Tipping his head back, Gray Elliott contemplated the ceiling, and Kate held her breath. Finally, he looked directly at her and said, “William Wyatt spent a fortune on private investigators because he wanted to find out everything he possibly could about the little brother who’d been sent away to make his own way in the world. Caroline Wyatt gave us that file, thinking it might assist us in our own investigation.”
He got up, walked over to a built-in wooden file cabinet, and removed a fat file from it. “Technically,” he said, as he walked over to the conference table and laid the file on it, “this file of Caroline’s is separate from our own investigatory files, so I’m under no real burden of confidentiality. I don’t see why you couldn’t sit over here and look through it while I’m out to lunch.”
Any emotion, even relief, brought tears to her eyes these days, and she had to brush them away as she smiled at him and got up to walk over to the conference table. “Thank you very much,” she said achingly.
He stared at her face for a moment, then he returned to the file cabinet, took out an armload of additional files, and carried those to the conference table, too. “These files are strictly confidential,” he said with a meaningful smile. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Miss Donovan is still in your office,” Gray’s secretary told him.
Gray nodded, opened his office door, and walked inside. Kate Donovan was so engrossed in what she was reading that she didn’t even notice that he’d returned. When he sat down at his desk, his leather chair made a noise, and she glanced up, completely startled. “In twenty minutes, I have a meeting scheduled here,” Gray said, “but you’re welcome to stay until then.”
“Thank you,” she said, and immediately lost herself in the file again.
Reaching for a tablet and pen, Gray started making notes for his meeting, but his gaze kept straying in her direction, and after ten minutes, he finally gave up and put his pen down to watch her. She was still working her way toward the bottom of William’s dark blue file, which, as he recalled, covered the first nineteen or twenty years of Mitchell’s life. There was nothing significant in that one; it contained mostly school transcripts, some letters and statements from those teachers who remembered him and were still employed at the boarding schools he’d attended, and copies of any pages from school periodicals or yearbooks that mentioned him.
And yet she was clearly finding items of import there, because at times she’d smile softly or frown, and a minute before, he’d distinctly seen her touch her fingertip almost tenderly to a newspaper photograph of him.
She was to his left, facing in his general direction, her head bent, her shining red hair spilling over her shoulders. She looked very young and very vulnerable, he thought, and very, very pretty, with her fair skin, long russet eyelashes, and the tiny cleft in her chin. Idly, he wondered why he hadn’t noticed how truly lovely she was before. She’d always seemed striking with her dark red hair, but he’d never really looked at her face. Now that he’d had a good long look at that face and that red hair, he realized the combination was stunning. And when he added in her emerald eyes and those legs of hers, she was downright fantastic looking.
Unfortunately for her, Mitchell Wyatt hadn’t overlooked her attributes and neither had that manipulative, two-faced schmuck Evan Bartlett. Bartlett had made sure everybody in their social circle knew that he’d dumped her and broken their engagement, but he’d neglected to mention that she’d cheated on him first. That would have made him look like less of a stud.
Getting up out of his chair, Gray perched a hip on the corner of his desk closest to the conference table and said, “Are you finding anything that’s helpful in all that stuff?”
She lifted jewel-bright eyes to his, nodded, and gave him a winsome smile. “He was an amazing athlete. He excelled at everything he tried, didn’t he?”
Surprised that athletic prowess would matter to her, Gray considered her question. “I guess he did. I remember there were a lot of school newspaper and yearbook photographs of him playing sports and getting trophies.”
“Did you notice anything else about those photographs?”
“No,” Gray said. “What was there to notice?”
Her voice caught. “He was always alone.” As proof, she flipped back a few pages in the file and took out the first photograph she came to. Gray shoved off the desk and walked the few steps to the conference table to see what she meant. In the photograph, Wyatt looked to be about sixteen, and he was getting a soccer trophy for breaking the school record for most goals in one season. “He isn’t alone,” Gray pointed out. “Two of his teammates who also won trophies are standing on either side of him.”
