Phantom of Riverside Park (16 page)

Who did he think he was? No woman would ever
perceive him as wonderful, no matter what he did.

He was reaching for the intercom to summon
Peter to take charge of the meeting when he remembered that Peter
was in New Albany. Facing the wrath of McKenzie.

She’d been furious when he’d told her Peter
was coming.

“You sent him down here deliberately, didn’t
you, David?”

“Of course. It’s business, McKenzie.”

His innocent act didn’t wash with his sister.
“I can smell a rat a hundred miles away, David, and this one stinks
to high heaven. Ever since Paul’s been gone you’ve acted like I
can’t find my butt with both hands.”

After all these years she still couldn’t
bring herself to speak of her husband as dead. And that’s why David
had sent Peter. McKenzie needed somebody besides animals to talk
to.

“Don’t get on your high horse, McKenzie.”

“I rarely ever get off of it.”

“Just make him feel welcome, McKenzie.”

“This is your place, too, and he’s welcome as
rain. As long as he stays out of my hair.”

David would bet his last dollar that Peter
would be in McKenzie’s hair every chance he got. Life was simple
when you were twenty-seven and handsome and successful.

It was when you were pushing forty and looked
like Frankenstein’s monster that things got complicated. It was
when you had invited a shining girl nearly half your age to come up
and see you late at night while the moon held magic and the stars
spoke of promise that you got scared. It was when the sound of
light footsteps in the hall made your heart swell twice its size
and sweat break out on your hideous face that you wanted to
run.

But David didn’t run. Instead he sat in the
dark with the left side of his face turned to the wall and waited
for Elizabeth Jennings to enter the room.

Elizabeth stood in the doorway blinking,
trying to adjust to the darkness. She could only make out shadows.
That must be David Lassiter, sitting behind his massive desk across
the room. The furniture stood in ghostly groupings about the room,
and on the walls she saw darker spaces that must have been works of
art.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, not knowing
what else to say, what to do.

“Are you?”

Was she what? Sorry or late? His voice was
cool, detached, and he sat totally unmoving.

“It wasn’t your driver’s fault. It was mine.
Nicky wanted to see the car. He’s my son.”

“I know your son’s name.” Did she detect a
note of warmth creep in his voice, or was it merely wishful
thinking on her part? “Sit down, Elizabeth. Please.”

The room was full of chairs, some closer to
the desk than others. She felt like an unprepared school girl
taking a multiple choice test. She wanted to get everything right
tonight, including sitting in the proper chair.

“Where shall I sit?”

“There.”

A light flicked on, and a wing chair
upholstered in tan leather was softly illuminated. She sat down in
the circle of light, taking great care to cross her legs at the
ankles the way Mae Mae had taught her.

“A lady never crosses her legs, Elizabeth,”
she’d said. “Only her ankles. Always remember that.”

Though the light shining down on her was not
bright, it further obscured the rest of the room. All she could
tell was that her chair was the farthest one from the desk where
her benefactor sat. Elizabeth couldn’t help but feel cheated. There
was no way she would be able to see his face, not a single
feature.

She’d especially wanted to see his eyes. You
could tell a lot about a man by looking into his eyes. She’d known
the first time she’d looked deeply into Taylor’s eyes that he was a
little boy parading as a man, and a spoiled little boy, at that.
Still, his charm had been irresistible.

There was an eerie silence in the room, and
suddenly she realized that David Lassiter must have said something.
Alarmed, she twisted her hands together in her lap. He was probably
going to think she didn’t have a brain in her head, or else that
she’d lied to him about having something important to discuss and
had merely wanted to see him again out of morbid curiosity.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear what you said. I
guess I’m a little nervous.”

“So am I.” He actually chuckled, a big deep
sound, totally masculine and completely wonderful. Elizabeth
couldn’t help but smile. “I asked you if Nicky enjoyed seeing the
car.”

“Enormously. Mr. Edwards let him wear his cap
and sit behind the steering wheel. He pretended he was
driving.”

