The Tycoon's Virgin Bride (13 page)

“Fine, fine.” He disappeared for a couple of minutes, coming back with a frosted crystal glass of water. The ice bumped gently against the glass as he passed it to her. “I'm pleased to see you,” he said.

On the bus, Jenessa had carefully rehearsed what she wanted to say; she was going to be cool, calm and collected, stating her case with impartial precision. She met her father's eyes, remembered as if it were yesterday that night by the lilacs, and said tautly, “Are you? Are you really?”

He laughed uneasily. “Why wouldn't I be? After all, you're my daughter.”

His response only fueled her anger. “I'm Leonora's daughter as well. But you never wanted me to be her daughter. Do you remember the evening you found me near the lilacs at Castlereigh? How you picked me up and shook me, threatened me, terrified me out of my wits? Just because I was dancing.”

“You took me by surprise that evening. All I ever heard from your mother was dancing, dancing, dancing. Do you wonder I reacted the way I did?”

“I was seven years old!”

“Old enough to know better.”

Sheer fury loosed Jenessa's tongue. “You wanted a carbon copy of yourself—that's why you enrolled me in business college when I finished high school, without even consulting me to see what I wanted. I'd scraped through arithmetic all the way through school—what were you thinking of?”

“The arts pay extremely badly,” Charles said stiffly. “I'd have been a poor father had I encouraged you to go to art school.”

“I went anyway.”

“You always were headstrong.”

“If I hadn't been, you'd have destroyed me,” she retorted. “Shaped me into something I wasn't and didn't want to be. Is that what being a good father means to you?”

Her voice had risen. He rapped, “Why are you dragging this up now?”

“I'd have been better off without a father!”

He slammed his glass down on a side table with scant regard for the crystal or the polished wood. “How can you say such a thing?”

“Very easily. You lied to me about my mother, letting me grow up thinking she was dead. And then you did your best to kill anything in me that might remind you of the woman who ran away from you. Come on, Charles—for once, tell the truth! You hated Leonora for what she did to you. You didn't want to admit to your fancy friends that you couldn't keep your wife. So you exiled my mother and deceived your three children. And all out of pride. Out of a fear of what people might think.” Her shoulders slumped. “I'll never understand you. So how can I possibly forgive you?”

“It wasn't pride!”

“Of course it was. Leonora stopped loving you. She defied you. She made a fool of you. So you buried her as if she'd never been.”

“All right,” Charles said, jamming his hands in his pockets, “there was a measure of pride in my decision. But it was more than pride. Far more. I loved her. Adored her. Worshiped the ground she walked on. I did from the first moment I saw her…I couldn't help myself. So within days of meeting her I took her to bed, Travis was conceived and we married. Then she was mine. Only mine.”

“She was another possession,” Jenessa said in a dazed voice.

“You're far too intelligent to say something so simplistic. Possessions can be replaced. If something's flawed, you throw it away and buy a new one, a better one, a perfect one. But Leonora was all I ever wanted! And I lost her.”

“You drove her away,” Jenessa said.

“I never really had her,” Charles said in a low voice. “I knew that from the beginning—that something in her would always elude me. Her essence. The mystery that made her a dancer.”

“That was why you hated me dancing?”

“You try living with someone you can never entirely possess,” he said with a depth of bitterness that horrified Jenessa. “Knowing in your heart that nothing you can possibly do will open her innermost core to you. It was hell, pure hell.”

Bryce,
Jenessa thought, stupefied.
That's what it's like for me when I'm with Bryce. He's refusing to share himself with me. To commit to anything other than the temporary.

But her father was still speaking. “I was a fool back then,” he said caustically. “I thought if I prevented her from dancing as much as possible, kept her away from her artistic, bohemian friends, everything would be all right. I smothered her with houses and jewels and money, I built Castlereigh for her, took her to Europe and the Bahamas, and I thought she'd be content. Settle down. Stay with me forever…”

“But you were wrong,” Jenessa said quietly. “All you did was drive her away.”

