To Tell the Truth (13 page)

"Why?" Nancy repeated tilting her head to one side.

"I have some correspondence that can't wait until I get back to San Francisco to be answered, I'd like to get it out this afternoon," answered Tell curtly. "I had hoped I could count on my sister's help since it's a family business."

"Dictation?" she asked with a grimace.

"And typing the letters," he acknowledged.

"You know how terrible I am, Tell," Nancy sighed, her hand falling away from the door. "Every time I help you, you always get so impatient. I can only take longhand and my typing is the two-finger variety."

His mouth thinned into a grim line as long fingers raked irritatedly though his black hair. "Never mind!"

"See, already you're snapping," his sister pointed out.

"Could I help?" The instant Andrea made the offer she wished that she could take it back as his smoldering dark gaze pinned her with sudden swiftness.

"Don't tell me you take shorthand and type?" he jeered.

"Have you forgotten that I told you I worked for John?" Andrea demanded, trying to draw blood.

"That's not something I'm likely to forget, is it?" Tell responded with cold arrogance. "Of course, I couldn't be certain it was the truth either."

"It is the truth." Her reply was drawn tightly through the constricting muscles in her throat.

"I didn't know you worked for John, actual office work, I mean." Nancy turned a frowning, curious look to Andrea. "Where was I when you two were talking about that?"

In that stricken instant, Andrea realized that she and Tell had made another slip in their anger. Widened hazel eyes pleaded with him to rescue them, to satisfy his sister's curiosity before she became suspicious. His mouth tightened grimly, the clefts in his cheeks deepening with his inner displeasure.

"You were there, Nancy," he stated. "Obviously you were daydreaming about Scott again."

"That's possible," she acknowledged, a warm smile curving her mouth. "Are you going to accept Andrea's offer or are we going to struggle through those letters for the rest of the afternoon? With me helping, it will take that long."

His narrowed, resentful eyes slid over Andrea's tense face. "Since it's vital the letters are out today, I have very little choice. I'm practically forced to accept Mrs. Grant's offer. If you'll step into John's study, with luck your skill is such that we can be through with them quickly. I would hate to take up too much of your time and spoil
your planned outing."

With the thinly veiled sarcasm of his last remark hanging in the air, Tell walked down the hall to the study. Feeling as if she were going to her own execution, Andrea hesitantly moved forward and Nancy followed.

"I hope it won't take too long for your sake," his sister offered, glancing toward the door Tell had left ajar, a wry grimace to her mouth. "He's in a vile mood today, as usual. Don't let him get you down, Andrea."

"I won't." But her smile was stiff. There was little chance that she would come out of the study unscathed.

Perhaps she was a masochist, Andrea thought idly, hesitating for a split second in front of the partially open door before pushing it open the rest of the way and entering the study. Tell was sitting behind the desk, shifting through a sheaf of notes lying on top.

Aware that he had deliberately not glanced up since she had entered, Andrea picked up her notepad and pencil from the typewriter stand that she used and walked to the chair in front of the desk. For several minutes, she sat there waiting for him to begin.

"I'm ready whenever you are," she said finally, the tension in the room oppressively suffocating her.

He leaned back in his chair, his brooding gaze centering on hot with piercing thoughtfulness. Andrea wished she had not called attention to herself. He was deliberately attempting to unsettle her and he was succeeding.

Without any warning, Tell began the dictation, his low, clipped voice giving her the name, firm and address to which the letter was directed. Andrea had barely written that down when he began the contents of the letter.

She stretched her ability to the limit to try to keep up with his steady and swift dictation, but she slowly kept falling behind, relying on her memory to supply the sentences she had heard a moment ago while trying to concentrate on what he was saying. Finally, she had to acknowledge defeat.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, heat flashing into her cheeks as she refused to look up. "Would you repeat that last part? I'm afraid that I didn't get all of it."

"I thought you said you could take shorthand?" Tell challenged.

"Not at that speed," Andrea retorted. "If I could I'd probably be working as a secretary and not merely helping John from time to time." Even with her head downcast, she could feel his eyes boring into her, delving and examining.

"Why didn't you take some advanced training? Why didn't you get a job as a secretary? Why couldn't you have worked for John instead of marrying him?" The flurry of questions was hurled unwillingly, bitter frustration tightening his jaw and drawing his dark brows together.

"Why do you ask questions when you don't want to hear the answers?" Andrea cried, rising to her feet in agitation, knowing that no matter what answer she gave him, he wouldn't believe her.

Anger, blazing white-hot, pushed him from his chair. "How can you stand there righteously indignant, playing the martyr, pretending that you were the one who was betrayed? You were the one who lied to me! Who led me on! Who asked me to believe things that were untrue!"

"Tell, I was going to explain, I swear I was!" Andrea pleaded with him to believe her. "I even tried to do it the morning you came to my room, but you were too busy telling me what we were going to do that you wouldn't listen. I know if I had had the chance, I could have made you understand that things aren't as sordid and ugly as you think. Then John called, and you condemned me without hearing my side."

"And how does that explain, the fact that you omitted to mention that there was anyone at home who had a prior claim? According to you, you didn't even have a boyfriend, let alone a husband," he taunted.

"If I'd told you I was married that first night we dined together, what would you have thought? We were strangers then. I wouldn't have told you the truth about the circumstances surrounding my marriage to John, not to a total stranger. But if you'd known I was married, would you have seen me again?" she demanded.

"No!" Tell snapped. "I'm disgustingly old-fashioned in that I believe the marriage vows between a man and a woman are sacred promises. I have little respect for those who don't keep them!"

Andrea recoiled from the venom in his voice as if she had been struck. "I haven't broken any promises I made to John," she murmured.

