Elevator, The (21 page)

Her mother sighed and checked the clock in the hall. “I promised to watch
Donny and Marie
with your dad—”

“That show doesn’t start until eight and you should be back long before then. Please, Mom?”

Her mother sighed heavily, then nodded. “All right. But you’d better hope your dad needs something, or he’ll accuse me of spoiling you again.”

After her mother left the bathroom, Gina moved to the hallway and listened as her father complained about the late hour, the rainy weather and Gina’s selfishness. Especially Gina’s selfishness.

Her mother’s voice rose above her dad’s growl. “She’s a seventeen-year-old girl—the world is supposed to revolve around her.”

“She has a car—why doesn’t she go herself?”

“She won’t be with us much longer, and I don’t mind going. So stop fussing and hand me my purse.”

Five minutes later, Gina heard the starting roar of her mother’s car. She pulled aside one corner of her bedroom curtain and smiled as her mother’s Chrysler backed out of the driveway, its windshield wipers beating in tandem.

Her smile vanished an hour later when a local sheriff knocked to inform them that Georgina Elizabeth Meade had been killed after skidding on the rain-slicked road. The Chrysler hit a telephone pole, which snapped at the base and fell on the car, crushing the roof and Georgina’s skull. “Looks to me,” the cop said, his voice strained, “like she never saw it coming.”

Gina collapsed into her boyfriend’s arms, burdened by guilt as much as grief, while her father followed the sheriff outside and stood bareheaded in the rain.

Dad rarely spoke to her after the accident. During the following months, she came home from school, heated a casserole or TV dinner and ate in front of the television. She did her homework in her room and accepted a weekend job. Though they lived in the same house and shared the same last name, tragedy and blame built a wall between her and her father, a barrier reinforced by every indifferent day.

Her dad admitted as much on a night when she came home late and found him sitting on the floor in the den, drunkenly sobbing over a photograph album.

“You,” he said, glaring at her through red-rimmed eyes. “You have the stone-cold gall to walk around here looking like her and talking like her when you aren’t worthy to kiss her feet! You selfish, stupid girl! Sent her out in the rain because you were too lazy and spoiled to lift a hand for yourself.”

“Daddy, please!” Gina knelt at her father’s side, her gaze clouding as she inched trembling hands toward his slipper-clad feet. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t want her to get hurt. It was an accident!”

“Never,” he said, remarkably lucid for one who smelled so strongly of alcohol, “never speak to me. I’ll do what Georgie wanted and send you to college. I’ll even pay for your wedding, but I will never talk to you again. If not for you, I wouldn’t have lost her. The only reason I haven’t turned you out on the street is because Georgie would want me—” emotion choked his voice “—to keep you.”

A hot tear rolled down Gina’s cheek. “Don’t you think I’d change places with her if I could? I’d die, Daddy, if that would bring her back to you. I’d do anything, if you would forgive me—”

Without another word, Dad clutched the photograph album to his chest, stood and stalked out of the room, leaving Gina alone on the gold shag carpeting that had been her mother’s pride and joy.

Michelle pushes a fringe of damp hair from her brow and sneaks a glance at the redhead, who has fallen into an introspective silence. No wonder the woman was in a dark mood when they entered the elevator. Though Michelle has had no personal experience with divorce, Lauren’s parents split a few years back, and she has confided that their breakup left her questioning everything she had previously believed about marriage and family.

Michelle crosses her legs to relieve the pressure on her hip bones. Even her parents, as messed up as they were, never considered divorce. Her father must have been the most patient person on earth. On the other hand, he didn’t always come home at night. Momma said he was working late, but even Shelly Tills knew that miners didn’t work more than an eight-hour shift. If Daddy wasn’t sitting in his recliner after dark, he either couldn’t come home…or he didn’t want to.

Still, she couldn’t believe her father had ever taken up with another woman. When her mother managed to stay away from the bottle, he was gentle and affectionate, a good husband. Sometimes he’d ask Momma to come out on the front porch to watch the stars come up over the ridge, but as soon as it got dark she’d complain of being cold and want a drink to “chase off the chill.”

After a while, Daddy stopped asking Momma to come outside with him. But Michelle was certain he’d never taken up with another woman.

Without looking directly at Gina, she manages a shaky smile. “I’d be careful if I were you. I’ve heard that people who think divorce will cure their ills soon find out that the remedy is worse than the disease.”

