What a Rich Woman Wants (15 page)

Chapter Seventeen

“Hi, Daddy.” Lesley bent and kissed her father's sunken cheek. He followed her with his eyes. The left side of his mouth lifted in a semblance of a smile. She smiled back. “How are you feeling today?”

The day nurse had greeted Lesley while she finished attaching Richard's computer interface controls. She bustled away with an armful of sheets in need of laundering. Lesley took a seat near the hospital bed, where her father could see her easily and she could see the computer's screen.

Lesley waited as Richard's efforts progressed across the screen to form two words.
Still kicking.

It was Richard's idea of a joke, and Lesley chuckled at his effort. The nursing staff kept him clean and comfortable. A physical therapist visited three times a week. He was fed a liquid diet. There was nothing wrong with his hearing. He read and watched television and movies. Without his computer, his communication skills were limited. A short email message could take him an hour to compose. Although he never gave up working on his memoir, he tired easily.

His health was precarious at best as he was prone to upper respiratory infections. Each year he weakened a bit more, grew thinner and sicker. Lesley pretended he hadn't changed a bit. She visited him twice a day, morning and evening. She kept him up-to-date on the business and chatted about family events. The weather. Anything and everything. He was her father and she loved him, looked up to him. She'd dreamed of running the Robinson Group with him at the helm for a good number of years, learning even more than he'd already taught her. When he retired, a date that should have been well in the future, she would take over for him as CEO.

But the stroke had fast-tracked her into her father's position. It had taken her months to find her footing, but she had. The company had survived and even thrived under her leadership. She had her detractors of course, but she supposed she'd have had them in any event.

“Daddy, I need to show you something and I need to ask you something, okay? It's important.”

Richard kept his gaze on her.

“Do you remember Maria? The housekeeper who worked for Steven and me when we were married?”

After a simple prompt from Richard, a preprogrammed response appeared on the screen.
Yes.

“She came here. She wanted to see you.”

No.

Lesley wasn't certain if she imagined the worry lines that seemed to develop around her father's eyes. She smiled easily. “That's what I told her. But do you know why she'd want to see you?”

No
.

“You barely knew her if I recall.”

Richard concentrated fiercely on Lesley's face.

“She gave me this. Have you seen it before?” Lesley held the photocopied picture up so Richard could see it.

No. Yes
.

Lesley wasn't sure what to make of that. “You've seen it?” she asked carefully.

Yes
.

“But it isn't the whole picture, is it?”

Richard stared hard at her.
No.

“That's what I thought.”

Lesley chose her next words carefully. “There was an account at a bank in Texas.”

Yes
.

“You set it up for Maria's mother.”

Yes
.

“Because you felt responsible for her.”

A hesitation, then
Yes
.

Lesley couldn't take her gaze away. Her father stared at her with a burning intensity as if waiting for her to get to the question they both knew she had to ask. She didn't want to ask it. She didn't want to see another
yes
after she asked it, but she was sure that's what he was going to do.

Richard's gaze shifted to his computer. It was a device not unlike the one Stephen Hawking used, though the hardware had to be customized for her father's particular limitations. He began to create a message. Lesley didn't see the need. She wanted an answer. A simple yes or no.

She covered his hand with her own and squeezed, even though she knew he couldn't feel it. “Daddy, is Maria your daughter?”

Distracted from his writing, her father made a low growling sound in his throat. It managed to convey pain and agitation at the same time. Like a distress signal for someone who had no other way to communicate. At the same time he began blinking so rapidly Lesley was afraid he was having a seizure.

The nurse appeared at Richard's side and spoke to him in soothing tones, blocking his view of Lesley with her upper body. Lesley was forced to let go of his hand. She felt as if she'd done something unforgivable. She stepped back out of Richard's line of sight while the nurse separated him from the computer, gently wiping at the tears that pooled around his eyes.

Lesley stared at the few words her father had written, her eyes burning. She turned and left.

Niko stripped out of his uniform and headed straight for the shower. The uniforms were durable and practically wrinkle-proof, but whatever polyester blend they were made of did not breathe, and by the end of his shift, Niko was hot and uncomfortable and dying to rid himself of his work clothes.

Less than ten minutes later, he'd donned a pair of baggy madras shorts and a tee-shirt and was contemplating the limited contents of his refrigerator. An insistent knocking on his front door pulled him away from thoughts of dinner. He peeked through the sidelight to see Lesley. The moment he opened the door, she fell into him, grabbing on to him as though he were a life preserver in the middle of a hurricane-swept ocean.

He closed the door, returning her embrace, but alarm bells were going off inside him. This was not the let's-go-to-bed-now Lesley embrace.

She didn't say anything, but he could feel how tense she was, how hard she was working to hold everything in. Something was very, very wrong. “Did somebody die?” he whispered. It was the only thing he could think of. Her father perhaps.

She shook her head vigorously.

That was something, he supposed. He racked his brain for another reason she'd be so upset, so close to losing control.

Before he could think of one, a sob escaped Lesley. Her head was buried in his shoulder, but he could tell she was still trying to hang on to her emotions. “It's okay,” he murmured. “Whatever it is, it'll be okay.”

She grabbed fistfuls of his shirt as tears started to flow. He leaned back against the wall and held her, stroking her hair as he might a child's, occasionally murmuring calming reassurances.

Eventually she quieted, but she didn't move away. The refrigerator motor kicked on about the same time Niko's stomach growled.

The mood shifted. Lesley made a sound Niko couldn't decipher and lifted her head, rubbing her fingers over the wet spot she'd made on his tee. She wouldn't meet his gaze.

He ducked his head to see her face. “Want something to drink?” he asked. “And a paper towel, maybe?

