Betrayals

Sixteen

Jared was closing in on forty and as good-looking as he’d been at twenty-five when Rebecca had been in love with him. In the dim parlor light, she could make out the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and the first touches of gray in his dark hair. He’d kept in shape: his abdomen was tight, and the muscles in his shoulders and arms suggested he still liked to sail and jog. He wore good-quality jeans and a plain navy pullover.

He recovered quickly from the initial shock of seeing her again after so many years. “R.J., what’re you doing here?”

“I live here.”

“She’s renting her old room upstairs,” her grandfather amended.

Jared gave a small laugh. “I should have known a tightwad Blackburn like you would camp out with family. Sorry for the intrusion. I’ll leave-”

Thomas snorted. “Oh, please, let’s not start all that nonsense. Where would you stay?”

“The Ritz.”

“I have enough on my conscience,” Thomas said in his dry, understated way, “without adding the cost of an unnecessary night at the Ritz to it.” He turned to his granddaughter, still rooted to her spot in the doorway. “Rebecca, Jared is a guest in my house. I’d be most appreciative if you’d retire to your room and permit us to carry on our conversation in private.”

A polite, stuffy way of telling her to get lost. Rebecca stood her ground. “I’m not going anywhere until I find out what Jared’s doing in Boston.”

“If he wants you to know his affairs,” Thomas replied, “he will tell you them.”

“Then you’d better give up, R.J.,” Jared told her, not nastily, but she got the point.

Rebecca made a face at him that would have done a twelve-year-old proud. She was still steamed from her earlier go-round with her grandfather over the Frenchman’s appearance that afternoon. Thomas had refused to discuss how one of the two-man team that had murdered Tam fourteen years ago could have known her father or even if Thomas himself recognized the detailed description she gave him. Nor would he speculate on what the Frenchman might be doing in Boston, what he might want-anything. His remedy for Rebecca’s heightened state of anxiety was to make her a pot of hot tea and encourage her to take a vacation. A long one. Preferably somewhere far from Boston, like Budapest.

She, in turn, hadn’t mentioned the Jupiter Stones and her afternoon with Sofi and David Rubin. There were too many uncertainties, and not a single guarantee that confiding in her grandfather would mean he’d return the favor. Likely enough, he’d clam up even more. And what David had told her was too fresh, too raw. It was one thing to believe Tam had gotten hold of a few sapphires and was smuggling them into the states as a nest egg-not that she’d have needed one with Jared. But maybe she’d wanted to make a life for herself and Mai without him. After all, what did Rebecca really know about their relationship and the terms they’d come to before Tam’s death? Jared certainly hadn’t told her.

Still, it was quite another thing for Tam to have gotten hold of Empress Elisabeth’s Jupiter Stones. Until she knew more, Rebecca would keep her mouth shut.

Not a gracious loser, she left the parlor and tried eavesdropping from the stairs. She couldn’t hear much. She was about to give up when her grandfather appeared in the parlor door and glared up at her. “I’m dismayed,” he said, “to see that the Blackburns’ sense of honor and decency has deteriorated to the point a granddaughter of mine would stoop to listening in on a private conversation.”

Rebecca jumped up and peered over the mahogany side-rail down at him. “Jared saw our man, didn’t he? He must have gone to San Francisco before coming here to Boston -”

“Rebecca, if you persist, Jared will leave and neither you or I will learn anything. So I suggest for once in your life you don’t cut off your nose to spite your face and please retire to your room. I’m perfectly capable of dealing with Jared on my own.”

Her grandfather always went into his haughty Bostonian act when he was on the verge of losing his temper. Rebecca didn’t respond and headed upstairs and stayed there.

She passed a near-sleepless night. There were haunting memories of Jared’s smile, echoes of the things he used to whisper to her when they’d made love, memories of the way he’d made her feel. She doubted he was ever tormented by similar memories of her. She hadn’t been his first lover.

And there were questions that kept her awake. What-ifs and fears. About the Frenchman and how his reappearance would affect their lives. About what had so unnerved Jared Sloan that he’d ventured back to Boston after so many years, back to the Eliza Blackburn house where he’d be accosted by enough uncomfortable memories of his own. About her grandfather and what he’d known for twenty-six years and had never told anyone, at least not her.

About the Jupiter Stones.

And about Mai, the hours-old infant she’d rescued from the chaos that was Saigon in April 1975. Sometime toward dawn, Rebecca flicked on her bed-stand lamp and examined the pretty, intelligent face of Jared Sloan’s daughter on the front page of The Score. If only Mai could have known Tam.

“My baby means everything to me,” Tam had told Rebecca not long before she had died.

Would the Frenchman hurt Mai?

When she still couldn’t sleep, Rebecca tried to accept her grandfather for being the taciturn, unsparing man he was. He was hardest on those he cared about most-and particularly on himself.

