Call It Destiny (9 page)

„And in between cruises I will plan on playing the new Hacienda Strand course, hmm?“ Paul reached for the jam pot.

„If we can get Cecil Winthrop to sell us that land,“ Jake agreed, his eyes on Heather. „But after the way Heather had him charmed last night I expect we can get just about anything we want from the man.“

„We’ll see,“ Heather said dismissingly. „I’m not at all sure the Hacienda needs a course of its own. And no matter how ‘charmed’ Cecil might be, he’s not going to let that land go cheap.“

„If we don’t pick it up fairly quickly he’ll probably sell it to someone else,“ Jake said carefully. „There’s a corporation back east that has its eye on it. The last thing we want is a commercial establishment going up nearby. It would hurt the resort atmosphere of the Hacienda.“
 

„We’ll discuss it some other time,“ Heather said with polite firmness.
 

A sudden tense silence descended over the small table, and then Paul Strand valiantly stepped in to change the subject.

„More thunderstorms predicted for this afternoon, I hear.“

What would people do without the weather as a safe topic of conversation, Heather wondered in amusement.

On the eve of her wedding
Heather stood quietly in the shadows of her parents’ garden and watched the crowd that jammed the terrace and spilled over into the lush
gardens. This last party her mother had insisted on giving was for the staff of the Hacienda. Everyone from Julian Richards to the most recently hired maid was having a ball.
 

Somewhere in that crowd Jake was probably standing alone, sipping a glass of Scotch on the rocks while the cheerful hotel workers ebbed and flowed around him. Heather wondered if anyone had missed her yet.
 

Normally she would have been in the middle of the crowd, pouring her energy into playing the perfect hostess. But about an hour ago she had suddenly realized that she needed a breather. For some reason she had begun to feel a little trapped, hemmed in by people and the sure unalterable course she had set for herself.
 

She was going to be married in the morning. That reality had finally struck her. She intended to link her life and her career with those of a man she didn’t truly know or completely comprehend.
 

Bridal jitters, she reassured herself. Or too much champagne. One of the two. With a wry expression she glanced down at the empty glass in her hand and wondered what Jake was thinking as the crowd milled around him.

Ever since the night of that other party, he had kept his lovemak
ing restrained to a few good-night kisses. There had been no more attempts to talk her into bed. Perhaps he was saving the arguments for the wedding night. Or perhaps he really intended to let her set the pace of their growing intimacy.
 

Controlling that pace was something Heather fully intended to do. She was, oddly enough, getting more nervous about that aspect of the marriage than she had expected. There was no denying the attraction that flared between herself and the man she was marrying. But she sensed an implicit menace in the idea of succumbing to that attraction. It was a menace she couldn’t understand or explain, but it was there.

Bridal jitters, indeed!

The real problem, Heather decided abruptly, was that she was getting restless. Her family and Jake had more or less forced her to concentrate her full efforts on the wedding. In a misguided attempt to give her a small „vacation“ before she assumed the reins of the Hacienda, they had all conspired to keep her away from the business offices. In an effort to oblige everyone, she had allowed herself to give complete attention to the coming wedding.
 

As a result she had not had anything else to take her mind off the matter. Some real work would have given her some balance during the past few weeks. She liked work. She needed it at times. Work had given her so much during the past few years. And running the Hacienda Strand was going to be so much richer and more fulfilling than anything else she had done to date.
 

Her family and Jake just hadn’t understood that by keeping her away from the hotel offices they hadn’t made things easier for her. Heather glanced around at the moonlit garden and smiled to herself. Soon everything would be settled and back under control.

„And soon, as the saying goes, all this will be mine,“ she joked softly to herself. When she was back at work she would feel back to normal.

Maybe what she needed to counteract the bridal jitters was some of that very therapy. On a sudden impulse Heather started down a deserted path toward the main lodge.

The fine, pleated, full-length evening gown she was wearing drifted sensually around her ankles as she made her way in silence. No one called after her or demanded to know where she was going. For the moment she was free.

The freedom, Heather discovered as she slipped into the main
lodge and down the hall to the darkened offices, felt surprisingly good. For a month she had been
playing the perfect daughter and the perfect fiancée. Conscious of her coming responsibilities as owner of the Hacienda Strand she had also been careful to play the gracious boss in front of the staff. The roles were all satisfying to some degree and she knew inside herself where to draw the necessary lines. No one would take advantage of her.
 

But occasionally a woman needed to be by herself. Tonight was one of those occasions.

The office door was locked. Going back to the front desk where only one clerk was on duty she flashed her most winning smile and asked for the key.

„Thank you, Harry. Did you enjoy the party earlier this evening?“
 

„Oh, yes, Miss Strand.“ The young desk clerk beamed. „Had a great time. Almost forgot to come back and relieve David so that he could go! Is it over?“

„No, I just decided to take a little break. This staff certainly knows how to party! I don’t think anyone’s even going to miss me for a while.“ Heather closed her fingers around the key and nodded as she went back down the hall.

A few moments later she stepped inside the plush offices that belonged to her father until tomorrow morning. This would be her domain, Heather thought wonderingly as she trailed a finger along the mahogany desk top. Moving slowly, she walked across the thick rug to the wall of files. Soon she would be in charge of her beloved Hacienda.
 

All those years in California away from the place she loved so much. It seemed like a lifetime. But now she was home.

