Night Whispers by Judith McNaught
“How long ago was your surgery?”
“Last week.”
“Last week! Shouldn’t you be wearing some sort of brace?”
He nodded. “Yes, but I can’t use my arm with that contraption on.”
“Surely someone else here could take over your work while your shoulder heals, and you could do their work.”
He stared at her as if that had never occurred to him and yet the possibility fascinated him. “What sort of work do you think I could do here?”
“This must be one of the biggest estates in Palm Beach. There must be something to do here that isn’t heavy labor. You should talk to whoever owns this place and explain your condition.”
“He already knows about my shoulder. He thinks I should stop doing everything until it heals.”
“He won’t give you another job to do?” Sloan said, angry at the callous indifference of the very rich to the financial plight of the less fortunate.
He patted her hand, touched by her indignation on his behalf. “I’ll be fine if you just sit here and talk to me for a while. Conversing with a sweet, pretty little thing like you is better than any painkiller I could take.”
“Will you get into trouble by sitting out here with me?”
He smiled, thinking that over. “I can’t see how, but it’s a delightful prospect to contemplate.”
Several things struck Sloan at once: his hand was smooth, his speech was educated, and his attitude was almost flirtatious. Embarrassed, she started to stand up. “You’re not the gardener. I made a foolish mistake. I’m sorry.”
He tightened his grip on her hand to prevent her from standing, but he let it go when she sat back down. “Don’t run off and don’t be embarrassed. I was very touched by your concern and glad of your help. Few young people here would have stopped to help an old gardener in pain.”
“You aren’t an old gardener,” Sloan persisted, amused by his audacity.
“I’m a new gardener. I needed a temporary hobby while my shoulder heals. I had the surgery on an old injury that was beginning to ruin my golf game.” His voice took on a truly dire note as he confided, “I developed a hook in my drives that I couldn’t get rid of, and my short game was atrocious.”
“That’s . . . tragic,” Sloan sympathized, trying not to laugh.
“Exactly. And this house belongs to my son, who is so heartless that he not only played golf without me yesterday, he also had the insensitivity to shoot a seventy-two!”
“He’s a monster!” Sloan teased. “He doesn’t deserve to live!”
He chuckled. “I love a woman with a sense of humor, and yours is showing. I’m intrigued. Who are you?”
Sloan’s father’s house was only a few houses down the beach from this one, and there was every chance the two men were acquainted. She didn’t want to reveal that she was Carter Reynolds’s daughter, and yet she’d be in plain view of this man when she left here and returned to the house. “My name is Sloan,” she evaded.
“Is that your first name?”
“Yes. What’s your name?” she added quickly, before he could ask for her last name.
“Douglas, and I haven’t seen you around here before.”
“I live in Bell Harbor. I’m visiting some people down the beach, but only for a few days.”
“Really, what people? I know most of the families along this stretch of the beach.”
Sloan was trapped. “Carter Reynolds’s family.”
“Good heavens! I’ve known the Reynoldses forever. You must be a friend of Paris’s?”
Sloan nodded and looked at her watch. “I really should go.”
He looked so crestfallen that she felt guilty. “Couldn’t you spare a few more minutes to brighten the day of a lonely old man? The doctor won’t let me drive, and my son is either working or out somewhere. I assure you, I’m completely harmless.”
Sloan was a sucker for the plight of the elderly, including the wealthy elderly, who she now realized must also suffer from loneliness. “I guess I have a little while before I have to play tennis. What would you like to talk about?”
“Mutual acquaintances?” he suggested at once and with unabashed delight. “We could have a good gossip— tear their reputations to shreds! That’s always amusing.”
Sloan burst out laughing at his tone and his suggestion. “That won’t work. The only people I know in Palm Beach are the Reynolds family.”
“It wouldn’t be much fun to gossip about them,” he joked. “They’re dreadfully dull and as upright as trees. Let’s talk about you instead.”
“I’m dull, too,” she assured him, but he was not to be derailed from his chosen topic. “You’re not wearing a wedding ring, which means you’re not married, which means you must occupy your time in some other way. Do you have a career?”
“I’m an interior designer,” Sloan replied, and quickly added, “but that’s not a very interesting topic. Let’s talk about something that interests you, too.”
“I’m quite interested in beautiful young women who, for some reason, do not want to talk about themselves,” he said with a sudden perspicuity that surprised and alarmed Sloan after his seemingly lighhearted, innocuous banter. “However,” he reassured her, “I won’t pry into your secrets. Let’s see—we need a mutually interesting topic. I don’t suppose you’re fascinated with corporate mergers, high finance, world politics—that sort of thing?”
Sloan nodded eagerly. “I heard some interesting theories on the future of the world market at dinner last night.”
He looked staggered, gratified, and impressed. “A beautiful woman with a soft heart, a sense of humor, and a fine mind. No wonder you aren’t married—I’ll bet you frighten young men your own age to death.” He flashed her an engaging smile that made Sloan wonder if he was quite as harmless as he’d said; then he slapped his knee and announced, “Let’s talk about the Russian economy. I love to hear myself talk on that subject. I never fail to amuse myself with my own wisdom and insight . . .”
