For the Love of Family (5 page)

Of course, for the two of them, “better” merely meant that it wasn’t World War III every time they came within ten feet of each other. Sam still found his mouthy daughter irritating, and Belle still found herself growing mouthier the minute she set foot in the door, just to show him he couldn’t intimidate her.

But she didn’t see his car, thank goodness. A golf afternoon? Or just one of those days when golf provided cover for something he didn’t want to share with his wife? Whichever, she welcomed a few minutes alone
with her mom. She pulled herself together, found her key and went inside.

She dropped her bag in the foyer, studiously ignoring her father’s framed display of military medals. All bought, of course, not earned. The collection always reminded her of how much he loved power and control.

She headed straight for the smell of coffee coming from the kitchen. The place had the relaxed air it only got when Sam Carson was out. Her mom had turned on the stereo, and left her knitting basket on the kitchen island, like a bowl of wonderful multi-colored exotic fruit.

“Honey!” Emily Carson said, coming in from the back garden, her hands full of herbs. “I wasn’t expecting you for another hour.”

Belle dropped her keys on the counter and hugged her, noticing that she looked tired. Her mom’s pale skin and hair washed out easily, especially when she was under stress. Belle knew the symptoms well, because her own hair and skin did the same.

After the impossible interview with George and Matt Malone last night, she’d seen a similar ghost in the mirror this morning.

Emily put the herbs in a strainer and spanked the dirt from her hands. “Is everything okay?” Her gaze was sharp, and Belle knew she was noticing the pale cheeks. “Do you need some money? I know job hunting can’t be…with this economy…”

“I’m fine, really. I just didn’t sleep much last night.” Belle looked out the kitchen door to the back drive, which was empty. “Where’s Dad?”

The pinched lines around her mother’s mouth
deepened. “He’s with the new attorneys. He won’t work with Stan, you know. He’s still…exploring options.”

Belle’s heart tightened. She plopped on the kitchen chair at the island and propped her head against the heel of her hand. “Still? He just can’t let it go, can he?”

Her father had been the king of the family for so long now, the only natural son of Robert and Sarah Carson. Learning that he had a brother—and an older brother, at that—had been difficult. Learning that he would not, after all, inherit the Carson diamond, a gorgeous sapphire-surrounded pendant with a romantic past, a heart-shaped jewel that had symbolized the Carson name for generations, had been intolerable.

He’d consulted a steady stream of lawyers ever since his mother’s last letter had revealed everything. He simply couldn’t accept being displaced.

Worst of all, he didn’t want anyone in his family to accept the new relatives, either.

“That’s ridiculous,” Belle had said when he ordered her not to talk to her newfound uncle, Adam Fraser. “Like it or not, Dad, these people are family. You can’t wish them away. You can’t bully reality into being whatever you want it to be.”

Sam had looked at her with cold fury. “Obviously not,” he had said.

Just two words, but the subtext had been cruelly clear. If he could control reality, he wouldn’t have ended up with a daughter as disappointing as Belle.

That was Sam’s specialty. With a tilt of an eyebrow, a razor edge in his voice, a curl of his handsomely carved lips, he could slice your heart neatly in two.
Often you didn’t fully comprehend the damage until much later, when you began to fall apart.

“You know this is difficult for him,” her mother said now over the sound of the faucet as she washed the herbs. But her defense seemed rote, as if she’d programmed herself to say it.

Belle began to pick irritably at the bowl of colored yarn. “It was difficult for all of us. But we’re trying to get past it. It’s nuts. He refuses to interact with any of them.”

Her mother nodded, and though she kept her face focused on the herbs, Belle could see the edge of her mouth. Her lips were so tight they were almost white.

She’d probably die of a stroke before she was fifty. The cost of holding back genuine emotion.

“Can’t you talk some sense into him, Mom? Can’t you tell him he’s being—”

Her mother swiveled her head and gave Belle a straight look. “It wouldn’t change anything. It would just stir the flames higher. You know that.”

Belle opened her mouth, but shut it again. This was an old debate. She could almost see the tire marks on the kitchen floor, from where they’d gone round and round, year after year.

