For the Love of Family (11 page)

She’d been half expecting Pandora, who sometimes needed a babysitter on Sunday afternoons, but the angry face at her door belonged to her father, instead.

“Hi, Dad,” she said, surprised and a little uncomfortable. He rarely came to her apartment, which wasn’t up to his standards. He preferred her to come to him. “Is everything okay?”

He looked over her shoulder into the tiny living room. “Any reason I can’t come in?”

She smiled. “If you’re asking whether there’s a half-naked man in my bedroom, the answer is no.” She started to add “unfortunately,” but figured that
wasn’t necessarily the joke you wanted to share with your father.

Especially when he was already glowering like a thundercloud. He entered the apartment aggressively, but once he was in he looked oddly out of place and uncertain. Though she’d done her best to make the flat clean, colorful and welcoming, it was an old building, neither very elegant nor very large. The kitchen, dining area and living room together could all have fit into his study at home.

“Dad, what’s up?”

“I don’t know, Belle.” He put his hands on his hips. “Maybe you should tell me.”

When she felt the first squirm of anxiety, so familiar from her childhood, she clamped down on it hard. She knew this game. It was a bully’s favorite. The hourglass of his temper ticked down while she tried to Guess Why Daddy’s Mad.

Forget it. She was not going to play.

“Dad, I’m very tired. I’ve got the headache from hell. If you want something, you’re just going to have to tell me what it is.”

“I want to know where your mother is.”

Damn it.
Belle had no idea what the right answer was. She honestly didn’t know whether her mother might be at the hospital visiting Adam, but she certainly didn’t want to say the wrong thing.

“Why? Do you think there’s been an accident or something?”

“Of course not. We had an argument. She’s not answering her cell phone.”

“So. She’s mad, and she wants some time alone. Let her have it.”

He waved that possibility off irritably, then glanced toward her bedroom. She had closed the door out of habit, thinking Pandora might bring Mary Isabella over. Babies and cluttered closets didn’t mix.

He gave Belle a hard stare, the one he probably used at the dealership to terrify his employees. “Is she
here
?”

“Dad. Get serious. No.”

He lowered his brows, then, without another word, turned on his heel and headed toward the bedroom door.

She thought about trying to stop him, but how absurd would that look? Lurching across her living room, throwing herself against the door? A tug-of-war with the knob?

Instead, she just called out, “Raoul, honey, put some clothes on. My dad’s coming in.”

Her father hesitated, just for a split second, but it was enough to make her smile with small, private triumph. He recovered quickly and barged through the door. She perched on the armchair by the bookcase, where she could see his face when he had to come sheepishly out again. She couldn’t wait.

He hadn’t ever been in her bedroom before. He would hate the multicolored, handmade quilt and the rainbow of scarves tied around her bedpost. He’d think her framed posters were cheap and her framed earring insane. She was petty enough to be glad she hadn’t made her bed today. He’d always been obnoxious about military corners. Her mom had come in and remade Belle’s bed nearly every day, just to avoid the row.

Dear God, she even heard him opening the closet. Did he really think her mother would be cowering behind the tennis rackets and trench coats?

Eventually, he had to emerge. In his usual way, he transformed his embarrassment into the only emotion he felt comfortable expressing: anger. It came off him in waves. She could almost smell it.

“Damn it, Belle. I don’t have time for this.” His breath was heaving, as if he’d been tossing things around. Maybe he’d even bent down and looked under the bed. “She said she was with you this morning. You’re going to tell me if that’s true, and then you’re going to tell me where she is now.”

“No, Dad.” Belle kept her hands loose and relaxed in her lap, but it took some effort. She hadn’t seen her mother in days. “I’m not.”

“Because you don’t know? Or because you just feel like being a bitch?”

She flinched inwardly. He didn’t use words like that. His contempt had always been more subtle, though no less deadly.

It was as if her dad was disintegrating right before her eyes. The shock of discovering the family secrets had taken a toll on all of them, but it had clearly tossed a bomb inside Sam Carson, and he was falling apart from the inside out.

“Because I have too much respect for Mom. She isn’t under house arrest. Where she is at any given moment is your business only if she decides to make it so.”

Belle thought he might slap her. He clearly thought so, too.

