Deceit (13 page)

This wasn’t beginning well, she reflected nervously, but then she hadn’t really expected anything else. She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. Both her throat and her lips felt dry. “I guess I should start with my father. ”

“Your father?” he said, surprised.

She nodded. “His name was Donald Gordon, and he owned a small textile business that he’d inherited. The name of that business was Gordon and Sons. The Gordon in the title was my grandfather, who founded the company, the Sons was my father. ”

She waited for Richard to show some sign of recognition, but all he said was, “Why was your father’s name different from yours?”

Her fingers fiddled with the diaphanous material that draped the bedpost. “I decided to take my mother’s maiden name for professional purposes.” “So your real name is Liana Gordon?”

“That's right.” She pushed away from the bed and slipped her hands into the pockets of her robe. “At any rate, apparently my father wasn’t much of a businessman, although I didn’t find that out until later. I was finishing high school about the time the business began to fail. Things went from bad to worse until it reached the point where everything rested on the company getting one contract.” She paused. “Unfortunately for him, you were going after the same contract and you won.”

Richard bolted straight up in bed.
“What?”

She nodded. “It was the Rhiman Industries contract.”

“I remember.” He frowned. “That must have been about twelve years ago.”

“That’s right. My father told me you were young and hungry and had underbid him.” Her throat tightened. "He also told me you were unscrupulous.” “What else did he tell you?” he asked in a soft, ominous voice.

“That the only reason you won was because you had cheated to get the contract. Then in the next breath, he told me that he had lost everything. Not too many days later he tried to commit suicide.”

He came off the bed and strode to her side. “Good Lord, Liana, suicide?”

Her lips formed a sad smile. “Oh, he didn’t succeed. He botched the job, and he was left an invalid.” She tried to laugh but it ended up a sob.

“So there I was, just out of high school, no real job skills and a mountain of medical bills that grew bigger every day. I had one thing going for me.”

“Your face.”

“Yes.”

He didn't move, but it seemed to her that he had physically withdrawn from her. “You already told me how you got to the Paris designers."

“And thank goodness that happened.” She drew a deep breath. “I finished one job and started looking for another. I had made quite a few contacts while I was there, and I thought my chances would be better in Paris than back in the States. Then one day quite by accident, I read in the paper about a young American businessman who was brash enough to come to Paris and try to sell textiles to the French.”

His grim expression told her he knew what was coming next, and this time he did move a few steps away from her.

She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “It was pure impulse on my part. To my everlasting regret, I didn’t even stop to think things through. I went to your hotel and flirted with one of the young men who worked behind the desk until he found out your schedule for me. Then I arranged to be in the same place at the same time.”

“Tell me something, Liana.” His tone held a quiet, deadly quality. “How did you know? How did you know that I would take one look at you and fall like a ton of bricks for you?”

“I didn’t. It’s just that making you fall in love with me was the only way I could think of to hurt you. I had no money, I had no power—”

“You only had your beauty,” he finished for her. “Your face, your body, your eyes, the way your skin smelled and tasted—” He broke off and turned away. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

She put her hand on his arm and tried to make him look at her. He wouldn’t budge, and she had to circle him until she was in front of him.

“You have to listen to me.”

“I don’t
have
to do anything. ”

Tears sprang into her eyes. “Please.
Please,
Richard. Just listen for a few more minutes.”

“Damn you, Liana!”

She lay her palms flat on his chest, feeling as though the contact would somehow help her get through to him. “I fell in love with you.”

He gazed down at her, his expression blatantly incredulous. “How can you even say that?”

Tears slipped from her eyes and ran freely down her cheeks. “Because I did fall in love with you, although that obviously wasn’t the plan. But, think about it, Richard. We couldn’t have had the incredible two weeks we had if—”

He tore away from her. “What the hell difference does it all make now. Liana? That was a long time ago. It’s
over.”

