Rivals (51 page)

“It's always business with you, isn't it?” Malcom murmured, realizing that very little about their relationship had changed.

For an instant, she went absolutely still. Then she turned, all the stiffness flowing from her. “No, not always.” A smile played with the corners of her mouth. With a supple lift of her arms, she draped them around his neck and let a finger play with a strand of dark hair at his nape. “I distinctly remember numerous occasions when business was the farthest thing from my mind. Don't you?” Lightly she brushed her lips across his, then brought them back, letting the tip of her tongue moistly trace their unyielding line.

For an instant, he resisted, then he pulled her roughly against him and crushed her lips in a hard kiss, hoping this time to block the sensation that there was someone else with them.

37

E
verything
in the latest status report indicated that his Tahoe project was progressing well ahead of schedule, but Chance could find little satisfaction in the figures and construction projections. They didn't fill the empty places in his body and his spirit, the wild and lonely ones that bred his restlessness and short temper. He felt the stir of memories and firmed his jaw against it. She wasn't coming back to him. He'd accepted that—just as he'd accepted that the rest of the days would have an emptiness, haunted by the memory of the time he'd had with Flame. It was something he couldn't change. He had no choice but to live with his bitter regrets.

Without warning, the door to his office opened. Chance looked up from the report, made irritable by the intrusion. “Dammit, Molly,” But it wasn't Molly who posed briefly within the frame, then boldly entered the room. “Lucianna.” He stood up, rankled by her unannounced arrival and showing it. “What are you doing here?”

“That's no welcome, Chance,” she chided. She was dramatically clad in a leopard print cashmere coat trimmed at the collar, sleeves, and hem in fox with a matching fur toque covering the black of her hair. Casually, she deposited her purse on a chair and came around his desk. “You should say: ‘Lucianna, darling, what a wonderful surprise to see you here.'”

When he failed to kiss her, she slowly withdrew her hands, skillfully covering whatever rejection she might have felt with a proudly indifferent expression. “I've come to take you to lunch. And don't tell me you're too busy. I've already checked with your dragon lady and you have no appointments for the next two hours. As a matter of fact—” A knowing smile curved her wide mouth. “—your schedule is relatively free for the next four days—no trips, no important meetings, nothing. Which will take us right into the weekend, maybe beyond.”

“I thought you were supposed to be in Europe this month.”

“I was,” she admitted, almost too casually, and turned away from him to stroll to the window. “But there is a small problem with my throat. The doctor has told me I must give my voice a complete rest for three months—and I told him I would cancel all engagements for
one
month only.”

Catching the hint of fear in her voice, Chance relented. “Three months,” he said. “They'd have to put you in a straitjacket and tape your mouth shut, wouldn't they?”

She swung back to him, her dark eyes turning soft at his understanding. “That's what I told him,” she said, then lifted her hands in an empty, helpless gesture. “But here I am with an entire month. And I said to myself—who better to spend it with than you? It will be like old times, won't it?”

He looked at her, recalling the high passion that had once filled their days together, and recalling, too, the loneliness of his life now—and how grim that loneliness was. “Maybe it will,” he conceded, then smiled faintly. “In any case, you're welcome to stay.”

Not pressing the point, Lucianna drew back, her expression confident and warm. “Where are you going to take me for lunch?”

“As I recall, you were taking me.”

“In that case—” She walked over and hooked her arm with his. “—I'll have to find some place
very
cosy and
very
quiet.”

As she started to draw him away, Sam barged into the office. “Chance, I—” He stopped short, frowning in surprise at the woman on Chance's arm. “Lucianna. What are you doing here?”

She sighed in mock exasperation. “The welcomes I receive here leave a great deal to be desired. I expected better from you, Sam.”

“I'm sorry, I—” A look of chagrin briefly raced across his expression, only to be replaced by the troubled frown he'd worn when he came in, his attention swinging once again to Chance. “Fred Garver just called me and wanted to know what was going on. His friend Zorinsky, with the Corps, claims there's another set of plans for the dam being circulated in his department.”

