Regina half expected to find Kane at Hallowed Ground when she reached the house next morning since he seemed to appear every time she turned around. Lewis Crompton was alone, however, having his breakfast in a sun-splashed room with a Boston fern in the bay window behind the table and his big yellow cat sprawled on the floor beside him. The air was redolent with ham, eggs, chicory-laden coffee, and the heartwarming aroma of the hot golden biscuits stacked on a platter in the middle of the table.
Mr. Lewis rose to his feet as Regina was ushered into the room by the housekeeper. Brushing aside her apologies for appearing uninvited and disturbing him at his meal, he pressed her to have breakfast with him. She wasn’t hungry, but accepted a cup of coffee because it appeared he wouldn’t go on with his meal otherwise. The housekeeper brought another cup from a sideboard and poured the steaming brew while her employer seated Regina. Then the woman went away, leaving them alone.
Regina cleared her throat the instant the door closed, ready to begin her carefully worded effort to discover something of use to Gervis. Mr. Lewis forestalled her.
“I believe Kane took you out to see the lake yesterday,” he said, all congeniality. “What did you think of it?”
“Beautiful, so peaceful,” she answered. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. But what I wanted to talk to you about was—”
“You met Luke, too, I hear. You really ought to go to his open house, my dear. Nobody throws a party quite like Luke. Why, that boy has more life in him than a one-legged, one-man band. You’d have a grand time.”
“I’m sure you’re right. About the jewelry, Mr. Crompton?”
The man across the table waved the silver knife he held in a dismissive gesture before using it to slit a biscuit. He tucked a slice of ham inside, then put it on a bread plate and slid it toward Regina. “Vivian said she spoke to you about it. She was right taken with you, I could tell. Mentioned you had the nicest smile, raved about your hair, of course.”
Regina pushed the small plate with the biscuit back toward him. In exasperation, she said, “Mr. Crompton, if you don’t want to sell your wife’s jewelry collection, you have only to say so.”
He studied her a long moment, a judicious expression on his fine old face. Then he put down his knife and heaved a sigh. “That’s just it, my dear. I don’t know whether I do or not.”
“Because you’ve decided to marry again?”
He sat back in his chair in surprise before his expression turned drolly accepting. “Now who could’ve told you that? Not Kane, I’d imagine. Must have been Vivian.”
“Are you sure the woman you’re interested in would care for it?” Regina asked, sidestepping his question. “Some people prefer to have no reminder of a former spouse.”
“True, true.” He sighed. “But Miss Elise isn’t the problem. It’s Kane.”
“Kane,” she repeated in resignation.
“I never dreamed he might object. Now he has, I really feel I should make certain it’s not just his pride talking. I mean—suppose he has some female in mind who he’d like to marry? He deserves the opportunity to give her his grandmother’s trinkets if he’s so minded.”
Trinkets. That was an inadequate description if she’d ever heard one. “I see what you’re saying,” she said as patiently as she was able, “but do you think it’s a real possibility?”
“I just don’t know, which is the point. Now I realize it’s an imposition to ask you to hold off. You must have other things to do besides hang around, waiting for an old man to come to a decision. But I’d take it as a favor if you’d give me the time to discover what’s on Kane’s mind.”
His suggestion was perfect, exactly what she needed. It was so perfect, in fact, that suspicion rose immediately in her mind. She searched his lined and craggy face, looking for craftiness, deceit, or at least some idea of why he might be so accommodating. There was nothing in it except warm courtesy. Which might indicate that he was absolutely aboveboard, but could also mean that he was a certified master at guile and manipulation.
Either way, she couldn’t afford to refuse. She even felt a little spurt of gladness that she had an excuse to stay. That was only because it made things easier from her point of view. Naturally.
She lowered her gaze to her coffee cup. “I suppose I can do that.”
“Good,” he said with satisfaction. “I’m glad we got that settled.”