She dashed at the tears with a shaking hand. “Maybe it doesn’t make a difference, but I want you to know the whole story. ”

“Why? To soothe your conscience? To absolve you of guilt?” His voice and hand sliced through the air like a knife. “Forget it, Liana. It’s not my job to give absolution.”

She couldn't stop her tears, nor could she stop before she’d told him everything. “Try to see it from my point of view. I had fallen in love with the man I believed had destroyed my father. To make matters worse, I had become involved with that man for the sole purpose of destroying him. ”

“By making me fall in love with you,” he said with a flat sarcasm.

“That’s right.”

“Well, honey, you sure as hell made me fall in
something
with you, but it was more than likely lust, and you didn’t come near destroying me.”

“I’m glad.”

He uttered a disgusted sound and dropped back onto the bed.

“Richard, I
had
 to leave you.”

“Right. And before you left, you just had to tell me that you didn’t love me, in fact had never loved me.”

“I told you that so you wouldn’t try to stop me. Don’t you see? I couldn’t bring myself to tell you the truth. I felt trapped and needed to get out quickly. I couldn’t go on living with the man who had destroyed my father, nor could I live with the idea of destroying you. But, Richard, don't doubt that I loved you.”

“Love.” He sneered as he infused the word
love
with contempt. “And of course, your love for me is why you went to Savion. Because you loved
me.
It all makes perfect sense, Liana.” He crossed his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.

Bands of pain were binding her chest, drawing tighter and tighter, but she went on. “I was hurting, because of what I had done and because of what I thought you had done. I could see no resolution. Jean-Paul provided me with a safe haven. He expected nothing of me—”

His harsh laugh interrupted her.

What was the use, she thought in despair. He didn’t want to hear any of this, and now she was sorry she had forced him to listen. She had opened sealed-over wounds and destroyed whatever tenuous relationship they had managed to achieve here at SwanSea.

“Are you finally through?” he asked.

“No,” she said slowly. “There’s one more thing. Six years ago, my father died, but right before he did, he confessed to me that he had used you as a scapegoat, as a cover for his own incompetence.” She laced her fingers together and stared down at them. “You see, he couldn’t accept the responsibility for his failure, and he couldn’t bear for me to know that he had lost the company that he considered my birthright.” For once, Richard didn’t say anything; he was staring at the ceiling again. “As soon after the funeral as possible, I caught a plane to New York. I planned to tell you everything and beg your forgiveness. But when I called your office from the airport, I found that you were on your honeymoon. The news, coming right on the heels of my father’s death, was devastating to me.” Completely miserable, she shrugged. “That’s it. You finally know everything. ”

She waited for a reaction, expecting an explosion of some sort, but his silence continued, stretching, growing, like an impenetrable wall. “Richard?”

“Come to bed, Liana.”

The quiet resignation she heard from him shocked her. “Is that all you have to say?”

He slowly moved his head on the pillow until he could see her, but his eyes appeared dead, without expression. “I’ll admit that when you left me eleven years ago it seemed like a big deal. I took it hard. But looking back on that day, it was only my pride that was hurt, nothing more. ”

“But—”

“There is no love, Liana. Love is only a word people use as a rationalization for passion.”

She couldn’t think of a thing to say; she felt as if she’d been hit in the stomach.

“Come to bed,” he said again.

The room began to spin, the floor tilted precariously. Somehow she made her way to the bed without falling and managed to lie down.

He didn’t touch her. She didn’t touch him.

She stared unseeingly into the darkness, listening to the quiet, even pattern of Richard’s breathing, and the ear-piercing screams in her head.

And when she awoke, she was alone. Again.

The cloud-shrouded night provided little illumination. Richard used the beam of the borrowed flashlight to light his way along unfamiliar paths as he ran. And ran. And ran.

Damn Liana!

What had she expected? That she could tell him that incredibly stupid story and the past eleven years would be erased? The emptiness. The loneliness. The pain.

Or was telling him her way of inflicting even more pain?

