An Act of Love (28 page)

Luke smiled and kissed her cheek, telling her that she
looked beautiful. "You look beautiful, too," she answered, running a
hand down the lapel of his dark suit. "But I like you better naked,"
she whispered mischievously.

"Patience, woman." He smiled and led her back to her
family. Roger and Linda had just arrived, and Randy felt as though her
own smile were plastered to her face as she made the introductions. To
her great relief both Luke and Linda smiled and shook hands as though
delighted to know each other.

It was left to Emily Dunne to finally bring up what was on
everybody's mind. Dinner had gone perfectly, from the champagne and
sushi to the special anniversary cake that Bill had ordered delivered
to the restaurant. Perhaps they'd had a trifle too much wine, but it
certainly hadn't hurt any of them. And then Emily smiled at Luke and
blithely asked him how his sister and her husband were getting along.

To his credit, the stunned look on his face passed almost
at once, and he answered that they were doing much better. "They're
seeing a very good woman therapist," he added. "Tom was having problems
with his job and Annie was frazzled from being at home all day with two
small children. Neither was very sympathetic to the other's problems,
but I think that they now understand each other better. They'll work
things out."

Emily said she was pleased to hear it and announced that
it was time to open the presents. The celebration picked up without
missing a beat. Emily adored the Persian carpet, saying that even
though a client was looking for one exactly like it she intended to
hang it in the bedroom. Roger handed them an IOU for house seats to a
couple of plays set to open in the fall, and Luke had brought along two
bottles of a very expensive French wine that was almost impossible to
find outside of someone's private cellar. Eventually all six people
wedged themselves into the Dunnes' limousine and drove uptown to finish
off the evening in the apartment.

Randy fixed the coffee while everyone else made themselves
comfortable in the living room. After an evening filled with passionate
little looks and subtle caresses she was glowing with happiness. But
the smile on her face abruptly disappeared when she walked into the
living room to hear Linda giggle and say, "Who would have thought that
things would turn out so well?"

Randy almost dropped her mother's sterling silver tray.
"Have some coffee, Linda," she said, setting it down on the cocktail
table.

But Linda didn't seem to hear her. "I mean, after all that
business with you and Luke in Maine…" She winked at Randy
and giggled again.

"Roger, did you happen to notice how much wine she had
tonight?" Randy asked with a sigh.

"Obviously too much," he answered. "Come on, darling, have
a cup of coffee."

"Maine?" Bill Dunne repeated, looking totally bewildered.
"What is everyone talking about? What business in Maine?"

"Oh, nothing," Linda said. When she picked up the silver
coffeepot and a delicate china cup Randy held her breath until she'd
safely finished pouring.

Bill Dunne's gaze slowly traveled around the room. Randy
was watching Linda sip her coffee, her face rather pale. Roger looked
as though he were dying to laugh but understood that such an act would
be an unpardonable breach of good taste. Luke seemed tense and angry
and Emily was smiling beatifically, as though Linda hadn't just dropped a potential bombshell into the
conversation.

"Emily," Bill said at last, "do you know what Linda was
talking about?"

Emily nodded.

"And?" he demanded.

Emily gave an apologetic little shrug at Randy, then
repeated the process with Luke. "Actually, it's rather a complicated
story, darling, but to give you just the basics, when Luke went up to
Cambridge to talk to Linda about Tom—that's his
brother-in-law, you remember—he decided that perhaps it would
be more —effective—to take her some place out of
the way for a while. I'm afraid his motives are rather a mystery to
Randy, and since she's the one who told me the story in the first place
I suppose you'll have to ask Luke to enlighten you. Because with men,
who knows? Isn't that true, Linda? Do you remember your friend Buffy
Cabot, the one who got involved with that ghastly dentist who seduced
her when she—"

"Emily," Bill interrupted with a heavy sigh, "don't pull
that number on me. Not after thirty-one years. I'm not going to forget
what I asked you in the first place, so just get on with it."

"I can't understand it," Emily observed blandly. "It works
perfectly with most of my clients."

