Double Dealing (10 page)

Though her mother’s praise was rare, Samantha was only
temporarily put off her train of thought by the compliment. “Drew let me use
his company’s resources, Mother,” she argued back. “If he hadn’t cooperated, I
wouldn’t have been able to alter a thing! He’s not what you think he is; he’s
simply an up-and-coming businessman. We have a tremendous amount in common…”

Vera shook her head sadly. “No, you don’t, honey. You’re
worlds apart from Drew Buchanan. And I’ll bet he knows it, even if you don’t.
Believe me, if he’s actually talked of marriage…”

“Talked of it! We’re engaged!”

“Then there can be only one reason,” Vera shot back coldly. “He
believes you can be useful to him as a wife, and we both know there’s only one way,
don’t we, Sam?”

“Mother!”

“He knows you’re Victor
Thorndyke’s
daughter. Buchanan is only marrying you for the money he expects you to
inherit, Samantha. Use your common sense! If there’s one thing I’ve tried to
teach you, it’s how to think logically. Kindly do so now!”

“I want to marry him,” Samantha repeated doggedly.

“And then what? Quit your job to become the perfect corporate
wife? Oh, Sam, you know that would never work. I haven’t brought you up to be a
good little corporate wife. To dole out your time between luncheons and teas
and appointments at the beauty salon. You’ve been taught to make your own way
in the world. To change it for the better if you could. And once outside the
corporation arena your influence would be significantly lessened, anyway.”

From out of nowhere came the courage to ask her mother the
one question Samantha had never dared to say aloud. “Did you ever, even for a
little while, imagine yourself in love with Victor Thorndyke?”

Vera sat back abruptly in her chair, staring at her daughter.
Then she seemed to gather herself for the answer. She had always prided herself
as a mother on the fact that every one of Samantha’s childhood questions had
always been answered fully and frankly, regardless of the subject matter. Every
question was an opportunity to teach and guide. Vera never lost an opportunity.

“Your father and I were physically very attracted to each
other, Sam,” she began honestly. “But how could it have ever developed into
anything more than that? He was diametrically opposite to me in all his
political, social, and economic beliefs. For God’s sake! The man had even
supported McCarthy during those Communist witch-hunts of the fifties, although
I’m pleased to say he eventually saw the error of his ways on that issue.” Vera
hesitated, glancing unseeingly out her window into the kitchen garden. “Frankly,
that is Victor’s one saving grace. He’s a hard man, but he is capable of seeing
the error of his ways. His problem was that he had been born into wealth and
had always been taught that privileges and power were only his due. Why would
he ever entertain the notion of undermining a system that had so lavishly
nurtured generations of
Thorndykes
? By the time I met
him, naturally it was too late to expect he would ever change. You have to shock
Victor to get him to view his world from the outside if you want him to change
his mind about anything.”

“And that’s why you seduced him? Because it was the one way
you thought you might get through to him?” Samantha waited tensely. Her mother
had explained years ago that she’d had the affair with Victor Thorndyke while
she was trying to convince him not to build the chemical plant he had been
planning near a river. She had been successful. Thorndyke had never built the plant.
Samantha’s conception was the other result of Vera’s campaign.

“It’s true that none of my logical arguments had worked.”
Vera half-smiled reminiscently. “And I knew he was attracted to me. But I also
knew he was married with two children and under most circumstances I would not
have had an affair with another woman’s husband. But I was thirty at the time,
Sam,” she went on gently. “I wanted to sample the uniquely female experience of
bearing a child and mothering it. Victor had a great many qualities I admired.
He was intelligent, healthy, and physically attractive. It wasn’t his fault he
had become a product of a system I found morally reprehensible. I decided he
would make a good biological father for you, and since I would be making no
claim on him later, either financial or emotional, I also decided I would not
be a disturbing influence on his family.”

“But were you in love with him?” Samantha persisted desperately.