Bitterness choked him until he thought he wouldn’t be able to go on. But he continued running, through woods, across meadows, trying to exorcise the demon that tormented his soul—the woman who had somehow imbedded herself so deep inside him, he feared for his sanity.

Even if the first part of the story were true, even if she had set out to hurt him by making him fall in love with her because she thought he had cheated her father, why had she left him?

She said that she had fallen in love with him. He didn’t believe it. He
couldn’t
believe it. The hateful words she had uttered right before she had walked out the door were forever carved into his brain. “I don’t love you,” she had said. “I’ve only been playing with you.” And then she had gone straight into the arms of Jean-Paul Savion.

Damn her straight to hell.

He ran, and he ran, and he ran.

And when he found himself in front of her door, he opened it, and went to her.Through the gray light of dawn, he saw that she was awake.

“I think I hate you,” he said quietly as he shoved his sweatpants down and thrust desperately into her.

She arched up to receive him, and his mind went blank, as a dark, burning desire took over.

And every time he drove into her, he repeated how much he hated her.

Eight

The sound of voices bounced off the rows of paint-ladened canvases, lifted to the high ceiling, and returned to fill the long gallery of SwanSea. Liana didn’t hear.

Rosalyn, who was newly discharged from the hospital and who had insisted on resuming work, fussed with Liana’s hair, trying to achieve the disordered look of the woman in the painting that hung high in the second tier of art on the wall. Liana didn’t feel.

Sara tugged at the folds of the blue gown she had donned for this series of pictures. Liana didn’t notice.

Steve shoved a light meter toward her face. She didn’t flinch.

With great force of will, she had retreated to the place in her mind where their hands, their voices, their gazes didn’t intrude. She had determined that she was through with hurting.

Briefly, foolishly, she had opened herself to Richard and, in the process, had allowed herself to become too vulnerable. No more.

Even the fact that Richard was among the spectators gathered around them didn’t bother her overly much. She accepted his brooding presence, just as she accepted the fact that he would kiss and hold her again.

She didn’t have the strength to refuse his love-making; there were times when she wanted him more than she wanted to live one more moment. But she had decided she could enjoy the interlude of their passion with relative safety if she kept her eyes on the rapidly approaching time when they would both leave SwanSea and go their separate ways. In a matter of days she would be alone again in her little house deep in the French countryside. She would be safe there. Until then, she had to protect herself.

“She needs flowers in her hair,” Clay said, eyeing her critically.

Rosalyn bent down to a florist box on the floor. “I have them right here.”

Sara draped an almost transparent blue stole around her shoulders; Rosalyn began to weave small cream-colored flowers through her hair. Liana endured their attentions patiently, understanding that their aim was to make her look as much like the young women of the art nouveau period as possible—the women with their flaring veils and streaming hair, who had posed for the posters and paintings of the period.

“The wind machine is ready,” Steve said to Clay.

Clay looped a camera around his neck and made one last check of its settings. “Okay, now, Liana, I want you to stand on that ladder over there so that I can get both you and the painting in the frame. Can you do that?”

"Of course.”

“Good." He patted her arm, then turned his attention to his crew. ‘Time is getting critical, people. The climax of this shindig, the ball, is tomorrow night, and we’ve got an awful lot of work to do yet. We can’t afford any more delays, so let’s all give our best. Liana, the ladder. Steve, the wind machine. Sara and Rosalyn, get out of the way. Let’s go.”

Liana stepped onto the first rung of the ladder. As soon as the wind hit her, the feather-light fabric of her gown began to pulsate around her in sinuous swirls and undulations, and she set about to capture the sensual, languid mood of the first painting Clay had chosen to spotlight.

“Go higher,” he called.

She stepped onto the next rung and the next. The sturdiness of the ladder allowed her to pose freely without the fear that it would tip over. Holding onto the top of the ladder, she arched backward so that her hair and dress flowed outward with the wind’s current.