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“So where’s Taggert?”
“What?” The question surprised her. Though she and Harley had been dating for a couple of months, she didn’t think it was common knowledge or anyone’s business, especially not someone’s who really didn’t know her.
“Your boyfriend, Princess. Remember? Where is he?” He reached into his shirt pocket and found a pack of cigarettes. Shaking out a couple, he offered one to her, and when she declined with a shake of her head, one side of his mouth twitched, as if she somehow had amused him. With a click of his lighter, he lit up and inhaled deeply.
“What do you care?”
“I don’t,” he said in a cloud of smoke. “Just making polite conversation.”
He was mocking her, she just knew it, but she couldn’t help rising to the bait, like a salmon to a fisherman’s lure. “Impolite conversation.”
He shrugged. “Whatever.”
“Look, I don’t like discussing my private life with strangers.”
“I’m not a stranger, Claire. Lived across the lake from you all my life.”
“You know what I mean—”
“I sure do, darlin’.” He took another drag on his cigarette and shot smoke from the side of his mouth. “I sure do.” He didn’t elaborate, just patted Marty on the shoulder near her bare leg and turned. Without another word he gathered up his things, such as they were, swung the strap of his camera over his neck, rolled the rest of his belongings into his sleeping bag, and hooked it by elastic cords to the back of his motorcycle.
“Want a ride?” he asked, and again she shook her head.
“Got one.” She motioned to Marty.
To her surprise Kane lifted his camera, took several shots of her astride the horse, then snapped the thirty-five millimeter back into its case, tossed his cigarette butt into the cold ashes of the fire, and started the big bike’s engine. Marty reared as the cycle sparked to life, but Claire clung on. Then Kane Moran was gone, vanishing into a plume of blue exhaust that chased after him as he raced his bike along the rocky trails.
Claire was left with a vague feeling of disappointment and a welling sense of despair. Why this was she didn’t understand, but it definitely had something to do with Kane Moran.
“For the love of Jesus, son, stay away from Claire Holland!” Neal Taggert tossed a file onto the corner of his desk in disgust. Papers flew, scattering like a flock of startled birds to land in disarray on the plush carpet. Neal didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he just didn’t care.
Harley wanted to run away and hide. His father’s tantrums had always been a source of fear to him, but he held his ground, standing in front of the polished mahogany desk, spine stiff as a drill sergeant’s, back unbending, as he stood in the den. Let the old man rant and rave. This time, Harley wasn’t backing down. “I’m in love with her.”
“Holy Christ. Love?” Neal let out a stream of oaths that brought warmth to the tops of Harley’s ears. “There is no such thing as love and let me tell you”—he pointed a fleshy finger at Harley’s nose as he stood and glared at his second-born son—“the very notion of love i
s overrated.”
“I’m not going to stop seeing her.”
“Like hell.” The old man swept around the desk more quickly than Harley had expected. Five-nine and topping two hundred pounds, Neal was amazingly agile. “Listen to me, kid. You’ll lose interest in that girl fast”—he snapped his fingers—“or you’ll be cut out of my will, ya hear that?”
Harley’s heart stood still for just a second, and in an instant he saw his life, his and Claire’s, flash before his eyes. They would be strapped, no money, no frills, living in a tenement of an apartment over a garage or cheap Italian restaurant where the sounds of patrons and loud cooks rattling pans and barking orders filtered through the floorboards, along with the stench of too much garlic and heavily spiced tomato sauce. He’d have to give up his Jag. His fists clenched, and the back of his jaw ached from the clamp of his teeth.
As if reading his mind, Neal grinned, showing off one gold-capped tooth. “Ain’t a pretty picture, is it?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m not giving her up.”
Neal sighed and ran a hand through the sparse strands of hair covering his balding pate. “Shit, son, you don’t have to pretend with me. Oh, sure you’d like to think you were noble and romantic and all that crap, but the truth of the matter is you’re no better than me or Weston. You like the good life more than you love”—again he snorted—“any woman.”
“But Claire—”
“Is a Holland. Just like her old man.” He rested a hip on the corner of the desk and sighed as if from his soul. If he had one. The jury was still out when it came to matters of Neal’s conscience or spirit. “I tried to cozy up to old Dutch, y’know. When I came here, I suggested that we form . . . well, an alliance if not a partnership, but Benedict Holland is nothing if not territorial, and he couldn’t see how much money could be made if we worked together instead of in competition with each other. Ever since your mother and I moved here, Dutch has been chewing on his tail, trying to think of ways to get rid of me, your mother, and anything to do with Taggert Industries. If you ask me—and I know you didn’t—Dutch is probably paying his daughter to make eyes at you just to get back at me.”
“You’re incredible,” Harley said, his voice a low whisper. “You’re so damned self-centered that you think everything is about you. This is different, and I’m going to see Claire whether you approve or not.”
“Then you’d better be ready to move out and forget about going back to Berkeley in the fall. And the car . . . it’s only leased, you know, so I’ll be expecting you to turn over the keys.”
Harley swallowed the fear that crept through him, the fear that he’d fought ever since he was a kid, the fear that somehow he wasn’t good enough. For years he’d lived in Weston’s shadow. Weston, the tall and athletic god of the football field as well as the backseat. Weston, who breezed through high school and entered Stanford on a goddamned scholarship. Weston the great, the king, the pain in the ass. “You can’t bully me, Dad,” Harley insisted and felt his damned Adam’s apple bob.
