Whispers Read online

  His mother was watching him. She lifted a dark skeptical brow. “They don’t scare you. Good. But what I really hope is that you’ll prove to be the smart boy I’ve always thought you were. The good, intelligent, loving son.” Straightening, she crossed her arms under her breasts and he blocked out the image of her nipples and white skin and Dutch Holland’s thick fingers touching her.

  He had no choice. The Coke bottles slipped from his fingers and rolled across the hardwood floor. “Okay,” he whispered, rubbing the side of his face.

  “Okay what?”

  “Okay, I won’t say anything about Mr. Holland.”

  “You mean you won’t lie about me.”

  His eyes looked up and caught the cold determination in hers. “I’ll say what you want.”

  “I only want the truth, Weston,” she said. “Now, run upstairs and clean up. Throw those awful clothes and your slingshot into the trash. You’ll have to be punished, of course, but it’ll only be a little grounding, a week or so, and I’ll tell your father how sorry you are. How’s that?” Her smile was bright and false as fool’s gold.

  “I won’t forget,” he said sullenly.

  “Forget what?”

  “I won’t forget ever,” he said, and took off up the stairs. His relationship with his mother had never been the same and his feelings for all people bearing the name of Holland had been colored forever.

  So he couldn’t feel too badly about taking Tessa’s virtue. She’d practically served it up to him on a silver platter. As far as he could see, it was tit for tat. Or maybe tit for tit. Dutch Holland had bedded his mother, and now Weston had returned the favor by making it with daughter number three. It felt good. As if he was getting a little of the Taggert pride back.

  He’d learned from his mother. For the first decade of his life he’d thought his father was the shrewd one in their marriage, but Mikki Taggert had talents even her husband didn’t appreciate.

  Weston dried his face, picked off the toilet paper he’d dabbed on his wounds, and told himself to savor Tessa Holland for as long as possible. Then, maybe, he’d get lucky enough to have his way with Miranda. Stepping into slacks, he thought about the eldest Holland daughter. Statuesque and dark-haired, with intelligent eyes and a biting tongue, she was a challenge. Oh, how he’d love to seduce her.

  With Tessa there had been no seduction. It was almost as if she’d decided that he was going to be the one. Miranda would prove more difficult. Smiling as he buckled his belt, he didn’t let it bother him that maybe, just maybe, Tessa Holland had manipulated him instead of the other way around.

  He reached for his jacket and walked out of the bathroom to find Kendall Forsythe, looking for all the world like a rag doll who’d lost half her stuffing, seated on the corner of his bed.

  “What are you doing here?” He glanced to the doorway. Christ, he hoped no one had seen her.

  “Paige let me in.”

  “She knows you’re in my room?”

  “I—I had no choice.” She ran a shaky hand over her mouth, glanced at him, then looked quickly away. “I know this is awkward. Oh, God, I can’t believe I’m actually doing this.”

  “Doing what?” He was mystified, but an inkling of what was going on in that gorgeous head of hers began to reach him.

  Fists clenched, she rose and walked to the open window. “I—uh—I think I want to take you up on your offer,” she said so quietly he barely heard the words.

  “My offer?” Then he remembered. “Oh.”

  “That’s right.” She stiffened and turned to face him, her smooth skin the color of chalk. “I need to get pregnant and fast.”

  He couldn’t help the smile that inched up one side of his mouth. Thoughts of Miranda and Tessa Holland slipped away. “You know me, Kendall,” he said, walking slowly across the room, sizing her up as a predator might a wounded bird. “I’m always willing to oblige.”

  Fourteen

  “So it’s finally official, the two richest families in the whole goddamned state are going to merge.” Jack Songbird lifted his rifle to his shoulder, narrowed an eye, and pulled the trigger. A tin can hopped off the bale of hay he’d set on the far side of a field of bent beach grass. Overhead the sky was cloudy, dark with the promise of a storm. “Harley Taggert’s gonna marry Claire Holland.”

