Loveknot

He ignored her dismissal. They started walking. “Have you been busy at the plant since the trial ended?” He rested his hand lightly beneath her elbow and she didn’t protest the small intimacy.

“Swamped,” she said, managing a smile. He realized the subject of her family’s financially strapped business was nearly as distressing as his curiosity about her visit to his father. “It seems like everything was put on hold during the trial. And now Dad—” Abruptly she stopped talking, pretending instead that she had to watch her footing on the straight, well-paved path to the parking lot.

“Any new contacts on the horizon?” He shouldn’t have asked that question, and wished he hadn’t the moment it was out of his mouth.

“One or two. But small ones. Replacement parts for a couple of the big farm-machinery companies that we subcontract with. They’ll only keep us running till the first of the year. And then I’m afraid we’re looking at substantial layoffs.”

“And then?” he prompted, ignoring another jab of his conscience. Business was business. He shouldn’t feel as if he was betraying her.

“I’ll have to deal with the Japanese consortium that wants to buy the plant. Unless,” she said, looking up at him with a smile that was half teasing, half in earnest, “you could lend me a million dollars to get us through the winter.”

“I can’t do that, Lyssa.” Not because he couldn’t put his hands on that much money. He could float a loan that size from his own personal investments, without bringing Addison Corporation, or DEVCHECK, his own investment company, into the deal.

“Too small-potatoes for Addison Hotels, I suppose,” she said, a blush of red stealing over her cheeks.

“That’s not it.” He regretted yet again bringing up the matter. The words conflict of interest echoed through his brain. He wasn’t ready, or able, to discuss alternatives for management of Ingalls Farm and Machinery with Alyssa now or any time in the immediate future. He was also convinced she wasn’t going to thank him for it when he did.

“You must think I’m a fool,” she said, moving a little faster, just quickly enough to dislodge his hold on her elbow. “A small-town housewife, trying to run a million-dollar business that’s in trouble up to its neck, asking you for a huge loan she hasn’t even got the collateral to secure.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is, Edward. You’ve hidden your contempt for Tyler and the rest of us well these past months, but it’s still there, isn’t it?”

“I don’t have contempt or hatred for anyone in Tyler, Lyssa.”

“Not even my father?” she asked, her blue eyes looking past him, back into time.

“Especially not your father.”

“No,” she said, focusing on his face once again, searching for something in his carefully neutral expression. “I apologize for saying that. If you still hated my father, you wouldn’t have taken Timberlake off his hands. You paid cash. And far more than it’s worth.”

“You’re wrong. This place is a gold mine. It just needs the right management to take off.”

“It needs you,” Alyssa said softly. “You have changed a great deal. You don’t resent coming back here.” There was just enough doubt in her voice to prompt his answer.

“If I still hated everyone who ever put down Eddie Wocheck, the Polack from the wrong side of the tracks, I wouldn’t have done what I did with this place. Tyler is my hometown, just like it is yours.”

“I apologize again,” she said with a self-mocking smile. “You’re lucky you lost your Midwest naiveté years ago. It’s a lot harder to do when you spend your whole life in the same small town, you know. You can put your money to much better use than pumping it into a failing concern like Ingalls F and M.”

“Alyssa, stop putting yourself down. There are thousands of small companies all over the country in the same kind of financial bind. I can’t save them all.”

“Somehow that’s not very comforting to me, or the people who work for me. Goodbye, Edward. I won’t embarrass you or myself by asking for help again.” She got into the car. She hadn’t locked it, he noticed. No one in Tyler locked their cars.

He watched her drive away, wishing he could still trust his fellow man enough to leave his own car unlocked. Wishing he was still the boy Alyssa had loved and trusted with all her heart; knowing he was not and never could be again. And knowing, also, that sooner or later she would find that out.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_1dd58bf4-9941-5ec1-952c-1e6d5fc2df65)

ALYSSA STOPPED the car at the top of the hill above the boathouse where her daughter and son-in-law, Liza and Cliff Forrester, made their home. Smoke curled lazily from the chimney of the rustic building, built to complement the lodge, nearly hidden from sight by the trees. When Judson had decided not to sell the boathouse along with the rest of Timberlake Lodge, Alyssa hadn’t been sure she approved. But now she was glad the property had stayed in the family, even though the private drive lay inside the lodge gates and one of the hiking paths ran past where she was parked, increasing, however slightly, her chances of running into Edward Wocheck every time she visited her daughter and her grandchild.

