Perfect Family Page 4

  Strangely enough, or maybe not strangely at all, her hunger had disappeared.

  He bit into a slice, then grinned at her with delight. She was grateful that he was no longer pushing her, no longer dropping disturbing pieces of information.

  She’d tried not to think of herself as a coward. Not a physical coward, nor even a mental one. She’d confronted too many crises as a child, had been a parent more than a child. But now she wasn’t sure she wanted to go on with this, to probe further into a man named Harding Clements.

  So they ate in silence, Alex Kelley obviously sensing her need for time, even for distance.

  Ben sat, begrudging them both every bite, and she gave him several pieces of crust, then turned her attention back to Alex. You can’t run again, she told herself. “Tell me why you think this Harding Clements was my father.”

  “Sarah Macleod, Harding’s sister, hired an agency that specializes in finding people. I don’t know everything they did, but they started researching horse farms and racing stables, looking for someone of Harding’s age and general characteristics. Owners remember good trainers, even if they don’t stay long. Using computers, they were able to narrow the list by age and physical features, then started checking out each of the remaining names. Your father had no history before nineteen-fifty. He seemed the most likely prospect.”

  “Is that it?” she asked. It seemed rather thin to her.

  “They found a photo in a magazine. It was rare. He seemed to avoid photographs, but this was an informal shot of Jon Clayton at the stall of one of his horses, a shot he probably didn’t realize was being taken. Sarah recognized him.”

  She bit her lip. Her father had avoided cameras, often finding excuses not to go into the winning circle when one of his horses won. “Tell me about them … about the Clementses.”

  “It’s a rather large family … and powerful. Mary Louise and Hall Clements—Harding’s parents—had five boys and one girl. Two of them are still alive: the oldest son, Halden, and the daughter, Sarah.” He hesitated, then added, “All the boys had names starting with an H. Makes things confusing at times.”

  Jessie knew she was certainly confused. And angry. What remained of her pizza grew cold. Her stomach turned into knots. She’d so longed for a large family, had queried her father so many times. What could have happened to make someone abandon his family? Usually when people lost someone they loved, they turned to their family, instead of running from it.

  If he was her father. She still couldn’t accept that he would have kept something like that from her.

  It was a betrayal. A betrayal beyond anything she could imagine. A feeling deep and bitter that quarreled with the occasional flashes of hope. Could it be true? A family. A family that must have spent tens of thousands of dollars looking for her.

  She continued listening, even as her mind was elsewhere, recalling different conversations with her father, looking for hints. There were none.

  Alex Kelley’s pleasant Texas drawl lapsed into a silence louder than any scream, a silence she felt in her bones.

  She felt schizophrenic. She didn’t want it to be true. She didn’t want to accept that her father had lied to her his entire life, that her life had been a lie. That her name wasn’t really hers. And yet another part of her wanted it to be true. She wanted a family. A family like other people had. A home place. Roots.

  “Sarah is convinced that you are her niece.” He had started talking again. “She wants you to come to the family reunion in two weeks. She wants to meet you and let you meet your cousins. We will pay all your expenses, of course.”

  Alex Kelley waited. It was as if he knew that any pressure would affect her negatively.

  She looked up at him, up from the cold pizza. “I don’t know whether I can get away. I have the shop. And Ben.”

  “You have a partner, don’t you?”

  She narrowed her eyes.

  “I’m afraid the search firm did some investigating of you, too,” he admitted easily.

  “How much?”

  “Investigating?”

  “Yes.”

  “Enough. We know your father left an inheritance that allowed you to attend Emory University with enough left over to buy part of this business. We know you are single and that you own this store with your partner.”

  She felt invaded again, just as she had after the burglary. Someone was looking into her life without her knowledge. She suspected that he also knew much more than he was admitting.

  “Sedona is a marvelous place,” he said, obviously trying to change the subject. “If you have never been there, you owe it to yourself to visit. The Clementses own a large ranch twelve miles north, and one of the family owns the Quest Resort. You can stay at either place. I think Sarah would like it if you stayed at the ranch.”

  Jessie tried to take it all in. “A ranch?”

  “The Clements family as a whole owns the Red Rock Ranch, better known as the Sunset. They run cattle, though most of the grazing land is leased from the government. Ross, the manager, also raises cutting horses.”

  Images danced in Jessie’s head of all the western movies she’d seen and adored. She’d not been able to budge her father past the Mississippi, or even as far as Kentucky until the end when he could no longer find a job in New York or Maryland or Virginia.

  Now that reluctance took on new significance.

  Still, she couldn’t quite believe. She wasn’t sure she wanted to believe. It was one thing to dream. It was another to have dreams come true. They never came true like the dreamer envisioned. Be careful what you wish for.

  Ben wriggled next to her. She knew he had to go outside to attend to business. He’d had a long day inside.

  Jessie stood. “It’s time for me to go home,” she said.

  He looked rueful. “I haven’t convinced you.”

  “Is that rare?”

  He grinned. “Not as rare as I would hope.”