“On the other hand,” she went on with some hesitation as she watched the steam curl across the surface of her coffee, “as I’m already here and have nothing better to do, I could look at the pieces and give you a written estimate that you could hold until you’re ready. You could call me in New York with your decision, and we could take it from there.”
Even as she made the suggestion, she wondered what she was doing. If Gervis knew she was throwing away the chance to stay longer in Turn-Coupe, he would have a stroke. Regardless, she was driven by an attack of fairness she didn’t quite understand. She almost hoped, in a way, that Mr. Lewis would take her up on her offer so she would no longer have an excuse for trespassing on his hospitality.
“Now, now,” he said, easing the bread plate and biscuit toward her again, “there’s no need for such a rush. You’ll give yourself ulcers, you don’t watch out. Just try a bite of this, then tell me what else you and Vivian found to talk about.”
Regina had no intention whatever of eating the biscuit. As she told the older man about the visit with Kane’s aunt, however, she reached out idly to pick up a bit of light brown biscuit crumb with the pressure of a fingertip, then put it on her tongue. A few minutes later, she picked up another. Then she broke a little of the crisp biscuit crust and ate it with the sliver of ham that was attached. Before she realized, the whole biscuit was gone.
“Hungry and didn’t know it,” Mr. Lewis said, slicing another biscuit, then reaching for ham. “All you young people with your juice and granola don’t know what good food is anymore. A bite here, a snack there, eat on the run, never slow down to savor the flavors or enjoy a nice, quiet conversation, and you wonder why you’re tired all the time. You’re not really living, just going through the motions.” He shook his head as he passed over the biscuit. “Pitiful.”
He had a point. Regina leaned back in her chair, sipping the perfectly brewed coffee in its fragile china cup. It was amazingly quiet in the breakfast room. No traffic noises or other hints of the mechanized world intruded on the old house on its hill. Blue jays, cardinals and mockingbirds called back and forth in the garden beyond the bay window. She could even catch the sandpaper rasp of the cat’s tongue as it groomed itself.
“I just might be able to get used to your way of doing things,” she said with a whimsical smile. “It’s so restful.”
“Not much happens to make it otherwise. Usually.”
He was thinking of the suit, she thought, which was a subject Regina was suddenly reluctant to explore. She asked instead, “How long have you lived here—or is that a silly question?”
“The only silly question, so they say, is one unasked. If you mean how long I, personally, have lived here, the answer’s all my life. If you’re talking about my family, well, my great-granddaddy came from North Carolina in the 1830s. He and his wife and a pack of children traveled in a wagon pulled by oxen, along with a caravan of six other families. They stopped for a few years in Alabama, where a couple of the older kids got married, but they left the newlyweds behind and came on. Because of that, there are Cromptons scattered all across the South.”
“Were the Benedicts one of the families in the caravan?”
He shook his leonine head. “They were already here when my folks made it. Nobody really knows how long they’d been holed up out on the lake, but it’s a while.”
“You’re talking about the Native American bloodline, as long ago as that?”
“What? Oh, only Luke’s bunch have Indian ancestors, but the rest were here anyway. Story goes, there were four brothers who left England in a hurry back in the 1700s. Something to do with the death of a sister’s snake-mean husband, as I understand it. They tried their hands at piracy a couple of years, but finally landed in New Orleans. Not caring particularly for the strict Spanish government in power at the time, they pushed inland and wound up here.”
“Fascinating,” she said, leaning forward to pick up the second ham-filled biscuit. Then she paused and tilted her head. “Unless you’re pulling my leg?”
“Would I do that?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.
“In a heartbeat.”
“Yes, I guess I would,” he allowed genially, “but not this time.”
She believed him, which seemed strange but nice. “So what happened? How did the Benedicts manage to survive and multiply?”
“The oldest brother took a Scotswoman to wife somewhere in the Caribbean, one with hair every bit as fiery as yours and a temper to match. Kane comes from that line. The next married the Indian woman who had guided them to the lake, I think. Another kidnapped a Spanish woman who wasn’t too unwilling to be spirited off, and the youngest wound up wed to a Frenchwoman he found wandering around lost in the woods.”
