Beyond Eden (28 page)

There was utter silence, impenetrable and disbelieving. Incredulous silence, silence that was like the eye of a storm. Dark feelings swirled and the silence was thickening, becoming acid and ugly. Then it seemed that everyone spoke at once.

Holly shot up from her chair, nearly knocking it over, her heavy face mottled with angry color. “But that's absurd! Giving Lindsay this mansion! That's impossible, I want to redecorate it!”

Royce grabbed her arm, pulling her back down. “My wife is perhaps unwise in her choice of words, Delmartin, but nonetheless, what she says is true. Leaving Lindsay anything is absurd. Leaving me, her only son, her heir, a paltry million dollars? Explain, now.”

Grayson Delmartin went through his ritual of removing his glasses, giving himself time to think before he spoke. “I was Mrs. Foxe's lawyer, Judge Foxe, not her financial adviser or her family confessor—”

“Bullshit! You advised her all the bloody time. Are you responsible for this travesty?” He stared a moment toward Lindsay. His eyes darkened—her eyes—the blue deep now, turbulent with anger. “What's your problem, Delmartin? Do you have a thing for girls who are over six feet tall and naive and stunted?”

Lindsay rocked back in her chair. She stared at her father, knowing she shouldn't be surprised at anything he said, but this ruthlessness, this cruelty—

“Judge Foxe,” Grayson Delmartin said, “I beg you moderate your language and your opinions. Miss Lindsay Foxe is your daughter, not some sort of interloper who had no claim on the family. She is also Gates Foxe's granddaughter. She is now very wealthy because she is also the sole inheritor of her mother, Jennifer Foxe. Since she is the sole beneficiary, I will cover it with her in private when we have finished with this.”

“Lunacy!” Holly shrieked. “Sheer wickedness! I won't have it! That damned old lady, I'll kill her!”

“We won't ever be finished with this,” Royce said. He turned to Sydney. “Well, what do you think? You haven't said a word. One million, Sydney, just one fucking million dollars. Jesus, and five million to your daughter. I'll just bet the old bitch tied up that money so you'll never see a dime of it. Probably Melissa won't either until she's twenty-five. What the hell are you going to do?”

Sydney just smiled gently at her father. She looked like the princess she was—cool, aloof, dignified, well-bred to her Gucci-shod toes. She turned toward her half-sister, her posture, her voice composed, gracious, soft. “Congratulations, Lindsay. It appears that you have quite shown all of us, haven't you? Grandmother used to speak of waters running deep in some people. I never really understood what she meant until now. In any case, I do commend you for your outstanding manipulations and congratulate you.”

“I didn't do anything. I have no deep-running waters, that's nonsense and you know it, Sydney. There were no manipulations. My God, this is more a surprise to me than to any of you.”

“Ah, at last some truth out of you, Lindsay,” Royce said. “Excellent.” He rose with swift grace
and strode over to stand over her. “Prove your honesty, your sincerity. Sign over your inheritance to me—to your father—to whom it should have gone in the first place. It isn't right that you take my place in line. You will correct it now.”

Grayson Delmartin jumped to his feet. “Now, just a moment, Judge Foxe. I highly disapprove of this. You mustn't try to coerce your daughter, particularly at a time like this. Such intimidation tactics are highly inappropriate and—”

“Stuff a sock in it!” Holly yelled at him. “Just shut up, damn you, you worthless old sod. Is Lindsay paying you a percentage for this? Did you doctor up this supposed will in her favor?”

Mr. Delmartin pursed his mouth closed. He gathered the papers together, taking his time, straightening each sheet perfectly, calming himself. He was trembling, which was strange to him, because he'd been in the eye of family will-reading storms before, some much worse in acrimony than this one. But the Foxes were supposed to be different. Money, he thought, money was the very devil. It blackened and tarnished and corrupted. It inflicted wounds that would never heal. He finished his straightening. He turned to Lindsay Foxe, who was sitting like a statue in a straight-backed chair. “Will you please come with me now, Lindsay?”

“Yes,” she said. “I'm coming.”