By five-thirty, she gave up, took a shower and got dressed, not bothering with anything remotely corporate, just a shirt, jeans and sneakers. She let her damp hair dry haphazardly. Downstairs she peeked in the front parlor: Jared was sacked out on the couch with an ancient afghan pulled up over him and his clothes lying in a heap on the floor. He wasn’t tossing and turning. It was all Rebecca could do not to march in there and wake him up.

Athena was already studying anatomy at the kitchen table. Rebecca helped herself to a cup of coffee and joined her, averting her eyes from the grim photographs. A sturdy, brilliant woman, Athena was of the unshakable conviction that into each woman’s life must come at least one bona fide rake of a man. Rebecca couldn’t resist telling her that her rake was conked out in the front parlor.

“Him?” Athena was thrilled. “Yes, he’s perfect! So handsome, no? He’s broken many hearts, I’m sure. What did he do to you?”

Rebecca poured milk from a carton into her coffee. She usually had her coffee black, but one needed some protection from Athena’s notoriously strong brew. “He had a baby by another woman while professing to be in love with me.”

That ignited Athena, and Rebecca was pleased to see she wasn’t the only hard case when it came to two-timing men. Athena ranted and commiserated and loudly suggested that Jared Sloan would make a fine specimen for her anatomy class, but she restricted herself to snorting at his sleeping figure when she headed off to med school.

A few minutes later Jared staggered into the kitchen in his undershirt and jeans, and Rebecca had to catch her breath at the memories of sleepy mornings on their trip to Florida after her freshman year at B.U. She’d dumped men and had been dumped since, but she’d never loved anyone with such abandon and trust-such naiveté-as Jared Sloan. Maybe it was because he was her first lover, maybe it was because he’d been her friend. What difference did it make? Whatever they’d had together was over.

He poured himself a cup of coffee. “Did I hear you and that firebrand med student planning to carve me up?”

Rebecca grinned. “Just a little.”

“Pleasant conversation to wake up to. Bad enough I had to fight off that damn cat all night. I thought your grandfather hated cats.”

“He’s not fond of them, but he tolerates Sweatshirt.”

“Sweatshirt?”

“He’s mine.”

“I should have known.” He sat across from her at the table, and he did look tired and restless. “Still hate me, R.J.?”

His expression was serious all at once, but Rebecca smiled over the rim of her steaming mug. “Only when I think about you.”

“Ouch-the infamous Blackburn honesty. It serves me right for asking.” Suddenly he set down his mug and ran one finger along the inside of the handle, watching what he was doing as if it were the most important thing he had on his mind. Finally he said, “R.J., I’m sorry about that business with The Score. If I’d known-”

“You’d still have punched that guy.”

He laughed unexpectedly. “Maybe.”

“No maybe about it, Sloan. You haven’t changed since you were ten years old and nailed that snotty little rich kid who picked on my brothers for wearing hand-me-downs. I don’t remember his name-he used to have birthday parties in the park in Louisburg Square with the maids in uniforms, silver platters, clowns.”

“Which you crashed,” he pointed out, his eyes dancing.

She shrugged, unrepentant. “Have squirt gun will travel.”

“He’s an attorney now, I hear-very upstanding. Throws parties for his kids in the park, I’m sure.”

“What do you suppose he thought of our pictures in The Score?”

Jared looked at her. “Do you care?”

“No.”

He smiled at her total absence of hesitation. “Have you had any fallout from all this?”

Twisting her mouth to one side in thought, Rebecca leaned back and gave him a long look. “Just what’s sitting in front of me.”

Jared picked up his coffee and gave her a teasing look. “No men calling up for dates with the rich, beautiful, famous R. J. Blackburn?”

“A few,” Rebecca said, and she had to smile. He was so much the old Jared who’d never been intimidated by anything about her-her looks, her intelligence, her heritage, her high standards.

His eyes darkened for a moment. “The Score said you’re not married.”

“I’m not. Never have been-and not because of you, either. The prospect of not being married at thirty-five doesn’t keep me awake nights, you know. What about you?”

He gave her a deliberate smile. “The prospect of not being married at forty doesn’t keep me awake nights.” Then he changed the subject. “Your grandfather’s not up, I take it?”

“Not yet. He’s usually an early riser. He’s probably upstairs plotting ways to get me out of here so you two can pretend I don’t exist.”

“Still not one to sit on your emotions, are you?”

For that, she didn’t warn him before he tried Athena’s coffee, which was strong enough to peel paint. All he did was make a slight grimace. That proper Winston-Sloan blood of his had kicked in, she supposed.

He went on, “It wasn’t my idea to throw you out last night.”

“I didn’t notice you asking me to stick around.”

“God forbid I should come between you and your grandfather.”

