Beautiful Lies (33 page)

She wasn't nervous, despite being in the sacred palace of designers like Donald Claflin, Angela Cummings, Elsa Peretti and Paloma Picasso. She wasn't even sure if she wanted a job with Tiffany, where she would probably spend years translating the designs of others. She knew the risks of going out on her own. She had chosen a career that demanded intensive, exacting craftsmanship in a world that valued mass production. But she had worked the craft-fair circuit the previous summer with a lover who made mandolins and banjos, and she had relished the freedom, if not—by summer's end—the man.

Since she had an independent income, she was considering her own shop in some wealthy tourist town in New England, and she had prepared herself by taking every relevant business course. After four years of study she was ready for an adventure.

The reception area where she waited was as classy as the jewelry Tiffany produced. The receptionist might have been a model. The gray leather furniture was comfortable enough to be welcoming, but not enough to encourage a casual posture.

Liana was wishing she had a magazine to pass the time when a young man strode in and gave his name to the receptionist. Liana watched the woman's eyes light. A smile curved on her artistically painted lips, and her layered blond hair bounced as she gestured to the area where Liana was sitting.

Liana watched him approach. He was tall, lean-hipped and broad-shouldered. His clothes, a navy sports coat and dark trousers, weren't expensive, but he wore them with the casual flair of a man who was more interested in comfort than show. That alone set him apart here.

“Mind if I join you?”

She moved over, making room for him. “Australian, right?”

He grinned. “And you're a Yank.”

“More or less.”

“Looks like I'll be here for a bit. My clock's all turned around. It feels like midnight. I thought it was one-thirty.”

“It's one.”

“The flash gal at the desk told me. I could go for a walk, but I doubt I'd find my way back.”

“You're finding New York confusing?”

“Naw. Fascinating. I've only been here a day or two. I keep wandering off to see something and forget what I'm here for.” He held out his hand. She took it for a brief handshake. “Cullen,” he said.

“Liana.”

“You live here?”

“Brooklyn.”

His gaze flicked to the portfolio she'd set on the table. “Not hocking the family jewels, are you?”

She laughed. “I design jewelry. They want to see my portfolio.”

“You're too young to be this close to the big time.”

There was no sting in his words. His blue eyes were dancing with good humor, and, in response, she felt something warming inside her. Cullen wasn't exactly good-looking, not in a New York kind of way, at least. But his rugged masculine features were allied with the most charismatic grin she had ever seen.

“How about you?” she asked, despite the fact that examining the lives of strangers wasn't her style.

“First, tell me about the pearls on your brooch. No, I'll tell you. The one in the middle's a dazzler. But it's not one of ours. Probably Japanese, an Akoya. The nacre layer on
our pearls is sixty, maybe a hundred, times thicker than theirs. Our pearls grow twice as fast, too, two years to their four. Of course, we learned something of what we know from the Japanese, so we give them a bit of credit.”

“I'll bet this isn't a hobby.”

He fished in his pocket and pulled out a business card. “I have a pearl farm in Western Australia, Southern Cross Pearls. I don't produce heaps. Not yet, anyway. But what I produce is top quality. I'm trying to develop some interest here in the Big Smoke. If I don't, the crocs can have the farm.”

She closed her fingers around his card without looking at it. “You farm pearls? Like people farm soybeans?”

He settled back and crossed his legs, as if he were there for the long haul. “I fell into it. A great-great-grandfather of mine was a pearler, successful by half, too. When old Somerset carked it, he didn't leave anything to my side of the family. The company passed down through a son by a second marriage, and nobody on my side knew a bloody thing about it. Times changed. The relatives scraped through, growing pearls instead of fishing for them, but before long there wasn't much left except some land on Pikuwa Creek in Western Australia and a couple of rotting luggers.”

If anyone else had been telling it, the long personal story might have seemed odd, but Cullen carried if off with brash charm. Liana nodded, hoping for the next installment. “And that's where you live now?”

“Right-o. The last descendant died off, but before he did, he traced my side of the family. The whole thing passed to my father. Dad didn't want anything to do with it—or me, for that matter—so he handed it over and told me to go stuff up something new.” He grinned. “I changed
the name to Southern Cross. And that's how I came to farming pearls. More than you wanted to know, huh?”

She was fascinated, both by the story and the man. “Do you like what you do?”

“I reckon. I was raised where the crow flies backwards, so the isolation doesn't bother me. Everything rises and falls by my hand, and I like that, too.”

“My father was born in Australia. In Broome. Is that anywhere near your creek?”

He whistled softly. “Broome's the big city in my part of the world. Pikuwa Creek's about thirty miles north, an hour or so when the roads aren't washed away.”