  That damnable charm continued to flow. He was the kind of man, she thought, that usually had a slim, blond beauty on his arm, but at the moment he made her feel like the most important person in the world. And she found herself recoiling from that. This was business for him, and it was his job to persuade her to travel to Arizona.

  Mills had exuded charm just as this man had. And Mills had been the worst thing that had ever happened to her. A chill ran through her as she tried to banish him from her thoughts.

  Alex Kelley seemed to realize he was losing her. “Any other questions?”

  “A million,” she said, “but first I have to … let this sink in.”

  “Perhaps you will meet me for breakfast. My plane leaves at noon.”

  She hesitated.

  “Bright sunshine,” he tempted. “No Draculas.”

  “But you still want my blood.”

  He looked chagrined. “I’m afraid it’s necessary.”

  “Only if I accept the possibility that … this family could be my father’s.”

  “And yours.”

  She wanted to retort. She wanted to say that accepting that fact would mean admitting that her father might have lied to her all her life.

  She finally nodded. She’d made her point. The shop didn’t open until ten. And tomorrow Sol would return from his latest pilgrimage to Andersonville. He was writing his own book on the former Confederate prison, but she suspected he would never finish. It was the research he loved. He’d spent the last ten years hunting for diaries from men imprisoned there and the guards charged with holding them.

  Perhaps he could keep Ben for her … if she decided to go to Sedona. He and Ben had a fine relationship.

  Deep in her heart she already knew she was going. How could she not? She had been curious all her life. She found it difficult to let a question go unanswered. And yet she had left important ones unanswered. She knew that now. She’d never pried deeply into her father’s past. Because she feared the answers?

  And yet for some reason, she was reluctant to let Ale
x Kelley know she’d already made a decision. She didn’t want to make it easy for him. She’d worked too hard to be strong, to be wise, to protect herself.

  “Any suggestions for breakfast?” His question jolted her back to the present and she suspected he’d read her mind.

  “Where are you staying?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t have a place yet. I came here right from the airport. Apparently there was an accident on the freeway and it took me longer than I thought.”

  Ah, she knew about that. One accident on an Atlanta freeway and everyone was stalled for hours. “There’s a hotel around the corner,” she suggested.

  “Thank you,” he said solemnly.

  She nodded. “You have a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go to the intersection, turn right. It’s two blocks on the left.”

  “And breakfast?”

  “There’s a restaurant next door. I’ll meet you at eight.”

  “Thank you, Miss Clayton.”

  She smiled for the first time. “Jessie,” she said.

  Jessie searched the web for information on Sedona. Beside the computer were several books she’d located at the store before leaving. One was a travel guide of Arizona. The others came from the American West history section. There was an advantage of being part owner of a bookstore.

  There was very little about the Sedona area in the history books. It had been settled fairly late in the 1800s by white settlers, though it had a long and rich history with early Indians and then later with Apaches and Yavapai.

  Ben whined for attention, something he seldom did. Usually, he was content with just her company. It was as if he knew something was puzzling her, that all was not normal with their usually complacent life.

  “I’m becoming obsessed,” she told him.

  He licked her, telling her that obsession was just fine as long as it didn’t interfere with him.

  She turned the computer off and stood, going over to the fireplace and the mantel. She touched one of the carousel horses, the first of her collection. As a child, she’d saved for the longest time to buy it, though it was an inexpensive imitation. But that hadn’t mattered to her.

  “But Daddy, I want to ride the merry-go-round.”

  Her father sighed. “We don’t have time, Jessica. Now stop whining.”

  But she wanted it badly enough to pull on his hand. “Please.”

  “Dammit, I have to look at the horses for Mr. Daley. Don’t be a baby.”

  “But Daddy …”

  He turned then, fury on his face. He bent down and slapped her bottom so hard she could barely keep from yelling.

  He pulled her along then as she looked back at the children being put on horses by their daddies and wanted … oh how she wanted …

  She’d never had that ride, but the dream stayed in her mind, and when she’d seen a carousel horse in a store, she’d very carefully saved every penny she had, the nickels and dimes that people around the track gave her. And she’d bought her own horse. Later, as an adult, she started collecting originals. She wondered once what a psychologist would think. Was she subconsciously reliving painful memories or triumphing over them?

  Later, of course, she’d learned to ride. Her father hadn’t taught her. An exercise boy had. It was the one time she remembered pleasing her father, the first time he had watched her ride around the track at twelve. He said she had a natural seat and good hands, and eventually she’d become an exercise girl herself.

  Jessie replaced the horse on the mantel, and the memories in the attic of her mind. Too much had been dredged up today. Too many emotions. Too many memories.

  She thought about Alex Kelley. She sensed there was much he had not told her, that he had picked carefully through information for what he wanted to say.

  Sedona. She tried the sound on her tongue. Should it ring bells? Had her father ever let the name slip from his lips?

  One of five brothers. And one brother died the day Harding Clements disappeared from Sedona. Had he witnessed his brother’s death and that of his wife? And finally, the question that plagued her most. Had he had something to do with their deaths? She tried not to even entertain the thought, but it resounded in her mind. And in her heart.