Gina releases a hollow laugh. “Trust me, that won’t be true in my case. I want Sonny out of my life as soon as possible.”

Michelle rests her head on her folded arms. “I can’t imagine ever feeling that way about my boyfriend. If Parker cheated on me I’d be upset, but he’d still be the man I love and the father of my child. I’d try to talk things out before I ever thought about leaving him.”

“Excuse me?”

Michelle lifts her head. “I said I’d try to talk things—”

“Did you say
Parker?
”

“Oh—yes, I did.” Michelle smiles when surprise fills the older woman’s face. “That’s right, you might know him. Parker Rossman.”

“P-Parker Rossman—” the syllables tangle on Gina’s tongue “—is the widower. The father of your baby.”

Michelle recoils from the redhead’s gaze, which has fixed her in a green-eyed vise. “That’s what I said.”

“Parker Rossman—” Gina fumbles with the folded coat in her arms “—has a family who calls him Sonny. And he’s not a widower, he’s married.”

Michelle shakes her head. “You have to be mistaken.”

“I’m not. You see, Parker Rossman is my husband.”

Michelle stares at the woman in bewilderment while some still-functioning part of her brain registers that Gina has pulled something from her coat—and the unwavering object in her hand is a gun.

“H
ello?”

Michelle looked up to see a man at the door, a bouquet in his arms. She moved to her purse, assuming he worked for a florist, then halted. Even in downtown Tampa, delivery persons did not wear suits and silk ties.

“Parker Rossman,” the stranger said, extending his right hand as he stepped into the office. “Your neighbor from down the hall.”

“Michelle Tilson.” She shook his hand, then tilted a brow at the flowers. “Did someone die?”

“Not unless you decide to kill me for impertinence. Instead, I hope you’ll accept these as a welcome to the building.” Parker placed the bouquet of daisies and wildflowers in her arms, then stepped back and slipped his hands into his pockets. “Gus told me an attractive young woman was moving into the empty suite between my office and the AG’s domain. I figured I ought to stop by and help you find your way around the thirty-sixth floor.”

She smiled. “Have I met this Gus?”

“The security guard downstairs—older guy, kinda portly. He’s nice—you’ll like him. Always genial, never pushy. He doesn’t even mind when my kids bug him for separate visitors’ passes so they can race each other in the elevators.”

Michelle made a mental note as she placed the flowers on an empty desk. Attractive, nice, generous, and a parent. Three out of four wasn’t bad.

She leaned against the desk and crossed her legs at the ankle. “Your office is down the hall? Then you must be—”

“In insurance—Rossman Life and Liability. We’ve been in this building ten years, in existence for almost twenty. My wife and I started the business from scratch and worked together…until I lost her, that is.”

Michelle brought her hand to her throat as Rossman coughed and averted his eyes. Maybe she’d been too quick to write him off. She’d begun to think that handsome, sensitive men could only be found in the pages of Nicholas Sparks novels.

Giving her visitor a moment to gain control of his emotions, Michelle lifted a framed photo of Olympia Densen-Jones from a box marked M’s Office. Olympia still had hair in the picture, though it had gone silver from the first round of chemotherapy. By that time she had divorced Howard, retired to Tampa and left Michelle to run the Jones Personnel Agency. After Olympia’s death, when Michelle had become part-owner of the business, Howard had been happy to buy her out.

With a sizable check and a shoe box filled with tacky tourist postcards from Olympia, Michelle followed her mentor’s example and moved to Florida. Because the citizens of Tampa were more globally minded than those of Charleston, West Virginia, she established Tilson Corporate Careers with a new résumé and a broader vision.

Though half of her business existed only on paper and in exaggeration, in time her expanding operation required moving from a small strip mall to the Lark Tower. Michelle knew Olympia would be proud of her—she had learned to play the game, she had thrived in a man’s world and she had never gone back to Bald Knob.

Now she took a deep breath and softened her smile. “I’m Tilson Corporate Careers,” she told her visitor. “I’m a headhunter.”

Parker Rossman gave her a lopsided grin. “Not a cannibal, I trust.”

“I haven’t eaten a client in months.”

“But you do eat.” He hesitated, one hand brushing his lapel. “Lunch, I mean.”

“Sure I do.” She spoke slowly, not sure if she wanted to go where he was leading. Perhaps he wasn’t sure he wanted to lead, because his gaze had begun to rove over the bare walls, examining everything but her face.