Royce didn't step back. His hands were fisted at his sides. His face was pale, his eyes hard and ugly. “You damned little slut, you no-account little bitch! Little, ha! You just stay where you are. I knew you were a hypocrite, a fraud, nothing more than a mealymouthed little thief. Jesus, I can't believe you'd steal from your own father, steal
my
birthright. More fool I—” He slapped his palm against
his forehead and delivered his blow, his voice low now: “However, blood will tell, won't it? How could I forget? Didn't you seduce your own sister's husband? Didn't you force her to shoot him because of what you'd done? Didn't you prove exactly what you were when you were eighteen years old? Jesus, you're despicable, Lindsay. I disown you.”

“If you disown her, Judge Foxe, you would no longer be a member of her family and thus she wouldn't have any obligation, either moral or legal, to leave you a bloody nickel in her will. Were she to die and leave you nothing, you would have no legal grounds to contest it. You would, in short, be a laughingstock.”

Mr. Delmartin was pleased with his own parting shot. As for Judge Foxe, he looked distinctly displeased with himself and his loss of control. Good, Grayson Delmartin thought as he offered Lindsay his arm. Let the good judge stew on that. Together they left the library. Lindsay was stiff and pale as death, and she stared straight ahead. He led her to the drawing room as a person would another who was blind.

He sat her in a chair and pulled up another opposite her. He took her hands in his as he spoke. Lindsay pulled hers away, unable to bear a touch that brought her here, to the present, to the incredible present that had left everything destroyed, in tatters. But there was no lessening of the shock. Jennifer Foxe had left her daughter an estate nearing five million dollars, after taxes, and a paid-for penthouse condominium on Russian Hill, valued at another million.

Lindsay couldn't take it in. She just sat there, her hands folded in her lap, looking at the painting of her grandfather over the fireplace. Her
grandmother had appeared to love this painting. Lindsay could remember her standing here just looking at it, not moving, staring and staring. She'd always wondered what her grandmother was thinking.

“Do you understand?” Delmartin asked, his voice gentle.

“Yes, but it makes no sense.” She turned and gave him a grave smile. “It really makes no difference, though, does it? To anything. My father has always disliked me. I just didn't realize how much he hated me, how much contempt he felt for me until today. Even if Grandmother had left me a million dollars like everyone else, even if she had left him the bulk of everything, he still would have yelled and screamed at me and hated me.”

“Probably,” Grayson said, his voice cool and matter-of-fact. “I have heard from financial rumblings that your father needs a sturdy influx of money. It seems he doesn't have your grandmother's cunning.”

“But one million—”

“One million dollars is nothing more than a finger in the dam, so I hear. Now, this notion of giving all your inheritance to him—I advise you strongly against it. As you said, what would it change? You think to buy his love? It wouldn't, you know, and I think you're smart enough to realize that. Nor would it buy his respect. It would buy exactly nothing. I think you should return to New York, Lindsay, and do some thinking. Your grandmother has laid a heavy burden on your shoulders. Here is my card with my private number at home. I will be here for you.

“I shouldn't say this, but I must. Don't let your father intimidate you. Don't let him make you feel guilty. Don't let him destroy you with that old
scandal in Paris. I know it was all twisted from the truth. Your grandmother told me that. Will you promise me?”

She gave him a look of naked pain.

“Promise me,” he repeated.

“All right. I promise.”

“Good. When are you going back to New York?”

“Now.”

“Er, what about the house?”

She stared at him blankly.

“This house, the Foxe mansion. You own it. It's all yours, free and clear. Your father and his wife live here. What do you want to do?”

She waved a vague hand. “I don't know. As you say, they live here. Let them stay. I can't quite imagine going in the library now and informing them to be out by three o'clock.”

Grayson Delmartin thought evicting Judge Foxe would provide him the most satisfaction he'd had in a good ten years. “Do you wish me to instruct Mrs. Foxe that no changes are to be made without your express permission in writing?”

She looked up again at her grandfather's painting. Would Holly send it to the trash bin if she had her way? “Whatever you believe appropriate, Mr. Delmartin. No, I don't want any changes, at least not yet. Yes, in writing. That makes it very official.”

“Good, good.” He rose and offered Lindsay his hand. “I will wait here until you're packed. Then I will drive you to the airport.”

