Sweet Liar (7 page)

Curling her upper lip at him in a sneer of what she hoped looked like contempt, she took the glass, drained it, then handed it back to him for a refill.

Mike laughed. “A real sailor, are you? Any tattoos?”

Samantha didn't bother to answer him, but she wished she hadn't drunk the wine. She had not eaten very much, and the wine was already going to her head, yet she desperately needed to be alert right now, not fuzzy-headed and relaxed as the wine was making her feel. “Not any tattoos I'm going to show
you,”
she heard herself say, then grimaced, for she had always been the very easiest of drunks. Half a glass of wine and she was dancing on tables—or at least thinking about dancing. It was something about her that had always disgusted Richard, but he had managed to cope with the problem. As always, he figured out a solution to all of Samantha's “problems”: Because she had no head for drinking, he didn't allow her to drink.

Looking down at the tray across her legs as he lifted the cover, she saw a fat, succulent steak smothered in sauce. “I don't eat meat,” she said, looking away.

“Why not? You don't like it?”

“Where have you been for the last century? Haven't you read the reports on meat? Fat content. Hardening of the arteries. Cholesterol. No fiber.”

“Is that all? The air's worse for you than any steak. Eat it, Sam.”

“My name is Samantha, not—” She didn't say any more because he shoved a piece of meat into her mouth. When she chewed, she found the flavor to be divine, really truly divine. Continuing to chew, she remembered that she had first given up meat as a way to cut down on their grocery bill.

“Hated that, didn't you?” he said smugly, watching her.

She ignored his comment. “I thought you wanted me to listen to you. Would you say what you have to say, then get out of here?” Cutting another bite of steak, he started to feed it to her as though she were a child or, perhaps, as though they were on far more intimate terms than they were, so she took the fork from his hand and fed herself. He didn't seem to notice the look she gave him when he picked up her salad fork and began helping himself to part of the steak. Samantha tried not to think of the scene: her sitting at the head of the bed, him sprawled across the middle, his head near her knees as they both ate from the same plate.

“Ever hear of Larry Leonard?”

“Yet another person we do not have in common,” she said jauntily, pointing her fork at him. She definitely should not have drunk that glass of wine.

“Larry Leonard is—was—a writer of murder mysteries. He didn't write very many of them and they didn't sell well, but they received some critical acclaim because they were so well researched. All of them were about gangsters.”

Her mouth was full of steak and she kept sipping on the second glass of wine. “The two of you should have gotten along splendidly as that's all you read about.” As soon as she said it, she blushed.

Mike grinned knowingly. “Been snooping, have you? By the way, thanks for putting my clothes away the day Tammy had to leave.”

Samantha looked down at her plate so he couldn't see her red face.

“Anyway,” Mike continued, “Larry Leonard was actually named Michael Ransome, and he was my honorary uncle, a friend of my grandfather's, and I was named after him. Uncle Mike lived in a guesthouse on my father's land in Colorado, and I spent a lot of time with him when I was a kid. We were…buddies,” he said softly.

Samantha stopped chewing when she heard the barely concealed pain in his voice, for she understood all too well how it felt to have people you loved die. Reaching out her hand to him, she pulled back before touching him.

Mike didn't seem to notice as he kept eating and talking. “When Uncle Mike died three years ago, he willed everything he owned to me. There wasn't any money, but there was his library of books on gangsters.” He smiled at her teasingly. “The books you've seen.”

“I'm sure they're your own taste in literature.” She speared a cherry tomato before he could take it.

“He also left me work he'd done on a biography of a big-time gangster named Dr. Anthony Barrett.”

“The man you think I know.”

Raising one eyebrow in praise of her memory, Mike didn't answer directly but made a stab at the last bite of steak, then just as he was about to eat it, offered it to her.

Samantha almost took it, but then shook her head. “I really wish you would finish this story and leave.” The intimacy of this shared meal was not something she wanted to continue.

Removing the last cover from the tray, Mike revealed a deep dish of chocolate mousse. Samantha started to refuse, but it looked so rich and dark and creamy that before she knew what she was doing, she had dipped her spoon in it at the same time that Mike dipped his.

