Night Whispers by Judith McNaught
“Well, then, why didn’t you come out and say so in the first place?”
Unable to answer or endure a lecture, Paris glanced at her watch. “If I don’t hurry and take a shower, we’ll miss our tee-off time at the club.”
“Take a look at the clothing she brought with her,” Edith called out. “Make certain she won’t disgrace herself or us while she’s here. She’ll be meeting our friends at the club and in town. If she needs clothes, see that she has them.”
Paris turned in dismay. “I can’t go through her closet and belittle her clothes and tell her they aren’t right.”
“Of course you can. You have an excellent sense of style. You design clothes.”
“Yes, but—”
“Paris! Take care of the matter. And Paris—” she called as Paris started off. “There’s no reason to throw money away at the expensive shops here unless you don’t have something to lend her.”
18
Sloan had no idea how much the FBI knew about her father or his finances, or even what they suspected him of doing, but it seemed important to tell Paul what she’d learned. Frustrated that the information exchange was strictly a one-way street, she knocked on the door to his room. When there was no answer, she went down the hall to her room and discovered its door was locked. She rattled it. “Hello, is someone in there?” she called.
The door opened so suddenly that she stepped back and stared in confusion at Paul, who was wearing shorts and holding her paperback novel with his forefinger inserted between the pages as if to keep his place.
“My room doesn’t have a balcony, so I thought I’d borrow yours and read for a while, until you came back,” he explained.
Sloan knew he was lying for the benefit of anyone who might overhear them in the hall. She followed him inside and closed the door. “What are you really doing?”
“Checking for bugs. I didn’t find any.”
The idea of a private home being bugged by its owner seemed preposterous, and Sloan said so.
“It was just a precaution. Your father is known to be an extremely cautious man.”
“Not that cautious or we wouldn’t be here,” Sloan joked.
“And speaking of why we’re here,” she added with a pleased smile, “I just had an enlightening conversation with my great-grandmother. Did you know she controls the major portion of the family money?”
“You’re referring to the Hanover Trust?”
A little deflated, Sloan nodded.
“What did she tell you?”
Sloan repeated the pertinent parts of her conversation with her great-grandmother almost verbatim.
“Nothing new there,” he said. “At least nothing significant. You were down there quite a while, what else did she talk about?”
Sloan told him the rest, and he seemed far more pleased by it than by the information she’d thought was important. “If she wants you to spend quality time with Paris, do it. I’ll hang around here and see what I can find out.”
“About what?” Sloan demanded, throwing up her hand in frustration. “What do you suspect him of doing? I think I’m entitled to some sort of a minimal explanation.”
“You’re on a need-to-know basis. When I think you need to know, I’ll tell you.”
Striving to match his blasé tone, Sloan said, “And, when I have something I think you need to know, I guess we’ll have to negotiate.”
She expected him to react to her threat with either amusement or annoyance, but he did neither.
“There are two men in Palm Beach you never want to try to negotiate with, Sloan. I’m one of them.”
“Who is the other one?” Sloan asked, taken aback by the veiled threat she heard in his voice.
“Noah Maitland. Thanks for letting me use your balcony,” he said for effect as he stepped into the hall.
The door closed behind him, and Sloan slowly headed into the bathroom to take her shower.
He was completely unreadable, unpredictable, and single-minded, but there were times when he’d also seemed charming and rather kind.
Now she had an uneasy feeling that this last might be a facade.
19
Paris was waiting in the foyer when Sloan came downstairs. “I brought the car around in front,” she said, and Sloan followed her outside.
A pale gold Jaguar convertible with the top down was parked in the driveway, and as they drove past the main gates, Sloan watched the sunlight gleaming on Paris’s chestnut hair. She was thinking how perfectly her sleek sister suited her sleek car when Paris glanced sideways and caught Sloan looking at her. “Did you forget something?” Paris asked.
“No, why?”
“You had an odd look on your face.”
After what she’d seen and heard of Paris today, Sloan wanted desperately to breach Paris’s barrier of formality and get to know her sister. She seized on Paris’s question as an opportunity. “I was thinking that this car is very beautiful and that it suits you.”
Paris almost lost control of the steering wheel as she turned and looked at Sloan. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You could say whatever you’re thinking.”
“Well, then, I guess I was thinking that that was the last thing I expected you to say.”
Sloan had given up on any further voluntary conversation when Paris blurted, “And I was thinking that it was such a nice thing for you to say.” She infused the word with so much warmth that Sloan knew Paris meant it as a very great compliment.
They turned left onto a large boulevard, and Paris hesitatingly said, “Does it feel odd to you to be here in the car and know that we’re . . . we’re sisters?”
Sloan nodded. “I was just thinking that very thing.”
“You’re not at all what I expected.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Your great-grandmother told me what you’d been told.”
Paris slanted her a shy look. “She’s your great-grandmother, too.”
Some demon of mischief made Sloan say, “Somehow I find it much easier to believe you’re my sister than she is my great-grandmother.”
“She’s a little hard to get to know. She intimidates people.”
Including you, Sloan thought.
“Does she intimidate you?”
“Not really. Well, maybe just a little,” Sloan admitted.