“Yes, they are,” Kate said softly. “But those two teammates’ parents are standing next to their sons. It’s the same theme in every photograph.”
She flipped slowly backward in the file—and in the chronological order of his life—to a photograph taken of him when he was about six during a cricket match. His bat looked way too big for him, and he was concentrating so hard he was scowling. “That is a kid who is focused on the ball,” Gray joked.
She nodded, started to say something, then shook her head and changed her mind. “Did you read this interview with the custodian of the grounds at his boarding school in France?”
“That sort of thing wasn’t of interest to me,” Gray admitted. “What does it tell you?”
“Mr. Brickley said Mitchell spent several Christmases with his wife and himself, rather than spending them with the headmaster’s family. He said Mitchell later wrote to them from the next boarding school he attended, but Mr. Brickley’s wife died and he stopped answering Mitchell’s letters.” Tears clogged her voice as she said, “Do you know why Mitchell was writing letters to a disinterested groundskeeper from his next boarding school?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“He was writing to him because it was mandatory at all these boarding schools for boys to write to a family member every two weeks. He didn’t have anyone else to write to.”
Leaning back in her chair, she said with a choked laugh, “I don’t blame him for despising the Bartletts and wanting revenge. In fact, I feel better knowing that—although I was badly used—it was actually for a very worthy cause.”
Gray grinned at her joke. “You missed the good stuff. His later years were filled with triumphs. In one of those files there’s a magazine article about Stavros Konstantatos. He called Wyatt ‘my left fist.’”
“His what?”
Leaning across her, Gray sorted through the top files, slid one out, and removed the article he’d shown to Jeff Cervantes and Lily Reardon. Kate read it, her smile faded, and she handed it back. “It’s a little easier for me to see him as a boy and young man than as a dynamic businessman. It’s harder for me to forgive a successful, intelligent man than it is to overlook the heartlessness of a boy who grew up with rich kids while he thought he himself was a charity case without a relative in the world.”
With a vague notion of trying to persuade Gray to let her have a copy of a picture of Mitchell to show her son someday, Kate reached for a file that obviously contained photographs.
The top photograph was a picture of Mitchell standing alone at the wharf in Philipsburg with the sun setting in the background. According to the date and time stamp in the lower right-hand corner, the photograph was taken at 5:45 PM.
It was taken on the date she was supposed to meet him there at four o’clock.
Her hand shook as she picked it up and looked at the date and time again, unable to believe her eyes.
“Oh, my God!” she whispered, looking from the photograph to the one that had been beneath it. That one was taken at 5:15 on the same day in the same place. “Oh, my God!” she said again.
“Why are you upset about that shot? You’re not in it.”
“I was supposed to be there,” Kate said, swiftly sliding the next photograph aside and then the ones beneath it. They were in chronolo
gical order. The first shot taken of Mitchell at the wharf that day was time-stamped 3:30 PM.
Not caring that Gray Elliott would think her demented, she touched Mitchell’s picture as if she could smooth back a loose black lock near his temple. “You were there,” she whispered achingly. “You were waiting there for me …” There was no mistaking that date—she’d gotten pregnant in the predawn hours of that day.
Gray straightened, taking in her flushed cheeks and overbright eyes. “Can I get you a glass of water or something?”
Kate started to laugh and ended up weeping.
“You’re scaring me, Kate.”
She went from weeping to joyous laughter and stood up, wrapping him in a quick, fierce hug with one arm, while she held the picture in her free hand. “You have nothing to be scared about—unless you try to pry this photograph out of my hand,” she warned him, with a beaming smile.
“I can’t—”
“Yes, you can. No one will ever know. It’s for his son to see someday.”
When he looked prepared to wrestle her to the ground for it, Kate sketched in the details of why it meant so much to her. When she was finished, he was a beaten man, and she knew it. “Phone me when you’d like to have dinner,” she said, “and I will see that you and your guests have a meal fit for a king.”
