Читать книгу Society Wives: Love or Money - Maureen Child, Bronwyn Jameson - Страница 12

Tristan had a breakfast meeting, too. Not with his lawyer but with the private investigator engaged by his lawyer to look into Vanessa’s alleged adultery. The P.I. turned out to be a retired cop who was punctual, professional and personable.

Tristan dismissed him anyway.

His decision was split-second, gut instinct. Sitting in a Stamford coffee house watching the guy demolish a towering stack of pancakes while he delivered the lowdown on his snooping techniques, he pictured Vanessa’s face when she’d appealed to his sense of fair play. Same as last night, he felt the grip of her emotion as she looked him in the eye and hit him with the reminder that this was between the two of them.

That didn’t mean he’d changed his mind, only his tactics.

Instead of employing a third party to dig into her affairs, he’d take up the shovel himself.

Instead of arranging for the letter to be sent to her lawyer, he collected it and brought it back to Eastwick. His aim: to deliver it personally.

Turning into White Birch Lane, he pulled over to make way for a horse float and the need to brake and control his deceleration alerted him that he’d been driving too fast. Worse, he realized that his haste was geared by a different anticipation from his first visit to her home. Edgy, yes, but colored by memories of her smile and her taste and the spark of a fiery inner passion when she faced up to his hard-line tactics.

Vanessa might look the picture of Nordic cool but he’d seen her gather that poise around herself like a protective cloak. Measured, learned, practiced—whatever, he knew it was fake and he couldn’t help wondering why she felt the need to adopt a facade. He couldn’t help wondering what she was hiding, and a frown pulled hard at his brow.

He’d spent a good portion of the night wondering about her, uncomfortable with how much he wanted to know. It was an alarm and a warning.

Get to know her, yes, but don’t forget why.

After the lumbering trailer disappeared, Tristan continued at a more sedate pace. He allowed himself to glance around, to take in the big homes set back from the road on finely manicured acreages. His frown deepened as he contemplated Frank Forrester’s reference to coming home.

He didn’t feel any more sense of homecoming today than yesterday, not even when he turned into the drive where he’d learned to ride a bicycle, not passing the first tree he’d climbed, not even looking out over the grass where he’d first kicked a football.

All he felt was the same gut-kick of bitterness and the keener edge of anticipation. He had to remind himself, again, of his purpose.

He wasn’t here to see her, to visit with her, to spar with her—he was here to deliver the letter.

That didn’t prevent the crunch of disappointment when the housekeeper—Gloria—opened the door and informed him, with great glee, that Mrs. Thorpe was out and not expected home until late in the afternoon.

Okay. This could still work. In fact, if Gloria didn’t mind talking, this could work out even better.

“I didn’t ever get that tea yesterday.” He smiled and was rewarded with the suspicious narrowing of the woman’s eyes. “Is the invitation still open?”

“I guess I could manage a pot of tea.”

She stepped back and let him precede her into the foyer.

“So,” he said, picking up his shovel and turning the first sod. “Have you worked for Mrs. Thorpe a long time?”

After visiting with Gloria, Tristan returned to his hotel to catch up on some business. He’d sold his share in Telfour very recently and was still fielding calls and e-mails daily. Then there was his position on two company boards plus an enticing offer to join a business start-up, which had influenced his decision to sell.

He was still considering that direction and monitoring a couple of other options.

The busyness suited him fine. He didn’t know how to do nothing and immersing himself in his normal business world served as the perfect touchstone with reality. He’d needed that after the last twenty-four hours.

Thus immersed, he picked up the buzzing phone expecting to hear his assistant’s voice, only to be disappointed.

Delia Forrester hadn’t waited for him to call. He didn’t much care for the woman’s overly familiar manner but he accepted her invitation to join their party at Sunday’s polo match, regardless.

After the call, his concentration was shot so he headed to the hotel’s pool. His natural inclination was to swim hard, to burn off the excess energy in his limbs and his blood and his hormones. But after a couple of hard laps he forced himself to ease off to a lazy crawl. He refused to cede control to a situation and a woman and an untenable attraction.

Up and down the pool he loped, distracting himself by thinking about last night’s encounter with Frank Forrester, conjuring up vague memories of him and his first wife—Lyn? Linda? Lydia?—spending weekends out of the city at the Thorpe home.