“Where did he go?”

The question startled her. She would never
have imagined him as a man who understood children.

“The zoo.”

He laughed again. “That’s exactly where I’d
have gone myself, if I were four years old and driving a
limousine.”

Elizabeth was amazed. Not just at him, but at
herself. She’d arrived at his office so scared, so nervous she’d
barely been capable of walking across the floor without tripping on
her feet. David Lassiter had appeared to be an enigma, a power
figure as remote as Mars, and no more approachable.

In a matter of minutes all that had changed.
It had happened exactly the same way the first time she’d come
here: a perfect stranger had transformed himself into a warm and
caring friend.

“Do you have children, Mr. Lassiter?”

He was silent so long she thought she’d
offended him. Nothing had been written about a wife and children,
but then David Lassiter was the kind of man capable of keeping
secrets, even from the press.

“No, I have no one... except my sister.”

It wasn’t what he said but the way he said it
that saddened Elizabeth to the point of tears.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t want your pity.”

His voice cut through her like a whip. In an
instant the man had changed from open and friendly to cold and
remote.

“I didn’t mean what I said as pity, Mr.
Lassiter.”

A long silence overtook them once again.
Elizabeth bit the insides of her lip and tried not to squirm. She
was acutely aware of the light that shone on her to the exclusion
of everything else.

As if I’m a criminal under
interrogation.

“Call me David.”

The chill had left his voice. It was amazing
to her how important the voice becomes when you can’t see a
person’s face. She wasn’t merely listening: she was reading the map
of a man’s soul.

“I’m sorry to be taking up so much of your
time, Mr... David.”

“Time is all I have.”

Loss.
That’s what she read. Loss so
bone deep it had become a central part of him.

“I would like very much to see you,” she
said. “May I?”

“No.”

“Forgive me for asking.”

“Your curiosity is understandable.”

“I didn’t ask out of curiosity. I asked
because, strange as it seems, I feel as if you’re my friend, and I
like to know the face of a friend.”

Silence screamed in the room once more, and
she strained to read it. All she could find was a wall. The man
behind the desk had erected a barrier between them, and she had a
feeling that no matter what she did or said for the rest of the
evening, she wouldn’t be able to see beyond it.

“Why did you come, Elizabeth?”

So, she had been right.
The man
speaking to her now was a complete stranger. If he hoped to put her
at a disadvantage, he was going to be sadly disappointed. Nothing
got her fighting spirit up more than adversity.

“I came to ask you for a loan.”

“Why? You have a million dollars.”

“No, I don’t. As I told you before, I have no
intention of taking charity. I’ve been taking care of my family for
years, and I’m going to continue to take care of them...with a
little help from you, I hope.”

He didn’t say a word. He simply waited. There
was no impatience in him, merely the enduring stillness of a
mountain.

Everything was left up to her now. The
brilliant but heart-felt presentation she’d planned standing in her
house on Vine Street went right out of her head, and she was left
with nothing but simple honesty and a heart on fire.

“I’ll do anything to help my son,” she said,
and it seemed to her that at that very moment the whole atmosphere
of the room changed. Maybe the moon grew brighter, or perhaps it
simply chose that moment to send a beam that stretched across the
room from David’s desk to her chair--a shining path of hope.

“I’ve applied to every agency I can think of
for assistance with what the doctors call cosmetic surgery, but I
either don’t qualify or I’m buried at the bottom of the list under
a pile of red tape.”

There was a sound across the room--a sigh, a
whisper, a curse, a prayer. She couldn’t tell what it was, only
that it came from David.

“I can’t borrow money from the bank. I have
no credit history and no collateral. I suppose I could go to one of
those fly-by-night lenders, but I’m broke, not foolish. They’d
require my soul.”

“How do you know I won’t?”

“Instinct. Although I can’t see your face, I
can see your heart. You’re a kind man.”

He made another of those inscrutable sounds,
like a massive lion awakening to find his pride threatened.

