Trust Me (5 page)

The elevator opened. Desdemona stepped inside. Stark followed. He thought she tensed as the doors closed again. He watched her out of the corner of his eye and could have sworn that she was doing some sort of deep-breathing exercise. Before he could figure out how to ask her politely if something was wrong, the elevator opened at the lobby level.

Desdemona leaned on the button that held the doors open as Stark got out. She searched his face. “Are you going to be all right?”

“Yes.”

“I'm really sorry about what happened today.”

“Forget it.”

“It must have been hell for you.”

“Like I said, you get used to it.”

“I don't believe that for a minute.” Desdemona fleetingly touched the sleeve of his corduroy jacket. “Take care of yourself.”

“Okay.” Stark paused. “Mind if I give you some advice?”

“On computer security matters?”

“No. Family matters.”

The red highlights in her hair gleamed in the overhead light as she tilted her head to one side. “What advice?”

“Don't cosign those loan papers for your cousin's wife.”

“I'm the only one in the family who has a decent credit rating,” Desdemona said.

“It's too risky. It's virtually the same as loaning the money to her.”

“So?”

“It's never smart to lend money to relatives,” Stark said patiently.

Desdemona's expression turned oddly wistful. “Your family isn't very close, is it?”

“What's that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing. I'm sorry you couldn't meet my parents and my brother, Tony. Tony's in L.A. He's got a shot at a soap.”

“He's in the laundry business?”

Desdemona laughed. “A soap opera. My folks are doing
My Fair Lady
at a dinner theater in Tucson.”

“You seem to have a rather large family.”

“Luckily for me.”

Stark eyed her speculatively. “From the sound of it, I'd say they're the lucky ones. You're apparently the financial linchpin of the whole operation.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “You don't understand. We're a
family
. We all stick together. You know the old saying, the only thing a Wainwright can depend on is another Wainwright.”

And they're all depending on you, Stark thought. “I've never heard that particular saying.”

“It's a family motto. Say, before you go, let me give you this.” Desdemona reached into the purse that was slung over her shoulder and took out a small business card. “I realize that the last thing you want to think about at the moment is the possibility of catering another major social event. But you never know.”

Stark accepted the card. “Thanks.”

Desdemona took her finger off the button. “Good night, Stark.”

“Good night.” Stark saw the curious tension return to her eyes as the elevator doors closed.

He hesitated a moment longer, and then finally he turned and walked out of the lobby.

He found a cab almost immediately. He got inside and leaned back against the seat. With one blunt finger he traced the words
Right Touch Catering
on the crisp white card Desdemona had given him. Then he put the card into the pocket of his jacket.

He felt weary and rather old.

He wondered where Pamela was and what she was doing tonight.

Maybe it was for the best. He knew in his bones that the marriage probably wouldn't have worked for more than a few years. Marriage was a fragile thing. Few people had the stamina for it. Most people opted out when the going got tough.

Stark knew a lot about the subject. His parents had been divorced when he was ten.

Stark had stayed with his mother, who had remarried and started a second family. For a while Stark's father had come around to see his son on weekends, but the visits had grown increasingly far apart. Eventually they had ceased altogether.

Looking back on that time, Stark was the first to admit that he had become difficult. He had turned sullen, rebellious, hostile, and uncooperative. His mother and stepfather, busy with their new baby, had lost patience.

He had been put into counseling, where he had retaliated by refusing to say a word. When the counselor threw in the towel, Stark's stepfather, a successful businessman who had been raised on the East Coast, had come up with an East Coast solution to the problem. Stark had been packed off to a boarding school some three thousand miles away.

West Coast born and raised, Stark had not fitted in well socially at the expensive school. He had kept to himself for the most part. But under the guidance of teachers who had seen past his anger to the keen intelligence that lay beyond, he had discovered mathematics, physics, and, eventually, computers.

He had soon learned that he fit perfectly into those calm, orderly realms where logic and reason held sway and where emotion did not intrude.