She rested her head on the steering wheel for a moment, trying to restore her composure so that Liza wouldn’t ask too many awkward questions about her state of mind. Her relationship with her volatile offspring had improved a great deal since Liza’s marriage to Cliff, but it still wasn’t the easy mother-daughter camaraderie she shared with Amanda, or with her son Jeff’s new wife, Cece.

Cliff’s pickup was gone, but Liza’s white classic Thunderbird convertible was parked at the top of the path leading down to the lake. Alyssa sat quietly a moment or two longer. Her confrontation with Edward, coming so close on the heels of her unsettling conversation with his father, had upset her more than she wanted to admit.

If she hadn’t been desperate to put the unanswered questions about Margaret’s death out of her mind she would never have been so tactless as to ask Edward for a loan for Ingalls F and M. And to add to everything else, the man still had the power, in his mere physical presence, to totally unnerve her. What must he think of her? That her business skills were woefully inadequate? Most likely that her common sense was lacking as well.

It was hard to concentrate on business concerns, no matter how important, when your thoughts were tangled in nightmare images of the past. What was in store for her family, for herself, if she remembered completely what had happened that night? What if she recalled the shadowy figure leaving her mother’s room to be her father, after all? What should she do? And worst of all, what if she remembered beyond all doubt that she herself was responsible for her mother’s death?

Alyssa got out of the car and hurried down the path, anxious to hold her new granddaughter in her arms. Margaret Alyssa’s warmth and sweet baby softness were just what she needed to dissolve the terror and uncertainty in her heart. Unconsciously she began to smile, picturing little Maggie’s already vivid blue eyes, and imagined herself coaxing a still-uncertain smile from the wee one.

“Excuse me.” A man was standing at the top of the ridge, at the intersection where the hiking path joined Liza and Cliff’s approach to the boathouse. He was older, balding, carrying a fishing pole and tackle box, and was dressed in Land’s End outdoor wear. He was also about fifty pounds overweight and breathing heavily from the climb. “Can you tell me the shortest route to Timberlake Lodge? I seem to have taken a wrong turn somewhere.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to go back the way you came,” Alyssa said, unfailingly polite. “Or you can walk along the driveway. It’s longer, but you won’t have to climb the hill from the lake again.”

“Yes,” he said, looking over her shoulder at the steep climb. “I think I’ll take the road. Are you a guest at Timberlake, too? Or are you native to these parts?” He smiled, showing teeth too straight and white to be real.

“I live in Tyler,” Alyssa said, shoving her hands deep into her pockets. The low November sun had gone behind the trees, and the damp, late-afternoon chill quickly penetrated her unlined coat.

The man nodded and smiled again. “I thought so. I’ve been at Timberlake the past five days. Figured I would have seen you somewhere around the building in that amount of time. My name’s Robert Grover. I spend most of my time in Florida these days but I still call Chicago home. Thought I’d come up here and try my hand at bagging a few pheasants and some pan fish before the lake ices over.” He transferred the fishing pole to his left hand, holding out the right one for Alyssa to shake. “And your name is?” he asked, waiting expectantly.

“Alyssa Baron.”

“Baron? That name rings a bell.”

“My husband’s family has lived in Tyler for many years,” Alyssa said, unable to be rude enough to walk away from the man but reluctant to continue talking to him.

“No, that’s not it.” He was still smiling. “It’s something else. It’ll come to me in a moment.” He snapped the fingers of his free hand. “Now I’ve got it. It’s the trial. I read your name in the Tyler Citizen. You’re…” He stopped abruptly and a red flush, almost the same color as the down vest he was wearing, crept up over the collar of his khaki shirt. “You’re Judson Ingalls’s daughter. Sorry,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “I have a bad habit of doing that. Running off at the mouth.”

“Don’t apologize,” Alyssa said, taking a step past him.

He shifted position slightly, unintentionally blocking her way. “I read about the trial in the Chicago papers, too.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Maybe that’s partly what made me come up here when my doctor told me to take it easy for a few days.”

“Maybe it was. If you’ll excuse me.” Alyssa smiled a polite dismissal.

“Or maybe it’s because I wanted to see what Timberlake looked like all spruced up. I remember being here in its heyday.”

“You knew my parents?” Alyssa asked, intrigued despite her reluctance to keep talking to the man.

“Never met your father,” Robert Grover admitted. “I knew your mother, Margaret, though. Lovely woman.”

“You were her friend?”

He shook his head. “Just an acquaintance. We had mutual friends. I came here once or twice for parties. Your mother certainly knew how to entertain.”

“Yes, so I’ve been told.”