Her mom hadn’t ever understood Belle’s defiance. “It doesn’t have to be like this, honey,” Emily had said a hundred times, stroking her daughter’s hand as she fought furiously to hold back wounded tears. The first time Belle remembered them having this discussion, she’d been about nine.

“Why is it so hard for you to back down?” her mother had asked. “Why can’t you just let him win now and
then? He can’t change what you think in your heart. But you could pretend to agree with him once in a while, just to make him happy.”

Belle hadn’t understood that at nine, and she didn’t understand it still. Why couldn’t her dad be happy unless everyone deferred to him and pretended he was perfect? It didn’t matter how many military medals he collected. He wasn’t the general, and they didn’t all march in his army.

She couldn’t pretend. She wouldn’t. No matter what the cost, in tempests, in wounds or in lifelong scars.

Her mother was finished washing the herbs, and she shook the colander gently. Setting it aside, she wiped her hands on a blue-striped dishcloth and sat down at the counter, across from Belle.

“Honey, this weekend…” She paused, picking her words. “Can you just let it be?”

Her mother’s face had once been strikingly beautiful. Belle had seen the wedding pictures. Tears always ached behind her eyes when she thought of at how vibrant and alive Emily Carson had been at that age.

The years with Belle’s father had drained her, as if she’d been living with a vampire. Today, she was so pale, almost translucent. Belle could see blue veins in her cheeks and throat, as if someone had stroked the tip of a pen across her skin. How tiny they were, far too fragile to fill a whole human being with life.

And then the air reverberated with something like thunder as her father’s oversize black SUV rumbled into the back drive. Her mother registered the sound, then stood up quickly. Belle wondered whether the sin
was sloth, sitting at the kitchen table when she should have been working on dinner, or fraternizing with the enemy—Belle.

“Mom.” She caught her mother’s hand and squeezed it, wishing she could squeeze warmth into the chilled fingers. “I’ll behave. I will. I’ll try to get along.”

She meant it. She’d suddenly realized how unfair it would be to breeze into town, get her father riled up and then depart again, leaving her mother alone to handle the fallout.

“Thanks, honey.” Emily smiled, then turned to the cupboard and pulled out her father’s favorite mug. “I hope the coffee’s still warm.”

Sam entered the kitchen like a gust of cold air. He used just a hair too much force on the door, and its glass panes rattled as it banged shut. Belle took a deep breath. She remembered that sound all too well. It meant her dad’s day had been tough, and someone would have to be sacrificed to restore his balance.

She looked at her mother, placidly pouring coffee, like well-trained hired help. And she wondered…if things didn’t improve, how long would her mom stay?

“Hi, Dad,” Belle said, moving forward to give him a hug. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Isabelle. You’re early, aren’t you?” He returned her hug, but, as usual, he was ready to quit before she was. He touched his finger to his own temple, indicating her glasses. “You really should wear your contacts, Belle. Those glasses make you look like a spinster librarian.”

Moving away, he dropped his briefcase on the countertop and took the cup of coffee from his wife’s hand. He
sipped at it, scowled briefly to register that it had grown lukewarm, then leaned against the countertop, sighing.

“I’m leaving Ackerman,” he said to his wife. “Morons. Two hundred dollars an hour to watch them sit around on their thumbs.”

Emily, busy washing the decanter so that she could prepare a fresh pot, made a noncommittal sound, which seemed to satisfy him.

He turned to Belle. “How’s the job hunt coming?”

“I’ve had a couple of nibbles,” she said, mentally thanking George for making it possible to say that without lying. “Nothing firm yet.”

“If it’s not firm, it’s phony. Don’t count on it. Keep looking.”

It was the same mantra he used to mobilize his sales force at the dealership. She’d heard it a million times through the years, and she didn’t actually disagree with it. But why couldn’t he assume she was smart enough, adult enough, to know it without being reminded?

She took a breath. He was trying to help. She was just being prickly. She was defensive because she was only too aware of that pile of bills on her kitchen table back at the apartment.

“I know.” She smiled and offered up one of his favorite lines as an olive branch. “Close only counts in horseshoes.”

