Lone Tree (34 page)

Her gaze fell on the five-by-seven frame next to the
intercom and her picture in it, a copy of the one he’d given her for Christmas.
She’d noticed it, but he hadn’t mentioned it so neither had she. She was
touched he’d put a picture of her on his desk. That had made her think they’d
be okay. He still wasn’t going to like her deception, but they should be able
to work it out.

She reached for the intercom to try again, and it
buzzed at the same instant. Her hand jerked at the sound and she knocked the
frame over. When she pressed the button to answer, he didn’t give her a chance
to speak.

“What is it?” he said crossly.

“It’s Lainie. Something came up. Need you now.” She
cut off, not giving him a chance to tell her no. The unit buzzed back
immediately, but she ignored it.

She picked up the frame—and wouldn’t you know it,
the glass was broken. Fine way to start a dicey conversation with someone who
was already ticked off at being disturbed. She removed the backing, carefully
withdrew the photograph so it wouldn’t be damaged by the broken glass, but it
was a different photo she pulled out. Not surprising to find one picture behind
another, except...

“What?” she whispered, gaze fixed on the photograph
that had been concealed in the frame. The girl was fourteen, wore a sleeveless
blue jersey, and she held a baseball bat poised over her right shoulder. Her
hair was brown and was pulled up high in a ponytail. In about a month, her
father would finally give in, and the teenager would have her hair cut into a
stylish bob with bangs. Two years later, her mother would give in and she’d
have it highlighted. And both the color and style would last her into
adulthood.

Lainie stared at the picture. It seemed like the
room turned into a vacuum, stealing her breath and wits.

“Well, what is it?” The irascibility in Miles’s
voice made her head snap up. He was disheveled, as if he’d dressed in a hurry.
“Don’t appreciate being summoned to my own office at any and all hours. Now
what’s so all-fired important?” He stalked into the room then pulled up short
halfway across, as if just realizing she stood behind his desk.

“What are you doing?” he asked, angry suspicion
mixing with his impatience.

She still held the frame with the cracked glass in
one hand, with the picture of herself atop Glory exposed, and the softball
photo in her other hand. She put the picture frame on the desk, feeling like
she was moving in slow motion, and held the softball picture in both hands and
stared at it.

“This was taken by a professional photographer,” she
said, not responding to his question or the demand in it. It sounded to her own
ears like her voice came from a distance. “I remember him going around, snapping
shots, and then he got a couple posed ones of each of us. It was the only year
I played. I wasn’t very good.” She grew quiet, still staring at the picture,
then added, “It’s not the one my folks chose. We got the one with my cap on,
the ponytail sticking out the back. They said that was the one that looked like
me, ’cause I was never bareheaded when I was playing.”

She looked up, a sense of betrayal overtaking the
dazed feeling.

“The cap shadowed your face,” Miles said, voice and
features lacking expression. “I wanted to see what you looked like.”

“You wanted to see what I looked like,” she echoed.
“You saw all of them?”

He nodded. At the back of her mind, she was aware of
the change in his attitude since he’d entered. Now he appeared circumspect, watching
her cautiously as if not knowing which way she’d blow. She didn’t know either.
She felt like an accident victim too shaken to feel anything yet.

“But she said you didn’t even know I was born,” she
murmured, her mind working at a snail’s pace as she tried putting it together.
She looked at the fireplace and the portraits. “You guessed. You saw the
resemblance, started checking...” Her gaze lowered again to the picture in her
hand. “But this is more than ten years old.”

She looked up, searched for answers in his face.
“How did you—”

Suddenly she jerked her head toward the file
cabinets, attention zeroing in on the top left drawer. The one she’d found
empty. Her gaze shot back to him. “Reports. You hired detectives, got routine
reports.”

“That I did.” He didn’t sound proud or defensive,
was just stating facts. Then he added, “People shouldn’t snoop where they don’t
belong. Might come across stuff that bothers them some.”

He was taking offense at the fact she’d discovered
the picture instead of explaining how he had it? She shook her head, trying to
clear it, trying to make sense out of the whole thing. “Hey, wait a minute,
you’re scolding me? You’re the one who—”

“Who what, Lainie Sue? Who played host to his
granddaughter, who didn’t even bother telling him who she was?”

“I tried. You wouldn’t listen. Remember?”

“Tried real hard, didn’t you. And took your sweet
time getting to it in the first place.”

She scrunched her eyes closed, and again she shook
her head. “Hold on here. Where’s this going? What...”

He strode to the desk, took the photograph from her
and looked down at it. “Should’ve known better than to bring this out again,”
he murmured. “Everybody had just figured it was a picture of my daughter. I put
it in the drawer right after Rosalie brought in your resume—your name blaring
across the top of it—then took it to my room and nobody ever caught on.”

She rubbed her forehead. It was getting away from
her—what she’d come to tell him, what he should be telling her. “You knew. Even
then you—”

One hand sliced sideways, cutting off her words, and
then he slapped the picture down on the desk. “ ’Course I did.” His eyes turned
accusing, as if he was recalling the interview and not liking the memory. “You
were a good little actress. I can say that much for you. But when my
granddaughter crossed this room and shook my hand, I knew exactly who she was.
Don’t you doubt that for a minute.”

Involuntarily, she took a step back. Clearly he
thought the best defense was offense, and she didn’t want to let him get away
with that, but her thoughts weren’t clear enough and coming fast enough to
counter him. Lifting her shoulders, she raised her hands, palms up in a
questioning gesture. “Then why didn’t you just say so?”

“Why didn’t you?”

Because she hadn’t known what kind of person he was
and hadn’t trusted him. And she knew now that the same distrust and reasoning
had been on the other side of the desk.