  She couldn’t avoid the idea that going to Sedona might open a Pandora’s box. That it would open one.

  How many times, she wondered, had flies flown voluntarily into a spider’s web?

  Alex Kelley knew he had succeeded. He knew it when she consented to having breakfast with him.

  He had wondered whether he should mention the possible inheritance. But he had wanted to take a measure of her first. And it was more difficult than he had thought.

  Jessica Clayton had given away very little. And she seemed impervious to the charm that he’d cultivated. That had surprised and intrigued him.

  Most people would have jumped at what he had offered. The fact that she’d not done so gave him pause.

  Did she know more than she pretended?

  Or had she just learned to keep her own counsel?

  Her life must have been hell, according to the reports from the detective agency. A father who drank to excess, who hadn’t been able to keep a job. The wonder was that he had left her anything at all, much less enough to send her through Emory. It was rumored he gambled heavily. On his own horses? Or on those running against his own horses? Harding was supposed to have been the brother with integrity. Until he disappeared, that is, leaving a number of suspicions behind.

  Alex had been convinced by both the agency and Sarah that Jonathan Clayton was indeed Harding Clements. It was the others who demanded a DNA test. They were the ones who stood to lose millions of dollars.

  He looked around his room. It was pleasant enough, and he was too tired to do anything but go to bed. The last month had been pure hell, and he was weary of twenty-hour workdays, but one of the companies he represented had been sued, and the case had come to court a week ago.

  And Sarah had not been willing to wait. Not a week. Not a day. Too much depended on Jessica.

  Perhaps he should have warned Miss Clayton. She would be walking right into the middle of a family feud.

  He tossed his small bag on the bed, then took a quick shower. He couldn’t get Jessica Clayton out of his mind. She was attractive but not a beauty by any means. Her eyes were by far her best feature: an intriguing hazel with golden flecks. They were wide with rich dark lashes framing them. Her short auburn hair was prettily tousled, and yet it was the haircut of someone who didn’t overly fuss with it.

  He liked her. No nonsense. No games. And she’d evidently been singularly unimpressed with him. He’d noted she’d not replenished her makeup while he went out for the pizza. It had been a bit demoralizing. He usually did very well with the opposite sex—mainly, he’d always thought, because he genuinely liked women. He came into contact with some very smart ones, and he’d known instantly that Jessica Clayton was one of those.

  She had a steady gaze that probed, as well as a patience that waited for someone else to make a mistake before she did. It was a rare trait.

  Sarah, he thought, would be pleased.

  But would Jessica Clayton? Particularly when he introduced her to the volatile mix that was the current Clements family.

  three

  ARIZONA

  Jessie tortured herself with questions as the plane approached Phoenix. She already missed the safety of the bookstore, the comforting smell of leather binding, old paper, and even dust. She already missed Ben. Guilt ate at her every time she remembered the accusation in his eyes when she dropped him at Sol’s house.

  In the three years since she had found him wandering alongside a major highway, she hadn’t left him with anyone. She had made him her family. He and Sol had been all she needed. Or so she had told herself.

  She looked out the window. Not many trees, not at all like Atlanta. It was more like an alien landscape. Mountains rose out of nowhere, then reclined back into flat earth
. A few scattered clumps of green broke an endless tan carpet.

  Jessie sat back in the plush seat. She had certainly not expected a first-class seat when Alex said the family would provide the airfare. But she had never flown that way before, and she enjoyed every moment of being pampered. Alex had also said she would be met by someone and driven up to Sedona, but she had insisted on renting a car. She wanted the independence of her own transportation.

  The freedom to escape.

  She really wanted to do that at this very moment.

  She recalled the breakfast meeting with Alex Kelley. He’d added little real information about the circumstances of Harding Clements’s disappearance, which was really what she wanted. Instead, he discussed the various relatives she would meet. Foremost, in his estimation, was Sarah, who was seventy-six, and the matriarch of the family. She had an adopted son, Ross, who ran the ranch.

  Then there was Halden, Sarah’s brother and the oldest of the family. He was ninety-one, still mentally sharp but irascible. He had two living children—sons. One was a congressman preparing to run for the U.S. Senate, the other a banker who was also the owner of the resort where she would stay. Alex had also mentioned a number of others, insisting they were all eager to meet her.

  Why? Why would they try so hard to find, and meet, someone they had never known?

  A nagging doubt persisted that something far more than a family trying to find a lost sheep could be in play. But then maybe it was all the books she read. She’d fantasized since she was a child and found comfort in the nearest library, especially when her father was on one of his drunken binges. She’d fantasized that she was part of the novel she read—the beautiful princess, the dashing hero whom everyone loved and admired, or the little lost girl reunited with loving parents. The books were her private world and when she didn’t have one, she’d made up stories in her head.

  She told herself she was making one up now.

  And what better scenario than the one that had presented itself just a few weeks ago? A handsome lawyer. A new family. A ranch in Arizona. The only thing missing was being an heiress.