with golden liquid of a certain potent variety and imbibed from time to time. But mostly, he was lost in thought.
It was the night before the party. Everyone had worked long into the evening, and would be back first thing in the morning to finish preparations before the guests began to arrive. Cam felt tired down to his bones, but he knew it was more emotional than physical.
Tomorrow the grounds would be filled with party-goers. A lot of beautiful young women from eligible families would be showing off their pretty summer dresses. Most of them were just coming to have fun, to see friends, to be at a party. But he knew there were certain expectations, mostly from his own family, that he would choose one of them to court. Preferably one of the richest ones, preferably from one of the Five Families. Hopes were high that he would do something matrimonial to save his own family from being kicked out of their ancestral home.
That wasn’t going to happen. Much as he wanted to do something to save his family from ruin, he couldn’t marry someone he didn’t love. And he couldn’t stop loving someone he couldn’t marry.
He groaned, stretching back in the leather chair and closing his eyes. He should never have let his mother have her way with this party. He should never have let any of them get their hopes up this way.
Janey had actually brought the subject up earlier that day.
“Look,” she’d said, waving a paring knife his way as she took a break from fashioning vegetable decorations. “It’s only obvious you’re crazy for Diana. You don’t want to marry any of those women who are coming. I’m not sure you even want to be here with us.”
She waved the knife so dramatically, he’d actually stepped back to be sure he was out of range.
“Why don’t you just grab Diana and go? Take off for parts unknown. Leave us behind. We’ll sink or swim without you.”
He shook his head. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Be
cause it turns out, though I tried for ten years to forget it, blood is thicker than water. I’m a part of this family and I do care what happens to it.”
Janey looked at him as though he were demented. “You can’t just go off and be happy with the girl you love?”
“No.”
Janey looked at him for a long moment, then said, “More fool you,” but her eyes were moist and she turned and gave him the first hug he’d had from her since they were children.
A part of what complicated things, of course, was that, even if he wanted to go off with Diana, he wasn’t sure she would want to go off with him. He knew she had a lot of affection for him, knew that she’d missed him and resented that he had gone off and left her behind suddenly the way he had—and for so darn long.
But why wouldn’t she tell him who Mia’s father was? He didn’t know anything about the man who had fathered her baby. There was only one reason he could think of for that. She must still love him, still hope to get him to return and take up his duties as her child’s father. What else could it be? And if that was still her dream, how could he get in the way?
He wished he understood women better. Somehow their thought processes were such a mystery. Just when he thought he’d figured one of them out, he found she was off in outer space somewhere, running on completely different assumptions than he was.
Gina for instance, the woman he’d lived with for a substantial length of time two years before. He’d thought they had the perfect adult relationship—companionship and sex without strings. She was the one who had suggested it and he’d been glad to accept her conditions. Then, suddenly, she wanted to get married. That was a shocker. He very quickly realized he didn’t love her and didn’t want to spend his life with her. When he explained that to her, she left in a huff.