Buch lesen: «A Wife In Time»

One

“Hey, you! Hold it right there! I want to talk to you!”

Susannah Hall ignored the loudly spoken order, certain it couldn’t possibly be directed at her. In fact, Susannah felt a bit sorry for the poor soul to whom it was directed, for the man’s command was driven by enough anger to fuel a fleet of jets for a week. A second later she dismissed the man and his anger from her thoughts. She had enough things to worry about.

Although Susannah had been an editor for almost five years now, this was her first time attending the huge American Publishing Convention, taking place in Savannah this year. Her recent promotion to senior editor at McPhearson Publishing meant that she was now expected to attend this bigger-than-life trade show.

From the moment she’d first walked into the convention center earlier that morning, she’d felt like a kid at the circus, surrounded by hype and hoopla. But now, midafternoon hunger pangs had forced her to leave McPhearson’s display booth in search of the convention center’s cafeteria.

“I said I want to talk to you!” the furious male voice repeated, this time from directly behind her.

Years of living in New York City had Susannah pivoting in her tracks, her huge purse automatically held at the ready should she need to use it in self-defense. The man and his anger were just a little too close for comfort.

He was tall, had dark ruffled hair, and he radiated fury. She’d never seen him before in her life.

Looking around, Susannah was reassured by the presence of the crowd despite the fact that, like water in a stream, the people simply flowed on around them, paying them little heed. But then this was a crowd in single-minded pursuit of the almighty buck, as millions of dollars’ worth of transactions were in progress at this convention.

Keeping a cautious grip on her large bag just in case, Susannah addressed the angry stranger. “Are you talking to me?” she demanded.

“Damn right, I’m talking to you,” the man confirmed with a growl.

“Shouting was actually closer to the truth,” Susannah noted frostily. “What seems to be the problem, Mr.—” She paused to read the name tag that everyone attending this convention was required to wear. Kane Wilder. The name fit, Susannah decided. The man’s behavior was certainly wilder than normal or acceptable. “What’s the problem, Mr. Wilder?”

“You’re the problem,” Kane Wilder replied, openly glaring at her.

She frowned, unable to imagine what she could have done to have so irritated this man, a man she’d never even met before. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she told him bluntly.

“I’m talking about my brother, Chuck, and the fact that he’s threatened to leave his wife because of you.”

Stunned, Susannah blinked at Kane. “Excuse me?”

“No, I won’t excuse you. There’s no excuse for what you’ve done!”

“I think you’ve made a mistake of some kind, Mr. Wilder,” she began in a conciliatory tone of voice when he interrupted her.

“The only person who has made a mistake is you, Ms. Hall. You are Susannah Hall, right? Senior editor at McPhearson Publishing, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So now you’re pretending you don’t know my brother? Is that your game?”

“It’s no game, Mr. Wilder.”

“Playing bedroom games with a younger, married man is exactly the kind of cheap ploy a Mata Hari like you would play.”

Mata Hari? Her? Susannah didn’t know whether to be insulted or complimented. She couldn’t imagine anyone further from the image of a seductress. Her hair was too long and too curly, her figure too full. She knew her eyes and her thighs were both too big. Her taste in clothes was too romantic and soft, although the sky blue suit she wore now was pretty businesslike.

Everyone knew that Mata Hari types were slinky, confident and ruthless. Susannah was a passionate dreamer. The worst that could be said about her was she could be aloof. And when crossed she’d once been called a “tough cookie.”

But a Mata Hari? No way. The man was clearly off his rocker.

“My brother’s name is Chuck Wilder. Charles Wilder,” Kane continued as if speaking to a two-year-old. “Ring any bells or are you fooling around with so many men you’ve lost count?”

His last stinging comment didn’t really sink in as she focused on the first part of his statement. “Are you talking about Charles, the intern at my office?” Susannah had never paid attention to the young man’s surname before. He was just “Charles the Intern.” One of them, anyway. McPhearson had four at the present time.

“That’s right. And you’ve been teaching him plenty, haven’t you?” Kane noted caustically.

“Well, yes, that’s what he’s there for. To learn.”