She tried to remember if she had ever met anyone else from Broome. “My grandfather was a pearler. Well, just for a short time. His best friend murdered him over a pearl they found.”

“More common than some think.”

She smiled at him. Her entire future might depend on the results of her upcoming interview. But she wasn't thinking about that. Cullen's life intrigued her. She was drawn to the man and the rough-and-tumble world he lived in. “So you like being your own boss?”

He rested his arm along the back of the sofa. His fingertips nearly touched her shoulder. “I'm the only man who could stand to have me work for him.”

She laughed. “You're not so bad, are you?”

“I take more risks than most blokes could tolerate.”

“Are they paying off?”

“You wouldn't think so if you saw the way I live.”

“Then how did you get to New York? It's an expensive trip.”

“I took a few that worked out.”

They were silent, but neither of them looked away. She
had tried to ignore the immediate chemistry between them, telling herself that she was attracted to this Australian stranger because he was different and refreshing—as well as a hunk. But suddenly explanations seemed irrelevant. She felt giddy. Her pulse was speeding out of control. His grin deepened into something subtler—and even sexier. Then he reached over and cupped her brooch, and the heel of his hand rested against her breast.

“The little pearls in this? Hardly worth mentioning, are they? But you've done something important with them. I pay attention to my pearls, not what happens to them. But every pearl should be set like this.” His hand brushed lightly across her chest as he withdrew it. “I'd like to see what you could do with mine.”

She tried to sound natural. “So would I.” Her voice emerged as something just above a whisper.

“Miss Robeson?”

For a moment she didn't, couldn't, move. Then she looked up and saw that the receptionist was standing.

“Liana Robeson.” Cullen seemed to be trying the name to see how it felt on his tongue. “I'll still be in town this evening. Will you?”

She had promised herself a real life when she left San Francisco. Maybe it was time to make that happen. She answered before she could change her mind. “I might wait for you.”

He favored her with a sexy grin. “I'd like nothing better.”

She nodded and stood. Only then did she realize she was still clasping his business card in her hand. She glanced at it, and for a moment she stared at the words, rearranging them. But the result was the same.

She looked up. “Cullen Llewellyn?”

“That's right.”

“From Broome…”

He frowned. “Nearly.”

“Are you related, even distantly, to a man named Archer Llewellyn?”

He cocked a brow in surprise. “My great-grandfather's name was Archer. How did you know?”

“A lucky guess.”

“Why? Does it matter?”

She slipped the card inside her purse. Then she looked up at him again. “No reason, really. Except that Archer Llewellyn was the man who murdered my grandfather.”

S
omewhere in the evergreens near their cabin, a bird—a crow, perhaps—squawked a greeting to dawn. Cullen stirred until he felt Liana's bottom warm and lush against the small of his back. By forbidding himself to sleep deeply, he had managed to stay on his own side of the bed. But Liana had inched steadily closer, a heat-seeking missile guaranteed to find and destroy its target.

He suspected he could turn and wrap his arms around her and she wouldn't wake. But if she did, he was certain she would blame their intimacy on him. And his protests would go unheeded.

He smiled, thinking of the early days of their marriage, when arguments had merely been an excuse to reconcile. The smile disappeared as he thought about all the things between them now that could not be cured by sex.

He was wrong about how deeply she'd been sleeping, because she spoke. “You're awake, aren't you?”

“Before you get angry, measure the mattress and divide it by two.”

She moved, but only a little, as if she were only removing the worst of temptations. “Did you ever think we'd end up in bed together again?”

“After I found out who you were, I didn't think we'd
ever
end up in bed together.” He turned over and rested his arms behind his head so that moving closer would be harder.

Her voice was sleepy. “It hardly seemed possible, did it? We were doomed from the start.”

They
had
been doomed, of course, but Cullen realized now that at the time he had seen that as a plus. He had been a gambler who was far too cocky to bet on a sure thing. He was the champion of lost causes, the no-hoper who put all his money on the horse least likely to finish the course. He had taken a good look at this woman whose history was in direct conflict with his, and he had known that he had to have her.

“We made a go of it for a while,” he said. “Do you remember that first year?”

“Doesn't it frighten you to think that Matthew might grow up to be as crazy as we were?” She didn't sound angry. She sounded wistful, as if, despite her words, she yearned a little for that exhilarating dizziness of youth.

“I hope someday Matthew falls in love as totally as we did. I just hope he can handle it better.”

“Totally?”

“Right.”

She faced him, stretching unconsciously as she did and shooting his libido into outer space. “From this side of the bed the percentages don't look that good. If it was total, how could we have failed?”