She smiled. “Ah, my protector from the ravening wolves.”

“Yes, exactly.” Telling Mrs. Foxe she couldn't lay a fat finger on the house would also give him some satisfaction. At least enough for now.

As he drove the very wealthy Miss Foxe to the San Francisco airport, Grayson Delmartin hoped that she had a protector in New York. She needed one, at least until she got herself on an even keel. He'd forgotten the scandal about the prince and his rape of an eighteen-year-old Lindsay. He shook his head. Jesus, a father calling his daughter a slut. It defied any logic he knew of and it defied any understanding Grayson could bring to bear on Judge Royce Foxe's dislike of his younger daughter.

The man, he thought dispassionately, was a shit.

It was on the way to the airport that Lindsay realized exactly what it was her grandmother had done for her: she'd given her power, ultimate power, the only kind of power Gates Foxe had understood, and she'd given it free and clear with no strings. Power. Lindsay smiled. Immense power, but now she had no need of it. She wished she could tell it to her grandmother now, but it was too late. Power wasn't to Lindsay what it was to Gates Foxe. To her it was understanding and acceptance of things she couldn't change. It was overcoming fear, putting the pain of her father's words behind that curtain she'd seen so clearly in the dining room the night before. Power was not letting the past obstruct the future. Power was knowledge of oneself, of what one was, of what one could become. Power was seeing her family as they really were, namely, jerks, and accepting that they'd never change.
And it wasn't her fault.
She didn't have to play their endless destructive games. She was free of them. She drew a deep, clean breath. Delmartin looked sharply at her, but when she just shook her head, he remained quiet.

To her utter surprise, Lindsay slept most of the way back to New York. She didn't dream. She
didn't cry anymore. She felt numb, then she slept. The last half-hour of the flight, she was in that vague semiawake state, and all her thoughts were focused on Taylor.

She wanted to see him. She wanted to be close to him. She wanted to touch him, breathe in his scent. She wanted to know that she wasn't alone. Always alone, she thought. God, she wanted Taylor.

It was just after midnight when she came through the gate tunnel. She knew she was hurrying, she couldn't help it. She wanted Taylor, and even a second longer to wait was too long. She nearly tripped once and felt a man's hand grab her arm, to straighten her back up. She smiled her thanks, her eyes darting beyond him, and kept hurrying.

He was there, leaning against one of the concrete posts, his arms crossed, his expression intent.

She paused, looking directly at him. For the first time since she'd met him, she really saw him, saw to the bone and marrow of him, to the toughness and kindness of him, to the essence of him, and she felt something wild and heavy beat steady within her.

She took a step forward, still staring at him, not understanding really, but wanting him more than anything. He'd said nothing, hadn't moved. His head was cocked now to one side as he watched her.

She dropped her bag and simply ran to him. He was a man of quick reaction time and he lifted her up against him, squeezing her so tightly she gasped for breath. When he lowered her, he felt the warmth and softness of her body and he felt something else. He felt urgency in her, and power and a frenzy, a wildness that had brought her to the edge. She didn't lose her hold around his neck.
Then she was kissing him all over his face, and he felt the heat of her mouth, the heat of her body.

Sweet Jesus, he thought, his mouth opening to her urging. He allowed himself for the first time since he'd known her to let go, to react as he wanted to, to show her how much he wanted her, to forget control, to forget scaring her. He wanted her with all the pent-up madness in him, and—

He moaned in her mouth, his hands now frantic on her back. He became aware of a laugh, and slowly, hating to be parted from her, Taylor raised his head. It took him an instant to focus his mind and his eyes. They were in the middle of Kennedy airport and any minute now he imagined he could very easily pull her pants down, open his, and slam into her.

He drew a deep breath, took her face between his palms and kissed her lightly—her nose, chin, cheeks—smoothed her eyebrows with his thumbs.

“Welcome home, sweetheart. I've missed you.”

“Take me home, Taylor, now, please, home.” He'd never heard her voice so low, nearly ugly in its hoarseness. He felt himself responding with a reck-lessness he didn't know was in him. He grabbed her bag in his right hand, her hand in his left, and dragged her toward the exit.