“Where was I?” he asked, leaning back, licking his spoon while Samantha watched him, wondering if he was always so at ease. “Oh yes. The biography. I read what work Uncle Mike had done and became interested in this Tony Barrett. I'd just finished the course work at school and I was at loose ends, so I thought I might continue what Uncle Mike started. So I decided to move to New York and continue researching. When I was moving Uncle Mike's books, I found the file folder.”

When he said no more, Samantha looked up at him. “Is that supposed to intrigue me? Am I now supposed to ask, ‘What file folder?' ”

“I could stand a little interest on your part, yes. But I can see that I'm not going to get it.” He filled his spoon with mousse. “The folder was simply labeled ‘Maxie' and inside was a newspaper photo of you, your grandmother, and your dog.”

Samantha put her spoon down with a clatter. “My grandmother ran away when I was eight months old. There
is
no photo of the two of us.”

Leaning on his elbow, he looked at her intently, without blinking, as though trying to relay some message to her.

“Oh,” Samantha said. “
That
picture.” It had taken her a while to remember, not that she remembered the incident, but her grandfather had told her what happened. “Brownie,” she said at last. “I was staying with my grandmother, and I crawled into a pipe in a ditch in the backyard.”

“And you got stuck, and your grandmother called the fire department.”

“And a bored newspaper reporter looking for a story happened to be at the station that day so he came with the firemen, but it was Brownie who saved me.”

“Your dog crawled into the pipe, bit into your soggy diaper, and pulled you out of that pipe. The reporter took a picture of you, your grandmother, and Brownie, the wire services picked the photo and story up and sent it around to papers all over the country, where it was seen by my uncle Michael Ransome as well as the rest of the world. Uncle Mike cut the photo out and wrote
Maxie
in the margin. All through his notes a woman named Maxie is mentioned.” He looked up at her, studying her.

“Maxie was Barrett's mistress.” When Samantha didn't jump out of her skin at this news, as he was hoping she would, he leaned back on the bed and put his hands behind his head. “I think Maxie and your grandmother are one and the same.”

When Samantha didn't say anything, just kept cleaning out the dish of mousse as though he'd said nothing, he looked back at her. She was looking sleepy again. “Well?” he asked impatiently.

She put down the empty dessert bowl. “Are you finished? Have you told me what you wanted to tell me? You think my grandmother was the mistress of a gangster. Okay, you've told me, now go.”

For a moment, he could only blink at her. “You don't have an opinion on this?”

“I have an opinion on you,” she said softly. “You have been reading too many of those gangster books. I didn't know my grandmother, but she was a regulation grandmother, cookie baking, that sort of thing. And her name was Gertrude. She was not a gangster's moll—is that the right term?” She put her hand up when he started to interrupt her. “And besides that, what does it matter if she was?
Now
will you leave?”

Rolling over to his side, he frowned at her. “It matters because I think your grandmother was in love with Barrett and bore him a child. Tony Barrett just may be your real grandfather.”

At that Samantha very slowly, very carefully, set the tray to one side, got out of bed, and walked to the door. “Out,” she said as though talking to someone who didn't understand English. “Get out. In the morning I will find another place of residence.”

As though she hadn't spoken, Mike rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. “Your father thought Barrett was his real father.”

“I don't want to hear anymore,” she said louder. “I want you to leave.”

“I'm not going to leave,” he said without looking at her.

Samantha didn't say a word, but if he wouldn't leave, she would. Stepping out of the room, she started down the stairs.

Mike caught her in his arms before she reached the bottom of the stairs. She struggled against him, but he held her easily, his arms about her body, her back against his front, and as she struggled against him, Mike felt his desire for her growing. He could feel her body against his, her hips, her breasts, her thighs, all touching him. “Be still, Sam,” he whispered, sounding desperate, which he was. “Please, please be still.”

There was something odd in his tone that made Samantha stop struggling and go perfectly still in his arms.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” he said, his voice ragged, his lips near her ear lobe. “You have nothing to fear from me. All of this was your father's idea, not mine. I told him he should ask you to help me find Maxie, not force you to do it.” Still holding her close to him, he moved his face to touch her neck, not kissing her, but feeling her softness, smelling her skin.

