Children of Dynasty (18 page)

That night, Mariah could not sleep. Long days at work, evenings spent cooking homemade soups and baking bread for her father — none of it served to keep her mind off Rory. A month had passed since he invited her to his father’s house, and while part of her wished she had torn the invitation to shreds, in every restaurant, on every lunchtime walk on Market Street, her eyes were alert for a dark head that stood above the crowd. Soon it would be June, the time of school’s end and looking forward to a new life, the anniversary of a Sausalito Sunday when she and Rory had rushed headlong from strangers to lovers.

For eight years, she’d never forgiven him for caving in to his father and marrying a woman Davis must have thought suitable. Yet, hadn’t Rory spoken the truth when he accused her of refusing his calls? And couldn’t he now say she’d gone to Ventana, made love with him, and turned away because of her father?

She switched on her bedroom light and took out the ruby ring. Neither had its fire, nor had the ache in her diminished as she remembered him slipping it onto her finger. Turning the gold band in her hand, she knew she should return it. It was far too valuable a piece to keep.

But, as light shimmered in the stone’s facets, she knew she wasn’t ready yet to part with it. Call her sentimental, but as long as she had it, she felt there was some connection with Rory.

Early the next morning, she went to Grant Development’s bank, First California, and rented a safe deposit box.

“Would you like to use the privacy booth, Miss?” asked the older gentleman helping her.

“Thank you, no,” she said. “This will only take a minute.”

Taking the ring from her purse, she clenched it for a moment in her hand. Then she put it away into darkness.

Tuesday evening Rory drove toward his parents’ house, hoping there had at least been a truce in their recent state of war. The part of him that would always be a child longed for them to find peace.

He wished for it, too.

After he had walked away from Mariah in the hospital cafeteria, Rory recalled that the gossip rags said he was good at exit scenes. Maybe they and Sylvia Chatsworth were right, but if he wanted to get technical, his leaving Mariah had not been his exit.

She had sent him away.

In the parking garage, he had jerked open the door of his Porsche and got in. A savage turn of the key and a heavy foot brought the engine from silence to a throaty growl. Gripping the steering wheel with one hand, he shifted rapidly with the other. He was driving on instinct, his old habit of escaping whatever troubled him by clearing his mind.

It hadn’t worked. How could he argue with the guilt trip Mariah was on? What if John’s daughter joining the enemy camp had caused his attack?

Rory exhaled a heavy breath and parked his car in his father’s drive. After suffering the usual indignity of having to knock and be let in by Anna, he started toward the family room. His heel strikes echoed in the tall stone and glass foyer.

“Rory!” his mother called.

He followed her voice to her sunroom on the far end of the house from her husband’s room full of trophies. Beyond the wall of windows, the molten ball of sun hung over the darkening sea.

“Hello, darling.” Wearing a silk caftan, Kiki rose from an overstuffed armchair and came to Rory with open arms. “Here’s my best boy.”

He chuckled at the greeting she’d given him since he was three.

Everything in this room was the antithesis of Davis’s rough masculinity, from the flowered chintz couches to the collection of china figurines Kiki had collected over the years.

With these most exquisite, intricate, and breakable porcelains he’d ever seen, he wondered how the family and the help had managed to avoid knocking off a shepherd’s crook, angel’s halo, or a hummingbird’s needle of beak. When he was a little boy and was allowed into this room, his father spent the entire time cautioning, “If you break something, you’re going to have a talk with me in the library.”

That was enough to skewer him to the edge of a white damask chair like a butterfly with its wings pinned.

Now, he reached a hand and stroked the painted head of golden hair on a delicate statue. It reminded him of Mariah, as she must have been as a girl, coltish, kneeling barelegged in shorts and a sleeveless shirt on the beach, a big seashell held to her ear.

From the corner of his eye, he noted that his mother almost cautioned him and then restrained herself. These fragile little figures were like Kiki, Rory thought, although anyone who met his mother casually might disagree. The flamboyant dress and bright hair hid a vulnerable and easily wounded lady.

Reaching to the side table, she refilled her wine glass.

Rory glanced at the tea set on a tray with matching pot and cups that looked like roses and pansies. It wasn’t his taste, but usually when Kiki was in this room, she had a pot of aromatic Earl Grey at her side. “No tea today?” he asked mildly.

After a generous swallow of what the wine label revealed to be a Chilean Cabernet, she gave Rory a direct look. “No tea.” She drank again, and he checked the level in the bottle, more than half empty.

As he bit back suggesting it was a bit early in the evening, her green eyes filled with tears. “So, he took the call right there at Sunday brunch in the Marin club. It was some goddamn woman, telling him when and where.” She rolled her eyes. “I threw my glass of wine at him and said I hoped she makes him happy. God knows, I never have.”

Rory’s heart went out to her. How dare his father behave so cruelly, flaunting his peccadilloes?

“One of these days …” Kiki went on.

“One of these days, you’ll what, Mother?”

Her shoulders slumped. “I … don’t know. Things have been so terrible lately, but I’d never give him the satisfaction of leaving. At least now he has to sneak around.”

“If it pleases you,” Davis said from the doorway, “I’ll stop sneaking and be open about it.” Dressed in a black DCI golf shirt and starched blue jeans, his long-limbed body advanced into the room like a big cat’s.

Rory scowled.

Davis flung himself down into an armchair that was too small for his frame. “Now I know why I never come into this room.” He rose again and glared at his wife’s wineglass. “How many of those have you had?”

“Not nearly enough,” she replied, taking another long swallow.

“Jesus!” Rory burst out at his father. “You’ve been a real bastard lately. What in hell’s the matter with you?”

Davis stretched his arms over his head and looked bored. Ignoring the question, he turned to his wife. “Are you coming with me to Tanzania in August?”

