Regina slept late. It was hardly surprising since she had tossed and turned for hours before dropping off. The sound of sirens tearing in and out of town from the direction of the lake had disturbed her, so she lay worrying about the wet weather and all the people who had been at Luke’s party. The main reason, however, was the turmoil in her mind. Even after she woke, she didn’t get up, but lay staring at the plaster ceiling above the bed with its flecks of starlike glitter and trying to make sense of the night before.
She had not been repelled by Kane’s kiss. The hard heat of him against her and the strength of his arms had ignited impulses she had felt only in dreams. His firm, smooth lips and tender exploration were revelations. The taste of him had sizzled through her veins like champagne until she felt euphoric and careless of the sweet, sinful consequences of making love to Sugar Kane. Or perhaps even eager for them.
Then his hold had tightened until it seemed there was no escape. She had suddenly become too aware of what she was doing. The familiar, panicky need to get away surged up inside her and she acted on it in blind, conditioned response.
Yet the instant he released her, she had felt so alone and desolate with the need to be in his arms again. Even now, she would like to be lying with him. Not in passion, no, but in simple security, with the kind of protective affection she had sensed between him and the members of his family, the people he loved.
Impossible. There could be no security for her anywhere near Kane Benedict.
Even if she could overcome her distrust of physical intimacy, even if she and Lewis Crompton’s grandson fell into a mad, delirious affair, there would never be anything in it for her except heartache. The instant he learned of her connection to Gervis Berry he would despise her. It would be over. And if by some remote chance she discovered information to help defeat his grandfather, then he would never forgive the betrayal. Never. He was far too upright and law-abiding to understand the gratitude and loyalty that made deceit not only possible but necessary.
She had hurt Kane with her rejection, for she had seen it in his eyes. The injury was only to his male pride; still she regretted it. She had also angered him and that was another problem altogether. What in the world was she going to do to get back on the intimate footing that Gervis demanded? Even if she could manage it, how was she to prevent the same situation from coming up again?
She shouldn’t, according to Gervis.
What would it be like to release all the doubt and fear she kept hidden and trust a man? Could she do that for Gervis and Stephan? Would she ever be able to trust Kane that far? If she did, could she bear it when he turned on her as he would, inevitably, when the truth came out?
He had been betrayed by a woman once. What would it do to him to have it happen again? Did she really want to know?
The sound of footsteps along the walkway outside her room caught her attention. Hard on them came the quick tattoo of a knock on the motel door. Regina shoved herself upright in the bed. Her immediate thought was that it had to be Kane. She wasn’t ready to face him again, had no idea what to say to him.
The knock came again. She threw back the covers and reached for her robe, dragging it around her. At the door, she peeped through the fish-eye viewer.
Betsy North. Regina closed her eyes, let out the breath she had been holding, then reached for the knob.
“Sorry to disturb you, hon,” the motel owner said, setting a hand on her ample hip clad in purple cotton knit. “I know you’re probably working or something, cooped up in here, but I thought you should know about Mr. Lewis.”
Betsy was obviously bursting with news she couldn’t wait to impart. Still, there was a grim cast to her features that sent alarm along Regina’s nerves. “What’s wrong?”
“Mr. Lewis and Miss Elise had a wreck last night, coming from the lake. Somebody ran them off the road.”
“Oh, no.” Regina put her hand to her amber pendant, holding tight. She could feel its warmth against the sudden chill of her fingers.
“Son of a gun didn’t bother to stop. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was deliberate.” Betsy’s lips thinned with her angry disgust.
“Are they…?” Regina couldn’t finish the question, couldn’t bring herself to say that final, so final, word.
“They’re okay, no thanks to whatever low-down skunk—well, never mind. They released Miss Elise, but Mr. Lewis is still at the hospital.” Betsy went on to recite his injuries.
Regina was so glad Mr. Lewis was alive that she felt weak. She couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to him. It was a special horror to think he might have been killed because of her and what she was doing.
She said hesitantly, “You don’t truly believe there’s a connection between the accident and the trial?”
“Looks that way to me.”
“Couldn’t it have been a coincidence, somebody who had to much too drink, or who couldn’t see for the rain?”
The other woman wagged her head in a negative. “Mr. Lewis is a good driver in spite of getting on in years, and he don’t scare easy. If he says the man was after him, that he meant to run him off the road, well, I’m inclined to believe him. Besides, it’s too much of a coincidence.”
“Meaning?” Regina was sure she knew, but needed to hear Betsy’s reasoning.
“The suit against this Berry Association, Inc. was filed by Mr. Lewis. He’s not only the plaintiff, but the star witness against the big funeral company. Nobody knows the background of the charges, or the business itself, the way he does. If there was no Mr. Lewis, there’d be no suit. You figure it out.”