“Would it have mattered to you if you had known he was married?” Kane demanded.

“Well, no, not really,” Susannah admitted. Although most of their interns were still single—and in their junior year of college—it wasn’t a requirement for entrance into the internship program.

“Listen, I’m only going to say this once,” he bit out. “Stay away from my brother.”

“A little hard to do since he works for me,” Susannah noted wryly.

“Then fire him.”

“I’ll do no such thing. Besides, he’s an intern. He can’t be fired. He’s not a paid employee. Look, I’m sorry to hear your brother is having marital difficulties, but I fail to see what that has to do with me.”

“Lady, you take the cake! You don’t think your having an affair with him might have something to do with his marital problems?”

“An affair?” Susannah repeated in astonishment. Now she knew Kane Wilder was off his rocker. “No way!” It was too ridiculous to even contemplate. Sure, she’d had lunch with Charles a few times, but that certainly didn’t qualify as an affair! There had never been a hint of any impropriety— Well, there was that one time in the copying room two weeks ago when he’d brushed up against her. At the time, she’d thought she’d been imagining things. Now she was quickly reassessing that conclusion.

It made Susannah very uneasy to think that Charles might have had a crush on her and she hadn’t even noticed. A crush so intense that he was threatening to leave his wife over it. Things like that didn’t happen to her, which was no doubt why she hadn’t recognized the signs earlier.

“Look, Mr. Wilder,” she began. “Your brother clearly has a problem—”

“Oh, sure, put the blame on him,” Kane retorted.

“He is the one who’s married,” she reminded him.

“And you’re the one who went after him—a much younger man.”

Stung, Susannah said, “He’s not that much younger!”

“You’re old enough to know better.”

“So is he. Not that anything happened, because it didn’t,” she quickly clarified before going on to bluntly say, “Your brother is lying if he told you that he’s having an affair with me.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“And I’m supposed to just take your word for it, is that it?”

Susannah nodded emphatically.

“The word of a woman I’ve just met over the word of a brother I’ve helped raise, the brother who has never told a lie in his life.”

“Well, when he decided to start, he sure started with a big one,” she countered. “Because the claim that the two of us are somehow romantically involved is ludicrous.”

“I see. So you’re merely sexually—not romantically— involved with him, is that it?”

“No, that’s not it! My relationship with your younger brother has been strictly professional.”

“Strictly professional?” he questioned. “Meaning you never met with him privately. You treated him as you did all your other co-workers?”

Susannah couldn’t stop the flash of guilt that shadowed her face.

“I knew it,” Kane said, looking at her as if she were something the cat had dragged in.

Susannah’s patience was rapidly running out. “No, you don’t know anything! Okay,” she acknowledged, “so I may have taken him more under my wing than I have with some of the other interns. But that doesn’t mean that I’m having an affair with him. Not by any stretch of the imagination!”

“And why do you suppose my brother would lie about something like this?” Kane asked coldly.

“I have no idea. You’d have to ask him that question. Maybe you misunderstood what he told his wife,” Susannah suggested.

“I didn’t misunderstand what he told me,” Kane retorted.

“I can’t believe he made up such a ridiculous story,” Susannah said with perplexed frown. “Surely he realized he’d be caught in a lie of this proportion?”

“My point exactly,” Kane agreed with a pleasant smile that conveyed mockery rather than humor. “It would be pretty foolish of him to lie about something like this.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth, however,” Susannah quickly maintained. “When I get back to New York, I’ll clearly have to talk with him.”

“Another little talk at your place?”

“He’s never been to my place.” She paused, remembering the time she’d stayed home to read manuscripts and he’d brought over a contract she’d needed to authorize. “Okay, so maybe he was at my place. Once. For five minutes. Maybe fifteen. I offered him a cup of coffee.”

“I’m sure you did. Along with a little sympathy about his unsupportive wife.”

“I didn’t even know he had a wife!”

“Well, now that you do, you can break it off.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, there’s nothing to break off,” she said through gritted teeth.

