A Will And A Way Page 9

  Turning back to the window, she tugged with all the strength she had. The latch gave with a grind of metal against metal, the boxes swayed from the movement. She saw her candles start to tip and grabbed for them. Out of reach, they slid from the box and clattered to the concrete, their tiny flames extinguished as they hit the ground. She almost followed them, but managed to fight for balance. Pandora found herself perched nine feet off the floor in pitch-darkness.

  She wouldn’t fall, she promised herself as she gripped the little window ledge with both hands. Using her touch to guide her, she pulled the window out and open, then began to ease herself through. The first blast of cold air made her almost giddy. After she’d pushed her shoulders through she gave herself a moment to breathe and adjust to the lesser dark of starlight. From somewhere to the west, she heard a hardy night bird call twice and fall silent. She’d never heard anything more beautiful.

  Grabbing the base of a rhododendron, she pulled herself through to the waist. When she heard the crash of boxes behind her, she laid her cheek against the cold grass. Inch by inch, she wiggled her way out, ignoring the occasional rip and scratch. At last, she was flat on her back, looking up at the stars. Cold, bruised and exhausted, she lay there, just breathing. When she was able, Pandora dragged herself up and walked around to the east terrace doors.

  She wanted revenge, but first, she wanted a bath.

  After three layovers and two plane changes, Michael arrived in Palm Springs. Nothing, as far as he could see, had changed. He never came to the exclusive little community but that he came reluctantly. Now, thinking of his mother lying ill, he was swamped with guilt.

  He rarely saw her. True, she was no more interested in seeing him than he was her. Yet, she was still his mother. They had been on a different wavelength since the day he’d been born, but she’d taken care of him. At least, she’d hired people to take care of him. Affection, Michael realized, didn’t have to enter into a child’s feelings for his parent. The bond was there whether or not understanding followed it.

  With no more than a flight bag, he bypassed the crowd at baggage claim and hailed a cab. After giving his mother’s address, he sat back and checked his watch, subtracting time zones. Even with the hours he’d gained, it was probably past visiting hours. He’d get around that, but first he had to know what hospital his mother was in. If he’d been thinking straight, he would have called ahead and checked.

  If his mother’s husband wasn’t in, one of the servants could tell him. It might not be as bad as the telegram made it sound. After all his mother was still young. Then it struck Michael that he didn’t have the vaguest idea how old his mother was. He doubted his father knew, and certainly not her current husband. At another time, it might have struck him as funny.

  Impatient, he watched as the cab glided by the gates and pillars of the elite. His career had caused him to stay in California for extended lengths of time, but he preferred L.A. to Palm Springs. There, at least, was some action, some movement, some edge. But he liked New York best of all; the pace matched his own and the streets were tougher.

  He thought of Pandora. Both of them lived in New York, but they never saw each other unless it was miles north of the city at the Folley. The city could swallow you. Or hide you. It was another aspect Michael appreciated.

  Didn’t he often use it to hide—from his stifling upbringing, from his recurring lack of faith in the human race? It was at the Folley that he felt the easiest, but it was in New York that he felt the safest. He could be anonymous there if he chose to be. There were times he wanted nothing more. He wrote about heroes and justice, sometimes rough but always human. He wrote, in his own fashion, about basic values and simple rights.

  He’d been raised with the illusions and hypocrisy of wealth and with values that were just as unstable. He’d broken away from that, started on his own. New York had helped make it possible because in the city backgrounds were easily erased. So easily erased, Michael mused, that he rarely thought of his.

  The cab cruised up the long semicircle of macadam, under the swaying palms, toward the towering white house where his mother had chosen to live. Michael remembered there was a lily pond in the back with goldfish the size of groupers. His mother refused to call them carp.

  “Wait,” he told the driver, then dashed up two levels of stairs to the door. The butler who answered was new. It was his mother’s habit to change the staff regularly, before, as she put it, they got too familiar. “I’m Michael Donahue, Mrs. Keyser’s son.”