Instead, he turned and left the apartment. He slammed the door so hard the pictures on the wall jumped, and a glass fell over in the sink.

When she heard the last of his footsteps stomping down the stairs, Belle pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed her mother’s number.

But she got no answer, either.

She sat on the edge of the chair, staring at the phone.

What on earth was going on?

M
ATT COULDN’T REMEMBER
ever working as hard to get anything from a woman as he worked that Monday morning to win a smile from Belle Carson.

He hadn’t even needed this much concentrated charm to persuade Tilda Marks to dispose of his virginity for him, back in tenth grade.

Obviously, he’d offended the hell out of Belle at the museum. When she arrived at work, dressed in summer white, with her hair scraped back into a tight twist, she’d looked as rigid and cold as an icicle.

When he called her into his office, to work with him and George on rewriting Nana Lina’s speech, she’d appeared at the door with a courteous good-morning about as warm as the canned voice on recorded phone messages.
For fake deference and artificial smiles, please press Zero.

In his experience, every woman had a defrost button, but he couldn’t figure out where hers was. She didn’t seem to give a damn when he assured her that the problem with the speech was Nana Lina’s proud, prickly personality, not Belle’s writing. She ignored his self-effacing jokes. She politely chuckled when he told
funny Nana Lina stories, but it wasn’t real laughter, just more generic noises.

And then he found it.

She liked to work.

She had a sharp mind, and she loved to use it. Small talk bored her. Empty compliments passed through her. But when they got into the nitty-gritty of reworking the speech, brainstorming new ways to phrase things, new ideas to fit Nana Lina’s eccentric style, Belle seemed to completely forget she was angry.

It was fun to watch her. She had this way of sliding her glasses up to her head whenever she was excited about an idea, as if they got in the way of her vision. She did it so often during the meeting that, eventually, tendrils of satiny blond curls escaped the frigid twist, creating a soft halo around her face.

He loved the blinking, slightly myopic look in her blue eyes when she didn’t have the glasses on. It made him want to smile, just because it was so misleading. She might look like Red Riding Hood, but she had the brave heart and nimble mind of the wolf.

Her ideas were fantastic. She had a natural ease with words.

They’d been working two hours before the real breakthrough came.

George had suggested a start for a closing remark, thinking out loud, but then floundered. The room was silent a minute. Suddenly, at the precise same moment, Belle and Matt both finished it for him, using exactly the same words.

He laughed. And so did she.

Bingo.

Their eyes met across the desk, and he could tell that she’d forgiven him.

Matt felt George staring at him. He forced himself to look away from Belle, but it was too late. The look on George’s face said it all.

He stood abruptly. “Damn it. I’m meeting Ken Castle for lunch. We’re going to stop by the film shoot afterward. We’ve got an appointment with their PR guy. I’d better get going. Think you guys can finish the last page together?”

Matt nodded. Flint Park, where the Hollywood crew was filming, was just at the other end of the block. Finding an entrée into that trend-setting crowd was at the top of Diamante’s list.

“Sure. Go for it. Get those pizzas onto that set.”

He glanced at Belle, to see whether the idea of working alone with him disconcerted her, but she was already staring down at the speech, chewing on the knuckle of her index finger. That meant, he’d learned, that her mind was working a mile a minute.

He exchanged a grin with George. “We’re fine.”

When Belle finally looked up, several minutes later, she didn’t even seem to notice that George was gone.

“In this part,” she said, tapping the last paragraph, “I think my mistake was in shifting the focus away from your grandfather. That’s what she’s comfortable with, obviously. She doesn’t want to blow her own horn, but she wants everyone to know what an amazing man Colm Malone was.”

“That’s right. And with good reason. My grandfather was one of a kind. He was wise and tough, and yet ex
traordinarily loving. He and my grandmother married at sixteen, and they had one of those lifelong fairy-tale romances. Except without the sappy part. Nana Lina doesn’t believe in sappy.”

Belle was watching him, but she’d pushed her glasses up, as if she wanted to be able to see more clearly with her inner eye.

“It sounds beautiful.” Her voice was wistful. “I’ll bet he never so much as looked at another woman.”