"Emily…"

"Yes, darling." Emily settled back in her chair, looking a
little chastened. "It's just that Luke got Randy instead of Linda, and
somehow he never realized it, so when she came back to New York she
pretended they'd never met, and—"

"What?" The question was bellowed out with all the
ferocity of a wounded rhinoceros. "What in
hell
were you doing in Cambridge?" he said to Randy. "You were supposed to
be in New Hampshire!"

The whole conversation had taken on the inevitable air of
a Greek tragedy—or perhaps a Roman farce. Randy knew that sooner or later the whole story would have
had to come out, but later—much later—would have
been better than sooner. Preferably, she thought to herself, after she
and Luke had been married for ten years and had produced a pair of
adorable children. Ugly ones wouldn't have served half as well.

Having told this tale first to Linda and Roger and then to
her mother, it was understandable that she'd lost a little of her
enthusiasm for it. Nonetheless, she obediently repeated to her father
just why Luke had mistaken her for Linda and what had happened
afterwards. It wasn't so much that she purposely left anything out as
that she simply forgot to mention that Luke had touched her a time or
two when they were in Maine.

She didn't really suppose that Bill Dunne would be
gullible enough to swallow her version of events without asking a few
pointed questions—and she was right.

"First of all," he said to Luke, "you can explain just
what made you think I would approve of your drugging one of my
daughters, flying her up to some remote part of Maine and keeping her
there against her will for three solid days. Second, you can tell me
how someone to whom I pay a six-figure salary, who's widely
acknowledged to be one of the smartest men in our business, can
possibly have been
stupid
enough to have mistaken
my younger daughter for my elder one. And third"—his voice
rose by a good twenty decibels—"you can tell me what the hell
you were trying to accomplish!"

Luke reached for his cigarettes. Randy had already noticed
that he tended to light up a cigarette whenever he was angry or upset,
but in this instance there was already a cigarette burning in the
ashtray. He stared at the pack, as if suddenly aware of that fact, and
threw it onto the table.

"I knew you wouldn't approve," he said. Randy was amazed
by how calm he could sound when she knew he was thoroughly rattled.
"That's why I didn't ask you. I believe that Miranda has already
explained why I thought she was Linda. And I certainly didn't intend to
harm her—I just wanted to, uh, take her mind off Tom."

"Well, from what I've heard about it," Linda drawled, "you
certainly would have succeeded!" She giggled again, then clapped a hand
over her mouth. At this point it seemed that Roger Bennett couldn't
contain himself a moment longer. He grinned from ear to ear and then
burst out laughing.

Both Bill and Luke ignored the pair of them. In
retrospect, Randy decided, the story was kind of funny, even if Luke
didn't think so. But then, she wasn't the one her father had just
called stupid, or the person who Linda and Roger were laughing at.

"Obviously," Bill said to Luke, "you didn't succeed in
taking my daughter's mind off anyone by telling her to carry wood. I
will therefore assume that you took a typical male approach and took
her to bed."

Suddenly even Linda sobered up. Randy's hands clenched
into fists, the nails of one digging into the palm of the other. She
didn't want to see her father hurt, but even more than that, she
couldn't allow Luke to be put on the spot this way. "Daddy…"
she began.

Luke cut her off with a short, hard stare. "Obviously
not
,"
he said. "If I had, I would have known it wasn't Linda."

Randy went limp with relief, so sure that the worst was
over that even when her father bit out the curt question, "And
Philadelphia?" she paid very little attention to him. She'd intended to
tell him about Sean Raley, but if Luke wanted to substitute a harmless
little lie or two, that was all right with her.

"I don't think it's going to do our future relationship
any good for me to lie to you," Luke said. Randy bolted up like a
puppet whose strings have been yanked taut. He couldn't possibly intend
to admit what had happened, she thought. But she was wrong.

"If you're asking me whether I've made love to Miranda,
the answer is yes," he added.

"Then I trust that you have a solitaire diamond in your
pocket," Bill snapped back.

Oh, no, Randy thought, here comes the shotgun. She rolled
her eyes toward the ceiling and then looked over at her mother, who
shrugged helplessly. Emily's expression said that
both
men were crazy.