“And they all lived happily ever after,” Regina said in dry mockery directed mostly at the romantic images conjured up in her own mind.
“You might say so. At least, they had long lives and big families. Oh, they had their tragedies and mysteries, their deaths from accidents and childhood diseases and whatnot. But they endured and they prospered. Now the woods are full of Benedicts.”
“So it would seem.” She paused to refill her coffee cup from the carafe that sat ready, then added to Mr. Lewis’s, as well. “What kind of mysteries?”
“The usual,” he said, amusement lingering around his mouth for the part of what he’d said that caught her interest. “Mainly who fathered whom, how so-and-so really died, which son ran with outlaws or whose daughter was a hoyden who got men killed in duels, which child wasn’t right in the head, where somebody buried their gold in the old days.”
Having so little family herself, Regina was always intrigued by the stories of other people’s. Added to that, her own ancestors, so far as she knew, were fairly recent immigrants from Ireland and Germany. It was hard for her to imagine a clan as diverse or long entrenched as the one to which Kane belonged. She said, “The Benedicts sound pretty colorful.”
Mr. Lewis pursed his lips. “I guess they are at that. Proud as Lucifer and touchy as all Hades, most of them. They’ve been known to take the law into their own hands, too, living so isolated out on the lake before there was much in the way of law and order. But the Benedicts live well, love hard, and pay their bills. They’re good, strong stock, no finer people in this state, I’ll stake my life on it. I’m proud to be associated with them.”
“Especially one of them?” she said with a teasing note in her voice.
“I’m partial to my grandson, I’ll admit, but there’s a lot to be partial about. Kane’s put his practice more or less on hold for the suit I’ve got going. All his energy and brain power are being channeled into the battle. His temper may be a mite short and his manners not quite up to par, but it would be a shame if anybody let such things stand in the way of seeing the fine man he is inside.”
He was making excuses for Kane. Why? Did he think she and his grandson had got off on the wrong foot, so was trying to make it right? Or was he attempting to smooth Kane’s way with her because he felt his grandson might be interested? Regina wasn’t sure which idea disturbed her more.
She made no answer, but allowed a small silence to fall. Then she changed the subject by asking if the china they were using was antique. Her host was involved in a comical tale of how his wife had chosen the pattern for her wedding china back before World War II when the housekeeper appeared at the door.
“Mr. Kane’s coming.”
“Well now, Dora, you don’t say.” Mr. Lewis lifted a brow as he met his housekeeper’s gaze. “This is a red-letter morning. I guess you’d better heat the biscuits back up. That’s if Regina and I left any.”
Some communication passed between the two of them, Regina thought, a shared opinion, perhaps, on the sudden influx of company at breakfast time. Their relationship seemed to have the ease that comes from long years.
Dora, a tall, rawboned black woman with a Native American cast to her features, wore her hair in two braids crossed over her head and had gold earrings flashing in her ears. She seemed an integral part of the household. Regina wasn’t sure what she expected, but it wasn’t an arrangement that closely mirrored the same position of responsibility held by Gervis’s bodyguard and houseman. Regina watched the woman as she brought another cup and saucer and plate from the sideboard, then reached for the coffee carafe. It was better than wondering why Kane couldn’t go away and let her get on with her job.
He appeared in the doorway seconds later. His greeting was polite; still the temperature of the room cooled by several degrees. Regina felt the muscles of her abdomen tighten in visceral reaction. Not all of it was wariness, however. A large part was sheer female response to the sight of his broad shoulders stretching the cloth of his knit shirt and the fresh scent of just-shaved-and-showered male that he brought with him into the room. To be unsettled so easily was annoying.
“Had breakfast?” his grandfather inquired.
“I’m not hungry,” Kane answered, though he pulled out the chair at the place setting where Dora had just finished pouring his coffee. He waited until she had gathered the empty plates from the table and took them away before he sat down.
“Neither was Miss Regina. Must be something going around.” Mr. Lewis kept his features perfectly straight, though his eyes gleamed.