  The news settled like lead in Kane’s stomach, and he closed his mind to the thought of Claire spending the rest of her life with a spineless dishrag like Taggert. Hell, what did the guy have besides money and more money? “It’ll only happen if the families allow it.” He’d heard the local gossip, running like a prairie fire through the beauty shops, groceries, Bible study groups, taverns, cafés, diners, and liquor stores from one small town to another up and down the coast.

  “What can they do?”

  “Claire’s too young. She’ll need Daddy’s signature.”

  “Unless they wait until she turns eighteen.”

  Every muscle in Kane’s body was suddenly tight as a bowstring. What did he care? Claire Holland could marry anyone she damn well pleased. She was a snooty rich girl with an attitude, and his feelings for her were just plain stupid—a schoolboy crush that he’d nurtured over the years. Yet he couldn’t just roll over and play dead, not when he felt as he did. It had been nearly two weeks since he’d last seen her, and soon he and Uncle Sam had a date. Time was running out.

  Kane tipped his bottle back, drained it, and let it drop to the ground. Then he hoisted his own .22 and took careful aim. He squeezed the trigger and missed. Jack let out a whoop reminiscent of Indians in old black-and-white movies. “Pathetic white man,” he taunted. It was their running joke.

  “Yeah, well let’s see how you do with a bow and arrow.”

  “A damned sight better than you.” He checked his watch and swore. “Son of a bitch. Son of a goddamned bitch.” Then he grinned. “Late for work again.”

  “You shouldn’t have lost track of time.”

  “How would you like working for Weston Taggert?” Jack’s lips curled into a snarl and hate tightened the skin over the planes of his face.

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Neither do I. Already had a fight with my ma about it, just this morning. Told her I was gonna quit, and she said I’d never get another job around these parts. Made her late for work. Boy, was she pissed!” He tossed a hank of jet black hair off his face and a sly expression crossed the bladed features of his face. “You know what needs to happen to Weston Taggert?”

  “I can think of a lot of things.”

  “Someone needs to sneak into his room at night and scare the living shit out of him by taking off some of his scalp—at least his hair. Just for fun.” He aimed quickly and got off three shots. Two cans danced, and a bottle shattered.

  “Dead eye,” Kane remarked, looking at Jack’s handiwork. Three broken bottles and umpteen cans littered the ground by the target.

  “I just wish I was aiming at Taggert’s ugly head.”

  You’re not the only one, Kane thought as he steadied himself and sighted the last bottle, but didn’t squeeze the trigger. “Be careful what you say around these parts.”

  “Yeah, it could get back to him, through my sister.” Jack saw a hawk circling and aimed straight up, as if he intended to blow the bird out of the sky. “Why she wants to be that bastard’s whore is beyond me.” Blade-thin, Jack’s mouth was suddenly cruel. “He’s just using her.”

  “He uses everyone.”

  “Maybe I should start screwing his little sister and see how he likes it.”

  “She’s just a kid. And a funny one at that. An oddball.” In Kane’s estimation Paige Taggert wasn’t playing with a full deck, but then what did he know, he was just poor white trash. Poor white trash with a crush on one of the local princesses. If he had a lick of sense he’d blow town now, insist on joining up this week instead of waiting . . . for what? He squinted up at the threatening sky and felt the same premonition of evil that he had for the better part of a week.
r />   Jack was still ranting. “Yeah, well Crystal’s just a kid, too, but she’ll lie on her back for that lowlife son of a bitch and turn a blind eye when he screws around on her.”

  “She’ll wise up.”

  “Or get knocked up,” Jack growled, as Kane took another shot at the last bottle and it remained standing, taunting him.

  “You’d better give this up,” Jack said, swinging his rifle around and snapping off a shot. Glass shattered and sprayed. “You’re just no damned good at it.” Slinging his rifle over his back, he started off at a trot through the fields. “See ya later. Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll get fired.”