“Most people are terrified of her.”
“She’s not exactly a typical great-grandmother, at least not my impression of one.”
“What is your grandmother like?”
“You mean our mother’s mother?” Sloan said gently.
“Yes.”
“She died when I was seven, but I remember she was very—cuddly. She smelled like cookies.”
“Cookies?”
Sloan nodded. “She loved to bake. She was plump, which is why I guess I said ‘cuddly.’ She always had cookies for Sara and me.”
“Sara?”
“A childhood friend, who is still my best friend.”
An awkward silence ensued, the silence of two people who want to move forward but who are so relieved by where they are that they’re afraid to take the next steps. Sloan drew a long breath and prayed that she was saying the right thing. “Would you like to know what your mother is like?”
“If you want to tell me. It’s up to you.”
Lifting her face to the wind, Sloan tipped her head back and contemplated Paris’s evasive answer. “If we aren’t honest and frank,” she said with quiet sincerity, “we don’t have a chance of really getting to know each other, and I don’t want to miss out on that. Do you think we could make a pact to tell each other the truth and say what we really feel? That’s going to take blind trust, but I’m willing to try it. Will you?”
Paris’s hands tightened on the steering wheel as she considered Sloan’s pact. “Yes,” she whispered finally. “Yes,” she declared again with a shy smile and a firm nod.
Sloan put the new pact to i
“Yes, I would.”
“That’s easy,” Sloan said happily. “She’s very much like my impression of you so far. She’s kind. She doesn’t like to hurt anyone’s feelings. She adores beautiful clothes, and she works in the most fashionable dress shop in Bell Harbor. Everyone who knows her, loves her, except Lydia, the owner of the shop. Lydia bullies and browbeats her terribly and takes constant advantage of her, but Mother makes excuses for her bad disposition.” Sloan broke off as the country club entrance came into view. “Paris, let’s not play golf. Let’s do something else, instead.”
“But Father wanted you to have a lesson.”
“I know, but suppose I tell you I absolutely refuse to do it. In that event what will he do?” Sloan wondered if he ranted and raged or worse. He had the temperament of a bully. “Will he shout at you?”
Paris looked shocked by the suggestion. “No, but he’ll be extremely disappointed.”
“I see. You mean ‘disappointed’ in the way he was disappointed in your tennis game this morning?”
“Yes, only he’ll be extremely disappointed in both of us this time. This morning he was disappointed in me alone. He doesn’t get over disappointments as quickly or easily as some people do,” she explained as if that were her problem, instead of his—a justifiable fact that Sloan should accept and understand in the same way Paris did.
Sloan understood it perfectly: Her father was not physically abusive. He engaged in emotional tyranny instead, a more subtle but equally effective form of brutal domination. “If I absolutely refused, then he can’t be disappointed in you, can he?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Do you want to play golf?”
She hesitated for so long that Sloan wasn’t certain whether Paris didn’t want to answer or didn’t know what she wanted, period. “No, I really don’t. I’m not as fond of golf as Father would like me to be.”
“If we could do anything you wanted right now, what would it be?”
“We would have lunch somewhere and just talk.”
“I’d love that! Since I absolutely refuse to play golf, he can’t be disappointed in you, so let’s have lunch and talk instead.”
Biting her lip, Paris hesitated; then she made a sudden right turn. “I know just the place. It’s a little café and we can eat outside. No one will bother us or rush us.”
In Bell Harbor a “café” was a very casual eating place, a first cousin of a diner. Paris’s café was a swanky French restaurant with canopies over the entrance, an enclosed patio with a fountain, and valet parking. The valet knew her by name and so did the maître d’.
“We’d like to eat outside, Jean,” Paris told him with that genteel smile that Sloan admired now that she realized it was genuine.
“May I bring you something to drink?” he asked when they were seated at a table near the fountain with a view of the shops across the street.
Paris looked at Sloan for a decision, then abruptly made it herself. “I think we should have champagne—some very good champagne—for a special occasion.”
“A birthday?” he guessed. Paris shook her head and looked shyly at Sloan. “More of a rebirth.”
When he left, an awkward pause followed while they both tried to think of a place to begin getting acquainted. On the sidewalk in front of them, a mother wheeled a baby in a handsome buggy and a teenager swooped around her on a twelve-speed. “I got my first two-wheel bike when I was five,” Sloan said to break the silence. “It was too big for me, and I ran into everyone I passed until I finally learned to balance it. The crossing guard said I was a menace.”
“Did you always know you wanted to be an interior designer?”
Although Sloan had to conceal a few things about her present life, she was determined to be honest with Paris about everything else. “Actually,” she confessed, “my original career goals were to be Superwoman or Batwoman. What about you?”
“As soon as I got my first doll, I started worrying about an appropriate layette for her,” Paris admitted. “So I guess I was always interested in fashion.”
A waiter arrived with a bottle of champagne in a silver stand, and Sloan waited for him to finishing serving their drinks while a young teenage couple strolled by, holding hands. “They look awfully young to be dating and holding hands, don’t they?” she remarked, and when Paris nodded, Sloan seized on that as the next topic of conversation. “How old were you on your first date?”