“You can tell me until you’re blue in the face. That doesn’t mean I believe a word you say. But believe me when I tell you that I’m not about to stand by and watch my brother get hurt by a—”

“Mata Hari like me,” Susannah sarcastically completed. “I get the picture, Mr. Wilder. And I’ll be expecting an apology from you in writing when this misunderstanding is cleared up.”

He stared at her in astonishment. “You’ve got some nerve, lady.”

“Oh, so now you think I’m a lady,” she said mockingly. “Funny, you didn’t act like it a moment ago when you accused me of seducing your brother. If it weren’t so absurd, I’d be highly insulted. As it is, I’ll chalk your incredibly rude behavior up to male hysteria.”

“Those two words are mutually exclusive.”

“Not in your case,” Susannah noted sweetly before turning on her heel and marching into the sanctuary of the women’s bathroom.

“I’m not done talking to you!” Kane bellowed from outside the door.

“Do you know if there’s another way out of here?” Susannah asked a woman in the bathroom.

“That door over there leads to the hallway outside the exhibition area.”

“Great. Thanks.” She made a beeline for that exit. Her little run-in with Kane Wilder had just taken up fifteen of the thirty minutes she had for lunch. Standing in the long line at the convention center’s cafeteria ate up another ten. Meanwhile, Susannah still hadn’t eaten a thing.

She grabbed an apple and an anemic-looking green salad, all the while lecturing herself on how she should have handled Kane. She wasn’t happy with the way he’d put her on the defensive. She should have stopped him in his verbal tracks the second he started making his ridiculous accusations.

Stashing her purchases in her oversize purse, Susannah hurried back to her employer’s display booth. She never did get around to eating, as a rush of people stopped by the booth. As one of the representatives of McPhearson Publishing, it was her job to answer any questions booksellers might have about the line of books McPhearson published.

Smiling at conventioneers as they passed by the booth, Susannah couldn’t help wondering if Charles the Intern had told his ridiculous story to anyone else, aside from his wife and his brother. Specifically, had he told any of her co-workers? And if he did, surely they hadn’t believed him, had they? Not that she was about to come out and ask. But perhaps she could make a few discreet inquiries....

She started with Roy, the head of Marketing. “So what’s your impression of our batch of interns this year?” she asked him during a lull in the action.

“They seem okay,” Roy replied. “Is it just me or do they seem to get wetter behind the ears each year?”

Susannah was tempted to ask about Charles specifically but then reconsidered, realizing her inquiry might only raise further speculation. The best thing to do would be to confront Charles when she returned to the office Monday morning—to go directly to the source...and kill him!

She grinned, making a passing sales rep pause and look at her twice. Of course, Susannah had no intention of doing Kane’s precious baby brother any bodily harm, but she’d certainly make him wish he’d thought twice about dragging her reputation through the mud.

She pumped Roy from Marketing again. “Ever heard of Wilder Enterprises?”

“Aren’t they that hotshot company on the forefront of the new CD-ROM technology?”

“CD-what technology? Speak English here, Roy.”

“I forgot I was speaking to a technophobic editor afraid to turn on the computer on her own desk.”

“I’m not afraid to turn it on,” Susannah calmly denied. “We have an understanding. I don’t bother it, and it doesn’t bother me.”

“It could make your workload a lot easier.”

“I know I’ll have to learn how to use it eventually,” she admitted. “But I’m not in any rush since the rest of the office isn’t hooked up yet.”

“It will be by the end of the year,” he told her.

“Let’s get back to Wilder Enterprises and the CD-ROM stuff.”

“It involves storing information onto compact disks and then reading them on your computer. How about your own library with 450 of the world’s greatest books on one disk?”

“Who would want to stare at a screen instead of reading a book in the comfort of their own easy chair?” she asked, mystified by the very idea.

“They have computers small enough to hold in the palm of your hand,” Roy reminded her. “The twenty-first century is right around the corner, you know.”

“Don’t remind me,” she muttered.

“So why the interest in Wilder Enterprises?”

“I just ran into Kane Wilder....”

“No kidding? He’s considered to be a visionary in the computer technology of the future. A regular whiz kid.”

“He’s no kid,” Susannah retorted, “although he does have a kid brother. Our own Charles the Intern.”

