Sidney Sheldon's Reckless (10 page)

It was the week before Christmas, and London was in the grip of a cold snap that covered everything with a sparkling gray frost. There was no snow, yet, but the park still looked like a Victorian Christmas card, timeless and peaceful and lovely. Jeff had always loved Christmas. It made him feel like a kid again, dreaming of candy and presents with his nose pressed against the store windows. Then again, as Tracy used to remind him, Jeff had never really stopped being a kid. The only difference was that as an adult he'd exchanged gazing through store windows for breaking in through the roof. “You've become a permanent fixture on Santa's naughty list,” she used to say.

Smiling at the memory, and still half thinking about Nicholas—he missed him at Christmas more than usual—Jeff pulled out his phone and, on a whim, called Tracy's number. Irritatingly it went to voicemail.

“It's me,” he said awkwardly. Jeff had never liked leaving messages. “Look, I really want to see Nick. I know we said to give it some time, but I want to come out there. It's been too long and I . . . I miss him. Call me back, OK?”

He hung up feeling annoyed with himself and went back inside to retrieve his coffee. He should have waited for Tracy to answer. Things always went better when they spoke in person.

A loud buzz from the doorbell made him jump.

Who the hell could that be at this time?
Jeff's stomach suddenly lurched. Surely not even Dean Klinnsman could have tracked him down that quickly. Or maybe he could.
Someone at the club could have given him my address. It would only take a phone call
.

Jeff darted into his bedroom, unlocked the drawer on his bedside table and pulled out a handgun. Keeping his back to the walls, he edged towards the front door of the flat and peeped nervously through the spy hole.

“Jesus,” he exhaled, opening the door. “You scared the crap out of me.”

Lianna stood alone in the hallway, wrapped up in a dark gray cashmere coat and winter boots.

“I thought it was your fiancée. Or one of his henchmen. Come to finish me off.”

“No,” Lianna smiled lasciviously. “Just me.”

Undoing the belt of her coat she opened it slowly, her eyes never leaving Jeff's. Other than the boots, she was completely, gloriously naked.

“Where were we?” she asked, advancing towards Jeff like an Amazon goddess, her pupils dilating with lust.

For the tiniest fraction of a second, Jeff thought about how very, very foolish he would be to sleep with Dean Klinnsman's girlfriend. Then he grabbed Lianna around the waist with both hands and pulled her into the apartment.

As long as Tracy Whitney was alive, Jeff Stevens's heart was spoken for.

The rest of his body, however, was quite another matter.

CHAPTER 8

T
RACY LOOKED AROUND THE
familiar walls of David Hargreaves's office. Christmas cards from staff and grateful former pupils covered every available surface. School would be out in a few days.

If only Nick could have controlled himself a little longer,
Tracy thought desperately.

She'd gotten to know the principal of Nick's middle school almost as well as she'd known his elementary school head, Mrs. Jensen. Poor Mrs. Jensen. It was a wonder the woman wasn't in a sanitarium somewhere, banging her head quietly against a padded wall, after everything Nicholas had put her through.

“The thing is, Mrs. Schmidt, it's not simply a question of money. What Nicholas did was a blatant act of disrespect.”

Tracy nodded seriously and tried to rid her mind of the image of Mr. Hargreaves farting loudly into what he believed to be an empty corridor.

Nick, seated beside his mother, adopted a hurt look.

“What about artistic expression? Our teacher told us only last week that art knows no boundaries.”

“Be quiet!” Tracy and Principal Hargreaves said in unison.

Nick's decision to break into the faculty recreation room after school hours and paint a series of cartoons on the walls, depicting various teachers in caricature, was likely to mark the end of his career at John Dee Middle School. He and an unnamed accomplice had painted the teachers engaging in different “humorous” situations (the mean, overweight math teacher, Mrs. Finch, was re-imagined by Nick as a hot dog, lying in a bun and being squirted with ketchup by the football coach). As a piece of art it actually wasn't bad. But as Principal Hargreaves said, that wasn't the point.

