The Secret of the Villa Mimosa (43 page)

“It was just a normal loving childhood,” Bea said. “I didn’t even realize my father was famous until my teacher in high school told me. I remember being surprised. After all, he was just my dad.”

She fell silent. She took her hand from Nick’s and hugged her knees under her chin. Her eyes were closed, and her face was tight with emotion. “I can’t talk about the rest,” she said in a strangled voice.

Nick put his arms around her and held her, stroking her short, springy hair, waiting for the trembling to stop.

He knew the story. It had been in all the papers. Johnny and Sévérine Jones were on their way to the opening of an exhibition of his latest works at a gallery in Washington when their car had skidded in the rain and gone off the road. It was four hours before the police emergency services had been able to cut them from the wreck. They both were dead.

“I wish I could help,” he said quietly.

“Not even you can bring them back.”

“What did you do? Afterward?” Nick asked.

“I came here for a while, to the farm in Provence. Then I went home again.”

“And?” he prompted.

“I don’t know,” she said. “
I still don’t know what happened at Mitchell’s Ravine.
”

The children came running into the room, their bare feet pattering on the tiles, the dog skittering behind them. They stopped with a jolt, staring at Bea’s tearful face with big, frightened eyes.

“What’s the matter?” Scotty said gruffly, fear catching
in his throat. It couldn’t be happening again, he thought panicked. Bea wasn’t leaving them, was she?

Julie ran to her. She flung her arms around Bea’s neck. “Don’t cry, please don’t cry, Bea,” she wailed, tears spurting from her own eyes. “I’ll do anything, I’ll be good, I’ll tidy my room, I’ll clean up after Poochie. Only please, please don’t cry. I love you, Bea,” she sobbed, all her fears surfacing. “Don’t cry, don’t leave me. I want to stay with you forever….”

Scotty ran to join her, entwining his thin brown arms tightly around Bea’s. The two of them clung like limpets, and Bea managed a smile. “I love you, too,” she whispered. “But now I want to tell you about my own mother and father, about why I’m crying. And why I understand so well what happened to you.”

Holding them close, she whispered the story in their ears, of how her own mother and father had been killed in an automobile accident, just the way their parents had.

“I was grown up, of course,” she said quietly, looking at Nick as she spoke. “I was supposed to be able to cope with grief. But I just couldn’t face seeing anybody. I wanted to be in the place where we had all been so happy together, the home my parents loved best: their farm in Provence, Les Cerisiers. I needed to do my crying alone.”

“We cried, too,” Scotty said, sniffing back his tears. “We cried and cried, Bea, but it didn’t bring them back.”

She ran her hand through his rough hair. “No, darling, crying doesn’t bring them back,” she said. “It’s just our way of saying we loved them and we shall always miss them. Crying is a good thing, Scotty, remember that.”

“It made me feel better,” Julie volunteered, gazing up at Bea. “But I still wanted my mom and dad.”

“Me too, baby,” Bea said, kissing her upturned face. “But now look at us. How lucky we are to have found
each other. Now we are a whole new family. Of course, I know I’ll never take the place of your real mother and father; that’s only right. But now we have each other, and that makes me very happy.”

“Then you won’t cry anymore?” Scotty asked anxiously.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe I will cry now and then. Just as you do,” she added, smiling at him. “But remember, that’s a good thing to do. It makes us feel a bit better, a bit closer to them. One day, as time passes, we shall be able to remember them without crying, we’ll remember all the good things and the happy times we spent with them.”

“How long will it take, Bea?” Julie asked wistfully, wiping a tear away with a grubby finger.

“A little while, baby, a little while. You’ll see, one day you will smile as you remember something your mommy said to you.”

“I can tell you that’s true,” Nick said from the background. He looked at Bea, and she thought his glance was almost as wistful as Scotty’s. She smiled, including him in the new family.

“Whatever would I do without you?” she said.

Still wistful, he shook his head. “I was hoping you would never have to try.”

Scotty darted a quick glance at him, then at Bea. His blue eyes narrowed as he looked shrewdly at them. “Are you two going to get married?” he asked with a grin.

“Oh, yes, yes.” Julie danced over to Nick, her tears blending into a sunny smile. “Please, please, Nick. Then we’ll have a real mommy and daddy again.”

“This is the damnedest proposal of marriage I’ve ever heard,” Nick said, looking intently into Bea’s eyes.

“You mean I should wait for you to go down on your knees?” she said, smiling.

He grinned as Scotty tugged at him. “On your knees, quick,” Scotty said urgently.

Nick knelt, and the two children knelt down next to him.

“Darling Bea French, Marie-Laure Leconte. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” Nick said as humbly as he could manage.

“Oh, please become his wife. Say yes, say yes, yes, yes …” the children chanted.

Bea’s eyes brimmed with love as she looked at them. “How could I possibly say no?” she said.

Julie threw her a worried glance. “Does that mean yes?” she asked suspiciously.

“It means yes,” Bea said.

“With all your heart?” Scotty asked, making sure. “With all my heart.”

“Are we yours forever now?” Julie asked, still anxious.

“Forever.”

“It’s forever, Julie,” Scotty said, solemnly catching her hands in his.

“Forever, Scotty.”

“Yea, yea,” they yelled, suddenly cavorting around the room, turning cartwheels and leapfrogging over chairs as the dog danced madly after them, barking its head off.

