Читать книгу Interrupted Lullaby - Valerie Parv, Valerie Parv - Страница 11

Three days later, Tara knew she had done the right thing in walking away from Zeke, but couldn’t make herself feel good about it. She was babysitting for her sister-in-law, Carol, when the sound of the front door opening and closing told her that her sister-in-law had returned. Carol came into the room and dropped her briefcase on a side table. “Children asleep?”

“Finally.” Tara’s tone suggested it was an achievement.

Carol gave a wry smile. “I hope they didn’t give you too hard a time.”

“Of course not,” Tara assured her. “Cole might be at the Terrible Two stage, but he always makes me laugh. And Katie’s so sweet, calling me Tawa through the gap in her teeth. How can you refuse them anything?”

“I remind myself it’s for their own good.” Carol paused at the kitchen door. “Join me for lunch?”

Tara nodded. “I’m seeing a publisher this afternoon and having dinner with a potential benefactor for the foundation, but I’m free till then.”

“Another schmoozy dinner. How do you stand spending so much time with people whose only attractive feature is their bank balance?”

“It isn’t always the case. Some of them are sweet, and when it’s for the kids, it’s worth it,” Tara said.

“We’ve never really discussed it, but it can’t be easy for you, dealing with children every day. Even minding mine must be a strain.”

Tara let out a long sigh. “When I’m bathing them or playing with them, I sometimes feel such a longing for what might have been. Then I think how lucky I am to be an aunt to your two. They help in the healing process.”

“Children are like that,” Carol conceded, adding realistically, “especially when they’re asleep.”

“Then they’re positive angels,” Tara agreed, laughing.

“I don’t know why dramas always have to coincide with the nanny’s day off,” Carol went on. “Although if Mrs. McCarthy changes her will one more time, I swear I’ll hasten her end myself.”

Tara laughed. Her sister-in-law was a lawyer who had set up a practice at home while her children were young. The client in question was bedridden, but still feisty enough to enjoy the power her fortune gave her over her family. According to Carol, the woman changed her will at regular intervals to keep her clan under her thumb.

Tara perched on a stool and watched Carol prepare sandwiches with practiced ease. Her sister-in-law was one of six children, all younger than herself, so she was incredibly domesticated. She was also a good friend. Tara’s brother, Ben, reminded her frequently, that marrying Carol was an example of his dedication to pleasing his little sister.

Pleasing himself had nothing to do with it, she thought with humor. Ben was a doctor and had met Carol professionally when she defended a colleague in a malpractice lawsuit. Love at first sight, Ben had called it, when he wasn’t claiming he chose Carol so he’d have his own private lawyer on tap. Tara knew which reason she believed.

“This is the first chance I’ve had to ask you how Monday’s talk went?” her sister-in-law said, levering the top off a mustard jar.

Tara traced a pattern on the granite counter. “The usual.”

Carol’s hands stilled. “No matter how many times you do this, you never describe it as usual. In fact you assure me every presentation is different. So out with it, what’s the problem this time?”

“Zeke Blaxland is investigating the work of the foundation.”

Carol caught her breath. She knew about Zeke and had been incredibly supportive during Tara’s pregnancy and the shattering aftermath. Other than Tara’s doctor, her brother and sister-in-law had been the only two people Tara had confided in.

Tara knew that Carol still felt badly about being out of Australia when the baby was born, but the family had been in England, settling Carol’s elderly mother into a retirement place. They had flown back as soon as they could, but it was too late. Tara had assured Carol she understood. Their presence wouldn’t have changed the outcome. And they had supported her through everything else, including the baby’s memorial service. Carol had shed almost as many tears as Tara herself, and had held Tara’s hand through the days that followed.

Now she frowned in sympathy. “Oh, honey, how awful. Did you hate him on sight?”

Tara laced and unlaced her fingers until she regained her voice. “Worse than that, I didn’t hate him.”

Carol covered Tara’s hand with her own. “You didn’t do anything foolish?”

Tara knew her laugh sounded hollow. “You mean like go home with him and let him make love to me? Does one out of two count?”

Reading between the lines, Carol shook her head. “Sounds like your sense of self-preservation kicked in just in time.”