He had never forgotten the fragrance of Liana's skin, the musky woman smell of early morning, the floral essence
of her hair. He had awakened with other women since their divorce, reached for them and felt a jolt of disappointment, even years after he had last held Liana. Now his body pleaded for the reunion it had been denied.

She sighed and sat up, pushing her hair back from her face with both hands. “I think I'll start on my shower. The way yours went last night, I might have to take mine in stages.”

He watched her walk to the bathroom door, her legs bare and beautiful as the T-shirt brushed the tops of her thighs. “Our failure didn't have anything to do with love, Lee.”

She paused with her hand on the doorknob. “I wish it had. If we hadn't loved each other so much, everything would have been easier, wouldn't it?”

The door closed behind her, and he heard the water running. He remembered that first night together in New York. After their conversation at Tiffany, he had expected her to change her mind, but when he emerged from his appointment, she had been waiting. They had talked late into the night in his hotel room, piecing together what they could of their own lives, of Archer and Tom's story, of the years in between.

He could barely force himself to remember what had come after their conversation—her dark, seductive gaze, and the way she had unbound her hair and combed it with her fingers until it was a midnight river flowing over her shoulders and down her back. He had extended his hand, afraid that if he did anything more, she would refuse him. But she had come to him easily, her body fitting perfectly against his, her breasts flattening enticingly against his chest.

No, the failure of their marriage hadn't had anything to do with love. They had fallen in love so quickly that there hadn't been time for thought, for dreaming together, for learning the smallest things about each other. That next
morning, as the sun rose and the honks and beeps of Manhattan crescendoed into an overture to daylight, he had asked Liana to come back to Australia with him, to take his pearls and make them come alive in her creations. Foolishly, he had believed that finding each other was a victory born from the tragedy of their ancestors. It was ordained that they take something so wrong and make it right.

And she had said yes.

He remembered too well their first morning together, the way the shower beat against glass doors as he lay in bed and thought about the commitment he had made. He hadn't asked Liana to marry him, only to come to Australia, to see the place where her family had lived and to give their relationship a try. As the water splashed and the sun rose, he had been torn, even then, by his need to love and protect her and his need to be unfettered. He had been so young, too young to understood that loneliness and regret were the heaviest chains a man could wear.

But he understood that now.

 

“I look like a madwoman. Nobody will answer any question I ask. You do the talking.”

Cullen glanced at her and liked what he saw, wrinkles and all. “You look lovely. Not as lovely as you did in the T-shirt, but lovely enough.”

“My clothes look like I slept in them. So much for natural fibers.”

“You just need a piece of your own jewelry to pull it together.” When she didn't answer, he went on. “That brooch Mei was wearing was one of yours, wasn't it? An early piece?”

“Yes.”

“Matthew's never said what you're designing these days.”

“I suspect he's as uncomfortable talking about me with you as he is you with me.”

From the tone of her voice, he knew a change of subject was in order. He turned the rental car onto the highway leading back to Tillman. “What will we say to him if we find him?”

“I don't know. We haven't had to deal with him together, have we? Not for a long time.”

“I vote we let him tell us exactly why he did this.”

“That's a good first step,” Liana agreed. “Then we kill him.”

Cullen pulled into the fast lane, although there was no traffic. “Dinkum follow-up.”

“We should tell him we're going to discuss what to do. Maybe letting him hang a little wouldn't hurt.”

“He's going to find it odd enough that we're looking for him together. Won't he find it doubly odd if we consult each other?”

“Maybe it'll be a good lead-in for the future. Nothing's going to be the way it used to be. It's doubtful we'll be able to trust Matthew the way we once did. But we'll trust each other more. Everything's been shaken up, hasn't it?”

She was silent so long he thought she'd finished. But she spoke again. “I'm so sorry it took Matthew's disappearance to make it possible for us to begin talking.”

“It's in the past now.”

“I said something when you first arrived, something I've regretted. I threatened you. I told you I'd tell Matthew what you did all those years ago, and why I couldn't stay married to you. You said you knew I'd never hurt Matthew that way. Well, you were right. I would never tell him.”

He glanced at her. “Lee, it doesn't matter. He knows.”

Her eyes widened; his hands tightened on the wheel. “What do you mean, he knows?”

“I told Matthew that when he was four, I took all the money from the trust fund you'd set up for him. I told him you'd been forced to set it up because you were afraid I might get hold of the money you had inherited from your mother and lose it. And I told him that even though it was illegal, I found a way to tap the money, because I believed if I just had a stake, I could win enough to save Southern Cross from going under.”

