Sweet Liar

by Jude Deveraux

  She motioned toward the manual typewriter. “Why not just use a stone tablet and a chisel? It would be the same difference.”

  He didn’t say a word but just kept typing. She should go back to her room and pack, she thought, or maybe take a nap, but for once, she wasn’t sleepy. She wanted to ask him what he was typing, but she didn’t allow herself to do so.

  “I guess I’ll go back to bed,” she said and started toward the door, but stopped. “Are you going to release the money if I don’t look for my grandmother?”

  “No,” he said firmly.

  Samantha started to protest but didn’t. After all, it was her choice as to what she did, and the money wasn’t all that important to her. She would do fine without the money because she knew very well that she could support herself. If she didn’t fulfill the requirements of her father’s will, she could leave New York today and she could go to…She could go to…

  She was unable to finish her thought, because she knew she had nowhere to go, no one to go to. Slowly, she started walking toward the stairs.

  “Your grandfather Cal was sterile,” Mike said loudly into the silence. “He had mumps while he was in the service—two years before he met your grandmother—and the mumps left him sterile. He couldn’t father children.”

  Samantha sat down hard on a chair by the doorway. A full circle, she thought. She had traveled full circle. She had lost her grandmother, her mother, her father, her husband, and now she was being told that her grandfather had never been hers to begin with.

  She didn’t hear Mike move, but he was suddenly standing in front of her. “You want to go get something to eat and talk about this?” His voice was full of concern.

  “No,” she said softly. All she wanted was to go back to her rooms, rooms where she felt safe.

  Grabbing her by the shoulders, Mike pulled her upright to stand in front of him, angry in his belief that her reluctance to go somewhere with him was her continuing conviction that he was half rapist, half murderer. “While you’re in this house I’m responsible for you. Whatever you think of me, I rarely attack women in public places so you can at least have a meal with me.”

  Samantha looked surprised. “I didn’t mean—” She looked away from him, not wanting to be so close to him, for she had an urge to sink into his arms, knowing that it would be good to be held by another human being. The last person who had touched her, besides this man on the day she had met him, had been her father, and in those last months he had been so very fragile. It would be nice to feel strong, healthy arms about her. But Samantha wasn’t in the habit of asking for things from people. She’d never asked her husband to hold her, and she wasn’t going to ask this stranger for comfort, so she jerked her shoulders away from his hands.

  Not understanding her look or her actions, Mike released her, his mouth twisted with disgust. “All right, I’ll keep my hands off of you, but you’re going to eat.”

  Samantha started to repeat her no, but instead, she said she needed to get her purse.

  “What for?” he asked.

  “To pay for—”

  Not allowing her to finish, he took her elbow and propelled her toward the front door. “I told you, I’m an old-fashioned guy. I pay. When I’m with a female, I pay. Whether she’s my sister, my mother, or girlfriend, I pay. No Dutch treat. No her picking up the tab. Understand?”

  Samantha didn’t say a word. There were too many other things on her mind than who paid for breakfast.

  As he ushered her out into the early morning light, she saw that there were a few people on Lexington Avenue, but not many, and the city had an eerie feeling, as though they were alone in it. Silently, she walked beside him, following him into an all-night coffee shop.

  Smiling familiarly, the waitress brought Mike a cup of coffee. “Mike, you been at it all night again?” she asked.

  He smiled back at her. “Yeah,” he said then turned to Samantha. “Scrambled eggs, bagels, okay with you? And tea, right?”

  She nodded, not asking how he knew that she didn’t like coffee. The truth was, she didn’t really care what she ate.

  Leaning back in the booth, Mike sipped his coffee. “I wish your father had told you more. I wish he hadn’t left it to me to explain everything.”

  “My father liked to…manage things,” she said softly.

  “Your father liked to control people’s lives.”

  That snapped her out of her lethargy. “I thought you said you liked my father!”

  “I did. We had some wonderful talks and we became friends, but I’m not blind. He liked to make people do what he wanted them to do.”

  Samantha glared at him.

  “All right,” Mike said. “I get your point. No more comments about your sainted father. You want to hear his theory—his, mind you, not mine—on what happened with your grandparents?”

  She did want to hear and she didn’t. It was rather like paying to see a horror film that you wanted to see yet also didn’t want to see.

  “Your father believed that in 1928 Maxie was pregnant by Barrett, but something happened to prevent them from marrying. Maybe she told him she was pregnant and he refused to marry her, I don’t know. I do know that she left New York, went to Louisville, met Cal, and married him. She stayed with him for thirty-six years, then the photo of her appeared in the paper. Your father thought Barrett probably saw it and that’s how he located Maxie.”

  While watching her with the concentration of a snake, Mike drank more of his coffee. She was difficult to read, and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “Two weeks before Maxie left, Dave said she was on the phone a lot and seemed upset. Just last year he was still berating himself, saying he should have asked her what was wrong, but he was fascinated with his baby daughter and had no thoughts for anyone else. Then, out of the blue, Maxie said her aunt was ill and needed her. She left, and no one in your family ever saw her again. At the time, Dave wanted to search for her, but your grandfather Cal said no—violently no. Dave believed Cal might have known that Maxie had gone back to Barrett. It was your father’s guess that after Barrett had seen her picture, he probably contacted her and asked her to come back to him and she did.”