  “You’re not marrying anyone, especially a Taggert, and that’s final,” Dutch said at the dinner table, his lips barely moving, his rage pulsing in an irritated throb under his jaw. “Hell, I’m only out of town two nights and what happens? You”—he swung cold blue eyes on his youngest daughter—“are seen drinking, drinking, mind you, when you’re six years underage, at the resort, my resort, and then spotted later with Weston Taggert, and you”—his attention landed with full hostile force upon Claire again—“are stupid enough to plan to marry the Milquetoast of that damned family.” He shoved his plate away from him in a fit of fury. Juice from his slab of baron of beef splattered over the linen tablecloth as he reached into his inside jacket pocket for a cigar.

  “For the love of God, Benedict, control yourself.” Dominique’s face was taut and white, her mouth puckered in disgust. “At least the Taggert boys have some respectability.”

  “You mean money,” Tessa corrected, and Miranda wished her youngest sister would just shut up. When their father was in this kind of mood, there wasn’t any talking to him.

  “There isn’t a respectable bone in the whole stinking family.” Dutch was on his feet, jamming the cigar between his teeth. “I knew this would happen, you know,” he said to his wife as his hand rested on the handle of the French doors. His cigar wagged in his mouth. “Didn’t I tell you? When each of them was born. Trouble.”

  “You wanted sons,” Dominique said, defeat and disappointment edging her words.

  Claire bit her lower lip, Tessa rolled her eyes, and Miranda, who had heard this argument before, felt a headache beginning to build at the base of her skull.

  “You bet I wanted sons. Big, strapping boys who would inherit everything I’ve worked for. I came from a family of men, Dominique.”

  “This isn’t about her,” Tessa cut in.

  “Sure it is. It’s about all of you. I feel like a fish out of water in my own damned home. Girls! I’ve been threatening to send you to boarding schools. Hell, your mother here would love it if you would study in Switzerland or goddamned France and, believe me, I’ll send all three of you abroad if there’s any more talk about marrying a Taggert.”

  “But—” Claire said, rising.

  “I’m not fooling around. Push me and you’ll be on the next flight out of Portland.”

  “I love him!” Claire announced, shaking as she faced her father, defying him for the first time in her life. Miranda wished she could kick Claire under the table. This wasn’t the time to push it with him. Give him some time to cool off.

  “You love him,” Dutch muttered. “Love? And I suppose he loves you?”

  “Y-yes,” she said, swallowing hard.

  “Is that why he’s still sniffing after the Forsythe girl?”

  “What?”

  “Dutch, don’t,” Dominique said.

  “She should know who she’s dealing with. I’ve had one of my security men watching Harley Taggert because I suspected something like this might be coming down.”

  Miranda felt cold as death.

  “That’s right. And your precious Harley, the hypocrite who gave you that damned ring, has been two-timing you.”

  “No!”

  Dutch shook his head at Claire’s naïveté. “Of course it’s true. But you’re too much in love to see the writing on the wall. As for Weston,” he said, eyeing his youngest daughter, “he’s about as faithful as a mangy dog around a bitch in heat. That boy can’t keep his pants up to save his life, so both of you, stay away from the Taggerts.” Finally his gaze landed full force on Miranda. “You, at least, seem to have some sense when it comes to boys.”

  Miranda withered inside. She was the hypocrite. Her sisters didn’t resort to sneaking around, but she was seeing Hunter on the sly, afraid of her father’s reaction, tired of walking that thin good girl line.

  “Girls. Shit.” Shaking his head, Dutch held his tongue, but Miranda knew what was on his mind. She’d heard the argument that had simmered between their parents for years. Dominique had failed Dutch by bearing him only daughters. No sons. He’d begged her, pleaded, screamed, and demanded that she bear him another child—a boy child—but she’d refused, claiming the last pregnancy had nearly killed her. She’d risk no more of her health bearing Holland issue.

  The fights had never been in front of the girls, and, Miranda supposed, as she pushed peas around on her plate, until tonight Tessa and Claire didn’t know their father’s deep disappointment at the sex of his children. Miranda had not had that luxury, as her room shared a wall with her parents’ bedroom. There was no large bathroom or closet that muffled the sounds of their fighting, or their lovemaking. Fortunately the latter was infrequent because the thought of her mother and father rolling around on the bed and panting—actually doing it—especially after one of their fights, made Miranda sick. For years, she’d heard her father’s complaints and Dominique’s challenge that their family’s sexual makeup was his fault. He obviously wasn’t man enough to spawn sons in four tries. Even their first child, a baby miscarried early in the second trimester, had been a girl.