“Which one is he?” Roy asked.

The lying, deceitful one, Susannah was tempted to reply. Instead she said, “The dark-haired one with the wire-rimmed glasses.”

“Sounds like nerdiness runs in the family,” Roy noted with a laugh.

Guess again, Susannah thought to herself. If there was a nerdy bone in Kane Wilder’s body, she hadn’t seen it. His dark business suit had a European cut that spoke of quiet elegance. Not a nerdy plastic penholder in sight. The only nonconforming element of his attire had been the tie he’d been wearing, as she only now recalled the tiny blue computer screens that had adorned the burgundy silk.

He might have been attractive, had it not been for the way he’d glared at her. Not the kind of man to make an apology easily. But apologize to her he would, because he’d made a mistake big-time when he’d crossed her. Talk about computer chips might make her tremble, but Kane Wilder she could handle!

* * *

Kane entered his hotel room and headed straight for the phone. His afternoon had been consumed with taking care of his company’s business. Now it was time for family business.

Automatically punching in the numbers for his calling card, Kane reflected back on his meeting with Susannah Hall. It hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped. He hated surprises, and she’d certainly been one.

He’d expected something different, someone different—not a sweet-faced, sharp-tongued woman with a temper to match his. And big brown eyes that seemed to secretly laugh at him, effectively telling him that she thought he was an idiot.

Kane wasn’t accustomed to being looked at that way. Most people considered him to be of above-average intelligence. Way above. He’d skipped ahead two years in grade school and another two in his college’s accelerated program.

The bottom line was that Kane had been called “gifted” by his teachers and “good-looking” by the women in his life. He prided himself on not conforming to the nerdy stereotype so many of his cohorts were tagged with. He’d been called “a maverick” and “a loner” accustomed to being on his own.

But he wasn’t entirely on his own. He never had been. He had Chuck. Their mother had died when Chuck was only four. Kane had been fourteen—ready, willing and able to take his brother under his wing to protect him from their abusive alcoholic father. The old man had finally drunk himself to death on the eve of Kane’s eighteenth birthday. Kane held no fond memories of his father.

With help from Philip Durant, his counselor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kane had petitioned the court for legal custody of his then eight-year-old brother. Philip and his wife had become surrogate grandparents to Chuck and firm believers in Kane’s determination to make a better life for himself and his brother.

Now Kane had that better life, but his brother didn’t seem to appreciate it one bit. Kane wished Philip or his wife were still alive to advise him, but they’d both passed away in a car accident two years ago. Kane still missed them, especially at moments like this.

The sound of his sister-in-law’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Hi, Ann,” he said with deliberate cheerfulness. Despite his initial misgivings about the advisability of his brother marrying at the young age of nineteen, he’d decided that Ann was good for Chuck. She kept his feet on the ground. At least she always had in the past. She was a sweet girl and she deserved better than this, Kane noted savagely. But his voice reflected none of his inner feelings as he asked to speak to his brother.

“He’s not here right now,” Ann replied in an unsteady voice that was husky with tears.

“What happened?” Kane demanded gently, not wanting to set his sister-in-law off again. “Did you two have another argument?”

“Chuck doesn’t really argue, you know that. He just quietly does whatever he wants.”

Kane swore softly. “I’ve been too easy on him.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Ann said. “We both know there’s only one person to blame. Her. Did you find her? Did you talk to her?”

Since this entire thing had begun, Ann had refused to use Susannah’s given name. Kane had told Ann about his intention of confronting Susannah once he’d discovered she was attending the conference. Working out of Boston as he did, this was his first chance to meet Susannah. “I found her and I talked to her,” he replied.

“What did she say?”

Kane was reluctant to tell Ann that Susannah Hall claimed she was innocent of any wrongdoing. Until Kane could talk to his brother himself, he decided not to be too specific about the details.

“Don’t you worry, Ann,” he reassured her. “I’ve got everything under control.”

* * *

Susannah was running late. So what else was new? she asked herself as she dumped her briefcase on the bed and kicked off her high heels. She sighed in relief, rubbing her toes as she sat on the bed for a second to catch her breath.

