Change of Heart (4 page)

“With your mind, you’re going to study everything,” Frank said as he got off the desk and turned away, then disappeared through a doorway.

Eli stared after him, but in that moment, with those few words, he felt that his future had been decided. He knew where he was going and how he was going to get there. And for the first time in his life, Eli had a hero.

“And then what?” Chelsea asked.

“He sent the copies of the letterheads—you’ve seen them—I wrote to thank him and he wrote back. And we became friends.”

Part of Chelsea wanted to scream that he had betrayed her by not telling her of this.
Two years!
He had kept this from her for two whole years. But she’d learned that it was no good berating Eli. He kept secrets if he wanted to and seemed to think nothing of it.

“So you want your mother to marry this man? Why did you just come up with this idea now?” She meant her words to be rather spiteful, to get him back for hiding something so interesting from her, but she knew the answer as soon as she asked. Until now Eli had wanted his beloved mother to himself. Her eyes widened. If Eli was willing to turn his mother over to the care of this man, he must . . .

“Do you really and truly like him?”

“He is like a father to me,” Eli said softly.

“Have you told him about me?”

The way Eli said “Of course” mollified her temper somewhat. “Okay, so how do we get them together? Where is this cabin of his?” She didn’t have to ask how they would get his mother up there. All they had to do was write her a letter on Montgomery-Taggert stationery and offer her a nursing job.

“I don’t know,” Eli answered, “but I’m sure we can figure it out.”

Three weeks later, Chelsea was ready to give up. “Eli,” she said in exasperation, “you have to give up. We can’t find him.”

Eli set his mouth tighter, his head propped in his hands in despair. They’d spent three weeks sending faxes and writing letters to people, hinting that they needed to know where Frank Taggert was. Either people didn’t know or they weren’t telling.

“I don’t know what else we can do,” Chelsea said. “It’s getting closer to Christmas and it’s getting colder in the mountains. He’ll leave soon, and she won’t get to meet him.”

The first week she’d asked him why he didn’t just introduce his mother to Mr. Taggert, and Eli had looked at her as though she were crazy. “They will be polite to each other because of me, but what can they have in common unless they meet on equal ground? Have you learned nothing from my mother’s books? The rich duke meets the governess in a place where they are
forced
to be together.”

But they had tried everything and still couldn’t get his mother together with Mr. Taggert. “There is one thing we haven’t tried yet,” Chelsea said.

Eli didn’t take his head out of his hands. “There is nothing. I’ve thought of everything.”

“We haven’t tried the truth.”

Turning, Eli looked at her. “What truth?”

“My parents were nearly dying for my sister to get married. My mother said my sister was losing her chances because she was getting old. She was nearly thirty. So if this Mr. Taggert is forty, maybe his family is dying to get him married too.”

Eli gave her a completely puzzled look.

“Let’s make an appointment with one of his brothers and tell him we have a wife for Mr. Taggert and see if he will help us.”

When Eli didn’t respond, Chelsea frowned. “It’s worth a try, isn’t it? Come on, stop moping and tell me the name of one of his brothers here in Denver.”

“Michael,” Eli said. “Michael Taggert.”

“Okay, let’s make an appointment with him and tell him what’s going on.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Eli turned to his keyboard. “Yes, let’s try.”

Michael Taggert looked up from his desk to see his secretary, Kathy, at the door wearing a mischievous grin.

“Remember the letter you received from Mr. Elijah J. Harcourt requesting a meeting today?”

Frowning, Mike gave a curt nod. In thirty minutes, he was to meet his wife for lunch, and from the look on Kathy’s face there might be some complications that would hold him up. “Yes?”

“He brought his secretary with him,” Kathy said, breaking into a wide smile.

Mike couldn’t see why a man and his secretary would cause such merriment, but then Kathy stepped aside and Mike saw two kids, both about twelve years old, enter the room behind her. The boy was tall, thin, with huge glasses and eyes so intense he reminded Mike of a hawk. The girl, even taller, had the easy confidence of what promised to be beauty and, unless he missed his guess, money.

I don’t have time for this, Mike thought, and wondered who’d put these kids up to this visit. Silently, he motioned for them to take a seat.