He smiled back. “That’s my girl. You’ll find something. Just don’t go beating your head against brick walls.” He pointed the coffee mug toward her to emphasize his point. “The newspaper business is dead. Bury the poor thing before it starts to smell.”

“I guess so,” she said, searching for a safer subject. Sooner or later he’d remind her that he’d predicted disaster in her newspaper career all along. And she’d say that she would rather have tried and failed than sold out at the start.

And from there things would get ugly.

Her mother came to the rescue. “Nora called while you were gone, Sam. She said it wasn’t urgent, but maybe you should…”

Brilliant
, Belle thought. Nora was her dad’s secretary. She idolized Sam, and could always be counted on to stroke his ego when no one else would.

He shook his head. “She got me on the cell phone on the way back from Ackerman’s. Those bastards. You know what they said? ‘The law is hazy on this point, Mr. Carson.’ Have you ever heard anything more absurd? If only Mitch Taylor was still practicing. This new Wilson guy is a charlatan.”

Mitch Taylor had been the Carson family attorney for years, retiring after Belle’s grandfather’s death. The new lawyer, Stan Wilson, had in Sam’s eyes “betrayed” them by letting Sarah bequeath the Carson diamond to Sam’s sister, Jenny. A sister he’d always felt comfortably superior to, because she was adopted. It had completely messed with his sense of the universe to learn that Jenny was actually Robert Carson’s daughter by blood, as well as by adoption.

To have her inherit the diamond he’d always believed was his birthright? Impossible. He had vowed to overturn it.

“I wonder if they’re in cahoots with Wilson. I bet he got to them somehow. Or else they’re idiots.” He
knocked back the last of his coffee. “Too bad you couldn’t hang on to David, Belle. It would be mighty useful right now to have a lawyer in the family.”

Belle lowered her eyes. With stiffening fingers, she started to rearrange the yarn in her mother’s basket, pinks all together, then blues….

“I never will understand what happened there.” He let Emily pour him fresh coffee, but he didn’t skip a beat. “I mean, you’ve dated some losers I was glad to see the tail end of, but David was the cream of the crop. A lawyer, good-looking, good money. Hell, if you’d stuck with him, you wouldn’t even have needed a job.”

Pink, blue, green, yellow.

“I couldn’t stick with him, Dad, unless I agreed to marry him. He gave me an ultimatum, remember?”

He laughed. “Yeah. An ultimatum that came attached to a four-carat diamond ring. You’re the first woman in history to run screaming from the sight of a ring that size.”

She glanced toward her mother, trying to signal that she was sorry. But she just couldn’t go on like this. Didn’t her mother see what happened when no one stood up to him? It was like feeding the monster in your closet. He didn’t go away. He got bigger and hungrier, and it took more of your flesh to satisfy him.

“I don’t give a damn how big his ring was, Dad. I didn’t want to be his wife. Do you really want a lawyer in the family so badly that you’d have me sell myself to a man I didn’t love?”

Her father’s face tightened.

“You loved him enough to live with him, and sleep
with him, and let him pay half the rent. There are only two names for women who do that, sweetheart. One of them is
wife
.”

Emily made an anguished noise. “Sam—”

“No. It’s true. She’s pretty mouthy for a young woman who doesn’t have anyone to pay her bills, and no prospects for getting a job. I hope she doesn’t think she’s going to move back into this house.”

Belle scraped her stool back. “Don’t worry, Dad. I’m only here for the weekend. If I can stand it that long.”

She plucked her keys from the countertop. She smiled at her mother, trying to control the shaking she felt moving through her body. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

“Where are you going? A bit thin-skinned, aren’t we? Can’t take a little truth?” Her father’s cold amusement followed her out to the hall.

Ignoring him, she picked up her purse, and as she went through the front door she was already fumbling for her phone.

She dialed the number wrong twice.

But finally the call went through.

She heard George’s voice saying, “hello.”

“George? It’s Belle.” She took a deep breath, leaning against the front porch pillar for support. “If the job’s still open, I want it.”

W
HEN
M
ATT’S OFFICE
door was open, as it almost always was, he had a direct view of the new hire’s cubicle.