“But you said the other day that Kane is the force behind the legal action. Surely he would go ahead if anything happened to his grandfather?”
“Maybe, maybe not, depending on what else he’s dug up against this Berry. But I wonder if that scumbag didn’t figure putting Mr. Lewis out of commission was worth the risk.”
“It sounds like something out of a television movie,” Regina protested.
“Yeah, well, maybe that’s where he got the idea,” Betsy said darkly.
Regina did her best to conceal the shiver that rippled over her skin. In an attempt at a more normal reaction, she said, “You’ve been to see Mr. Lewis?”
“Not yet. I’ll go this evening, after my night manager comes on duty. I did call the hospital and talk to the nurse on his station. She gave me the lowdown because she’s—”
“A Benedict?” Regina supplied before Betsy could finish.
“Married to one,” the other woman answered with a fleeting grin before she launched into a complete description of the accident as culled from the nurse who had gotten it from one of the patrolmen.
Regina listened while stifling a strong urge to drive straight to the hospital to see for herself that everything was really all right. She might have given in to it except for a distinct feeling that it would be hypocritical. She was far from eager to face Kane just now, too. Nor was she sure he would welcome having a near stranger around during the family crisis. At the same time, she turned the details of the accident over in her mind, searching for something, anything, to make her feel more easy about it.
As Betsy paused again, she said, “They haven’t identified the other driver?”
“No, and Kane is mighty upset about it. There’ll be hell to pay if he ever discovers who it was.”
“I would expect so.”
“He’ll keep searching, don’t you ever doubt it. I hope he finds him because it’s only God’s mercy that both Mr. Lewis and Miss Elise weren’t killed. Why, I could strangle the man with my bare hands myself.”
Regina made noises of agreement. At the same time, she glanced beyond Betsy to where Dudley Slater’s car had been sitting for two days. It was gone, just as it had been gone the night before when she got back to the motel.
Following her gaze, Betsy asked, “You looking for the guy who’s been over there? I wondered myself what became of him. Won’t hurt to mention to Kane that he took off.”
Regina gave the motel owner a quick look. “I imagine Kane noticed.”
“Could be. Not much he misses.”
“I’m beginning to realize that.” The words were grim.
“Well, I’ll let you get on with your rat killing.” Betsy turned away. “Just wanted to let you know Mr. Lewis won’t be available for a day or two, in case you needed to change your plans.”
“Yes, thank you,” Regina replied, and added a few more words of appreciation before closing the door. She thought that the other woman was disappointed that she had not had more to say about the incident. Regina couldn’t help it. She was in no mood for meaningless chatter.
She paced up and down the room, squeezing her hands together in front of her while her thoughts ricocheted in her head like the metal spheres inside a pinball machine.
Had Slater forced Mr. Lewis off the road? If so, whose idea had it been? Could Gervis have engineered it? Would he go that far?
She had always known there were certain business matters he never discussed. Though she helped him with his private computer records kept at the apartment and often served as a sounding board for him, she didn’t push it out of respect for his privacy. Still, that didn’t keep her from wondering or putting certain facts and figures together until she had a far firmer grasp on how Gervis ran his operation than he realized.
She wished now that she’d paid even more attention. It had suddenly become extremely important to guess how far he would go. If he would order the death of an elderly man who happened to be his opponent in a civil suit, then saying hurtful things to a small boy might mean nothing at all.
No, no, it wasn’t possible. She couldn’t accept such a thing. To do that would be to acknowledge everything she had thought and felt for years was a lie.
Regardless, Gervis’s threat toward Stephan, whether he meant it or not, had left her shaken. It struck at the foundations of her world back in New York. Without Gervis, what would she do? She would be alone, she and Stephan. They would have no one in the world who cared what became of them.
Regina was so disturbed in her mind that she could settle down to nothing. She took a shower, dressed in a T-shirt and slacks. With a great show of industry, she made a few phone calls about an estate sale and two or three antique jewelry exhibitions she was due to attend over the next couple of months. She read an auction catalog that she had brought with her, making notes on the values of pieces for future reference. The room turned stuffy and overwarm as the sun brought out the mugginess left by the rain. She turned on the air conditioner and stood in front of it for long moments with her eyes closed. After a quick lunch for which she had no appetite, she tried to watch an old Fred Astaire musical on television. The plot was contrived and silly and even the music couldn’t hold her; she clicked it off again.
When she could stand it no longer, she placed a call to the hospital. They would tell her next to nothing about Mr. Lewis, perhaps because of harassing calls from the press or the defense lawyers. When the operator offered to put the call through to his room, Regina, suddenly nervous that Kane might answer, hung up at once.