“You’re busy and so are we, so I’ll get right to the point,” Eli said.

Mike had to repress a smile. The boy’s manner was surprisingly adult, and he reminded him of someone but Mike couldn’t think who.

“I want my mother to marry your brother.”

“Ah, I see,” Mike said, leaning back in his chair. “And which one of my brothers would that be?”

“The oldest one, Frank.”

Mike nearly fell out of his chair. “Frank?” he gasped. His eldest brother was a terror, as precise as a measuring device, and about as warm as Maine in February. “Frank? You want your
mother
to marry Frank?” He leaned forward. “Tell me, kid, you got it in for your mother or what?”

At that Eli came out of his seat, his face red. “Mr. Taggert is a
very nice
man, and you can’t say anything against him
or
my mother!”

The girl put her hand on Eli’s arm and he instantly sat down, but he turned his head away and wouldn’t look at Mike.

“Perhaps I might explain,” the girl said, and she introduced herself.

Mike was impressed with the girl as she succinctly told their story, of Eli’s offer to go to Princeton but his refusal to leave his mother alone. As she spoke, Mike kept looking at Eli, trying to piece everything together. So the kid wanted a billionaire to take care of his mother. Ambitious brat, wasn’t he?

But Mike began to have a change of heart when Eli turned to Chelsea and said, “Don’t tell him that. He doesn’t
like
his brother.”

“Tell me what?” Mike encouraged. “And I love my brother. It’s just that he’s sometimes hard to take. Are you sure you have the right Frank Taggert?”

At that Eli removed a worn, raggedy envelope from the folder he was carrying. Mike recognized it as Frank’s private stationery, something he reserved for the family only. It was a way the family had of distinguishing private from business mail. His family frequently joked that Frank never used family stationery for anyone who did not bear the same last name as he did. There was even a rumor that on the rare times he’d sent a note to whichever date was waiting for him at the moment, he’d used business letterhead.

Yet Frank had written this boy a letter on his private stationery.

“May I see that?” Mike asked, extending his hand.

Eli started to return the letter to his folder.

“Go on,” Chelsea urged. “This is important.” Reluctantly, Eli handed the letter to Mike.

Slowly, Mike took the single sheet of paper from the envelope and read it. It was handwritten, not typed. To Mike’s knowledge, Frank had not handwritten anything since he’d left his university.

My dear Eli,

I was so glad to receive your last letter. Your new theories on artificial intelligence sound magnificent. Yes, I’ll have someone check what’s already been done.

One of my brother’s wives had a baby, a little girl, with cheeks as red as roses. I set up a trust fund for her but told no one.

I’m glad you liked your birthday present, and I’ll wear the cuff links you sent me next time I see the president.

How are Chelsea and your mother? Let me know if your dad ever again refuses to pay child support. I know a few legal people and I also know a few thugs. Any man who isn’t grateful to have a son like you deserves to be taught a lesson.

My love and friendship to you,

Frank

Mike had to read the letter three times, and even though he was sure it was from his brother, he couldn’t believe it. When one of his siblings produced yet another child, Frank’s only comment was “Don’t any of you ever stop?” Yet here he was saying his brother’s new baby had cheeks like roses—which she did.

Mike carefully refolded the letter and inserted it back into the envelope. Eli nearly snatched it from his hands.

“Eli wants his mother to meet Mr. Frank Taggert in a place where they will be equal,” Chelsea said. “She’s a nurse, and we know Mr. Taggert’s been injured, so we thought she could go to this cabin in the mountains where he’s staying. But we can’t find where it is so we can send her there.”

Mike was having difficulty believing what she was saying. He looked at his watch. “I’m to meet my wife for lunch in ten minutes. Would you two like to join us?”

Forty-five minutes later, with the help of his wife, Samantha, Mike finally understood the whole story. And more importantly, he’d figured out who Eli reminded him of. Eli was like Frank: cool exterior, intense eyes, brilliant brain, obsessive personality.

As Mike listened, he was somewhat hurt and annoyed that his elder brother had chosen a stranger’s child to love. But at least Frank’s love for Eli proved he
could
love.