The spot used to belong to the director of communications, but George had moved over one desk when Belle Carson came on board. He apparently wanted his assistant to be the first face visitors glimpsed, after the receptionist. Belle needed to meet people, he said. Be visible, make contacts. Integrate.

Matt never micromanaged if he could help it, so he had just nodded. Belle would make an excellent first impression on guests—her manner was much warmer and more appealing, actually, than Francie’s, the woman who sat at the reception desk and doubled as office manager.

But now, only two days after Belle’s arrival, Matt was wondering whether she might be a little
too
appealing. He hadn’t understood a word of the lease he’d supposedly been reading for the past twenty minutes. He’d been too distracted by the way she dangled one shoe from her pink-tipped toes while she talked on the telephone.

He dragged his attention back to the lease. What the hell was wrong with him? He didn’t look at his employees’ feet. He didn’t look at his employees at all,
that way
.

But the navy-blue pump jiggled up and down, at the edge of his peripheral vision, and he found his mind wandering again. Did she fidget like that every time she made a phone call? Or did it mean she was bored, or nervous, or annoyed? She’d been quite reluctant to take the job. He still wasn’t sure what had changed her mind.

So maybe the bouncing shoe meant she hated networking with the media, which George undoubtedly had her doing this first week.

“You got a minute?”

Matt jerked his eyes upward, belatedly realizing that George stood in the doorway.

“Sure,” he said. He tossed aside the lease gratefully, yawning. “Why is everything lawyers write so damn boring?”

George smiled. “Guess you’ll have to ask your brother that one.” He hesitated a second, then closed the door behind him.

Matt sat up a little straighter. George knew Matt preferred transparency in all transactions. For Diamante, the “open door” policy wasn’t just a sound bite. What was up?

The older man chewed on the inside of his lip a minute, as if trying to decide how to begin. “Have you heard from Bill Duncan?”

Matt frowned. He heard from Bill Duncan, the owner of several small radio stations in outlying municipalities, only twice a year. Matt got invited to Bill and Marcy’s Christmas extravaganza, and he got hit up for donations to their Summer Fun charity auction. This was only June. The auction wasn’t for another month, at least.

“No. Why?”

“You probably will.” George glanced out the glass wall of Matt’s office, toward Belle’s desk.

Matt looked, too. Belle had put her black glasses on top of her crazy curls and was rubbing her eyes. Then she stood, wandered to the coffee area in the corner and began pouring herself a cup of Francie’s coffee.

Matt wondered if she knew about Francie’s coffee.

He turned back to George. “Come on, just spit it out. Why will I probably hear from Bill Duncan?”

“Because…well, Belle…” He hiked up his pants a little. “I had her sending out media e-mails yesterday. You know, introducing herself, making nice, saying a few flattering things about the contact, about his work, or you know, whatever compliment she felt comfortable—”

“And?”

“And she wrote an e-mail to
Jim
Duncan. But she sent it to Bill.”

Matt absorbed that for a beat, then groaned. Bill and Jim Duncan, no relation, were both media types around town. Unfortunately, they were on opposite sides of the political spectrum, one a business reporter and the other a fat-cat station owner. They hated one another like poison.

“Damn it.
No.
”

“Yeah.” George looked miserable. “She had done a helluva job, too, saying how much she admired Jim’s work. It was her best letter yet, because apparently she really does like the guy’s writing. Unfortunately, she stuck the wrong e-mail address on it. It went to Bill.”

As if on cue, Matt’s phone rang. He let it ring over to the reception desk. He and George exchanged a glance, but after a few seconds Francie approached the glass
wall and tapped on it. She batted her eyes and touched her cheek flirtatiously. It was their code for Tiffani.

Matt shook his head emphatically. This made the fourth call from Tiffani since they’d broken up ten days ago. Each time, he considered relenting—it felt brutal to refuse even to be friends. But he knew a man couldn’t leave any chinks in his defenses with the Tiffanis of the world. If she saw a crack in the fortress wall, she’d ooze right through it.

