Paper Rose (17 page)

Tate wouldn't have mentioned to save himself that he wanted to know more about his real background, his grandparents. He stood scowling at the man who'd just destroyed his life.

Holden stared at him with helpless pride. “One of your great-grandfathers was a Berber,” he recalled. “He rode with the Rizouli, who was a revolutionary in Morocco about the turn of the century. There's a painting of him over the mantel in my study. I've actually been to see the Rizouli's palace, in Asilah, down the coast from Tangier. It's a beautiful little town.”

Tate was quiet. He stuck his hands in his pockets. His mind was working again. “This is why you went back on the security contract,” he said. “It would have been nepotism.”

Holden nodded.

“And it's why you didn't want me at Wapiti.”

Holden nodded again.

“But Cecily knew. She's known from the beginning, hasn't she?” he demanded, remembering tidbits of conversation that had puzzled him until now.

Holden got up from his seat, looking every year of his age. Things would only deteriorate from now on. He had to go, he had to give Tate time to work through it. It must have come as the worst kind of shock. He remembered how he'd felt when a complete stranger had confided that the senator had a son. Holden hadn't taken his word for it, of course. He'd dug into the records of Tate's birth for his whole name, which was Tate Rene Winthrop. Holden's father whom he adored was called Rene, and Leta knew it. His blood type, a rare one, was also shared with Tate. There wasn't much guesswork after that.

“I wanted you to know the truth before you heard it on the evening news,” he said curtly as he paused at the door, meeting his son's hostile gaze evenly. “You'll never know how I felt when I learned about you. I hated your mother for a while. I had a child I'd never seen. I missed his first steps, his first words, I missed his whole damned life! And while I was sitting up here on my nice white cloud, Jack Winthrop was playing hell with the family I didn't have. While you're hating me, think about that. I could have spared you, and her, if I'd only known the truth!”

He opened the door and went out, closing it sharply behind him.

Tate opened another beer. He was glad he had several. He held up the beer to his image in the mirror. “To bastards everywhere!” he said sarcastically, and chugged it down.

 

Later, when he was calm enough to use the telephone, he called his mother.

“Guess who just paid me a visit?” he asked her with a faint slur in his angry voice. “My dad.”

There was a long, heavy pause. “Your father…he did?” she stammered, shocked. She'd never dreamed when Matt Holden called her that he might be willing to tell Tate the truth himself. She was sick to her soul, to have her child know that his whole life was a lie. She felt guilty, as she had when she'd heard Matt's deep, beloved voice after thirty-odd years. She'd been too flustered to say much to him, and in the end, regretfully, she'd hung up on him out of sheer embarrassment.

“Why didn't you tell me?”
he demanded. “Why?”

There was another pause. “I can't tell you how sorry I am, but now's not the time to discuss this. We'll talk about it one day, when you're ready to listen. Call me back after the shock's worn off. Please forgive me. I love you!”

She hung up.

He dialed the number again. She didn't answer. He tore the telephone cord out of the wall and threw the phone. It shattered with a nice noise. He wondered a little dimly if that had been his father's reaction when Leta had hung up on him.

His father. His
father!
He put his head in his hands, fighting the sickness that welled up in his belly. He'd been unique, a member of a vanishing race, a vanishing tribe, an individual in an ancient society. Now he was one of thousands with mixed blood, not unique anymore, not even Lakota. He was part Moroccan, part Berber if he believed the senator. The illegitimate son of a senator, how was that for a shocker? And if it hadn't been for a renegade gambling syndicate trying to get a casino on Sioux land that they could siphon off profits from, he'd have gone the rest of his life without ever knowing the truth. His mother had kept her secret for thirty-six years. His whole life.

He remembered Jack Winthrop's temper, the vicious attacks, the hateful attitude. No wonder the man hated him. It made sense now, when it was too late to matter. Leta's fault. His mother's fault. Not that she hadn't suffered, too.

He leaned his head against the wall. He didn't want it to clear. He didn't want to think about what he'd learned. Not now. It was too much. He needed to sleep.

He fell into his bed and all but passed out on a single six-pack of beer, which had hit him hard because he didn't ordinarily drink. The next morning he woke with a headache and a renewed burst of bad temper. Cecily had lied to him. She'd lied to him. Well, she wasn't going to get away with it. He was going to her office and he was going to tell her a thing or two!

 

It was midday of an otherwise unremarkable day when Cecily's head lifted with surprise at the force with which her office door was pushed open and then closed. Her secretary was at lunch. The office was deserted. And a furious black-eyed man stood over her desk looking as if he planned to come right across it after her. She knew what had happened, even before a weeping Leta had phoned her the night before to give her the latest news. She'd coaxed Leta into getting on a plane Tuesday and coming to stay with her before the news media ran the scandal and destroyed her privacy at Wapiti.

“Did you think I wouldn't find out eventually?” Tate asked in a bitter tone.

She wasn't sure how to handle him. He looked completely out of control. “Find out what?” she asked, even though she had a pretty good idea.

“Matt Holden finally got around to telling me who my father was,” he said with an unpleasant smile. His calm voice belied the storms in his eyes.

It was no use pretending innocence anymore. She sighed heavily. “We were all trying to protect you,” she began. “If we could have gotten enough on the syndicate, they'd never have dared print what they knew. But we didn't count on them doing it for revenge because Matt threw a spanner into their nasty plan. Matt decided that you had to be told, and there was only him to do it. Your mother wouldn't.”

“My mother had no right to keep such a secret from me. Neither did he. Neither did you!” He pointed at her. “You had no right, Cecily!”

