Celebration (21 page)

“Years.”

“
YEARS!
”

He found his voice. “This isn't going to be one of those Mickey Mouse productions. We're going to be dealing with people's lives. When it's time for you to come into your major inheritance, we should be wrapping this up.”

“Over four years! Are you saying this is going to take us more than four years? I'll be fifty years old! You'll be thirty-one!” Kristine's voice was so strangled-sounding, she ran to the kitchen for a drink of water.

Light-headed with Jackson's words, Kristine leaned against the kitchen sink. More than four years! Woodie would never wait that long for her. Woodie wanted to get on with his life. A life that was set to include her. A life where they both would live happily ever after. Where was she going to get the time to file for a divorce, carve Logan Kelly out of her heart once and for all, if she committed to this project with Jack? Not to mention the brand-new relationship she was experiencing with her daughter. “What about my business?” she wailed loud enough for Jack to hear. “Dammit, Jackson Valarian, I'm going to need the business to live.”

“I know, Kristine. I'll help in any way I can. This is the right thing to do, Mrs.... Kristine.”

Kristine closed her eyes. A vision of a child being torn from its mother's arms flashed behind her lids. “I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

He was a twelve-year-old kid again, hiding in the alcove near the attic stairs. A place where no one ever looked for him, especially his mother, who had crippling arthritis and never ventured to the second or third floors. He'd played here since he was a wobbly toddler and allowed to use the stairs. It was his own personal hideout, where he could play with things he wasn't supposed to, and then later a place where he could avoid doing homework and chores. A special place where he kept the piles of
National Geographies
he snitched from the school library, a place where he could dream his special dream and gaze at pictures of bare-breasted African women.

The books were old, tattered, and they smelled, but he didn't care. Someday when he was rich and famous he was going to go to Africa, the land of the sun. He would travel every inch of the land, ride on elephants, and make friends with all the wild animals the way his idol Tarzan did in the movies. Maybe he would be a tour guide for rich people. They would be so grateful for his expertise and knowledge they would reward him handsomely with rare gems and stacks and stacks of money. That's how he would get rich. He'd wear one of those hats with the little holes in it and a safari suit with pockets all over the place. Maybe he'd learn to smoke a pipe and pretend he looked like Dr. Livingstone. The natives would love and respect him. All the women and girls would be bare-breasted, their titties bouncing as they wiggled their rear ends for his benefit just so he would smile at them. Maybe he would marry one of them. Maybe he would marry a girl for every day of the week. Maybe they would walk around naked all day. He'd get brown as a berry.

If he saved his money from now until he was twenty-one, he wondered if he would have enough to go to Kenya's Utalii College, where he would learn to speak Swahili or Kikuyu.

It was 1957. Logan leaned back against the pile of blankets that covered his little nest. He pawed through the pile of
National Geographics
, until he found the one he wanted. His two favorite places in the whole world; Kenya and Tanganyika. He closed his eyes as he started on his safari. He took a deep breath as he envisioned the snowcapped mountains, the cavernous valleys, the vast deserts, and the lush forests with sparkling lakes and vibrant waterfalls. He stepped aside as a parade of sleek cats—lions, leopards, cheetahs—and elephants headed toward a water hole. When he had his fill, he opened his eyes and sniffed, imagining he could smell the pungent jungle and the overpowering scent of luscious blooms of every color of the rainbow. Life was full of warm, golden sunshine, and the air carried the scent of a thousand bottles of perfume.

He would be a king.

Logan rummaged beneath the blankets and pillows to find the ceremonial robe his mother had made for him two years ago for a Halloween party. It was beautiful burgundy velvet with faux ermine down the front and around the collar. It felt regal as did the papier-mâché crown and scepter at his side.

Logan squeezed his eyes shut a second time. Where to visit this time, the Serengeti or Mount Kilimanjaro? He leaned back, his crown askew as he watched a family of cheetahs cross the road to get away from an elephant charge. The trees in the distance moved as a group of giraffe raced after the cheetahs to get away from the stampeding elephants. He stepped backwards only to realize what he thought was a clump of bushes was a pride of lions. Moving farther back, his eyes on the thundering elephants, he leaned against a rock and was jolted forward for his effort by a rhino scrambling to move deeper into the bush. And all about him was the overpowering scent of jasmine.

