his hands over one small photo, Ben studied it. “That was ten years ago. Arianna was only fourteen years old when you formed Perseus.” He looked up. “She’s my youngest of three children.” Turning the photo around, he placed it so that Morgan could get a good look at her.
“Pretty young lady,” Morgan commented. The photograph showed a woman of perhaps twenty-four or -five sitting among a number of potted plants in a greenhouse. She was delicate looking, with short, blond hair and her father’s sky blue eyes in an oval face. She was dressed in a pair of jeans, a pink tank top and tennis shoes. The expression on her face was one of pure joy.
Ben leaned back in his chair, his hands folded across his belly. “Arianna was only eight when her mother died of leukemia. She was the youngest and it was very hard on her. She was too young to understand…and her mother’s death changed her forever…. I tried to help, but I was hurting so much myself that I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job of being a parent at that time….”
Morgan lost some of his joviality as Ben turned another framed photograph around for him to look at. It showed Ben and his wife, Ellen. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he murmured sincerely. In some respects, Ellen reminded him of his own wife, Laura, who also had blond hair. “Arianna really takes after your wife, doesn’t she?”
“In every respect,” Ben muttered. “Which is why I asked you to drop by and see me.” Ben waved his hand. “I know you have other appointments today, equally important, and I’m grateful you could squeeze this impromptu visit into your schedule.”
Morgan finished the tasty coffee cake. He blotted his lips with the napkin and picked up the cup of coffee. “I’m glad I could do it. I gather this involves something personal instead of professional?”
Ben sat for a moment, his square face stern, his jowls set, his gaze pinned on his daughter’s photograph. Rousing himself, he nodded. “Yes…it concerns Arianna. And what she thinks she’s about to do.”
Morgan heard the pain in the man’s somber voice and sympathized, though he had a feeling he knew what was bothering him. Ben was a hard-hitting Type A personality—a born leader, who liked to control every nuance of his life. As secretary of the Navy, his commanding leadership was a good thing. But Morgan wondered how Ben’s controlling personality might have impacted his family. He’d seen too many military men who were far too rigid with their wife and children.
“Fill me in on how I can help you,” Morgan said.
Ben sighed and picked up the picture of his daughter, holding it as he spoke. “Arianna is so much like her mother that since she’s grown up, I sometimes forget and think Ellen’s in the town house whenever Arianna comes over. Arianna’s twenty-five now, and has just graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in business and a minor in Spanish.”
“Impressive,” Morgan murmured. He thought of his own children, who were growing up quickly. Jason was ten now, and little Katy wasn’t far behind. And the fraternal twins, Peter and Kelly, were a year old. “I’ve got a college fund already established for my four kids. I’m hoping they’ll see the benefits of a college education like your daughter, Arianna, has.”
Worthington’s mouth tightened slightly. “I forced her into getting a degree in business. Maybe it was wrong of me, but I wanted Ari to have a solid foundation, so she could earn money and control her own life instead of having it controlled by others. She’s a very intelligent girl, if she’d just settle down.”
Touching the frame, Ben continued unhappily, “She’s a dreamer, not a hard-core business type, Morgan. My wife was a dreamer, too. Lord, she had so many dreams. Ellen loved to travel. She wanted to go around the world. She loved orchids, and I had a small greenhouse built for her. Ellen and Arianna spent hours out in that little steamy box where she grew all those orchids. In fact, the year before Ellen died, she made a concerted effort to be with Arianna. They spent a couple hours every day, up until the last two weeks before her death, out in that greenhouse.”
Touched, Morgan murmured, “It was a parting gift of love that Ellen gave to her then.”
Ben’s normally hard face softened somewhat. “Yes…Ari was all she had left. Our son, Kirk, was at the Naval Academy at the time.” He gave Morgan a pained look. “I think you already know our middle daughter, Janis, died at age thirteen. She took a stupid dare from a boy at a riding stable. He bet that the horse she was riding couldn’t jump a four-foot fence. It didn’t, and she fell off and broke her neck, dying instantly. It was a blow to all of us, but especially Ellen.” Rubbing his neck, Ben muttered, “I sometimes think that the shock of her death—the trauma of our loss—triggered Ellen’s leukemia. She contracted the disease six months after Janis died. It’s too coincidental, in my book.”
“And Ari got shunted aside during that time?”
“Yes, but she was the kind of little girl who would go off to her room and play for hours in a make-believe world.” Ben roused himself and gave Morgan a half smile. “She still does. And that’s the problem.”
“How?”
“One of the things my wife wanted to do more than anything else was take a trip down to the Amazon in Brazil to find orchids and draw them. My wife had a master’s degree in art. She was an incredible artist. She talked to Ari endlessly about all her dreams, and urged her to fill her life with exploration, with adventure, with going places.”
“All the places Ellen hadn’t gotten to go, right?”
“Yes.” Grimly, Ben sat up and said, “Ari has it in her head to go down to Brazil, to that damned jungle, and do exactly as her mother said—find orchids, draw them and have a book published on them. The only problem is that Ari is a delicate child. She hasn’t got any backbone. She’s painfully shy and has low self-esteem. Yet,” Ben growled in frustration, “she wants to traipse off to Brazil and do this crazy, stupid thing.”
“She’s twenty-five,” Morgan said. “Old enough to make up her mind on what she wants to do.”
“That’s the point!” Ben shot out of the chair and began to pace, his hands resting on his hips. “Ari has been a good girl. She’s been responsible. She’s done everything I’ve ever asked of her. Then, all of a sudden, she comes for a visit and tells me—tells me—that she wants to fulfill this crazy dream for her mother.”
“Why not let her?” Morgan asked. He could easily understand what was fueling the daughter’s rebellion. In making her mother’s dying wish come true, she would help to heal herself from the loss of her beloved parent.
“Because,” Ben said, turning and glaring at Morgan, “she’s not an artist! She has no degree in art. Oh, she dabbles with her colored pencils, and her mother did teach her some art techniques…but to think that she’s got the kind of artistic professionalism that a book demands? No. No way. I just don’t want to see her set herself up for disappointment. And risk her neck by running around a foreign country alone.”
Ben sighed. “Ellen used to read Arianna books on Brazil. They would sit for hours with five or six orchid books spread all across her bed, and they’d make plans about which species should be drawn for the book. Ari has it in her head that she can go gallivanting off to the jungle and draw those orchids.”
Shrugging, Morgan finished the coffee and said, “I haven’t met a twenty-something yet who didn’t rebel, didn’t want to go out and knock heads with life, Ben. If this is her rebellion, I’d say it’s a pretty healthy one, from my perspective.”
“Don’t
