by Judy Duarte
He’d almost said Derek Ross. He’d hidden beneath the name Moss for almost as many years as he’d once used his own surname. By now, the names should have all been one and the same to him, yet ever since the funeral, there’d been this yearning within him. A yearning to go back, to reclaim his name. To return to his roots, his youth.
To maybe somehow do it all again, just differently this time.
But then, if things had been different, if they had arranged themselves according to a different plan, he might have missed out on being Brooke’s father. And Brooke represented the greatest triumph of his life. She was his most precious treasure.
If he hadn’t gone into hiding, he would never have met Brooke’s mother, and although he’d never loved her the way he had Anna, Jenna had brought a peacefulness to his life that had long been missing.
Brooke quickly took the lead. “This is Mr. Banning, Dad. Mark.”
Derek noted that his daughter said the name as if she already liked it. As if she already liked the man even though he was fairly certain that Banning was a stranger to her. But then, Brooke liked everyone. She was such an innocent that way. He supposed that was his fault. He’d gone out of his way to shelter her, to allow her to continue believing that the world was a place where the just and the good triumphed over the bad and the corrupt. Instead of the other way around.
She would learn that all too soon, and it was a lesson destined to remain with her all of her natural life.
Reclaiming the role of the friendly proprietor, Derek put his hand out to the younger man. Banning appeared to hesitate for just a beat before he took it. The man had a firm grip. You could tell a lot about a man by his grip. Derek smiled. “Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Banning.”
“Mark,” Mark prompted. “And I’m the one who’s happy.” As he said the words, he forced a smile to his lips, slipping into the role he’d cast for himself. It occurred to Mark that ever since Dana had died, he’d been playing one part after another, deliberately losing sight of himself. It was as if one way or another, acting had to remain in the family.
“Oh?” Derek raised an inquisitive eyebrow, glancing toward his daughter for an explanation. When none was volunteered, he looked back at Mark. “And why would that be?”
Mark’s natural inclination was to hang back, to observe, to lose himself in the background of life. But that wouldn’t give him the answers he needed, wouldn’t ultimately allow him to find a way to prevail upon the bookstore owner to come forward.
So he pushed ahead. “I was hoping that you could help me.”
“Help you do what?” Derek asked.
“He’s writing a book, Dad,” Brooke informed him with no small measure of enthusiasm and excitement.
It made Derek smile. Brooke was far more impressed with writers than he was. To Brooke every person who put pen to paper or, these days, glided their fingers across a computer keyboard, creating something out of nothing, was godlike.
Although he loved books—good books—experience had taught him otherwise. Most people spent far more time talking about writing than they actually spent writing, and even those who did apply them-selves…well, few were worth the trouble of reading. But those who proved to be worth the effort, they were a world apart.
He couldn’t help wondering which category this young man with the dark scar fell into.
Derek studied him with real interest now. “Are you, now?”
Mark nodded. This was not a man who was easily hoodwinked, but he already knew that after preparing himself by reading extensively about his background. “Yes.”
Derek leaned his hip against his desk, half perching on it. “Would you mind if I asked what it was about?”
“Not at all. It’s a—”
“History of San Francisco,” Brooke finished for Mark when the exchange felt as if it was moving too slowly.
Derek continued looking at the other man. “Why would a New Yorker want to do that? I would think that you would have more than enough to write about in New York about New York.”
“San Francisco’s history is richer.” Mark figured that would be what a native would want to hear. One glance at the smile on Brooke’s face told him he was right. And then he paused, shaking his head, making this more personal. “Your daughter already commented on my accent. I guess I’m going to have to work hard on getting rid of it.”
Brooke’s eyes widened. There was an eager, hopeful look there that was hard to miss. “Why would you want to do that? Are you planning on making San Francisco your home?”
He was tempted to say yes because that was what she appeared to want to hear and it would keep things simple. But he had always found it best to keep things without confining parameters. “At least while I’m working on my book.”
Brooke looked from Mark to her father. Wheels began to move in her head. This was the most amount of interest she had seen him display in anything since he’d come home from that funeral. Slipping her hand into her pocket, her fingers came in contact with the letter she’d shoved in there. The letter that might or might not have been meant for her father. The letter whose contents she knew had to have upset him, at least a little. He needed to be distracted, and this tall, dark, mysterious stranger with his lofty goal seemed to fit the bill perfectly. He’d come into their lives just in time and appeared to be nothing short of a godsend.
“Do you know anyone here, Mark?”
He’d never quite heard his name said that melodiously before. It almost sounded as if she was singing his name instead of saying it. The question wasn’t one that he’d expected, not so soon, but nonetheless he was prepared for it.
“I know the two of you.” It wasn’t what he would have normally said, not by any stretch of the imagination. But then he wasn’t being himself now, he was being whoever he had to be in order to bring his case to a successful close.
“And no one else?” She could feel her father looking at her in confusion, probably trying to guess where she was going with this. She wasn’t usually this brazen. This is for you, Dad, not for me.