“I gave my word to Senator Holden, and to your mother, that I wouldn't say anything,” she said softly, rising from her desk. She walked around it slowly, approached him cautiously as if he were completely wild. In fact, he was. He was vibrating with frustration, shock, hurt, fury. “I knew it was going to be impossible to keep the secret, but they wanted to try, to spare you the truth.”

“All my life, I knew who I was,” he told her. “I knew what I was, where I belonged, where I was going in life. In the space of a day, I've been set adrift. Suddenly I'm an outsider among my own people. My ancestry is a lie. My life…is a lie!”

“That isn't true,” she replied gently. “Your mother didn't dare tell your father the truth. His wife hated Native Americans. She could have hurt your mother. She could have hurt you. Even the knowledge of you could have cost him his career.”

“Jack Winthrop knew the truth,” he said huskily. “It's why he hated us so much—her for loving another man, me for not being his child. He made us pay every day we lived, and until yesterday, I never knew why!”

She winced, feeling his pain. She started to reach out to him. He backed up a step.

“Don't,” he warned softly, his eyes glittering with conflicting emotions. “So help me God, if you touch me,” he breathed, “I'll have you right here on the carpet!”

He made it sound like a threat, but in fact, it was what he needed, perhaps why he'd come here. He needed comfort and he'd come to her for it, bristling with bad temper to disguise the need. She wasn't afraid of him. She loved him too much to be bothered by sizzling black eyes and a straight line of a mouth. He had every reason to be angry, to be hurt. But what he needed from her wasn't words. She could give him what he really yearned for. It might be the last time he ever would touch her, now, when he was out of control and not thinking clearly. He wasn't a particularly forgiving man, and she'd betrayed him.

She went to lock the door before she went back to him. She reached up and pulled his mouth down over hers without a word.

He actually trembled before his arms caught her, held her, lifted her into the viciously aroused contours of his body. His mouth was devouring on her lips. He was bruising her a little with the ferocity of the embrace, but it was oh, so sweet, to be needed like that. She sighed into his lips. It seemed like forever since he'd kissed her.

It seemed that way to him as well. He was losing himself in her and she was seducing him deliberately. He didn't want to do this. It wasn't right. But he wanted her to the point of madness, needed her, ached to have her. He'd come to her for comfort, even if he couldn't admit it. All the long weeks he'd denied himself were over. Feast after the famine, even if he was angry. Somehow, the anger was translated into the hottest, fiercest passion he'd ever expressed to a woman.

Inevitably kisses weren't enough. Oblivious to the time, the place, their surroundings, he carried her down with him to the floor. Fastenings were loosened, obstacles moved aside, hands searching for bare skin in a frenzy of heat.

Then she lay under the slow, hard thrust of his body on the imported Persian rug with her eyes closed, her mouth answering the deep, hungry kisses, smiling under the ferocity of his lips. It was feverish and rough and even a little dangerous, here in her own office, even with the door locked. The danger made it even more passionate. She pulled him closer, dimly aware that they were still almost fully clothed. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the…pleasure!

He covered her mouth quickly to stifle the surprised sob of joy that prefaced the violent tremor of her body under him. He held her to him with a lean hand at her hip, jerking her up to him as the rhythm grew more violent, more demanding. He groaned into her welcoming mouth as the fever rose high and bright and suddenly exploded into fiery particles of pleasure that shot through his body like cellular fireworks. He stiffened helplessly as the spasms shook him and felt her eyes on him. He groaned harshly at the overwhelming pleasure it provoked to know that she was watching him.

When he could breathe again, he lifted his face from her throat and looked down into her eyes, his own eyes strange and turbulent.

“You watched,” he said coldly.

“Yes.” She opened the buttons of his shirt and slid her hand over his smooth muscles to where she could feel his heart beating. She could feel him intimately and she moved deliberately, knowing that he was still fiercely aroused and that her movements would renew the passion. She lifted her hips, gasped at the sensation. “Are you…going to watch…this time?” she whispered, pulling his head back down to her.

He went right over the edge. His eyes were as hostile as the look on his face when he pushed down with a fierce surge, impaling her further. It aroused him even more than her restless movements had. He did it again. His eyes blazed. His body shuddered.

“Yes, that's it,” she whispered feverishly. Her hands slid down his back, under his slacks. “Yes. Do it again. Make it last. Make it last forever! You can watch me, too…!”

“Damn you, Cecily,” he bit off with helpless desire, trembling with new urgency as he found her mouth and his taut body moved helplessly on hers all over again. It shouldn't even have been possible. She was demanding this time, fiercely enjoying everything he did to her, and he'd never been so aroused.

He lifted his head, and he did watch. She laughed with shocked pleasure, looked up at him with love blazing out of her green eyes.

When she lifted into his body with a sharp, funny little cry, he saw her eyes dilate until they were almost black. She clung to him, sobbing.

Her face was beautiful, like that, he thought while he could. She was completely uninhibited, as if the past had never happened, as if she were a whole woman. In the back of his mind he knew that there wasn't another man in the world she could give that response to, and it humbled him. Her contorted features and those pulsing little sobs took him over the precipice so that he could fall with her, into that exquisite hot void that beckoned so seductively. He heard himself cry out huskily with ecstasy before he finally collapsed in an exhausted, beloved weight over her.

“Why did you do that?” he asked roughly, when he was able to speak. “Why did you knock me off balance like that?”

“You know why,” she said softly, brushing back a strand of loose dark hair from his broad forehead. “You needed me.”

He lifted his head and looked down at them. “It was supposed to be a punishment!”

She lifted both eyebrows and smiled a little wickedly. “Was it really? I didn't notice. Do it again,” she whispered boldly, “and I'll try to look chastised.”