“I wasn’t joking,” Nick said seriously, taking her hand.

“Nor was I.”

“I love you, Bea Marie-Laure,” he said, bending to kiss her lips.

“And I love you,” she whispered back.

“They’re kissing, they are kissing … uugggh,” Julie yelled, laughing with joy.

“That’s our new mom and pop,” Scotty yelled back, skidding across the polished floor, heading for the kitchen to tell Jacinta.

32

T
he sky was black and moonless without even the suggestion of a breeze. Phyl sat on the sofa in the beautiful summer room at Brad’s Diamond Head mansion, watching him as he prowled the floor, still talking. It was four in the morning, and she was tired but fascinated by what he was telling her. “
I want you
,” he said, looking broodingly at her, but instead of being thrilled as she would have just a few weeks ago, she felt a shiver of fear.

She asked herself why. He was the same good-looking, sexy, more than eligible man she had fallen for in Paris. The difference was that she was now seeing him with professional eyes. He was revealing a dark, troubled streak in his character that was interesting, but at the same time repelling.

As she listened to him, she knew she had never been in love with Brad. She didn’t even know him. It had been one of those heated all-consuming affairs that were doomed to self-combust. She wished she had never come to Hawaii, now that she saw how disturbed he was. But the man was searching his soul, baring his
emotions and his life to her. She owed it to him to listen, to try to help him.

“I lied to you about the Monkey,” he said. “The reason he ran away from the island was that he was responsible for the death of a servant. Her name was Maluhia. She was young and pretty. He raped her, and so she threw herself over a cliff. But somehow the Monkey escaped in Jack’s little boat. My father never believed he had drowned. He always said one day he would come back to haunt him.

“Archer was drinking heavily by then, and the responsibility for Kanoi was falling on Jack’s shoulders. He found out that their financial affairs were in chaos, and the ranch was in dire need of an influx of capital. Archer spent money like there was no tomorrow. But Jack was different.”

Brad’s eyes met Phyl’s. The quiet desperation that she saw in them touched her.

“You see, to Jack the Kanoi Ranch was his identity, his reason for being. He valued it above everything. Above morals, above his own life. Even above his father’s life.

“Jack was in Honolulu the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He said when he saw what they had done, he was filled with murderous rage. He just wanted to get in there and kill the bastards with his bare hands. America was at war, and supplies were at a priority. The ranch got a financial reprieve thanks to the government, and Jack joined the Marines.”

Brad laughed, his mood changing as he said, “God, he was a tough fighter,” he said proudly. “He earned himself a couple of medals for valor, won, he told me, because of his total uncompromising hatred of the enemy. ‘No one hates quite like Jack Kane,’ his fellow marines used to say. ‘All he wants to do is kill.’

“Archer had been given the rank of major in the Army and a desk job supervising the Japanese interned
on the island, which allowed him plenty of time to run the ranch.

“Then the war was over, and the need for money raised its ugly head again. Archer figured out a plan. Europe was in chaos; many years had passed since his French wife’s death, and by now the Monkey would have been of an age to inherit. But he had no proof that the Monkey was dead, and anyway, he knew it would have been too difficult to take his claim through the French courts. So he took Jack to France and passed him off as Marie’s son.

“He said it was easy. The old lawyers and bankers who knew about
la célebataire
were all dead, and the legal papers had been lost. He just gave them the birth certificate, Jack signed his half brother’s name, and they handed over the inheritance.

“You see,” he said, spreading his hands wide and looking appealingly at Phyl, “to them the ranch had to come first. It may not have been strictly legal, but Jack said it was the right thing to do.”

“And do you agree with that?” Phyl asked quietly.

“Of course I do. I would have done the same myself.” He shrugged her question impatiently away as though it scarcely mattered. “The money should have been Archer’s by rights anyway if it were not for the French legal system.”

He began pacing the floor nervously again. The dog crouched near the door, watching him, waiting for a command, but for once Brad was not aware of it.

“They were in Paris,” he said abruptly, “and Jack told me Archer was drunk with triumph.

“‘
La célibataire’s
fortune is finally ours,’ he said. ‘No one can ever take it away from us. Now we have enough for everything, Jack. For Diamond Head, the ranch. Whatever you want it’s yours.’

“Jack was around twenty-four years old then, I guess, but he knew he had to take control of the ranch before
Archer threw all that money away on booze and women and high living, just the way he had before.

“They were in the Ritz bar, drinking champagne and congratulating themselves, when Jack noticed a blond, expensively dressed woman across the room, staring at them. She was smiling, an odd, knowing little smile. She was older, but still very attractive and smart-looking, and there was something eerily familiar about her. She caught his eye, and then she got up from her table and walked over to them.

“‘Surprise, surprise,’ she said, kissing Archer on the cheek. He just stared at her, with a stunned look on his face. She turned to Jack and said, ‘The last time I saw you, you were a squalling, red-faced infant. I have to admit you have improved since then.’ She blew him a kiss, throwing back her head and laughing.

“‘Don’t you know me?’ she asked, still laughing. ‘I’m your mother, Chantal O’Higgins.’

“Jack said he felt the same sudden rush of hatred toward Chantal as he had toward the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. He could have killed her with his bare hands right there in the Ritz bar. He had never seen her before, but he’d read plenty of dirt about her in the gossip columns.”