And now, for all the brightness of his conversation, Frank looked worn out. Had his father aged as badly? Had he grown frail and stooped?

Worn out from keeping up with a young, fast, social-climbing wife when he should have been taking it easy with his life’s companion, enjoying the rewards he’d earned through decades of hard work?

Without realizing it, Tristan had upped his tempo to a solid churning pace, driven by those thoughts and by the effort of not thinking about his father with Vanessa.

Too young, too alive, too passionate.

All wrong.

He forced himself to stop churning—physically and mentally—at the end of the lap. Rolling onto his back, he kicked away from the edge and there she was, standing at the end of the pool, as if conjured straight out of his reflections.

Or possibly not, he decided on a longer second glance.

Dressed in a pale blue suit, with her hair pulled back and pinned up out of view, her eyes and half her face hidden behind a pair of large sunglasses, she looked older, stiffer, all polish and composure and money.

She didn’t look happy, either, but then he’d expected as much when he decided not to leave the letter with Gloria.

He knew he’d hear about it—and that she’d possibly come gunning for him—but he hadn’t expected her this early in the day. Not when he’d been told she had a full day of important charity committee meetings.

Despite all that, he felt the same adrenaline spike as last night in the restaurant and this morning walking up to her door. The same, only with an added rush of heat, which didn’t thrill him. To compose himself, he swam another lap and back, forcing himself to turn his arms over—slow and unconcerned.

Then he climbed from the pool in a long, lazy motion and collected his towel from a nearby lounger. All the while, he felt her watching him and his body’s unwelcome response undid all the good work of those relaxing last laps.

Thank God for jumbo-size hotel towels.

Walking back to where she stood, Tristan subjected her to the same thorough once-over. Payback, he justified. She didn’t move a muscle, even when he came to a halt much too close, and he wondered if her shoes—very proper, with heels and all to match the suit—had melted into the poolside tile.

“A little overdressed for a dip, aren’t you?”

A small furrow between her brows deepened. She moistened her lips, as if perhaps her mouth had all dried out. “I didn’t come here to swim.”

“Pity. It’s the weather for it.”

“Yes, it’s hot but—”

“You want to get out of the sun?” Tristan inclined his head toward the nearest setting with a big shady umbrella. What a difference a day makes. Twenty-four hours ago he’d been in the business suit, knocking at her door. Now she was on his turf and he aimed to milk the reversal in power for all it was worth.

“No.” She shook her head. “I only came for the letter. Gloria rang to tell me you’d called around but you wouldn’t leave it.”

“I didn’t know if I should.”

She made an annoyed sound with her tongue and teeth.

“Last night you specifically asked that we keep this between you and me,” he reasoned.

“Which is why you insinuated yourself into my house and interrogated my housekeeper?”

Ah. He’d thought she mightn’t approve of that. “Gloria kindly made me tea.”

“Did she kindly tell you what you needed to know?”

“She told me you were tied up with meetings all day.” He allowed his gaze to drift over her charity-meeting outfit. “Yet here you are.”

He sensed her gathering frustration, but she took a minute to glance around the surroundings and the little clusters of tourists and the discreetly hovering staff. If she’d been about to stomp on his bare foot with one of her weapon-shaped heels or to launch herself fully clothed into the pool, she resisted. Her elegantly dimpled chin came up a fraction. “I am here to fetch the letter. Do you have it or don’t you?”

“I have it, although—” he patted his hips and chest where he might have found pockets, had he been wearing clothes “—not on me.”

Despite the dark Jackie O.-size shades, he tracked the shift of her gaze as she followed his hands down his torso. Then, as if suddenly aware of what she was doing and where she was looking, her head snapped up. “I didn’t mean on you. Is it in your room?”

“It is. You want to come up and get it?”

“No,” she replied primly. “I would like you to go up and get it. I will wait in the lounge.”

Vanessa didn’t give him a chance to bait her further. She turned smartly on her heel and walked away. Yes, he tracked her departure all the way across the long terrace. Yes, that filled her sensory memory with images of his bare tanned length wet and glistening from the pool. Of those muscles flexing and shifting as he toweled himself off. Of the blatant male beauty of a strong toned abdomen, of dark hair sprinkled across his chest and trailing down his midline and disappearing into his brief swimming trunks.

