Dollenganger 02 Petals On the Wind (34 page)

"I haven't hidden myself," I said, feeling nervous and hoping it wouldn't show.
He laughed as his dark eyes scanned over my tight sweater and skirt and what he could see of my foot that nervously swung. Then his face grew solemn. read in the newspaper about your sister's death. I am very sorry. It always hurts to read of someone so young dying. If it's not too personal, may I ask what killed her? A disease? An accident?"
My eyes opened wide. What killed her? Oh, I could write a book about that!
"Why don't you ask your wife what killed my sister?" I said stiffly.
He appeared startled, then shot out, "How can she know when she doesn't know you or your sister? Yet, I saw her with the clipping cut from the obituary page, and she was crying when I snatched it from her hand. I demanded an explanation; she got up and ran upstairs. She still refuses to answer my questions. Just who the hell are you, anyway?"
I bit again into my ham, tomato and lettuce sandwich and chewed irritatingly slowly just to watch his vexation. "Why not ask
her?"
I said again.
"I do hate people who answer questions with questions," he snapped, then motioned to a red-haired waitress who hovered nearby and gave her his order to have the same as I. "Now," he said, scooting his chair forward. "Some time ago I came to your dance studio and showed you those blackmail letters you keep writing to my wife." He reached into his pocket and pulled out three I'd written years ago. From the dogeared look of them, and the many stamps and cancellations, they had followed her about the world to end up again in my hands, with him almost shouting again, "Who the hell are you?"
I smiled to charm him. My mother's smile. I tilted my head as she did hers and fluttered one hand up to play with my simulated pearls. "Do you really have to ask--can't you guess?"
"Don't play coy with me! Who are you really? What is your relationship to my wife? I know you look like her, same hair, same eyes, and even some of your mannerisms are the same. You must be some kind of relative . . . ?"
"Yes. You could say that."
"Then why haven't I met you before? A niece, cousin?" He had a strong animal magnetism that almost frightened me from playing the kind of game I had in mind This was no adolescent boy who would be timidly impressed with a former ballerina. His dark appeal was strong, almost overwhelming me. Oh, what a wild lover he'd make. I could drown in his eyes and, making love with him, I'd be forever lost to any other man. He was too confidently masculine, too assured. He could smile and be at ease while I fidgeted and longed to escape before he led me down the trail I thought I'd wanted up until this very moment.
"Come," he said, reaching to forcefully restrain my departure when I rose to go, "stop looking frightened and play the game you've had in mind for some time." He picked up the letters and held them before my eyes. I looked away, unhappy with myself. "Don't turn away your eyes. Five or six of your letters came while my wife and I were in Europe, and she'd see them and paled. She'd swallow nervously--as you are swallowing nervously now. Her hand would lift to play with her necklace, just as you are playing with your beads now. Twice I saw her write on the envelope, 'Address unknown.' Then one day I collected the mail and I found these three letters you'd written to her. I opened them. I read them." He paused, leaned forward so his lips were only inches from mine His voice came hard and cold and fully in control of any savagery he might feel. "What right have you to try and blackmail my wife?"
I'm sure the color left my cheeks. I know I felt sick and weak and wanted to flee this place and him I imagined I heard Chris's voice saying,
Let the past rest in peace. Let it go, Cathy. God in his own way will eventually work the vengeance you want. In his own way, at his own speed He will take the responsibility from your shoulders.
Here was my chance to spill it forth--all
of it! Let
him know just what kind of woman he'd married! Why couldn't my lips part and my tongue speak the truth? "Why don't you ask your wife who I am? Why come to me when she has
all
the answers?"
He leaned back against the gaudy, bright orange, plastic-covered chair and took out a silver cigarette case with his monogram in diamonds. That just had to be a gift to him from my mother--it looked like her. He offered that case to me. I shook my head. He tapped the loose tobacco from one end and then lit the other with a silver lighter with diamonds too. All the while his dark, narrowed eyes held mine and, like a fly caught in a web of my own making, I waited to be pounced upon.
"Each letter you write says you need desperately a million dollars," he said in a flat monotone, then blew smoke directly into my face. I coughed and fanned the air. All around the walls bore signs reading No SMOKING. "Why do you need a million?"
