Romancing the Billionaire (28 page)

T
hat Saturday, the skies were blue and the sun was out, the weather lovely. It was the kind of day that was made for picnics and walks in the park, not visiting a grave. But now that everything else in Violet's life had somehow lined up, this was the only question still unanswered, and Violet wanted closure.

Even if the prize at the end of this treasure hunt was just one of her father's silly notes or a research journal, at least she'd be able to move on from this. Hopefully, Jonathan's stele would be enclosed there, and he could move on, too. No more manipulation from Dr. DeWitt from beyond the grave. She liked the thought of that.

“You look lovely,” Jonathan told her as she pulled on a plain black sweater.

Violet stepped into her black flats and gave him an odd look. She'd skipped makeup that morning, just in case she got emotional at her father's grave. On top of that, she was wearing all black. Her lips twitched with a nervous smile; God, why was she nervous? “Lovely, huh? Why is that?”

“Absolutely.” He moved to her side, dressed in a black jacket. Instead of his normal T-shirt and jeans, he wore a collared black shirt and slacks out of respect for her father's grave. His hand tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and he gazed into her face. “It's the look on your face this morning. I can't take my eyes off of you. You're strong, and resolute, and every time you look at me, I see love in your eyes. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.”

An emotional knot threatened Violet's throat and she tilted her face back, silently asking for a kiss. For comfort.

He brushed his lips over hers. “Shall we get going?”

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

Hand in hand, they went out to the parking garage and Jonathan drove his roadster while Violet navigated with his tablet and a maps application. The graveyard was all the way across town, and they drove in relative silence, the only sounds Violet's quiet driving directions.

When Jonathan finally turned into a parking lot, Violet's heart gave a painful little clench. “We're here,” Jonathan said quietly.

She nodded, frozen.

“Do you know where he's buried?”

She stared at the rows of gravestones and flowers, and then gave Jonathan a mutely pleading look.

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Wait here, love. I'll go ask.”

She waited in the car, clutching the tablet PC to her chest. The day was a gorgeous one, and the cemetery quite pretty. In the distance, an elderly couple walked the rows. For some reason, it made Violet incredibly nervous. It wasn't death itself; her mother had passed when Violet was twenty-one, a miserable drunk to her very last moment.

Violet was terrified of what they'd find at her father's grave and at the end of the scavenger hunt.

She and Jonathan had lived in bliss for the past few weeks. There was some schedule juggling, of course—they both had jobs. There were the usual growing pains of two people moving into a new place together. But God, she was happy. So, so happy. And she was terrified that whatever they found at her father's grave would somehow ruin this fragile happiness and destroy it forever.

She didn't count on anything less from Dr. Phineas DeWitt.

Her throat was dry when Jonathan left the on-site funeral home, hands in his pockets, and he came to her car door and opened it. “Shall we go?”

“Sure.” She didn't sound sure, though. She sounded terrified. But when she got out of the car, Jonathan's fingers laced with her own and she felt a little better.

They walked through rows of gravestones, heading to the back of the cemetery. There, at the end of a row, close to a tree, was a long, narrow stone marker shaped like a famous obelisk—Cleopatra's Needle. Seeing that, Violet started to laugh. “You're kidding me.”

Jonathan smiled at her. “Count on your father to go out in style. Look,” he said, pointing at the top. “He's even got his name in a cartouche.”

Sure enough, her father's name was spelled out in English, then below it, a cartouche with Egyptian hieroglyphs. “Aren't those only for royalty?” Violet asked, amused.

“Like that ever stopped your father?”

He had a point. If anyone thought he was entitled to everything the world had to offer, it was Dr. Phineas DeWitt. Smiling, Violet studied the front of the obelisk. It had his birth date and date of death, and instead of a family platitude, it read “The Garden of Love” poem again:

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

And Thou shalt not, writ over the door;

So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,

That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tomb-stones where flowers should be:

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

“That must have had special meaning for him,” Violet said softly.

Jonathan's hand squeezed hers in sympathy. “For all his faults, DeWitt had deeper waters than I think he ever liked to let on. He wanted everyone to think he was supremely in control of everything, but sometimes I wonder.” He turned to Violet. “How are you feeling?”

She considered her father's headstone. It felt odd to think of him buried here. She hadn't even come to his funeral because she'd been so full of brimming resentment for him. Now, that seemed selfish. “I honestly don't know. Part of me still thinks he was a rotten man, and part of me . . .”

“Still loves him because he was your father?”

“I guess.” Her voice was thick.

Jonathan wrapped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her close. “We can leave, you know. Whatever he's holding over our heads isn't worth it. We can turn around and get back in the car.”

She buried her head against his chest, enjoying the warmth and strength that he offered. “But your stele? And the journals? I know you wanted both.”

Violet felt him shrug. “There will be other steles, other journals.”

They both knew that was a lie, but it was sweet of him to offer. She reluctantly pulled away from Jonathan's comforting embrace and shook her head. “We've come this far, haven't we? Might as well go the full distance.”

He rubbed her back. “All right. Do you want to do the honors?”

“No. You can.” She wasn't sure that she could. For some reason, she was feeling all emotional.

Jonathan gave her another squeeze, and then he walked to the back of her father's obelisk gravestone. He glanced around and gave her a rueful look. “Mind keeping a lookout? I'd hate to have someone come after me and wonder what I'm doing.”

