Heart Of Gold (25 page)

“Uncle
Nick?”

Wicker
creaked as he looked up at the porch ceiling.

“Cort?”

“Can
I ask you something?” The kid's voice was tentative.

“Of
course.”

It was a
long time before Cort spoke again. “What do you do if you like
someone?”

Nick was
stunned. It was the first time Cort had ever asked him for advice.

But why
the hell couldn't it have been about treasury bills? He'd gone to school to
answer questions like that.

Trying to
buy himself some time, Nick asked, “Do you like someone?”

“Maybe.”

“What
makes you think you do?”

“Whenever
she's around my head doesn't work right, my legs feel like I've run a sprint,
and my stomach feels queasy. Like I ate too many tacos.”

That
about covers it, Nick thought.

“Do
you think this person likes you back?”

“Maybe.”
There was a pause. “It's not Carter, you know. She's too old for me.”

The edge
was almost gone out of the kid's tone, and Nick was relieved they seemed to
have weathered that crisis.

“So,
what do you do?” Cort prompted.

Nick
sighed. “Be yourself. Spend time with her. Listen to her. Make sure she
knows how special she is.”

Drive
yourself nuts fantasizing about her, he added to himself. Brace yourself for a
bout with insomnia. Get ready to put your foot in your mouth and have to beg
for forgiveness.

“That
wasn't how you were with Candace,” Cort challenged him.

Nick
winced. “I know. I didn't really like her.”

“I
don't think anyone did.”

“Well,
you shouldn't be with someone you don't really like.”

“I
know that. I didn't think you did, though.”

Nick
laughed softly at the boy's candor.

Funny, he
thought, that it had taken him so long to learn the lesson.

Silence
stretched out between them, the sound of waves against the shore marking the
passing moments.

“I
think you're right,” the kid said with resolve. “I'm just going to be
with her. Thanks.”

“Cort?”

“Yeah?”

“I'm
glad you asked me.” Nick took care to make sure the words were spoken
clearly and that Cort heard them.

There was
a long pause.

“Yeah.
Me, too.”

Above,
the door into Cort's bedroom was closed softly.

Nick, for
once, didn't feel shut out.

Staying
on the porch, he got lost in memories of Carter until he became so
agitated he had to go back to the study. When he sat down in his chair, he
picked some papers off the desk and tried to distract himself.

The deal
for CommTrans was progressing nicely, he thought, as he reviewed the memorandum
of understanding that had been faxed to him earlier in the day. If all went
well, by the end of the month the transaction would be complete. Wessex would buy the company, then immediately sell most of it to Nick.

And at
the end of all the paperwork, Nick's prey would have a new boss.

He smiled
grimly. Payback was a bitch.

The year
before, Nick had been forced to sell off some holdings because of antitrust
concerns. Bob Packert, CEO of CommTrans, had bought the manufacturing companies
and proven to be incapable of running them. He was so bad at it that the value
of the rest of the man's holdings had been dragged down into the sewer. Share
prices had plummeted and his stockholders had gone ballistic.

Instead
of fixing the problems he'd created, however, Packert had gone to the press and
alleged that Nick had falsified financial documents during the sale, making the
company appear more healthy than it was. The man had declared loud and wide
that fraud was the cause of the failure, not his own incompetence.

It was
all lies and Nick wasn't one to let that kind of attack go without retribution.
This was where William Wessex came in. Wessex was only too happy to buy up all
of Packert's stock in a hostile takeover and pass the bulk of the holdings on
to Nick for a fair price. To keep it all legal, he'd retain the manufacturing
plants that Nick couldn't own because of the antitrust laws—a little reward for
doing the favor.

Courtesy
of the maneuvering, Nick was going to own Packert's ass, and his first move as
the new chairman of the board of CommTrans was going to be discharging Packert
from his own company for cause. The next step was going to be having him
blackballed among Nick's friends on the Fortune 500 list so Packert wouldn't be
able to get another high-paying, high-profile job. Then Nick was thinking about
getting the man kicked out of the private clubs and golf courses he belonged to
and ensuring that his wife found out about his various mistresses.