Mr. Lewis’s housekeeper, Dora, might tell her something if she rang Hallowed Ground, she thought, then again, perhaps not. The best bet was probably Luke. He wasn’t close to Mr. Lewis, but she was fairly sure he would know what was going on.
The phone at Chemin-a-Haut rang endlessly with no answer, nor was it picked up by anything so recklessly modern as an answering machine. She would try again later in the evening.
It was almost sundown when she decided to go in search of something to read, a couple of magazines or maybe one of April’s books if she could find it. She brushed her hair, smoothed on a little lip gloss, then picked up her keys and headed out the door. It was then she saw the car.
Slater was back, parked in the same place across the street. She hadn’t noticed, hadn’t heard him, for the pulled draperies in the motel unit and the roar of the air conditioner.
Her lips tightened and a frown pleated the skin between her eyes. The need to do something, to have concrete answers, congealed inside her. Without stopping to think, she stalked toward the car.
The evening was suffocatingly humid. Damp heat rose around her ankles from the pavement, coating her skin in a light glaze of perspiration. The odor of exhaust fumes caught in her nose, mingling with the smell of frying chicken from the motel restaurant and honeysuckle fragrance drifting from where a mass of vines climbed a roadside utility pole. Somewhere a dog barked, then was quiet.
The man in the car watched her approach. He spat out the window, a warning shot that brought her to a stop a couple of steps away.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded without preamble.
His lips curled in his sharp face. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just sitting. No law against it, is there?”
“I know exactly who and what you are, or pretend to be.” As she spoke, she stepped back a pace. The sour miasma of old sweat, beer breath, and stale cigarette smoke from inside the car was nauseating.
“Yeah? You read my stuff?”
“Not if I can help it. If you were any kind of reporter, you’d be at the hospital, wouldn’t you?”
“You’ve got a smart mouth, you know that?”
“I’m well aware Gervis Berry is calling the shots here for you. What I want to know is how much of what you’re doing is on his orders and how much on your own hook.”
“The setup is real simple, sweetheart,” he drawled. “I stick around here, do what I’m told, and I get a story, a big story. If I stumble onto the same thing you’re looking for, then I get a bonus that’ll set me up for life.”
“What I’m looking for?”
“The secret, the key, the skinny, the info that’s going to blow the case these hick lawyers are putting together to-hell-and-gone.”
“Is that where you were last night, looking for this information?” She allowed suspicion to filter into her voice.
His eyes narrowed. “Where else?”
A couple of cars passed on the street just behind her, flapping her shirt with the wind of their passage. When she was sure she could be heard, she said, “Out toward the lake, improving the odds for Gervis?”
“Now where’d you get that idea?”
“And today you were staying clear until you found out whether Lewis Crompton was going to recover.”
The reporter studied her for a second, then raised his brows in pained innocence. “You got it all wrong.”
“I don’t think so. So did Gervis tell you to do it?”
“I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do,” she corrected grimly. “There’s no one else it could be.”
He squinted at her as he reached to extract a cigarette from his shirt pocket along with a cheap plastic lighter. As he flicked the lighter into flame, the glow turned his skin yellow and exposed the feral enmity in his eyes. Then the light went out.
“Maybe you’d better take it up with Berry,” Slater said, deliberately blowing smoke in her direction. “While you’re at it, ask him if he’s happy with my little solution to his problem.”
She had been right. Cold horror slithered down her back. It increased, spreading, as she recognized one thing more: Though she knew Slater was behind the attack on Kane’s grandfather, there was nothing she could do about it.
She backed away an instinctive step as she asked tightly, “Gervis doesn’t know? Did he tell you to go after Mr. Lewis?”
“Didn’t tell me not to.”
“Maybe what I should ask, then, is how he’s going to like your getting him involved with attempted murder.”
“You think it’ll bother him?”
The words were rasping in their dryness. Regina felt her scalp crawl. It was all too possible he was right and Gervis wouldn’t mind. Her cousin, like some mob boss, might well be capable of sending a hireling to take care of the situation, then protesting his innocence if the man blocking his way wound up dead.
Voice tight, she said, “It could bother you both if Kane Benedict figures it out. I wouldn’t underestimate him if I were you. Or his cousin who’s the sheriff.”
Slater gave another hacking laugh, then hawked and spat before he said with heavy irony, “I’ll keep the warning in mind when I report to the boss man. He just might be interested in how thick you’re getting with the law, too.”
“No doubt you’ll enjoy telling him,” she said bitterly. She had suspected that Slater was reporting her movements; he’d just confirmed that, as well.
“I was sent to do a job. I’m doing it the best I know how.”
“Where do you stop, tell me that? How much further will you go?”