These days Mark made sure that his mind was always several steps ahead of any square he found himself in. He’d learned the hard way. Had his mind worked like that five years ago, maybe he would have realized that Dana wasn’t just being moody, but that she had slipped into a full-fledged, raging depression that only got worse and worse with each rejection she sustained.
No time to dwell on what might or might not have been now, he admonished himself. There was nothing he could do about the past. He had the present to worry about, and to be successful there meant that he had to be sure there were no slipups in this charade he was being paid to play.
“Well—” he hedged a moment “—technically there is one other person.”
“Technically?” Her mind given to romance, Brooke immediately assumed that Mark was referring to an ex-girlfriend or worse, perhaps an ex-wife. Was that why his eyes looked so sad? Had the woman broken his heart and moved away and now he was here, trying to work up his courage to see her?
She struggled to control her thoughts before they completely ran away with her.
“A friend of mine has an apartment here,” Mark explained, “but he’s out of the country right now. On location,” he added, seeing that there was a question hovering on Brooke’s full lips and guessing at what she’d want to ask. “He’s letting me stay there while I get my bearings.”
It was a plausible enough story based on a kernel of truth from the past. When he and Nick had originally moved out here, it was Nick who had looked up someone he’d known back in New York, a struggling actor who had since moved on to a more stable way of making a living. He and Nick had stayed with Stan until they could find a place of their own. And from there Nick had eventually moved on to his own place.
He’d set up the excuse in case, for some unforeseeable reason, he needed to give her an address where she could reach him. From what he had gathered about her, Brooke Moss seemed like the kin
d who could spring that kind of question on him without warning. All bases had to be covered for this to work.
“How fortunate for you,” Derek commented.
Mark looked at him sharply, expecting to see either doubt or a sarcastic expression on the man’s thin face. But there was nothing. Apparently, despite his background, the father seemed to be almost as trusting as the daughter. Good, that would make things easier for him. He needed to gain their confidence so that asking the right questions wouldn’t be a problem.
“Sometimes I get lucky,” Mark allowed.
But most of the time, a small, bitter voice echoed inside of him, you don’t.
“Would you like to come to dinner tomorrow night?”
The question that had been forming, waiting to escape, popped out of her mouth the second there was a moment without conversation in it.
Both men turned to look at her, surprise written on both their faces.
Mark wondered if he was dreaming. He’d hoped that getting close to these two people, to Derek, wouldn’t take too much time or prove to be too difficult, but this was going along at a speed he would never have predicted. His eyes shifted toward Derek, who looked as surprised as he felt.
He decided to downplay the invitation, in case the older man became defensive over this sudden invasion of his privacy. “That’s very kind of you, Ms. Moss, but I don’t want to impose—”
He expected Brooke to be the one to shoot down his protest. Instead, it was Derek. The man smiled warmly at him.
“You wouldn’t be imposing, Mark, trust me. It’s been a while since we had anyone to dinner, and I think that maybe Brooke is getting a little tired of the stilted conversation.”
“There isn’t any stilted conversation,” Brooke protested, more out of a sense of protectiveness than anything else. The truth was she’d spent a lot of time trying to get her father to talk to her about anything these days.
“No, you’re right,” her father agreed. “There’s hardly any conversation at all. There’s been a death in the—”
Derek abruptly stopped. He’d almost said “family” but had caught himself just in time. He couldn’t very well just drop this bombshell on Brooke, not like this. She deserved to hear this the right way. As far as his daughter knew, there were no other family members, just her and him. She hadn’t a clue that there was actually an extended family she knew nothing about. That there were cousins and that she was related, by marriage, to the affluent Walter Parks, perhaps one of the most manipulative, odious men to have walked the earth.
Someday, Derek thought, he’d sit her down and tell her who her father really was and where he had come from. As it stood right now, she knew very little about him. And wouldn’t it surprise Brooke to discover that she was related to Kathleen Carlton, the mystery author she held in such high regard? He could almost see her face.
But not tonight. He didn’t feel up to telling her the long story that led up to his being here in this small bookstore with her tonight. Maybe he wouldn’t feel up to telling her about it for a long time.
“A death in my circle of acquaintances,” Derek concluded.
Sorry, Marla, he silently apologized to his late sister, sorry to have to shove you aside like this one last time, but this is for Brooke, you understand.
Twenty-five years had gone by since he’d actually spoken to his older sister. Twenty-five years, and in all that time he’d always believed that someday he would attempt to bridge that gap with her, attempt to regain the ground they’d once shared as siblings when life had been so much less complicated. He would come to her and they’d patch things up and things could, for a little while, be the way they had once been.
But now there was no time. Death had seen to that, and the gap that had been created so long ago by that horrid man who had ruined so many of their lives yawned before him, deep and dark and bottomless.
