Donovan's Child (3 page)

“I will. Count on it.”

After she said goodbye to her mom, she checked in with Javier Cabrera.

Javier was an experienced builder—and the first person she'd called when she got the summons yesterday from Ben. He owned his own company, Cabrera Construction, and had been kind enough to hire Abilene to work as a draftsperson on a few of his projects over the endless months she'd been waiting to get started on the fellowship. He'd even allowed her to consult with him at his building sites, giving her the chance to gain more hands-on experience in construction. He had become not only her friend, but something of a mentor as well.

His connections to her family were long-standing and complicated. Once the Bravos and the Cabreras had been mortal enemies. But now, in the past few years, the two families seemed to have more in common than points of conflict.

“Abby,” Javier said warmly when he answered the phone. “I was wondering about you.”

“I'll have you know I have made it safely to Donovan McRae's amazing rock house in the middle of nowhere.”

“Did he tell you how sorry he was for all the time he made you wait and wait?”

“Not exactly.”

“You get in your car and you come back to SA. I have work for you. Plenty of work.”

She smiled at the driftwood and barbed-wire creation overhead. “You're good to me.”

“I know talent. You will go far.”

“You always make me feel better about everything.”

“We all need encouragement.” He sounded a little sad. But then, Javier
was
sad. He was still deeply in love with his estranged wife, Luz.

Abilene confided that Donovan had said her design was crap.

Javier jumped to her defense, as she had known that he would. “Don't listen to him. Your design is excellent.”

“My design is…workmanlike. It needs to be better than that.”

“You're too hard on yourself.”

“I have to be hard on myself. I want to be the best some day.”

“Stand tall,” he said. “And call me any time you need to talk to someone who understands.”

“You know I will.”

They chatted for a bit longer. When she hung up, it was ten minutes of seven. She combed her hair and freshened her lip gloss and walked across the courtyard to the front of the house.

 

Donovan was waiting for her.

He sat by the burled wood bar, watching, as she approached the French doors from the courtyard.

She wore a slim black skirt, a button-down shirt with a few buttons left undone and a long strand of jade-colored beads around her neck. Round-toed high heels showed off her shapely legs, and her thick chestnut hair fell loose on her slim shoulders.

She pushed open one of the doors and stepped inside as if she owned the place. There was something about
her that had him thinking of old movies, the ones made way back in the Great Depression. Movies in which the women were lean and tall and always ready with a snappy comeback.

From that first moment in the afternoon, when Ben ushered her into the studio, he had felt…annoyed. With her. With the project. With the world in general. He wasn't sure exactly why she annoyed him. Maybe it was all the energy that came off her, the sense of purpose and possibility that seemed to swirl around her like a sudden, bracing gust of winter wind.

Donovan didn't want bracing. What he wanted was silence. Peace. To be left alone.

But he had chosen her, sight unseen, by the promise in the work she'd submitted, before it all went to hell. And he would, finally, follow through on his obligation to the Foundation people. And to her.

They were doing this thing.

She spotted him across the room. Paused. But only for a fraction of a second. Then she kept coming, her stride long and confident.

He poured himself a drink and set down the decanter of scotch. “What can I get you?”

“Whatever you're having.” She nodded at the decanter. “That's fine.”

“Scotch? Don't women your age prefer sweet drinks?” Yeah. All right. It was a dig.

She refused to be goaded. “Seriously. Scotch is fine.”

So he dropped ice cubes into a crystal glass, poured the drink and gave it to her, placing it in her long-fingered, slender hands. They were fine hands, the skin supple, the nails unpolished and clipped short. Useful hands.

She sipped. “It's good. Thanks.”

He nodded, gestured in the direction of a couple of chairs and a sofa. “Have a seat.” She turned and sauntered to the sofa, dropping to the cushions with artless ease.

He put his drink between his ruined legs and wheeled himself over there, rolling into the empty space between the chairs. “Your rooms?”

“They're perfect, thanks. Is it just you and Ben here?”

“I have a cook and a housekeeper—a married couple, Anton and Olga. And a part-time groundskeeper to look after the courtyard and the perimeter of the house.” He watched her cross her pretty legs, admired the perfection of her knees. At least she was a pleasure to look at. “Did you rest?”

“I had a shower. Then my mother called. She told me to tell you that Dax sends his regards and my sister says you'd better be nice to me.”

“Your sister and Dax…?”

“They were married on Saturday. And left on their honeymoon this morning.”

“I hope they'll be very happy,” he said without inflection. “And then what did you do?”

“Does that really matter to you?”

“It's called conversation, Abilene.”

Her expression was mutinous, but she did answer his question. “After I talked to my mother, I called a…friend.”

He took note of her hesitation before the word, friend. “A lover, you mean?”

She laughed, a low, husky sound that irked him to no end. A laugh that said he didn't intimidate her, not with his purposeful rudeness, nor with his too-personal questions. “No, not a lover. Javier is a builder. A really good one. I've been working for him over the past year, on and
off. He also happens to be my half sister Elena's father. And the adoptive father of my sister-in-law, Mercedes.”

He sipped his scotch. “All right. I'm thoroughly confused.”

“I kind of guessed that by the way your eyes glazed over.”

“Maybe just a few more details…”

She swirled her glass. Ice clinked on crystal. “My father and Javier's wife, Luz, had a secret affair years ago.”

“An adulterous affair, that's what you're telling me.”

“Yes. That's what I'm telling you. Luz was married to Javier. My dad to my mom. The affair didn't last long.”

“Did your father love your mother?”

“He did—and he does. And I believe that Luz loved—and loves—Javier. But both of their marriages were troubled at the time.”

“Troubled, how?”