Luke glanced at Randy, saw that she was more exasperated
than upset, and told Bill, "Not at the moment. Perhaps eventually."

Randy could see that her father was absolutely furious.
He'd given his word not to interfere and had certainly intended to
honor it, but Luke's clear admission of what had happened in
Philadelphia was too much for him to swallow. "I strongly suggest," he
said, "that tomorrow morning you take Miranda to Tiffany's, Luke."

"I'm busy tomorrow morning," was the measured response.
"Maybe some other time."

Suddenly Randy had had enough of both of them. "Would you
just stop it?" she yelled. "In the first place, Daddy, I have no
intention of marrying a man who has to be backed into a corner before
he'll agree, and in the second place—in the second place,
this entire conversation is absurd. If you insist on getting out your
shotgun, why don't you point it at—"

"That's quite enough, Miranda." The rather overbearing
interruption came from Luke, who promptly turned his attention back to
Bill. "Obviously we're upsetting her," he stated. "I suggest that we
finish this conversation in the den."

But Bill had paid very little attention either to Randy's
outburst or to Luke's quashing of it. He seemed to be deep in thought,
lost in some world of his own. "I learned in California that you can be
a tough negotiator," he finally remarked. "Do you happen to recall what
Dunne Industries closed at this afternoon?"

"Thirty-two and a half," Luke answered.

"Exactly. I hold options to buy ten thousand shares at
twenty-six even. I think that one thousand of those options would be a
reasonable sum. And then there's the matter of the presidency. I've
told you six years, but I could be persuaded to reconsider."

Luke settled back on the couch, apparently at ease now.
"I'm listening," he said.

If Randy had been close enough to hit him she probably
would have. How dare he negotiate with her father as though dowries
were still in style? She heard another giggle from Linda, turned to
glare at her and noticed the expression on her face. Over the years
she'd learned that if Linda thought something was
that
funny, it probably was.

"Do you believe the two of them?" Linda asked Randy, still
laughing. "They sound like two characters out of a Regency romance!"

Randy smiled in spite of herself. "Really, Luke," she
teased, "those options are only worth, let me see, sixty-five hundred
dollars. Don't you think you're worth a little more? I mean, it isn't
every day a woman gets to marry—"

"Nobody asked you." Luke obviously saw nothing funny in
the situation. "You were saying?" he asked Bill.

"I could be persuaded to give up the presidency in, let's
say, five years."

Now Emily chimed in. "Luke, dear," she said solemnly, "I
think you should hold out for stock. The problem is, my father and I
hold most of the stock, so you really should be talking to
me
,
not Bill."

"Mom, you're outrageous," Randy said, laughing along with
Linda and Roger now. In fact, the only two people in the room who
didn't find the situation amusing were Luke and Bill Dunne.

"I think," Emily went on, "that five hundred shares would
be a very nice wedding present. And don't you dare try to bargain me
up, Luke Griffin, because I won't have it. That's worth over sixteen
thousand dollars, and even if you are the handsomest, most charming,
most
desirable
man in Manhattan there's a limit
to what you can extort from me."

"I wouldn't think of it," Luke retorted. "Thank you,
Emily. It's a very generous gift." He looked back at Bill. "Four years.
No longer."

"You've got yourself a deal." The two men stood up almost
simultaneously and shook hands.

"I'll pick you up at ten o'clock tomorrow, darling," Luke
said to Randy.

Darling
? she thought. "What for?" she
said aloud.

"Tiffany's," he stated.

"You're out of your mind." Suddenly Randy's sense of humor
had fled. "I'm not going to be part of some—some financial
package that you've negotiated with my father."

"Why not? In Philadelphia you told me—"

"Never mind what I said in Philadelphia! I'm not going to
marry a man who has to be
bought
for me!" Without
another word Randy turned on her heel and stormed into her bedroom,
slamming the door viciously shut behind her.

Luke joined her within moments. The minute he walked into
the room Randy rubbed the tears out of her eyes and glared at him.
"What do
you
want?" she demanded.