“That's right. I came home from a business trip and found her letter telling me she was flying to Paris to study
avant garde dance.” Briefly he closed his eyes. “The paper she'd written on smelled of her perfume.”

Bryce's skin…wouldn't she know the elusive, masculine scent of him anywhere? “So you exiled her.”

“I was torn apart by grief. By despair. By rage at myself for my stupidity and rage at her for leaving me. Out of my mind? Oh, yes, I was out of my mind. So I faked a funeral, told everyone—including Travis—that she'd died, and put the lawyers onto her so that she'd never dare show her face on this side of the Atlantic again.”

To her horror, Jenessa saw tears trickle down his cheeks. As she made an instinctive move toward him, Charles added in a muffled voice, “It was a wicked thing to do. I see that now. Travis made me see it. And that's why, in the only way I know how, I've been trying to connect with you, Jenessa. Brent and I have always been close. But not you and I.”

Impulsively Jenessa rested her hands on his shoulders, looking up into his ravaged face. “I never knew you had this much emotion in you,” she whispered. “Except for that one time by the lilacs, you were always so cold, so much in control.”

Clumsily Charles put his arms around her. “I'm sorry, Jenessa. More sorry than I can say for what I did to you. Because you're right, I was trying to kill your mother in you. I couldn't bear to be reminded of her.”

“But you love Corinne…don't you?”

“Yes, I love Corinne. She's been good for me—and did her best to be good to you. She's not an effusive woman, but in her way she loves you.”

Jenessa knew he was right. She could have asked if he still loved Leonora; and decided not to. That was between himself and her mother. It was enough that they could meet socially, be together at family gatherings. Her vision blurred with tears, she said, “I'm sorry I yelled at you.
But I'm not sorry you told me all this. It's overdue. Long overdue.”

“I don't know if you can ever forgive me. I robbed you of your mother, and that was a terrible thing to do. And yet, in a twisted way, I did it out of love. Because I do love you, I want you to know that.”

Jenessa looked up, scrubbing at her wet cheeks. “I've forgiven you already,” she said with a shaky smile, “and I love you, too, Dad.” Then she watched as two more tears spilled from his eyes.

“Love and forgiveness,” he said heavily. “That's more than I deserve.”

“I'm so glad you have one of my paintings in the house. Would you let me paint one for Castlereigh?”

“I'd be honored,” Charles said, standing a little taller.

“I'll do it,” she promised. “Do you know what? I'd like a glass of wine. Let's toast a new beginning.”

“Champagne,” Charles said. “Nothing but the best. I'll be right back.”

She watched him leave. If someone had told her that such a capacity for emotion was locked within her father, she'd have laughed at them. Laughed and disbelieved. Nothing could alter the harm he'd done to his first wife and his children; but now she understood why, and had seen for herself his bitter regret and his need to be reconciled with his only daughter.

A few minutes later Charles came back, dusting off a venerable bottle of champagne. After he'd popped the cork, they raised their glasses. “To my daughter,” Charles said gruffly, “who is her own woman.”

A lump in her throat, Jenessa drank. By mutual consent they began talking about lighter matters. An hour later Jenessa said, “I'm going to head home, Dad, I'd like to get an early start in the studio tomorrow. Give Corinne
my love. I'll call her and we'll arrange a dinner date very soon.”

“We'd like that,” Charles said. “In the meantime, let me drive you to the bus station.”

“I'll take the subway,” Jenessa said. “It'll give me time for my thoughts to settle. But thanks for the offer.”

She gave her father a fierce hug at the front door. Then, oblivious to the heat, she walked along the elegant row of town houses in the shade of the trees. But when she got to the subway, impulsively she took the red line, getting off at the station nearest to Beacon Hill. She should phone first. But something stopped her. Walking the few blocks to Bryce's house, she climbed the steps and rang the bell.