Rebecca gave him a skeptical look. “Yeah, right.”

“Okay, I admit I was hoping you were thumbing your nose at my cousin and aunt and anyone else who thought the Blackburns would never amount to anything again and were living in the fanciest, most expensive condo you could find. I admit I didn’t want to have this conversation. But you’re making a mistake if you think Thomas has told me anything he hasn’t told you. If it makes you feel any better, he wants me to head back to San Francisco.”

“Sounds good to me.” Rebecca knew she was being petty and immature but couldn’t stop herself. The old hurt had gotten the better of her. “When’re you leaving?”

“I’m not.”

“Why not?”

Jared leaned over the table, and Rebecca saw that his teal eyes were as clear and luminous as she remembered in all her dreams of the first time she and Jared had made love. “You’ve seen our guy from Saigon, haven’t you? He’s in Boston.”

“Did Grandfather tell you that?”

“No. He’s no more going to blab your ‘affairs’ to me than he is mine to you. But it’s a fair guess from his reaction to me-and yours.”

Rebecca sipped her coffee, the mug poised in front of her in both hands. Her fingers weren’t trembling; she hadn’t gulped the coffee. As far as Jared Sloan could see, she was just fine. But she wasn’t. A time and a man she’d thought she’d put behind her had reared up again, and she didn’t know what she was supposed to do.

“R.J., don’t hold back on me,” Jared said, not as a plea or a demand, but a simple, honest request. His gaze remained intense, difficult to ignore. “My daughter’s life could be at stake.”

Rebecca took a sharp breath. “She’s been threatened?”

“No, but this guy tried to kill her when she was just a baby. For all I know, he might try again. He was at my house in San Francisco the day before yesterday and didn’t touch her, but that doesn’t mean he won’t. She’s with my father, so she’s safe for now.” Jared set down his coffee mug, his expression hard and serious and very determined. “Nothing happens to Mai. I don’t care what I have to do.”

Rebecca was taken aback by his vehemence-by how very much he loved his daughter. And suddenly she knew, as she’d only thought she’d known before, that fourteen years ago Jared Sloan had done exactly the right thing in taking unconditional responsibility for the tiny newborn girl. Mai was his daughter. And Tam’s. He had never offered any excuses or explanations. He had simply done what he’d had to do. It had meant losing Rebecca, but as painful as that had been at the time, it was now completely irrelevant.

“You’re right,” she told him. “I did see our man.”

Jared listened grimly, without interruption as she related yesterday’s encounter, leaving out the Frenchman’s comment about having known her father-and David Rubin’s report on Tam’s bag of colored stones. Rebecca still needed time to process both developments before she could determine if they were any of Jared Sloan’s business or if it were even her place to tell him. The stones might not have had anything to do with his relationship with Tam, and her violent death and Mai’s illegitimacy were already enough for Jared and Mai to deal with without Rebecca throwing a fortune in smuggled gems into their faces. But that had been her judgment in 1975, as it was now.

“I don’t know what he’s after,” she said finally. “What about you? Did he say anything-”

“No. I didn’t exactly give him a chance. Mai was there. I just got rid of him and came out here.”

“To see my grandfather.”

Jared didn’t comment.

“Why Grandfather?” Rebecca persisted. “He wasn’t in Saigon in 1975. He hasn’t been there since my father was killed. Look, Jared-”

“R.J., I’m not going to start a war between you and your grandfather.”

“A polite way of saying you’re not going to tell me a thing. Well, fine-don’t.” She set her mug down hard and swept to her feet. “I’ve got enough to do without beating my head against a wall trying to make you play fair. If you’ll excuse me, I have a business to run.”

As she came around the table he caught her by the arm-not hard, not long. But she drew back as if he’d given her an electric shock. His touch called up images of hot nights of lovemaking, reminded her of how much losing him had hurt, of how damned much she’d loved him. And warned her he was as sexy as ever. She could want him again. It wouldn’t take much.

If she were going to be stupid.

“Stay out of this, R.J.,” he said quietly, his voice even deeper, raspier than she remembered. She saw that touching her had an impact on him, as well. There’d never been any doubt in her mind he’d had a grand time for himself making love to her, no matter what had happened between him and Tam.

Rebecca narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not a kid, Jared. I won’t let you order me around anymore.”

Jared looked surprised. “I never did order you around.”

“Ha! You’ve been telling me what to do since I was two years old.”

“Not a chance. R.J., you were the bossiest kid on Beacon Hill. I never managed to get you to do one thing you didn’t want to do. And, in case you’ve forgotten, we didn’t see each other during the ten years after you moved from Boston to Florida, or the fourteen since you left me to rot in that hospital in Manila. You’ve been free of me about two-thirds of your life.” He held back a smile, his eyes giving off that pirate’s gleam that used to make her groan just with wanting him. “Hey, we’re practically strangers.”