The deep leather chair behind the desk looked inviting. With a smile of distinct pleasure Heather sank down in it. How many times had she wandered into this office as a child and clambered over this chair? So many memories. And not all of them bad. It was only in her teen years that the temperaments of her father and herself had truly begun to clash. During those unstable years when she had been growing from child into woman, things had been tense and difficult. She had never stopped loving her father or the rest of her family. But she had needed to separate herself from the domineering influences in her life. Needed to prove herself and make her own way.
 

And that was exactly what she’d succeeded in doing. She had needed those years in California and the task of proving herself to herself and her family had been accomplished. It was time to come home.

Absently she began opening desk drawers. With a pleasant sensation of possessiveness she regarded the array of pens and pencils and paper clips in the center drawer and then shut it. The drawers on the left side yielded a battered dictionary and stationery with the Hacienda Strand letterhead. The Tucson phone book was stashed in the back.
 

The right-hand drawers were locked. Experimentally Heather tugged at them, trying to remember where her father had always kept the key. Ah, yes. Behind the row of books on the top shelf of the bookcase across the room.

On a whim Heather got up and went over to the case. Standing on tiptoe she scrabbled around behind a copy of a history of Arizona until her fingertips closed over the little key. Then she went back to the desk and unlocked the drawers.

This was where her father had always kept the most vital financial records. The corporation’s check registers, bank-account information, various licenses were all still neatly filed here.
 

Strange. Jake had taken over much of the day-to-day accounting work during the past two years. Heather wondered why a great deal of the financial information hadn’t been transferred to his office. From what she had been able to tell, Jake appeared to work out of his cottage.

With idle curiosity she pulled one of the journals out of the drawer and began flipping through it. Perhaps her father hadn’t been very good at delegating authority. When she took over next week she would see to it that Jake took charge of these records. After all, he was supposed to be the financial wizard. He should have custody of the journals and ledgers and other such records.

Her eye paused on some recent entries, noting that the handwriting was not her father’s or that of his secretary. It was strong masculine handwriting. Jake’s?
 

A bit more intently she began to examine the various items. She was wrong about one thing. Her father certainly had delegated authority to Jake!
 

Frowning intently, she reached for some of the official records of the corporation. Exactly what title did Jake hold?

Five minutes later she sat staring at the copy of a recent corporate resolution that had been drawn up to open a new checking account at a local bank. The document clearly stated the owner of the Hacienda Strand, and it was not Paul Strand.

Stunned, Heather read the name again and again, unable to comprehend what she was seeing in black and white.
 

Fifteen minutes later, after poring over every vital document she could find, Heather was forced to acknowledge the truth. Jake Cavender owned the Hacienda Strand, and had owned it for the past six months.

It had been about four months ago that her father had first approached her about returning to Tucson to take over the Hacienda. Three or four months ago that her parents had first begun to hint very seriously just how beneficial a marriage between herself and Jake would be for all concerned. Oh, the matchmaking had begun almost two years ago. Whenever she happened to return to Tucson for the holidays her mother had always tried
to pair her with Jake. But it had been only recently that the suggestions of marriage had become so definite.
 

A perfect team, her father had said. A perfect management team.

No one had bothered to tell her that she was not going to be the ranking member of that team. No one had spelled out that her birthright had been sold to the man she was to marry.
 

Fury, intense and passionate beyond anything she had ever known, began to uncoil in her. For long moments she sat very still in the huge leather chair, not trusting her coordination. Then, very slowly she got shakily to her feet.

She had been manipulated. Cheated of her inheritance. Lured home by false promises. It had all been an elaborate illusion spun by masters. And she had fallen neatly into the trap Jake and her father had woven.

She could not believe her mother knew of the change of ownership. Her gentle mother could never have maintained such a lie. No, this was the work of hard tough businessmen. Men like Jake and Paul.
 

The overwhelming sense of betrayal made her momentarily dizzy. She clutched at the desk to steady herself. What a fool she had been!

No wonder Jake hadn’t seriously objected to signing the prenuptial agreement. He had changed the only clause that might conceivably cause him some frustration. Everything else he had agreed to
had merely been protecting his own financial interests! He was the one who was entering the marriage with control of the Hacienda, and he was the one who would retain possession of it in the event the marriage was dissolved.
 

Calling herself a fool and an idiot in a hundred different ways, Heather managed to let herself out of the office. She returned the key to the puzzled desk clerk who wondered why he wasn’t getting the customary
brilliant smile he had come to expect from Heather. Then she made her way out into the comforting darkness of the gardens.
 

The music on her parents’ terrace drifted through the balmy night air along with the distant hubbub of the crowd. Jake would be standing there, a remote island in the stream, knowing he owned all he surveyed. And tomorrow morning at ten he was scheduled to acquire the last item on his shopping list. At ten he would have secured not only the physical property of the Hacienda but the intangible sensation of really belonging to it. He would be marrying the daughter of the man who had created the Hacienda Strand out of the desert. He would be joining the family.
 

Rage and a violent sense of betrayal battled with an even stronger feeling of utter stupidity within Heather. How could she have been so incredibly blind? All that talk about not letting her get into the business end of the Hacienda until after the wedding. What a fool she had been.

She had allowed herself to be manipulated and used; controlled and driven in the direction Jake had determined. It might have been interesting to see how and when he would finally have broken the truth to her, Heather thought in chilled fury.

„Hello, Heather. I’ve been looking for you.“

Her head snapped around. Jake was standing nearby, his face in deep shadow. It was as if her enraged imagination had conjured him up out of the darkness. A devil who had come to buy her soul. And she had almost sold it. More than almost, Heather was forced to acknowledge. By owning the Hacienda, he already owned a large chunk of it.

„Good evening, Jake. Have you been enjoying yourself?“ From out of nowhere an icy calm settled on her.