The Billionaire’s Valiant Rescue (14 page)

It was hard to imagine. I stared down at my hands, and held them up for closer scrutiny. I’d figured I was employed in some menial job, but a painter?

The notion buoyed me, and filled me with a feeling of exhilaration. Suddenly my mind’s eye filled with colors and shapes, each one more outrageous and uplifting than the next. I couldn’t wait to see my studio and experience my art firsthand. “Am I any good?”

Dad gave me a critical look. “Your mother seems to think so. Me? I’m... not much of an art critic, honey. I simply wouldn’t know.”

“But I like it, right? I like my life?”

His eyebrows rose, and he seemed resigned. “I guess you do. Except for the strange company you sometimes keep. Those bohemians do have a habit of getting on your nerves sometimes. Or so you led us to believe before you took off on your holiday.”

I suddenly was reminded of something. “Dad?”

“Mh?”

“Do I have… a boyfriend?”

He laughed at this, the first time I’d heard him laugh since I’d stepped into the car. “Honey, you have lots and lots of boyfriends, one even crazier than the next.”

“But... no one special?”

He frowned. “Well, that’s more your mother’s department I’m afraid. If I can keep track of this constant stream of young men it’s only because she is adamant about keeping me in the loop.” He frowned again. “I do seem to remember her mentioning some guy called Benjamin. Or was it... Olivier?” He shook his head, the effort of recalling the exact details of my love life clearly beyond him. “Ask your mother. She’ll know.”

I studied him for a moment, the memories all tumbling into my head and snapping into place.

“Dad?”

“Yes, honey?”

“I’m glad to be home.”

His lips curled up into a smile that spread to his eyes, and when he returned my gaze, he was the father I’d just remembered. The man who had taken me to ballet class in spite of his insistence I should go to math class instead. The father who’d dandled me on his knee even when business associates had demanded an emergency meeting one late night, and I couldn’t sleep because my tummy hurt.

He was the father I remembered from bedtime stories read and impromptu soccer games played, from movies watched in one of Paris’s oldest cinemas to a waltz he’d taught me by placing my little feet on his big ones and carrying me around the living room to the sound of...

Suddenly, I remembered where I’d heard the violin concerto before. It was one of my father’s favorites. Over and over again, he’d play it, taking me around the room with him, as we whirled to the divine strands expertly wrought by Francine Bruniau on her Stradivarius.

A thought formed in my mind. The thought that perhaps the animosity between Jack’s dad and mine had deeper roots.

I decided not to ask him. The mere mention of the name Carter seemed to turn him into a raging tiger.

“And... we’re home,” spoke my father with a happy sigh. I immediately recognized the white facade of the three-story house, with its porticoed porch and lacquered burgundy door complete with brass knocker.

As I turned to look, the door swung open, and my mother came rushing out of the house and at the sight of her, my heart soared.

Home. I was finally home.

“Don’t go there, son. Don’t even think about it.”

Jack looked up at the vehemence with which his father spoke these words, and decided to thrash this thing out once and for all.

“Look, Dad. This thing between you and Franklin Travers? It has nothing to do with me or Gracie.”

“It does. More than you know.”

“No, it doesn’t. I love her, Dad. I want her to be my wife, and no silly business dispute will come in the way of that, so—”

“Silly business dispute? Is that all you think this is?”

Jack’s dad looked incredulous, and if Jack hadn’t seen his face as he spoke the words, he’d have dismissed them out of hand. As it was, his old man looked positively shocked at the prospect of becoming Gracie Travers’s father-in-law.

They were seated in the back garden of the Carter family home, a place Jack and his brother rarely visited these days. When Mom had still been alive, they used to spend every holiday at home, even when he and Frank had flown the nest for their own respective bachelor pads. And even when Frank settled down and got married to the love of his life, the whole family still trooped together any opportunity they had, such was the centrifugal force of his mother’s magic pull.

The moment she had passed away, their family had pretty much fallen apart, his father burying himself in his work, while his brother was more and more sucked into his wife’s family’s orbit and started to neglect his own.