His heart racing, Logan's eyes snapped open when he heard his mother calling his name from the front porch. Didn't she care that he was in Africa, the place of his dreams? Kings shouldn't have to take out trash, mow the lawn, and shovel snow. When you were a king, your loyal subjects did all those things. He leaned back into his nest. He wanted to see the peacocks and the native dance that were next on his agenda. He didn't want to go to the barn for the milk, didn't want to carry in firewood for the wood-burning stove his mother preferred to cook on. Nor did he want to set the table or do his homework.

“Logannnn!”

The boy sighed as he removed his crown and robe. He piled his magazines neatly in the corner, the scepter on top of them.

Angry that his dream had been interrupted, Logan stomped his way down the stairs and out to the front porch.

“Where were you, Logan? I've been calling you for the past ten minutes.”

“Africa,” he muttered as he made his way to the barn. “I'm going to go there someday, you just wait and see. I'm going to be rich and famous and the animals will love me and all the people will bow their heads when I walk by. They're going to be afraid of me, but they will respect me too. You just wait and see,” he continued to mutter.

Kathleen Kelly stared after her son. Logan was such a strange child. On more than one occasion she wondered if there had been a mixup at the hospital.

Why in the name of all that was holy would a child of twelve want to go to Africa, where all those savages lived?

Today was one of the days when she totally believed there had been a mixup at the hospital the day her son was born. How, why, where, when did Logan become so obsessed with that faraway land? She should know the answer, but she didn't. Neither did his father or his teachers. Maybe he was a
spawn
of ... of ...
something
. She shivered in the late-afternoon sunshine.

 

 

The offices were plush, elegant, stopping just short of being embarrassing to those walking through the doors for the first time. No expense had been spared on the rich furnishings. The man seated behind the ornate desk looked just as plush, just as elegant as the elaborate furnishings.

The suite of offices was empty of clients, the phones silent, the fax machine just as quiet. The silence meant a death knell for Eberhart Safaris, and Logan Kelly knew it.

The stacks of bills, the blank registration forms, and the month's payroll vouchers caused Logan Kelly, aka Justin Eberhart, to suck in his breath. For all intents and purposes, he was going to go belly up, and there wasn't a damn thing he wanted to do about it. It was all part of his plan. Eight million dollars shot to hell. Actually, if you counted Danela's five million, it was thirteen million shot to hell. He refused even to think about all the money Eberhart Safaris owed the banks. All he had left in the world was Kristine's eight thousand dollars, plus the interest it had earned and a few hundred dollars in his personal checking account. Danela had less than a hundred dollars in her own account. Again, it was all going according to plan.

Even if a well-heeled tourist scheduled a safari, he wouldn't be able to accommodate him. Oh, he could talk it up, make wild promises, take his money and skip out, but that was as far as he could go. One lone tourist simply wasn't going to do it this time. He owed a fucking fortune to his guides, his directors, the hotels, the airlines, his personal servants, and the bank. If the heavens and the roof didn't open up to deposit millions in the middle of his desk within the next forty-eight hours, he was down for the count.

The palatial home he had lived in with Danela these past years would just be a memory. The two Mercedes Benz, along with the land cruisers, would be reclaimed; these offices would be emptied, the furnishings sold, and he would be the laughingstock of East Africa. Like he really cared. He was set for life. It was time to move on.

It had been a grand venture in the beginning. But it was nothing like the dreams he'd had when he was that twelve-year-old kid. That was a dream, reality was something else. Instead of starting small, he'd shot for the moon and gone whole hog, hoping to put a dent in the competition's business. He'd succeeded for the first year, with a profit margin unlike anything he'd expected. The second and third years were good too, even though he'd secretly funneled millions into his Swiss bank account. He'd gotten cocky, arrogant the fourth and fifth years, believing his own PR machine run by Danela. Even so, he'd still managed to funnel money out of the business during the worst of it. Workers, unused to his military style of doing things, quit in droves, often forcing him to cancel safaris. Travel agencies, afraid of his reputation, stopped booking tours during the sixth and seventh years. His head remained above water until three months ago, when his reputation got so bad, word went out on the wires that Eberhart Safaris was a joke run by a clown who didn't care about his customers.

