Lead Me On (29 page)

"Changing your name doesn't change who you are. You're still his son, and you never told me. For the past three weeks, we've been—" She motioned toward the bed. "How could you do this to me?"

"Because if I'd told you in the beginning, you wouldn't have let me stay here."

She searched his eyes. "Why did you want to stay? If not to spy on us."

"For exactly the reason I said. I was in a writing slump and hoped being here would get me out of it. And it has. The book is going great. Everything's back on track for me."

"Your writing slump," she echoed numbly, as if mentally fitting the pieces together. "You thought your slump was because your family lost Pearl Island. So you came here to use Marguerite."

"You knew from the beginning I hoped her charm would help. If it didn't bother you then, why now?"

"I didn't know you were a LeRoche then."

"Does that matter? Hell, you claim to be one of Henri's direct descendants. If that's true, you're as much a LeRoche as I am."

"It matters because you lied."

He started to explain that he'd hoped she'd come to care for him enough to accept him anyway. But looking in her eyes, he realized she'd closed herself off from him completely. Nothing he said would change her mind. "Don't do this, Alli. I'm begging you—" His throat closed around the words. "We're so close to having something special, don't throw it away over things that have nothing to do with you and me personally."

"It has everything to do with us, because what we came from is part of us. Your side of the family stole our inheritance and spread so much slander about us we've lived on the fringe of acceptable society for generations while you've lived in the lap of luxury. And now, when we finally have a chance to regain what was taken from us, your own father is trying to drive us into bankruptcy so he can steal this house back. You've known that for weeks, yet you said nothing." She shook her head. "If you'd lie about something as basic as who you are, how can I trust you about anything?"

"You can trust me." He nearly got down on his knees and begged her to listen, but he stopped himself. What good would it do but postpone the inevitable? He'd known all along it wouldn't last, but God, he'd hoped it would last longer than this.

"Fine." He turned away, unable to look at her without touching her. "If you want to play this out like some modem-day version of the Hatfields and McCoys, go ahead. Wallow in it."

He felt her standing there staring at him a long time. Finally she headed for the door, and he told himself to let her go—squeezed his eyes against the tearing pain in his chest.

"Allison." Her name slipped past his lips of its own will. He looked over his shoulder and found her standing with one hand on the doorknob, her back to him. "It doesn't have to be like this. I know you're scared, but don't use this as an excuse to run away."

She turned her head and he saw the tears streaming down her cheeks. "I trusted you, and you lied to me."

"I never meant to hurt you."

"Well, you succeeded." She opened the door. "I want you gone. I'm going to go down to the apartment for a while, and when I come back up, I want all trace of you gone."

"Allison—"

"No." She held up her hand. "Just go." The moment the door closed, he collapsed onto the settee and buried his face in his hands. What a fool he'd been. What an utter fool!

Scott lost himself in his work. Rather than return to New Orleans, where too many people knew how to find him, he moved into the beach house on Galveston. The only person who knew he was there was his mother. He'd called her out of courtesy to ask if he could stay there, and to be sure no other family members were planning a visit in the near future.

Assured of his privacy, he set up his laptop on the student desk in his old room upstairs where he'd done some of his very first writing, and dove into the story. When he wasn't writing, he swam laps in the pool, pushing himself to the point of exhaustion, anything to block out memories of Allison.

In those moments when reality intruded into his conscious mind, he told himself he didn't care. Her rejection could only hurt if he let it. He'd never wanted to get tangled up in a relationship in the first place. Loving someone gave them carte blanche to rip your heart to shreds. He was glad he'd gotten out of it before she'd become any more a part of his life.

As for the pain that knifed through him at unexpected moments, he assured himself that it wouldn't last. It couldn't.

By the third week of his self-imposed exile, he'd reached a state of total numbness. Nothing touched him. Nothing mattered. He worked to block out reality, yet couldn't care less what happened with the book. Normally, his work and his privacy were all he cared about. Now he had them in abundance, and they meant nothing.

Ironically, he thought
In Deep
was shaping up to be the best thing he'd ever written.

The day he finished the rough draft, he decided it was time for a break. He opened a bottle of Chardonnay and carried it and the phone out to the back deck. The afternoon sun pierced his eyeballs, and he realized he hadn't been outside for a few days. Since he didn't want to risk running into one of the St. Claires, he'd taken to calling taxi drivers to pick up anything he needed and deliver it to the house.