Sloan laughed, helplessly charmed by his humor. And then she listened. And was impressed.
• • •
When she left, Douglas Maitland stood at the edge of the lawn, watching her; then he strolled back to the house and sauntered into the kitchen. “Good morning,” he told his son and daughter as he helped himself to a cup of coffee. “You should have watched the sun come up today. It was beautiful.”
His son was sitting at the kitchen table, reading The Wall Street Journal. His daughter was removing a bagel from the toaster. They both looked up in surprise at his buoyant tone. “You’re in remarkably good spirits this morning,” Noah observed.
“I’ve had a remarkable morning.”
“Doing what?” his daughter, Courtney, challenged skeptically. “In the first place, you haven’t gone anywhere. In the second place, there’s nowhere to go. Palm Beach is the pits. I can’t believe you actually expect me to live here permanently when I could stay in California and board at school.”
“I must be a masochist,” Douglas told her cheerfully. “However, to answer your original question, my morning was made remarkable by the presence of a fascinating young woman who noticed that my shoulder was causing me pain, and who offered assistance and then conversation.”
Courtney’s eyes narrowed. “How young a woman?”
“Under thirty, I’d guess.”
“Oh, great! The last two times you met ‘a fascinating young woman’ who was ‘under thirty,’ you married her.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Courtney. One of those women was your mother.”
“The second one was too young to have children,” she lied.
Douglas ignored her and described Sloan to his son. “She mistook me for a gardener—an understandable mistake, considering that I was digging in the dirt. We had a delightful discussion. You’ll never guess who she is—”
“Let me try,” Courtney interrupted. “While you talked to her, was she sitting on a tuffet, eating curds and w
Both men ignored her. “Who is she?” Noah asked.
“If you had dinner with Carter last night, you probably met her. I would have asked her about that, but I rather hated to admit I had a son your age. My vanity had already taken a blow by being mistaken for the gardener. Her name is Sloan.”
Noah gave a bark of laughter. “You have to be joking! What on earth did you find to talk to her about?”
“Many things. We discussed world affairs, the economy—”
“You must have done all the talking,” his son said sarcastically. “She couldn’t carry an intelligent conversation in a basket.”
“She did it very well this morning. She mentioned she’d heard a similar discussion last night. When she told me what she’d heard, it sounded like it came from you.”
“I’m amazed she was able to repeat it, but believe me, she didn’t understand it.”
“You’re making her sound like a parrot! Really, Noah, I think I qualify as a reasonably good judge, and I can guarantee that she’s not only beautiful, she is also very smart. And she’s witty, too.”
“Are we both talking about Carter Reynolds’s daughter?”
It was Douglas’s turn to look shocked. “His what?”
“Carter has two daughters. Paris is older by a year.”
“I’ve known Carter for decades and he’s never mentioned having another daughter.”
“He told me last night that the girls were divided in the divorce when they were babies and Sloan remained with her mother. After his heart attack, Carter decided to try to heal the family breach, so he invited her to come for a visit. Until yesterday, the two branches of the family have had no contact.”
“Why not?”
Noah pushed his newspaper aside and stood up. “I have no idea. Carter didn’t volunteer any more information, and I didn’t feel it was appropriate to ask.”
“I sensed she had a secret!” Douglas said, smiling at his perception. “I fooled her by letting her think I was a gardener, so she tricked me by keeping her own identity a secret. She must have known I’d find out who she is. Tit for tat. She’s amazing! I told you you’d underestimated her.”
“Maybe,” Noah replied, unconvinced but definitely curious.
Courtney finished spreading cream cheese on her bagel and brushed past Noah on her way to the table. “I can see how all this is going to turn out,” she predicted. “My brother is going to marry Paris, my father is going to marry her sister, and I’m going to go on the Sally Jessy Raphael show and talk about incestuous stepfamilies. It will be very intense.”
“I’ve told you before that I am not going to marry Paris,” Noah snapped.
“Well, you can’t marry Sloan, because our father plans to do that. And you can’t marry her after he does, because that’s old stuff and it won’t get me on Sally’s show. They’ve already done ‘my sister-in-law used to be my stepmother’ programs.”
“Knock it off!”
Courtney waited until Noah was out of earshot; then she looked at her father, who was opening Noah’s newspaper. “Why do you let him talk to me like that?”
Douglas ignored her attempt to provoke a quarrel and turned to the editorial page.
“He’s not my father; he’s only my brother. Why do you let him talk to me like that?”
“Because I’m too old to spank you and he refuses to do it.”
“He’d probably enjoy it. He likes violence.”
“What makes you say that?” Douglas inquired mildly.
“You know why,” she shot back, “only you pretend you don’t because you lost most of our money but he’s making so much of it now that we can go on living like this. Are you going to pretend you didn’t know when he gets caught? Are you going to go see him on visiting days?”