Heat flared in her skin then shivered through her flesh as she crossed from the wicked midafternoon sunshine into the cool shade of the hotel interior. She chose a secluded seat away from the terrace windows and surreptitiously fanned her face while she waited.

And waited.

She ordered an iced water and checked her watch. And realized the waiting and waiting had actually been for little more than five minutes. Time, it seemed, had taken on a strange elongated dimension since she opened the door exactly twenty-four hours ago.

In that time so little had happened and yet so much had changed. None of it made sense … except, possibly, the buff body. He’d been an elite athlete, after all, and any woman with functional eyesight would have found herself admiring those tight muscles.

It wasn’t personal.

Vanessa exhaled through her nose, exasperated with herself. She didn’t check her watch again.

Assuming he showered and dressed, he could be five or ten minutes or more. And although she hoped he did shower and dress, she didn’t want to think about him showering and dressing.

To pass the time she scoped the room, wincing when she noticed Vern and Liz Kramer at a table not too far away. Vern and Stuart went way back. While she liked the Kramers, she didn’t want to deal with another introduction and everything-is-fine conversation like last night’s episode with Frank. She just wanted to get the letter and get out of here.

The letter.

Another shiver feathered over her skin with the realization of a purpose and an anxiety forgotten from the second she saw Tristan’s strong, tan body slicing effortlessly through the azure water. Finally she would get to see this piece of evidence. She could make her decision on how to proceed: whether to take Andy’s advice and tell all, or follow Jack’s counsel in revealing as little as necessary.

Since this morning’s breakfast discussion, she’d had little time to weigh the options. Jack’s version tempted her because doing nothing, saying nothing, was always easier. But was it best for Lew? She just didn’t know. But seeing the letter—her heart raced as a tall, familiar, fully-dressed figure entered the room—she hoped, would make up her mind.

Although she’d watched him arrive, Vanessa looked away to take a long sip from her water. Then he was there, standing beside her chair, an envelope in his hand. Her whole stomach went into free fall and she had to close her eyes against a dizzying attack of anxiety.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded. From the corner of her eye she saw Liz Kramer peering their way and she sucked in a quick breath. “Can we go somewhere more private? I’m afraid some more old friends are about to come over here.”

To his credit, he didn’t turn and look. “There’s the guest library downstairs. Or I could arrange a private meeting room—”

“The library will do fine. Thank you.”

Tristan stood back, hands in pockets, while she turned the envelope over in her hands. He tried not to notice the pale trepidation on her face. Or the tremor of her fingers as she drew the single sheet of folded paper from inside.

But he couldn’t ignore the tightening in his chest and gut, the desire to reach out and … hell … do what? Take the bloody letter back? Ignore his reason for holding onto it this morning, so he could hand it to her and judge her reaction?

Logic said she wouldn’t look so uncharacteristically nervous—she of the cool poise and composure—unless she were guilty.

Damn it all to blazes, he needed that guilt. He should be turning up the heat, pushing and prodding her into a hot-tempered admission. Except she looked too fearful and vulnerable and he couldn’t. Not yet.

“It’s white,” she murmured, so low he wouldn’t have made out the words if he weren’t so intensely focused on her face. Her lips. The wide bemused eyes she suddenly raised up to his. “This is the original? Not a copy?”

“That’s the original.” Then, when she continued to sit there studying the paper and the envelope, he asked, “Aren’t you going to read it?”

Perhaps she’d been building up her nerve or delaying the inevitable, because now she unfolded the letter and scanned it quickly. When she got to the end, she stared at the page for a full minute. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking only that she was thinking. In the silence of the large library room, deserted but for them, he could almost hear the wheels turning and the gears engaging.

But when she finally spoke it wasn’t to point out the lack of concrete proof in the letter’s content, as he’d expected. It was to ask, “Why would somebody do this?”

Hands deep in his pockets, Tristan shrugged. “To create trouble for you.”

“Well, they’ve succeeded there,” she said dryly, surprising him again … and reminding him of her first baffling reaction.

He nodded toward the letter. “You commented on the white paper.” She’d also asked if it was a copy. “What’s going on, Vanessa? What aren’t you telling me?”