Taking a seat in a deck chair by the pool, he stared out at the gulf where sea gulls dipped and screeched at the surf. His mind drifted back to the day he and Alli had ridden horses along the beach. He could see her so clearly, laughing and happy, her lithe body atop the gray mare, the sun on her face and the wind in her hair.

Then she'd seen the beach house, and her laughter had faded. She'd refused to even ride by for fear that someone might be out on the deck where he now sat, and she'd be forced to wave.

Heaven forbid she should have to be nice to someone named LeRoche. He snorted and took a drink of wine. What a sap he'd been to think he could overcome generations of animosity. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back and tried to relax as the sun warmed his bare chest and legs. Adrian had been right when he'd said Allison felt more deeply than most people. She also didn't forgive easily, and he'd bet money she never forgot.

How sad that her very capacity to love so completely was what kept her from loving at all. Her greatest strength was also her greatest weakness. And the quality that made him fall for her in the first place was what made her unobtainable.

The ache rose hard and fast, tightening his chest and throat, all the more painful after days of numbness. Squeezing his eyes shut, he fought the need to be with her. To see her, touch her, hear her voice. If only he could find some way to open the locks she'd put on her heart. But he couldn't. Only she could do that, and she was too angry, or too afraid, to even try.

He rubbed a hand over his face, and realized he hadn't trimmed his beard in days. No doubt his hair could use a trim as well. The last time he'd bothered to glance in the mirror, he'd looked like hell.

In need of a distraction, he picked up the phone and punched in his agent's number. When Hugh's voice came on the line, Scott lifted his glass of wine toward the gulf. "Say cheers, pal."

"Scott?" Hugh nearly shouted. "Good God! Where are you? I've been trying to reach you for weeks. Do you have any clue what this little disappearing act did to my blood pressure?"

"Aren't you going to ask what we're drinking to?"

"Only if you're calling to say you finished the book."

"How about the rough draft?"

"That depends. Is it any good?"

"It's fabulous. Or will be when I finish filling in a few holes."

"What size holes?"

"Mostly background color, polishing, that sort of thing." He decided not to mention the book had two ghosts, one of which played a much larger role than he'd ever intended. Ever since the day he'd gone down to see the ship, Captain Jack Kingsley had lived in the back of his mind. His story—or rather Scott's imaginary version of his story—had spilled out onto the pages. "It needs work, but what I have so far will knock Penny's socks off."

"It better, since she's about to have a coronary."

"She's too young to have a coronary."

"She's an editor," Hugh said. "They age quickly."

"True."

"She's also not the only woman looking for you."

"Oh?" Scott went still.

"Does the name Allison St. Claire ring any bells?"

He leaned forward, bracing himself against a wild rush of hope. "What does she want?"

"Not much. Your head on a platter. Your skin nailed to the wall. And the diaries she says you stole."

"The diaries?" His mind raced. Could he have accidentally tossed Marguerite's diaries into the car the day he left the inn? He'd unpacked his clothes and most of his books, but not all of them, so it was possible.

"You should also warn me," Hugh said, "the next time you piss someone off that badly. Here I innocently call down there looking for you, and sweet little Allison, the epitome of Texas friendly, nearly flames me to a crisp. What possessed you to steal the woman's diaries?"

"It's a long story."

"Well, I trust you'll take care of it, so she'll quit calling here leaving messages for you."

"What messages?" Hope stirred again, the sadistic beast.

"That she wants her diaries back."

"That's it? That's all she says?"

"I'm afraid it would offend my gentlemanly sensibilities to repeat the rest"

"Yeah, right." Scott snorted. Hugh had the sensibilities of a sailor and they both knew it.

When they finished their conversation, Scott went straight upstairs to the bedroom he was using. The place was a wreck with the bed unmade, clothes on the floor, books and papers stacked everywhere. He wondered why he hadn't noticed before. On a shelf over the desk, he spied the book bag Allison had given him and let out a curse. He knew what had happened. The last research books he'd ordered were ones he hadn't needed after all, so he'd forgotten about them.

Pulling the bag down, he opened it and groaned. Sure enough, there were Marguerite's diaries. He sank to the chair and debated what to do. The quickest solution would be to call the taxi company and have one of the drivers deliver the volumes safely back into Allison's hands. Yet the more he stared at them, the more the secrets within the pages whispered seductively to him.

