Behind the Shadows (10 page)

Kira paused. Weighed her options. She
had
to get Leigh to listen. She hadn't wanted to use the DNA. It had been an invasion of Leigh Howard's privacy. It might even have been illegal. But there was no time for niceties. If she was fired from a job, so be it. “There's something else,” she finally said. “I took a piece of the cup you used. I had it tested. Your DNA matches my mother's. Katy Douglas's DNA.”

Kira took Chris's card from her pocket and pressed it into Leigh's hand. “Chris Burke has been investigating this for me. He's a former detective with the police department. Have Mr. Payton check him out. He can confirm everything I said.” She swallowed hard. “This isn't easy for me, either. I had your same reaction last week. I didn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. But I had to. I had to accept I couldn't help my mother.”

Leigh simply stared at her, unblinking. Like a deer in headlights. “I went through the same shock,” Kira said, her fingers knotting into a fist. “I'll sign a paper to say I won't claim any part of the Westerfield estate. My one and only concern is my mom. Think about it,” she pleaded. “Just think about it.”

Leigh's face paled. Her lips had thinned and yet she was quite beautiful. She went over to the phone. “Please leave,” she said coldly. “You're trespassing. If you don't go, I'll call the police.”

Kira started for the door. She turned. “I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry. I don't think I would ever have told you if my mother wasn't so ill. She only has weeks to live without a new kidney.” Her voice broke and she fought to hold back tears. “But you have a right to know you still have a living parent.”

“And I have money,” Leigh said coldly.

“I don't care about that.”

“Everyone does,” Leigh retorted with bitterness. She opened the door and held it open. “I'm asking my attorney to get a restraining order. I think we will also be calling your newspaper.”

The door closed behind her. More like a slam.

Tears gathered behind Kira's eyes. Could she have handled it worse? Had she just destroyed her mother's last chance?

Leigh leaned against the door. There was no strength left in her.

Lies. They had to be lies
.

Someone else who wanted part of the Westerfield legacy. Just like her former husband. Like her former fiancé.

Her mother and father were dead. She'd watched them die as she'd struggled to live.

She closed her eyes, and the scene came back. The nightmare that wouldn't go away. Driving home from an afternoon campaign affair held by Seth's father. There had been liquor, and her father drank a lot of it. An argument. Then the screams, the crash of metal, then moans that faded away. Her own pain. And the guilt. The terrible guilt that somehow she had been responsible …

The reporter's words brought it all back again. Damn her.

Hot. She was hot. She touched her face and it was burning.

Max! Max would know what to do.

He would expose Kira Douglas as a liar and cheat.

She opened her hand and let the card Kira had pressed into her fingers fall onto the floor.

11

Max leaned back in his chair and put the contract he'd just reviewed on the table.

Jack Melton would be pleased. Max had few questions about the contract the CEO had negotiated with a company in Japan for Westerfield lumber. It appeared to be a damn good price.

His attention, though, was wandering. That was unique enough to be worrisome. A pretty reporter with a challenging smile kept popping into his mind.

His personal cell phone rang, and he answered. Only a few people had the number.

“Max, this is Leigh. I need to talk to you. As soon as possible.”

“Go ahead,” he said.

“In person. I have to talk to you in person.”

Her voice trembled in a way he hadn't heard in a long time. “Can it wait until tonight?”

“No.”

He heard panic in her voice. He glanced at his watch. “I have two hours before a meeting here at the office. Why don't you meet me in thirty minutes for lunch?”

“Thanks. Where?”

“Come to the office, and we'll walk over to the Grill.”

“I'll be there.” She hung up.

He replaced the cell on his belt. Her voice worried him. He hadn't heard that tone in a long time. Since her sessions with a psychologist three years earlier, she'd gotten on a steady course, lost some of that defensiveness. The compulsion to immediately succeed at something or abandon it had abated. Like with her riding. She'd found a great teacher, had researched horses, and had worked hard to become as good a rider as her mother had been. She'd seemed to cast aside the shadows that had haunted her since childhood. For someone who had beauty, position, and money, she had remarkably low self-esteem.

She'd even been excited about the newspaper interview. She'd become passionate about her favorite cause: the riding program for special needs kids. She'd thought the interview would help raise funds.

Maybe she was finding herself, after all. He hoped to God she was.

He wanted her happy, and God knew she'd had little of that emotion. He used to ferry her to school and various activities when she was a child. He knew how self-conscious she was about the scars from the accident that killed her parents. Plastic surgery had helped, but a number of psychologists hadn't been able to heal the survivor's guilt she felt.

He wondered if her cry for help now had anything to do with the story. And that drew his attention back to Kira Douglas and the dinner last night. He'd enjoyed himself far more than he'd expected until she'd virtually fled from him.

Her excuse had been exhaustion, and the slight rings around her eyes gave substance to the claim, but he suspected she was one of those people who ran on adrenaline.

He couldn't explain his reaction to her. Not the heat that had ignited in him, nor the desire to touch her. There was a fierce attraction—make it a sexual storm—that stunned him. It was even more surprising since she was a reporter, and he'd never been a fan of most of them.

To his surprise, Kira Douglas had challenged him in a way few women did. She was driven. Confident. Compassionate. Smart as hell.

And pretty. Not beautiful with sleek cheekbones and a straight nose, but a more interesting kind of attractiveness. Eyes that flashed with enthusiasm or clouded with questions. A smile that was real and not practiced.

She was also wary of him, and he couldn't quite figure out why. He'd been on his best behavior. But her eyes had been cautious and her responses carefully phrased, even after two large glasses of wine.

He called the investigative agency on retainer for Westerfield Industries. “Any more on Ms. Douglas?” he asked the investigator.

“Very little. She's been active lately in organ donation groups. Other than that, nothing.”