With a sharp jerk, Samantha pulled away from him, then leaned back against the stair rail. Her heart was pounding in her breast, her breathing deep and irregular. When she looked at him, she saw that his heart was pounding too and his skin was flushed.

“You want to sit down somewhere and talk about this?”

“No,” she answered. “I don't want to talk about anything, nor do I want to hear anything you have to say. I don't want to hear your made-up stories about my father or my grandmother or about anything else for that matter. All I want to do is leave this house and never see you again.”

“No,” he said, pleading, but there was something else in his eyes. “I can't allow you to leave. Your father gave me the care of you and I mean to be worthy of his trust.”

Samantha blinked at him several times before she was able to speak. “ ‘Gave you the care of me?' You mean to be ‘worthy of his trust'?” She didn't know whether to laugh or run away. “You sound like something from the past, something from the Middle Ages. I am an adult woman and I—”

Abruptly, Mike's face changed. “Oh the hell with it. You're right. Who am I to take any of this seriously? I told Dave this was a dumb idea. I told him he should give you your inheritance with no strings attached, but he insisted that this was the only way. He wanted you to find out the truth.”

Mike threw up his hands, palms up in surrender. “I give up. I'm not a good jailer. First I let you stay alone in a room until, as far as I can tell, you're on the point of suicide, then I play the heavy and try to make you do what you don't want to do. You
are
an adult and you can make your own decisions. You're not interested in any of this, so go on back to bed. Put a chair in front of your door if you want—that should keep out even a dedicated pervert like me. In the morning I'll call a real estate agency and help you find somewhere else to live and I'll give you back your rent money. Why don't you take that computer equipment with you because I don't know what the hell to do with it. Good night, Miss Elliot,” he said, then walked down the stairs, turned, and went into the living room.

Shaking from her wrestle with him, shaking from all of it, Samantha slowly went back up the stairs.

A
s Samantha entered her father's apartment, her first instinct was to pack a suitcase, but she didn't. She felt so very tired. Closing the door, she wedged a chair under the knob, removed the chair, then climbed back into bed.

She couldn't sleep. She did her best not to think about her father and his will, but it was no good. It was the old “don't think of elephants” dilemma.

At three in the morning, she got out of bed and began to search for her father's will. She had purposely not read it, for she hadn't wanted to know the details of his after-death rules, hadn't wanted to know what he had planned for her to do.

She found the will among some other papers, then sat down to read it. Her father's lawyer had told her everything that was in the will except for the single sentence that said she was to report all her findings to one Michael Taggert, and on Taggert's approval of her research, she was to receive her money—money that should have been hers unencumbered.

Samantha's first instinct was to tear the document into a thousand pieces, but controlling herself, she smoothed it and replaced it with the other papers. Her father was dead; she had never been angry with him when he was alive, and she was not going to get angry at him now that he was gone. That he wanted someone to take care of her after he was dead was a sign that he loved her. It made no difference that Samantha didn't know this man, because her father had and he had approved of Michael Taggert—just as he'd approved of Richard Sims as her husband.

Getting up, Samantha went to the bathroom where she took a long, hot shower and washed her hair. When she emerged, she felt better. She dressed in gray cotton slacks and a long, loose pink sweater, combed her hair, tied it back from her face, and even put on makeup. It was still dark outside, but there was the feeling of dawn approaching, so she opened the doors leading onto the balcony and breathed the fragrance of the roses in the garden below.

Hearing something that she couldn't place, for a moment she stood still, listening. It was the sound of a typewriter being punched with heavy fingers. The sound made Samantha smile, for she hadn't heard a typewriter in years.

She knew she should stay in her room, knew she should pack her suitcase, but she didn't. Going to the door, she opened it and went down the stairs.

It was easy to follow the sound of the typewriter. Michael was in the library, the room dark except for a light over the desk, and he was punching away on an ancient typewriter that looked like something a war correspondent had used during World War II. He typed with his two index fingers, and he typed as though he were furious.

All at once feeling cowardly, Samantha started to leave the room.

“If you have something to say, say it,” he said without turning toward her.

She blurted her words. “My granddad Cal was my father's father. He was a wonderful man and I don't believe he wasn't.”