Not that Jack minded. He spent most of his time in Brussels, and partied his way through the weekends. The years passed, and now for the first time, he noticed how fine a job Dad had done with the house. The garden looked just as neat and well-tended to as when Mom had still been there to lend it her magic touch, and even the house was in ship-shape condition.

“Tell me the whole story, Dad. I have a feeling you’ve neglected some crucial part.”

They both stared out across the garden from their perch on the bench. It lay at the end of a narrow cobbled path leading from the back porch to a small fountain. This had always been Mom’s favorite spot, and even when she was sick and her health had rendered it impossible to walk around on her own accord, Dad had wheeled her chair out here so she could soak up the rays and enjoy the sheer beauty of this magic spot. Her healing garden, she called it.

“Look, son. I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t go spreading this far and wide, all right?” He fixed him with a scrutinizing gaze.

“I won’t, Dad. Whatever you tell me stays between us.”

“Not even to your brother—correction,
especially
not to your brother.”

He was growing more and more intrigued by the secret of his father’s dealings with Franklin Travers, but he held his tongue and merely nodded his agreement with these terms.

Dad sighed, and seemed to slump a little. “This all happened a long time ago, and if I hadn’t been sworn to secrecy by your mother, I might have told you about it sooner. As it is, recent events seem to have caught up with me, so here goes...” He licked his lips, and searched around for his drink. Before coming out here, he’d poured himself a generous libation of Scotch, which seemed to help him tell his mysterious tale.

“I wasn’t your mother’s first love, though she certainly was mine. The first time I laid eyes on her, was at a concert organized by the University. We were a rowdy bunch, me and my frat mates, and a violin concerto wasn’t exactly our idea of a good time, but Franklin insisted we go. He paid for the tickets, and only when he promised also to pay for the drinks, did we finally take him up on his offer.

“You see, Franklin had met a girl, and had fallen head over heels in love with her. He’d even managed to catch her eye by showing up unannounced in her dressing room before a concert, and offer her a dozen red roses as a token of his growing infatuation.

“And now he wanted his cronies to meet this wondrous woman, and give their honest opinion as to how to proceed and win her heart. Little did he know he’d already won it, and if he’d only asked, she would surely have said yes. But Franklin, being the fathead that he was, ignored all the signs, and kept his distance, wooing her from afar.”

Dad sighed deeply, and took another swig from his drink. “And then I saw her, and I felt the earth shift beneath my feet. It wasn’t hard to fall for your mother, Jack. You know what a wonderful woman she was. Only hitch was, Franklin had met her first, and was on the verge of laying his heart at her feet.” He swallowed, his gaze fixated on some point in the garden, his mind far away in the distant past.

“I knew I had to move fast, or my chance would forever be lost, so without telling Franklin, I used the intermission to sneak backstage, and pay an uninvited call on Francine myself. She wasn’t surprised. Young men had been running down her door ever since she’d started performing on the stage. But instead of taking things slow, like most of her suitors had done, I decided to use a more forceful approach, knowing full well that time was of the essence.”

“What did you do?” Jack couldn’t deny he was amused by the story. His father? The arduous lover? It was hard to imagine.

“I simply walked up to her, and said that I was deeply in love with her, that she was the most beautiful woman I’d laid eyes upon, and if she didn’t agree to go out with me, I’d devote my life to God from that day onward and join a monastery.”

“You told her that? You cheeky bastard, you.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” He grinned at the recollection.

“And? Did it work?”

“Actually, no. It kinda backfired on me. She was amused, to say the least, but then told me she was engaged to be married to another man, and didn’t want to deny the church the opportunity of welcoming a fine admission to its roster.” He looked up. “In other words, Franklin hadn’t been entirely honest with us either. He’d secretly proposed to the girl, and she’d accepted.”

Jack whistled through his teeth. “The plot thickens.”

“Wait till you hear the rest.”

“The suspense is killing me, Dad. Get on with it, will you.”

“I knew you’d find it interesting.” He searched around again.

“What are you looking for?”

“My smokes. Have you seen them?”

“I thought you quit?”

“I did. But this whole Travers business made me start again.”

He lighted up one of the cigarillos he favored, and drew in a long, eager puff of the rich aroma.

