Judith McNaught (45 page)

male line, is that Stanhope men are womanizers.

Always. Their lechery is legendary in that part of Pennsylvania, and it is a trait of which they have all been extremely proud. Including, and especially, my grandfather. I'm not sure the Kennedy men had anything on the Stanhope men when it came to wanting

women. To give you a nonoffensive example, when my brothers and I each turned twelve, my

grandfather gave us a hooker for a birthday present.

He had a little private birthday party at the house, and the hooker he'd selected was brought there to attend the party and then go upstairs with the birthday

boy."

"What did your grandmother think of that?" Julie said in disgust. "Where was she?"

"My grandmother was somewhere in the house, but she knew she couldn't change it or stop it, so she held her head up as best she could and pretended she didn't know what was going on. She handled my grandfather's philandering the same way." Zack grew quiet, and Julie thought he wasn't going to say anything else, and then he added, "My grandfather died a year after Justin, and he still managed to leave her a legacy of humiliation: He was flying his own plane to Mexico, and there was a beautiful young model with him when it crashed. The Harrisons own the Ridgemont newspaper, so my grandmother was able to keep that fact out of it, but it was an exercise in futility because the wire services picked it up and it was all over the big city newspapers, not to mention radio and television newscasts."

"Why didn't your grandfather simply get a divorce if he didn't care about her?"

"I asked my grandfather that same question the summer before I went away to Yale. He and I were celebrating my forthcoming college career by getting drunk together in his study. Instead of telling me to mind my own damned business, he'd had just enough to drink to tell me the truth and not so much that he

wasn't lucid." He reached for his brandy and tossed down the rest of it as if he were trying to wash away the taste of his words, then he stared absently into the empty glass.

"What did he tell you?" she asked finally.

He glanced at her as if he'd almost forgotten she was there. "He told me that my grandmother was the only woman in the world he'd ever loved. Everyone thought he'd married her to merge the Harrison fortune with what was left of his own, particularly because my grandmother was a long way from being beautiful, but my grandfather said that wasn't true, and I believe him. Actually, when my grandmother grew older, she became what is sometimes called a handsome woman—very aristocratic looking."

He stopped again and Julie said in disgust, "Why did you believe him? I mean, if he loved her, it seems to me he wouldn't have cheated on her like that."

A sardonic smile tugged at his lips. "You had to know my grandmother. No one could meet her high standards, least of all my devil-may-care grandfather, and he knew it. He told me he just gave up and

quit trying to do it soon after they were married. The only one of us my grandmother ever actually approved of was Justin. She adored Justin. You see,"

he explained with something closer to genuine amusement, "Justin was the only male in the entire family who looked anything like her people. He was fair like she was, medium height instead of tall—in fact he had a striking resemblance to her own father.

The rest of us, including my father, all had the Stanhope height and features—me, in particular. I happened to have been a dead ringer for my grandfather, which, as you can imagine, did
not
endear me

to my grandmother in the least."

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Julie thought that was the most ridiculously biased thing she'd ever heard, but she kept her feelings to herself and said, "If your grandmother loved Justin so much, I'm sure she would have stood by him if he'd

told her he was gay."

"Not on your life! She despised weakness, any and all weakness. His announcement would have revolted and shattered her." He slanted her a wry look and added, "Considering all that, she certainly married into the wrong family. As I mentioned earlier, the Stanhopes were rife with every kind of weakness. They drank too much, drove too fast, squandered their own money, then married people who

had enough to revive their flagging fortunes. Having fun was their one and only avocation. They never worried about tomorrow or gave a damn about anyone but themselves, not even my own parents, who

died on their way home from a drunken party, driving over a hundred miles an hour on a snowy road.

They had four children who needed them, but it didn't slow them down."

"Are Alex and Elizabeth like your parents?"

He answered in a matter-of-fact, nonjudgmental voice, "Alex and Elizabeth possessed the usual Stanhope weaknesses and excesses. By the time they were sixteen, they were both heavily into drugs and booze. Elizabeth had already had an abortion.

Alex had been busted twice—and of course released with nothing on the record—for drugs and gambling.

In fairness to them, there wasn't anyone to try to take them in hand. My grandmother would have, but my grandfather wouldn't hear of it. We were, after all, created in his own mold. Even if she'd tried, it wouldn't have done any good because we were only at

home for a couple months during summers. At my grandfather's insistence, we spent the rest of the year in exclusive private schools. Nobody really gives a damn in those schools what you do so long as you don't get caught and cause them trouble."

"So your grandmother probably didn't approve of your sister and brother, is that it?"

"That's it. They didn't like her either, believe me.

Although my grandmother believed they had possibilities if they could have been gotten under control in time."

Julie had absorbed every word he'd said so far, more than that, she'd absorbed every subtle nuance of his tone and expression. Even though he'd invariably included himself when he discussed the Stanhope

"weaknesses," she'd caught the disdain lacing his voice when he spoke of them. She was also drawing some very interesting conclusions from what he had not said. "And what about you?" she asked cautiously. "How did you feel about her?"

He quirked a challenging brow at her. "What makes you think I felt any differently about her than Alex and Elizabeth?"

She didn't hedge. "I sense you did."

He nodded silent approval at her acuity. "Actually, I admired her. As I said, she had impossibly high standards for us, but at least she
had
standards. She made you want to try to be something better than you were. Not that you could ever satisfy her. Only Justin was able to do that."

"You told me how she felt about your brothers and sisters. How did she feel about you."

"She felt I was the image of my grandfather."

"In
looks,
" Julie corrected.

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"What's the difference?" he said shortly.