As he turned to look at her, she was surprised to see that he looked tired. Just like her, he had obviously been up all night.

“Believe what you want,” he said, turning away to pull the paper out of the typewriter and insert another sheet.

“Why are you typing?” She took a step toward him.

Glancing at her over his shoulder with a look that said she'd been born without a brain, he said, “Because I want something typed.”

She motioned toward the manual typewriter. “Why not just use a stone tablet and a chisel? It would be the same difference.”

He didn't say a word but just kept typing. She should go back to her room and pack, she thought, or maybe take a nap, but for once, she wasn't sleepy. She wanted to ask him what he was typing, but she didn't allow herself to do so.

“I guess I'll go back to bed,” she said and started toward the door, but stopped. “Are you going to release the money if I don't look for my grandmother?”

“No,” he said firmly.

Samantha started to protest but didn't. After all, it was her choice as to what she did, and the money wasn't all that important to her. She would do fine without the money because she knew very well that she could support herself. If she didn't fulfill the requirements of her father's will, she could leave New York today and she could go to…She could go to…

She was unable to finish her thought, because she knew she had nowhere to go, no one to go to. Slowly, she started walking toward the stairs.

“Your grandfather Cal was sterile,” Mike said loudly into the silence. “He had mumps while he was in the service—two years before he met your grandmother—and the mumps left him sterile. He couldn't father children.”

Samantha sat down hard on a chair by the doorway. A full circle, she thought. She had traveled full circle. She had lost her grandmother, her mother, her father, her husband, and now she was being told that her grandfather had never been hers to begin with.

She didn't hear Mike move, but he was suddenly standing in front of her. “You want to go get something to eat and talk about this?” His voice was full of concern.

“No,” she said softly. All she wanted was to go back to her rooms, rooms where she felt safe.

Grabbing her by the shoulders, Mike pulled her upright to stand in front of him, angry in his belief that her reluctance to go somewhere with him was her continuing conviction that he was half rapist, half murderer. “While you're in this house I'm responsible for you. Whatever you think of me, I rarely attack women in public places so you can at least have a meal with me.”

Samantha looked surprised. “I didn't mean—” She looked away from him, not wanting to be so close to him, for she had an urge to sink into his arms, knowing that it would be good to be held by another human being. The last person who had touched her, besides this man on the day she had met him, had been her father, and in those last months he had been so very fragile. It would be nice to feel strong, healthy arms about her. But Samantha wasn't in the habit of asking for things from people. She'd never asked her husband to hold her, and she wasn't going to ask this stranger for comfort, so she jerked her shoulders away from his hands.

Not understanding her look or her actions, Mike released her, his mouth twisted with disgust. “All right, I'll keep my hands off of you, but you're going to eat.”

Samantha started to repeat her no, but instead, she said she needed to get her purse.

“What for?” he asked.

“To pay for—”

Not allowing her to finish, he took her elbow and propelled her toward the front door. “I told you, I'm an old-fashioned guy. I pay. When I'm with a female, I pay. Whether she's my sister, my mother, or girlfriend, I pay. No Dutch treat. No her picking up the tab. Understand?”

Samantha didn't say a word. There were too many other things on her mind than who paid for breakfast.

As he ushered her out into the early morning light, she saw that there were a few people on Lexington Avenue, but not many, and the city had an eerie feeling, as though they were alone in it. Silently, she walked beside him, following him into an all-night coffee shop.

Smiling familiarly, the waitress brought Mike a cup of coffee. “Mike, you been at it all night again?” she asked.

He smiled back at her. “Yeah,” he said then turned to Samantha. “Scrambled eggs, bagels, okay with you? And tea, right?”

She nodded, not asking how he knew that she didn't like coffee. The truth was, she didn't really care what she ate.

Leaning back in the booth, Mike sipped his coffee. “I wish your father had told you more. I wish he hadn't left it to me to explain everything.”

“My father liked to…manage things,” she said softly.

“Your father liked to control people's lives.”

That snapped her out of her lethargy. “I thought you said you liked my father!”

“I did. We had some wonderful talks and we became friends, but I'm not blind. He liked to make people do what he wanted them to do.”