“I stop when it’s done, go as far as it takes,” he answered with a snort. “But you got no right to come over all high-and-mighty. The way I see it, you’re not a damned bit better.”
He was right. It was sickening, but she couldn’t deny it. Her voice compressed, she said, “I have my reasons.”
“Don’t we all.”
“Anyway, it’s none of your business.” She squared her shoulders, exhaling in an effort to rid herself of the noxious recognition of blame. “You’re not needed here. I can take care of things just fine on my own.”
“You mean with Kane Benedict? Question there is, are you taking care of him? Or is he taking care of you?”
Heat rose in her face as she heard the innuendo in his voice. “What do you mean?”
“Just what you think,” he countered, his lips wet with spittle. “He’s good-looking, rich, and has the hots for you. You weren’t exactly turning him off there for a while last night, now were you?”
“How do you know?”
“Never noticed me sneaking around, did you? Maybe I make a better undercover man than you thought.”
She ignored both the jeer and her own quiver of distaste. “Why? What reason would you have to follow me?”
“Figured it might be interesting, and damned if I wasn’t right. Just like a picture show, it was, seeing you make up to Benedict. But I did wonder about it for a second there. Seems to me somebody needs to watch out that you don’t go over to the enemy.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Berry might not think so.”
“He knows me, knows I would never do anything against him. Besides—” She stopped abruptly, unwilling to give this revolting little man anything else to use against her.
“There’s the boy to keep you in line, isn’t there?”
She said nothing, only lifted her chin.
“Surprised, huh? I make it my business to find out whatever there is to know.”
There was another car coming. She turned her back on it. “My son,” she said distinctly, “has nothing to do with this.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I think I’ll keep my eye on you anyway, for the charge if nothing else.”
Disgust curled her lips. “I can imagine.”
“You got me all wrong,” he protested. “Watching’s okay, but I got me a yen for some of what you were passing out. You want to work together on this, it’ll be fine by me.”
The look in his eyes made her feel as if she needed a bath. Her answer was instinctive and instant. “Never.”
“Fine,” he growled. “Then don’t mess with me again. I’m after the dirt, the shit that’s gonna help that bastard Berry get what he wants, because that’s how I’ll wind up with what I need. Get in my way and I’ll stomp you flat.”
“Will you now?” she said, holding his gaze.
“You better believe it.” His features were animalistic as he stared at her from the car’s cavelike interior.
Regina swung away, putting her back to him as she checked out the traffic, then started across the road. She could feel his gaze burrowing into her. It was a relief when she reached her room and let herself inside. She put the chain on and turned the dead bolt, then slumped against the door and closed her eyes. She breathed in and out in deep gasps, as if she had been running for miles.
It had been a mistake, perhaps, to throw his suggestion back in his face with so little tact. Injured pride could make him a dangerous enemy. She couldn’t help it; even pretending to cooperate with him was beyond her.
Something had to be done, but what? What?
She could call Gervis, but to what purpose? He’d said before that he had no control over Slater. Assuming, of course, that he wanted to control him.
The next best thing might be to call Kane and throw herself on his mercy. She well might, except there was no guarantee he would be merciful, much less willing to understand her involvement.
Going to Roan Benedict was no better option. If she did that, it would all come out. There was no possible way to explain what she knew or make anyone believe it without implicating Gervis. If that happened, her cousin would go crazy. There was no telling what he might do.
And Stephan would be there alone with him.
Stephan, her son.
No, bringing the sheriff or authority of any kind into this was clearly impossible. That left only one thing. She had to find something Gervis could use against Mr. Lewis in court. She had to find it fast, before Slater took matters into his own hands again. If she managed that feat, then there would be no reason for any more threats, any more danger.
Kane was the key after all, though it had nothing to do with mercy. She was going to have to go through him to get what she needed.
She put her hand to her pendant, holding it in a death grip. Squeezing her eyes shut so tight that she could feel her lashes pricking the skin around them, she listened to the hard, frantic pounding of her heart.
Could she do it? Did she have the nerve, not to mention the sex appeal or the pure, unmitigated gall? Could she manage it while Kane was so concerned for his grandfather? She didn’t know, but she was going to have to find out.
She had to follow Gervis’s orders. She had to do it as soon as she was able, tomorrow, the next day, whenever she could find the glimmer of an excuse.
There were so many ugly phrases for what she needed to do, so many crass, contemptuous, vulgar words to describe an act that was both simple and profound, a joining of the flesh that could not be accomplished without some degree of mental bonding. There were also a few with gentle, even resplendent, meanings.
She needed to make love to Kane in order to get close to him, to become intimate with him so she could discover what he knew.
The last was far preferable. It was what she would choose, if she must.
Or if she dared.