Stark's father had remarried twice in the years that followed his first divorce. Stark was vaguely aware that, in addition to his half sister and half brother on his mother's side, he had a pair of half brothers in Portland. He had never met them or their mother, Hudson Stark's third wife, and saw no compelling reason to make their acquaintance.

Boarding school had led to college, which had, in turn, led to the Rosetta Institute. The Institute had led to Stark Security Systems.

Life went on. What with one thing and another, Stark and his relatives had simply drifted out of each others' lives. No one had seemed to take much notice.

He had not lost touch entirely. He still called his parents on their birthdays. They, in turn, sent cards at Christmas.

He had sent wedding invitations to his mother and father, but neither had been free to attend. Stark was grateful. It had been humiliating enough to be abandoned at the altar without having to deal with his parents.

A thought struck him, slicing through his memories and bringing him back to the present. He reached inside his jacket and removed his personal digital assistant. He switched on the tiny computer and made a note to drop a line to his folks to inform them that he hadn't gotten married after all.

He hoped they hadn't bothered with gifts this time. Returning the crystal punch bowl his mother had sent two years ago had been a nuisance. He never had gotten around to sending back the silver candy dish he had received from his father's third wife.

A
somber hush greeted Stark when he walked into the lobby of his headquarters in downtown Seattle on Monday morning, reminding him of the atmosphere found in the viewing room of a funeral parlor.

Rose Burns, the receptionist, smiled tremulously. It was a smile that held pity, horror, and a certain degree of sheer awe. It was the same smile she had reserved for him two years ago on the day after his last fiasco of a wedding.

“Good morning, Mr. Stark,” she murmured. Her eyes were eloquent.

“Good morning, Miss Burns.”

There was a grim pause during which Rose lowered her gaze the way mourners do when they stand at the edge of the grave. “Wonderful weather we're having today.”

Stark looked at her. “Do you think so?”

Rose's face turned a brilliant shade of crimson. She hastily busied herself with an incoming call.

The hall that led to Stark's office was a gauntlet. Stark went down it with a sense of stoic resignation. The morbidly curious hovered in the open doorways on either side. He detected covert glances from the vicinity of the copy machine room. A few brave souls mumbled an awkward greeting before rushing off to the rest rooms, where they could compare notes with other eyewitnesses.

But the worst was yet to come. Stark set his teeth as he strode through the door of his office suite.

His secretary, Maud Pitchcott, peered at him over the rim of her reading glasses. Her pale blue eyes assessed him. Stark braced himself.

Maud was sixty-something. She had a round helmet of iron gray curls and favored gray suits to match. The suits were power suits. They were double-breasted, a style that, on Maud's sturdy figure, made her a force to be reckoned with at Stark Security Systems.

Her chief hobby, so far as Stark could discern, was hanging out in greeting card stores on her lunch hour. She was forever on a quest to find just the right inspirational verse for every occasion.

Her children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, friends, and associates received cards from her on all major and minor holidays. Stark even got one on Boss's Day, an annual event of which he had been blissfully unaware until he had hired Maud. The constant stream of cards were a pain because he had the nagging feeling he should reciprocate in some fashion. He ignored the uneasy impulse and tolerated his secretary's eccentricity because Maud was incredibly well organized.

Unfortunately her greeting card hobby had influenced her view of reality.

“Good morning, Mr. Stark,” Maud said. “I didn't think you would be in today. I was extremely sorry to learn about the unfortunate little incident on Saturday.”

Only Maud would term it an unfortunate little incident, Stark thought. “Forget it, Maud.”

“Remember, sir, as we travel along life's highway we are bound to stumble over the occasional stone. You must pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.”

“Saturday was not my best day, Maud. Nevertheless I'm pleased to say that I did at least manage not to trip and fall. Therefore, there is no need for me to pick myself up or to dust myself off.”

“I wasn't speaking literally, sir,” Maud chided gently.

“Weren't you?” Stark feigned surprise.

“Of course not. I was speaking metaphorically.”

“I've never been good with metaphors.”

“Onward, sir,” Maud said briskly. “This is the first day of the rest of your life.”

“I'll bear that in mind.”

“You must turn your back on the cloudy days of the past and look toward the rainbow that promises a sunny future.”