“God, no!” Matt laughed. “She would have skinned him alive. But there wasn’t much chance of that, anyhow. Other women were invisible to him.”

For some reason, that seemed to make Belle sad. He wondered why. But then he remembered that handsome, blustering man who had come to see her. Her arrogant, bullying father. Maybe there wasn’t a lot of love and fidelity in the Carson household.

“They were lucky,” he said. “Not everyone finds a soul mate at sixteen, or even at sixty. Most of us have to limp on, just doing the best we can, trying not to hurt or get hurt…not too much, anyhow.”

She nodded slowly. “I guess that’s true.” She cleared her throat, as if she’d realized the conversation had turned far too personal. She picked up her pencil. “Okay, so how about if we say something like—”

His cell phone had to pick that moment to ring. Damn it. It wasn’t a number he gave out to the public, so it couldn’t be ignored. But if it was Colby, Matt was going to kill him.

It wasn’t Colby. In fact, he didn’t recognize the caller on the display. He tried to think whether there was any
way Tiffani could have gotten hold of this number, but decided it was unlikely.

“Sorry,” he said to Belle, who put down her pen and started to get up.

“No,” he said, waving her back down. “Wait. I won’t be a minute. I’d like to get this done today.”

As she lowered herself back onto the chair, he picked up.

“Matt Malone,” he said, hoping the crisp tone of a busy man at work would discourage any telemarketers.

“Mr. Malone.” It was a woman, probably middle-aged. Slight accent, smoker’s rasp. He didn’t recognize her. Not a telemarketer, though. None of the phony, ingratiating cheer.

“This is Matt Malone,” he repeated.

“Okay. Umm…Mr. Malone, you don’t know me, but my husband used to work for you. He doesn’t anymore, thank God, but I thought you should hear about this. Your guy who gives out the money, that Mr. Kirkman?”

“You mean Mr. Kirkland? Our Drivers Fund manager?”

Matt noticed that Belle’s pencil stilled when he said Todd’s name. She had been aware of how drunk Todd was the other night, of course.

“Yes. Todd Kirkland,” the woman on the other end said. “He’s a bad man. He doesn’t care about people who are hurting.”

Matt’s hand tightened on the phone. “And what did you say your name was? Mrs….?”

“I didn’t. I’m not going to give you my name, because I don’t want you to come after me. Or my hus
band. I just thought someone should speak up. About Mr. Kirkland. You heard what I said, right?”

Matt wondered if he could get the number traced. “Yes, I heard you. But I’m not sure why you think so. Do you have some reason to believe such a thing? Do you have any proof of wrongdoing?”

She laughed, an angry sound that ended in a cough.
“Proof?
Where is somebody like me going to get proof? Maybe you don’t care about people who’re hurting, either. My husband says you’re different, but I don’t know.”

He pulled out a pen. “Okay, Mrs…. Why don’t you give me a number where I can reach you, and I—”

But she was already gone.

He looked at the phone, a tight feeling spreading across his chest. He had no idea whether the woman’s accusation had any basis. It could easily just be the nastiest kind of character assassination. Since the Drivers Fund had been created, there had been quite a few requests that Todd had to deny, and many of the rejected didn’t take it gracefully.

The fund had been set up to help Diamante employees facing true emergencies. Overextending your credit cards for a plasma TV didn’t qualify. Neither did huge speeding tickets, or more exotic vacations.

So this woman’s vitriol could have been prompted by anything. But Matt didn’t like coincidences, and the call followed awfully hard on the heels of Todd’s breakdown the other night.

Matt shut the phone off. He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair for a minute, trying to think.

“Is everything all right?”

He looked across the desk to where Belle was watching him, her eyes intelligent and curious behind her glasses. He should have let her leave before he took the call. She’d obviously heard enough to deduce that someone had accused Todd of something.

Matt had an absurd impulse to tell her exactly what had happened.

It was selfish, but it would be nice to have someone objective to talk it over with. Both he and Nana Lina were too fond of Todd, too sorry for the mess his life had become. Colby and Red were too hostile.

Belle would be neutral. She was smart. She was a decent judge of people. And she wasn’t petty. He’d truly like to know what she thought.