Still…a businessman who’d been working in Tampa twenty years would know people. People with connections who wanted to change jobs.

“Since you eat lunch,” he said, “maybe sometime—”

“Today would be great,” she said, deciding for both of them. “I have to unpack a few boxes, but I should be free by twelve-thirty.”

He grinned, then back-stepped toward the door, cocking his finger gunslinger style. “Great. I’ll meet you here.”

“It’s a date,” she said, smiling as he let himself out.

Michelle gapes at Gina across a sudden ringing silence. Parker is—what? Impossible; this has to be a case of mistaken identity. Parker isn’t married, he couldn’t be. He has given her names, dates and details. He still chokes up when he talks about how his wife died in a horrific car crash. Matt had been ten at the time, Amanda eight, and little Sam only six. Those poor children have been without a mother ever since, and Parker has worn himself to a frazzle trying to be father and mother and businessman.

If only he were here to clear this up. He isn’t a cheater. Not a liar. Gina has to be deluded, maybe even a little crazy.

Gina’s eyes light with fierce sparkling as she rises to her knees. “I should have known. Why else would you be on your way to the thirty-sixth floor?”

“I told you, my office is up there,” Michelle says. “Dozens of people work on that floor.” She presses her spinal column against the wall and slides one hand toward the shadows in the rear of the car. Can she count on Isabel for help? She tears her gaze from the gun for an instant, but the housekeeper is curled into a ball so tight not even her face is showing. She’ll be no help at all if this madwoman starts shooting.

Meeting Gina’s eye, Michelle speaks with deliberate firmness. “Parker has two boys and a girl—you said you have two girls and a boy. I’ll admit it’s a crazy coincidence, but you have to be mistaken.”

“I didn’t make a mistake.” Gina’s face has gone deadly pale except for two garish roses, one blooming in each cheek. “You, however, made a big one when you went after my husband.”

“Parker’s boys,” Michelle answers, careful not to make any threatening moves, “are Matt and Sam. His daughter is—”

“His only son,” Gina interrupts, “is Matthew. His daughters are Mandi and Samantha. And that diamond bracelet he gave you? He paid for it with my children’s inheritance.”

Michelle exhales in a rush as relief avalanches over her. “Bracelet?” She holds up her arm, adorned with nothing but a simple watch. “I don’t have a diamond bracelet. Parker has never given me anything like that.”

Disbelief flickers in Gina’s eyes, then steely determination returns to those fiery orbs. “So he hasn’t given it to you yet. But he’s going to, I know. It’s not in his safe at the house.”

With a shiver of vivid recollection, Michelle remembers Parker’s parting words:
By the way, I ordered something special for you….

Realization strikes all at once, like a jolt of electricity to her spine. Parker didn’t ask her to come downtown to give her an engagement ring; he wanted to give her a diamond bracelet. He isn’t planning to propose…because he is already married.

To this outraged woman.

Michelle lifts her head to meet the eyes that seem intent on impaling her. “I didn’t know.”

“You should have known.”

“Maybe…I should have.” Now she understands why Gina looks familiar—the striking green eyes that smile from the children’s portrait in Parker’s office are Gina’s eyes. Amanda has this woman’s chin, and Matt her nose.

And Sam is a girl. In the portrait, painted from a photograph of the kids playing at a ski resort, Sam is a shorthaired, chubby-cheeked five-year-old in a snowsuit. Michelle had assumed Sam was a boy and Parker never corrected her assumption. Last year, when Sam’s birthday rolled around, he even agreed with Michelle’s gift suggestion of a baseball glove.

Just as he acted on her idea to buy Amanda a ring last December.

“Did your husband—” she struggles to keep the sound of stunned disbelief from her voice “—give Amanda a ring last Christmas? A band made from Black Hills gold?”

When a tide of hurt washes through Gina’s eyes, Michelle has her answer.

She turns her head, unable to monitor her reeling thoughts and the gun only inches from her face. This is insane. Any moment now she will wake up and console herself with knowing that her life, her love and her secrets are still intact—

But there is the gun, and above it, the steely eyes of a wronged wife. Parker Rossman, the father of her child, is a complex man, not easy to know intimately, but she knows him…or does she? If he lied about having a wife and two sons, did he lie about his feelings for Michelle? Has he ever told her anything true?