“That's impossible.” Chance automatically dismissed it. “Somebody probably saw a similarity in place names and confused the two.”

Sam nodded, “That's what I said. Fred did, too, but Zorinsky swears it isn't the case—that he triple-checked to be sure before he called Fred. The plans call for a dam to be built on Morgan's Walk, but this dam is located almost a mile north of our site. The house and most of the valley won't be flooded.”

“What?” Chance frowned, suddenly wary, his skepticism fading as he unconsciously slipped free from Lucianna's hold. “Where did these plans originate? Did Fred find that out?”

“They were done by an engineering firm called Thurgood. Fred's pretty sure it's a West Coast company. That has to mean Flame's behind it.” He paused, then went on with rising energy. “A lot of things are starting to make sense, Chance—like some of the comments that filtered back to us from the ranch hands we hired away from Morgan's Walk. Remember they said some men had been there taking soil samples? At the time I shrugged it off, figuring she'd contacted some oil and gas companies and arranged to have their geologists come out to see if there was the potential for any oil or gas on the property, but obviously—”

“—they were doing test borings for the dam.” Chance finished the sentence for him.

“Exactly.” Sam punched the air with his finger, emphasizing the point. “And something else is adding up, too. Fred said that with the dam moved up the river, more of the land to the northwest will be flooded. Remember the rumors we've been hearing about a lot of real estate activity going on there? Somebody's buying up—or trying to buy up—that hill land. And we thought somebody had gotten wind of our development and was doing some speculating. We also said almost the same thing when we heard those rumors about a big resort development going in somewhere in the Midwest. We thought they were talking about
our
project. But I'll bet you anything she's got something in the works along the same line.”

“There's a problem with that theory, Sam,” Chance said. “She hasn't got the money to do it. We've seen her financial statement. Excluding Morgan's Walk and her apartment in San Francisco, she has a personal net worth of only about twenty thousand dollars that she can get her hands on readily. She might have used some of the proceeds from Hattie's life insurance to have the plans drawn up for the dam, but, Sam, she hasn't been able to raise the money yet to pay our mortgage demand. So where is she going to get the money to buy all this property?”

“From Malcom Powell.” Lucianna sat in the chair next to Chance's desk, holding her compact open with one hand and applying a fresh coat of lipstick to her already red lips with the other, her purse lying open on her lap. Briefly she met the glance he shot her. “He's the logical choice, darling, since the two of them are in the midst of a torrid affair.”

“That rumor was thick when I met her,” he replied impatiently. “Their relationship is purely business. She handles his advertising account with the agency, and that's all.”

“It may have been all
then
.” Lucianna shrugged with feigned idleness and recapped the tube of lipstick. “But it's a fact now. Oscar told me they've been seen together almost constantly.”

“I told you she handles the account for his stores,” he snapped. “Naturally she has to meet with him.”

“Naturally.” She smiled at him in a look of mock acceptance. “And I'm sure that's the reason he gave her a key to his apartment in town—so they could have private business conferences in the bedroom instead of the boardroom.”

“I don't believe you,” he murmured coldly.

“About the key or the fact that they're lovers? They are, you know. But you don't have to take my word for it.” She returned the compact and lipstick to her purse and closed it with a definite click of the clasp. “Call Jacqui Van Cleeve—or read her columns these past few weeks. That woman doesn't print anything that isn't the absolute truth. And believe me, she has a network of spies that are the envy of the KGB.”

He looked at her for a long, challenging moment, demanding that she admit she was wrong—that she had exaggerated. She looked back at him, in her dark eyes a sadness, a hint of pity, and regret that she'd been the one to tell him. Then it hit him. She was telling the truth. A hot swell of jealousy ripped through him. He turned from both of them, his hands doubled into tight fists, wanting to strike out at something, anything—but there was nothing, just a hard pressure squeezing at his heart.

“Chance, I—” Sam began tentatively.