“Right. Where was I?”

“Mom was joining Franklin Travers in matrimony and you a monastery.”

“Right, right.” A smile lit up his face. “What Franklin didn’t know was that I still had a few cards up my sleeve. You see, Franklin had one vice. He was always an avid gambler. The cards, the ponies, soccer, you name it, and he was in on it. Only thing was, I knew from usually reliable sources that your mother hated gamblers, her own father having been one and practically ruining her childhood by losing half his paycheck as a rule. Or more.”

“Reliable sources?”

“Your grandmother Belle. I’d made sure to pay her a call before I resumed my addresses. Francine’s father had passed away by then, and the two women were very close. Belle took an instant liking to me the same way she’d taken a dislike to Franklin, partly because of the gambling, partly because she didn’t like his face for some reason.

“Anyway. Belle made sure her daughter learned all about Franklin’s gambling habit, and even told her how much money Franklin lost, something of which I kept her informed, down to the last
centime
.”

“You cheeky bastard.”

“All’s fair in love and war, my boy.”

“And did it work?”

“Not at first. The affection Francine felt for Franklin ran deeper than I’d anticipated, and even though I’d taken up the habit of visiting her at home, under the guise of being a friend of her mother, she refused to break off the engagement, much to my sorrow, for by then I was hopefully in love with her myself.”

“What did it take to change her mind? For I assume that she did change her mind, otherwise neither me or Frank would be here, right?”

Dad cast down his eyes. “She didn’t. She married Franklin Travers and broke my heart doing so. And it was only when Franklin got drunk one night and took his belt to her, that she showed up on my doorstep, weeping and bleeding, that I finally came into the picture again.”

“What was worse, she was pregnant by then, and the beating she took, or more specifically the emotional turmoil of seeing the man she loved turn into an animal, took its toll on her. She almost lost the baby that night, and only through the intervention of our family physician, did she manage to come through the ordeal relatively unscathed.”

Jack sat listening with rapt attention, the shock and horror of this sudden twist in the story of his parents holding him in its grip.

“I-I never knew about all this.”

His dad smiled weakly. “We made sure you didn’t. Francine insisted we never discuss that night ever again.”

“But what happened? Did she go back to Travers?”

Dad shook his gray head. “She’d seen his real face, and even though he vowed never to touch another drop of alcohol ever again, she refused to have anything more to do with a man who resembled her own father in more ways than one. I nursed her back to health, and when she finally delivered a healthy baby into this world, I raised it as my own. Of course, we were married by then. And Franklin had kicked me out of the company we’d built together.”

“A... baby. You mean... Frank? He’s not your son?”

A look of defiance came into his father’s eyes. “He
is
my son, Jack. In every way. I raised your brother as my own, and don’t you dare tell me different. Now you see how important it is not to divulge any of this? Your brother would be devastated if he knew the truth.”

Jack stared before him, the truth of his brother’s parentage only now coming home to him. “So... Frank is Gracie’s brother.”

“And so are you, Jack.”

“What!” Dad put a soothing hand on his arm, but he shook it off. “What are you talking about? Frank’s five years older than I am. You and Mom were married by then, right?”

“Gracie is your little sister, Jack. After your mother and I had been together for three years, she wanted to have another child. Frank was growing into a fine boy, and we both wanted to give him a little brother or sister to play with. Unfortunately, I couldn’t offer her a child. We tried and tried, and finally turned to the medical profession for help.”

Dad gave him a look of such desperation it froze the blood in Jack’s veins.

“I couldn’t conceive. Something about my sperm count, the motility, I don’t really remember all the technical stuff.”

He had tears in his eyes, and now it was Jack’s turn to place a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right, Dad. Just tell me... how?”

“I decided not to tell Francine. The thought of denying her a second child broke my heart. Instead, I went to my old friend Franklin Travers, who’d fathered her first child, and asked him to donate...” His voice broke off, and the shock must have shown in Jack’s eyes, because he quickly continued, “I pretended it was my own. The doctor suggested artificial insemination and I simply handed him the sperm sample as my own. Your mother never knew that both her boys were fathered by the same man.”