True Colors

A second man came into view. This one was a giant with thinning dark hair and big, deep-set green eyes, with an imposing nose in a chiseled face. He was wearing a chauffeur’s uniform. “I couldn’t brake quickly enough,” he said. “But I’m sorry. It was my fault.”

“No,” Meredith said weakly. “I felt faint. I’m pregnant….”

The two men exchanged a speaking glance. “Your husband?” the first man asked. “Is he with you?”

“I don’t have…a husband,” she whispered, and tears sprang to her eyes. “He doesn’t know.”

“Oh, boy.” Henry smoothed back her long, disheveled hair with a gentle hand. “Well, you’d better come with us.”

In her naive way, Meredith equated big black limousines with organized crime. This man was dressed fit to kill, and his driver looked every inch a mobster. She hadn’t run away from one dangerous situation to land herself in another.

“I can’t do that,” she blurted out, her big eyes saying more than she realized as she looked from one of them to the other.

“Will it help if we introduce ourselves?” The thin man smiled. “I’m Henry Tennison. This is Mr. Smith. I’m a legitimate businessman.” He leaned closer, his lazy eyes smiling at her. “We’re not even Italian.”

One look at the humor in his face, and all her apprehension disappeared.

“That’s better. Help me get her in the car, Smith. I think we’re becoming the center of attention.”

Belatedly, Meredith realized they were blocking traffic. Other drivers were making their irritation known with their horns. She allowed herself to be put in the back of the limousine with Henry Tennison while the formidable Mr. Smith stashed her luggage in the trunk.

She looked around her at the luxurious interior of the car. Real leather. Not to mention a bar, a television, a cellular phone, and some odd kind of computer and printer. “You must be worth a fortune,” she said without thinking.

“I am,” Henry mused. “But it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I’m a slave to my job.”

“Everything has a price, hasn’t it?” Meredith asked sadly.

“Apparently.” He leaned back and folded his arms as Mr. Smith started the car and pulled into traffic, leaving the loud horns behind. “Tell me about the baby.”

Without knowing why she trusted him implicitly, a man she didn’t even know, she began to talk. She told him about Cy and the beginning of their love affair, her voice quiet and slow as she skipped over the passion to his mother’s interference and her speedy departure in disgrace.

“I guess I must sound like a tramp to you,” she concluded.

“Don’t be absurd,” he said gently. “I’m not an impressionable youth. Is the father going to come after you?”

She shook her head. “He believed his mother.”

“Too bad. Well, you can come home with me for the time being. Don’t worry. I’m not a lecher, even if I am a certified bachelor. I’ll look after you until you find your feet.”

“But, I can’t—”

“We’ll have to get you some clothes,” he said, thinking aloud. “And your hair needs work, too.”

“I haven’t said—”

“Delia, my secretary, can look after you while I’m away. I’ll have her move in, just to keep everything aboveboard. And you’ll need a good obstetrician. I’ll have Delia take care of that, too.”

Meredith caught her breath at the way he was arranging her life. “But—”

“How old are you?”

She swallowed. “Eighteen.”

His eyes narrowed on her thin face. “Eighteen,” he murmured. “A little young, but it will work out.”

“What will work out?”

“Never mind.” He leaned forward, his hands dangling between his knees as he stared straight into her eyes. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” He sat back again. “Do you like quiche?”

“What?”

“Quiche. It’s a kind of French egg pie—Oh, never mind. I’ll show you when we get home.”

Home was a penthouse apartment in one of the most expensive hotels in Chicago. Meredith, who’d never known anything grander than Great-Aunt Mary’s small house, was shocked and delighted at the luxury. She stood in the entrance to the living room and just stared.

“Don’t let it intimidate you,” Henry said, smiling. “You’ll get used to it in no time at all.”