“Actually, it’s Miss Regina I came to see.” Kane interjected irony into that title of respect as he looked straight at her for the first time.
“Yes?” Her smile felt pasted on.
“I’m interested in hearing what your connection might be with a notorious tabloid reporter named Dudley Slater.”
Her reaction to the accusation she heard in his voice was instant and instinctive. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“No? You’ve never heard of him?”
“Afraid not. What makes you think I might have?”
“He’s camped outside your door, for one thing.”
Kane was talking about the man in the car across the street from the motel. She shook back her hair. “Really?”
He took a couple of folded pages from his shirt pocket and unfolded them, then tossed them over in front of her. “That’s what he looks like, and also his rap sheet.”
She glanced at the fax page, which showed a blurred photograph of a man with a thin face, sharp nose, and narrow, haggard eyes. After a moment, she looked up at Kane again. His gaze bored into hers. She blinked quickly in reflex action, though she recognized that was a mistake. With as much composure as she could manage, she said, “I saw this man across from the motel, I think, but he could be interested in anyone.”
“He could, but I don’t think he is.” Kane’s words were grim, though his attention seemed to wander an instant to where sunlight shafting through the window was warming the top of her head.
“Are you suggesting he’s there because of me?”
His eyes narrowed at the amusement in her voice. “It crossed my mind.”
Lewis Crompton cleared his throat with a loud rasp, a warning, apparently, for the accusation in his grandson’s tone. He asked, “How did you find out about this reporter?”
“I noticed him yesterday and had Roan run a make on the rental car. The Taurus was picked up at the airport in Baton Rouge. Slater has a record a mile long for harassment, assault, breaking and entering, not to mention enough parking tickets to paper several rooms.”
Breaking and entering. Regina turned those words over in her mind in dismay. At the same time, she watched the two men with care. If either of them had set this Dudley Slater to watch her, then the other didn’t know about it. But she didn’t think they were involved. No one could be that good at faking either the concern of Mr. Lewis or the grim effort to get to the bottom of the business that was plain in Kane’s face. It was not a pleasant discovery.
“Who,” she asked in clipped tones, “might Roan be, and just what is his part in this?”
“Sheriff Roan Benedict,” Mr. Lewis answered in polite explanation. “He’s the law here in Tunica Parish.” Turning back to Kane, he went on, “Why would this Slater bother with Miss Regina? Why isn’t he after me? Or you, for that matter?”
Kane looked at Regina, his gaze unyielding. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Maybe he thinks I’m a star witness,” she quipped with more bravado than she felt.
“Could be,” Kane allowed with a curt nod. “The only question is whether for the plaintiff or the defendant.”
She frowned as anger for his unending suspicion flowed through her. “Why would you even think such a thing?”
“I don’t know what to think. I’m listening if you’d like to tell me anything.”
The force of his will was like a powerful magnet. The impulse to tell him whatever he wanted to know shivered along her nerves. It was compounded, she thought, of fear that he could see through her and an insistent need to gain his approval, to see him smile at her as he did at others. If this was what it was like to face him from the witness stand, then she pitied anyone who wound up there.
Moistening her lips, she said, “You’ll have to excuse me. I can’t help you.”
He didn’t believe her; she could see it in his face. There was nothing she could do to prevent that. She didn’t need this, couldn’t stand it just now. More than that, she had a strong urge to get back to the motel, check her room and the things she had left there.
“Thank you for the breakfast,” she said, summoning a smile for her host as she rose to her feet. “I’m sure you two have business to discuss, so I’ll leave you to it. Perhaps you’ll give me a call when you’ve made your decision?”
“I’ll do that,” Mr. Lewis said genially, rising to his feet and taking the hand she offered. “This has been a very great pleasure.”
She was warmed by his words even as she wondered if they were mere politeness. “For me, also,” she said, and meant it. She turned to Kane who was standing, as well. She felt like striding off without a word to him, but that would be too pointed after her cordial farewell to his grandfather.