Vera’s lashes lowered as she gazed down at her coffee cup.
Then she drew a deep breath. “Perhaps, for a while, I made the mistake of
thinking that what I felt was… love,” she finally admitted very slowly.

Samantha stretched out a hand across the table, closing it
warmly over her mother’s. “Oh, Mom, please don’t act as if you’ve just
confessed to some horrendous criminal act. I’m glad you felt that way.”

Vera looked up, her expression raw. “Because it gives you an
excuse to make the same mistake now?”

“No! Because I like the idea that I was conceived in love
and passion, not just cold-blooded mating!”

In spite of herself, Vera’s mouth curved faintly. “There was
passion, Sam. More than I’ve ever known with anyone else.” Then she shook her
head once, very determinedly. “Which is probably what led me into thinking for
a while that what I was experiencing was love. I don’t want you making the same
error!”

“If you had it to do over again, would you?” Samantha
whispered, searching her mother’s features.

“I have never regretted the affair,” the older woman said
vibrantly. “You are an intelligent, healthy, and independent young woman. I
have always been very proud of my daughter.”

Just don’t screw up
now and ruin everything I’ve tried to do. Samantha finished wryly in her head.
“I love him, Mother.”

Vera knew her daughter’s streak of independence well. Hadn’t
she deliberately fostered it all during her childhood? It was unfortunate that
it was temporarily sending her off in a misguided direction, but there wasn’t
much point in further argument, and Vera knew it.

Eventually Samantha had departed for Miami never dreaming
just how desperate her mother was to prove her point about Drew Buchanan. So
desperate, in fact, that for the first and only time in her life Vera had
turned to a man for help. And the man she turned to was Victor Thorndyke.

After that, events had moved quickly and catastrophically.
With a knowledge and complete understanding of Drew Buchanan which stemmed from
the fact that Victor, himself, had used many of the younger man’s business
methods, Samantha’s father had moved coldly and calculatingly to bring a swift
ending to the engagement. It had taken only one phone call from Vera to send
Thorndyke on his way to Florida determined to protect his daughter in the only
way he knew.

Samantha did not find out until much later of the way her
father had walked into Buchanan’s office and bluntly told the younger man that
his “bastard daughter would inherit nothing!”

That’s all it had taken. Samantha had shortly thereafter found
her romantic illusions in ashes as Drew quickly eased her out of his life.

As the truth emerged, the anger set in. At first the heated
emotion was directed at her parents, but that hadn’t lasted long. She was too
logical, too intelligent not to realize that all they had done was show her the
truth about Drew Buchanan. If he had loved her, her illegitimate status and the
fact that Thorndyke promised to leave her nothing wouldn’t have mattered.

The anger became self-directed. It had provided the incredible
energy required to start over again in her chosen location in the Northwest
three years ago, and eventually the white heat of it had died.

But the need to revenge herself on Drew Buchanan had never
burned itself out completely. Samantha’s desire to rectify the biggest mistake
of her life had remained constant. Even now it made her wince to recall how she
had been willing to give up everything for the man she loved. She wanted
Buchanan to know that the naïve, emotional woman he had manipulated so easily
three years ago had teeth now. She had emerged from the experience older and
wiser, and she was going to make Drew pay in the only way he understood. With a
huge chunk of money and an even larger slice of masculine ego.

After that, Samantha knew, she would be free. The slate
would somehow be wiped clean, and she need no longer see the occasional memory
of disappointment in her mother’s eyes. She was only sorry Victor Thorndyke had
not lived to see his daughter’s revenge. He would have appreciated the beauty
and simplicity of the plan. He had always appreciated
hef
inborn ability for business. It was the talent she had inherited from him.

Slowly Samantha turned away from the window and got ready
for bed.

An hour later she was still awake, staring at the darkness
beyond the window and wondering why sleep wasn’t descending as abruptly as it
should have done, given the extent of her exhaustion earlier in the day. How
much longer was she going to lie here going over and over the events of the
day?