“How active?”

“Press releases. Press advice. That kind of thing.”

“Paper doesn't mind?”

“Not if it's a nonprofit.”

“Okay, keep hunting. I want to know what she has for breakfast in the morning.”

“Gotcha, Mr. Payton.”

Max put down the phone and stared at the law books in his office. He loved those books. The symbol of success. He used to take pleasure in looking at them, but the glow had faded.

He suddenly felt alone, and the feeling didn't give him the satisfaction it usually did.

Leigh ran down to the pasture before leaving. Maude always made her feel better, as did Silver Lady, who came to the fence and nudged her pocket for a treat.

“You spoil them,” Rick said, and she whirled around. She hadn't heard him approach.

“I like spoiling them. Did you rub Lady down after my lesson this morning?”

“Yes'm.” There was the touch of insolence in his voice, but as long as he did his job, she ignored it. He was Mrs. Baker's nephew and had worked part-time as groom for two years. He was rarely late and had never missed a day; it was rare finding someone that reliable, so she ignored his sometimes surly manner.

“I'll put them inside the barn when I get back this afternoon,” she said.

“I'll be going, then,” he said. “I put clean water and feed in their stalls.”

She gave the donkey and mare another piece of apple, then went inside the house and grabbed her purse. In minutes she was on the interstate.

What did the Kira person want? Money? Her inheritance?

What galled her most is how she'd been tricked. She'd been flattered by the interview, had instinctively liked Kira Douglas. She'd told the other members of the board about the upcoming story, and they'd been thrilled.

What a fool she'd been. What a trusting fool. No wonder Max wouldn't give over control to the Westerfield trust.

Anger seethed inside her. She had no doubt her mother had given her birth. She'd been told that her mother had three miscarriages before her birth, and she had been a treasured child for that reason.

An ugly prank? Blackmail of some kind?

Get yourself together, she told herself. Max will know what to do. He
always
knew what to do.

She left the house early. You never knew about Atlanta traffic, even on Saturdays. Her hands trembled on the steering wheel as images flipped through her mind. Her mother singing to her. Her father whirling her around. Then the ugly parts. The drinking. The arguments.

Traffic was light today. Unusually light. She arrived at Max's office twenty minutes before noon. The security guard nodded at her. “Miss Howard. Good to see you.”

On the sixth floor, she went directly to his office. Why would someone say something like this? That she wasn't Leigh Howard?

She blinked back tears. She would fight back this time. No more running and hiding. She wanted advice from Max, but no one was going to take her birthright from her. No one was going to take her name and her memories.

He stood as she entered his office. It was clean except for two manila folders. It was always clean. He was the most disciplined man she knew.

He looked at her face, and his smile faded. “What is it, Leigh?”

“Can we go out to lunch? Now?” She didn't want to be in the close confines of the office. She wanted to be in a public place where she could wear a public face. She wouldn't cry there.

“Of course.” His hand touched her shoulder as they went out the door.

Was she really that obvious? Kind gestures were not in his repertoire, at least not that she'd noticed.

“That reporter,” she said after they were seated in the restaurant, “the one who did the story earlier this week, visited me again.”

She saw a flicker of surprise in his eyes. “Why?” he asked with more interest than she'd expected.

“She claimed that I'm not the biological daughter of my parents. That
she
is. That we were switched at birth.”

Max didn't usually show emotions, but he started forward in his chair and his eyes darkened. “That's nonsense.”

“That's what I said,” Leigh agreed, suddenly comforted by his obvious shock. “You know all the family secrets,” she said, voicing that tiny kernel of doubt. “
You
would know.”

He ignored that comment. “Tell me exactly what she said.”

She recounted the conversation with Kira Douglas as completely as she could, knowing she'd hit the most important points.

His eyes turned icy and a muscle flexed in his throat. She'd seen enough of him to know he was angry. Furious, in fact. It wasn't, though, aimed at her. She had been on that end before and knew the signs.

“She wants me to take a DNA test.” A pause. “She wants me to give a kidney.”

“And what do you want to do?” His voice was noncommittal but his eyes seethed with anger.

“Tell her to go to hell. She lied to get into my house. I have no reason to trust her. I found my birth certificate after talking to her. There's no doubt I'm a Westerfield. I wonder if she's just using the kidney story to blackmail us.”

Max shook his head. “She
does
have a very ill mother on the kidney transplant list.”

“How do you know?”

“A gut feeling that she wasn't just there for the interview. I ran a check on her.”

She glared at him. “Why didn't you warn me?”

“I had no reason to. You made the appointment without asking me. When I saw her and the photographer, it was rather late to ask questions.”

“What do you think she wants?”

“She's clean as far as public records go. She's apparently good at her job,” he said.

Leigh had the sudden impression that he was not telling her everything. Her blood chilled. If she couldn't trust Max, who could she trust?

“What should I do?” she asked again.

“Don't agree to anything. Don't sign anything. I'll meet with her and find out exactly why she believes there was a baby switch and whether she has any proof. You say she got some DNA that day she interviewed you?” Then he cursed.
That damned cup
. No wonder Kira Douglas had looked so guilty.

“She says it matches her mother's.”

“That wouldn't hold up in court,” he said.

“What should I do?”

“I don't want you talking to her. If she phones, hang up. If she e-mails, save them for me but don't reply. Okay?”

She nodded, feeling better already. His anger was palpable, but she knew it was directed elsewhere. She would not want to be in that reporter's shoes.

“Something else,” he said. “Don't mention this to anyone else. Not until I know more. You don't want the press camping on your doorstep.”

“She
is
the press.”

His expression tightened. “For some reason she apparently hasn't said anything about this to anyone but you. If she had any legal proof, she would have gone to the hospital first. That's something for our side.”