Carla Neggers: Betrayals

Rebecca wasn’t one to turn down a meal Quentin Reed was stuck paying for, but the smell of the fish turned her stomach as the elevator plunged forty stories, its doors sliding smoothly open at the cherry, marble and brass lobby. She started out.

And stopped. No. She wasn’t going to let Quentin off that easily.

She marched back into the elevator, tapped thirty-nine, and nibbled on a sprig of crisp spinach on the way up. She wasn’t afraid of Quentin Reed. She’d run and fetched him baking soda and water the time he and Jared Sloan had peed in the yellow jackets’ nest, and she hadn’t told his mother of their idiocy when she’d demanded to know why the two boys were walking so funny.

The thirty-ninth-floor reception area was, if anything, more opulent than the lobby, but Rebecca had no trouble lying her way past the receptionist into the inner sanctum of the president and chief executive officer of Winston & Reed, Boston ’s most prestigious real estate and construction firm. Annette Winston Reed still retained the title of chairman of the board, but the real power of the company now resided with her thirty-seven-year-old son, a circumstance that surprised Rebecca. Annette had never thought Quentin was worth a damn.

His secretary was a well-dressed, highly efficient woman who informed Rebecca she would require an appointment to see Mr. Reed.

“I’m a family friend,” Rebecca said, breezing past her.

On her feet at once, Willa Johnson, willowy and fast, protested, firmly suggesting Rebecca wait while she checked with Mr. Reed-or suffer the consequences of her whisking in security.

“Mr. Reed and I,” Rebecca said, “were kicked out of the wading pool on Boston Common for taking our clothes off. He was five and I was two.” Supposedly, too, Jared had been the one who’d gotten them dressed and hauled them back to Beacon Hill. Mercifully, Rebecca didn’t remember.

With Willa momentarily taken aback at the image of her well-bred boss skinny-dipping on Boston Common, Rebecca slipped into his spectacular office.

Across the room, Quentin Reed slowly hung up his telephone, his pale blue eyes riveted on her. “Rebecca,” he said in little more than a whisper.

It had been fourteen years.

A recovered Willa, about to strong-arm Rebecca out herself, heard the emotion in her boss’s raw voice and retreated, quietly shutting the door behind her.

“Hello, Quentin.”

He was as handsome as ever. Ash-haired, square-jawed, trim, even confident, although Rebecca suspected that was more in appearance than in fact. Quentin had forever been at war with his sensitive nature. He wore a conservative pinstriped suit of exquisite cut.

He cleared his throat. “What can I do for you?”

“Was it your idea or your mother’s to have me fired?”

“You’re not an employee. It wasn’t a question of firing you.”

“Semantics, Quentin. You’re not going to weasel out of this one. You found out about me, told your mama and she said to give me the boot?”

He winced at her bald words, but confirmed her guess with a small nod.

“Does this mean I’m going to have the long arm of the Winston-Reed clan undermining my business in Boston?”

“Of course not.” He rose, and she was surprised at how tall he was. She’d forgotten. “Rebecca, look at this situation from our point of view.”

“I have. That’s why I’m here. You can’t stand the idea of a Blackburn earning a penny off Winston & Reed.”

“You don’t need the money-”

“That’s not the point. Quentin…” She exhaled, wishing now she hadn’t gotten back into the elevator. “Quentin, I was hoping we could put the past behind us.”

He shut his eyes a moment, sighing, and shook his head. “You should have known that’s impossible.”

She supposed she should have. Twenty-six years ago Quentin’s father and hers-and Tam’s-were killed in a Vietcong ambush for which Thomas Blackburn, Rebecca’s grandfather, was directly responsible. It was a lot for anyone to put aside. But she wasn’t going to give Quentin the satisfaction of telling him that.

She told him instead, “Bidding on this project was strictly a business decision on my part.”

“You never were worth a damn as a liar, Rebecca. It’s only your grandfather-”

“Leave him out of this.”

Quentin stiffened. “You’d better leave before we both say things we’ll regret.”

On her way out of the luxurious office, Rebecca debated dumping her fish dinner in the trash, hoping it’d stink up the place. But she resisted, because there’d never been any satisfaction in trying to prove to anyone that the Blackburns still had their pride.

San Francisco

Jared Sloan cursed the sadist who had invented the tuxedo and had another go at his bow tie. It’d been years since he’d tied one. He’d managed all the other parts of the tux with relative ease and probably would have handled the bow tie all right, but he was running late. At least, except for cleaning, his tuxedo hadn’t cost him a dime. His mother-proper Boston Winston that she was-had insisted on buying it for him years ago, and all he’d had to do was resurrect it from the back of his closet. Another failure with the tie, though, and back under his baseball cards it went. He’d wear jeans. Which would embarrass his father and his daughter. He’d never hear the end of what an insensitive lout he was and sparing himself that was worth another try at his tie, and maybe even the six or seven hours he was doomed to spend in his tuxedo. It was a close call.

He smiled at the sound of Mai’s undignified squeal from the entry. “Daddy!” Then she caught herself and calmed her voice to that of a fourteen-year-old would-be sophisticate. “Dad, are you almost done? The limousine’s here.”

Only for you, babe. Jared successfully completed his third try at what was, in fact, a simple knot. He quickly appraised himself in the mirror. The tux’s classic style helped conceal its age; both the Boston Winstons and San Francisco Sloans would be willing to claim him tonight. He had the strong Sloan cheekbones, dark hair, teal eyes and their general rakish, devil-may-care look. His height-he was six-two-and his more powerful build came from his mother, the second of Wesley Sloan’s four wives, who’d exited from Boston society years ago and now lived on the east coast of Canada in what she called self-imposed exile. She’d never been so content.

“Wow,” Mai said when he joined her in the entry. “Don’t you look handsome.”

He laughed. “You’re no dog yourself.”

Mai wrinkled up her pretty face. She was a small, slim girl, wiry and strong, with almond eyes and high cheekbones, a squarish jaw and a reddish cast to her fine, dark hair. From the time she was a tot, Jared had tried to get her to concentrate just on being herself. But lately he’d begun to realize that Mai wasn’t entirely sure who that was. He tried to understand. Her mother, whom Mai had never known, had been Vietnamese. In Vietnam, Amerasians were known as bui doi. The dust of life. The expression broke his heart, for Mai was, in a very real way, the light of his life.

“That’s not much of a compliment,” she told her father.

“Wouldn’t want you to get a swelled head. You’re going to be swimming in compliments by the end of the evening. Ready?”

The glint in her eyes and the way she kneaded her hands together told Jared his only child was champing at the bit, anxious to zip ahead of him to the elegant black limousine waiting incongruously outside their small redwood-and-stucco house on Russian Hill. But she restrained herself. A bright ninth-grader, she had lost none of the energy and exuberance of her early childhood, but was channeling it in new directions. Still, Jared found himself half expecting she’d run out and kick the limousine’s tires, check under the hood, demand to try out every seat and see how every gadget worked, what every button did. A year ago she would have-in fact, her grandfather had told him, had.