“A stranger isn’t someone who knows-not just guesses, but knows-you were the one who lit the fire on Boston Common that time.”

Jared grinned at their shared childhood memory. “It wasn’t much of a fire, just a few twigs and leaves.”

“You and Quentin and Nate were playing Salem witch trial, and I was the witch. You were going to burn me at the stake. What was I, five?”

“We weren’t really going to burn you-”

“Yes, but the mounted policeman didn’t know that when he smelled smoke and you took off, leaving me tied to that tree.”

“R.J., you know you could have gotten free anytime, and anyway, the fire wasn’t that close to you.”

“The cop didn’t think so. He wanted to find you and stick your toes in it, but I kept my mouth shut.”

“Not out of any sense of virtue,” Jared countered, “but only because you’re a Blackburn and keeping your mouth shut comes naturally.”

“The point is, you’re no stranger and you never will be, no matter how little we see of each other.” She smiled wistfully, wondering if she and Jared, if never strangers, could ever be friends again. If they hadn’t fallen in love, then it might have been possible. Now-she didn’t know. “Good luck with Grandfather. And if I don’t see you before you leave town-well, give my best to your daughter.”

Jared looked at her. “I will, R.J. Thanks.”

Maddeningly, her eyes filled with tears, and she fled, running out the front door and into the cool spring air. It was damp and drizzly, a typical New England morning, and still early.

“I have no wish to discuss with you the matter of a Frenchman who might have known your father,” her grandfather had told her yesterday afternoon.

She’d see what she could find out on her own.

First she’d have a big, fattening breakfast on Charles Street, and then she’d head over to the Boston Public Library, which supposedly had an impressive amount of information on the man John F. Kennedy didn’t choose as his ambassador to Saigon, one Thomas Ezekiel Blackburn.

It also, Rebecca felt certain, would have something on Empress Elisabeth and her Jupiter Stones, and maybe even information on a rash of robberies on the Côte d’ Azur in the late fifties.

Jared made a fresh pot of more tolerable coffee and went out into the garden, toweling off a chair. The air was cool and damp, but it wasn’t raining at the moment. His coffee was piping hot, just what he needed. He inhaled the steam and tried to settle down. It wasn’t easy to be around Rebecca again.

In a few minutes, Thomas came outside, wearing an ancient sweater over his polo shirt and chinos. He looked a hundred as he pulled out a chair and sat down, not bothering to towel it off. “You’re not on your way back to San Francisco, I see.”

“No. I called Mai last night-she’s fine. Irritated with me for going to Boston without her, but she’ll survive.”

Thomas sighed. “I’m too old to force you to take sound advice when offered. Where’s Rebecca?”

“Gone out. She says she has a business to run, but-”

“But she’s got the bit in her teeth,” Thomas finished for him.

“She told you our man from Saigon was at her studio yesterday, didn’t she?”

Thomas fastened his incisive eyes on Jared. “She mentioned it, yes.”

“You could have told me.”

“I have no intention of repeating private conversations between myself and my granddaughter to anyone, including you, Jared.”

Jared accepted the mild lecture with equanimity, and said, in just as mild a tone, “That’s fine-until your idea of honor and discretion endangers my daughter. Thomas, R.J. knows something, and she’s holding back.”

“What do you want me to say?” Thomas asked calmly.

“I don’t know. Did she give you any indication-”

“No. I agree with you. She’s holding back.”

Jared inhaled, controlling his frustration. “R.J. should get out of Boston. If this guy’s here, she could be in danger.”

Leaning forward, Thomas looked at Jared, his expression surprisingly gentle. “Don’t be protective, Jared. Don’t hover.” He paused and picked bits of wet twigs and yellow pollen off his table. “Rebecca hates that.”

“I don’t give a damn what she hates.”

Thomas smiled. “Don’t you?”

Uncomfortable, Jared jumped up and abandoned his coffee. The Blackburns were getting to him. “I’m going out for a while. I need some air-a chance to think.” He glanced down at the elderly man seated at the battered garden table, wishing the last quarter-century of Thomas Blackburn’s life hadn’t been so isolated and hard. Thomas would say he didn’t mind; he deserved the ostracism he’d endured since 1963. But Jared wondered. He added, “Maybe coming back here was a mistake.”

Thomas was unruffled. “There are two seats available on a nine-o’clock flight to San Francisco. I called myself. I don’t believe Rebecca’s ever been.”

A vision flashed in Jared’s mind of taking R.J. across the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time, taking her to dinner at his and Mai’s favorite Chinese restaurant.

He had to get out from under the Blackburn spell.

“I’ll talk to you later,” he told Thomas, his voice hoarse. He didn’t wait for a reply.