Before she could speak, he said, “I’ll see you to your car.”
She could hardly object without adding to his suspicion. “If you like.”
He indicated that she should precede him, then followed her from the room. She was acutely aware of him behind her, so much so that it was difficult to walk naturally. As she stepped past him onto the front porch, he said, “You aren’t carrying jewel cases, so I’m assuming you still don’t have the collection.”
“Your grandfather decided to give you another chance at it.”
“Did he now?” There was an intrigued note in his voice. Closing the door behind him, he walked beside her across the porch and down the steps.
“That was my impression. I expect he’ll get around to talking to you about it soon, since he asked me to stay on a couple of days.”
“Crafty old devil,” he muttered, staring straight ahead.
“What?” She flung a glance at his set face.
“Never mind. It looks as if you’ll be on hand for Luke’s open house this weekend after all.”
“I suppose.” Her tone was not encouraging.
“I’ll drive you, if you care to go. Before you say no, let me add that my only motive is hospitality. You’re kicking your heels here because of Pops. The least we can do is provide a little entertainment.”
“That would certainly be considerate,” she said, “if I believed it.”
He stopped. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“Lawyers aren’t exactly known for their ethics. Isn’t bending the truth the name of the game?”
“Not for any I choose to play.”
She gave him a sardonic glance. “Of course not.”
“I mean it. I prefer the truth as a weapon.”
“And I’m supposed to accept that while you doubt every word that comes out of my mouth?”
“There’s a difference,” he said, his eyes as hard as his voice was soft.
She stared at him. He meant he made a habit of stating facts, but knew she did not. Heat rose in her face as she exclaimed, “Of all the—”
“I guess this means you won’t be going with me to Luke’s after all?”
“I can find my own way, thank you very much.” With a scathing glance, she started again toward her car on the drive.
“Suit yourself.”
In a childish need to have the last word, she said over her shoulder, “I intend to.”
He returned no answer for long seconds. Then, just as she opened her car door, he said, “Regina?”
She stopped and looked back at him, caught by an undercurrent of concern in his voice.
“Watch out for Slater. He doesn’t play by the rules.”
She had suspected as much. That didn’t make his continued assumption that she had some connection to such a sleazy character any less irritating. Her gaze as lethal as she could make it, she said, “But you do, right?”
“Always.”
Strangely enough, she almost believed him. She looked away, then stepped into her car and slammed the door. The loud noise was satisfying. Still, she knew the last word hadn’t been hers after all.
Regina’s thoughts were chaotic as she drove back to the motel. Fine tremors ran through her hands. She didn’t know why she let Kane Benedict get to her. Her defenses were many and well perfected against most people. She was a grown woman, not a teenager overwhelmed by hormones and a romantic imagination. She had seen handsome men before and had brushed off her share of those who assumed red hair equaled a passionate nature or who saw her disinterest as a challenge. They got nowhere against the barricade of her indifference.
She wasn’t indifferent to Kane. He had pushed through her defenses at their first meeting, closing in before she was prepared. She felt exposed, emotionally vulnerable in a way she hadn’t in years. It was disturbing on some level she preferred not to explore. It was also nerve-racking.
Back at the motel, everything in her room was exactly as she had left it. Nothing was gone, nothing out of order. If Slater had been there, he was very good at what he did.
Not that there was anything for him, or anyone else, to find; she had seen to that. Regardless, she was outraged at the possibility of intrusion. Her personal privacy was important to her, and the thought of having it breached for no good reason was far too much like a violation to be tolerated.
What bothered her more than anything else, however, was the possibility that her cousin had not been aboveboard with her. She intended to get to the bottom of it.
Gervis should have been at his office since it was the middle of the morning. He wasn’t, according to his secretary. Instead, he was at the apartment. That worried her even before he answered the phone.
“Gina, baby,” he said, his voice hard, “I hope you’re calling with good news because I could sure use it.”
“I’m calling to find out what you think you’re doing.”
