Masquerade (8 page)

"What do you mean? How were you right about him?"

He turned away, plainly uncomfortable with her questions, and walked to a window, unbuttoning his suit jacket and pushing it open to rest his hands on his hips. "I wish you could remember for yourself. I don't like being the one to say these things, but—I guess someone has to tell you." He stared out the window. "The man simply doesn't have the same values, the same principles as you. He comes from a totally different background, a different environment. True, he was born and raised in New Orleans, the same as we were, but on the other side of the river, in Algiers. You can't get much further removed from the Garden district than that."

Remy nodded absently, remembering the desperately poor and crime-ridden area of Algiers, located directly across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter. The contrast between Algiers, with its dilapidated shotgun houses and scrubby yards, and the Garden district, with its colonnaded antebellum mansions, its lush, green gardens, and its tree-lined streets, was unarguably a stark one.

"And you can't grow up in an area like Algiers," Gabe continued, "without coming away with some of its hardness, its ruthlessness."

Frowning, she recalled her own impression that Cole possessed both traits to some degree, but she didn't consider either one to be something that should be held against him, as Gabe was implying. And this talk about different values and principles held criticism as well.

"You don't trust him, do you?"

He hesitated, then angled his shoulders toward her, briefly meeting her eyes. "No, I don't."

"But he's the president of the company. If that's your opinion of him, then why—"

"Look." Gabe turned from the window and raised his hand in a silencing gesture. "At the time, we thought he was the best man for the job. He had the experience, the qualifications—and a helluva reputation for turning troubled shipping lines around. As far as all the talk we heard that his methods were sometimes less than orthodox —nothing illegal, at least nothing that was ever proved—we chalked it up to disgruntled competitors. After all, every head-hunter we talked to mentioned Cole Buchanan as a solid candidate for the position. A man's name comes up that often, you hire him."

"And now you suspect him of doing something wrong."

He seemed startled by her comment, which was half guess and half supposition—startled and a little worried, as if he'd said more than he'd intended. "We're getting off the track here. We were talking about you, and why I didn't like the idea of your getting mixed up with a man whose name has been linked with some sharp—maybe even shady—dealings. As for the company, maybe it's the lawyer in me, but I don't like the employment contract he got. It ties the board's hands and puts too much power in his. In my opinion Buchanan's grabbing for power, and you were part of the grab."

Had that been it? Logically she could see that it was more than possible. A man who had been raised in the squalor and poverty that marked so much of the violence-ridden Algiers section, and then risen from it to preside over a major shipping line, obviously had to be aggressive and ambitious. After sampling the heady taste of power, he could have decided he wanted more.

"How could I represent power to him?" She lifted her curious, troubled glance to Gabe.

"You own a substantial share in the company, and you sit on the board," he replied, studying her with affectionate patience. "And the family is not without some influence."

Remy suspected that the latter was a gross understatement, but she didn't dwell on it, her thoughts turning instead to the other things Gabe had said. With no memory of her own, she found herself seizing on every scrap of information and trying to make it mean something—specifically, something that would explain this feeling of trouble she had.

"You mentioned that Cole had a reputation for turning companies around. Does that mean the Crescent Line is in trouble financially?"

He gave a light shrug. "The company has lost money the last couple of years—nothing dramatic, certainly nothing to be overly alarmed about. All businesses experience a slump now and then."

"Then that wasn't the reason you hired him." Absently she ran a hand through her hair, which by now was nearly dry, trying to piece things together.

"No. Dad wanted to retire. He'd already put thirty years into the company, and Marc had never been involved in the operations side of the business."

"Marc—who's he?"

"Dad's brother—our uncle." He frowned at her for an instant, then his forehead cleared. "I forgot. You probably can't remember him either."

"No, I can't."

