Wild Hawk (10 page)

Without answering immediately, she turned to the back part of the book, where he’d noticed the blank pages before. He watched as she riffled the pages, back to where the filled pages came to an end. Then she turned the next blank page. Oddly, the text began again after that skipped page, as if leaving room for something before it began again.

Silently she turned the book so he could read the page where the text resumed. As with all the other sections of the book where individual stories began, this part began with a name recorded in an elegant brush script. But here it was followed by what appeared to be a list of dates rather than story. And he knew this hadn’t been there before; when he’d looked at the last page in the airport, the family tree had ended at his father’s name. And Kendall hadn’t had time to do it herself; he’d been face-to-face with her most of the time the book had been out of his sight.

So he had no explanation for it. But he also couldn’t deny it. He could only stare at the scripted name.

Jason Hawk.

Chapter Eight

“WHAT DO YOU think she’ll do?”

Alice glared at Whitewood, weary of his incessant questions. She wasn’t paying him this exorbitant amount of money to have to deal with stupid questions; he should just do what he was told and keep quiet.

“She’ll do,” she ground out, “whatever will cause me the most trouble.”

She tried to control her annoyance. She knew she was tired; she needed sleep after last night, but instead she was here, pacing the floor, wondering if everything she’d worked so hard for was in danger, if all the humiliation she’d put up with in her life had been for nothing.

She’d never been under any illusion about why Aaron had married her. Her father had made it quite clear, telling her if Hawk Manufacturing had been even a month further away from bankruptcy, he wouldn’t have had the leverage to force Aaron to agree to his terms. But she had been much more foolish then. She’d thought she could make him care, that if she was amiable enough, loving enough, he would look at her differently. It was a mistake she had never made again.

“Do you really think she was sleeping with him?”

She turned to look at Whitewood. He was patting his hair once more, a familiar gesture, but there was a lascivious glint in his eyes that turned her glare icy.

“I fail to see how that is any concern of yours.”

Whitewood shrugged. “I was merely curious.”

“If you’re thinking of seducing her, I suggest you think again. You’d never succeed.”

“Oh?” He sounded a bit offended at her assessment.

“She’s impossibly loyal. And her loyalty is to Aaron. The fact that he’s dead won’t alter that.”

The attorney’s brows lowered. “You sound as if you admire her.”

“I despise her.” She meant it. Kendall Chase had gotten everything from Aaron that he had refused to give to his wife: time, attention, caring. But she had learned long ago not to let useless emotions interfere with her judgment. “But I’m not blind. I’ve watched her for ten years, and I know her. She won’t betray Aaron’s wishes.”

“Then why did you even try to buy her?”

Alice wasn’t sure she knew the answer to that herself. She didn’t know what had compelled her to try, when she’d known the girl would throw the offer back in her face. That certainty alone added to her antipathy toward Kendall; she hated to admit there was anyone money couldn’t buy. Money was power, and power the only thing worth having in this world. The only thing that made people treat you with respect. People who didn’t play by that rule made her nervous.

“It was an alternative that had to be explored,” she said flatly.

“Do you think she’ll keep her mouth shut?”

Alice gave him a withering look. He was pretty, but he was a fool. And had absolutely no talent for judging people. No wonder he’d failed as a defense lawyer and turned to probate jobs. And no wonder he’d been willing to go along with her plan, once she’d made it sufficiently worth his while.

“Ms. Chase has a foolishly strong streak of rectitude. Aaron obviously counted on that. That’s why he entrusted her with this absurd codicil. He knew she would do everything possible to carry out his wishes.”

She knew she was right. What she didn’t know was how Aaron had managed to inspire such loyalty. At best he’d been gruff and impatient; at his worst he’d been unbearably arrogant.

She was aware of Whitewood giving her a guarded look. “Maybe you should have tried to string her along a little longer. Stall her. We could have accepted the codicil, then told her we were going to have its validity verified by an expert. We could have had a few days, at least.”

“Pointless,” Alice snapped. “She has her own agenda. She’s an orphan, and has some kind of fixation on family. She has always had it. It even began to affect Aaron, before he died. She planted a lot of idiotic ideas in his head. I’m sure she was behind this determination Aaron developed to find that bastard of his.” Alice gave a disgusted snort. “She doesn’t know how lucky she is. Family ties are more nuisance than benefit.”

