Always (3 page)

"Goodnight, Mr. Whittier." Her smile felt pasted on. "Thank you for the lovely meal."

His hand enveloped hers, warm and steady. Elinor's thoughts zipped back to their first handshake and how surprised she felt at his strength. Weren't wealthy men supposed to be soft from sitting behind desks?

Again, he held her hand, his face unreadable in the dark. "Thank you for a lovely evening, Elinor," he drawled. "I've enjoyed your company immensely."

"Oh, how nice," she uttered disjointedly, feeling stupidly disappointed as he released her hand. "Well..." She fumbled with the door behind her. "Goodnight again."

"Elinor!" he called to her softly, drawing her glance back over her shoulder.

"Yes?" she hesitated, half-turned on the threshold, her heart throbbing in breathless anticipation. He loomed, powerful and heady in the darkness, so close she could barely think.

He leaned to her, his warm breath brushing her cheek. "You really ought to get a light on this porch. For your own safety."

She didn't like the limo. Cole sat back in the seat as the blood pounded through his veins, a rage of hormonal disappointment. The last thing he'd wanted to do was walk away leaving Elinor Prescott untouched. But the play of the game dictated it.

All her defenses were up. He flattered himself enough to think he'd done her armaments some damage tonight, but not enough to start a siege. Not yet.

So he'd tantalized her, just enough to leave her wanting. Although she couldn't possibly be wanting as much as he was at this moment. Cole stretched his legs out in front of him, grateful for the space the limo afforded him. He relaxed, slowing the surging urgency in his groin while his mind replayed his strategy.