"Really?" he jeered. "How can that be when you promise to marry one man when you're still married to another? Is that something you promised John you would do?"

"I never promised to marry you!" Her hands trembled visibly as she cast the notepad and pen on the desk. "There isn't any point in continuing this conversation. You don't want to listen. You've become so twisted and cynical that all you want to do is hurt. You haven't even had enough courtesy to hear me out before you've judged me. I think I've been punished enough for my mistake without enduring any more of your insults!"

Spinning away from the desk, she hurried toward the door. Her eyes, already blurring with tears, turned the door into a dark mass and the brass knob into a shapeless, gleaming object. But Andrea wasn't to be granted a reprieve. As her fingers touched the cold knob, her shoulders were roughly seized and she was swung around with violent force.

"You don't know the meaning of the word 'punished'!" Tell snarled.

In the vice of his hands, Andrea was pulled toward his descending mouth. One quick gasping breath later, the punishing force of his kiss was bruising her lips, grinding them against her teeth until the taste of blood tainted her mouth. His arms then circled her, crushing her against his chest until she thought he intended to squeeze the air from her lungs.

Blackness swirled around her, but Andrea could not bring herself to be afraid. She loved him desperately and unendingly. Behind his brutal kiss, she knew that he loved her, too, although he despised and hated himself and her because of it. She was being smothered by his ravaging mouth and she didn't care.

When Tell drew his head away, relaxing his hold, she leaned weakly against his arms, too drained and defenseless to break free now that she had the chance. His eyes glittered over her like cold, black diamonds, cutting and emotionless. Then Tell released her completely and strode back to the desk.

"You may leave. I don't need your services any more," he said evenly. There was something in his calm dismissal that told Andrea that he was serious, that he meant it to mean forever.

Catching back a little sob, she fumbled for the doorknob, opened the door quickly and nearly tripped over the Irish setter whining anxiously on the other side. Andrea's fingers trailed lightly over his golden flame head in assurance that she was all right before she bolted for the stairs. In her room, she shed the tears she couldn't hold back.

More than a quarter of an hour later, her expression frozen by repeated applications of cold water to clear her red-rimmed eyes, Andrea walked down the stairs in search of Nancy. Her haunted eyes automatically sought the study door and veered away from the door tightly, and no doubt permanently, closed to her.

"Goodness! You're finished already!" Nancy exclaimed, quickly bounding from the chair beside her mother to hurry to Andrea's side. "You must have knocked Tell off his feet getting those letters done so soon."

It was the other way around, Andrea thought. She was the one who had been knocked off her feet, but she only smiled and asked Nancy if she was ready to leave, if Tell decided to let it be known that she had not helped him that was his business. Personally, she didn't want to explain how disastrously her offer had turned out.

"The last time I was in Jacksonville I was barely thirteen. I hardly remember anything but a lot of old buildings," Nancy chatted easily as Andrea started the car and turned it down the lane past the rows of pear trees. "Of course, the day before we had just taken a float trip over the rapids on the Rogue River. Anything would probably have seemed pale in comparison to that."

"The town has been classified as a National Historical Monument."
Andrea
was determined to keep the conversation from straying into a personal direction. This was to be a sightseeing trip and that was what they would discuss…the sights they would see.

Ignoring the entrance ramp onto the fast, divided highway, she chose to take the leisurely and scenic back road from Gold Hill to Jacksonville. As they traveled the road with the pine-covered slopes of the mountains forever in the background, Andrea talked about the old stagecoach road and pointed out the thickets of blackberry bushes that would be heavy with large, succulent berries in late July.

When they arrived at the frontier town of Jacksonville, Oregon, there was a great deal more to attract Nancy's attention. Parking the car and taking a walking tour of the town, they turned off first down Oregon Street so Nancy could see the Brunner general store that the townspeople had used as a refuge during Indian raids, and the Oddfellows Hall across the street. The two feet of dirt between the roof and the ceiling of the latter structure had been installed to protect the building from fire in the event Indians attempted to burn it with a barrage of flaming arrows.

Other buildings possessed unique pasts as well. The Beekman Bank handled more than thirty-one million dollars' worth of gold, but never loaned any money in all its years of operation. The gold dust from the dance halls and gambling saloons had helped to fund the construction of churches in the town.

The better part of the afternoon was gone by the time they ended their tour with a walk through the old cemetery.

"Maybe Scott and I will come back in August to hear the Britt Outdoor Music Festival," said Nancy, voicing her thoughts aloud as they returned to their parked car.

"I go every year and enjoy it tremendously," Andrea responded, unlocking the door and sliding behind the wheel. She reached over to unlock Nancy's door.

"I'm much too content to go shopping. Let's go to Medford another day," she suggested.

"We still have plenty of time and it's not very far." Andrea glanced at her briefly as she started the car.

"Don't you feel relaxed and comfortable?" Nancy tipped her head inquiringly, a bright sparkle in her sapphire eyes.

"Very much so." Which was the truth. She had been able to carry off the day's excursion successfully without Nancy being the wiser about the scene with Tell.

"In that case—" the attractive girl settled into her seat, watching the scenery ahead as Andrea turned onto the road leading them home "—you can tell me all about the crazy argument you had with Tell just before we left."

"W-Wh-What?" The startled look she gave his sister nearly made her miss a curve in the road. Andrea had to turn the wheel sharply to keep from driving into the ditch. "What are you talking about?"

"Not even Superwoman could have got those letters out as quickly as you supposedly did," Nancy replied calmly. "And Tell was very anxious to get them out. Since you didn't have time to do them and considering the animosity he has expressed before, it had to have been an argument that got you free so soon." A faint smile dimpled one cheek. "Am I right?"