“Sixteen,” Paris said. “His name was David, and he took me to my sophomore dance. I had wanted to go with a boy named Richard, but Father knew David’s family and felt he would be a more acceptable escort.”
Sloan was instantly intrigued. “How was it?”
“It was awful,” Paris confessed with a smile and a shudder. “On the way home from the dance, he started drinking from a flask; then he parked the car and started kissing me. He wouldn’t stop until I finally burst into tears. How was your first date?”
“A lot like yours,” Sloan said, laughing. “I went with Butch Bellamy, who was a foot taller than I and couldn’t dance. He spent most of the night in the locker room, drinking beer with his buddies on the freshman football team. On the way home, he parked the car and started kissing me and grabbing me.”
Laughing, Paris guessed the ending of the story: “And you burst into tears, too, so he would take you home?”
“No. I told him if he didn’t let me out of the car, I’d tell all his friends on the team that he was gay. Then I took off my first pair of heels and hiked two miles in my first pair of panty hose. They were not a pretty sight when I got home.”
Paris laughed, and Sloan lifted her glass in a toast. “To us—for surviving our first dates,” she said with smiling solemnity.
Paris clinked her glass against Sloan’s. “To us, and to all girls with first dates like ours.”
The waiter appeared just then and handed each of them an open menu. Anxious to maintain the spirit of cheerful closeness that had sprung up between them, Sloan peered over the top of her menu. “What’s your least favorite food?”
“Brussels sprouts. What’s yours?”
“Liver.”
“They say that if liver is fixed with—”
Sloan shook her head. “There is no way to fix liver and make it edible. Maybe we aren’t genetic sisters, after all. Maybe I was adopted and—Why are you laughing?”
“Because I was only repeating what people say. I hate liver. It makes me gag.”
“The gag reflex is the ultimate proof. We’re definitely related,” Sloan happily decreed, but Paris turned very solemn.
“Not necessarily. This is the ultimate test question, so take your time before you answer: How do you feel about tomato soup?”
Sloan shuddered, and they both burst out laughing.
The waiter had put a basket of fresh bread sticks on the table, and Paris reached for one. “Have you ever been married?” she asked.
“No,” Sloan replied. “Have you?”
“Almost. I got engaged when I was twenty-five. Henry was thirty-two, and we met in Santa Barbara at a theater party. Two months later, we got engaged.”
Sloan paused in the act of selecting a bread stick for herself. “What happened?”
“The day after we got engaged, Father discovered Henry had an ex-wife and two children living in Paris. I wouldn’t have cared if he hadn’t lied and told me he’d never been married before.”
“That must have been awful for you.”
“It was at first. Father hadn’t trusted him from the very beginning.”
Sloan could imagine how little sympathy Paris must have gotten from Carter Reynolds, and she felt a pang of angry sadness that Paris hadn’t had Sloan or her mother to help her through it. “How did your father discover that?”
“He’s your father, too,” Paris reminded her with a beguiling smile; then she answered Sloan’s question. “Wh
Sloan tried not to sound as mistrustful of Carter Reynolds’s motives and integrity as she was beginning to feel. “Does he usually have your friends investigated?”
To Sloan’s shock, Paris nodded as if that were the most normal thing in the world for a parent to do. “Not just my friends, but other people he doesn’t know who start spending a lot of time around us. Father believes it’s best to be careful about people you associate with. He doesn’t give his trust easily.” She glanced at the bread stick in her hand; then she lifted her gaze to Sloan’s. “Let’s talk about something else. My broken engagement doesn’t deserve another minute of our valuable time.”
After that, the hours flew past, filled with hesitant questions, honest answers, and warm smiles, as two strangers, who had started out to form a bond, discovered that the bond was already there. Ignoring the waiters, their meals, and the admiring looks of men, a beautiful brunette and an exquisite blonde sat at a sidewalk table beneath a striped umbrella and carefully constructed a bridge to span thirty years.
20
Sitting beside Paris in the late-afternoon traffic on the way home from the café, Sloan felt as if the magic of the last few hours had spread its beauty over all of Palm Beach. Overhead, the sky was a brilliant blue, the clouds whiter, fluffier. The ocean was more majestic, the beach prettier. Colors were more vivid, sounds were soothing, and the sea air blowing against her face was a benediction, not just a breeze.
Yesterday, Paris and she had been strangers who thought of each other as adversaries; now they were sisters who thought of each other as allies. She glanced at Paris, and Paris’s answering smile was filled with the same wonder and delight that Sloan felt.
“We didn’t have time to talk about Paul and you,” Paris said as they neared the house. “Are you serious about him?”
Sloan hesitated, struck by the sudden, unhappy realization that this wonderful, fragile new relationship with her sister was going to be jeopardized in the future by the lies she and Paul had perpetrated on Paris. If Paul found no evidence that incriminated Carter, then Paris could at least be spared the truth about their reason for coming to Palm Beach. In that event, Sloan would have to come up with some reason for having kept her job a secret. But if the evidence did turn up, then Paris would soon know the full extent of their deception, and Sloan was afraid of how she’d react.