What self-preservation? Tara asked herself. Zeke had been in her audience for only a few hours before she’d thrown caution to the wind and driven him home. She hadn’t been reckless enough to go to bed with him, although it was close. But he still managed to dominate her waking thoughts. Her dreaming ones, too, she had discovered, only in her dream they had been a family of three. This morning she awoke with tears drying on her cheeks.

“I didn’t have him figured as the charitable type,” Carol said.

“He isn’t. He’s writing a series of columns about charities that help themselves more than the people they’re set up to help.”

Carol looked shocked. “He must know the foundation is genuine or you wouldn’t be involved.”

Tara nodded. Carol knew that after ending her relationship with Zeke and losing the baby, Tara hadn’t wanted to face the world at all, far less be involved in a cause that brought her into daily contact with young children. She hadn’t wanted to return to modeling, either, so had retreated behind closed doors to lick her emotional wounds.

But the storm of publicity surrounding her efforts to help the single parent with the triplets had refused to abate. Gradually she had been drawn into similar projects until it had become a full-time job.

She sighed. “I hope Zeke agrees with you. The publisher I’m seeing wants me to write a book about the foundation’s work, so he must think it’s on the level.”

Carol rested her elbows on the counter. “So why are you letting Zeke undermine your confidence? I can hear it in your voice and see it in your body language.”

Tara straightened, chagrined at being read so easily. Reading body language was part of a lawyer’s stock-in-trade, she told herself, but it didn’t change the fact that Carol was right. “How can I be the children’s spokesperson when the proof of my own failure as a mother was sitting in my audience last Monday?”

There, it was out. Tara had barely articulated her reasoning to herself, but as soon as she said it, she knew it had been nagging at her from the moment she’d seen Zeke in her audience.

“Losing the baby wasn’t your failure any more than it was Zeke’s,” Carol stated. She retrieved a jug of homemade lemonade from the refrigerator and added it and two glasses to a tray with the sandwiches. “Let’s go outside. It seems I have a pep talk to give.”

“I don’t need a pep talk.” But Tara followed her sister-in-law out to a table and chairs placed underneath the weeping branches of a crepe myrtle. From somewhere in the greenery, a Little-Wattle Bird gave its distinctive rusty-hinged cry. “It’s beautiful out here,” she said.

Carol wagged a finger at her. “Don’t change the subject.”

“Can I make a statement in my own defense, counselor?”

“Only if it doesn’t incriminate you.”

Tara poured them both a glass of lemonade. “Everything I can think to say fits that category.”

“Because you’re not as over Zeke Blaxland as you tell yourself.”

Tara felt her eyebrows lift. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“Sometimes defending a client involves making them deal with facts they’d rather not face.” Carol held out the plate. “Have a sandwich. They’re good if I do say so myself. Then we’ll discuss Zeke.”

About to refuse, Tara saw Carol’s expression. It was easier to eat than to get into an argument with someone who made a career out of it, so she took half a sandwich and bit into it, although her appetite had deserted her.

Was she avoiding facing facts? Perhaps so, Tara thought on a silent sigh. She was still attracted to Zeke, but it didn’t mean she had to give in to it. “Whatever he and I had is over. All I’m hearing are echoes from the past,” she said firmly.

Carol looked unconvinced. “As long as you’re sure.”

Tara wasn’t, but decided to let it lie. She appreciated Carol’s and Ben’s support, but there was nothing they could do. At some stage Tara knew she had to learn to deal with a world that included Zeke. Now was as good a time to start as any.

“You haven’t told me how the insider trading suit ended,” she said, seizing on the fastest way to divert her sister-in-law.

Her tactic worked. “We won. My client was completely exonerated. Didn’t you read this morning’s paper? We made the front page and the editorial.”

Tara had avoided looking at the paper. She choked back an instinctive protest as Carol went to fetch the paper. Seeing Zeke’s byline and knowing he was writing his column practically on her doorstep was another thing she must learn to deal with.

Carol came back and spread the paper across Tara’s knees. “Read the headlines then the editorial. I get a mention in both.”

Tara dutifully scanned the story, feeling pride in her sister-in-law’s accomplishment. “So the unwinnable case wasn’t as unwinnable as everyone predicted,” she said, a note of pleasure in her voice.

Carol nodded. “That’s pretty much what the editor says, too.”