I watched the smoke; it circled and came directly to me, wreathed about my head and neck. "Look," I said, struggling to regain my control, "you know my husband died. I was expecting his child and I was inundated with bills I couldn't pay, and even after the insurance paid off, with
some
assistance from you, still I'm going under. My dance school is in the red. I have a child to support, and I need things for him, to save for his college education, and your wife has
so
many millions. I thought she could part with just one."
His smile was faint, cynical. He blew smoke rings to make me dodge and cough again. "Why would an intelligent woman like you presume to think my wife would be so generous as to turn over one dime to a relative she doesn't even claim?"
"Ask her why!"
"I
have asked her. I took your letters and pushed them in her face and demanded to know what it was all about. A dozen times I've asked just who you are and how you are connected to her. Each time she says she doesn't know you, except as a ballerina she's seen dance. This time I want straight answers from you." lb assure that I didn't turn my face and hide my eyes, he reached forward to firmly grip my chin so I couldn't turn my head.
"Who the hell are you?
How are you connected to my wife? Why should you think she would pay you blackmail money? Why should your letters send her running upstairs to take out a picture album she keeps locked in her desk drawer or in a safe? An album she quickly hides and locks away whenever I come into the room."
"She took the album--the blue album with a gold eagle on the leather cover?" I whispered, shocked that she would do that.
"Everywhere we go the blue album goes with her in one of her locked trunks." His dark eyes narrowed dangerously. "You described that blue and gold album exactly, though it's old and worn shabby now. While my wife looks in a picture album, my mother-in-law reads her Bible to rags. Sometimes I catch my wife crying over the photographs that blue album holds, which I presume are pictures of her first husband."
I sighed heavily and closed my eyes.
I didn't want to know she cried!
"Answer me, Cathy.
Who are you?"
I felt he would grip my chin and hold me there throughout eternity if I didn't speak up and say something, and for some stupid reason I lied. "Henrietta Beech was your wife's half- sister. You see, Malcolm Foxworth had an extramarital affair, and three children were the result. I am one. Your wife is my half-aunt "
"Ahhh," he sighed, releasing my chin and leaning back in his chair, as if satisfied I was telling the truth. "Malcolm had an affair with Henrietta Beech who gave him three illegitimate children. What extraordinary information." He laughed mockingly. "I never thought the old devil had it in him, especially after that heart attack soon after my wife married the first time. Gives a man inspiration to know that." He sobered then to give me a long and searching look. "Where is your mother now? I'd like to see and talk to her."
"Dead," I said, hiding my hands under the table and keeping my fingers crossed like a superstitious, silly child. "She's been dead a long, long time."
"Okay. I get the picture. Three young, illegitimate Foxworth children hoping to cash in on their bloodline by blackmailing my wife--right?"
"Wrong! It was only me. Not my brother or my sister. I only want what is due us! At the time I wrote those letters I was in a desperate situation, and even now I'm not much better off. The hundred thousand the insurance paid didn't go very far. My husband had run up huge bills and we were behind in our rent and car payments; plus I owed hospital bills for him, the money for his funeral, and then the costs of having my baby. I could go on all night telling you my dance school's problems and how I was tricked into believing it was a profitable, going concern."
"And it's not?"
"Not when it consists of so many little rich girls who take off and go on vacations two or three times a year and aren't really serious about dancing anyway. All they want to do is look pretty and feel graceful. If I had one really good student it would be worth all my efforts. But I don't have one, not one."
He drummed his strong fingertips on the tablecloth, looking deeply reflective. Next he had a cigarette lit again, not as if he truly enjoyed smoking, but more as if he had to have something to keep his restless fingers busy. He inhaled deeply, then looked me straight in the eyes. "I'm going to speak very frankly to you, Catherine Dahl. First, I don't know if you are lying or telling the truth, but you do look like a member of the Foxworth clan. Second, I don't like you trying to blackmail my wife. Third, I don't like to see her unhappy, so much so that she cries. Fourth, I happen to be very much in love with her, though there are times, I admit, I'd like to choke the past from her throat. She never speaks of it; she is full of secrets my ears will never hear. And one great big secret I've never heard before is that Malcolm Neal Foxworth, the good, pious, saintly gentleman, had a love affair after he had heart trouble. Now before his heart trouble, I happen to know he had at least one, possibly, but no more."