“Thank you for the advice.” Stark went swiftly past her desk. Escape was at hand. He was almost at the door of his inner office.

“Tomorrow brings a new dawn and renewed hope, sir.”

“Right.” Stark breathed a sigh of relief as he shoved open the second door. “Send McCallum in, will you?”

“Yes, sir. And may I say, sir, that every obstacle that we successfully surmount helps us to blossom and grow.”

“If you do say that, Maud, I will probably fire you on the spot.” Stark went into his office and closed the door. Hard.

He tossed his briefcase down onto his desk, slung his jacket onto the brass coatrack in the corner, and stalked to the window. He stood there for a few minutes and brooded over the view from the fifteenth floor of the high-rise office building.

From where he was standing he could see the steel blue expanse of Elliott Bay and the snow-capped Olympic Mountains in the distance. There wasn't a cloud in sight, although, this being the Pacific Northwest, that was subject to change.

Ferries weighted down with tourists, as well as the usual compliment of commuters, moved busily back and forth across the cold, dark waters of the Bay. They reminded Stark of so many industrious spiders spinning invisible webs. They dodged giant container ships and picked their way through the flock of sailboats that had materialized with the good weather.

Stark thought briefly about how he ought to have been sitting on a beachfront lanai in Bora Bora. It had been Pamela's idea to go to the South Pacific for their honeymoon. Stark had raised no objections. He had left the matter to her, just as he had intended to leave his entire social calendar to her.

Pamela had arranged everything, hotel, airline tickets, and his schedule. He wondered if she had bothered to cancel the reservations or if he would be getting bills for an unused honeymoon.

The door opened. Stark turned as Dane McCallum strolled into the office.

Tall, lean, and aristocratically good-looking at thirtyfive, Dane was Stark's fashion opposite. He had a taste for expensive tailoring and the ability to wear his beautifully cut suits with the stylish flair of a model. He got his blond hair styled in a salon instead of cut in a barbershop. He wore Italian leather on his feet, not scuffed running shoes, and he was never seen in jeans at the office.

He was Stark's opposite in other ways as well. He was at ease in the social situations that Stark detested, and he genuinely cared about the arts, fine wines, and even the opera.

He was also very good at managing people and money, qualities that made him invaluable to Stark.

The two men had met a few years earlier at the Rosetta Institute. Stark had worked on the technical side. Dane had been in management and finance.

When Stark had made the decision to go out on his own, he had approached Dane with an offer that amounted to little more than a gamble. He had not been able to hold out a fistful of money, because his first product, a computer encryption program, was still in his head. But he had promised Dane a vice presidency and stock in Stark Security Systems. To his surprise, Dane had jumped at the opportunity.

Dane had proved to be just as skillful at bringing new business in to Stark Security Systems as he had once been at bringing in funding for the Institute.

Stark was the first to acknowledge that he and Dane had little in common on the surface, yet somehow they had become friends. They were bound together by the mutual goal of making Stark Security Systems the leading company in its field. Hard work and success had welded them into a team.

“How bad was the hangover on Sunday?” Dane asked equably.

Stark shrugged. “I didn't have one.”

“No?” Dane smiled faintly as he lowered himself into a chair and stretched out his long legs. “I realize you're not a heavy drinker, but I figured you'd make an exception Saturday night. If you didn't get drunk, what did you do? I called around eight, but there was no answer.”

“I spent the evening at the theater.”

Dane's brows rose. “Didn't know you went to the theater.”

“I went Saturday night. Saw something called
Fly on the Wall
at the Limelight.”

“I don't believe it. You went to see experimental theater? You must have been in worse shape than I thought. How the hell did you find your way to a fifth-rate playhouse like the Limelight?”

“My caterer and her staff asked me to join them. It wasn't as though I had anything better to do.”

Dane blinked in surprise. “Your caterer?”

“Forget it. It's a long story.”

“All right, you spent Saturday night at the theater. What did you do yesterday? I tried to get you on the phone a couple of times.”

“I had the phone turned off,” Stark said. “I was working on ARCANE.”