Julie had a feeling she was treading into forbidden territory, but she took the leap anyway. With quiet firmness, she said, "I think you must know the difference, even if she didn't recognize it. You may have

looked
like your grandfather, but you weren't like him at all. You were like her. Justin resembled her physically, but he wasn't like her.
You
were."

When he couldn't intimidate her into retracting her opinion with a revolted scowl, he said dryly, "You're awfully confident of your opinions for a child of twenty-six."

"Nice tactic," she replied, looking impressed and matching his tone perfectly. "If you can't fool me, ridicule me."

"Touché," he whispered softly, bending his head to kiss her.

"And," she continued, turning her head so that his only available target was her cheek, not her mouth,

"if

ridiculing me fails, try to distract me."

His chuckle was rich and deep as he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and firmly tipped her mouth up to his. "You know," he said with a slow smile, "you could become a real pain in the ass."

"Oh, please, no—don't resort to flattery now," she laughed, effectively preventing him from kissing her.

"You know I go all to pieces when you say sweet things to me. What happened to make you leave home?"

He covered her laughing lips with his. "A
first-class
pain in the ass."

Julie went down in defeat. Sliding her hands up his shoulders, she yielded to the demanding persuasion of his kiss, putting her heart and soul into it, feeling that no matter how much she gave, he gave back more.

When he finally let her go, she expected him to suggest they go to bed. Instead he said, "Since I can't outwit you, I suppose I owe you an answer about why I left home. After that, I'd like to drop the subject

of my background entirely, assuming your curiosity is satisfied?"

Julie didn't think she could ever learn enough about him to be satisfied, but she understood his feelings about this particular subject. When she nodded, he explained: "My grandfather died during my first year at college, leaving my grandmother in absolute control of his estate. She summoned Alex, who was sixteen then, Elizabeth, who was seventeen, and myself home during summer vacation and had a little

gathering for the four of us on the terrace. To put it simply, she told Alex and Elizabeth that she was pulling them out of their private schools, sending them to local schools, and putting them on a strict allowance for living expenses. And she said if they so much as broke one rule of hers about drugs, drinking, promiscuity, and so forth, that she would throw them out of the house and cut them off without

a cent. To fully appreciate the impact of that, you have to realize that we were accustomed to having an

endless supply of money at our disposal. We all drove sports cars, bought any clothes we wanted—

the

works." He shook his head smiling a little. "I'll never forget the look on Alex's and Elizabeth's faces that day."

"They agreed to her decree then?"

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"Of course they did. What earthly choice did they have? Besides being very fond of having and spending

money, they weren't fit to do anything to earn a cent on their own and they knew it."

"But you wouldn't accept her deal, so you left home," Julie guessed, smiling a little.

His face took on that masklike look—carefully blank, deliberately expressionless, and it made her extremely uneasy whenever he did that. "That wasn't the deal she offered me." After a prolonged moment of silence, he added, "She told me to get out of the house and never come back. She told my brother and sister that if they ever attempted to contact me or if they let me contact them, they were out, too. I was permanently disowned as of that moment. So I handed over my car keys—at her demand—and walked

down the driveway and down the hill to the highway.

I had around fifty dollars in my checking account in Connecticut and the clothes I was wearing that day.

A few hours later, I hitched a ride with a truck that happened to be loaded with props bound for Empire Studios and I ended up in Los Angeles. The driver was a nice guy and he put in a good word for me at Empire. They offered me a job on their loading dock, where I worked until some idiot director belatedly realized he needed some extras for a scene he

was shooting on the back lot. I made my film debut that day, went back to college at USC and got my degree, and continued making pictures. End of story."

"But why did your grandmother do that to you and not your brother or sister?" Julie said, trying not to look as stricken as she felt.

"I'm sure she thought she had her reasons," he said with a shrug. "As I said, I reminded her of my grandfather and everything he'd done to her."

"And you never—you never heard from your brother and sister after that? You never tried to contact them in secret or they you?"

She had the feeling that of everything he'd said, the subject of his brother and sister was the one he found most painful. "I sent them each a letter with my return address when my first film was going to be released. I thought they might…"

Be proud,Julie thought when he fell silent.
Be happy
for you. Write back to you.

She knew from the cold, blank look on his face that none of that had happened, but she had to know for sure. She was understanding more about him with every passing moment. "Did they answer?"

"No. And I never tried to contact them again."

"But what if your grandmother intercepted their mail and they never got your letters?"

"They got them. They were both sharing an apartment and going to a local college by then."

"Oh, but, Zack, they were so young and, you said yourself, they were weak. You were older and wiser by far than they. Couldn't you have waited until they'd grown up a little and given them a second chance?"

That suggestion somehow put her instantly beyond all limits of his tolerance, and his voice took on a chilling, deadly finality. "Nobody," he said, "gets a second chance from me, Julie. Ever."

"But—"

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"They are dead to me."

"That's ridiculous! You're losing as much as they are.

You can't go through life burning bridges instead of mending them. It's self-defeating and, in this case, completely unfair."

"It is also the end of this discussion!"

His voice had a dangerous edge, but Julie refused to back down. "I think you're much more like your grandmother than you know."

"You're pushing your luck, lady."

She actually flinched at the bite in his voice.

Wordlessly, she got up and gathered their empty glasses and

took them into the kitchen, alarmed by this new side of him, the streak of ruthless finality that enabled him

to cut people out of his life without a backward glance. It wasn't so much what he'd said, it was the way

he'd said it and the look on his face! When he'd first taken her hostage, all his actions and words had been motivated by necessity and desperation, never unwarranted harshness, and she'd understood that.

But until these last few minutes—when she'd heard the menace in his voice and seen it on his face—