Oh! He knew more than I. I had shot an arrow into the sky, not knowing it would hit a bulls-eye!
Bart Winslow glanced about the cafe Families were coming in to dine early, and I suppose he feared someone might recognize him and report back to his wife, my mother.
"C'mon, Cathy, let's get out of here," he urged, getting to his feet and reaching to pull me on mine. "You can invite me to have a drink in your home, then we can sit and talk and you can tell me everything in more detail."
Twilight came like a quickly dropped shade to the mountains--suddenly it was evening--and we'd been hours in that cafe. We were on the sidewalk when he held my cardigan sweater for my arms to fill the sleeves, though the air was so brisk I needed a jacket or coat.
"Your home, where is it?"
I told him and he looked disconcerted. "We'd better not go there . . . too many people might see me go inside." (He didn't know then, of course, I had chosen that cottage mainly because it backed up to a wooded area, and there was plenty of privacy for a man to come and go on the sly.) "My face is in the newspapers so often," he continued, "I'm sure your neighbors would see me. Could you call your babysitter and have her stay on awhile longer?"
I did just that, speaking first to Emma Lindstrom, and then to Jory, telling him to be a good boy until Mommy was home again.
Bart's car was sleek and black, a Mercedes. It purred along like one of Julian's sleek luxury cars, so heavy it didn't rattle or clank, and firmly it gripped the curved mountain roads. "Where are you taking me, Mr. Winslow?"
"To a place where we can talk and no one will see us or hear us." He looked my way and grinned. "You've been studying my profile. How do I rate?"
A hot rush of blood heated my face. Knowing I was blushing made me blush again, so then I felt damp. My life was full of handsome men, but this man was far different from any I had known. A rakish, bandit type of man who was filling me with alarm signals--go slow with this one! My intuitiveness warned as I studied his face and took note. Everything, his expensive, beautifully fitted suit, shouted that he should be as determined as I was in getting what he wanted, when he wanted.
"Well-ll," I drawled to make a mockery of this, "your looks tell me to run fast and lock the door behind me!"
Wickedly he grinned again, seemingly satisfied. "So, you find me exciting and a bit dangerous. Nice. To be handsome but boring would be worse than being ugly and charming, wouldn't it?"
"I wouldn't know. If a man is charming and intelligent enough, I often forget how he actually looks and think he's handsome regardless."
"Then you must be easily pleased."
I shifted my eyes and sat up primly. "Truthfully, Mr. Winslow--"
"Bart."
"Truthfully, Bart, I am very difficult to please. I'm inclined to put men up on a pedestal and think of them as perfect. As soon as I find out they have feet of clay, I fall out of love, become indifferent."
"Not many women know themselves so well," he mused. "Most go around never knowing what they are beneath their facade. At least I know where I stand--a sex symbol not on a pedestal."
N000! I'd never put
him
on a pedestal. I knew him for what he was, a womanizer, a skirt-chaser, wind and fire, enough to drive a jealous wife crazy! Certainly my mother had never bought that sex manual to instruct him how to or when to and where to! He'd know everything. Abruptly he pulled his car to a stop, then turned to meet my gaze. Even in the darkness the whites of his dark eyes shone. Too virile, too vibrant for a man who should be showing signs of aging. He was eight years younger than my mother. That made him forty years old, a man's most attractive time, his most vulnerable time, his time to think youth would soon be over. He'd have to make his new conquests now, before the sweet and fleeting bird of youth had flown away and taken with it all the young and pretty girls that could have been his. And he must be tired of the wife he knew so well, though he professed to love her. Why then were his eyes gleaming, challenging me?
Oh, Momma, wherever you are, you should be down on your knees praying! For I'm not going to show you mercy, no more than you showed us!
Yet as I sat there summing him up I realized he was no self-sacrificing, quiet man like Paul. This one wouldn't need seducing. He'd do that himself, staccato time. He'd stalk like a black panther until he had what he wanted, and then he'd walk out and leave me and it would be all over. He was not going to give up his chance to inherit millions and the pleasures millions gave for some chance mistress who came his way. Red lights were flashing behind my eyes. . . go easy . . . do it right, for there's danger if you do it wrong.