A hysterical giggle arose in Violet's throat at the thought of Jonathan being caught red-handed doing something to her father's grave. She obediently turned her back to him and scanned the area. There was no one nearby. A groundskeeper was fussing with an edger in the distance, and the elderly couple she'd seen earlier was heading to the parking lot.

She heard Jonathan's clothing rustle and then he hummed under his breath. “There's a little ledge under the base here and I can feel a tiny lever.”

A thrill raced through her. Not surprising, but still exciting. She glanced around, but there was no one close by, so she turned back to Jonathan and knelt next to him. His hands were running along the base of the obelisk. “Can you open it?”

“Yep. It's just got a lot of dirt crusted on it. Give me a moment . . . There.” A loud click sounded and a tiny compartment shot out a half inch, then got stuck in the thick green grass. He groaned in dismay. “I guess he didn't think this whole secret compartment thing through all that well. I need to dig it out a little.”

“Hurry,” Violet whispered, glancing around. The cemetery was still empty, but her heart was fluttering wildly in her chest, as if they were in danger of being caught and chastised like naughty children.

“Almost have it,” Jonathan murmured. He ripped up the grass at the base of the obelisk and dug his fingers into the soil until he could wiggle the small shelf forward a little more. The interior was a bright red, like a jewelry box, and she could see two creamy envelopes tucked inside a plastic bag.

Violet sucked in a breath. “There they are.”

Jonathan wiped his hands on the grass and then reached for the plastic bag, taking it gently out of the secret compartment. He handed them to Violet, and slid his fingers into the compartment again. “Nothing else.”

“No stele?” She felt a pang of disappointment. Poor Jonathan. He'd wanted that very badly, if for nothing else than to restore her father's name to the men he'd worked with for so long and ultimately betrayed.

“No stele,” Jonathan said. “It doesn't matter.”

She nodded absently and pulled the two envelopes from the protective bag into her lap. Both were sealed with her father's familiar wax symbol, and their names were on the front. Just like usual, except this time, Violet's envelope was thicker, as if it held multiple pieces of paper. She held Jonathan's out to him, fingers trembling. This was it. Unless her father was sending them on another wild-goose chase, this was the last communication she'd ever have from him.

The thought made her feel curiously hollow.

“Open yours first, love.” Jonathan took his envelope and set it in his lap, waiting.

She nodded, breathless, and broke the seal. Inside were several sheets of handwritten lined paper. Unlike the notes from before that were sent on a thick, creamy vellum, this was pages of her father's loose, messy writing, torn from a notebook and folded over and over again until the paper was soft, as if he'd handled it repeatedly before lovingly placing it in the envelope for her to find after his death.

Violet unfolded it and began to read.

Darling Violet Isolde DeWitt,

I could start this out with a cliché and say that by the time you read this, I am dead. But I was never a man fond of the obvious, as you might have guessed now that you are reading this. I prefer to leave my mark with style. I'm thankful that you (and hopefully Jonathan) have followed my trail to my final resting place.

I know you've held resentment for me in your heart. There's been a lot of bad blood between us. And since it's impossible for us to talk without emotion and our past getting in the way of our words, I wanted to tell you everything from my perspective and hope that you could perhaps understand your dear old dad a little more.

Your mother and I should have never married. I was her teacher and she was my student, and we should have never been involved, but I couldn't resist her. I've never been able to resist her, really. I know that this is perhaps obvious as an adult, but I know it was hard on you as a child to have your parents be so at odds with each other. I have always been wrapped up in my work, and your mother was always looking for someone to save her from herself. I didn't realize that until it was too late, and then she was pregnant with you. We both wanted you—if nothing else to save our already failing relationship, and so we married. But I found that your mother wanted me to give up my work for her, and that there was no pleasing her. For the first few years, I truly did try. I stayed home from important digs, I made other arrangements, and I was at her side for every hour of the day that I was not working at the university. It still wasn't enough for her, and I began to realize that the black hole in your mother's soul that was sucking all happiness out of her was going to extend to me if I let it. I had to make a choice, and I chose my work since it was either that or for both of us to be eternally miserable.

I know that my choice wasn't the right one for you, but I didn't know what else to do. Half the time when I tried to come home, your mother would insist I stay away. I missed several of your birthdays, your kindergarten graduation . . . but I did it to try and please your mother. By the time I realized that there would never be any pleasing her, it was too late and you and I had grown so far apart that I felt there was an uncrossable gulf between us.

Violet swallowed hard. He'd stayed away while she was growing up because her mother had asked him to? She'd always thought he'd been too busy for her, too uninterested. To find out that her miserable mother had been equally responsible for Violet's loneliness wasn't surprising, but it was heartbreaking. How many times had she misunderstood old Phineas DeWitt, who knew how to handle a two-thousand-year-old vase with care, but didn't know how to spend time with his daughter or handle his too-young and too-unstable wife? Suddenly, things were no longer so black and white.

You were always the brightest little scrap, and even if I wasn't the best father, I was proud of you. You were smart and sensible where I wasn't, strong and independent where your mother was not. Both your mother and I were two really weak people at our core, but I like to think we created something special when we created you. When you graduated, I wanted you at my side for the summer in Akrotiri. Your mother didn't want you to go. She was jealous, I think, and lonely. I insisted, though. I loved having you there for the dig that summer. I know we didn't get to spend as much time as we'd wanted together, but I was so proud of you. I still am.