W
HEN
the doorbell chimed, Bryce was about to leave for his sports club; he ran downstairs in his shorts and T-shirt, his bag in one hand, and checked through the peephole. Distorted by the glass, he saw the woman who was haunting him, night and day; it was as though his dreams had conjured her up. Quickly he opened the door.

“Oh,” Jenessa said, “you were about to go out…I should have phoned.”

“I can go later—I was planning on jogging on an air-conditioned track rather than on the street. Come in. I didn't know you were coming into town today.”

“I didn't know myself.” Once inside, she positioned herself near the door and said rapidly, “I've just been to see Charles.” Gathering momentum as she went, she described their meeting, and all that she'd learned. Then she said with a radiant smile, “So I've forgiven him. I'm not angry with him anymore. I can't tell you how wonderful that feels, Bryce. It's as though I've put down a burden I've been carrying for a long time.” She laughed. “I feel light enough to dance just like my mother.”

His brain working overtime, Bryce asked, “And you came straight here to tell me?”

Taken aback, she said, “Of course. It's hugely important…surely you understand that.”

He understood too much. That Jenessa was willing to share her whole life with him, with all its crises and joys: something he wasn't willing to reciprocate. Yet every time he saw her, he was getting more deeply embroiled. When he thought of ending their affair before she got hurt, every cell in his body urged him not to be a fool; the prospect
of another man replacing him in her bed flooded him with jealousy.

But he couldn't—wouldn't—commit to her.

The silence had gone on too long. Jenessa said in a brittle voice, “I shouldn't have come. You don't want to hear about Charles and me. You just want me in your bed. Everything temporary and on the surface.”

“I don't know what I want!”

She'd gone very pale. “A canvas is a surface. But there's no point putting paint on it unless the result says something about what's going on underneath. Brings the hidden and the unknown into the open.”

“I know what you're asking,” Bryce said tightly, “and the answer's no—I haven't made any attempt to find my mother or father.”

“I've changed since we met,” Jenessa cried. “But if you won't change, too, we can't go anywhere.”

“Just where are we supposed to be going?”

She winced as though he'd struck her. “Nothing stands still,” she said passionately. “Human beings, gardens, time itself…to be static is to die.”

“You're quite the philosopher.”

“Go to hell, Bryce Laribee!”

She looked angry enough to banish him there single-handed. And why wouldn't she, when with one hand he pulled her close and with the other pushed her away?

Trapped, he thought. They were both trapped. “Let's go upstairs,” he said hoarsely. “I need to hold you and touch you, Jenessa. I don't know what's real anymore—except for you.”

For a moment he thought she was going to refuse, and his heart froze in his chest. “Okay,” she said.

Relief swamping him, he said bitterly, “You're braver than I am. Your mother and your father—you went looking for both of them.”

“In retrospect, it wasn't that difficult. But, Bryce, when you go in search of your parents, you're venturing into
the unknown—you have no idea where they are or what they've turned into. You're also reopening terrible memories. It's not the same at all.”

Hadn't his whole life been fashioned around avoiding that mean little apartment where Fletcher and Rose had entangled their lives? His money, his women, his many successes, weren't they all barricades against memory?

He dumped his bag on the floor, took Jenessa into his arms and pressed his face into the sweetly scented mass of her hair. She was his only certainty, he thought dimly. When he was holding her, he knew who he was.

 

A week later, in a light rain that slicked the dirt to the streets, Bryce was standing outside an old tenement house gazing up at the blank windows. He'd come directly here from the shelter where thirty-two years ago his mother had walked out the door and never come back.

Left him as though he was of as much value as a sack of potatoes.

At the shelter, they hadn't been able to tell him anything about his mother or his father; their records didn't go back that far. But the elderly janitor had suggested he seek out an old woman called Maybelline Parker, who'd been working night shifts during the time Bryce's mother would have stayed there.

Maybelline Parker lived in this building. If she couldn't tell him anything, he'd reached a dead end.