“I think it’s all wonderfully romantic,” Samantha said.

“I think the poor woman’s going to meet Frank and be horrified,” Mike muttered, but when Samantha kicked him under the table, he shut up.

“So how do we arrange this?” Samantha asked. “And what size dress does your mother wear?”

“Twelve petite,” Chelsea said. “She’s short and f—” She didn’t have to turn to feel Eli’s glare. He wasn’t saying much, and she knew that it was because he was hostile toward Mike. “She’s, ah, round,” Chelsea finished.

“I understand,” Samantha said, getting a little notebook from her handbag.

“What difference does her dress size make?” Mike asked.

Chelsea and Samantha looked at him as though he were stupid. “She can’t very well arrive at the cabin wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, now can she? Chelsea, shall we go buy some cashmere?”

“Cashmere?!” Eli and Mike said in unison, and it made a bond between them: men versus women.

Samantha ignored her husband’s outburst. “Mike, you can write a letter to Mrs. Harcourt saying—”

“Stowe,” Eli said. “My father’s new wife wanted my mother to resume her maiden name, so she did.”

At that Samantha gave Mike a hard look, and he knew that all sense of proportion was lost. From now on, anything Eli and Chelsea wanted, they’d get.

2

G
ratefully, Miranda got off the horse and went into the cabin. In the last few days, things had happened so quickly that she’d had no time to think about them. Yesterday afternoon a man had come to the hospital and asked if she’d please accept a private, live-in nursing job for his client. It was to start the next morning and would last for two weeks. At first she started to say no, that she couldn’t ask the hospital to let her off. But it seemed that her absence had already been cleared with the chief of staff—a man Miranda had never seen, much less met.

She then told the man she couldn’t go because she had a son to take care of and she couldn’t leave him. As though the whole thing were timed, Miranda was called to the phone to be asked—begged, actually—by Eli to be allowed to go with Chelsea’s family on an extremely educational yacht trip. Maybe she should have protested that he’d miss too much school, but she knew that Eli could make up any work within a blink of an eye, and he so wanted to go that she couldn’t say no.

When she put down the phone, the man was still standing there, waiting for her answer about accepting the job.

“Two weeks only,” she said, “then I have to be back.”

Only after she agreed was she told that her new patient was staying in a remote cabin high in the Rockies and the only way to get there was by helicopter or horse—but there was no place for the ’copter to land. Since the idea of being lowered on a rope from a helicopter didn’t appeal to her, she said she’d take the horse.

Early the next morning, she hugged and kissed Eli as though she were going to be away from him for a year or more, then got into a car that drove her thirty miles into the mountains. An old man named Sandy was waiting to take her up to the cabin. He had two saddled horses and three mules loaded with goods.

They rode all day and Miranda knew she’d be sore from the horse, but the air was heavenly, thin and crisp as they went higher and higher. It was early autumn, but she could almost smell the snow that would eventually blanket the mountains.

When they reached the cabin, a beautiful structure of logs and stone, she thought they must be in the most isolated place on earth. There were no wires to the cabin, no roads, no sign that it had touch with the outside world.

“Remote, isn’t it?”

Sandy looked up from the mule he was unloading. “Frank made sure the place has all the comforts of home. Underground electricity and its own sewage system.”

“What’s he like?” she asked. Because of the narrow trail, they hadn’t been able to talk much on the long ride up. All she knew of her patient was that he’d broken his right arm, was in a cast, and that it was difficult for him to perform everyday tasks.

Sandy took a while to answer. “Frank’s not like anybody else. He’s his own man. Set in his ways, sort of.”

“I’m used to old and weird,” she said with a smile. “Does he live here all the time?”

Sandy chuckled. “There’s twelve feet of snow up here in the winter. Frank lives wherever he wants to. He just came here to . . . well, maybe to lick his wounds. Frank doesn’t talk much. Why don’t you go inside and sit down? I’ll get this lot unloaded. If I know Frank, he’s out fishing and won’t be back for hours.”

With a smile of gratitude, Miranda did as he bid. Without so much as a glance at the interior of the cabin, she went inside, sat down, and immediately fell asleep. When she awoke with a start, it was about an hour later, and she saw that Sandy and the animals were gone. Only a huge pile of boxes and sacks on the floor showed that he had been there.