He turned into the parking lot of the petrol station where they would start their questioning. He cut the engine and faced her. “I explained that Southern Cross was in trouble because I'd already gambled away everything I could, but I was so terrified, that the only answer I could see was gambling more. So I stole my own son's inheritance.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Why did you tell him?”

“I owed it to him. How could I tell him how sorry I was unless he knew what I had done?”

“When, Cullen?”

“Two years ago.”

She was silent.

“I asked him not to tell you,” he explained. “That's the only reason he didn't.”

“But why?”

“Because I knew it would frighten you too much. You've always believed that the only reason I let you keep full custody of Matthew was your promise not to tell him what I'd done. Once you realized that had changed, I knew you'd be afraid I was planning to take him away from you.”

She shook her head, as if she didn't know what to say.

“I knew you wouldn't believe me if I told you I would
never hurt you or Matthew by battling for him in court,” he finished.

“All this time.”

“Since you know that much, there's something else you should know, too. Through the years, I've reinvested more than I took. He'll have a nest egg when he comes of age. I wanted Matthew to have what you tried to give him.”

“But how? Southern Cross was in disarray when I left. I've never understood how you kept it going. Did you get a lucky break after all? Make a lucky bet?”

“I haven't made a bet since you left Australia. The bank found an investor who was willing to put up enough money to help me hold on, some anonymous adventurer in the east who thought Australian pearls had a future and was willing to pull me out of the worst of it. I've done the rest a bit at a time.”

Tears glistened on her cheeks. “You should have told me.”

“I didn't do any of this to prove myself to you.”

Their gazes caught and held. He had never expected to tell her this story or allowed himself to imagine what that might feel like. He wasn't prepared for the vulnerability in her eyes or something closely following it that looked like respect. He hadn't done any of this for her, and certainly not to win her back. That, he had known, was impossible.

But for the first time, he allowed himself that fantasy. Liana and Matthew waiting for him at night, instead of an empty house. Liana returning to the creative work that was so much a part of who she was. Southern Cross a family enterprise they could build together, that they could pass on to their children.

He looked away, because the pain of those images cut too deeply. “We're here, Lee.”

“Here's a long way from there, isn't it, Cullen? How did you come so far?”

He managed a weak grin. “One bloody step at a time. The same way you got yourself on that plane yesterday.”

“But yesterday I had you.”

He looked at her. “And years ago I
lost
you. Don't underestimate what a powerful motivation reality can be.”

She leaned over and kissed his cheek. Her lips lingered, and for just a moment, her fingertips touched the back of his neck. Then she sat back. “Let's go find our son, Cullen.”

 

Brittany Saunders didn't live in Tillman. She lived in what the teenage clerk at the station called “the country.”

“I didn't know Brittany
had
friends,” she said, when they told her their cover story.

Liana pretended alarm. “Oh, dear. Do you know something we don't?”

“I'm not saying anything.” The girl, brown-haired and stick-thin, clamped her lips. Liana fully expected her to run her fingers across them as if she were zipping them shut.

“I'm sorry.” Liana offered her warmest smile. “I just don't want to walk into trouble.”

The girl rolled her eyes. “Oh, you won't have any trouble. She keeps to herself, that's all. Brittany thinks she's better than anybody else. Smarter, you know?”

“You're a smart girl yourself,” Cullen said. “You've got a job already. You're on your way somewhere, aren't you?”

The girl preened for him. “I'm on my way out of here, that's for sure.”

“Well, I guess we'd better see Brittany, anyway, or our son will be mad. Can you give us directions?”

The girl gave detailed instructions, right down to the rock formation in the field just before Brittany's driveway.
“There's not much out that way,” she said, when she'd finished. “She lives with her aunt. You can't miss it.”

They thanked her and left. Cullen had the car out on the road before Liana's seat belt was fastened.

The trip took most of twenty minutes, even as fast as Cullen drove. They hardly spoke, caught up in their own thoughts. Liana was the first to spot the formation the clerk had described. For an instant the colors became beads on a thin golden chain.
Agate and jasper, cat's-eye and cordierite.

“Slow down,” she told him. “Looks like we're there.”

He made the turn without fishtailing, a feat she couldn't have accomplished at half the speed. “He could be gone already,” Liana said.

“Let's wait and see.”

She knew she was borrowing trouble, or perhaps just preparing herself. “Or maybe she won't let us in to see if he's there.”

“Lee…”

“All right.”

“That's my missus.”

She couldn't bring herself to complain.

Brittany lived in a wide mobile home parked in the shadow of a small, vegetation-dotted hillside. On either side of it, twisted silver-barked trees formed sculptures against the brilliant blue sky. The site was neatly laid out, with a cactus garden planted in a tractor-trailer tire, just beside the awning-draped entrance.