Dane's eyes gleamed briefly. “To quote Maud, when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade, hmm?”

“This is not a good time to quote Maud,” Stark warned.

ARCANE was his newest brainchild, a highly flexible computer security program based on principles he had developed from what the popular press called chaos theory. Stark preferred to term the new field that existed at the frontiers of math and physics “the science of complexity.”

He did not like the word
chaos
. In his mind it did not conjure up what it did for most scientists, an image of seemingly random signals and movements awaiting the discovery of the patterns hidden in them. For Stark, true chaos was an empty universe shrouded in an endless night. It was a place where everything was meaningless. A place where he was utterly, completely alone. And it existed inside a sorcerer's cauldron that was buried somewhere deep inside him.

Dane laced his fingers together and eyed Stark with a thoughtful gaze. “I hate to inquire, but sheer, morbid curiosity compels me. Have you heard from Pamela?”

“No.”

“Just as well, I suppose.”

“I agree. Pamela and I don't have a lot to talk about at the moment.”

“Look on the bright side,” Dane said. “A cancelled wedding has got to be a hell of a lot cheaper than a divorce.”

“You didn't see the bill from the caterer.”

Dane chuckled. “That may be so, but I speak from experience. Don't forget, I'm still writing out checks to Alicia. I'll bet they're a lot bigger than your check to the caterer.”

Stark didn't argue. Alicia was Dane's second ex-wife. The marriage had lasted less than a year. Dane had recently paid a fortune to her in the divorce settlement.

“I suggested that you have Alicia sign a prenuptial agreement,” Stark said. “You should have learned your lesson after Elizabeth left you.”

“Guess I'm just a romantic at heart.” Dane's mouth twisted. “Unlike you.”

Stark sat down behind his desk. “You saw where being logical and businesslike about marriage got me on Saturday.”

“True. It was not a pretty sight. That makes two strikes. Think you'll ever go for a third?”

“Do me a favor,” Stark muttered. “Don't even mention the possibility.”

Dane twitched the crease in his slack. “What happens next?”

“Business as usual,” Stark said. “I'm fine-tuning ARCANE. Now that I don't have to take ten days off to go sit on a beach in Bora Bora, I should finish ahead of schedule. I think I'll have the last of the bugs worked out of the program by August.”

Dane pursed his lips. “That is ahead of schedule. Two months ahead.”

“I'm not having much trouble with the usual program glitches,” Stark said. “Things are going well. Have Lancaster start work on the sales projections.”

“Right.”

“And remember,” Stark muttered, “I want conservative numbers, not blue sky figures.”

“I'll tell Lancaster.” Dane grinned. “But don't blame me if he comes back with rosy projections. I think he's sweet on Maud.”

“God help us.”

In the days that followed his cancelled wedding, Stark did what he always did when things went wrong in his life. He buried himself in work.

He did not surface until two weeks later when Maud stationed herself in the doorway of his office and cleared her throat in a manner that boded ill.

She had to clear her throat twice because Stark was concentrating on a spreadsheet that Dane, who was sitting in his favorite chair in front of Stark's desk, had just handed to him. He looked up reluctantly.

“What is it, Maud?”

“Your social schedule for the next three months, sir.”

A chill of alarm went through Stark. “What social schedule?”

Maud held up a notebook. “The one Miss Bedford arranged for you before the wedding.”

“Damn,” Stark said. He thought quickly. “Cancel everything.”

“I don't think that's such a good idea, sir.” Maud glanced at Dane for backup.

“She's right,” Dane said. “Pamela consulted with me a month ago regarding that schedule. Everything on it is business-related. You put that side of things in her hands, remember?”

“Hell, yes, I remember.” Stark felt trapped. “But that was when I thought I was going to get married.”

“I realize that,” Dane said. “But business is business.”

Stark eyed Maud warily. “What, exactly, is on that schedule?”

Maud glanced down at the list in her hand. “You're hosting cocktail parties and buffets following each of the seminars on computer security that we're putting on once a month. The first is in two weeks. There are three receptions for various clients and corporate officers scheduled, a couple of charity events—”