Wessex was critical to
the revenge because, legally, Nick couldn't resume ownership of the
manufacturing businesses and therefore couldn't be the front man in the
CommTrans acquisition. The situation put the two raiders in a difficult
position, however. Nick had to trust that Wessex would divest as soon as the
ink was dry. Wessex had to have faith that Nick would pay him the agreed amount
for CommTrans.

Even
though they had interests that were aligned, the deal was only as safe as any
situation involving two hungry lions and one piece of meat.

This was
why Nick had wanted to give the man a chance to meet with his daughter. Wessex's gratitude would have made Nick feel more secure about his position, and would have
added a personal obligation to ensure that the professional one would be
adhered to.

He
shifted in his chair, feeling trapped by his own maneuvers. When he'd started
down this road, he'd had no idea what would happen between Carter and him.
Abruptly, the idea of leveraging her struck him as totally wrong.

Disturbed,
Nick went to the bar, poured himself a scotch, and then walked over to the
bookcase. He knelt down in front of a five-volume set of Victorian travelogues.
With the flip of a lever, that part of the bookcase came forward and revealed a
safe.

Turning the
dial to the right, twice to the left, and then back again, he heard the
tumblers release and then pushed down on the brass handle. Lights came on
inside, something he'd always thought of as a nice touch, like the thing was
just a really sturdy little refrigerator.

He was
looking for the cross, knowing that holding it in his hand would give him
solace. It was something he had done over the years when feeling conflicted.

But
before taking it out, he was distracted by the familiar stacks of leather boxes
containing some of his grandmother's jewelry collection. On impulse, Nick
reached in and picked up a small one that was covered in Carrier's brilliant
red. He unlatched the lid.

A diamond
ring glistened in the dim light. The stone had been given to his grandmother
upon her engagement to Rufus Lachlan Farrell. The ring had outlived both the
giver and receiver, and Nick thought it was a shame that such a magnificent
piece was locked up in a safe.

Nick
remembered his mother coveting the diamond, not because of its size and
quality, although it was stunning on both accounts, but because it had been
worn by a woman she couldn't compete with. Nick's grandmother, known as Ma
Farrell, had been a consummate hostess, a prize-winning gardener and, in an era
when women like her were supposed to lead the inactive lives of
“ladies,” she was also a horsewoman, a poker player, and a swimmer.
She was charismatic, charming, and loved by anyone who'd ever met her.

Nick's
mother, Sarah, had been the opposite. She was willowy, not strong, and socially
insecure and aggressive, not gracious and likable. She'd also suffered from a
bottomless appetite for approval and had always been resentful because she
never seemed to get enough. Making things worse, she'd had to endure the Oedipal
hardship of knowing her husband, Ashland, infinitely preferred spending time
with his own mother over her.

This
burden might have been easier to bear if Ashland had had some bizarre
attachment to Ma Farrell. Sarah might have been able to leverage an embarrassing
pathology into guilt-induced fits of spending at Tiffany's. The truth, however,
was both more prosaic and difficult. The man just liked his mother's company,
and his wife had never forgiven him for the split of affections.

This had
been the reason for Nick's birth, or so he'd heard. Sarah had figured that by
becoming a mother, she could get her husband to stop fixating on his own. It
proved to be an ill-conceived strategy. Ashland had made room for his son,
right next to the mother he adored, and his wife, instead of finding herself in
higher regard, was squeezed out even further.

Which was
why Nick had always had the sense his mother despised him.

It was
capricious cruelty, or perhaps mercy, that Sarah's life ended before the woman
she had hated passed on. Ma Farrell survived her by almost a decade, and the
diamond ring had gone on plying the dirt in the gardens at the edge of the
lake. After his mother's death, Ashland had had the ring appraised and then put
it in the wall safe. It hadn't been worn since.