Francie nodded, obviously pleased with Matt’s resolve, and stalked back to the phone. George’s face was studiously blank, the perfect employee pretending not to know what was going on. Matt appreciated the professionalism, though he was well aware that no one around here had much liked Tiffani.

George cleared his throat. “So, about Bill Duncan…”

“I can handle Bill.” He wasn’t crazy about the man himself. If Matt ended up getting scratched off the Christmas list he could live with that. “I’m more worried about Belle. Can she cut it, do you think?”

George nodded, still promoting his new hire as vigorously as he ever promoted Diamante Pizza. “Absolutely. She’s going to be great. She’s got wonderful instincts. I filled her in on the Diamond Sweepstakes yesterday, and she had some inventive ideas.”

Matt was glad to hear it. The Diamond Sweepstakes had been Nana Lina’s idea. Because Diamante meant diamond, she’d decided to promote the company’s sixtieth anniversary expansion by giving away a three-karat diamond solitaire worth sixty thousand dollars.

Everyone who ordered a pizza in the next three
months would automatically be entered in the contest. They’d been running TV and print ads already, created by an outside agency. It was a huge expense, and frankly, Matt thought it was a huge gamble.

But when Nana Lina wanted to do something, Matt got it done.

“Really,” George went on, “Belle’s a natural. I’m going to have to watch out, or you’ll end up giving her my job. She’s smart, and friendly, and credible. She’s got a sort of natural elegance that—”

It couldn’t have been timed more perfectly. Just as George mentioned “elegance,” Belle took a sip of Francie’s coffee.

Instantly, she choked, coughed and spilled coffee all over her chest. She recoiled in horror. Her glasses tumbled from her head, and her shoe fell off her toes, so that when she stood, wildly brushing at the hot, brown liquid on her white blouse, she lost her balance and had to grab the back of the chair to keep from going down.

The chair rolled, pulling Belle two feet outside her cubicle, before bumping awkwardly into the wall. She stood there, her fair skin flushed as bright as her toenails, as Francie burst into laughter.

George moaned.

“You really should have warned her,” Matt said, struggling to hold back his own amusement. Though fifty-five and worked to the bone, Francie was attending night school to get her law degree, and hadn’t slept in about six months. She existed on Diet Coke, dark chocolate and coffee that would strip the lining of your esophagus like cheap wallpaper.

“Matt, honestly, today looks pretty bad, but Belle’s going to be fine—”

“I know she is. Now get out there and fix the mess. If the poor woman gets any redder, her face is going to explode.”

George hustled out. Matt stayed behind his desk, ignoring the urge to jump up and join the rescue mission. Belle was probably dying of embarrassment, and having the brand-new boss hand her a towel wouldn’t help matters much.

Besides, he knew himself fairly well. The urge to go out there and soothe this pretty, flustered young woman was way too strong. All day, she’d seemed like a lost kitten, which made him feel sad, because he remembered the spark and sizzle he’d glimpsed in her eyes at the restaurant the other night.

She was a proud woman, and a capable one, but she was out of her element here. It must have been difficult for her to agree to take the job at all. He didn’t want her to feel humiliated only two days into it. He didn’t want her to feel defeated already.

He found himself wanting to do something gallant, something manly and tender.

But he stopped himself.

Manly? Tender? That darn sure wasn’t in the job description of
employer.

In fact, that was the textbook definition of
hell no
.

A
LL MORNING
Belle had been a bit uncomfortable about the lunch she’d agreed to have with her newfound cousin Joe today. The invitation had come out of the
blue, a real surprise, considering how steadfastly Joe had been ignoring Belle’s own overtures. The sudden about-face made her nervous.

When she finally heard the sweet little chime of the lobby elevator announcing Joe’s arrival, she moved like a criminal making a prison break. She grabbed her purse and hustled Joe back into the elevator without introducing him to anyone.

Though he’d always been a close friend of her cousin Sue’s, Belle had met him a couple of times before, at the reading of the will and at the hospital when his dad had a stroke, so they were hardly on intimate terms. She would have called Sue to join them, but Sue had just returned from a quickie wedding in Vegas and was up to her ears in the red tape of adopting her husband’s infant niece.