“That sounds like a bribe.”
She was so deliriously happy that she patted the arm of a man she barely knew and smilingly said, “Not a bribe, a payoff.” She picked up her tote bag and headed for the door, then she stopped in the middle of his office and turned back. “Just out of curiosity, where did he go when he left the wharf?”
“He went directly to the airport and flew back here. His brother’s body had been found that day, and his nephew phoned him and pleaded with him to come straight home.”
“The same nephew who later confessed to killing William?”
Gray nodded, his expression turning grim. “The very same crazy little bastard who duped the most lenient judge in the juvenile court system and got off with a year in a psychiatric facility, followed by outpatient therapy, and three years probation.”
Outside on the sidewalk, Kate had to restrain the urge to throw her arms out wide and turn in slow, delighted circles. Mitchell had been waiting for her at the wharf. She wasn’t as naïve now as she’d been then, so she didn’t deceive herself into thinking he’d been in love with her and waiting there to carry her away with him.
The fact that he was there at the wharf didn’t negate the pretenses and secrets he’d built their brief relationship on. He’d pretended he knew nothing about Chicago, he’d pretended he knew nothing about Zack Benedict, and he’d sent her back to the villa to break up with Evan without ever admitting he knew who Evan was.
But he had not intended for her to trot back to the Enclave like an eager puppy only to find out that her master had checked out and vanished. He had not been going to let that happen. Maybe he had been waiting at the wharf just to say, “I’m sorry I’ve used you and hurt you—the Bartletts were my real target.”
It didn’t matter why he’d been waiting there for her. It only mattered that he’d been there. Holly might have been right after all—while he was executing his plan for revenge, he’d started to care for Kate a little, maybe enough to want to watch the sunrise with her. His behavior at the Children’s Hospital benefit rather negated that last thought, so Kate decided never to think about that awful night again.
In her heart a little voice pleaded with her to find Mitchell and see if she could make whatever feeling he’d had for her grow deeper and stronger. But then logic pointed out the futility of that. She was pregnant with his child, and Mitchell did not want anything to do with fatherhood. No doubt he felt that looking at his own child would bring back all the helplessness and pain of his own childhood. Kate felt an impulse to do real violence to Henry and Evan Bartlett and Cecil Wyatt, and everyone else who had put a beautiful, black-haired, blue-eyed little boy through a life of senseless misery.
Kate hailed a cab, slid into the backseat, and asked the driver to take her to Donovan’s restaurant. When she started to give him the address, he waved his hand and said, “Everybody in Chicago knows where it is.”
That was an exaggeration, but Kate didn’t argue. Sliding her hand protectively over her stomach, she whispered to the baby she’d been unable to accept until an hour ago. “Daniel Patrick Donovan,” she said, “you and I have a restaurant to run!”
Walking straight and quickly, Kate pushed the heavy door open and walked into Donovan’s; then she paused a moment and decided that Daniel Mitchell Donovan was the perfect name.
Chapter Forty-two
KATE PULLED HER CAR TO A STOP AT THE VALET PARKING sign ten minutes before Donovan’s regular opening time, but none of Donovan’s valet attendants were waiting under the awning as they normally were by 11:20 in the morning.
She’d had a dentist appointment, and now she wanted to see Danny before Molly put him to bed for a nap after his daily outing at the park.
He was twenty-two months old, full of energy and exuberance, and he loved the swings and slides and teeter-totter. Last Sunday, on a beautiful September afternoon, Kate had taken him to a larger park they visited on weekends and she’d gotten some wonderful photographs of him sailing his boat in the big fountain with sunlit trees in the background.
Twice that day, people had stopped to remark on how beautiful he was, which was a normal occurrence for any outing with Danny. He was the image of his father, with Mitchell’s thick black hair and dark-lashed, cobalt eyes; he even had his slow smile and effortless charm. He was also showing signs of having inherited Mitchell’s magnetism with females. With one of his quick, flashing grins, Danny could conquer the hearts of women—from old ladies to teenagers to an adorable two-year-old girl from the South whose name was Caperton Beirne.
