IN ROOM 33 (23 page)

Her mother, knowing her words came out wrong, laughed again, before settling her flawless face to a smug smile. "I watched him run the other day, you know. Very nice. You have good taste." She sent one of her smoky gazes toward David, took his hand. "Like mother, like daughter. And with a man who looks like Wade, has a body like Wade, I'm sure there is at least
one
other long, hard reason to go to his bed."

Joy didn't have an ounce of violence in her, but if she had, she'd have slapped the smile from Lana's face. Instead she raised her eyebrows and matched her mother's bemused expression with a carefully composed dead-straight one of her own. Control was a game anyone could play. "Who I sleep with and for what reason is my business. But just to set your minds at ease," she said, her tone biting, "you'll be pleased to know I have money—two million dollars, to be exact."

Joy savored David's shocked—frightened?—eyes, scanned the mask that was her mother's face."You know, I came here today to talk things over, get your input on the idea of renovating instead of selling, which is the way I'm leaning right now. But just to keep you in suspense—and to keep my promise—I'll save my final decision and any more attempts at communication until the end of the month as we agreed."

She gave her mother a withering smile. "It's been fun. A very educational afternoon. I hope you and David enjoy the rest of it."

"See you in a couple of weeks, darling daughter. Don't do anything with Wade that I wouldn't do."

Joy's anger turned to disgust, and because she couldn't find a printable response to her mother's implication, she took a step away.

David reached for her arm, gripped it tightly. "And for God's sake, don't even think of keeping that hotel. It would be the biggest mistake of your life."

"I'll do whatever I decide to do." She yanked her arm free of his grasp and swept out, her whole body rigid with tension and forced bravado.

When the massive front door closed behind her, she leaned on it briefly before bolting for her rental car.

She steadied her hands on the wheel, drove two blocks, pulled over, and cried for twenty minutes.

When did a grown woman stop wanting her mother? And why the hell, when she found her—or at least a small piece of her—did it hurt so much to lose her again?

Suddenly chilled, Joy put the car in gear and drove and drove and drove....

When she finally turned the car back to Seattle's city center, the sun had slipped below the horizon, and she'd shoved Lana and the increasingly inscrutable David Grange to the back of her mind. She'd have to think everything through, make some decisions, she knew that. But not now.

Now she was going home. To the Phil. And tonight she would sleep with Wade Emerson, for reasons that had nothing to do with money and everything to do with strong arms, deep kisses, and a soul she sensed was in lonely concert with her own.

Or would be until he learned how she'd come to be in possession of almost two million dollars.

Like mother, like daughter.

* * *

Wade took the elevator to six, got off, and jogged the steps up to the seventh floor. He looked at his watch as he walked the few feet to Christian Rupert's door. Five minutes to eight. He knew Rupert didn't like late, but nobody had said anything about early. Standing in the dim light over the penthouse door, Wade rapped three times. If he did get invited in, it would be the first time he'd set foot in this part of the hotel. Christian Rupert's inner sanctum. Hell, his grandfather, if he weren't already in his grave going on twenty years, would have apoplexy.

"You're early, boy. Come back in five minutes."

The voice sounded muffled as if it came from a fair distance away. "It's not Gordy, Mr. Rupert. It's Wade Emerson. Gordy's leg is pretty bad. He asked me to walk Melly."

Silence greeted this announcement, so Wade waited a second before adding. "I'm happy to do it, if Melly's up for it. And I'd like to talk to you, if you have time."

More silence, then, "Just a minute."

It was exactly eight o'clock when the door slid open about four inches and a gnome of a man, almost half Wade's height, looked up at him from behind the heavy chain securing the door. His ancient eyes, pale gray, were deeply set in a wizened face that looked older than a face was ever meant to be, but there was nothing ancient in his sharp gaze; it was icily intelligent. "Emerson, you say?" he asked, his eyes watery but unblinking.

"Yes. Wade Emerson."

"We haven't met," Rupert said, as if it were an accusation of sorts, and he made no move to unchain the door.

"No. Maybe I should have come up, introduced myself." And maybe he should have, he thought, but he'd fallen easily into the Emerson pattern of pretending Christian Rupert didn't exist.

"Yes. That would have been right."

Duly chastised, or as chastised as an over six-foot-tall man could be by someone three times his age and half his height, Wade nodded amiably. "About Melly. Would you like me to walk her?" The dog was snuffling at the lower part of the door, whining and pawing.

"Are you alone, Mr. Emerson?"

"Yes, and the name's Wade."

"Wade Philip Emerson. I know. You were named after this hotel. I knew your grandfather. I'm sure he mentioned me."

The last was said with force and maybe a touch of wistfulness. "Yes, sir, he did." He didn't bother to mention in what way he'd been mentioned. And as to the "mean old bastard" label, Wade would form his own opinion.

Rupert stared at him as if the fate of the free world depended on his decision to open the door or close it in his face. Wade had the sensation of being x-rayed without a radiation guard. A full minute passed before the man closed the door, slipped the chain, and opened it again. Not much wider than the first time.

"Use as little of the opening as you can to come through, please. I don't want the hall breeze in here. All the dust. Germs, etcetera."

"Sure," Wade turned sideways, inched his way into the room while the old man pressed the door against his chest. Wade heard the shallow, erratic rasp in his lungs as he slid past him and stepped into the room. The poor guy was terrified.

In a second, Melly was all over him, and Wade's attention was diverted to the excited dog.

When Melly settled down, Wade offered Rupert his hand. He stared at it in apparent confusion.

"Oh, yes, the handshake custom. You'll have to excuse me, I don't do that." Rupert tottered back to an automated recliner chair that sat nearly dead center of the large room. When he sat in it, it dwarfed him.

