Facets

Chapter 26 #2

“I haven’t pushed you anywhere. Give me the chance, and I will.” This time he caught her around the waist and hauled her against him before she could duck away.

She pushed at his chest. “Let me go, John.”

“I like the feel of you against me.”

She pushed harder. “Let … me … go.”

“Or what?” he tossed off.

“I’ll cry rape.”

“You’ll never prove it.”

“I’ll make enough noise to do the damage.”

He grinned. “You’re a minx.” He shook his head and murmured, “Rape.” He chuckled. “Kiss me, Hillary. I’ve missed you.”

When his mouth sought hers, she turned her head away. He turned it back with a firm hand and covered her lips before she could utter a protest. She did make sounds in her throat, though, and struggled to free herself. Finally, she gave him a swift kick in the shin.

Abruptly he released her and bent to rub his leg. “What’s the matter with you?”

With an arm at her mouth, she took a step back. “What’s the matter?” She couldn’t believe he was asking. “What’s the matter? I don’t want you to kiss me. That’s what’s the matter. Didn’t you hear me telling you that? Are you deaf?”

“I heard you say it, but you didn’t mean it. You want me.

“Right now, I want you drawn and quartered. You’re beyond salvation.”

“I never-asked for salvation.”

Her nod was slow and held equal parts acknowledgment and confession. “You’re right. You never did. Only I guess I thought that maybe, somehow, sometime, I could make a difference in your life. I was wrong.”

She whirled around and started for the door, only to be caught by the arm and whirled back. “Where are you going?”

“Out. Away. Back to New York. You’re a waste of my time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

She glared up at him. “I walk in here absolutely furious because you’re sabotaging my career, and all you can say is ‘you want me.’ You think sex is the answer to every little worry?”

“Between us it is.”

“No more!” She threw up her hands. “I’ve had it.”

“It always worked before,” he had the gall to say.

She gave another exaggerated nod. “You’re right.

It did work before, and that was my fault.

My weakness. One look at you, and I started to tremble.

You came near me, and I melted. It didn’t matter that I knew all the hideous things you were doing to the people around you.

The sex was good, so I took it while I could get it.

I was an easy lay.” Her head jerked. “But no more. I’m not melting, and if I’m trembling, it’s from anger—anger at you for being a bastard and at myself for having been taken in all these years.

I’ve been defending you. Do you know that?

At the slightest negative word, I’ve always come to your defense.

So what do you do to repay me for that? You go to the chairman of the board of my publishing house and have my contract rescinded. ”

“Be grateful. That book would have been a piece of shit.”

She pounded her chest with a fist. “That book was my work. I had a right to get it published whether it was a piece of shit or not.” She waved a hand.

“But forget that. I can go to another publisher. There’s always someone who’ll publish shit.

And you won’t be able to stop me. Unless you kill me.

You’ve committed murder before, if you consider Pam’s abortion, and you nearly beat Cutter to death.

So I suppose you could kill me. Only I’ve got my story locked up somewhere safe.

If something happens to me, the finger will point straight at you.

Won’t do much for the respect you want, will it? ”

He was looking disgusted. “I’m not a murderer, for God’s sake. You’re talking ragtime.”

“I’m talking reality, and the reality is that you’re an evil man.”

He rolled his eyes.

“You’re frightening, John. You have a warped idea of what’s right and what isn’t. What’s right is what serves your purposes. Whoever gets in the way is out of luck. You barge ahead full steam, rolling over anyone in your path.”

“Every successful businessman does that to some extent.”

“I don’t know about every successful businessman. I only know about you.”

“I’m successful.”

“You’re pathetic and sad and lonely. You’ve hit middle age. You have money and a business to show for it, but nothing else. No family. No close friends.”

“I have friends—”

“Not close ones. You won’t let any come close. And I doubt they’d want to. You have a dark side that’s off-putting. So you’re alone.”

“I choose to be alone.”

“Because to this day you’re insecure. Despite everything you’ve done and been, deep down inside you’re still insecure.”

“That’s crap.”

She shook her head. “I’ll bet you have nightmares about being little again, up in Timiny Cove, trying to please your father and failing.

You never got over that, did you? You never got over the fact that you didn’t measure up to the standards he set.

” She gave a bitter laugh that helped ease the knot slowly forming in her throat.

“God, it’s ironic. If he’d lived, if he’d seen half of what you’ve done, he’d have been in awe. ”

“If he’d lived,” John said in a stony way, “he wouldn’t have allowed me to do any of what I’ve done. I told him my ideas. He said it was all wrong.”

“He was conservative. He was frightened about taking as big a step as you wanted. He wasn’t sophisticated like you are.

He didn’t have the vision, and when you tried to give it to him, he couldn’t see it.

That was his limitation, John, not yours.

In so many ways, you’re so much more than Eugene ever was—” She caught herself, stared at him, shook her head.

“Do you hear me?” she asked in astonishment.

“I’m defending you still.” The knot tightened in her throat.

“I guess I’ll always do that. Just like you’ll always feel second best. It’s so much a part of you that you can’t give it up.

You’ve lived so long with jealousy and hatred that you’d feel empty without it. ”

She felt the first prick of tears in her eyes.

She tried to will them away but she failed.

“They’re the evil things, John, the jealousy and hatred.

Not you. You’re not an inherently evil person, but you’ve let yourself be taken over.

You’ve let yourself be emotionally stunted. And it’s made you miss out on so much.”

John stood with his legs apart and his features tight. “I’m not missing out on a thing. I have everything I want in life.”

“You do not. It’s sad.”

His eyes flashed. “There’s nothing sad about me. I have more than most people ever hope for.”

“You have nothing! You go to work. You come home, change your clothes, go out and come home again, and through it all you’re alone.”