The only genetic contribution from her that Kate could see was that Danny’s hair was slightly curly, although not as curly as hers.
He was tall for his age, surprisingly well-coordinated, and growing up so fast that, at times, Kate wished she could reach out and stop the clock from ticking away the minutes and days of his childhood. He was extremely bright, and—not surprisingly—he was also starting to pick up and repeat words and phrases from the several languages he heard being spoken by Donovan’s culturally diverse employees. His most recently acquired phrase—a colorful Polish curse—had Kate thinking he needed to stay upstairs with Molly, in the apartment she’d expanded and renovated so she could keep him near her all the time. Although she could well afford a place of their own now, she’d decided to wait until he was old enough to start kindergarten. Then she would buy a place for them in the best school district around and cut back on her evening hours at the restaurant.
Wondering where the valet attendants were, Kate debated about driving around the corner and putting her car in the lot there, then she decided to risk getting a ticket by leaving it where it was until she could find a valet to move it. She was halfway across the sidewalk when she heard Hank at the corner newsstand shout, “Congratulations, Miss Donovan!”
Puzzled, Kate waved to him and kept walking.
She unlocked the heavy front door, walked inside, and saw—absolutely no one. The dining rooms were set up for lunch, everything looked perfect, except no one was there—not the maître d’, not a single waiter or busboy or valet attendant. Puzzled and vaguely uneasy, Kate quickened her pace toward the kitchen, rushed through the swinging doors, and stopped short as a smiling army of loyal employees burst into cheers and applause. At the front of the crowd, Molly was holding Danny, and he was clapping and grinning.
Next to him was a big sign on a floor stand where the specials of the day were usually posted by the chefs for the benefit of the kitchen staff and waiters. Today it said, “Kate Donovan, Restaurateur of the Year.”
Kate scooped Danny out of Molly’s arms and looked around at the sea of smiling faces. “What’s all this ab
out?” she asked.
Frank O’Halloran grinned at Marjorie and then at the rest of the staff. “She hasn’t seen it yet,” he said, and everyone burst out laughing.
“Seen what?” Kate said.
Drew Garetti, the manager she’d replaced Louis Kellard with a little over two years before, held out the morning’s edition of the Chicago Tribune. It was opened to a full-page article with a headline that read, KATE DONOVAN, CHICAGO’S RESTAURATEUR OF THE YEAR. According to the article, Kate had been chosen for the honor partly because of the overall excellence of the dining experience at Donovan’s and partly because of a program she’d instituted whereby Donovan’s chef and sous-chef exchanged places four times a year with their counterparts at equally famous restaurants throughout the country. This gave Donovan’s customers a chance to enjoy the fare from other fabulous restaurants, as it did the customers of the other restaurants.
Included in the article were several pictures used in prior stories about Donovan’s, including one of Kate with the governor of Illinois and one of Kate meeting with her kitchen staff, with Danny beside her in his high chair.
The caption below that one read, “Kate Donovan runs her restaurant while son Daniel looks on and learns the ropes from his high chair.”
Kate scanned the article, then she looked around at her staff and told them exactly who she felt deserved the credit for her award. “I can’t thank all of you enough for this,” she said simply.
Drew glanced at his watch, then at everyone else. “We’re opening in two minutes,” he warned them, and patted Kate’s shoulder as he walked out. “You’re the best,” he said.
Kate gave Danny a hug. “Did you hear that, Danny? Drew says we’re the best.”
In response, Danny planted a kiss on her cheek and said, “Molly and me go to the park, Mommy.” Kate let him slide to the floor, and he took Molly’s hand. He adored Molly, who’d come to work for Kate when Danny was born, and the middle-aged Irish woman positively doted on him.
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