It was only one floor down to the ground level of the renovated town houses that served as Diamante Incorporated headquarters, but the elevator ride seemed to last forever. Though she had buttoned her jacket over the ruined shirt, the aroma was enough to make anyone gag. She gave Joe a point in the “nice guy” column because, even as the air grew close, he had manners enough not to grimace.

Of course, he knew almost nothing about her, either. He might just think she had terrible taste in perfume.

She crossed her arms, trying to hold in the odor. “So…I don’t know the neighborhood all that well yet. Did you have a restaurant in mind?”

There must be plenty of choices. Diamante’s location on a shady street in Lower Pacific Heights was an
eclectic blend of retail, restaurants, offices and condos. In any two-block segment of this neighborhood you could find almost anything on earth you wanted.

Joe, who seemed to take up a lot of room in this mahogany-paneled box, smiled politely. He had deep-set, dark blue eyes—and the smile didn’t quite reach them. “Well, Diamante Pizza is here…the whole first floor, right?”

“Oh, no, no,” she said without thinking. “I mean…not that their pizza isn’t wonderful. It’s just that I would like to
really
get away, you know? Not even think about the job for a while.”

“Okay.” He shrugged those double-wide shoulders, clearly indifferent to the lunch location. “I saw a couple of restaurants across the street. Mexican and…something else.”

“Mexican sounds terrific,” she said gratefully. Finally the elevator doors opened, and she escaped into the open air. “Let’s see…it’s…oh! Banditos? Yes, that looks fine.”

She wished she could stop talking. But, combined with the missteps at work, Joe Fraser’s quiet demeanor had begun to get on her nerves. He was attractive, with that black hair that looked as if it could be lush if he’d ever let it grow, and those shoulders. But he also had a cowboy’s square jaw, and a nose that might have been broken somewhere along the way, which gave him an intimidating edge.

And the few times she’d seen him, at the reading of the will and at the hospital when his father first had the stroke, he’d been giving off no-nonsense vibes. She wondered once again why he’d asked her to lunch in the first place.

Obviously it wasn’t a sudden gush of familial warmth.

Now that she was free of Diamante and the maddening awareness of Matt Malone, she felt herself steadying. Maybe Joe had just needed time to adjust to the idea of his new relatives. After all, her dad hadn’t exactly welcomed him into the family with open arms.

She could have told him that her father didn’t understand the concept of “open arms.” But that would have been gratuitous disloyalty, so she waited to see what Joe had in mind.

For a couple of minutes they just sat making small talk, and ordered the same cheese enchiladas, salad and tea. Finally, when the waitress left, Joe scraped his chair closer to the table and cleared his throat.

“I want to talk to you about your mother.”

Belle sipped her water, trying not to reveal how surprised she was. She’d been fully expecting him to say he wanted to talk about her father and his rotten attitude. She’d been mulling it over all morning, trying to figure out how honest to be.

But her mother? This was a bit of a shock.

She didn’t respond right away. It was a technique her first editor had taught her, back in her college newspaper days. If the reporter talks, the subject doesn’t have to. If the reporter rushes to fill the gaps, he never gets any quotes to fill the pages.

Joe fixed his sharp-eyed gaze on her, unblinking. “I guess you know your mother has come by to visit my father in the hospital.”

Belle put her glass down carefully, not sure her suddenly shaky fingers wouldn’t drop it. Her mother
had visited Adam Fraser? It couldn’t be true. Her father had given them both explicit orders not to associate with any of the Frasers.

Belle was perfectly willing to defy Sam when he was being a fool or a bastard, or, as was so often the case, both. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here right now, eating enchiladas with Joe.

But her mother? Her mother didn’t believe in defiance. Emily Carson had grown up with an alcoholic father and a runaway mother, and she had learned early to be a peacemaker. She never challenged Sam. Never. She simply didn’t have the courage. It had been bred out of her by her own father.

Joe’s eyes narrowed. “You weren’t aware of this?”

Apparently Belle needed to work on her poker face. “No,” she admitted. “I wasn’t. In fact, I can’t believe that she…that my father…”