  Samantha took a few moments to adjust to what he had told her. “If that’s the case, why in the world would my father want to search for an adulteress? An adulteress! Scum-of-the-earth.”

  Mike watched her. “Interesting. Such a forceful opinion about adultery. Any personal reasons for such vehemence?”

  Not answering him, she watched the waitress place the food before them.

  “Your father wasn’t sure what happened to his mother,” Mike continued. “He thought for a while that she was a victim of foul play. Purse nabbed, then murdered, that sort of thing, but a year after she disappeared, she sent Cal a postcard from New York saying she was safe.”

  “How thoughtful of her,” she said sarcastically.

  Mike waited a moment for her to say something else, but when she was silent, he spoke again. “Maxie wrote that she was safe. Not that she was happy or well or send my clothes to so and so. She said she was safe.”

  “Safe in the arms of her lover?”

  “Is that bitterness I hear in your voice?”

  “What I think or feel is none of your business. All I want from you is to know how much I have to do before the requirements of the will are met.”

  “Get me in to see Barrett and that’s it. I want to meet the man. No one’s seen him in twenty years. He’s a recluse who lives on an estate in Connecticut with fences, dogs, and armed guards.”

  “Has it ever occurred to you that my grandmother—if she’s still alive—might be living there with him?”

  Mike grinned. “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  Samantha thought about the possibility of seeing her grandmother again. Her grandmother had abandoned her family, had left the people who loved her for another man, and Samantha wasn’t sure she could forgive the woman. On the other hand, she thought of t
his man Barrett, a man she didn’t know but who may actually be her grandfather.

  “I might like to see him,” she said, then added quickly, “but not her.”

  Mike’s shock showed. “You can forgive a man for being a gangster, but you can’t forgive a woman for adultery? Murder seems worse than sleeping with someone besides your spouse?”

  She ignored his comment. “What is it you want me to do?”

  “Nothing much. I’ll write a letter to Barrett telling him that Maxie’s granddaughter wants to meet him. It’s my guess he’ll answer right away, then we go to meet him. Simple.”

  “What if he wants to see me alone?”

  “I thought of that, actually, so I need a good, solid reason to be your escort. You wouldn’t like to get married this afternoon, would you?”

  “I’d rather be roasted alive,” she answered sincerely.

  Mike laughed. “Liked being married, did you?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You know, there’s a reason for all the divorce in this country.”

  Dave had told him little about Samantha’s marriage, saying only that he had encouraged her divorce and had helped her obtain it, but even so, Mike was startled by her hostility. Looking down at Samantha’s hand on the table, he knew he shouldn’t touch her because she seemed to have such an aversion to being touched—at least by him, anyway—but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

  Picking up her hand, he looked at it, so small in his own, then kissed the palm. “I could show you one heck of a great wedding night.”

  Angrily, she jerked her hand out of his grasp.

  He sighed. “Is it me you hate or all men?” He was surprised at how much he wanted her to say that she didn’t hate him personally.

  But Samantha didn’t answer his question as she looked at her eggs. “Why don’t you tell him the truth?”

  It took Mike a moment to remember who they’d been talking about. “You mean tell Barrett that I want to write about him?”

  “I can fully understand his aversion to writers.” She said the word writers with disgust in her voice.

  “I take it that writing is another mark against me,” he said with a sigh. “Want to tell me why?”

  He didn’t even expect her to answer. “All right, keep your secrets. Ever hear of Al Capone? Of course you have. The reason you’ve heard of him is not because he was the biggest gangster or even the most violent. You’ve heard of him because Capone loved publicity. He used to take corps of pressmen along with him when he went fishing. The man thought everything he did was worth recording. Actually, in his day in New York, Barrett was bigger than Capone, but Barrett hated publicity of any kind. Wouldn’t even allow a photo to be taken of him, and never gave an interview.”

  “So now you think that if you wrote and told him the truth, saying that one maybe-granddaughter and one nosy writer wanted to meet him, he’d say no?”

  “I’m sure of it. That’s why I have to be something close and personal to you. Sure a husband is out? Okay, then how about a fiancé?”

  “How about my half brother?”

  “If Barrett has seen Maxie, he’d know that was a lie.”

  She tried to think of something else for him to pretend to be, for she didn’t want the implied intimacy between them even for one afternoon.

  He knew what she was thinking as clearly as though he could read her mind. “What is it you have against me anyway?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you really want to marry me? Settle down, have a couple of kids?”

  “I hadn’t planned on getting married this week,” he answered.

  “Then you’re not in love with me? Deeply, really in love?”

  “We haven’t had a conversation yet that wasn’t full of hostility.”