She didn't like the limo? The limo had to go. Some things were easy discards in the game of life, when the goal was worth the sacrifice.

~~~********~~~

Two

Standing alone in the silent, overgrown garden, Cole surveyed the huge house, the center point of his plans. Soon he wouldn't need to tread quietly, to inspect it in secret. Soon it would be his.

Oakleigh sat solidly on a gentle rise, its faded grandeur facing the distant river. Twenty-eight massive columns surrounded the house on three sides. Their once-white plaster surfaces were faded now, chipped and cracking under the onslaughts of nature. It seemed a haunted place, magic and monumental, a relic of an era long past.

Cole walked through the dusky afternoon half-light, remembrance washing over him like a jasmine-scented wind. Oakleigh evoked all the magnificence of the antebellum South, an era when plantation masters presided over hundreds of slaves, and ruled their kingdoms as they saw fit. The house itself had been built by slaves, a work force that had devoted years to erecting the monumental Greek Revival-style edifice.

Through the jumble of overgrown gardens, Cole ambled, letting the sense of the place slip back under his skin, as familiar as his own heartbeat. The scents of the underbrush, damp and rich, rose up to assault him with memories. For years after he'd left Bayville, he'd pushed the image of Oakleigh into the recesses of his mind. It had lain dormant, a time bomb of tangled emotion inextricably linked to the memories of his father.

For Cole, the house stood as a symbol, a resolution to years past when he'd grown up in the shadow of the big house. Soon it would be his. He'd have come full circle from a shack on the wrong side of the tracks to the big house on the hill.

In a way, it was for his father. John Whittier had been a handyman, Oakleigh's only defense against time, and only then when Daniel Prescott could no longer endure the decay. Although his father had never spoken of it, Cole knew he'd always felt a deep affinity for the pile of cypress and brick that was Oakleigh. When Prescott had called, John Whittier had gone, lovingly repairing the roof, fixing broken windows, and trying his best to push back the encroaching gardens.

A bird's low trill sounded high above Cole. Once a meticulously tended arboreal paradise, the grounds of Oakleigh had long ago yielded to the wilderness. A tangle of wisteria hung in twisting brown ropes from the sturdy limbs of an oak. Other than the occasional rustle of animal life, the grounds were silent. Cole leaned against the trunk, satisfied that he couldn't be seen from the house, and mentally began the restoration of Oakleigh.

Minutes later, he heard a woman's voice coming closer, half-humming, half-singing. A path ran through the garden, six or eight feet from where he stood. Belatedly, Cole remembered where the path led, and knew with certainty that Elinor was about to discover him.

She came around the corner in the path, walking easily, her head tilted back to follow a jay's flight. A thin finger of sunlight found its way through the trees and stroked her chestnut hair as she passed. Out of her path of vision, Cole took the opportunity to watch her without her awareness.

Elinor was beautiful, her body swaying easily as she walked. A soft rose-colored sweater hugged her body lovingly above the graceful sweep of her moss-green skirt. Cole felt his pulse leap at the sight of her.

She was closer now, lost in her daydreams and still unaware of his presence. Cole listened to her melodic humming and waited for the moment of discovery. Any second now, she'd catch sight of him, and would naturally wonder at finding him skulking here.

He'd had enough warning to come up with the outlines of a plan. As plans went, it was pretty sketchy, but he'd made do with less before. Deciding to take whatever advantage he could, Cole boldly stepped forward. "Out for a stroll, Red Riding Hood?"

Elinor's step faltered as he shocked her out of her preoccupation. "Oh! Good grief, Cole." She hesitated on the path, obviously thrown off balance. "You startled me."

"You don't expect to find strange men lurking in the woods when you're on your way to grandfather's house?" he teased.

"Not usually," she admitted with the barest hint of a smile.

"And you're wondering what on earth I'm doing here," he concluded, once more taking the initiative.

"Well . . . yes."

"I came by hoping to call on your grandfather," Cole lied, regretting the necessity.

"You did?" Her face looked skeptical as he skirted an overgrown rosebush to join her on the path.

"Yes. And as I walked up the drive, I felt like I'd stumbled into a lost world." He gestured toward the huge house, looming pale and ghostly at the end of the path.

Elinor's eyes glanced briefly at the house. "It is otherworldly, isn't it?" She glanced back at him. "You came to see my grandfather?"

"He's always been a significant member of the community," Cole offered in explanation, his senses distracted by her soft scent. "And I thought it would be polite to come by and let him know what my plans are for the manufacturing plant."

A faint sadness settled in Elinor's eyes. "That's very sweet of you, Cole, but I'm afraid my grandfather isn't able to take much part in the community these days. Even if he'd want to, which I doubt."

"He wouldn't?" Cole murmured, battling an insane urge to reach out and stroke her fair skin. She would be soft, he knew, like a pale rose. Would her scent drift up to him, heady and overpowering, if he crushed her in his arms?

She shook her head. "My grandfather is an irascible old coot and has been most of his life, apparently." She paused, her face puzzled. "You lived here as a boy; surely you knew him."

"Why, Miss Elinor," Cole chuckled. "You have a mistaken idea of my social status. Everyone in town knew who your grandfather was, but I certainly wasn't one of his privileged inner circle." Technically, it was the truth.

"I don't suppose he had time for children," Elinor mused as they slowly walked together toward the big house.

Again, Cole wondered at her relationship with the old man. Hadn't he had time for her as a child?