"Marc's a couple of years younger than Dad— brown eyes, dark, curly hair with just a touch of gray sprinkled through it." Gabe paused, as if trying to think how else to tell her about him. "After Grand-père died, he and Dad took over running the company. It's almost too limiting to say that Marc handles the public-relations side. He's the spokesman for the Crescent Line—the labor-relations man, the representative, the company's goodwill ambassador. The man's phenomenal, Remy. He knows even the newest employee by name. He can go down on the docks, take off his jacket and tie, and swap stories with the longshoremen over a beer like he was one of them. That same night he can put on a white tie and tails, mingle with a bunch of visiting dignitaries, and exchange views on global politics with all the ease of a diplomat. Everyone likes him. He's so charming and warm it's impossible not to."

But the only image she had of her uncle was the one Gabe had just drawn for her. She had none of her own. "Sorry." She shook her head in regret. "I still can't remember him."

"What about his son, Lance? He's the same age as me—our birthdays are just a couple months apart. He works for the company too, in the accounting end of it." He watched for some indication that his words were striking a familiar chord—and found none. "Maybe it would help if I told you that you don't like Lance."

"Why?" she asked, surprised by his assertion.

"You seem to think he's too full of himself, a little too contemptuous of women."

"Is he?"

"Probably," he conceded. "But the way they practically fall on their backs if he so much as looks at them, it's not really surprising that he doesn't have much respect for them. I used to be envious of him when we were in high school together. It was the closest I ever came to hating him. If he was around, not a single girl would look my way."

"By that I assume you mean he's handsome."

He laughed softly at that. "Actually the phrase 'handsome as the devil' could have been invented to describe Lance—dark hair, dark eyes, and a sexy, brooding look. He's the bad kind that mothers warn their daughters about and daddies meet at the door with a shotgun—and girls go crazy over."

"He sounds like a bachelor playboy." She was conscious of her teeth coming together in an almost instinctive reaction of disgust and dislike. But was she reacting or remembering? She couldn't tell.

"A bachelor? No. He's been married for three years and has a two-year-old son and another baby on the way. A playboy?" Gabe tipped his hand from side to side in a gesture that indicated that the decision could go either way.

"In other words, he's a married playboy," Remy concluded, a little acidly.

"Let's be realistic," Gabe protested, obviously coming to his cousin's defense. "If you're at a party and you keep being served up a tray of sweet, delectable morsels, are you going to have the willpower to say no every time it's offered? No man is that strong, Remy."

"And Lance is a little weaker than most, isn't he?" she guessed—or was she guessing? She wished she knew, then shook off the question as unanswerable, just as so many others were. "You said he works in the company's accounting department?"

"Yes. So you see, neither Lance nor I was interested or qualified to take over as president. Which meant we had to look outside for someone to replace Dad."

The ringing of the suite's front bell was quickly followed by a heavily accented voice announcing, "Room service."

"That must be the coffee I ordered earlier," Remy said, and automatically went to the door.

The waiter swept into the sitting room with an elaborate tray balanced on his upraised palm. He made a production out of setting the tray down, arranging the china cups and saucers, setting out the cream and sugar, and adjusting the placement of a flower vase, totally indifferent to the heavy silence stretching over the room.

He picked up the stainless coffee server. "Shall I pour, madam?"

"No thank you."

"Very well, madam." But he practically sniffed his disapproval as he presented the bill to her with a slight flourish.

Remy hastily scratched her name across it and passed it back to him. When the waiter left, she locked the door behind him, then turned back to the room.

"Would you like a cup of coffee?" She walked over to the tray and picked up the coffee server.
 

"Please."

Remy filled both cups with steaming coffee, then reached for the creamer. "Heavy on the cream and light on the sugar, right?"

"Right," he said. "You're starting to remember things."

"I hope so," she said, feigning a nonchalance she didn't feel.

"What happened, Remy? What caused this amnesia? I never really got the story straight. Was there an accident, or what?"

"According to the police inspector, I was seen arguing or. . . struggling with a man." She sipped at her coffee, remembering the bruised and swollen soreness of her lips. "He struck me and I fell backward, hitting my head against a tree trunk. It knocked me out. When I regained consciousness in the hospital, I had a dozen stitches in my scalp, a concussion, and—amnesia. I had no idea who I was, where I lived, or what I did, and I didn't have any identification on me."