His lifelong dream was coming to an end. Eight fucking years down the drain. Thirteen million dollars pissed away on a dream that was now a nightmare. A smug look settled on his face. He was actually beginning to believe all this crap.

Then there was Danela.

The silence finally broke when a stunning redhead opened the door to the office. “I'm going shopping, Logan. There's nothing to do here except stare at the telephone that isn't ringing. Do you want me to bring you some lunch?”

“We don't have any money for you to go shopping, Danela. Bring me some lunch from home.” Never in a million years did he believe he would ever hear himself say these words. Never, ever. A game was a game. There were always winners and losers if you knew how to play. He knew. Danela didn't.

“Don't tell me what to do, Logan. I said I was going shopping. You need to go to the bank to borrow money. You need to pay the creditors. Then you need to sit down and figure where it all went wrong and try to make it right. We've been at this for eight long years and there isn't one thing we own outright. Are you listening to me, Logan? We spent thirteen million dollars plus what we borrowed from the banks, and we're still in the red. You're thinking about bailing out, aren't you?”

“I'm thinking, but not about bailing out. I have some ideas,” he said vaguely.

“Maybe it's time you shared some of those ideas with me.”

“Tonight over dinner. Go shopping but bring me some lunch.”

“Are you just going to sit here all day and think about the past? This is not what I signed on for, Logan. My five-million-dollar settlement is gone. I need to know what's going to happen to
us.”

Logan wanted to tell her there was no “us.” There was just him. In life, only the fittest survived. “Tonight over dinner,” he repeated. “Wear something sexy.”

“I'm not in a sexy mood, Logan. I'm in a bad mood. The kind of bad mood shopping isn't going to help. By the way, the head of the motor pool just quit this morning. Before he quit, he let me know your safari cruisers were minus their distributor caps until you pay him and his men. He was rather ugly. You can deal with him from here on out.”

“I will,” Logan said shortly. He wished she would just leave. “Lock the door on your way out.”

“Lock it yourself,” Danela said smartly. “I don't know what I ever saw in you. Your wife was the lucky one; she's rid of you, and I'm stuck with you. I have a good mind to call her up and tell her what a lucky woman she is.”

Logan fought the urge to laugh in Danela's face. “Go ahead. All she'll do is profess undying love. Kristine will love me until the day she dies.”
She'll even forgive me for taking her money
. “That's the difference between you two. She's a lady. You were a tramp with a good body who managed to snooker an old man's family into buying you off to save themselves from scandal. Don't make the mistake of threatening me again, Danela.”

“What are you going to do, Logan, whip out that shitty book you go by and read me Rule Twelve or is it Rule Twenty-one? Kiss my ass.”

“In case you've forgotten, I've already done that, and it wasn't the enjoyable experience you said it would be. I thought you said you were leaving.”

“Go to hell, Logan.”

Logan opened his desk drawer. An open-ended Lufthansa first-class airline ticket to Washington, DC stared up at him. He'd bought it his first year in Africa, the same day he'd started funnelling money into his Swiss bank account. Each year he was careful to renew it. Just in case. In the bottom drawer he always kept locked, was a small flight bag with a change of clothes and his shaving gear, along with the bankbook in the amount of eight thousand dollars and a passport in the name of Justin Eberhart and one in the name of Logan Kelly. When he was ready, he could walk out of here in a heartbeat.

He'd always known things would come to this. It was okay. He had his ace in the hole named Kristine. Six weeks from now, Kristine would reach the half century mark and come into the bulk of her inheritance. If he wanted to, he could be on hand for that momentous occasion. Eight years wasn't long enough for her to get over him, he told himself. Plus, Kristine was a one-man woman, something she always boasted about. Kristine would welcome him with open arms.
If
he returned to the United States. The possibility of that happening was getting stronger with each passing day.

If he played his cards right, he could return to the States just in time for Kristine's fiftieth birthday. Just in time to inherit all that beautiful green money. Kristine was always a sharing person and when he showed her he hadn't touched her eight thousand dollars, she would weep with joy.

Logan shifted his mental gears. He wondered if he was a grandfather yet. Where were the kids and what were they doing? They'd be less happy to see him than Kristine would, and no doubt they hated his guts. That was okay. Growing up they'd been a constant source of disappointment. They were probably off on their own and wouldn't interfere with him or their mother, leaving him a wide-open field to work his magic.