“So you think that’s that what she was doing with him, telling him about the codicil? And that we . . . er, confiscated it?”

“I would wager the twenty-five million dollars my dolt of a husband tried to give away that that is exactly what she was doing.”

Whitewood opened his mouth, then shut it again as she glowered at him. She didn’t like this young shyster criticizing her tactics. She’d been controlling her powerful, arrogant husband for years by controlling the purse strings, and she’d done well enough. She’d made him pay every day of his life for cheating her; she’d made him pay a high price for whatever satisfaction he’d found in the arms of his mistress. And she’d made his life pure hell at every opportunity since the day she’d found out that mistress had borne him a son, announcing to the world that Alice, not Aaron, was the reason the Hawks were childless.

When Whitewood spoke again, he had obviously decided discretion was wiser than criticism.

“Perhaps we should keep close tabs on Ms. Chase, as well,” he said neutrally. “I can have my man hire some help—”

Alice almost smiled. “Don’t bother. And tell your man to keep on through tonight, but he’ll no longer be needed after tomorrow. I have a man coming in the morning. He’s handled some . . . delicate matters for me before. He’ll handle this, as well.”

Whitewood looked wary. “He knows . . . what your plans are? You trust him?”

He knows more than you do, you ninny,
Alice thought.
And he knows that I know enough to hang him.

“Yes, I trust him. It would be . . . most stupid of him to cross me.” She gave Whitewood a look that made it clear that warning was meant for him, as well. “And he knows it.”

“What is he going to do?”

“Whatever I tell him to do,” Alice told the lawyer pointedly.

Whatever is necessary,
she added to herself.
By any means necessary. It wouldn’t be the first time.

She left the lawyer stuffing papers into his briefcase and made her way slowly upstairs. It was becoming more difficult every day, and her breathing more laborious when she finally made it to her room. She hated the encroachment of age, hated the betrayal of her body when her mind was as sharp as it had ever been. But the satisfaction of remembering her past success did much to alleviate her sour mood.

No, it wouldn’t be the first time she had resorted to extreme measures to hold what was hers. And if this was to be the last time, she would at least have the pleasure of knowing that it was to thwart the final wishes of the man who had never loved her. And that the son who should never have been born would pay the price.

“AARON USED TO say the Hawks were either blessed or cursed, depending on who you asked,” Kendall said quietly. “In the old days, people said there was a special god who looked out for them. Some said it was something closer to the devil.”

She looked, as she had been doing periodically for the past hour, at Jason. He didn’t react. He just sat there, staring at the book in his lap, not reading, just staring.

He’d begun with his name, and read until he’d reached the blank pages after the list of dates that followed that script entry. He’d muttered under his breath several times while reading, and twice had looked away from the book, his hands tensing as if he was about to slam it shut. But each time, looking like a man drawn utterly against his will, he had resumed reading that list. Intently, so intently that she doubted he was even aware of his surroundings or her presence.

Then he at last actually had slammed the book shut. But he hadn’t said anything; he’d just continued to sit there, staring, his breathing strangely audible, as if he’d been running. It was after several long, silent minutes of this that she had finally begun to speak to him, in a soft, quiet tone that she hoped was soothing. She wasn’t sure it had worked; his hands had tightened around the leather-bound volume. And he looked no less tense than he had before.

She tried again, her voice even softer this time.

“Aaron said most Hawks had only heard of the book, that many thought it didn’t really exist. Hawks tend to be . . . logical. Pragmatic. They don’t deal well with unexplainable things.”

His grip on the book tightened visibly. He had beautiful hands, she thought irrelevantly. Long, agile fingers, tendons that stood out, defining the strong, masculine structure. The thin white line of a scar marked the top of his left hand, curving down from his wrist, across the back and fading away just above his ring finger. The mark only emphasized the strength there, and she wondered what it would be like to be touched by him, to know that strength was harnessed into gentleness for her.

She nearly gasped aloud at the unexpected thought; what on earth had come over her? She never indulged in silly fantasizing. Never. Not even about men as strikingly handsome as Jason West.