“You waited till your mother died, then came to see
me,” he went on, angry speculation right up front. “Wondered what you wanted
then, and still wondering now.”

She glanced again at the portraits above the
fireplace. “Then you must’ve known when she got sick.” It was more a statement
than a question. She was still working it out, piecing it together.

He also looked at the portraits, and he took so long
to answer she thought he wasn’t going to. Then he said, voice wooden, “Yes, I
knew.”

“But you didn’t...how could you not...” She lifted
her hands, as if pleading, but he didn’t look at her. After a long moment, she
dropped her hands and felt herself closing off from him. “You’re that
cold-hearted?”

“Don’t judge me.” His voice held warning as he
turned back to her.

She remembered her mother fighting the pain those
last weeks, the unbelievably rapid loss of strength, the despair in her eyes.
Then she thought of this man, sitting here in his office, knowing and yet
keeping his distance. “You bastard,” she said under her breath.

He jerked as if she’d slapped him. “I don’t allow
language like that in my home. And, just to keep the record straight, my
parents were married. It was yours who weren’t.”

She drew in an unsteady breath.

“You didn’t know that, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.” Her body tightened up like a coiled
spring. “How kind of you to enlighten me. And now that we’re speaking so
plainly,” she went on, tone as cold as ice water. “Is there anything else you’d
like to tell me?”

He gave her back stare for stare. “Long as you think
you can handle it. She ever tell you about your father? Not Walter, your real
father.”

“Walter was my real father. If you’re talking about
my biological father, she told me he died before I was born.”

“Not before you were born, Lainie Sue. He didn’t die
till you were a year old. Murdered. Shot in a drug deal gone bad in Florida.
Doubt your mother ever knew that. Or even that she would’ve cared much by then.
She’d learned, but not fast enough, who and what he was.”

It seemed that his words carried weight; Lainie felt
like she was being buried with them.

“Had him traced, too,” he went on, biting the words
off as if the anger was still with him. “But he took longer to find. Crossed my
mind more than once I’d like to kill him with my bare hands. But somebody else beat
me to it.”

Feeling an almost desperate need to put distance
between herself and her grandfather, she rounded his desk and walked to her
own, aware of his hard gaze following her. Once there, because she felt both
weak and numb, she sat down. “You must’ve hired detectives as soon as she left,”
she said. She squinted at the desktop, still working on piecing it together—the
situation then and now.

“I had to. I knew what he was, even though she
wouldn’t listen. He wanted a rich wife and the life of ease that went with her.
When he found out that wasn’t what he was getting, he left her flat. Three states
away, pregnant and unmarried, and he left her to fend for herself.”

“And you let—”

“I didn’t
let
anything. That was his doing,
and hers. I didn’t even know where she was for four months. By then she’d found
a job, as a clerk in a cheap little company, but at least she was supporting
herself.” He paused. “And you were born a month later. I hadn’t known she was
pregnant when she left.”

“Is it surprising she didn’t share that with you?”

He studied her. Clearly he’d built up a lot of
resentment of his own. “Still trying to judge me, little girl? How would you
know anything of that situation and the people?”

He had her there. She knew nothing of that time, of
the people and events. Still, what she did know filled her with disgust. “So
you sat here, all those years, all that time, monitoring our lives? How exactly
did that make you feel?”

“Not good, Lainie, if that’s what you’re after. But
I needed to know...how your mother was faring. What was happening with her. I
couldn’t just write her off.”

“Evidently, you did just that.”

“You’re passing judgment again, on something you
know nothing about.”

“Then enlighten me, damn you!”

“Careful,” he warned, eyes narrowing. He didn’t like
bad language; she’d always known, but that hadn’t been a problem because she didn’t
use it. It occurred to her now that this was a weapon she could use against
him.

“Be careful of what,” she said, spacing her words,
“you—”

“Lainie.”

She put her face in her hands, rubbed her forehead
with the fingers of both hands. “Okay, okay,” she said. They were going nowhere
fast. Slowly, giving herself time to put her thoughts together, she trailed her
hands down her face, then looked up. “When I tried to talk to you, why didn’t
you just let me go ahead and tell you then? Wipe the slate clean. For both of
us.”

Instead of answering, he looked at the French doors
that led outside. So did she. She felt the urge to go open them, breathe the
cool night air. The air in the room felt heavy, oppressive. She looked back at
her grandfather. “Why?” she asked again. “Why did you put me off, not let me
talk?”

“I wanted you married to Reed first,” he said
quietly, still not looking at her. “Then we’d talk.”

She squinted, thinking she must’ve misheard. “What?”

He spun to face her and then hurled the words at
her. “I wanted you settled and married! So we wouldn’t get bogged down in this
same confounded mud puddle we’re stuck in right now!”

“Married?” she asked, as if flinching from attack.
“But how did you know? Reed just—”

Contrary to when this discussion had started, her
mind was working rapidly now. Suspicion and betrayal stung her eyes, cut her
words off, and took the sentiment right out of Reed’s proposal. She felt
herself breaking inside.

“Reed knew?” she whispered. She didn’t look at
Miles, fearing the answer she’d find in his face. She’d been so full of guilt,
felt so undeserving of Reed’s love and her grandfather’s acceptance. Yet all
the while she was being manipulated. By both of them. Reed hadn’t known what
the tie was, but she knew he’d guessed there was one. What else had he guessed,
and when? Who had approached whom?

“So you planned this together. To get me...” She
stopped, tried to remember Miles’s phrasing. “Settled,” she said precisely. Her
gaze fixed on the patio doors. She felt the same dark void inside herself that
she saw outside. “Get me married and settled. So I’d be tied to the ranch. To
him. And to you.”