You want to keep it impersonal, or—”
“I don’t intend to give the girl a check. If she’s Ben’s offspring, if she’s a decent woman, I’ll want to meet her. Write her into my will.”
Gray looked up. Jonas was standing over him, one bony hand curled around the back of a chair. His eyes were flat, his mouth a grim line, but a dark blue vein throbbed in his papery temple. Something was going on here, something more than the old man had told him, but what?
“You want to write her into your will?”
“You deaf, counselor? How come I have to repeat everything I say?”
Oh, yeah. Definitely something was going on. There was the look on Jonas’s face. The sudden ringing tone to his voice. More to the point, the on-again, off-again accent had just taken a hike, and that was always meaningful.
Gray capped the pen, placed it and the legal pad inside the briefcase and stood up. He’d been as tall as Jonas for years; now, he towered over him. It was a small but decided advantage, and wasn’t that a crazy thing to think?
“And how will you be sure she’s a decent woman, Uncle?”
Jonas’s mouth curved at the corners. “I’ll rely on your reports, nephew. What else would I do?”
“Now, wait just a minute. I’m willing to use one of my investigators to locate this woman, but if you intend to base your decision on the findings of a private detective…forget it. I won’t take responsibility for somebody else’s opinion of an unknown woman’s moral fiber—assuming the investigator finds her at all.”
“He’ll find her. You just told me he would.”
Hell. Gray ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. I’ll put the best man I can think of on the case.”
“I’ve already done that, Graham. I’ve put you on it.” Jonas seemed to stand a little taller. “Your investigator will do the footwork.” He grinned, and suddenly he didn’t look quite so frail and old. “Wouldn’t expect somethin’ so down and dirty of you, boy. But you’re the one who’s gonna verify what the man says. You’ll take a good, hard look at the lady once she’s found. Observe her. Talk to her, check her out every which way. An’ when you know what she’s really like, why then, nephew, you’ll report back to me and tell me everythin’ I need to know.” Jonas strolled to his chair, sat down and picked up his tumbler of bourbon. “Way I figure it, the whole thing shouldn’t take you no more’n a couple of weeks.”
“Jonas.” Gray spoke gently. “Look, I’d like to help you. But surely you understand that I have a law practice. Clients. I have obligations, and I can’t just—”
“You got an obligation to me, boy. Maybe it’s time you knew that.”
Gray narrowed his eyes. There was an ominous sound to the words. “What in hell is that supposed to mean?”
Jonas got up, walked to the sideboard and refilled his glass. “You never did get along with your old man, did you? Never did cotton to the idea of sittin’ around, watchin’ him grovel to me.” He sipped the bourbon, smiled over the rim of the tumbler. “You ever stop to think how nice it was, gettin’ away from here when you was, what, eighteen? When you went away to that there fancy college in New Hampshire?”
“I was seventeen,” Gray said coldly. “And what does that have to do with this conversation?”
“An’ how ‘bout that law dee-ploma?” Jonas sighed. “The way I hear it, ain’t ever’body can afford a Yale law dee-gree.”
The hair on the nape of Gray’s neck was rising again. “I had full scholarships to both Dartmouth and Yale.”
Jonas chuckled. “Oh my, yes. You was a smart kid, Graham. You won them scholarships, fair and square.” His smile faded. “‘Course, you never did give too much thought as to who funded those scholarships, did you?”
Gray stared at his uncle. He felt as if the floor were dropping from under his feet. “You?” he said hoarsely. “You funded them?”
“And the pocket money that went along with them.” The old man plucked what remained of his cigar from a heavy glass ashtray and stuck it between his teeth. “Your father did the right thing, son. He come to me, said you was smart and he couldn’t afford to do right by you.”
That his father had once said something good about him didn’t seem to matter half as much as learning that he’d gotten where he was today—wherever in hell that might be—courtesy of the very man he’d grown up despising. Gray could feel a cold, hard knot forming in his gut.
“And now,” he said softly, “you’re calling in your markers.”
His uncle shrugged. “Only if you make it seem that way.”
Gray laughed. “Only if I make it seem…? You are some piece of work, Jonas, you know that? You’re blackmailing me into taking God only knows how much time out of my life so you can soothe your conscience before you die, and you say it’s payback time only if I make it seem that way?” His laughter stopped abruptly. “I don’t suppose you’d settle for me writing out a check for whatever I owe you… No,” he said grimly, when Jonas chuckled, “no, I guess not.” Anger flooded through him and he balled his hands into fists, jammed his fists into his pockets before he did something he knew he’d regret. “I’ve got news for you, old man. You don’t need to be concerned with your conscience because the fact is, you never had one.”
Jonas took the cigar from his mouth and set it back into the ashtray. “Yes,” he said softly, “I do, even if it seems to be catching up years too late.” He walked toward Gray, his gaze locked to the younger man’s, his hand outstretched. “You do this, we’ll call things even.”
Gray held his uncle’s eyes for a long minute. Then he looked pointedly at the outstretched hand, ignored it and reached, instead, for his briefcase.
“You’re damned right we will,” he said, and he pulled open the door and marched down the hall, hating Jonas, hating himself, but most of all hating his own father, a man he’d sworn he’d never emulate, because here he was, dancing to a tune Jonas Baron played and stuck with dancing straight to the very last note.
GRAY boarded the flight to New York still tight-lipped with rage.
If anybody had asked him how he’d gotten where he was today, a partner in one of New York’s top law firms at such a relatively young age, he’d have said he’d done it all on his own. Good grades in college had led to his acceptance at Yale Law. A straight A average there and a stint writing for the Law Review had won him a clerkship with a Federal judge and then interviews at a number of important firms. He’d picked the one where he’d figured he’d have a straight shot at the top after putting in the requisite seventy-five hours a week of grunt work for a couple of years. He’d been right. Those years got him noticed; he landed a partnership even sooner than he expected without having to curry favors from anybody. Watching his father go through life as a suck-up had convinced him he’d sooner end up flipping burgers than repeat Leighton’s pattern.
Now it looked as if he’d been