Is that what he wanted?

Bryce took the rickety stairs two at a time; he'd phoned her from the shelter, so she knew he was coming. When he tapped on a door that had a brave coat of red paint on it, the old woman who opened it had a smile as welcoming as the door. “Well now,” she said comfortably, “haven't you grown into a fine-looking man?”

He had to smile back. In one quick glance he saw that Maybelline Parker's living room had very little of monetary value in it; but it was clean and orderly, china dogs
crowding every surface, photos of soap opera stars pinned carefully to the faded wallpaper. She shuffled over to the stove; her purple-flowered housedress clashed with her green apron and her electric blue slippers, while her hair was pure white.

“You'll have a cup of tea, won't you, Mr. Laribee? Then we'll have a nice chat.”

“The name's Bryce and I'd love one,” he said, watching in some dismay as she threw enough tea bags in the pot to stun a horse.

“You just hitch that cat onto the floor, he takes up more room than I do.”

The cat, who was fat and fluffy, lashed its enormous tail and eyed him balefully. Bryce, no coward, said, “That's okay, I'll sit on this other chair,” and hitched out a wooden chair from the little table by the window. African violets, lovingly tended, were lined up on the sill.

The tea had sufficient caffeine to keep him awake all week; Maybelline put a plate of chocolate cookies in front of him and helped herself. “So you're Bryce…looks like you turned out real well. I'm glad for that.”

“I've done okay,” he said in magnificent understatement. “But the time's come when I need to find out about my parents. All I know is their names. Rose and Fletcher. And that she left me at the shelter, and he disappeared around the same time. Not much to go on.”

Maybelline frowned at him in puzzlement. “That's all you know?” she repeated. “That your mom left you at the shelter?”

“I said it wasn't much to go on.”

“They never told you anything more than that?”

It was his turn to frown. “No…should they have?”

She answered his question with one of her own. “You got a reason for looking for them?”

Maybe it was the tea scalding his throat that loosed his tongue. “I've never married,” he said evenly, “and I decided long ago not to bring a kid into the world—”

He broke off, in a flash of insight suddenly understanding that the school he was planning to build was for a surrogate family: the boys and girls who went there would be the children he'd never have.

Abruptly he realized Maybelline was talking. “So you've met yourself a woman,” she said. “She good enough for you?”

“You cut to the chase,” he answered wryly.

“You didn't come here to talk about the weather.”

“Yeah, she's more than good enough. But I saw what marriage did to my parents…I guess I'm afraid I'll turn out like my old man.”

“You got a drinking problem?” Only with your tea, Bryce thought, and shook his head. “You push this woman around?”

He laughed. “I wouldn't want to try…I've never in my life raised a hand to a woman.”

“Don't see what you're worrying 'bout, then.”

“He was my father! His blood runs in mine, he was a drunk who could be as ugly as a starving dog.”

“I got a good feeling 'bout you the minute you walked in my door,” Maybelline said. “But I can set your mind to rest right easy on one score. Fletcher Laribee wasn't your dad.”

Bryce almost choked on a mouthful of tea. “
What
did you say?”

“He moved in with Rose after she was widowed. She was already pregnant with you at the time. Your dad worked in the shipyards, his name was Neil Bryce Jackson and he was killed by one of them derricks. Came from out Iowa way as I recall.”

“Fletcher wasn't my father?” Bryce said blankly.

“Nossir. Your mom told me about Neil one time when I was on the night shift and she couldn't sleep. She loved her husband and he was good to her. A good man. That's what she said.
He was a good man.
Lots worse things can go on a headstone than that.”

His brain reeling, Bryce said, “I always called Fletcher
Dad.
He never contradicted me. Nor did my mother.”

“He didn't like the thought of some other man fathering her kid. He was a mean sonofabitch, if you'll pardon me for saying so.” Maybelline daintily flicked a cookie crumb onto the floor.