Tara flipped pages until she came to the piece in question. It painted a glowing word picture of Carol’s handling of the difficult case. About to congratulate her, Tara’s eye strayed to the photo at the top of the next column and her heart almost stopped. A new photo of Zeke accompanied his column. It showed him seated behind a desk, making him look much more commanding and handsome than the previous head shot. More like the man she remembered so well, she thought.

Like someone drawn to touch a hot stove to prove it really can burn, she began to read and her blood turned to ice in her veins. “How can he do this?” she stormed after a few paragraphs.

Carol looked surprised. “I thought it was pretty flattering myself.” She glanced over Tara’s shoulder and saw what she was reading. “I didn’t mean to put that in front of you. I didn’t have time to read beyond the editorial this morning. Sorry.”

Tara shook her head although her muscles felt stiff and unresponsive. “I would have seen it sooner or later.”

Under the heading, Not-So-Sweet Charity, Zeke urged his readers to consider carefully where they donated their hard-earned money, suggesting that some organizations were designed as much to provide for their organizers as to help the underprivileged.

“How dare he suggest that I’m a do-gooder,” Tara demanded hotly.

Carol scanned the column and she frowned. “He doesn’t mention your name, or the foundation’s.”

“He doesn’t have to. After Australian Life publishes their piece and notes that top-gun reporter Zeke Blaxland was checking us out, it won’t be hard for people to put two and two together.”

Carol read on. “Are you sure you aren’t reading too much into this? Zeke may not flatter some of the fund-raising activities people do, but he doesn’t say anything that could give rise to legal action.”

“He only suggests that we’re in this for our own benefit.”

Carol gestured dismissively. “Nobody in their right mind will think he means you. You gave up a fortune in modeling fees to help set up and run the foundation.”

“Because I want the bulk of the money to go to the children. He doesn’t mention that part.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know it,” Carol suggested.

Tara stood up, adrenaline surging through her body. “Then it’s time he did, counselor. I may have no legal redress, but I can give that son-of-a-columnist a piece of my mind.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to cool down first?”

It was the last thing Tara wanted to do. “I’d rather tackle him while my blood is so hot I could burn him by bleeding on him.”

In spite of the situation, Carol laughed. “Poor Zeke. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes when you get hold of him.”

Tara looked affronted. “How can you say ‘poor Zeke’? He’s the one using his position to take a cheap shot at me just because I didn’t leap into bed with him the moment he showed up.”

Carol shook her head. “I meant poor Zeke after you get through with him. From the look on your face, that cheap shot may turn out to be a lot more expensive than he bargained on.”

The Publishing House was a curious hybrid. Built behind a century-old sandstone facade, the new tower rose seventeen floors above Sydney’s historic Macquarie Street. Tara’s publisher was headquartered there, as was the editorial division of Zeke’s newspaper. When she parked outside, she wondered how she was going to cope with coming here on a regular basis, knowing that Zeke was only a few floors away.

Today it wasn’t a problem. She not only wanted him back in town, but seated behind the desk in his office so she could give him a large chunk of her mind.

Naturally, because she was fired up to confront him, he wasn’t there. His computer screensaver featured an animated figure walking through a never-ending series of doors that closed behind him one after the other, accompanied by cheerful sound effects. Across the screen scrolled the words, “Missed me by that much.”

It was an in-joke, related to Zeke’s love of classic television shows, she remembered, thinking of the hundreds of tapes in his collection. She wasn’t a fan but her pleasure had come from watching him while he watched the tapes. Some of them he knew practically by heart. Unwillingly, she found herself remembering long, rainy Sunday afternoons when they made huge bowls of popcorn and watched marathon sessions of old series.

Sometimes he had turned the sound off and made up his own dialogue, urging her to join in until they had both been helpless with laughter, she recalled. Inevitably, she had ended up in his arms, her laughter turning to passion as his kisses deepened. From the sofa, they invariably slid to the floor and made love while some old superhero flickered in the background. She couldn’t be certain but she suspected that their baby had been conceived at such a moment.

She made herself turn away from the screen, unwilling to be reminded of those days.

“Looking for Zeke?” came a familiar voice behind her. “He’s out.”

She spun around. “Matthew Brock. It’s great to see you. Still working for this newspaper then?”

He looked rueful. “Until the right man comes along to take me away from all this, I don’t have much choice. I finally stopped chasing Pulitzer prizes and settled for a steady paycheck and what little security this business has to offer.”