  “Ah…Then what you really want is to go to bed with me and that’s all.” She leaned forward. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Taggert. Just as you’re an old-fashioned man, I’m an old-fashioned woman. I’m not a modern woman who debates whether or not to go to bed with a man on the first date. I’m the kind of woman who debates whether or not to kiss a man on the third date. I do not want to go to bed with you and, heaven help me, I do not, under any circumstances, want to get married again. One major mistake per life is my motto, and I’ve made mine and I’ve learned from it. Do I make myself clear?”

  Leaning back in the booth, Mike stared at her, trying his best to understand where all her hostility was coming from. Nothing Dave had told him had prepared him for this animosity.

  “I thought so. Now, do we have things clear between us? I want to fulfill the requirements of my father’s will and get out of this city, and I’ll do what’s necessary but no more. Understand me?”

  “A little better than I did,” he said softly.

  “Good. Now maybe we can proceed. You may write Barrett and tell him I’ll come with my fiancé. After the meeting I’ll move out of your house and you will give me a document saying that I have fulfilled the requirements. Agreed?”

  “Almost. I have a stipulation. Between the time we send the letter and when we receive a reply, probably a few days at most, I don’t want you out of my sight.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want you staying alone in your father’s apartment. Until your father’s will is carried out I am responsible for you.”

  “Of all the—Oh, I see, you said before that you thought I was near suicide. I can assure you, Mr. Taggert, that I—”

  “And I can assure you, Miss Elliot, that I have made up my mind about this. We can do whatever you like, go shopping, visit the Statue of Liberty, whatever, but we do it together.”

  “I will not—”

  He started to leave the table. “This conversation is over. Let’s go back to the house and I’ll help you pack.”

  “Pack?”

  “So you can leave.”

  “But…” She knew what he meant. Either she did what he wanted in the way he wanted it done, or she left his house. He held all the cards. If she wanted the money her father had left her, she had to do what he said. “All right,” she said in disgust as she stood up. “But keep your hands off of me.”

  He was looking at her oddly. “That husband of yours must have been one big bastard.”

  “Not particularly so. Show me a woman who’s been married to the same man for more than two years and I’ll show you a woman with a very high pain tolerance.”

  “I guess your pain level wasn’t too high or you’d still be married to him.”

  She looked away. “That’s where you’re wrong,” she said softly. “My capacity for pain seems to be limitless.”

  6

  The mirror on the wall shuddered when Samantha slammed the apartment door behind her. Just who did he think he was? she thought. What right did he have to give her ultimatums? The instant she thought the words, she knew the answer. Her father had given him the right to decide whether she met the requirements of the will or not, but her father hadn’t given him the right to control every minute of her day, she thought defiantly.

  She opened her closet doors. Statue of Liberty, she thought with disgust, knowing how much she genuinely hated anything that could remotely be called a tourist attraction. In the four years she had lived in Santa Fe she had never visited anything that was frequented by busloads of people who were ruled by timetables prepared by someone else.

  As she looked at the contents of her wardrobe, she smiled. Perhaps he could force her to do what he wanted her to do, but he couldn’t make her enjoy it. Perhaps if she were disagreeable enough, he’d leave her alone. Rummaging inside two packing boxes, she found what she was looking for.

  Mike wrote the letter to Barrett, called an express mail service, and sent it off, letting out his pent-up breath when the letter was gone. Now it was up to Barrett as to what he did, but Mike hoped he’d allow Samantha and him to visit. It was Mike’s guess that the old man would very much want to see his granddaughter—at least Mike hoped that was the ca
se. But who could tell what a ninety-one-year-old man was going to do?

  As Mike watched the express mail truck drive away, his thoughts turned to Samantha and he smiled. For all her bristles, all her hostility, he was looking forward to spending the day with her. It wasn’t just that she was the sexiest female he’d ever seen or that he wanted to take her to bed, there was something about her that intrigued him. He wondered what she was like when she wasn’t angry. Now and then he caught a glimpse of her, a glimpse of what he had come to think of as the real Samantha. He’d seen the real Samantha the first day he’d met her, and last night when she’d drunk the glass of wine and had made jokes, he’d had a look inside her. These rare sights made him sure there was another Samantha under the one she presented to the world, or he thought with a smile, maybe she presented the bristle-coated side only to him.

  Now, he wondered, what did one do with a young lady who looked as though she wore a hat and gloves to church on Sundays? He couldn’t very well take her to his favorite New York haunts, some of which consisted of bars, nor did he think she’d appreciate visiting Daphne and her friends.

  Picking up the telephone, he called his sister Jeanne, for she would know what to do to entertain someone like Samantha, he thought as he dialed his parents’ telephone number in Colorado. His mother answered the phone.

  “Mom, is Jeanne there?”

  “No, Michael, dear, she isn’t.” Patricia Taggert knew the sound of each of her children’s voices, and she knew when they needed something. “Can I help you?”

  Feeling a little odd asking his mother such a personal question, Mike prayed she wouldn’t start asking awkward questions, but he did need a woman’s advice. “I met a woman—Now, wait a minute, before you start thinking orange blossoms—”

  “I didn’t mention orange blossoms, Michael, dear, you did,” Pat said sweetly.

  Mike cleared his throat. “Well, anyway, I met this woman. Actually, she’s the daughter of a friend of mine and—”