If it wasn’t that he had accidentally stumbled across her obituary, which he’d discovered that her son had printed in all the major newspapers in the country per her request, he wouldn’t have even known she was dead. Because of his own reticence, there would be no reunions, no forgiveness, no restitutions. There would be, and was, only guilt—guilt and a deep, all-pervad-ing sadness for the time that had somehow managed to slip by without contact.
Sorry, Marla, he apologized again.
It was what he had been doing ever since he’d learned of his sister’s untimely death, apologizing to her spirit since he could no longer apologize to her person, apologize for dropping out of sight, for allowing his fear to get the better of him. For allowing his fear to make him abandon her to the life she had wound up living.
It was all Walter Parks’s fault. Walter Parks had killed her as surely as if he’d put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger.
But then, one way or another, the diamond czar was no stranger when it came to killing people, Derek thought. He’d witnessed it firsthand.
Derek became vaguely aware that Brooke was tugging on his arm. “Dad?”
Banning was looking at him curiously. Embarrassed, Derek forced himself to focus on the present before he totally slipped away into the quagmire that had become his thoughts.
He cleared his throat. “As I was saying, Mark, I’ve been rather poor company for my daughter lately and you would be doing me a great favor if you would agree to join us for dinner tomorrow night. It won’t be anything fancy, but it will be home-cooked, something I suspect you don’t get very much of.”
Mark wondered if the man was just making idle conversation, or if Ross sensed that the man who was attempting to entrench himself into the perimeter of his life took most of his meals in the form of frozen dinners and take-outs.
Probably just idle conversation, Mark decided. He was getting too paranoid.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “A home-cooked meal would be a really nice change from what I’m used to.” He looked from Brooke to her father. “If you’re sure I wouldn’t be barging in.”
“We’re sure,” Brooke assured him with feeling.
She liked this man fate had brought into their bookstore, she decided. He was thoughtful and polite, two traits that weren’t all that common these days. Romantic traits, she mused.
Brooke wondered if he wrote poetry. Probably wouldn’t admit it even if he did, but thinking that he might gave her thought wings again. She didn’t want Mark leaving just yet.
“Dad, why don’t you take him over to the domestic history section while I finish putting the chairs away in the storeroom?”
“She fancies herself a little dictator,” Derek explained fondly as he looked at his daughter. “I tell you what, you show Mark to the domestic history section and I’ll put the chairs away.”
“I—”
And then she stopped. While she and her father were busy debating who would put the chairs away, the man she hoped would bring some kind of spark back into her father’s life was quietly doing it.
Mark had picked up four of the folding chairs, two in each hand, and was carrying them toward the door that was opened in the rear of the store. Quickly she grabbed two chairs and followed his lead.
“So, you’re a doer,” she said to him as she caught up, “not a talker.”
It amused Mark that for all intents and purposes, the naive young woman had hit the nail on the head. He preferred doing to talking. It seemed rather ironic to him that he was now in a position where he had to use verbal skills to get by.
“Pretty much,” he agreed.
Chapter Four
Walter Parks slowly paced around his spacious office, his small, brown eyes cold and drawn into slits as he chewed on the information he’d just gotten wind of. A rumor, really, but rumors had a nasty way of turning out to be true when they could cause the most trouble.
And that’s what this now meant. Trouble.
The expression on the diamond czar’s face was one that would have sent an enormous chill through the souls of those who worked for him. Wh
en the head of Parks Mining and Exploration was displeased, hardened men had been known to break out in a cold sweat and run for cover.
The sixty-year-old owner of the largest diamond import-export firm in the country was several levels above displeased and quickly approaching enraged.
An expensive bust of Hannibal caught his eye and he cleared it off its pedestal with one sweep of his arm. The sculpture by a then up-and-coming, now renowned, artist that he had picked up during his last visit to Florence broke into more than a dozen pieces at his feet. He kicked the largest one aside.
God damn it all to hell, why now?
As each decade of his life went by, bringing with it more and more financial success achieved in an above-board manner, Parks increasingly became more of a force to be reckoned with, and he knew it, prided himself on it. Based all of his fragile self-es-teem on it. He’d gone from being a shrewd, calculating man who knew how to make the best of every opportunity that came his way, to a man who created his own opportunities, then on to someone who didn’t care what he had to do in order to maintain his position at the top of the mountain. And he meant to keep it at all costs.
Along the way he had shed what little conscience he’d possessed to begin with.
There were skeletons in his closet as well as bodies, specifically one that had marked the beginning of his meteoric rise in the diamond field. He had married Anna to gain possession of her father’s firm, but it had been the demise of his chief rival, Jeremy Carlton, that had cleared the playing field for him and placed him on the track to exclusive power.
Thoughts of the late Jeremy Carlton, once his naive, so-called friend, had put that haunted look in his eyes. The look that, when flashed, sent lightning bolts of terror slashing through to his underlings.
And they were all underlings.
As far as he was concerned, everyone in his acquaintance was an underling. And he meant to keep it that way.
Walter fisted his hands, wanting to punch something, knowing that destroying something else wouldn’t remove the problem.