  The butler glanced over his shoulder at the waiting cab, then back at Michael’s disheveled sweater and unshaven face. “Good evening, sir. Are you expected?”

  “Where’s my mother? I want to go to the hospital directly.”

  “Your mother isn’t in this evening, Mr. Donahue. If you’ll wait, I’ll see if Mr. Keyser’s available.”

  Intolerant, as always, of cardboard manners, he stepped inside. “I know she’s not in. I want to go see her tonight. What’s the name of the hospital?”

  The butler gave a polite nod. “What hospital, Mr. Donahue?”

  “Jackson, where did that cab come from?” Wrapped in a deep-rose smoking jacket, Lawrence Keyser strolled downstairs. He had a thick cigar between the fingers of one hand and a snifter of brandy in the other.

  “Well, Lawrence,” Michael began over a wave of fury. “You look comfortable. Where’s my mother?”

  “Well, well, it’s—ah, it’s Matthew.”

  “It’s Michael.”

  “Michael, of course. Jackson, pay off Mr. ah, Mr. Donavan’s cab.”

  “No, thanks, Jackson.” Michael held up a hand. Another time, he’d have been amused at his stepfather’s groping for his name. “I’ll use it to get to the hospital. Wouldn’t want to put you out.”

  “No trouble at all, not at all.” Big, round and only partially balding, Keyser gave Michael a friendly grin. “Veronica will be pleased to see you, though we didn’t know you were coming. How long are you in town?”

  “As long as I’m needed. I left the minute I got the telegram. You didn’t mention the name of the hospital. Since you’re home and relaxing,” he said with only the slightest trace of venom, “should I assume that my mother’s condition’s improved?”

  “Condition?” Keyser gave a jovial laugh. “Well now, I don’t know how she’d take to that term, but you can ask her yourself.”

  “I intend to. Where is she?”

  “Playing bridge at the Bradleys’. She’ll be coming along in about an hour. How about a brandy?”

  “Playing bridge!” Michael stepped forward and grabbed his surprised stepfather by the lapels. “What the hell do you mean she’s playing bridge?”

  “Can’t stomach the game myself,” Keyser began warily. “But Veronica’s fond of it.”

  It came to Michael, clear as a bell. “You didn’t send me a telegram about Mother?”

  “A telegram?” Keyser patted Michael’s arm, and hoped Jackson stayed close. “No need to send you a telegram about a bridge game, boy.”

  “Mother’s not ill?”

  “Strong as a horse, though I wouldn’t let her hear me say so just that way.”

  Michael swore and whirled around. “Someone’s going to pay,” he muttered.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to New York,” Michael tossed over his shoulder as he ran down the steps.

  Relieved, Keyser opted against the usual protests about his departure. “Is there a message for your mother?”

  “Yeah.” Michael stopped with a hand on the door of the cab. “Yeah, tell her I’m glad she’s well. And I hope she wins—in spades.” Michael slammed the door shut behind him.

  Keyser waited until the cab shot out of sight. “Odd boy,” Keyser grumbled to his butler. “Writes for television.”

  Chapter Six

  Pandora, sleeping soundly, was awakened at seven in the morning when Michael dropped on her bed. The mattress bounced. He snuggled his head into
the pillow beside her and shut his eyes.

  “Sonofabitch,” he grumbled.

  Pandora sat up, remembered she was naked and grabbed for the sheets. “Michael! You’re supposed to be in California. What are you doing in my bed?”

  “Getting horizontal for the first time in twenty-four hours.”

  “Well, do that in your own bed,” she ordered, then saw the lines of strain and fatigue. “Your mother.” Pandora grabbed for his hand. “Oh, Michael, is your mother—”

  “Playing bridge.” He rubbed his free hand over his face. Even to him it felt rough and seedy. “I bounced across country, once in a tuna can with propellers, to find out she was sipping sherry and trumping her partner’s ace.”

  “She’s better then?”

  “She was always better. The telegram was a hoax.” He yawned, stretched and settled. “God, what a night.”