Incredibly, she had. Without quite knowing how, she became Henry Tennison’s possession. She was maneuvered into marriage scant weeks later and shipped out of the country to one of Henry’s houses in the Bahamas, near Nassau. Her name became Kip Tennison. Henry undertook her advanced education in business tactics and strategy, in between natural childbirth classes with a registered nurse he hired to live in and look after Kip. During this time, he anticipated the baby with all the delight of its real father, spoiled his young wife, and seemed to lose twenty years of age as he involved himself with her pregnancy.

She sighed, remembering how it had been. Slowly, she had begun to replace Cy’s face with Henry’s, to trust her husband, to confide in him. She warmed to him. When the baby was born, he was with her at the delivery in Nassau, and as the tiny infant was placed in his arms, tears fell from his eyes.

It was only later that she discovered Henry was sterile, that he could never have a child of his own. It was why he was single at the age of thirty-eight—why he’d never asked anyone to marry him until Meredith came along. But fatherhood seemed to come naturally to him, and he treated Blake as if the infant were his own blood child.

In all the months they’d waited for Blake, he’d never touched Meredith. She wouldn’t have refused him. He was kinder to her than anyone had ever been. He worshiped her, and slowly she began to return his warm affection, to look forward to their time together.

Then, almost inevitably, he came to her one night. It was as if there had never been a woman, he told her softly while he loved her. And while it wasn’t the intense passion she’d shared with Cy, it wasn’t at all unpleasant. Because Henry loved her, she was able to indulge him. He was a tender, expert lover, and she felt no revulsion at being touched by him. And if he ever suspected that, with her eyes closed, she sometimes thought of Cy as she gave herself to him, he never said so. They were compatible. They got along well together, with mutual respect and affection, and Blake was their world.

It had all fallen apart the day Henry left on a business trip and his plane crashed into the Atlantic. Meredith had felt something with him the night before that she hadn’t experienced in their marriage. A merging, a oneness, that left her sobbing in his arms afterward. For the first time, she’d curled into his body and refused to let go. She was glad about that, when the news came. She’d finally told him that she loved him. If he’d lived…

She sat at the funeral with anguish in her eyes, and even her brother-in-law, Don, who’d been so distant with her, softened as he realized how genuine her grief was.

Henry was gone. But he’d been a good tutor, and Meredith had been an excellent student. She didn’t stop learning after he died and left her with control of the domestic operation. Possessed already of a keen, intuitive mind, she found the give and take of negotiating right up her alley. In her first month, she astounded the corporate directors with her ability to size up a potential acquisition and land it with a minimum of fuss. Despite their initial desire to kick her out, the directors became her greatest fans—to the chagrin of Henry’s brother, who was secretly nurturing a jealous resentment of Meredith’s power that grew by the day.

Unaware of that resentment, Meredith barreled through business like a velvet bulldozer. She was enjoying power for the first time in her life and loving her job as mother to Blake. All the while, as Meredith grew in strength, she never stopped thinking about Cy Harden and his venomous mother. Don had been right about one thing. Her interest in Harden Properties went far beyond mineral rights acquisitions. She wanted to back Cy into a corner and cut him to ribbons, while his arrogant mother stood by helplessly and watched. She wanted Myrna Harden to suffer along with her son. Meredith was so far gone with regard to the Hardens that revenge was the only thing that registered. Whether Don liked it or not—and of course, he didn’t—she wasn’t leaving Billings until she had the Hardens on their knees, no matter what it took to get them there.

She got up and dressed, taking time to pour herself a cup of coffee before she left the house. Mrs. Dade didn’t like her employees having breakfast on her time. She was a good boss, and a fair one, for all that.

The phone rang and Meredith yawned lazily as she answered it.

“Good, you’re home,” Mr. Smith said. “Don had me fly out with those Jordan papers for your signature. He said express mail was too slow. I’ll be with you in five minutes.”

“All right.” She hung up, surprised. It wasn’t like Don to send the corporate jet just for some routine papers. Perhaps the merger was more complicated than she’d realized.

She met Mr. Smith at the door with a cup of strong black coffee. He grinned as he took it.