“I …”

Vanessa paused, her chest tight with indecision. Despite Jack’s instructions to divulge as little as possible, she wanted to share. Yesterday, no. Out by the poolside, no way. But this man had shown a new consideration, in fetching the letter so promptly, in whisking her away to a private room without question, in standing aside and letting her read in peace.

Besides, telling him about the letters would take the focus off her and the secret she didn’t want to share. This one he would probably hear anyway, if he hadn’t already, on the town grapevine.

“A couple of months back,” she commenced slowly, decision made, “two people I know here in Eastwick each received an anonymous letter. I thought … I had thought … this one might be connected.”

“Now you think not, because the paper’s different?”

“And there’s no demand of any kind.”

He went still. “Are you saying these other letters contained extortion demands?”

“Yes.”

“Demanding what? What’s the link?”

“Did you know Bunny Baldwin?” she asked. “Lucinda was her real name but everybody called her Bunny. She was married to Nathan Baldwin, a friend of Stuart’s. I thought you might have known them when you lived here.”

“It’s been twenty years.”

“You remembered Frank Forrester.”

“He and his first wife spent a lot of time at our house.”

Oh. She looked away, unaccountably stung by the sudden hard cast to his eyes. Our house. Did he still feel that attachment? Was that why he was so bound and determined to win the estate back?

She wanted to ask, to know his true motivation, but he cut through her thoughts and reminded her of the subject at hand.

“I take it this Bunny Baldwin is the link between the letters?”

“Yes.” A sick, tight feeling twisted her stomach as she thought about poor Bunny. Although the woman had been fearsomely intimidating—and had cast some speculation about Vanessa marrying so spectacularly well—she’d also been mother to one of Vanessa’s closest friends. “She passed away a few months ago. They thought it was a heart attack but Abby, her daughter, discovered her journals missing. Long story short, the police are now reinvestigating her death.”

“Because of some missing journals?”

“Have you heard of the Eastwick Social Diary?”

His answer was a noncommittal, “Refresh my memory.”

“It’s a gossipy newsletter and Web site column about who’s who and doing what—” or whom “—in Eastwick. Bunny was the writer and editor, and the journals contain her notes and sources plus all the material she chose not to print.”

“Chose not to?”

Too agitated to sit, Vanessa rose to her feet and slowly circled the seating arrangement. This connection to his letter and its allegations had to be broached, as much as she dreaded how the conversation would go down. “I gather she thought some stories were too scandalous or damaging or potentially libelous to print.”

That’s all she had to say. The sharp speculation in his eyes indicated he’d joined the dots without needing further clues. “These journals were stolen and the thief has attempted to blackmail persons named in the journal?”

“That seems the likely explanation.”

“And you think it’s possible the same person sent the letter to me?”

“I thought so.” She lifted her hands and let them drop. “But then it’s not the same stationery.”

“You think a blackmailer uses the same paper every time?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. Do you?”

“There’s no hint of extortion,” he said after a moment’s pause. “And if this person did have blackmail in mind, he’d have sent the letter to you. To entice you to pay hush money.”

She exhaled on a long note of resignation. Yes, he was right. Although … “Do you believe there’s no connection to Bunny and the journals? Because this is rather a big coincidence, a third anonymous letter whose source could have been the same as the first two.”

He regarded her silently for a long second. “What are you trying to sell me here? What’s your angle?”

“I don’t have an angle. I’m just trying to work out the motivation behind this letter.”

“And?”

Surprised he’d detected the nebulous hint of more in her words, she looked back at him warily. Then, she decided to tell him. “What if the thief read something in the journals and misinterpreted? What if the person referred to as having an affair wasn’t me at all? A lot of the diary pieces are guess who, don’t sue. Names are not named. What if he has the wrong person?”

“That doesn’t explain why he sent the letter to me.”

Vanessa narrowed her eyes. “You aren’t prepared to listen to my side at all, are you?”

“I listened.”

“And now what? You’ll have me investigated?”

“Yes,” he said, that blue gaze unflinchingly direct. “I will continue to investigate. I also think we should speak to the police.”

“The police?”

“You said they were investigating Bunny’s death and, I imagine, the extortion demands. Whether it’s connected or not, they should see this letter.”