  “You mean…” Pandora tugged on the sheets and glowered. “Well, the rats.”

  “Yeah. I plotted out several forms of revenge when I was laid over in Cleveland. Maybe our friend who stomped through your workshop figured it was my turn. Now we each owe them one.”

  “I owe ’em two.” Pandora leaned back against the headboard with the sheets tucked under her arms. Her hair fell luxuriously over her naked shoulders. “Last night while you were off on your wild-goose chase, I was locked in the cellar.”

  Michael’s attention shot away from the thin sheet that barely covered her. “Locked in? How?”

  Crossing one ankle over the other, Pandora told him what happened from the time the lights went out.

  “Climbed up on boxes? To that little window? It’s nearly ten feet.”

  “Yes, I believe I noticed that at the time.”

  Michael scowled at her. The anger he’d felt at being treated to a sleepless night doubled. He could picture her groping her way around in the dank cellar all too well. Worse, he could see her very clearly climbing on shaky boxes and crates. “You could’ve broken your neck.”

  “I didn’t. What I did do was rip my favorite pair of slacks, scratch both knees and bruise my shoulder.”

  Michael managed to hold back his fury. He’d let it go, he promised himself, when the time was right. “It could’ve been worse,” he said lightly, and thought of what he’d do to whoever had locked her in.

  “It was worse,” Pandora tossed back, insulted. “While you were sipping Scotch at thirty thousand feet, I was locked in a cold, damp cellar with mice and spiders.”

  “We might reconsider calling the police.”

  “And do what with them? We can’t prove anything. We don’t even know whom we can’t prove anything against.”

  “New rule,” Michael decided. “We stick together. Neither of us leaves the house overnight without the other. At least until we find out which of our devoted relations is playing games.”

  Pandora started to protest, then remembered how frightened she’d been, and before the cellar, before the fear, how lonely. “Agreed. Now…” With one hand hanging onto the sheet, she shifted toward him. “I vote for Uncle Carlson on this one. After all, he knows the house better than any of the others. He lived here.”

  “It’s as good a guess as any. But it’s only a guess.” Michael stared up at the ceiling. “I want to know. Biff stayed here for six weeks one summer when we were kids.”

  “That’s right.” Pandora frowned at the ceiling herself. The mirror across the room reflected them lying companionably, hip to hip. “I’d forgotten about that. He hated it.”

  “He’s never had a sense of humor.”

  “True enough. As I recall he certainly didn’t like you.”

  “Probably because I gave him a black eye.”

  Pandora’s brow lifted. “You would.” Then, because the image of Biff with a shiner wasn’t so unappealing, she added: “Why did you? You never said.”

  “Remember the frogs in your dresser?”

  Pandora sniffed and smoothed at the sheets. “I certainly do. It was quite immature of you.”

  “Not me. Biff.”

  “Biff?” Astonished, she turned toward him again. “You mean that little creep put the frogs in my underwear?” The next thought came, surprisingly pleasing. “And you punched him for it?”

  “It wasn’t hard.”

  “Why didn’t you deny it when I accused you?”

  “It was more satisfying to punch Biff. In any case, he knows the house well enough. And I imagine if we checked up, we’d find most of our happy clan has stayed here, at least for a few days at a time. Finding a fuse box in the cellar doesn’t take a lot of cunning. Think it through, Pandora. There are six of them, seven with the charity added on. Split a hundred fifty million seven ways and you end up with plenty of motive. Every one of them has a reason for wanting us to break the terms of the will. None of them, as far as I’m concerned, is above adding a little pressure to help us along.”

  “Another reason the money never appealed to me,” she mused. “They haven’t done anything but vandalize and annoy, but, dammit, Michael, I want to pay them back.”

  “The ultimate payback comes in just under five months.” Without thinking about it, Michael put his arm around her shoulders. Without thinking about it, Pandora settled against him. A light fragrance clung to her skin. “Can’t you see Carlson’s face when the will holds up and he gets nothing but a magic wand and a trick hat?”