Groaning in mild self-disgust, she climbed out of bed and
went to the window again, her apricot-colored nightgown wafting lightly around
her legs as the breeze from the open slider caught at it. She could have done
with a bit more of her mother’s courage, she decided. Just now she was feeling
tense and uncertain about the snag which had developed in her carefully outlined
plans.

What was she going to do if she couldn’t get Gabriel Sinclair’s
cooperation? Start over again with William Oakes? Something in her mind shied
away from abandoning the project with Gabriel. It was becoming very important
to make it work.

Once again she wondered at how he might react if he were to
learn the real reason behind her business proposition. He was already not
overly enthused about backing her. Her cause would be hopeless if he discovered
the truth.

It wasn’t as if the deal she’d put together couldn’t stand
on its own merits! She was going to use her father’s business methods to prove
herself her mother’s daughter. What fine irony. Why couldn’t Gabriel see how
much money there was to be made?

And while he was making money, she would be wiping out the
recollection of what a fool she had been three years ago. Her mother had raised
a daughter capable of total independence, and except for the affair with Drew
Buchanan when she had sacrificed her pride for a meaningless passion falsely
labeled love, Samantha had tried hard to live by her mother’s code. The
opportunity to seal the still-open wound in her pride, however, must not be
allowed to slip by simply because she couldn’t convince one very stubborn
venture capitalist to go along with the plan.

Angrily Samantha pushed the sliding glass door open wide and
stepped out onto the balcony. Below her the sandy beach met the rhythmically
pulsing waves. A yellow glow from the outside lights around the house illuminated
the scene faintly, revealing a touch of glittering phosphorescence in the
cream-topped breakers. The beach stretched empty for miles. The few other homes
secluded along the curving miles of coastline were not even visible from where
Samantha stood.

The breeze off the ocean chilled her. She couldn’t stand out
on this balcony much longer unless she went back inside and found a jacket.
Samantha straightened from the railing and stepped back through the sliding glass
door.

Her eyes fell on the vague outline of her folded jeans lying
in the open suitcase as she walked back toward the bed. On a sudden impulse she
reached down and picked them up. Then, without giving herself a chance to
think, she whipped the apricot nightdress off over her head. She stepped into
the jeans without bothering to search for a pair of panties and felt through
her clothes for the cotton shirt she knew was buried somewhere in the case. A
few minutes later Samantha let herself out into the beige-carpeted hall.

Shoving her arms into the sleeves of a black leather jacket,
she made her way softly through the shadowy living room toward the door which
would let her out onto the beach. She needed to walk off her restlessness if
she hoped to get any sleep tonight at all.

From his bedroom window Gabriel watched her leave. He had
heard her go out onto her own balcony and had known the exact moment she had
opened her door and walked down the hall. She had been moving with a purposefulness
which had alarmed him.

He had climbed out of bed and had his hand on the doorknob
before he realized she wasn’t heading for her car. She was going out onto the
beach, not running away from him.

He had yanked his large, square hand off the doorknob as if
it had grown hot beneath his palm, but in truth what had startled him was his
rush to the door in the first place. He hadn’t stopped to think; he had simply
charged out of bed, uncaring of his own nakedness and prepared to stop his
witch if she were indeed intent on taking flight in the middle of the night.

The unexpected rashness of his own actions was unnerving. He
crossed the bedroom in three long strides and was mildly disgusted to find his
hand was shaking slightly as he braced it against the metal frame of the sliding
glass door. Even more unsettling was the surge in his loins as he watched her
walk over the sand toward the water’s edge. What was he letting the woman do to
him, for God’s sake?

It was just that he had been too long without a female,
Gabriel decided, and knew in the same instant that he was lying to himself. It
had been a long time, but that was because it hadn’t been very good the last time.
He had been in no rush recently to satisfy the basic needs of his nature; not
when physical satisfaction had to be purchased at the price of feeling empty
and emotionally shortchanged afterward.