“Me? I’m doing something? Hell, I’m not doing anything because I’m too busy fighting a lawsuit. Which you’re supposed to be helping me with. If you’ve got nothing to report, why are you wasting my time?”
She would not let his irascible mood throw her. “I want to know why you lied to me about Dudley Slater.”
“Baby, baby, what do you take me for?”
“I’d be hard put to say right this minute,” she said as his abrupt change to a caressing tone rang alarm bells. “You told me you had nothing to do with the man watching me, this Slater, yet you knew he was a reporter. Why is that?”
“Must have been a lucky guess. Gina, listen—”
“No, you listen. I’ve heard you talk about doing this to other people, but never dreamed you’d try it on me. Why? That’s all I want to know, just why?”
He said nothing for a minute, then he asked, “They really made Slater as a reporter? Somebody down there is on to him?”
“You could say that,” she returned with irony.
His only answer was several short and pithy comments on the reporter’s mentality and antecedents. They struck her as incredibly vulgar, not to mention lacking in imagination, when they would hardly have registered not so long ago. The change, she thought, was a direct result of not hearing such phrases in her presence over the past few days, something she’d hardly noticed until now.
“What is this all about, Gervis?” she demanded, cutting him short. “Don’t you trust me?”
“It’s not that, sweetheart. It’s just that you’re not exactly a pro, you know? I thought you needed backup.”
“A cheap reporter with a face like a weasel and a record to match is supposed to help? Give me a break!”
“All right, so I wasn’t sure you had the guts for the deal, okay? You’re great with people, they like you right off, whereas with me—but never mind that. You said yourself you were on shaky ground. You think you’re tough, you talk tough, but you don’t know how to take care of yourself. I got a right to worry about you, now don’t I?”
“If you were really worried about me,” she said with sudden pain in her chest, “I wouldn’t be here. I want you to call off Slater.”
He gave a long-suffering sigh. “I can’t do that.”
“Can’t or won’t?” She held her voice steady with a valiant effort.
“I don’t have the man on a leash. He’s a newshound and he smells a story.”
“He’s a cut below a paparazzo, a certifiable creep!”
“Be that as it may, he’s arranged his own deal with his magazine, one that’s got nothing to do with me and what I sent him to find out.”
She hesitated, thinking hard. “Are you saying…?”
“What, baby?”
She didn’t answer. Abruptly, she couldn’t speak at all as her concentration focused on something else entirely, a sound that she had been hearing all along. In the background, from the living room beyond the study, a television program was going. She recognized it without any trouble since it was the soundtrack of a cartoon movie she had heard a thousand times before.
Her cousin hated cartoons.
“Gervis,” she said, her voice taut, “who do you have there with you?”
“Now, Gina. It was supposed to be a surprise.”
“Is Stephan there?”
“It’s just for a few days.”
“You took him out of school?” Her voice was rising, but she couldn’t help it.
“Now, Gina, don’t get all upset.”
The sharper her own words, the more soothing, almost oily, her cousin’s became. On the edge of panic, she demanded, “What are you doing with him?”
“He was missing his mama, so I brought him for a visit. Take it easy.”
“How can I take it easy? He has to have his medicine and have it on time. He shouldn’t be upset, and you know he doesn’t like Michael, won’t take his medicine from him or from you.”
“It’s fine. I’ve taken care of it, hired a nurse and everything.”
“Why?” she demanded with panic fluttering in her chest. “Why are you doing this?”
“For you, for Stephan. What else?”
“Let me talk to him.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’ll upset him for nothing. Maybe next time, when you’ve got something to report.”
She didn’t like what she heard in his voice, didn’t like it at all. “What do you want from me?”
“Now, baby,” her cousin complained, “you know what I want.”
“Don’t call me baby!” she yelled into the phone. “I want you to take my son back where he belongs.”
“Sure, sure, I promise. When you’re done with the job down there.”
She breathed in quick gasps, trying to think. “I’m no miracle worker, Gervis. I can’t find out secrets that aren’t there or manufacture crooked deals where there aren’t any.”
