Kim turned to look at him. “Y ou’re the man in the shop. The one who was after Carla.” “Russell Pender gast,” he said, smiling. “I’d shake your hand but . . .” He had his arms full of deli meat and bread. “Anyone else want a sandwich?” “No!” T ravis and Kim said in unison. “He’s my secretary’ s son,” T ravis said. “I only met him this morning. I didn’t even know he existed until a couple of days ago when Penny said her son would help me. From the way she said it, she could have been talking about a six-year -old. But then she is his mother. You and I talked about how parents do that. Remember , Kim?” She was still glaring at him. “What did your secretary’ s son help you with that in volved my shop and my employee?” Travis drew in his breath. It looked like his attempt to distract her hadn’ t worked. Russell didn’ t help matters by chuckling. “You want to leave us alone?” T ravis said to him, frowning. “Actually , no,” Russell said. “No Broadway show has ever been this good, but I’ll leave if Miss Aldredge wants me to.” “I never want to be alone with this man ever again. And please call me Kim.” “Gladly ,” he said as he gave her a look of appreciation. “Russell!” T ravis snapped. “So help me if you—” “If he what?!” Kim said loudly . “Travis, I am waiting for an answer .” Never in his life had T ravis ever found himself in a situation that he couldn’ t talk his way out of. But too much rested on this now for him to think coherently . “I . . .” He hesitated, not sure what to say , then he reached into his trousers pocket and withdrew the big sapphire ring that Borman had stolen. “I got this back for you,” he said, his voice hopeful. Kim didn’ t take it, so he set it on the kitchen countertop. “I see. The missing ring.” She took a moment to think. “If you have the ring, that means that whatever you two have been up to in volves my boyfriend, Dave. You must have met him.” Travis’s face grew serious. “Y es we did and, Kim, you don’ t know him. He’s not what you think he is. The truth is that he’ s after—” “He wants to take my jewelry business national and name it The Family Jewels. I treated it as the joke it was. Not the national part, but the name.”
Both men were so shocked at her words that Russell stopped eating and Travis stared at her . Kim turned away . There was so much anger in her that she could hardly breathe. Her friend Gemma was a boxer . Right now , if Kim had the know- how, she’d hit T ravis so hard his head would roll across the floor . She looked back at him. “Why did you assume that I didn’ t know what Dave was after? Did he seem subtle to you? Secretive?” “No,” T ravis said. “But if you knew the truth, why would you consider marrying him?” Kim was almost sure that if Dave had asked her she would have said no. Before T ravis had shown up she might have said yes, but she blamed that on her friend Jecca’ s recent wedding. Of course, when she came to her senses, she wouldn’ t have gone through with it. But she was damned well not going to tell T ravis that! “Is there a man on earth who doesn’ t have his own agenda for marriage? At least Dave was honest with me. He let me know that he was very interested in my business, and he had some good ideas.” “But . . .” T ravis said. “But what? I should wait for a man like you ? Compared to the amount of lying and manipulation you have done, Dave is up for sainthood.” She wanted to get this back on track. This was about him, T ravis, and what he had done, not David Borman. That was none of T ravis’s business. “I want to see if I get your story straight. Y ou’re a Maxwell, son of one of the richest men in the world.” When T ravis just stood there, she looked at Russell and he nodded in verification. “You came to Edilean when you were twelve, spent two weeks with me, then left without so much as a note.” “Kim,” T ravis said, “come on, I was twelve. I did what my mother told me to.” “You could write,” Russell said, his mouth full. Travis glared at him. “Do you know that for eighteen years I searched for you? I used to sneak into my brother ’s room to use his unblocked Internet service to try to find you.” “But you couldn’ t find him because you didn’ t know his correct last name,” Russell said. “Mind if I get a beer?”