Chance stiffened, then turned slowly. “Call Fred back, will you? Tell him if he can't get a copy of those plans, I want him to draw his best guess of the new lake's location. And I want it now,” he ordered, conscious of the flatness, the deadness, in his voice.

“Right.” Sam nodded, backing toward the door.

He pushed the intercom button. “Molly, will you come in here?”

From her chair, Lucianna murmured, “I have the strange feeling our lunch has been canceled.”

He ignored that as Molly entered. “Get hold of Kelby Grant. Tell him to get over here. I have some land I want him to buy for me—yesterday,” he said grimly.

“Yes, sir.”

“And Sam,” Chance called him back before he got to the door. “Tell Fred I want a finished set of drawings on our dam site as fast as he can get them done for me. And I want the Corps' stamp of approval on them the day after—and I don't care how he gets that done.”

“But he can't complete the plans without doing test work on the site itself,” Sam protested.

“Tell him to get a crew out there and get it done.”

“But we don't own the land.” He looked at Chance as if he'd taken leave of his senses.

“Haven't you ever heard of trespassing, Sam?” he replied tiredly. “As soon as you get Fred lined out, call Matt Sawyer. Tell him I want everything he can get me on Malcom Powell.”

“Will do.”

Molly was on Sam's heels when he exited the office. “Sam, what's all this about? What happened?” In the briefest of terms, he explained it to her. When he'd finished, Molly looked properly outraged. “What does she know about building a development? Malcom Powell's money or not, she'll never succeed.”

“I don't know about that, Molly. From everything I've read about Malcom Powell, he could match Chance dollar for dollar. If that isn't bad enough, it's old money. Chance doesn't have the phone numbers of half the people Malcom Powell calls by their first name. With him backing Flame, this is going to turn into one helluva war. And Morgan's Walk is going to be the battleground for it.”

“She's got to be stopped.”

“How?” he asked, and shook his head over the lack of an answer.

“Well, someone has to try,” she insisted.

“I know.” A troubled sigh broke from him. “I can't help feeling this is all my fault, Molly. If I hadn't let Chance down—if I'd kept a closer watch on Hattie, we would have found out about Flame right from the start. Then maybe none of this would have happened.”

“Wishing won't change the past,” Molly replied curtly. “So don't waste valuable time dwelling on it. Concentrate instead on finding a way to stop her. Which reminds me—” She turned to her desk. “There was a note in today's mail from Maxine. The new duchess of Morgan's Walk will be arriving on Thursday—with two guests. It will be interesting to find out who they are.”

38

E
xhilarated
from the brisk gallop back to the barns, Flame walked back to the imposing brick manor house of Morgan's Walk with her arm around Malcom's waist and the weight of his resting possessively around her shoulders, a quickness and a lightness to her steps that matched her new mood. As they approached the front door, she drew apart from him and waited, allowing him to open the door for her, then swept into the entrance hall. There she stopped and turned back to him, pulling off her riding gloves as he closed the door behind them.

“What a marvelous ride,” she declared, leaning into Malcom when he returned to her side, curving his arm to the back of her waist and asserting his claim on her once more. “How about a drink to top it off?”

He shook his head. “I think I'll shower and change instead. Why don't you join me?”

“Not this minute, but I'll be up directly,” she promised. “I want to check with Maxine and see if there were any calls, then find out what Ellery's doing.”

Ellery called from the parlor, “Do I hear my name being bandied about?” Flame pressed a quick kiss on Malcom's cheek in parting, then moved to join Ellery in the parlor. “I see the Lone Rangeress and her powerful companion have returned. Hi Ho Silver and all that,” Ellery observed dryly, lounging with his usual ease on the sofa in front of the fireplace.

“And it was wonderful, too,” she stated, ignoring his jesting remark. “There was a blush of green over the whole countryside. I had the feeling that any moment every tree and bush was going to burst into leaf. We rode up to the dam site and I showed Malcom where the lake will be.” She walked over to the drink cart and poured some tonic water in a glass, adding some ice cubes from the insulated bucket. “You should have come with us.”