“You can do something, damn it! How you coming with Benedict? Are you close enough to work on him?”
“Work on him how?”
“Talk to him, come on to him, screw his brains out. Hell, Gina, you’re a female. Figure it out for yourself.”
Horror shafted through her. “I can’t do that!”
“You’d better try. I turned down the old man’s offer and now they’re upping the ante, hinting about millions in damages. They win, I’ll be bankrupt. I want the goods, and I don’t care what you have to do to get them.”
“But you know how I feel. You know why.” He was the only one who did, the single person who had stood behind her during that terrible time. She couldn’t believe what he was asking of her now.
“I know you’ve been hiding behind that for years. It’s time you got over it.”
“But what if—”
“Don’t ‘what if’ me, Gina. I’m doing you a favor here, making you face this, if you want the truth. Lots of people have bad things happen. They don’t let it get to them, but pick themselves up and go on. You get in there and do whatever it takes. Use your imagination, your feminine wiles, your tits and ass. Hell, I don’t care. We got a week, give or take, to get something and figure out how to use it. Either you do this for me or you can expect to be sorry.”
“You wouldn’t hurt Stephan, you couldn’t.”
“I won’t have to if you come through for me, now will I? But all I got to do anyway is tell him what a bastard his old man was. Tell him how his mama nearly died having him. We could have a nice discussion about what a terrible thing it is, the way the law forces girls who are children themselves to carry babies that come from rape. Especially babies with problems. You think that’ll make him feel good, huh, Gina?”
“How can you do this? How can you even think of it?” she cried, her voice thick with unshed tears. “He’s like your own. We’re family!”
“Families stick with each other, Gina. I’ve been begging for your help here, and you keep making excuses.”
“I told you I’m trying,” she said thickly.
“And I’m telling you I’m a desperate man. Maybe you’ll believe me now. Maybe you’ll be desperate, too, so you’ll get something done. What do you think, Gina? Think you can find out what I need to know now?”
Before she could answer, the phone was slammed down on the other end. She sat motionless, staring at nothing, until the automatic request to hang up came on the line. Then she dropped her own receiver into its cradle and put her hands to her face. She pressed hard against the facial bones as a shudder ran over her. Tears seeped from her eyes, trickling through her fingers.
Stephan was the most important thing in life to her, her whole world. He was so young, so sweet and defenseless. How could anyone hurt him? The very thought made her feel as if her heart were being squeezed in a vise.
Surely Gervis didn’t mean what he threatened? Her cousin was only trying to frighten her. He had been so good to Stephan from the time he was born, had brought in a nanny when he was a baby and, later, paid the bills for expert evaluation, a special school. She would never have made it without Gervis.
She owed him so much, had wanted to do something in return for so long. Coming to Turn-Coupe was the first major thing he had ever asked. If not for her gratitude and sense of obligation, she wouldn’t be here.
Still, Gervis had changed in the past few months. She hardly knew him. It was worry over business that caused it, she thought. Now the fear that he might lose everything he had worked so hard to gain had pushed him over the edge. That was it, it had to be.
He had started with nothing, a welfare kid from the back streets of Brooklyn. His father had died shortly after he was born, and his mother, left alone, could never quite cope. She had depended on wine and fashion magazines to get her through the days. She’d lived on dreams of striking it rich, winning the lottery or some sweepstakes, too involved in the fantasy and her depression to be much of a parent. Taking in Regina after her mother died had been an act with more heart than practicality, even if she had been Regina’s mother’s best friend. It hadn’t lasted all that long in any case. Gervis’s mother had died of a prescription drug overdose barely five years later, when Regina was fifteen.
After that, it had been just her and Gervis. As he was reminding her now. He needed her, and she couldn’t afford to fail him.
If he harmed Stephan, she would never forgive him. Nor could Gervis ever live with himself. Or so she would have thought just a few days ago.
It was possible she was wrong.
She had never dreamed he would ask her to spy for him, either. And the last thing she expected was that he would demand she sleep with his worst enemy.