“Please do,” Kim said. “Eighteen years and nothing. I was for gotten by you.” “That’s not really true. I always knew where—” T ravis said, then shut his mouth. Kim looked at Russell in question. “Mom said that you were never out of his radar . She said he used to—” “I saw your shows,” T ravis said quickly before Russell could say any more. Kim’s eyes widened. “Y ou! It was you . Jecca saw you there. She used to call you the TDH Stranger . She even drew your portrait, but I had no idea who you were.” “TDH?” T ravis asked. “Tall, dark, and handsome,” Russell said. “This beer is good. I’ve never had it before.” He looked at T ravis. “W ant one?” “Only if it doesn’ t have hemlock in it,” T ravis muttered as Russell, smiling, got a beer out, opened it, and handed it to him. Travis drank half of it in one gulp, then dropped down onto a stool. He looked back at Kim as though to say he was ready to receive more of her verbal lashes. “I thought I was watching over you,” he said. “Ah, right, how noble. ‘W atching over me.’ ‘Looking out for me.’ Is that right?” “I thought so,” T ravis said and drank more beer . Russell started making a sandwich for T ravis. Neither of them had eaten since breakfast. “So now ,” Kim said, “you returned to Edilean not for me—oh no, not for me —but because your mother called you.” “Actually ,” Russell said as he cut the bread, “she called my mother and told her .” “Even better ,” Kim said. “Lucy Merritt or Cooper or Maxwell called . . . What is her name?” she asked Russell. “Cooper and Merritt are made up. Her name is Lucy Jane T ravis Maxwell of the Boston T ravises. She got the name and education but none of the family’ s old money . My mother is Barbara Pender gast of no money and no name. Just hard work.” “Thank you,” Kim said. She looked back at T ravis as he bit into the sandwich Russell had made for him. He looked like a man walking up the
gallows st eps. “Whatever the name, the point is that you didn’ t come back for me, but for your mother .” Travis got up to get two more beers. “Because of Jecca’ s wedding you happened to see me and . . . one thing led to another .” Russell looked at T ravis in question. “She means inviting me to stay in her guesthouse,” T ravis said. Russell nodded and looked back at Kim as though to say the floor was hers. “You moved into my guesthouse and talked to me so much about friendship that I was beginning to think you were gay . And you—” Russell gave a snort of laughter . “I never meant—” T ravis began. “How’s Leslie?” Kim asked, letting every millimeter of her anger show . Travis looked down at his sandwich. She picked up the ring and looked at Russell. “When I said I had a boyfriend, he almost had a grand mal seizure of old-fashioned jealousy .” “I did not,” T ravis said as he started to defend himself. But every word Kim was saying was true. “I was shocked, that’ s all,” he mumbled. “Shocked that I had a boyfriend?” Kim said. “Y ou are . . .” Her eyes widened in disbelief. “Y ou’ve watched me—stalked me—enough that you knew when I had a boyfriend or not.” It was a statement, not a question. Travis wouldn’ t have answered that if someone had set his feet on fire. That his mother had listened to Edilean gossip and told him about Kim on nearly every call was beside the point. It suddenly went through his mind to wonder if it was a coincidence that she called just when Kim was getting serious about some guy . And she called when there was going to be a wedding next door to her where Kim was a bridesmaid. His mother had called Penny—who she’d always disliked—and it was his secretary who got him to go to Edilean ASAP . Had it been up to T ravis, he might have postponed going to Edilean, but Penny set everything up. Right now it seemed as though the two women had worked together to get T ravis to Edilean at a time when he was sure to see Kim again. But that couldn’ t be true. Surely , all of it was coincidence. Kim’s hands were in fists and she had to turn away for a moment to catch her breath. “Y ou thought . . .” she said softly . “You thought that since you’re