It must be the oddness of the whole situation, she told herself. The appearance of the book that, despite Aaron’s insistence, she had doubted really existed. The impossibility of the whole thing was affecting her. Along with, she supposed ruefully, the suggestive remarks Jason West had made. But she’d never been one to fall prey to that kind of thing. Especially when she knew perfectly well those remarks had been made mainly to intimidate her, not out of any genuine desire or attraction to her. Men like Jason didn’t pursue small, quiet women like her; tall, leggy, dramatic females were undoubtedly more his speed.

Hastily she got to her feet, turning away from him as she went on, afraid he was going to look up at any moment and catch her gaping at him, afraid he would read the knowledge of her wayward thoughts in her face. She resumed her explanation.

“Aaron was like that. He liked the heroic aspect of the Hawk legends, but he hated the magical parts. He used to scoff at them even as he told them to me. He’d laugh about it, and people who tagged anything they didn’t understand as magic.”

She turned back in time to see Jason’s hands move, as if testing the book to be sure it was still real and solid beneath his fingers. As if he was looking for some way to deny its existence. Its presence. Its appearance. Its magic.

Kendall went on, knowing he was listening, and afraid she might never get another chance to convince this man that his father truly had changed before he’d died. She stood facing him, putting every bit of earnestness she could manage into her voice.

“But when he was so ill . . . he didn’t laugh anymore. He said he’d come to believe in the book, and that it only appears when the last Hawk is in danger of becoming just that, the last.”

She hesitated, watching him, but he still didn’t move, didn’t look at her.

“Like you,” she said.

He flinched, as if she’d struck him, but he didn’t speak. And still he didn’t look at her. He just stared at the leather-bound book. She took a step toward him.

“I know this all sounds crazy,” she said, her voice even quieter now, “and impossible—”

“What’s impossible,” he said, speaking for the first time since he’d seen his name inscribed on that gilt-edged page, “is what’s in this book.”

His voice was tight, tense, like a wire pulled to the point of snapping. Kendall sat down on the edge of the bed, near Jason’s feet. He hadn’t changed his position, but the air of insouciance had vanished. His body was rigid, his jaw clenched.

“Jason,” she began, but stopped when, at last, his head came up and she saw his eyes. They had been either glacial or hot with anger since she’d met him, but nothing like they were at this moment. She’d seen Aaron in a rage over a threatened hostile takeover of Hawk Industries, and had thought then she never had and never would see a fiercer gaze. She had now.

“There are things in here that no one knows.
No one.
”
His voice dropped on the words, but they were no less harsh because of it. “Things about me. About my mother. Things I never knew about her. Things I never told her, or anyone else, about me.”

“So it is . . . magic,” she said, thinking it ridiculous even as she said it, knowing that it was only some childishly hopeful part of her that wanted to believe.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. He gave her a look that was half scorn, half disbelief. “You want me to believe that you helped run Hawk Industries, but your best explanation of this is magic? That’s crap, and you know it. Or should.”

She didn’t react to his tone, and she had no way to answer what were soundly logical points. “Then what’s your explanation?”

He grimaced. “I don’t have one. Yet.”

The last word was ominous and, coupled with the look he gave her, almost threatening. And it poked at a sore spot within her that had had more than enough prodding since Jason West had come to Sunridge. Her chin came up.

“If you think I managed to sneak that into your room, while you were inside, then right under your nose sneak it into your suitcase, and somehow in between, also right under your nose, add an entire section of hand calligraphy to it, then perhaps it’s
your
theory that needs rethinking.”

He glanced at the book he still held. She saw his jaw tense, and knew he’d already, however reluctantly, realized the truth of what she’d said. She hastened to pound home the point.

“It seems you have two possibilities. One you can physically disprove, and one you can’t. Perhaps I could have waltzed the book right past you into your room, but there’s no way I could have gotten it into your bag, because it was already in your car when I got here.”

“You could have followed me to the airport.”

“And put the book in your suitcase without you seeing me? And got back here before you? You don’t give yourself much credit, do you?”

He shifted uncomfortably, and she knew that she’d struck home. He wasn’t the kind of man who missed things. Like Aaron, she suspected his son missed very little of what went on around him. Under any circumstances.

“Even if that was true,” she said, “there’s certainly no way I could have added that new section. That would take time. The book wasn’t out of your sight long enough. You
know
that.”