“I'll talk to the board over the weekend,” the principal told Tracy. “But to be frank, I don't see that we have much wiggle room here. Nicholas has had a lot of chances.”

Principal Hargreaves didn't want to lose the beautiful Mrs. Schmidt as a parent. Tracy's son might be a tear away, but she was a lovely woman. More importantly she'd donated very generously to the school over the years, and was offering to “more than compensate” for the damage Nick had caused to school property this time. But his hands were tied.

Tracy said, “I know. And I appreciate your even discussing it. Please let the board know that I'm grateful.”

After the meeting, Tracy waited till they were in the car and safely off campus before turning furiously on Nick.

“I don't understand you. You have to go to school, Nicholas. It's the
law.
If they kick you out of here, you'll just have to go somewhere else. Somewhere farther away, and stricter, where you don't have any friends.”

“You could homeschool me,” Nick suggested guilelessly. “That would be cool.”

“Oh no.” Tracy shook her head. “There is zero chance of that happening, mister. I'd rather stick pins in my eyes.”

Homeschooling Nicholas would be like trying to teach deportment to a newly captured chimpanzee.

“I could send you to boarding school,” Tracy countered. “How about that?”

Nick looked aghast. “You wouldn't!”

No,
Tracy thought.
I wouldn't. I couldn't live without you for one day.

“I might.”

“If you did I'd run away. Why do I need school anyway? Uncle Jeff left school at twelve. He learned all he needed to know on his Uncle Willie's carnival.”

“Uncle Jeff is not a good role model.”

“Why not? He's rich. He's happy. He has a great business, traveling the world.”

“That's . . . not the point,” said Tracy, increasingly desperately. She didn't want to talk about Jeff and his “great business.”

“Well what about Blake?” said Nick. “
He's
a good role model, isn't he?”

“Of course.”

“Well he went to work on his daddy's ranch when he was my age. Full-time.”

They'd reached home now. It was still only lunchtime. Tracy debated sending Nick to his bedroom—minus his computer, phone and any other means of escape—but the thought of him stuck indoors all day, brooding, didn't seem right. Instead, she sent him out with two of the hands to go and clear the snow drifts that had built up on the high pastures.

“You want to work on a ranch full-time?” she told a stricken-looking Nick as she pushed him into the back of the truck. “You may as well get started now.”

With any luck a few days of backache and chilblains would cure of him of that romantic notion at least. Still, Tracy wasn't looking forward to explaining Nicholas's latest shenanigans to Blake Carter. She could already hear the old cowboy's “I told you so” ringing in her ears.

“I TOLD YOU SO,”
said Blake. “I'm sorry to say it, Tracy, but I did.”

“You don't look sorry to say it,” Tracy complained, handing him a bowl of steaming beef and vegetable soup. On stressful days, Tracy liked to destroy things in blenders. “I didn't tell him to go in there and do those paintings, you know. He's not a toy that I control.”

“No,” agreed Blake. “He's a boy that you influence. And you keep encouraging him to act out.”

“I do
not
!” Tracy said furiously. “How did I encourage this?”

“You told him the artwork was good.”

“It was good.”

“Tracy.” Blake frowned. “When Principal Hargreaves showed you the math lady in the hot dog bun, you laughed! Right in front of Nick! You told me that yourself.”

Tracy shrugged helplessly. “I know. I shouldn't have, but it was funny. Nick
is
funny, that's the problem, Blake. And I love that about him.”

The truth was that Tracy loved everything about her son. Every hair on his head, every smile, every frown. Becoming a mother had been the great miracle of her life. Creating Nicholas was the one, pure, wholly good thing she had ever done, untinged by regret, untouched by loss or pain. Whatever the boy's faults, Tracy adored him unconditionally.

“It was tough to keep a straight face in that office,” she admitted to Blake. “Every time I looked at Hargreaves I couldn't stop thinking about the farting thing.” She started to giggle. Once she started, she couldn't stop.

Blake sat in stony silence as tears of mirth rolled down Tracy's cheeks.

“I'm sorry,” she said eventually.

“Are you?” Blake said sternly. “ 'Cause I don't see it, Tracy. Do you want that boy to wind up like his father?”