At first she was a bit disconcerted to find herself alone there, but she shrugged and began to look about her.

The cabin looked as though it had been designed by a computer, or at least a human who had no feelings. It was perfectly functional, an open-plan L-shape, one end with a huge stone fireplace, a couch, and two chairs. It could have been charming, but the three perfectly matched pieces were covered with heavy, serviceable, dark gray fabric that looked as though it had been chosen solely for durability. There were no rugs on the floor, no pictures on the walls, and only one table had a plain gray ceramic lamp on it. The kitchen was in the corner of the L, and it had also been designed for service: cabinets built for use alone, not decorative in any way. At the end of the kitchen were two beds, precisely covered in hard-wearing brown canvas. Through a door was a bathroom with a shower, white ceramic toilet, and washbasin. Everything was utterly basic. All clean and tidy. And with no sign of human habitation.

Miranda panicked for a moment when she thought that perhaps her patient had packed up and left, that maybe she was here alone, with no way down the mountain except for a two-day walk. But then she noticed a set of doors beside one of the beds, one on each side, perfectly symmetrical. Behind one, arranged in military precision, were some pieces of men’s clothing: heavy canvas trousers, boots without a bit of mud on them.

“My, my, we are neat, aren’t we?” she murmured, smiling, then frowned at the twin bed so near his. No more than three feet separated the beds. She did hope this old man wasn’t the type to make childish passes at her. She’d had enough of those in school. “Just give me a little kiss, honey,” toothless men had said to her as their aged hands reached for her body.

Laughing at the silliness of her fantasy, Miranda went to the kitchen and looked inside. Six pots and pans. Perfectly arranged, spotlessly clean. The drawers contained a matched set of stainless steel cooking utensils that looked as though they’d never been used. “Not much of a cook, are you, Mr. Taggert?” she murmured as she kept exploring. Other cabinets and drawers were filled with full jars of spices and herbs, their seals unbroken.

“What in the world does this man eat?” she wondered aloud. When she came to the last cabinet, she found the answer. Hidden inside was a microwave, and behind the tall door in the corner was a freezer. It had about a dozen TV dinners in it, and after a moment’s consternation, Miranda laughed. It looked as though she’d been hired to cook for the missing Mr. Taggert as much as anything else.

“Poor man. He must be starving,” she said, and she cheered up at the thought. The beds so close together had worried her, but the empty freezer was reassuring. “So, Miranda, my girl, you weren’t brought here for a sex orgy but to cook for some lonely old man with a broken arm. Poor dear, I wonder where he is now.”

She didn’t waste time speculating but set to work hauling in supplies. She had no idea what Sandy had brought on those two mules but she soon found out. Packed in dry ice, in insulated containers, was nearly a whole side of prime beef and a couple dozen chickens. There were bags of flour, packets of yeast, some canned goods, and bags of fresh fruit and vegetables. With every item she unpacked, she felt more sure of what her true purpose here was, and thinking of someone who needed her made her begin to forget how easily Eli had said he didn’t need her for the next two weeks. He’d told her in detail how very much he wanted to travel with Chelsea and her parents to the south of France, then on to Greece aboard some Italian prince’s yacht.

“All in just two weeks?”

“It’s a really fast boat,” Eli said, then disappeared into his room.

With a sigh, Miranda put a frozen chicken in the microwave to thaw. She would
not
let herself think how Eli needed her less every day. “My baby is growing up,” she said to herself as she removed the chicken and began to prepare a stuffing of bread cubes, sage, and onion.

“Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself,” she said. “You’re not dead yet. You could meet a man, fall madly in love, and have three more kids.” Even as she said it, she laughed. She wasn’t a heroine in a romance novel. She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous with a figure that made men’s hands itch with lust. She was a perfectly ordinary woman. She was pretty in a dimpled sort of way—an old-fashioned prettiness, not the gaunt-cheeked style that was all the rage now. And she was—well, face it, about thirty pounds overweight. Sometimes she consoled herself that if she’d lived in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, men would have used her as a model for a painting of Venus, the goddess of love. But that didn’t help today when the most popular models weighed little more than ninety pounds.