"Age has taken a hard toll on my grandfather," she confided. "His eyesight isn't good now, and he's frequently forgetful. It's very difficult for him, and I'm tempted to blame his unhappy personality on his poor health, but, Charlie, the man who takes care of him, says he's always been that way."

"You didn't see your grandfather much when you were growing up, did you?" Cole asked, his mind busily digesting everything she'd said as they left the path and walked on to the ragged green lawn. He'd forgotten about Charlie, and that was a mistake, because Charlie had never been anyone's fool.

"No, we never visited," she answered candidly. "My father and grandfather had a huge fight when I was small and they never made it up. Actually, I think my father would have liked to before he died, but my mother was always bitterly angry toward grandfather."

"Parents leave a tremendous legacy, don't they?" Cole said softly, the memory of his own father as tangible as the great columns of Oakleigh.

"Yes, they do," Elinor agreed, pausing on the low front step to meet his eyes.

"Will you introduce me to your grandfather?" he entreated, his tone low. God only knew why he was pushing this. Being recognized by Charlie or the old man would jeopardize all his plans, but he had a sudden urge to see just what Elinor had taken on in coming back to get to know her grandfather. There was no one else but her and old Charlie to care for Daniel Prescott.

"Of course. If you like," she acquiesced, turning to cross the wide lower gallery to the front door. "But, I warn you, he's sometimes very testy."

The main entrance doorway, surrounded by heavy, leaded glass, opened onto a wide hallway from which a magnificent spiral staircase rose to the third floor. Cole followed Elinor as she passed through the entry without a second glance at its tarnished beauty.

"Grandfather!" she called out as she went through to a large room to the right. "It's Elinor. I've brought a guest for you."

The shrunken frame of Daniel Prescott occupied a chair in a darkened corner. As he followed Elinor into the room, Cole's nostrils recoiled. The room stank of age, the medicated decay of a human life. A hospital bed occupied a far corner, giving testimony to just how small Daniel Prescott's world had become.

"I don't want to see you." Prescott's quavering voice was a far cry from the irritated boom Cole remembered. "I told you when I let you rent that cottage from me. I don't want you hanging over me. I don't need no woman hanging over me."

He made her
pay
to live in that tumble-down cottage? From what Cole had seen, she had to have spent a fortune just to make it livable.

"I know, Grandfather," Elinor soothed. "I won't stay long, but Charlie had to go out for a while and I promised to stop in and make sure you have everything."

Cole relaxed. With Daniel's attendant absent, the threat of recognition diminished considerably.

"Where is Charlie? I should have fired him twenty years ago," the old man swore viciously." He's never around when he's needed. Always out drinkin' and whorin'."

Hanging back by the doorway, Cole felt his lips twitch at the image of the upstanding Charlie engaged in either activity.

"There's no need for you to get upset," Elinor said bracingly. "He'll be back soon. And there's someone here who wants to meet you. Do you feel up to it?"

"I'm fine," Daniel Prescott spat out. "There's nothing wrong with me."

"Good." Elinor held her hand out to Cole in a gesture so sweetly eloquent of invitation that he longed to kiss her then and there. Instead, he moved forward, knowing she was unaware of the impact she had on him.

As he stepped farther into the darkness surrounding Daniel, Cole felt the hairs prickle on his neck as his pulse picked up its tempo. Risk always did that to him. Surely it was more that than any real anxiety over facing the nemesis from his youth. He was a man now, successful and powerful, and Daniel Prescott had withered into a shell of his former self, unable to harm anyone but himself.

"Who's that?" Daniel quavered venomously. "Some man come sniffin' round your skirts?"

"This is Mr. Whittier, Grandfather," Elinor responded evenly. "He's wanting to build a large manufacturing plant here in Bayville."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Prescott," Cole said as he stepped in front of the old man's chair. "Nice to meet you."

"Whittier?"

"Yes, sir," Cole affirmed, waiting for the outburst he knew would follow.

"What are you wantin'?"

Had the old fool even heard his name? Was his senility so far advanced that he didn't remember the kid who'd grown up in the shadow of Oakleigh?

"I'm building a plastics plant on the Lanier property." Cole felt Elinor's gaze sear him, but he ignored her to focus on the man who'd drawn so much of his adolescent rage. The old snob had never missed a chance to sneer at Cole's father. "You're a significant citizen of Bayville and I just wanted to acquaint you with my plans."

"I don't want to know about any plans. Why should I care what they do in Bayville?" Prescott demanded. "I'll be dead inside a year. The town can rot for all I care."

Catching Cole's eye for a significant second, Elinor bent near her grandfather to say, "Charlie said you had some papers for me."

"Yeah," her grandfather said, the fire suddenly going out of him. "They're over there on the desk. Don't look at them now! Just take them. I don't want you hanging around any longer than you have to."

"Okay. I can see you're all right. I'll take the papers and go," she promised, bending to kiss his withered cheek.

To Cole's surprise, the old man accepted her display of affection without rejecting her. "Go on now," he said, his voice softening only marginally.

Elinor picked a fat envelope up off the desk, saying quietly, "Good night, Grandfather."

Cole walked out with her, feeling unaccountably shaken. He'd come back to Bayville knowing his enemy was in a weakened state, but he'd never expected to pity Daniel Prescott. And the oddest thing was that he didn't pity the old man for his age and infirmity as much as he did for Daniel's obvious inability to acknowledge the love of his granddaughter. Cole couldn't help but feel compassion for her.