“You're not telling me anything I don't already know. Was that why he used to belt my mom? Jealousy?”

“Jealousy, drink, natural cussedness. Some men just can't keep their fists to themselves, and he was one of 'em.”

“Why did she stay with him?”

“She didn't have two cents to rub together, no schooling to speak of though she was bright enough, and she was pregnant when she met him. He was good-looking, I s'pose, and when he chose to he could charm canaries from a pear tree. And she had you to look after, don't forget. She told me that's when she ran away to the shelter, the day he hit you so hard you flew clean 'cross the room. That was when she said
enough
…she loved you like the sun rose and set on you, though she might never have said so. Not a woman to say two words if one would do.”

Bryce's heart was thumping as though once again he was that little boy wielding a rusty truck at Fletcher Laribee. “Why did she leave me at the shelter if she loved me so much?” he said, and heard the sharp edges of that old pain in his voice.

“That's the part I'm real surprised you don't know about. Can't figure out how come they never told you.” Maybelline gave a heavy sigh. “So I guess it's up to me. We'll never know for sure what happened…I can only tell you what I believe. You can see by the posters on the wall that I like the soaps. But what happened back then wasn't no soap. It was for real. And there wasn't a happy ending, neither.”

Her face sagged; for the first time she wouldn't meet
Bryce's eyes. “The night she disappeared, Rose told me she was going back to your apartment to get some of her stuff. A couple of photos, the old ring she had from her mother, that kind of thing. I told her not to be so foolish. Or else to take someone with her. But no, she was set on going by herself and getting back all the faster. She had plans, you see. For you and her. Plans to get on the bus and start out afresh somewhere else where no one knew her, and Fletcher wouldn't find her.”

Bryce wrapped his cold fingers around his cup. “Why didn't she come back?”

Gazing down at the floor, Maybelline said, “They found her the next day. At the bottom of the stairs with her neck broke.”

Bryce paled. “Dead. She was dead…that's why she left me at the shelter.” Briefly he covered his face with his hands.

“That's right, she was dead. I'm real sorry to be the one to tell you.”

“I always wondered why she didn't come back for me,” Bryce said in a muffled voice.

“Ordinarily, nothing would've stopped her,” Maybelline said. “There was no sign of Fletcher that day, nor ever after that I heard. They held one of them inquests and called it death by misadventure, which is a downright stupid word when you come to think about it.”

Bryce looked up, aghast. “You think he did it. Fletcher.”

“That's what my bones tell me happened that evening. But I can never prove it. Maybe she slipped and fell. Or maybe she was pushed.”

“Either way, she was dead,” he said bitterly.

“They took you away before my next shift, to a care home way 'cross the city. By the time I got there, you were in a foster home and they wouldn't tell me where. They never would give out that kind of information.
Against city policy, or some such fancy words—that's what they said.”

Bryce rested his hand on her wrinkled fingers. “It was good of you to go looking for me.”

Maybelline wiped a tear from the corner of her eye with her apron. “I just don't understand why they never told you your mom was dead. Maybe not right away…I can see that, you were just little. But you should've been told later on.”

“I moved around a lot,” Bryce said dryly. “I wasn't what you'd call a model kid. So I never stopped in one place very long.”

“That's no excuse. It's downright disgraceful, keeping you in the dark all those years.” She scowled. “I bet they'd have some more of their fancy words to cover it up. Failure in communication. Mislaid records. When what they really mean is that they done wrong.”

The old woman looked very fierce. Bryce said, “I always assumed she'd upped and left me. That I was too much trouble for her and for Fletcher.”

“For Fletcher, yeah. But for Rose? No way. I liked Rose, liked her a lot. She was doing her best, which is all any of us can do. I was saddened that she died like that. Still am.”

“I'll find out where she's buried. Would you go with me one day and we'll leave some roses on her grave?”

“She's in the old cemetery five blocks east of here. And I'd be right pleased to do that with you.”