Two heartbeats later, her second was up. She headed for the closet. She only had half an hour to get ready for the big party tonight.

It was a must-attend function and promised to be a spectacular spread. The organizers had rented one of Savannah’s most impressive historical homes for the evening. Everything had been taken care of: from providing charter buses to take participants from their hotels to the historical district, right down to supplying rental costumes in the requested sizes.

Susannah’s period costume had arrived while she was still at the convention center, so it was with some trepidation that she pulled back the opaque garment bag to reveal a lovely dress in deep red velvet. She couldn’t believe the costume company had actually supplied her with the right color and size.

Finally, something was going right! Although she’d never admit it to a living soul, Kane’s appearance as an avenging angel this afternoon had thrown her. So had his accusations.

After stripping off her business suit, she carefully tugged the dress over her head. She was relieved to see that it did fit. She wasn’t relieved by the amount of cleavage it showed.

The dress, which zipped at the side so she was able to fasten it herself, had a long skirt, ending just above her ankles. After a long day on her feet, she wasn’t about to cramp her feet into another pair of high heels for what would no doubt be more standing tonight, so she instead chose a pair of velvet flats.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to do much with her hair. Savannah’s springtime humidity had turned her dark waves into an uncontrollable mop. The best she could do was pin it up so she wouldn’t get too hot.

The finishing touch to her outfit was an antique garnet necklace that was a favorite of hers. A matching pair of drop earrings and bracelet completed the set, which she’d inherited from her great-grandmother. Normally, Susannah didn’t bring the set on a business trip, but the promise of the costume party tonight had been too good an opportunity to resist.

Glancing at her watch, she swore softly. She only had five minutes to get downstairs and catch the charter bus going to the party. Susannah grabbed her purse and was out in the hallway before realizing that she should have switched to a smaller bag.

Such was her life in a nutshell, Susannah noted as she impatiently jabbed at the elevator button. She was almost organized. Almost together. But inevitably there would be one thing that threw a wrench in the plan. Tonight that one thing was her purse.

She was the last one to board the bus, where everyone was dressed to the nines. Once they reached the historical house, guests had to show their invitations at the door in order to be allowed inside. It took Susannah five minutes to find the gilt-edged invitation in her bag—which still held the apple she’d picked up for lunch, along with the personal cassette player she’d listened to on the flight that morning, among other things.

Slinging her purse back over her shoulder, and almost decking the man behind her, Susannah followed the crowd into the front parlor. The place was packed. Rather than head for the buffet table laden with food, she chose to join a tour that was gathering at the foot of the stairs.

On her way there she bumped into someone, or more accurately her purse did. “Sorry,” she said with a smile that evaporated as she recognized Kane Wilder. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Looking for you,” Kane replied. “I told you I wasn’t done talking to you.”

“Well, I’m done talking to you.” With those words, she slipped past him and moved up the stairs with the rest of the tour group. To her dismay, Kane followed her.

“Only two people to a step, please,” the tour guide requested when Kane joined her on the stairs. “We’re trying to minimize the wear and tear on the structure.”

Wanting to minimize the wear and tear on her own composure, Susannah strove to keep her attention focused on holding up the long skirt of her dress as she climbed the steps. It was better than thinking about Kane—who was directly behind her.

He’d looked incredibly dashing in his black formal wear, white tie and tails complete with a starched collar true to the Victorian period. She could feel his eyes on her and she wished she were ten pounds lighter. Maybe fifteen. The dress did nothing to hide her full figure.

Kane was enjoying the view of Susannah Hall’s velvet-covered derriere. The stiff set of her bare shoulders radiated an ice-age chill. With her hair pinned up, he could see her pale nape as she leaned forward. For the first time since he’d arrived, he was glad he’d decided to attend this bash.

He’d been tempted to stay in his hotel room and wait for his brother’s call, but past experience told him that Chuck wouldn’t be back for some time yet. When his brother got in a snit, he tended to brood for hours. Kane would check in with him again when this party was over. Meanwhile, he planned on hounding Susannah until she relented and agreed to leave his brother alone.