But of course he couldn’t do that. If Todd had indeed gone off the rails, Matt wasn’t going to shame him by making the failure public. If Todd hadn’t done anything wrong, if this caller was just motivated by disappointed greed, then the fewer people who heard the accusations the better.

Matt knew what to do, anyhow. It involved hiring an auditor. It would hurt Todd’s feelings, but it had to be done.

“Yes,” he said after too long a wait. “Everything is fine.”

“Maybe I should go?” Belle put her paperwork into a neat pile and made a motion as if to get up.

This time he didn’t stop her. “All right,” he said. “I’m sure you can finish the rest. Thanks for all your hard work. It’s going to be a great speech.”

She smiled, not the warm grin he’d been so proud of
eliciting earlier. But not the phone-lady smile, either. He had made a little progress, then.

Belle got up and moved to the door, her white dress swirling slightly around her knees. Her legs were—

Damn it, Malone
…. He dragged his gaze back up to her face.

“I’ll e-mail you a revised version,” she said. “When I’m done.”

“Fine.” He hesitated. “And, Belle…”

She waited, her hand on the knob.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry. About what I said the other night. I trust you completely. I know perfectly well you weren’t trying to get a job with Drayson.”

The apology had sprung to his lips impulsively. He hadn’t thought it through, had no idea how she would respond. But whatever he’d been expecting, the uncomfortable look that crossed her face wasn’t it.

He couldn’t tell exactly what the hastily smothered expression meant. It could have been embarrassment, guilt, disapproval or fear.

The only thing he knew for certain was that it wasn’t delight. For some reason, his apology did not make her happy.

For several seconds, she didn’t speak.

“It’s all right,” she said finally. “You don’t have to be sorry. It’s probably not smart to trust anyone
completely
, is it? One thing I learned in the short time I was a journalist is that deep inside…”

He waited.

She shrugged. “Deep inside, everyone’s motives are a little murky.”

B
Y
F
RIDAY EVENING
B
ELLE
was exhausted, and when the phone rang in the Diamante office, she almost didn’t answer it.

She’d worked sixty hours this week, planning the launch events. Not that she really minded. She was learning so much—everything from where to get the best novelty giveaways, to which permits were required to sell food on the beach—that sometimes she thought her head might explode.

She hadn’t been able to spare even a minute to search for information about Todd Kirkland, and she had to admit she was secretly relieved. The whole subject of Todd made her edgy, even though that weird phone call in Matt’s office Monday morning certainly raised more red flags. Still, she couldn’t make up her mind what was right.

So she threw herself into the coming launch instead. She fell into bed each night mentally writing the leads of the next day’s press releases, and she dreamed of plastic rings nestled inside Cinnamon Diamond desserts.

She also hadn’t been able to talk alone with her mother, to find out what had happened last Sunday. She knew her mom was fine, and she’d received half a dozen promises of a call when a moment of privacy presented itself, but so far…nothing.

Maybe Belle should have pushed harder, insisted on a full-out discussion of Adam, her dad’s fury and her mother’s secrecy. But she needed a drama-free environment while she mastered this job, so she ignored the inner voice that warned about the calm that always came before the storm.

The phone kept ringing, like a pin poked in her con
science. She sighed, swiveled her chair and went over to Francie’s desk.

“Diamante Incorporated. This is Isabelle.”

There was a pause. Then Matt spoke. “Belle? What are you doing in the office so late?”

“Just finishing up some details. Is there something I can do for you?”

He groaned. “Not unless you know how to wait tables. I was thinking Francie might still be there.”

“Wait tables? What’s going on?”

“Pure bedlam. I’m in the restaurant, downstairs. We’re having what you might call a movie-star emergency.”

“Oh! Did they finally agree to let you cater something for them?”

“Not really. Apparently their regular caterer ran into a hitch. They just showed up at the door. Fifty of them. All starving. And not the most patient people in the world.” He laughed. “We’ve called in everyone on the payroll, but there’s no way—”

“I can come down.”

He paused. “No, really, Belle, you don’t have to—”

“I want to. We’ve been trying all week to get in with the movie crew. This is our chance.” She chuckled. “What? Are you afraid I’ll spill coffee all over the director?”

“The director’s so drunk he’d never notice. If you’re willing, that would be wonderful. Come on down!”