“I would pay you back. Every penny. Plus
interest. I’m not looking for charity, merely a loan.”

He was totally silent. Had she overdone
it?

“I’ll sign any kind of loan agreement you
want to make... as long as it’s fair.”

“Good for you, Elizabeth. Never sign an
agreement that is disadvantageous to you.”

“Then I have the loan?”

“Yes.”

She wanted to shout, to scream, to run across
the room and hug him. Instead she felt the hot press of tears. She
sniffled in a vain effort to stop them.

He made another of those puzzled lion
sounds.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I sometimes cry when
I’m happy.” To her dismay she realized she didn’t have a
handkerchief with her, nor even a tissue. She’d just have to sit
there tear-streaked. “I suppose you’ll draw up the papers and I’ll
sign...or something.”

“I’ll make all the arrangements, Elizabeth.
The doctor, the hospital. I’ll take care of everything, including
the bills.”

“I thought this was a loan. I don’t want
...

“Charity. I know. This is not charity,
Elizabeth. After the surgery is over, you and I will come to terms
about repayment. Fair enough?”

He was more than fair. He was magnanimous
bordering on saintly. Put Elizabeth in front a firing squad and she
would fight like a tigress, but confront her with kindness and she
wilted like a camellia left too long in the sun.

The dam inside her burst, the dam she’d been
shoring up with resolve and holding back with bravado and patching
with prayer. She knew she was sitting in a leather chair late at
night on the top floor of the Lassiter building, but she felt as if
she’d been climbing for years carrying a backpack weighted down
with stone, and finally she’d scaled the top of the mountain. Now
she would rest. At last she could breathe.

She couldn’t stop her tears. She couldn’t
find her voice to say
I’m sorry
. She couldn’t even find a
voice to say
thank you.

“There’s a box of tissue on the corner of my
desk.” The shock of what he’d said stopped the tears. Was he going
to bring her a tissue? Was he coming into the light? She sat very
still, waiting.

“You can come over and get it.”

Her heart in her throat, she stepped out of
the circle of light and walked into the darkness toward David
Lassiter. As she got closer, his profile emerged--squared-off jaw,
classic nose, chiseled cheekbone. Even in the shadows she could see
that the right side of his face was that of a very handsome
man.

One long arm snaked out and pushed the box to
the edge of the desk, and for a moment she thought she saw the
glimmer of his right eye, dark as obsidian.

A trick of the moonlight? Improved night
vision? Wishful thinking?

Pierced to the heart, she lingered near the
desk under the spell of David’s intense sideways glance.

Once when she’d been ten, a deer with a
massive rack that labeled him the grand old man of his herd had
stepped out of the trees into the clearing beneath the tree house
where she sat dreaming. Sensing her presence the buck had tilted
his head, his antlers so heavy they almost touched the ground. And
then in one of those shining moments forever emblazoned on her
heart, he’d studied her with ancient eyes that knew the secrets of
the deep woods, and she’d felt touched by magic.

That’s how she felt, now: touched by a
mysterious force that made her believe David knew the secrets of
the deep woods and beyond--the secrets of oceans and mountains, of
creation itself, and the heavens that encompassed it all.

That look, that single sideways look, touched
her soul and made her feel that she was no longer alone, one small
woman standing fierce against the fates.

David broke the spell. “Take the tissue and
leave,” he said.

“Leave?”

How could she go? There were things she
didn’t know, details to be worked out.

“Edwards is waiting to take you home. I’ll
contact you as soon as the arrangements are made.”

Fifteen minutes earlier she would have called
his dismissal arrogant and curt. But that was before she’d gazed
into his deep black eye. There was no coldness in David Lassiter,
only a heart frozen over and a soul imprisoned.

Strange as it seemed, Elizabeth didn’t want
to leave him. She might have called her reason compassion if she
hadn’t been Papa’s granddaughter. He’d taught her that survival
depended on truth.

“Never lie to yourself, Elizabeth,” he
said.

And she hadn’t. Not in all the years she’d
been in Memphis.