  When she’d been younger, Miranda had felt guilty, as if the fact that she’d been born a woman was her fault, and she’d tried to please Dutch, to gain his favor, to be the son he’d never had. She was smart, excelled in school, was captain of the debate team, worked on the school paper, gained entrance to several elite colleges, but, damn it, she couldn’t grow male parts of her anatomy, and for being a woman she would be forever punished.

  At eighteen, she was just beginning to understand that she would never please her father. No accomplishment would make him proud of her, and so she’d quit trying to satisfy him and was now trying to please herself. With Hunter.

  She watched as Dutch slammed one of the French doors behind him, rattling the glass panes and sending the chandelier swaying, so that the light from the hundred small candles swirled against the walls and reflected in teetering pinpoints in the windows.

  Dominique cast a glance at her husband’s silhouette and sighed with the patience born of years of living with a volatile man. Spooning a ladle of cheese sauce over her sliced potatoes, she said quietly, “Just let him blow off a little steam. It’s his way, and there’s nothing we can do to change it.”

  “He’s a pig.” Tessa, forever wearing her heart on her sleeve, couldn’t control her rage.

  Dominique raised both eyebrows. “He’s your father. We have to deal with him.”

  Tessa glowered and fiddled with her water glass. “I don’t see why. You could divorce him.”

  “Tessa!” Claire hissed. “You don’t mean it.”

  “Sure I do. It’s not a sin, you know.”

  Secretly Miranda wondered why her parents stayed together.

  “I said ‘until death do us part’ and I meant it,” Dominique said without a smile. “We’re a family.”

  “So that means we do anything he wants? He tells us what to do and we just go along. Claire should give up Harley and I . . . I should give up my life?” Tessa ran angry fingers through her hair and glared at her father, who was leaning on the railing, staring out at the water, the tip of his cigar glowing an angry red in the darkness.

  “I’ll run away before he sends me to any school in Europe.”

  “That was just talk,” Dominique said. “Let him cool off.”

  Claire sc
ooted her chair back. “He can’t stop me from marrying Harley.”

  “Of course he can, honey,” Dominique said, her face suddenly appearing old.

  “That’s bullshit! He can’t tell me what to do.” Tessa shot her chair back and, half-running, took off for the front of the house.

  “I worry about her,” Dominique said. “Such a hothead, and you”—she reached out, touching Claire’s hand with long, beringed fingers—“it’s not wise to fall too deeply into love.”

  “Why not?” Claire said, but she looked nervous and drew her hand away from her mother’s.

  “You should always hold a little back. Just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  “In case the man you love doesn’t love you back.”

  “Harley does,” Claire said swiftly as she shoved her chair away from the table. “Why doesn’t anyone believe me?” She, too, walked out of the room, and, as she did, Miranda noticed the doubt in her eyes, the worry clouding Claire’s gaze.

  “Oh, Lord,” Dominique said when she and Miranda were alone in the room. The sound of violins playing some soulful classical piece wafted softly through hidden speakers and filled the painful silence. “Take a lesson, Randa.” She smiled sadly. “I guess I don’t need to talk to you about this sort of thing.”

  “No, Mom, you don’t,” Miranda said, though she knew she was lying through her teeth.

  “Well, someday a boy will touch you in a special way and then, for the love of God, watch out.”

  “Is that what happened with you and Dad?”

  Dominique’s face turned into a mask of sadness. She glanced out the window to the porch where her husband was sending clouds of smoke into the starless night. “No,” she admitted. “The truth is that I grew up without any money, you know that. Your father was wealthy and I . . . I decided he was my only escape. I got pregnant.”

  “On purpose?” Miranda whispered, thinking about the baby who hadn’t survived to be born. The older sister she’d never had.