“Lion hunting,” Kiki mocked. “Sleeping out in tents and listening to baboons at night.”

“You’re just afraid you won’t be able to get the red dye number twenty for your hair.”

“It’s just that I could never imagine taking up a gun and deliberately killing anything.”

Davis smiled, a lazy confident expression that said he could more than imagine it. It sent a chill through Rory.

“Why don’t you take one of your little diversions to Africa?” Kiki suggested coldly. “Impress her.”

“It worked on you,” Davis came back without missing a beat.

Rory’s father and mother had met when Gates Campbell and prominent surgeon Carl Mainwearing brought their adult children on safari. The matchmaking must have been effective, for within weeks after the trip, Kiki and Davis were married.

“What about you and Tanzania, son?” he asked. “Why not bring Sylvia?”

“No, thanks.” He didn’t bother to reveal he’d not seen her since the night of the Senator’s fundraiser.

“Speaking of Sylvia …” Davis’s casual air turned intent. “Wilson McMillan’s house party this weekend will be a nice place for you two to make an announcement.”

Wilson McMillan, well over seventy years old, was one of the founding fathers of the northern California developer’s club. Rory had been invited and planned to go … alone.

“I’m not taking Sylvia to McMillan’s.”

“She’ll be there,” Davis assured. “She, Larry, and her mother.” He frowned. “You’re not planning to bring Mariah Grant, are you?”

These past weeks Rory had tried to forget Mariah. A hundred times, he’d played back her hurtful words in the hospital hall, when she’d accused him of causing her father’s heart attack. He’d driven his Porsche relentless miles. Yet, each night, tossing on sweat-dampened sheets, he was haunted by her quick intelligence, the soft look in her golden eyes when she came into his arms.

“No,” he said quietly. “I’m not bringing Mariah to McMillan’s.”

Rory noted that at the mention of John Grant’s daughter his mother sat straighter and studied him. Perhaps she read the sadness in him, kindred to her own as she said, “Don’t settle for the wrong woman, Rory. Even if you have to remain alone.”

Turning to her husband, Kiki went on, “I was foolish enough to believe I was the one you wanted.”

“I’ve stayed with you all these years …” Davis began.

“You’ve stayed, I’ve stayed.” She slashed at air with her hand. “But lately, you’ve been so strange I might surprise you and go.”

Rory couldn’t take any more. “I hate to give you the satisfaction, Father, but I’ve had about all of these family values I can take.” He bent, brushed a kiss on his mother’s cheek where there might have been tears, and left the house.

His mother’s suggestion of staying alone rather than being with the wrong woman was exactly what he planned. But why did Mariah Grant, whom everyone agreed was wrong for him, continue to feel so right?

T
haddeus Walker of First California did not belong at Grant Development unannounced on a Wednesday morning.

With a sigh, Mariah pushed the button on her office phone and told the receptionist that someone would be with him shortly. She rose from her desk, sorting through the possible reasons for the visit, and wished she knew Walker better. The bank representative had taken over the company account last winter when Bill Bryan, Grant’s manager of twenty years, had passed away. Not even John had had much time to develop a relationship with the new man. In fact, he had mentioned several times that he was thinking of shopping for another bank.

Although it was nearly nine, a glance down the hall told Mariah that Tom Barrett wasn’t in. She thought of asking corporate attorney Ed Snowden or PR director April Perry to join her with Walker, but dealing with the financial side was Arnold Benton’s turf, and she knew it. With reluctance, she phoned and asked him to meet her in John’s office.

In the reception area, she found the narrow-faced banker reading
The Wall Street Journal.
His close-cropped grayish hair did nothing to hide his prominent ears. His cuffs were shot from the sleeves of his expensive charcoal suit, and his tie depicted money, gold coins on blue silk.

Mariah wished she’d worn something more formal than olive drab slacks and an open-necked khaki shirt, but she had not expected outside meetings today.

She greeted Walker and found out he shook hands like a dead fish. Then she led the way to the corner office while he silently followed. Arnold, jacket on, pale hair neatly combed, had beaten her to John’s chair.

“Coffee?” she asked Walker.

He refused with a curt shake of his large head.

Arnold said, “Black,” with a tight grin.

Mariah crossed to the door and asked John’s secretary to get it.

Taking a seat in one of the chairs across from Arnold, Walker leaned back and made a tent of his fingers. Apparently in no hurry to get to the point of his visit, he proceeded to study his hands as if the solution to a fascinating and intricate problem lay in their proper alignment. Twenty-nine stories below on Market Street, an emergency siren wailed faintly.

At last, Walker addressed Arnold, “Back in May when Grant had those late loan payments …”

Mariah almost gasped aloud. She’d worked at Grant the entire month of May and heard nothing about any payments in arrears. She shot a hard look at Arnold and found him avoiding her eyes.

Walker went on, “I was willing to accept your explanation that you were changing software. Now, this accident and the news coverage have spooked our directors.”

Mariah got a griping sensation in her gut. Her father had always advised that saying too much was more deadly than too little, but Arnold began babbling about the unreliability of computers. She knew the trouble with that. Computers were built by people, programmed by people, and used by people.

Walker looked at John’s desk as if estimating its cost. “After the … incident at Grant Plaza, I was willing to give a company with the strength of yours the benefit of the doubt, but with John’s health problems …”

Mariah interrupted. “His doctors say he should be back at work in a matter of weeks.” They had originally projected twelve, actually months, but she wasn’t going to tell Walker that or anything about the complications her father had been having.

Arnold joined in. “Grant Development is not about John Grant, or his family.” He gave her a disparaging look. “We have many projects and fine people.” Though the statement was a backhanded attack, he’d essentially said what she would have told the banker.