She gave him a look. One that said he'd better back off. “I was a toddler when all this happened. I don't know all the details, all the deep inner motivations.”

“Maybe you should ask your father.”

“Maybe you should stop goading me.”

“But I kind of like goading you.”

“Clearly. Where was I? Wait. I remember. Javier—and everyone else except Luz—believed that Elena, my half sister, was his. But then, a few years back, the truth came out. It was…a difficult time.”

“I would imagine.”

“However, things are better now. Slowly, we've all picked up the pieces and moved on.” She uncrossed her legs, put her elbows on her knees and leaned toward him. With the glass of scotch between her two fine hands, she studied him some more through those arresting golden-
green eyes of hers. “So what did
you
do while I was busy talking on the phone?”

“Mostly, I was downstairs in the torture chamber with one of my physical therapists.”

“You mean the gym? You were working out?”

“Torture really is a better word for it. Necessary torture, but torture nonetheless.” And he had no desire to talk about himself. “What made you become an architect?”

She sank back against the sofa cushions. “Didn't I explain all that in my fellowship submission?”

As if he remembered some essay she had written to go with her original concept for the children's center. As if he'd even read her essay. Essays were of no interest to him. It was the work that mattered. “Explain it again. Briefly, if you don't mind.”

She turned her head to the side, slid him a narrow look. He thought she would argue and he was ready for that—looking forward to it, really. But she didn't. “Four of my seven brothers work for the family company, Bravo Corp. I wanted to be in the family business, too. BravoCorp used to be big into property development.”

“And so you set out to become the family architect.”

She gave him one slow, regal nod. “But since then, BravoCorp has moved more into renewable energy. And various other investments. There's not much of a need for an architect at the moment.” She set her drink on the side table by the arm of the sofa. “What about your family?”

He put on a fake expression of shock. “Haven't you read my books?”

She
almost
rolled her eyes. “What? That was a requirement?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, then all right. I confess. I
have
read your
books. All four of them, as matter of fact. Will there be a quiz?”

“Don't tempt me. And if you've read my books, then you know more than anyone could ever want to know about my family.”

“I'd like to hear it from you—briefly, if you don't mind.” Those haunting eyes turned more gold than green as she gave his own words back to him.

He bent to the side and set his drink on the floor, then straightened in the chair and braced his elbows on the swing-away armrests. “I hate all this getting-to-know-you crap.”

“Really? You seemed to be enjoying yourself a minute or two ago. But then, that was when you were asking the questions.”

“You are an annoying woman.” There. It was out.

She said nothing for several seconds. When she did speak, her voice was gentle. “You're not going to scare me off, Donovan. If you want me to go, you'll have to send me away—which means you'll also have to admit, once and for all, that you're backing out of the fellowship.”

“But I'm not backing out of the fellowship.”

“All right, then. Tell me about your family.”

He was tempted to refuse. If she'd read his books as she claimed, she knew it all anyway. But he had the distinct impression that if he refused, she would only badger him until he gave it up.

So he told her. “My father was never in the picture.”

From where he sat, without shifting his gaze from her face, he could see out the wide front windows. He spotted the headlights of a car approaching down the winding driveway. When the car pulled to a stop under the glow of the bright facade lights, he recognized the vehicle.

A red Cadillac.

He ignored the car and continued telling Abilene what she no doubt already knew. “My mother was a very determined woman. I was her only child and she set out to make me fearless. She was a force to be reckoned with. Adventurous. Always curious. And clever. It was her idea that I should write my autobiography when I wasn't even old enough to have one. She said I needed to cultivate myself as a legend and an authority. And the rest would follow. She died when I was in my early twenties. A freak skydiving accident.”

Abilene had her elbow braced on the chair arm, her strong chin framed in the L of her thumb and forefinger. “A legend and an authority. I like that.”

“It's a direct quote from my second book. If you really had read that book, you would remember it.”

“This may come as a shock, but I don't remember everything I read.”

“How limiting for you.”

She gave him a slow smile, one that told him he was not going to break her. “Did you ever find your father?”

“To find him implies that I looked for him.”

“So that would be a no?”

An atonal series of chimes sounded: the doorbell. Abilene sent a glance over her shoulder and shifted as if to rise.

“Don't get up,” Donovan said.

“But—”

“Olga will take care of it.”

Abilene sank back to the couch cushions as his housekeeper appeared in the wide-open arched doorway that led to the foyer. Olga cast him a questioning look. He gave a tight shake of his head.

Olga shut the thick archway doors before answering the bell. Seconds later, there were voices: Olga's and that
of another woman. The heavy foyer doors blocked out the actual words.

He heard the front door shut.

And then Olga opened the doors to the living area again. “Dinner is ready,” she announced, her square face, framed by wiry graying hair, serene and untroubled.

“Thanks, Olga. We'll be right in.” Out in the driveway, the Cadillac started moving, backing and turning and then speeding off the way it had come. Abilene had turned to watch it go. He asked her, “Hungry?”

She faced him again. “Who was that?”

“Does it really matter? And more to the point, is it any of your business?”

Abilene stood and smoothed her skinny little skirt down over those shapely knees. “I can see this is going to be one long, dirty battle, every step of the way.”

“Maybe you should give up, pack your bags, go back to San Antonio and your so-helpful builder friend, who also happens to be the father of your half sister, as well as of your sister-in-law. To the loving arms of your large, powerful, wealthy family. To your father, who loves your mother even though he betrayed her.”

Her eyes went to jade, mysterious. Deep. “I'm going nowhere, Donovan.”

“Wait. Learn. The evening is young yet. You can still change your mind.”

“It's obvious that you don't know me very well.”