"This man who hit you—did they catch him?"

"No. He ran off and disappeared into the crowd. The police couldn't get much of a description of him, and of course I wasn't able to remember any of it. I still don't know if he was somebody I knew, somebody I recently met, or a total stranger." She stopped. "Do you know anything about that night, Gabe? Why was I at the Espace Masséna? What was I doing? Where was I going?"

"We were all at a party that night... at a hotel not far from the square," he replied hesitantly, as if uncertain how to answer her questions. "You, me, Marc and Aunt Christina, Lance and his wife, Julie, Diana and Kathy and their husbands—" He caught her blank look at the last two names and paused to explain, "Diana and Kathy are Marc's daughters, both younger than Lance." A rueful smile tugged at his mouth. "They're our cousins, but—to be truthful—they're both kind of shallow and vain, more concerned with being seen with the 'right' people, wearing clothes by the currently 'in' designers, and sending their children to the 'right' schools than they are with anything else. . . . Anyway, they were there that night too. But the last time I remember seeing you, we were all at the party. Then you were gone. I assumed you'd gone back to the yacht. I wasn't surprised. After all, one Carnival party is pretty much the same as another. And when you weren't on board the next morning, no one thought anything of it. You had planned to leave that day, and we thought you had. I never guessed—none of us did—that something had happened to you. We wouldn't have left if we had."
 

"I know."

She heard the key turn in the lock and turned with a slightly guilty start as Cole walked in. He stopped, his gray eyes locking on her, but she had difficulty meeting them, no longer certain she could trust him, yet bothered by the feeling that her doubt was somehow a betrayal.

"Were you able to round up the crew?" Gabe asked.

"They're on their way to the airport now to file a flight plan and obtain all the necessary clearances. We should be able to take off as soon as we get there."

"Give me twenty minutes," she said, and she walked quickly from the room.

 

 

 

 

8

 

 

From the porthole window of the corporate jet, Remy watched the golden light of a slowly setting sun spread its color over the beaches and buildings of Nice. As the jet climbed over the tinted waters of the bay, the grand hotels along the Promenade des Anglais—those towers of luxurious elegance —diminished in size, the famed Castle Hill landmark, with its sparkling waterfall, visible from almost anywhere in the old section, was reduced to a vague knoll of ground, and the backcloth of verdant hills and distant mountains that ringed the city rose to dominance. Then the plane made its banking turn on its prescribed departure pattern, and Remy leaned back in her seat and tipped her head against the headrest.

They were going home. She was going home— home to New Orleans, to Louisiana. Yet she felt no sense of anticipation, only a kind of vague dread.

"Tired?" Gabe asked from his seat across the narrow aisle, mistaking the barely audible breath she'd released for a weary sigh.

"Not really." Though she wished she was.

The seat-belt light flicked off. Giving in to a surge of restless energy, Remy picked up her purse and got out of her seat. As she turned to walk down the narrow aisle to the lavatory, her glance encountered Cole's. He was in the cushioned chair directly behind hers, the point of his elbow on the armrest and a forefinger curved across his mouth in a thoughtful gesture.

What was in that steel-gray look of his? Remy found it impossible to tell. He had a face that revealed his inner feelings only when he chose. She hesitated an instant longer, then walked back to the lavatory and studied her own reflection in the mirror, wondering if she was that good at concealing her feelings. She doubted it. On the contrary, she suspected that she'd never bothered to learn to control her feelings or her opinions. From reviewing her own recent actions, she recognized that she was invariably blunt, even with those she liked or loved.

She freshened her makeup, touching the wand of brown mascara to the tips of her lashes, adding a few strokes of blush to the high contours of her cheekbones, and applying a fresh coat of peach lipstick to her lips. When she was finished, she ran cold water over her wrists, trying in vain to cool the agitation that pulsed through her. Giving up, she dried her hands on a towel monogrammed with the company's initials, then retrieved her purse from the sink counter.