As Miranda settled down to prepare a meal for her absent patient, she tried to forget the loneliness of her life, to forget that her precious son would soon be leaving her to go to school and she would be left with no one.

Two hours later she had a lovely fire going in the big stone fireplace, a stuffed chicken roasting in the never-before-used oven, and some vegetables simmering. She’d filled a bowl full of wildflowers from the side of the cabin and put a dry pinecone on a windowsill. Her unpacked duffel bags were by the bed the man didn’t appear to use. She’d draped her sweater across the back of a chair and put an interesting rock on one end of the stone mantel. The place was beginning to look like home.

When the cabin door was flung open and a man burst in, Miranda almost dropped the teakettle. He was
not
old. There was some gray at the temples of his thick black hair and lines running down the sides of his tight-lipped mouth, but his virility was intact. He was a
very
good-looking man.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” he demanded.

She swallowed. Something about him was intimidating. She could see that he was a man who was used to giving orders and being obeyed. “I’m your nurse,” she said brightly, nodding toward his arm, which was in a cast nearly to his shoulder. It must have been a bad break for such a cast, and he must have great difficulty doing even the smallest tasks.

Smiling, she walked around the counter, refusing to be intimidated by his face. “Miranda Stowe,” she said, laughing nervously. “But you already know that, don’t you? Sandy said you had the medical reports with you, so maybe if I saw them, I’d know more about your condition.” When he didn’t say a word, she frowned a bit. “Come and sit down, supper’s almost ready and—here, let me help you off with those boots.”

He was still staring at her, speechless, so she
gently tugged on his uninjured arm and got him to sit in a chair by the dining table. Kneeling before him, she started to unlace his boots while thinking that sharing a cabin was going to be a lonely experience if he never spoke.

When he started to laugh, she looked up at him, smiling, wanting to share whatever was amusing him.

“This is the best one yet,” he said.

“What is?” she asked, thinking he was remembering a joke.

“You are.”
Still smiling, he cocked one eyebrow at her. “I must say you don’t
look
the part of—what was it you called yourself? A nurse?”

Miranda lost her smile. “I
am
a nurse.”

“Sure you are, honey. And I’m a newborn babe.”

Miranda quit unlacing his boots and stood up, looking down at him. “Exactly what do you think I am?” she asked quietly.

“With those”—he nodded toward her ample
bosom—“you could be only one thing.”

Miranda was a softhearted woman. Wounded butterflies made her weep, but this tall, good-looking man, nodding toward her breasts in that way, was more than she could take. She was strong from years of making beds and turning patients, so when he reached out as though to touch her, she put her hand on his shoulder and pushed. It was harder than she meant to. As he went flying backward in the chair, he reached for the table to keep from falling. But his right arm, encased in plaster, unbalanced him so he went sprawling to the floor.

Miranda knew she should see if he was all right, but she didn’t. She turned on her heel and started for the cabin door.

“Why you—” he said, then grabbed her ankle before she could take another step.

“Let go of me!” She kicked out at him, but he pulled harder, until she landed on top of him and hit his injured arm. She knew the impact must have hurt him, but he didn’t so much as show his pain by a flicker of an eye.

With one roll, he pinned her body to the floor. “Who are you and how much do you want?”

Genuinely puzzled, she looked up at him. He was about forty years old, give or take a few years, and his body felt as though it was in perfect condition. “For this job I receive about four hundred dollars a week.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “For
nursing.”

“Nursing,” he said in a derogatory way. “Is
that
what you call it?”

She pushed against him angrily but couldn’t budge him.

“So how did you find me? Simpson? No, he doesn’t know anything. Who sent you? The Japanese?”

Miranda stopped struggling. “The Japanese?” Was the man’s injury
only
in his arm?

“Yeah, they weren’t too happy when I won on that last deal. But microchips are a dead item. I’m going for—”

“Mr. Taggert!” she interrupted, as he seemed to have forgotten he was lying full length on top of her. “I have
no
idea what you’re talking about. Would you please let me up?”