Matthew was a photographer and Tara had worked with him many times during her modeling days. “You never chased Pulitzer prizes, although you have the talent for it,” she said. “You always preferred security. A plateful of do-nuts and you’re anybody’s, you used to tell me.”

He rolled his eyes. “I never could put anything past you, Tara. You look great. I know you’re pretty involved with the kids thing, but if you ever want a modeling assignment…”

“I’m after blood, actually,” she cut in, remembering her mission.

He looked interested. “Zeke’s blood, by any chance?”

“Blood, bones, whatever.”

“‘Hell hath no fury,”’ he quoted, adding, “I gather you saw the column?”

She affected an expression of innocence. “Did he write a column concerning me?”

“Zeke knows better than that, but reading between the lines, it wasn’t very kind, considering the two of you used to be an item. Maybe that quote should be about a man scorned.”

“I didn’t scorn him, he left me,” she snapped then caught herself. Matthew was an old friend, not the enemy.

She jumped as her cell phone played the first few notes of “Jingle Bells.” Matthew grinned as she answered it. It was early for Christmas, but the tune was easy to hear in a noisy setting. By the time she flipped the phone shut, she could feel her face muscles tightening. She relaxed them with an effort.

“Problem?” Matthew asked.

“Only a potential benefactor calling to cancel our dinner engagement tonight. Apparently something came up. I’ll bet I know what.”

“You might be reading too much into this. Not everybody reads Zeke’s column.”

“There may be a corner of the African veld he doesn’t reach, but I happen to know this lady never misses it. She told me she’s thinking of supporting one large charity rather than a number of smaller ones but she’ll get back to me. In a pig’s eye.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh. When I get my hands on Zeke…”

“Maybe it’s just as well he isn’t around. He’s doing wonders for our circulation.”

She laughed in spite of herself. “You and your insecurity. The paper survived while Zeke was in America. It will survive again without him.”

“Wow, you really are out for his blood.”

“When is he due back?”

Matthew looked thoughtful. “He’s following a lead, something about a baby farming racket he’s working on.”

Something tightened inside her. “Baby farming? Isn’t that a bit out of Zeke’s line?”

Matthew shook his head. “Before agreeing to come back to Australia he negotiated the right to work on features of his choice. This is one of them.”

She kept her tone carefully neutral although every instinct shrilled a warning. “It sounds fascinating. What’s it about?”

Matthew shrugged. “I don’t know much. I only took a couple of pictures that Zeke wanted. A mother being united with a year-old baby that was apparently stolen from her, for one.”

Something inside Tara wound even tighter. “Really?”

He nodded, glad of her interest. “Yeah, it’s all very cloak-and-dagger. Zeke needed a shot of the hospital involved, so I used a long lens to avoid tipping them off. It’s a place with a flowery name. The Roses Private Hospital, that’s it.”

She could hardly breathe. “How fascinating.”

Concern flashed over his features. “Keep it to yourself, Tara. If anyone else breaks the story before Zeke is ready, he’ll kill me. It’s his baby.”

She felt faint. His baby. Matthew couldn’t know how his words stabbed her to the heart, but not because of a newspaper feature. Zeke’s infuriating column was nothing compared to what she had just learned. He was investigating the hospital where she had given birth less than a year ago.

She knew better than to hope that her baby had been stolen and given to someone else. She had only to remember her son’s lifeless form when the midwife brought him to her after attempts to revive him had failed. So she held no hope that things might be different for herself. But if Zeke managed to access the hospital records, and he was more than capable of doing it, he was bound to learn the truth.

Matthew regarded her anxiously. “Are you okay? You’ve gone chalk-white.”

She made herself nod and say shakily, “I’ve only eaten half a sandwich today. My blood sugar is probably in my boots by now.”

He took her arm. “Let’s grab some coffee and you can have a snack.”

She didn’t really want food, but she needed to occupy herself until Zeke returned, and she did feel shaky. Besides, the photographer was one of her favorite people. “Okay but I can’t stay long. I have a meeting in the building in less than an hour.”

“That’s just long enough to tell me more about what you plan to do with Zeke when you catch up with him.”

It was more a case of what he would do with her if he uncovered the truth, she thought as she allowed Matthew to steer her out of the office. The unkind things Zeke had written in his column would pale into insignificance beside his reaction when he knew she had kept from him the birth of his own child.