Tracy recoiled as if she'd been stung. Blake never brought up Nick's parentage. Never, ever. He knew Jeff Stevens was Nick's real father. Seeing the two of them together that time Jeff came to stay at the ranch had hardened Blake's suspicions on that score into incontrovertible fact. But he'd never discussed it with Tracy. Never asked for any details or cast any judgments. Till now.

To her surprise, Tracy found herself suddenly defensive of Jeff Stevens.

“Do I want Nick to be funny, you mean? And charming and brave and a free spirit?”

“No,” said Blake angrily. “That's not what I mean. I mean do you want him to be a criminal, a liar and a thief? Because if you do, you're going the right way about it.”

Tracy pushed away her bowl and stood up, her eyes brimming with tears.

“You know what, Blake? It doesn't matter what I want, or what you want. Nick
is
like Jeff. He just is! You think you can lecture it out of him, or punish it out of him, but you can't.”

Blake stood up too. “Well, I can try. I'm gonna take him out for a meal tonight in town. Talk to him man to man. One of his parents needs to tell that boy the difference between right and wrong.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Tracy shouted. Blake was already heading for the door. “You are so goddamned holier than thou, Blake Carter. Did you ever wonder why I'm your only friend? You're not perfect, you know.”

Blake kept walking.

Tracy yelled after him. “If Nick's a hoodlum, he's a hoodlum
you
raised! Not Jeff Stevens. You! Take a look in the mirror you . . . hypocrite!”

Blake shot her a look of real pain.

Then he walked out, slamming the door behind him.

FOR THE REST OF
the afternoon Tracy caught up on paperwork. Then she cleaned the kitchen until every surface sparkled and reorganized the books in her library. Twice.

Why did Blake have to be so judgmental?

Worse than that, why did he always have to be right?

Afternoon turned to evening, then to night. When the hands came back in from the fields, Nick wasn't with them.

“Mr. Carter came and picked him up,” one of the men told Tracy. “They were headed into town, I think. Did you want us to bring him back here, Ma'am?”

“No, no. That's OK,” Tracy said. “You go on home.”

It was a bitterly cold night, not snowing, but with a wind blowing that could flay the skin from your bones like a razor blade. Usually Tracy loved nothing more than to curl up in front of the fire on a winter's night like this, luxuriating in the warmth and savoring the precious hours alone with her book. But tonight she found she would read a page and take nothing in. She wandered into the kitchen to make herself some food, then found she wasn't hungry. If Nick were here they'd have watched a show together—something mindless and funny like
The Simpsons
—but Tracy hated watching television alone. Eventually she gave in to her jitters and began pacing the room, going over and over the argument with Blake in her mind like a child stubbornly picking at a scab.

I shouldn't have called him a hypocrite.

High-minded maybe. And rigid. But not a hypocrite.

He'd looked so hurt when he walked out. That was the killer. Then again, Tracy had been hurt too. Did she really deserve to be punished for loving the free spirit in Nick? For finding him funny and charming, even when he was being exasperating? For being on his side?

Tracy's parents, both long dead, had always been on her side. Especially her father. Then again, as a child Tracy had never given them cause to worry. She'd never stepped out of line or been in trouble at school.

I was the archetypal good girl. And look how
my
life turned out.

For all Blake Carter or anyone else knew, Nick might grow up to be a missionary or an aid worker. Rebellious boy didn't necessarily translate into rebellious man. Did it?

Still, she shouldn't have said what she said to Blake. She'd apologize as soon as he dropped Nick home. And thank him for tonight.

Tracy looked at her watch. 10:15
P
.
M
. They were very late. Most restaurants in Steamboat stopped serving at nine. Tracy pictured Blake ensconced in a booth somewhere, haranguing Nick about moral responsibility until the poor boy's ears melted.

I hope he's OK.

A banging on the front door broke her reverie.

They're back!

Blake must have forgotten his key. Tracy flew to the door. Pulling it open, the first thing she noticed were the lights of the squad car, blinking blue and white in the darkness. Then she focused on the two cops standing in front of her.