men, then?” Mrs. Dade smiled and didn’t pursue it, going on to detail Meredith’s duties and her salary, along with information about uniforms and territory.
Meredith was busy giving herself a lecture on keeping to the part she was playing. It wouldn’t do to assume Kip Tennison’s persona every time someone pried too deeply. She forced a smile and listened with every indication of interest, while at the back of her mind she wondered how long it was going to be before Cy Harden made his next move.
LATE THAT AFTERNOON, Cy walked into the gardens at the huge Harden estate. His eyes lingered halfheartedly on the Greek revival columns on the house’s wide front porch. He remembered playing on that porch as a child, with his mother nearby, watching him. She had always been far too possessive and protective of her only child, a condition that, in later years, had caused friction between them. In fact, their relationship had fallen apart with the departure of Meredith Ashe. Cy had changed, in visible and not-so-visible ways.
He hung his hat on the antique hat rack in the hall and wandered absently into the elegant living room, gathering the usual impressions of pastel brocades and thick neutral shag carpeting and the priceless antiques his mother loved.
She was sitting on her wing chair, crocheting. Her dark eyes lifted and she smiled at him a little too brightly. “You’re home early, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I finished early.” He poured himself a stiff whiskey and sank onto his own armchair. “I’ll be out for dinner. The Petersons are hosting a business discussion on some new mineral leases.”
“Business, business,” she muttered. “There’s more to life than making money. Cy, you really should marry. I’ve introduced you to two very nice young women, debutantes…”
“I won’t marry,” he said with a cold smile. He lifted his whiskey glass in a mock toast. “I took the cure. Remember?”
His mother went pasty white and dropped her eyes to her thin, nervous hands. “That…was a long time ago.”
“It was yesterday.” He threw down the rest of the whiskey and got up to refill the glass. Remembering was painful. “She’s back in town, did you know?”
There was a funereal stillness in the room. “She?”
The word came out sounding as if his mother had choked on it. He turned. “Meredith Ashe. I gave her a job at the restaurant.”
Myrna Harden had lived with her terrible secret, and her guilt, for so long that she’d forgotten anyone else shared it. But Meredith did. Ironically, the very information she’d used to get Meredith out of town could now be turned against her with even more devastating results. The ensuing scandal could ruin her by destroying the failing relationship she had with her son. She panicked.
“You mustn’t!” she said frantically. “Cy, you mustn’t get yourself involved with that woman again! You can’t have forgotten what she did to you!”
His face gave away nothing. “No, Mother, I haven’t forgotten. And I’m not getting involved with her. Once was enough. Her great-aunt died.”
She swallowed nervously. “I didn’t know.”
“I’m sure there are bills to pay, loose ends to tidy up. She came from somewhere. She’ll probably go back there as soon as she’s got it all together.”
Myrna wasn’t so sure. “She’ll inherit the house.”
He nodded, staring into his second whiskey. He swirled the liquid carelessly. “She’ll have a roof over her head. I have no idea where she’s been all these years, but I know she had nothing when she left town.” His face hardened and he tossed down the whiskey as if it were water.
“That’s not true,” Myrna said quickly. “She had money!” Myrna had given her a wad of bills which Meredith had promptly returned. Myrna had always refused to believe, however, that the girl hadn’t kept enough of it to get out of town. It eased her conscience to think it.
Cy stared at his mother over the glass, curious about her expression and about the fear in her normally calm voice. “Tony gave back the money that was supposedly stolen. Had you forgotten?”
Her face went even paler. “I’m sure she had some money,” she faltered, lowering her eyes with raging guilt. “She must have.”
Cy’s eyes were thoughtful and bitter. “I was never comfortable with her part in it,” he said. “Tony gave us the story as if he’d learned it by heart, and Meredith swore to me that he’d never touched her, that they’d never been lovers.”
“A girl like that would have many lovers,” Myrna said, flushing.
Cy’s eyes went dark as he remembered the way it had been with Meredith, the fever that burned between them. He could still see her trembling because she wanted him so badly. Could she have been that way with any other man? She’d been as obsessed as he had, every bit as involved. He’d been too insanely jealous and angry to listen at the time his mother had accused her. It took only a couple of days after she left town for him to begin doubting her part in the so-called theft. It really had been very convenient that Tony subsequently produced all the “stolen money,” and that Myrna insisted the boy not be arrested. The whole matter blew over after Meredith left town. But she hadn’t looked guilty. She’d looked…defeated.
He hadn’t questioned that. Perhaps he should have asked questions, but he’d deeply resented his helpless attraction to Meredith at the time. It had been almost a relief to have her out of his life, to close once and for all the door to his sexual excesses, to the headlong, wanton passion she had kindled in him. There had been a brief affair or two since then, but no woman had been able to make him lose control the way Meredith had. He wasn’t sure he was even capable of it now. He felt dead inside. That was how Meredith had looked the last time he’d seen her, standing with her head bent in the hall of his home. She’d looked as if something inside her had died, and her accusing eyes had burned indelibly into his mind. He could see them even now.
He turned. “It’s all past history. There’s nothing left to build on, even if I were tempted. She was a fling. Nothing more.”
Myrna relaxed a little. “I’m glad to hear it. Really, Cy, a waitress with a full-blooded Crow Indian for a great-uncle. Not our kind of people.”
Under his heavy brows, his eyes glittered. “Isn’t that a little snobbish for descendants of a British deserter?”
Myrna actually gasped. “We don’t speak of that!”
He shrugged. “Why not? Everybody has a black sheep in the family tree.”
“Don’t be absurd. Sheep don’t climb trees.” She put down her crocheting. “I’ll tell Ellen that you won’t be in for dinner.”
She walked past him, her mind whirling with fear and new complications. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She couldn’t have Meredith Ashe in Billings, not now, when she was doing her best to get Cy married. Dragging up an old love affair was the last thing he needed. She’d have to get Meredith out of town, and fast, before she had time to play on Cy’s sympathy or make any hints about what had happened.
The baby…had she kept the baby she was carrying? Myrna ground her teeth at