“Look who’s talking. Are you any better? You’re not involved with anyone. You never have been. You work, go out, come home, and you’re alone. So who are you to criticize me?”

“But I don’t want to be alone! I never have, and I freely admit it!”

“So why do you do it?”

“Because I’ve been loving you all these years, waiting for you to love me back, only you can’t!

You can’t love anyone! You’re too busy loving yourself, because you think that if you don’t, no one else will and you’ll have to go without.

That’s the sad part.” Tears gathered on her lids, and her voice shrank.

“But I can’t go on like this, John. I want more.

I want someone to love me. I’m too old to have children.

I blew that on you, too—not that you’d want children, because you’d see them as competition for your wife’s affections—and it may be that I’m too old to find someone to love me the way I want.

But I can’t go on waiting for you this way, wondering when you’re going to come, holding my breath and praying.

” In a splintered voice, she said, “It hurts too much. Loving you is too painful.”

His face blurred. She tossed a limp hand in the air and whispered, “I’m done with it.” Feeling drained and defeated, she turned and left.

John didn’t follow her. She wandered aimlessly through downtown Boston for a while before taking a cab to Logan and returning to New York.

Rather than go straight to her apartment, she walked some, even stopped for dinner, since it was well past the hour.

But she wasn’t hungry, and the loneliness of sharing a table with herself got to her.

So she left without doing much more than picking at her food.

There were four messages on her answering machine. None of them was from John.

She grappled with her dilemma for hours and hours over the next few days.

She didn’t answer her phone. If Arlan called with good news—either that John had relented and Templar wanted to go ahead with her book, or that Arlan was moving to another house and was taking the book with him as part of the deal—he would leave a message. But he didn’t call.

Nor did John.

Her loneliness had been bad before, but it was even worse now.

Things were over with John. Really over.

The emptiness she felt was just like the one she predicted John would feel if he ever let go of his jealousy and hatred.

If he’d done that, she would have gladly filled the void in his life.

He wasn’t doing it, though, and now she had a void in her own.

To fill it, she turned her attention back to her book. The only emotional energy she had seemed tied to it, and although she had neither a publisher nor a contract, she couldn’t just stop. She had to finish. She had to work John out of her life.

For several weeks, she wrote without a break.

It was summertime in New York. Most of her friends were away, and the heat was oppressive enough to keep her indoors.

She edited and polished, made calls to check her facts.

If she planned to take her book to a new publisher, it had to be supergood.

Everything had to be backed up so that John wouldn’t be able to pull the stunt he’d pulled with Templar.

Then the unexpected happened. She managed to track down Joe Grogan, the lawyer who had written Eugene’s will.

She had assumed he had died, but in her effort to leave no stone unturned she followed a lead and found him retired and living in northern Arizona.

On the phone, he was cordial and seemed perfectly lucid. He remembered Eugene well.

The next morning, she flew to Arizona. Grogan, not being an executor of Eugene’s estate, had had no way of knowing that Cutter had never received his bequest. He did remember the codicil, though, and made a sworn statement to that effect, witnessed by his ranch foreman and a local law officer.

Hillary returned to New York feeling both ebullient and terrified. She added Grogan’s statement to her book, but she was uneasy about it. It was disconcertingly real, evidence of a breach of the law. It was a potential firecracker.

For that matter, so was much of what she’d written.

John had been right to want her to stop.

She wasn’t just telling secrets; she was backing them up several times over.

Perhaps because of her connection with Timiny Cove, she found people there who were willing to talk to her.

Because of her connection with John, she likewise found people in his circle who opened up.

She saw him more clearly than she ever had, and that picture emerged in her book.

Gradually she began to grasp what was in her hands. She had power. For the first time in her life, she had the means to move John in some way, shape, or fashion. It was a daunting realization.

That realization took on even greater meaning in the course of the next few weeks.

Summer ended, Labor Day came and went, and business in the city picked up where it had left off.

Hillary had dinner with Cutter one night.

A week after that, she had lunch with Pam.

In both of them she found an air of expectancy.

At her prodding, both admitted that it had to do with the company.

One part of her—the part that had loved him for years—wanted to warn John.

In her mind’s eye, he stood alone, arrogant and, therefore, defenseless.

He had been wrong about the legacy, the beating, and the abortion.

He had been wrong about a slew of other things.

But he was in for a fall. She felt it in her gut.

He was in for a fall, and a part of her still wanted to help him.

She didn’t see how she could warn him. She couldn’t betray Cutter and Pam, after the way they had trusted her.

Besides, she hadn’t been in contact with John since the night she had told him off.

She thought of calling him now, just to reestablish some sort of contact.

But she feared he would hang up on her, and that would hurt.

In truth, she still loved him. She hated him for not loving her back, but she did love him.

Her love was insane. Cutter told her so, Pam did, and Arlan did, and she knew they were right.

But she couldn’t help what she felt. It was visceral, not rational.

She couldn’t turn it off with a snap of her fingers.

It was buried deep inside her and had been for twenty-seven long years.

John was part of her. He was the one person who had shaped her more than any other.

She had learned that over the past few months.

Revenge may have spurred her to write the book, but John was a force behind it in more ways than that.

If she had become a dedicated writer over the years, it was to win his praise, far more than to distinguish herself from her family.

If she wrote to exorcise her personal frustration, he was at the root of that frustration.

She wished it weren’t so. She wished she didn’t care what happened to him. She wished she hated him more than she loved him. But she didn’t. Whatever his fate, it would touch her.

That was why, when Pam called her on a cloudy Sunday in late September with the news that she and Cutter were meeting with John in the library of the Beacon Hill townhouse the following morning, she asked if she could come.