How accurately had he portrayed Marguerite and Jack?

What had his distant uncle, Henri LeRoche, really been like?

And—far more important—if he could understand Allison's anger toward his family, could he find a way around it?

Unable to resist, he thumbed through the volumes until he had them stacked in chronological order. Then he climbed into bed with his back against the headboard, his glass of wine on the nightstand, and began to read. He skimmed through the first few volumes, since the ramblings of an adolescent girl held little interest. Although some of the historical insights about New Orleans in the early 1800s piqued his interest, especially once Marguerite took to the stage. Her wealth grew apace with her fame, and—much to her amusement—men fell at her feet in droves. With no intention of becoming a rich man's mistress, she turned them all away, until Henri came into her life.

Scott's focus instantly sharpened as he read through weeks' worth of entries, detailing Henri's relentless campaign to prove his love was real, that it had nothing to do with her stage persona or the stories of her birth.
What a total bastard
, Scott thought, long before Marguerite realized the same. He wanted to shake the woman for not seeing the truth right from the start, but reminded himself she was still quite young at that point in her life and remarkably innocent for someone who had been raised by a prostitute. Not innocent in knowledge, but in nature. She found humor and happiness in everything around her. His heart ached knowing the painful lessons she was about to learn.

By the time Jack Kingsley was first mentioned, Henri had nearly succeeded in obliterating that innocent spirit God, the things Marguerite had endured! Scott's stomach rolled with anger. No wonder Nicole hadn't fought harder to prove her legitimacy after the man's death. She'd probably thought: "Fine, he doesn't want to claim me, I don't want to claim him, either."

Scott could certainly understand that since he'd basically done the same thing.

The more he read about Jack, though, the more the hair on his arms stood on end. The man who unfolded to him through Marguerite's words bore more than a passing similarity to his imaginary Jack. Never in his life could he remember anyone telling him that Jack Kingsley had an illegitimate son by a barmaid. Even so, he'd put it in his book, claiming one of his characters was a descendant of Jack's. And here it was. In Marguerite's diary. Jack had had a son. By a barmaid.

Though Jack never married the mother, and clearly had little liking for the woman, his son had meant the world to him. Since Nicole was about the same age, Jack and Marguerite talked of their children often. Other things, too, jumped off the page. Like the fact that Kingsley hated talking about himself, rarely giving Marguerite any facts about his past.

His reluctance had caused Marguerite to doubt his love, but Scott could understand it all too well. Couldn't she see he was ashamed of his past and felt unworthy of her? The man might have been a blockade runner, willing to face Union gunboats, but he was a coward when it came to love.
How could she not see that!

Exasperated with Marguerite's lack of perception and her inability to trust her own judgment, much less trust Jack, Scott tossed the diaries aside, determined to get some sleep since it was the middle of the night by then. Two people that stupid deserved to die apart rather than grow old together. Idiots. Total idiots. He lay awake and fumed for nearly an hour before he turned the bedside lamp back on and continued to read.

By the time color stained the eastern horizon, he felt weighed down by sorrow. Marguerite and Jack had been so close to overcoming all the obstacles that lay between them, but had let their chance at happiness slip through their fingers.

Gazing out the window, he turned the whole story over in his mind, wondering what had happened after the diaries ended. He knew Henri had concocted a story for the authorities to explain the incident: Marguerite had tripped and fallen down the stairs while trying to run away with her lover, who happened to be a Union spy.
Lying bastard.

Nicole had probably known the truth but either hadn't told anyone, or no one would listen. She'd gone on to achieve wealth and fame on her own, but had died a destitute divorcee in the cottage her father had built to banish her from Pearl Island.

But what had happened to Jack's son?

Acting on a hunch, Scott called Paige at the tour boat office and asked her again for the name and number of the woman in Corpus Christi, the one whose father had been so enamored of Jack Kingsley's story.

~ ~ ~

The champagne cork popped toward the ceiling amid a chorus of cheers. "Gather round, folks," Chance called.

Allison joined the others—Rory, Adrian, Bobby, and Paige—around the kitchen island in the basement apartment. She still couldn't believe the whole sordid business with John LeRoche had ended so abruptly. They'd all been braced to go to court and endure months of suits and countersuits. But that morning, Chance's attorney called to say John wanted to settle in their favor. By afternoon, they'd agreed to an amount so huge it left all of them staggered.