a big city lawyer and you were born into great wealth, that you know more about life than I do.” “Kim, I never thought that,” T ravis said as he put down his sandwich. “It wasn’t like that at all.” “You assumed that I was a naive, simple, small town girl who was so desperate to get married that I couldn’ t see the truth about some guy I was dating regularly .” “Kim, you’re not being fair ,” Travis said as he came of f the stool. “Borman was a real bastard. He conned Carla into giving him that ring, saying he was going to give it to you when he asked you to marry him. But then he pawned it. I—we—think that he was going to say he knew nothing about the ring and let Carla take the blame.” Kim didn’ t allow the shock of that information to show on her face. “How did you get it?” Travis sat back down and looked at his plate. “He bought Borman Catering,” Russell said. Travis looked at him with murder in his eyes. “You did what?” Kim asked in disbelief. “He paid a hundred and seventy-five grand for the company ,” Russell said. He’d finished his sandwich and was working on the second beer . “He was going to pay more, but I got Borman down to that. It’ s still too much.” “Much too much,” Kim said. “Those vans of his are worn-out and Dave’ s lost commissions because he doesn’ t deliver what he promises.” “I thought it was too much too,” Russell said, “but we were up against a deadline.” Travis looked at Russell in disgust for ratting on him. “Kim, I think we’re losing sight of the main issue here. Borman was going to ask you to marry him and I was afraid you’d say yes.” “And when he proposed, he’d give me my ring back!” Kim said loudly . She threw up her hands. “Men! I’ve had all of you I can take this week. Today I had to threaten Carla with firing her because of what she’d done.” “You should fire her ,” Travis said seriously . “What she did was a prosecutable of fense.” “She was conned by a man ! It’s a hazard of being female. And for your information, in Edilean we don’ t discard someone for making a single mistake.”
“As I did,” T ravis said softly as he looked at her with eyes begging for forgiveness. “ You have made a thousand mistakes. And stop looking at me like that! You already showed me that face, remember? Y ou used it to get the pretty young wife of the old man to teach you how to cook—along with other things.” Russell laughed. “She’ s got you figured out.” “Kim, I never meant—” “I know!” she said loudly . “I’m sure that from your view you came swooping in on your white horse and rescued me. But I didn’ t need rescuing. I didn’ t need someone to make me look like a fool, to make me feel that I’m an idiot who can’ t run my own life. What I need is—” She couldn’ t take any more. “Out! Both of you get out of my house and out of my life. I never want to see either of you again.” Both of the men got up and started for the door . When T ravis passed her she said, “Did you ever think that it’ s not the Maxwell name that brings out the bad in people? That it’ s you ?” Travis had no answer for her . Kim slammed the door behind them, locked it, then leaned back against it. “For your information, John T ravis Maxwell, I want love too.” Two minutes later she was calling the person she wanted to talk to about all this. He answered on the first ring and said he’d meet her right away . Twenty minutes later she was pulling into Joe Layton’ s parking lot. Oceanof PDF . com
Joe Layton’ s solution to every problem was the same: food and work. After he’d spent thirty minutes listening to Kim’ s nearly incoherent words that she uttered in between copious tears, and feeding her , he put her to work. As he had her help him put the supplies T ravis had unpacked on the shelves that he’d installed, Joe couldn’ t help musing on the fact that their turbulent love life was giving him a lot of free labor . “I don’t get it,” she said as she picked up boxes of electric drills and put them on the shelves. “Why would he make so much ef fort to get a man away from me if all he plans to do is leave me and go back to . . . to wherever he lives?” “New Y ork,” Joe said. “Lives on the top floor of some big building.” “He told you that?” “No, but I found out.” “That means you’ve known T ravis’s last name and you looked him up on the Internet,” Kim said with a sigh. “Reede said I’d find out everything there, but he couldn’ t wait to send me info. But who wants to find out about someone on the W eb? But then, why does everything T ravis tells me have to be a lie? Or an evasion? What’ s happened in his life that makes him think even the most ordinary things have to be k ept secret?” “I don’t know,” Joe said. They were questions that were bothering him too. He’d given Lucy every opportunity to tell him about her son, but she hadn’t. Three times she’d almost said “my son” but each time she’d caught herself. Joe was trying hard not to get angry about it, but it wasn’ t easy. “Are you in love with young T ravis?” he blurted out. Kim paused for a moment in putting a box on the shelf. “How can I be? I thought I knew the boy T ravis, but the adult . . . I don’ t know who he is. He seems to think he has a right to oversee my life. He takes away from me but