Nick's
favorite story about the diamond was one Gertie had told him. Ma Farrell's
active lifestyle had meant the platinum setting had taken a beating over the
years. When Ashland took it back to Cartier to get it evaluated, the jewelers
had offered to put it in a brand-new setting.

“You
don't reset a life, gentlemen,” Ashland had said. “That ring earned
those nicks and someday, if it gets passed down, the woman who wears it is
going to know exactly who put them there. It's a legacy to live up to, not something
to be replaced.”

Nick
looked at the band, seeing the scratches in the surface of the metal, and was
shaken as he imagined the diamond on Carter's finger. Returning it to its box,
he was struck by the fact that he'd been in and out of the safe for years and
had never bothered to look at the ring before.

Refocusing
on a lower shelf, he rifled through stacks of money and shoved aside about
$100,000 in gold Krugerrands that he'd pushed into the safe two weeks ago.
Behind the largess was the felt bundle he'd taken that day to Carter's.

Going
over to his desk, he unveiled the cross. The aged wood, cracked in veins,
seemed to glow.

A
familiar feeling in his stomach returned, caused by the colliding of his
family's private history with the history of his country. He thought once again
of the men who had died on what was now his land. He was, as always, moved.

And then
he froze.

That
strange shift in gravity was how he felt when he was around Carter. How he felt
when he thought about her.

This was
what had always been missing. He'd never felt truly moved by a woman before. He
could stand next to them and forget they were in the room at all, could leave
the country without missing them, could walk away without second thoughts,

But
Carter, she consumed him. Challenged him with her quick wit and her
intelligence. And when they were making love, he felt whole.

Nick
sucked his breath in as he struggled with that familiar fear of his.

Rolling
up the artifact carefully, he realized something was changing inside of him.

And he
was never going to be the same again.

TWO WEEKS
LATER, CARTER AND THE TEAM WERE on their hands and knees, laboring
under a bright sun, when they hit the halfway point. In spite of the heat and
their progress, there was no celebration over the accomplishment. They
continued to work, steady and determined.

Carter
only noticed because she paused to take a drink and saw how much distance
they'd covered. The ground inside the circle of boulders was now split down the
middle into a higher and a lower level. It was the result of countless hours of
trowels slicing into the earth and dirt rushing into plastic buckets.

The site
had proven to be a rich one, and many artifacts had been found, some more
significant than others. Back at camp, collapsible containers had been expanded
to accommodate all manner of arrowheads, pottery shards, and musket balls, and
more kept coming. The day before, Cort and Ellie had found the remnants of a
Brown Bess, the gun used by redcoats during the Revolutionary period. Luckily,
the metallurgic appointments on the weapon were in good shape, and some of the wood
had survived as well. It was quite a find, and everyone was thrilled that it
might have been used by one of the men whose remains had been unearthed.

As for
the skeletons, they had been removed from the ground, and the bones were now
carefully housed in boxes stashed out of the sun's heat. As they were the most
precious of the finds, Carter found herself increasingly anxious to get them
over to the university where she knew they would be safe. She didn't want
anything to happen before she had a chance to study them.

She
glanced over at Cort and Ellie. The two were joking and laughing together,
their eyes flirtatious as they jostled over a trowel. She thought back to
Cort's early infatuation with her and was glad he had come around so well.

Her next
thought was of Nick.

The night
before they'd stolen off together for a midnight boat ride. The moon had
glimmered over soft waves as they'd slowly cruised the shoreline, the sound of
the Hacker's throaty engine and the call of loons accompanying their trip down
the lake. She'd leaned against his chest, snuggling into his warmth, and felt a
terrible temptation to believe that the warm summer evening was going to go on
forever.

Although
the physical pleasure Nick gave her was intense and satisfying, she did her
best to keep her heart to herself. There were moments, particularly after they
had a deep conversation about his past or her plans for the future, when she
could feel him struggling. He would get a faraway look in his eyes, as if he
were searching for an escape, and tension would run through his body. Even
though he hadn't shown any inclination to follow through on the impulse, she
remained wary.