At the moment, the tour guide was the only one talking. “The Whitaker house is a fine example of Federal architecture. In its heyday this house was at the center of Savannah society. At its low point, it was an apartment tenement in the 1930s and was almost torn down in the 1950s to build a parking lot when, thankfully, the Historical Preservation League saved it.”

Susannah shuddered to think of this lovely home being demolished and paved over. Sensing Kane coming closer, she edged around the person ahead of her. Throughout the tour of the second floor she managed to weave her way in and out of the crowd, always staying one step ahead of him.

“As you can see,” their guide continued, “the second floor houses the family’s bedrooms, which have been decorated with period furnishings. On the wall along the stairway you’ll see several family portraits, including that of Elsbeth Whitaker—who is said to have committed suicide on these very steps.”

Susannah rubbed her hands over her bare arms as a chill settled over her. She couldn’t see the painting due to the crowd of people still clustered in the hallway where she stood. Then the crowd parted and she saw a flash of the portrait—a white face and sad eyes. The image lingered even after she’d turned away.

“What’s up on the third floor?” someone asked.

“It’s a storage area that’s presently under construction and being renovated. It’s not open to the public,” the guide replied. “Now, on our way back down, remember that only two people are allowed on a step at a time, so please come down the stairs slowly and in groups of two.”

“We need to talk,” Kane growled in her ear. “I’m not letting you off the hook until you promise to stay away from my brother.”

“Go away!” she hissed, angrily pulling back from him. She needed to lose him and fast. She was feeling unsettled enough as it was, tonight. She wasn’t in the mood for any more confrontations. But there was no place to hide. Unless... Her gaze was drawn upstairs. Maybe she could ditch Kane by sneaking upstairs and waiting a few minutes until the coast was clear.

While the tour guide’s back was turned and she still had the protection of the crowd, Susannah did just that. She didn’t take time to think about her actions. She just did it. It was almost as if she were compelled to do so.

Kane was about to go down when he saw her out of the corner of his eye. Susannah was going up the stairs. Muttering under his breath, he went after her, slipping past the tour guide. He wasn’t going to let her get away from him that easily.

Instead of a storage room under construction as the tour guide had claimed, he saw a room that looked to be completely furnished although very dimly lit with a sort of flickering candlelight. He also saw Susannah, just over the threshold of that room.

Not wanting to get caught in a restricted area before he had a chance to talk to her, he whispered her name when he wanted to shout it.

Paying him no heed, Susannah moved forward, away from him and toward a bright blue light that was coming from a rocking chair in the far corner near the other entrance into the room.

Enchanted, Susannah forgot all about Kane. She was drawn forward, as if pulled by invisible forces. The nearer she got, the more the light shifted away from her toward the second doorway. Following it, for one instant she saw a face amid the ethereal blue light—it was the face of the woman in the portrait!

Kane was right behind Susannah as she reached out to touch the pool of light, but it disappeared as they stepped through the second doorway after it. Whatever it was they’d witnessed had vanished!

“Did you see that?” Susannah asked in a whisper. When he made no reply, she said, “You’re not going to tell me that you didn’t see it, are you?”

“I’m not telling you anything except to stay away from my brother,” Kane replied curtly.

“You sound like a broken record,” she informed him before hurrying back downstairs.

Kane let her go. She’d caused him enough aggravation for one day. He’d talk to her again tomorrow, get her promise to stay away from his brother then. God knew, he’d had an exhausting day with little to eat. As for that strange light they’d seen upstairs...it must have been a hologram, perhaps a future exhibit of some kind for the historical house.

The party was in full force now. The rooms were packed with people, all looking rather solemn. Glancing around, Kane didn’t see anyone he knew. With a crowd this large, he wasn’t surprised. After all, this was his first publishing convention. Normally he demonstrated his CD-ROM material at computer shows.

Heading straight for the food spread, he eyed the offerings with suspicion. Nothing looked good. And nothing looked substantial enough to stop the growling in his stomach. He remembered seeing a soda machine by the gift shop in the back of the house but when he headed that way, he couldn’t find it. Or the gift shop. But then, the house was a maze of rooms. Crowded rooms.