She gave him a watery chuckle and a wobbly smile.

Niko hooked an arm around her neck to keep her close and steered her into the kitchen. He handed her a paper towel from the roll on the counter and opened the refrigerator, popping the tops on two Corona Lights. “No limes,” he informed her.

In the pantry he found a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of salsa. Alicia Sanchez would be scandalized.

He set them on the counter and took the stool next to Lesley.

She sipped her beer. “Sorry about that.” She nodded her head in the direction of the front door. More tears welled in her eyes. She dabbed at them with the paper towel. “Just for the record, I never cry.”

“Never?”

“Rarely,” she amended with an effort at spunk.

“Maybe you should do it more often.”

“No. I despise women who are reduced to tears at the drop of a hat. It's weak.”

“So what dropped?”

“My father.”

“I thought you said—”

“While I was with him this morning, he had an episode which I'm afraid our conversation caused. But I found out something I didn't know. Something I didn't want to know.”

She took another drink. Niko waited. “All that stuff I told you about Ricky? Steven's affair?”

Lesley sniffed and dabbed at her nose with the paper towel. Other than a slight redness around her nose and eyelids a little puffier than normal, she bore hardly any signs of her earlier breakdown. Every time her eyes filled with tears, she willed them away. “I think Ricky's mother is my half sister.”

“Your think your father is…her father?”

“It looks that way, yes.” Lesley's eyes were so full of pain, it broke Niko's heart. He couldn't even begin to imagine how she was feeling.

“Come here.” He drew her up and settled her on the sofa next to him, beers forgotten, while he pieced together what she hadn't yet told him. “What happened? Why do you think there's a connection between you?”

Lesley sniffed. “Because of the picture Maria left with me the first time she came to see me.”

“Do you still have it?”

“Yes.” Lesley fumbled for her purse and handed the photo to him.

“This is your father. And this supposedly is Maria's mother.”

“There's a strong resemblance between them. I don't know why Maria would lie.”

Niko raised an eyebrow but said nothing as he continued to study the photo.

“So you think your father had an affair. With Maria's mother.”

Lesley nodded. “Evidently.”

“He had her deported? When she became pregnant?”

“I don't know exactly what happened.”

“But your father knew? That she was pregnant?”

Lesley nodded and wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye. “It looks that way. He set up an account for her. That's how I found out. He set up an account with a bank in Texas twenty-five years ago. Regular transfers were made to a bank in El Salvador. My father must have known Maria was his daughter. He arranged for her to come here, to work in our home. But he couldn't acknowledge her as his daughter.”

“Did she know? That he was her father?”

“I don't know. His stroke occurred almost at the same time everything blew up with Steven.”

“He financially supported her, though. Along with her mother.”

Lesley nodded. “Initially there was a lot of money in the bank account in Texas. A local attorney oversaw the transactions. There were no further deposits made to the account, so the balance dwindled until it was nothing.”

“That's about the time Maria showed up here.”

“Yes.”

“It explains why she wanted to see your father. Why she wanted money.”

“Yes.”

Niko picked up the picture again and stared at it intensely, bringing it closer to his eyes. “This is a photocopy of an old photograph, and a not very good one at that.”

“I know. But it's definitely my father. I'm as certain as I can be based on the resemblance that the woman is Maria's mother.”

“I need a magnifying glass to be sure,” Niko said, “but look here. It looks like someone's arm is around her. Whoever it belonged to was cut out of the picture.”

Lesley studied the picture more closely. “I think you're right. This looks like part of an arm, here, and some of his hand is just barely visible there.”

She glanced at Niko with hope in her eyes.

“In contrast, your father is sitting next to her, a few inches away. His hands are in his lap.”

“You're right!”

“Lesley, I think it's possible that whoever got cut out of the photo might be of some relevance. Perhaps your father was covering for him by supporting Maria and her mother all these years. Or maybe Maria's mother blackmailed your father.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you know where this picture was taken?”

“No.”

“Your father's wearing a dress shirt. No tie and the sleeves are rolled up, but it looks like at some point during the day that picture was taken, he was dressed for the office.”

Lesley continued to pore over the picture.

“Maybe there's a duplicate of this picture in your company archives. Or your mother might have seen it before. I think you should ask her.”

Lesley groaned. “She's been through so much these past few years. I hate to bring it up and cause her more pain.”

“Maybe she already knows. If she doesn't, well, she's family. Why should you go through this alone?”

“My father was always protective of her. I guess I've tried to follow in his footsteps.”

“Your mother's probably a lot tougher than you give her credit for. Women tend to know when their husbands cheat on them.”

“I don't want to believe my father's a cheat.”

“Of course you don't. You don't want to hurt your mother, either. But what's the alternative? You leave the questions you have unanswered and you don't know what to think about your father? You deserve to know the truth one way or the other.”

Lesley sniffed and dabbed at her nose. “I tried to ask Daddy about it earlier. He recognized the picture. He has a computer he can use to communicate, and he started to type a message to me. It was taking so long and I was impatient, so I asked him if he was Maria's father. He got so upset . It was horrible.”

“Either he isn't Maria's father and what you've always believed about him is true. Or he is and you'll have to adjust your image of him. Maybe he made a mistake and then tried to do right after the fact. Or maybe the mistake wasn't on his part.”

“The message he started? It said, ‘Nothing else I could do.'”

“That's a pretty ambiguous statement, Lesley. Look, the easiest thing to do is ask your mother about it. If she can't help, then dig through the company archives for the original picture.

“I don't know. I don't know how to ask her about it.”

Niko ruminated on that for a moment, wondering how Mitzi would react to such a situation.