With the gun steady in her right hand, Gina sinks back to the floor. That ring! She and Mandi had marveled over the intricate design of pink and green leaves; she had been impressed with Sonny’s taste and thoughtfulness.

Yet Sonny deserved none of the credit—his mistress had been responsible for everything. He had allowed this stranger’s influence to touch his daughter at Christmas, a time when families participate in the exchange of gifts. How could Sonny have allowed this woman to infringe on such an intimate occasion?

The determination that drove her to this building now has a sharper spur.

“I should have recognized you,” she says, punctuating her words with jerks of the gun. “Tall, slim, young—I have a picture of you walking on my husband’s arm. He’s looking at you like you’re the cream in his coffee.”

From the corner of her eye, Gina sees the maid cross herself.

“I didn’t know,” Michelle says again, a catch in her voice. “He told me his wife was dead.”

“Maybe to him, I am.” Gina laces every word with venom. “Maybe he thinks of his children as dead, too.”

“He loves his kids. He talks about them all the time.”

“Really?” She swallows a hysterical surge of incredulous laughter. “Tell me—did he introduce you to my children as his mistress, or did he pass you off as a client? How many times has he lied to them about you?”

Tears slide from beneath the younger woman’s closed lids, glittering like silver in the dim light. “He never let me meet the kids. He was so protective…I thought he didn’t want to risk them getting attached to me…you know, if things didn’t work out.”

Gina feels the corner of her mouth twist. Something inside her is relieved to hear that Sonny didn’t expose the children to this woman, but she doubted he had the kids’ best interests in mind. Matthew might be taken in by a pretty face and Samantha could be gullible, but Mandi is sharp; she’d sense anything that wasn’t right and she’d tell.

No, Sonny wasn’t thinking about guarding the kids. He kept the children from this woman to protect his own sorry rear end.

Across the elevator, Michelle opens her hands in a gesture of entreaty. “I don’t know what to say. I would never go out with a married man—I would never want to break up a family. I’m sorry.”

“Shut up.” Gina lifts her free hand and massages her pounding temple. “I need a few minutes to think.”

This morning she had tried to plan for every possible scenario, but she could never have imagined Sonny getting off scot-free while she sweat in a metal box with his pregnant mistress and a gutsy Mexican girl. The best-laid plans of mice and men have done more than go awry; they have doubled back to snare her.

But she can think herself out of this mess. She has time. She has courage enough to do whatever it takes to protect her children.

When she lowers her hand, she finds that her thoughts have crystallized. Though the mistress’s baby is an unexpected wrinkle, her plans for Sonny don’t have to change.

Still, children always complicate things. When Gina’s sister divorced her gutless husband, he got custody of the kids, child support and alimony because Marion had established a medical practice while he’d sat on his tush watching soaps and football on TV.

Gina won’t allow anything like that to happen in her situation. When they get out of this elevator, she is not going to let anyone set aside part of the estate to provide for this woman’s child.

With newfound determination, she lowers the gun to her lap and looks the mistress in the eye. “I hate to break it to you, Michelle, but my husband is not going to be thrilled about that baby you’re carrying. He has to pay for three college educations, so don’t count on him for child support. I won’t let him spend a penny on an illegitimate brat.”

Michelle shifts the focus of her gaze from some interior field of vision to the gun in Gina’s lap. All traces of good humor vanish from the curve of her mouth and her eyes. “You know, you caught me off guard when you pulled that thing out, but now I understand—you came here to kill Parker.”

Gina doesn’t flinch. “I told you—I came here to ask for a divorce. I brought the gun because I thought I might run into looters.”

Icy contempt flashes in Michelle’s eyes. “You were planning to shoot Parker and leave him up there until after the hurricane passed. We all saw what happened during Katrina—it’s possible no one would find him for days—”

“You’ve got quite an imagination.” Gina smiles without humor and crosses her arms, moving the pistol to her left side. “Why would I kill Sonny? He’s the guilty party in our broken marriage, so I’m sure my lawyers can devise several ways to empty his pockets. He’ll be ruined when I force him to buy out my share of the business—I own half the company, you know. Rossman Life and Liability wouldn’t exist without me.”

Depleted by the waning of her adrenaline rush, Gina sets the Rohrbaugh on the floor and stretches her cramping fingers. “I’ll admit I wanted to scare Sonny,” she says, idly studying her nails, “just like I wanted to scare you. But I could never shoot him. I wouldn’t.”