Samantha glared at him.

“All right,” Mike said. “I get your point. No more comments about your sainted father. You want to hear his theory—his, mind you, not mine—on what happened with your grandparents?”

She did want to hear and she didn't. It was rather like paying to see a horror film that you wanted to see yet also didn't want to see.

“Your father believed that in 1928 Maxie was pregnant by Barrett, but something happened to prevent them from marrying. Maybe she told him she was pregnant and he refused to marry her, I don't know. I do know that she left New York, went to Louisville, met Cal, and married him. She stayed with him for thirty-six years, then the photo of her appeared in the paper. Your father thought Barrett probably saw it and that's how he located Maxie.”

While watching her with the concentration of a snake, Mike drank more of his coffee. She was difficult to read, and he couldn't tell what she was thinking. “Two weeks before Maxie left, Dave said she was on the phone a lot and seemed upset. Just last year he was still berating himself, saying he should have asked her what was wrong, but he was fascinated with his baby daughter and had no thoughts for anyone else. Then, out of the blue, Maxie said her aunt was ill and needed her. She left, and no one in your family ever saw her again. At the time, Dave wanted to search for her, but your grandfather Cal said no—violently no. Dave believed Cal might have known that Maxie had gone back to Barrett. It was your father's guess that after Barrett had seen her picture, he probably contacted her and asked her to come back to him and she did.”

Samantha took a few moments to adjust to what he had told her. “If that's the case, why in the world would my father want to search for an adulteress? An adulteress! Scum-of-the-earth.”

Mike watched her. “Interesting. Such a forceful opinion about adultery. Any personal reasons for such vehemence?”

Not answering him, she watched the waitress place the food before them.

“Your father wasn't sure what happened to his mother,” Mike continued. “He thought for a while that she was a victim of foul play. Purse nabbed, then murdered, that sort of thing, but a year after she disappeared, she sent Cal a postcard from New York saying she was safe.”

“How thoughtful of her,” she said sarcastically.

Mike waited a moment for her to say something else, but when she was silent, he spoke again. “Maxie wrote that she was
safe.
Not that she was happy or well or send my clothes to so and so. She said she was
safe.”

“Safe in the arms of her lover?”

“Is that bitterness I hear in your voice?”

“What I think or feel is none of your business. All I want from you is to know how much I have to do before the requirements of the will are met.”

“Get me in to see Barrett and that's it. I want to meet the man. No one's seen him in twenty years. He's a recluse who lives on an estate in Connecticut with fences, dogs, and armed guards.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that my grandmother—if she's still alive—might be living there with him?”

Mike grinned. “The thought had crossed my mind.”

Samantha thought about the possibility of seeing her grandmother again. Her grandmother had abandoned her family, had left the people who loved her for another man, and Samantha wasn't sure she could forgive the woman. On the other hand, she thought of this man Barrett, a man she didn't know but who may actually be her grandfather.

“I might like to see him,” she said, then added quickly, “but not her.”

Mike's shock showed. “You can forgive a man for being a gangster, but you can't forgive a woman for adultery? Murder seems worse than sleeping with someone besides your spouse?”

She ignored his comment. “What is it you want me to do?”

“Nothing much. I'll write a letter to Barrett telling him that Maxie's granddaughter wants to meet him. It's my guess he'll answer right away, then we go to meet him. Simple.”

“What if he wants to see me alone?”

“I thought of that, actually, so I need a good, solid reason to be your escort. You wouldn't like to get married this afternoon, would you?”

“I'd rather be roasted alive,” she answered sincerely.

Mike laughed. “Liked being married, did you?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You know, there's a
reason
for all the divorce in this country.”

Dave had told him little about Samantha's marriage, saying only that he had encouraged her divorce and had helped her obtain it, but even so, Mike was startled by her hostility. Looking down at Samantha's hand on the table, he knew he shouldn't touch her because she seemed to have such an aversion to being touched—at least by him, anyway—but he couldn't seem to help himself.

Picking up her hand, he looked at it, so small in his own, then kissed the palm. “I could show you one heck of a great wedding night.”

Angrily, she jerked her hand out of his grasp.