17
On the tennis court, Sloan’s father and sister not only looked good in their winter tans and tennis whites, they had the grace and power of two perfectly matched thoroughbreds, and Sloan couldn’t help being impressed at the beginning of the first game of the set.
By the end of that game, Sloan realized something else: Her father played tennis as if the court were a battlefield, and he showed no mercy to the enemy even though it was obvious that Paul and Sloan were hopelessly outmatched. Furthermore, he showed no mercy to his partner either. Whenever Paris made what he perceived to be a mistake, no matter how minor, he lectured or criticized her.
That made Sloan so uncomfortable that she felt like cheering when there was only one game left. Instead, she stood next to Paul on their side of the net, trying to pretend she couldn’t hear her father chastising Paris for the way she’d scored the last point: “You’ve been staying too close to the net all morning! The only reason Paul missed your last lob was because you got lucky. Losers rely on luck. Winners rely on skill. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, as composed and polite as ever, but Sloan knew she had to be thoroughly embarrassed, and Sloan wondered if he behaved like this toward her when they played elsewhere.
“This is unbelievable!” Sloan whispered to Paul. “Why doesn’t she stand up to him and tell him she’s doing her best.”
“She isn’t doing her best,” Paul replied. “She’s been trying to play well enough to suit him, but not so well that we’ll feel completely outclassed over here.”
Sloan’s heart sank. She’d had the same impression, but when Paul put it into words, he made it a fact and that made it impossible for her to ignore the angry sympathy she’d been feeling for Paris.
Carter’s personality underwent a complete change for the better as soon as the match was over. With all the cordial charm he’d displayed yesterday, he trotted over to the net and gave Sloan an approving smile. “You have a lot of natural talent, Sloan,” he told her. “With good coaching, you could become a real contender. I’ll work with you while you’re here. In fact, I’ll give you a lesson right now.”
That announcement startled a horrified laugh from Sloan. “That’s very nice of you, but I think I’ll pass.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t particularly enjoy playing tennis.”
“That’s because you don’t play to the best of your ability.”
“You may be right, but I’d rather not try.”
“Okay. You’re in good physical condition. You run. What else do you do?”
“Nothing much.”
“What about that self-defense course you took? They must have taught you a little tae kwon do or jujitsu?”
“A little,” Sloan said evasively.
“Great. I studied martial arts for a few years. Let’s go over there and you can show me what you can do.”
The man was not merely athletic, he was a compulsive competitor, Sloan realized with a shock, and he was not going to give up until he took her on in one form or another. She also knew Carter Reynolds didn’t like to lose, and since she was here to ingratiate herself with him, it didn’t seem like a good idea to humiliate him.
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I’ll go easy on you,” he insisted. Ignoring her protest, he laid his tennis racquet on the grass and walked a few steps away. “Come on.”
Sloan threw a helpless glance at Paul, and noticed Noah Maitland walking across the lawn toward them with a large brown envelope in his hand.
Carter saw him, too, and waved. “I didn’t know you were coming over this morning, Noah.”
“I brought some papers over for you and Edith to sign,” the other man explained.
“I’ll be with you in a few minutes. Sloan took a self-defense course recently, and she’s about to show me what she learned.”
“Take your time,” Noah said.
With great reluctance, Sloan laid her tennis racquet in the grass beside her father’s. Paris looked uneasy but said nothing. Paul looked uneasy, too, but Sloan wasn’t certain whether he was worried she’d get hurt or whether he was worried she’d hurt their host. Noah M
“Not to me,” he said and tipped his head toward Carter. “Have at it.”
Sloan thought his attitude seemed a little odd, but she had no choice except to do as he suggested. She walked over to her father, reminding herself that no matter how he behaved, it was not a good idea to toss him on his back.
“Ready?” he asked her with a brief, formal bow.
Sloan nodded and returned his bow.
He moved so suddenly that Sloan didn’t react in time and he scored his point with embarrassing ease.
“You weren’t alert,” he said in the same infuriating tone of censure and condescension he’d used on Paris during the tennis match. Instead of giving her time to return to her position, he nailed her again, catching her off-balance. “Sloan, you’re not concentrating.”
Sloan decided it was a very good idea to toss him on his back. He moved in, thought he saw an opening, and lunged. Sloan pivoted and with a high, hard kick sent him sprawling onto the grass. “I think I was concentrating better that time,” she sweetly replied.
A little warier now, he stood up and circled, looking for a new target. Mentally Sloan acknowledged that he was really very good, but he was also overconfident. He lunged; she countered with a block and struck back at his solar plexus, taking his breath away. “I was more alert that time,” she confessed.
Sloan was no stranger to angry predators, and when she scored the next hit, she realized he had become one. He doubled over, his face red with embarrassed anger, and his movements lost all grace and style. He waited for an opening; then he pivoted and kicked but missed her. The instant he recovered, Sloan scored another hit; then she decided it was time to end this “exhibition” before she was forced to either hurt him or risk being hurt if she didn’t.