  His shoulder felt more solid than she’d imagined. “And Biff with three cartons of matchbooks.” Comfortable, she chuckled. “Uncle Jolley’s still having the last laugh.”

  “We’ll have it with him in a few months.”

  “It’s a date. And you’ve got your shoes on my sheets.”

  “Sorry.” With two economical movements, he pried them off.

  “That’s not exactly what I meant. Don’t you want to wander off to your own room now?”

  “Not particularly. Your bed’s nicer than mine. Do you always sleep naked?”

  “No.”

  “My luck must be turning then.” He shifted to press his lips to a bruise on her shoulder. “Hurt?”

  She shrugged and prayed it came off as negligent. “A little.”

  “Poor little Pandora. And to think I always thought you were tough-skinned.”

  “I am—”

  “Soft,” he interrupted, and skimmed his fingers down her arm. “Very soft. Any more bruises?” He brushed his lips over the curve of her neck. They both felt her quick, involuntary shudder.

  “Not so you’d notice.”

  “I’m very observant.” He rolled, smoothly, so that his body pressed more intimately into hers as he looked down on her. He was tired. Yes, he was tired and more than a little punchy with jet lag, but he hadn’t forgotten he wanted her. Even if he had, the way her body yielded, the way her face looked rosy and soft with sleep, would’ve jogged his memory. “Why don’t I look for myself?” He ran his fingers down to where the sheet lay, neat, prim and arousing, at her breast.

  She sucked in her breath, incredibly moved by his lightest touch. She couldn’t let it show…could she? She couldn’t reach out for something that was only an illusion. He wasn’t stable. He wasn’t real. He was with her now because she was here and no one else was. Why was it becoming so hard to remember that?

  His face was close, filling her vision. She saw the little things she’d tried not to notice over the years. The way a thin ring of gray outlined his irises, the straight, almost aristocratic line of his nose that had remained miraculously unbroken through countless fistfights. The soft, sculpted, somehow poetic shape of his mouth. A mouth, she remembered, that was hot and strong and inventive when pressed against hers.

  “Michael…” The fact that she hesitated, then fumbled before she reached down to take his hand both pleased and unnerved him. She wasn’t as cool and self-contained as she’d always appeared. And because she wasn’t, he could slip his way under her skin. But he might not slip out again so easily.

  Be practical, she tol
d herself. Be realistic. “Michael, we have almost five months more to get through.”

  “Good point.” He needed the warmth. He needed the woman. Maybe it was time to risk the consequences. He lowered his head and nibbled at her mouth. “Why waste it?”

  She let herself enjoy him. For just a moment, she promised herself. For only a moment. He was warm and his hands were easy. The night had been long and cold and frightening. No matter how much she hated to admit it, she’d needed him. Now, with the sun pouring through the tiny square panes in the windows, falling bright and hard on the bed, she had him. Close, secure, comforting.

  Her lips opened against his.

  He’d had no plan when he’d come into her room. He’d simply been drawn to her; he’d wanted to lie beside her and talk to her. Passion hadn’t guided him. Desire hadn’t pushed him. There’d only been the basic need to be home, to be home with her. When she’d snuggled against him, hair tousled, eyes heavy, it had been so natural that the longing had snuck up on him. He wanted nothing more than to stay where he was, wrapped around her, slowly heating.

  And for her, passion didn’t bubble wildly, but easily, like a brew that had been left to simmer through the day while spices were added. One sample, then another, and the taste changed, enriched, deepened. With Michael, there the flavors were only hinted at, an aroma to draw in and savor. She could have gone on, and on, hour after hour, until what they made between them was perfected. She wanted to give in to the need, the beginnings of greed. If she did, everything would change. It was a change she couldn’t predict, couldn’t see clearly, could only anticipate. So she resisted him and herself and what could happen between them.

  “Michael…” But she let her fingers linger in his hair for just a minute more. “This isn’t smart.”

  He kissed her eyes closed. It was something no one had done before. “It’s the smartest thing either of us has done in years.”