Wade idly rubbed his rejected hand on the side of his jeans and looked around, intensely curious. As far as he knew he was the first Emerson ever to be in here. When he'd been a kid, his grandfather had ordered him to stay as far away from the penthouse as possible. But even now, he was stunned by the size of it. It had to be five thousand square feet. And it was so damned... thirties. Except for the recliner Rupert sat in, the place was like a museum.

"This is quite the place," Wade said.

"Yes, I like it. Look around, if you like."

Wade did, couldn't have resisted if he wanted to. The ceilings, as in the rest of the Phil, were very high, but here the walls held a series of soaring, arched windows with stained glass inserts at their tops. Tonight, despite the show the sun made, sinking slowly into the west, only one window—matching the others but serving as double doors leading to the terrace—had its draperies partially pulled back. He moved to the window, curious to look outside.

The terrace was spacious, encompassing most of the hotel roof. A brick wall on one side hid the air conditioning unit and a roof access door, installed in the seventies sometime, and sealed a few years later. To Wade's knowledge, that door hadn't been opened since. Two deep rectangular containers, lushly planted, formed the other two sides.

Unlike the rest of the decaying hotel, everything was in top condition. He was impressed. "You've lived here a long time."

"Most of my life. It suits my needs."

Wade nodded, abruptly aware of something else going on in the room, something other than a look-around and words of superficial hospitality. The room was warm, charged. Strangely uncomfortable.

Except for the pool of light cast by the lamp burning beside Rupert's chair and the finger of sunset that made it through the half-opened drapes, the cavernous room was deep in shadow. Christian Rupert sat ramrod stiff in his over-large recliner, his intense study of Wade overt and unblinking.

"Step into the light where I can see you," he instructed.

Wade decided to humor him, walked to the window and stood in the light from the lowering sun.

"Oh, yes..." Rupert took a deep, noisy breath and closed his eyes; he seemed transported. When he opened them, he said in a hushed voice, "You are very much like him. Very, very beautiful."

Wade frowned. This was a first, a man calling him beautiful. He put it down to the man's age. "I assume you mean my grandfather. Gordy told me you had a picture of him."

"There." He pointed to a grand piano, draped with a fringed green cover, beside the terrace doors.

Wade saw it immediately, picked it up, and carried it toward the light. "This is him, all right. Although I've never seen this exact picture before." He studied it a moment longer and set it back on the piano.

"No, you wouldn't have." He gestured at the picture. "A little farther back, please. Where it was before you picked it up."

Wade did the best he could with the picture. "Exactly how long have you lived here?"

"I stopped counting the years sometime back—made the passing of them easier to bear." The barest smile crossed his face. "But I moved in not long after the hotel was built."

"That's over sixty years."

"I expect it is, Mr. Emerson."

"Wade, please."

"Of course, things are so much more informal now. And you may call me Christian." He gestured to a liquor cabinet. A glass tray and a decanter sat on its top. "I have brandy, very good brandy. May I offer you one and prevail upon you to serve one to an old man who now hoards his strength with a miser's concern?"

"Happy to." Wade poured the brandy. Christian was right. It was very good, two-hundred-dollars-a-bottle good. He handed him the glass, noticed that while he'd been getting the drinks, Christian had donned a pair of white gloves. Weird old duck, definitely obsessive/compulsive, but so far not the "mean old bastard" his grandfather described.

"Thank you," he said, taking the brandy from Wade. "Now, sit down, Wade Philip Emerson—in the light where I can look at you... such memories you bring back." He stopped. "Then tell me, what brings you to the Philip? And more to the point, what brings you to me? You wanted to talk, you said."

Christian was sharp. Wade admired that, and he admired people who got to the point and skipped the subtlety. He sipped the brandy but ignored the chair Christian gestured to. "What brought me to the Philip originally was curiosity. I wanted to see how the old fellow had stood up through the years." More of a truth than he'd admitted when he arrived at the Phil's front door. "What brings me to see you is a business proposition."

"A need for money, you mean."

Wade smiled at the man's directness. "My need for money, your need to retain your home as the sanctuary it's always been for you. As I said, a business proposition. One that will benefit both of us."

Christian sat back in his chair and started to laugh. The laugh became a cough, then a series of harsh, painful-looking wheezes. Rupert clutched his chest, seemed to fight for his breath, tears streaming over the thin skin of his cheeks.

Christ, he was turning blue. Wade moved toward him, no idea in hell what to do, but Christian raised a hand, rasped out, "Don't! Don't touch me. I'm fine."

Relieved, Wade saw color return to his face and heard his breathing steady. "Are you sure?" Wade eyed him, still uncertain whether or not to call 911.

"Yes. Perfectly fine." Christian sipped his brandy, used a tissue from the table beside his chair to wipe moisture from his runny eyes. "I thank you for that. It's been a long time since I was so highly amused."

"What was so funny?"

Christian set his pale eyes on him, repeated, " 'A business proposition. One that will benefit both of us.' Your grandfather said those same words to me over sixty years ago." His mouth quivered before forming a nasty twist of a smile. "And young, arrogant fool that I was, I went along with it." He wagged his head, raised cold, rheumy eyes to Wade's. "And I've cursed him and his grasping, selfish spawn every day of my life since. And you are that spawn."

Silence, thick and dark, filled the room.

When the shock of his words wore off, Wade put down his brandy glass. This was what he sensed earlier.

Hatred. Frigid and unadulterated. Wade had firsthand experience with hatred, but usually going out, not coming back at him. "Obviously there's a story behind that. One I don't know. I'd like to hear it."

"I don't think so. But I'll tell you this. I saved this hotel for your grandfather. If it weren't for me, he'd have lost it right after that grand opening of his." He looked around with the distaste you'd show an unclean sty. "I financed him, got him and this hotel out of debt, and all I received for my efforts was this prison."