Embarrassed by all the flattery, Kate smiled and said, “I’m following that, tonight, you want me to think I’m wonderful.”
“You are wonderful. Now, this brings us to Mitchell Wyatt. Sometime in the next couple of hours, you’re going to come face-to-face with him—” Three women, laughing and talking, walked into the lounge to check their makeup, and Holly and Kate both turned to the mirror, pretending they were doing the same thing.
Kate reached into her purse for her lipstick, but her entire body was in flight mode at the thought of looking into Mitchell’s blue eyes and seeing that hard, handsome face again. He’d made her laugh, he’d made her moan with pleasure, and then he’d held her in his arms as if he never wanted to let her go. Worse, much worse, he’d made her care so much that she thought she was in love with him.
And then he’d sent her back to break up with Evan, never intending to be there when she returned.
Viewed with the clarity of hindsight, she realized now that everything Mitchell did from the moment she met him—even sending for an ambulance and doctor to help Max—was done to ensure the accomplishment of his ultimate goal. There was no doubt in her mind now that he’d sent her that Bloody Mary himself and then sauntered into the restaurant to introduce himself. In fact, just thinking about the way he’d made a date with her after she spilled the drink on him made her grind her teeth: “If I were you, I’d offer to take me to dinner …” Of all the egotistical, cocky, overconfident …
He must have been amazed and very pleased when he introduced himself and she didn’t recognize his name. Her ignorance made it so much easier for him, and so much more fun, as he seduced Evan Bartlett’s witless girlfriend.
“Stop going over everything he did in your mind!” Holly said urgently, the instant the other women departed. “Just for tonight, you have to forget all the awful details and be completely objective, or you won’t be able to pull this off! The simple reality is this: Mitchell Wyatt is a man with an ego that’s so fragile he needed to seduce you to get even with Evan for knowing his secret.
“If you’d agreed to jump into bed with him after the two of you had dinner at the villa, it would have been over with that night and you wouldn’t have gotten emotionally involved. Instead, you insisted on knowing something about him first, so he had to come back to you and tell you about his brother; then he had to start actively seducing you in the garden. Once he realized you weren’t going to sleep with him in Evan’s hotel room, he had to get a hotel in St. Maarten. In St. Maarten, he warned you not to have any illusions or false expectations about going to bed with him. He told you he didn’t want complications or ‘magic,’ he just wanted an afternoon of good sex with you. Again, you turned down his offer, so he had to come back at you with that ‘Let’s get complicated—I felt everything you did last night’ routine.”
“Are you saying that what happened was partly my fault?”
“God, no! I’m trying to make you see that hurting you wasn’t his actual goal; his goal was to either coerce Evan’s silence or bring Evan down to his level by having a fling with Evan’s girlfriend.”
Kate shivered at the coldness of his logic and the ruthlessness of his methods.
“I’ll tell you something I haven’t said before,” Holly continued. “I think that, at some point, Wyatt had a better time with you than he expected. Otherwise, he’d have patted you on the butt when he finished having sex with you the first time and sent you back to the villa.”
“Why would he do that when I was such an eager, cooperative bed partner?” Kate said with bitter self-recrimination.
“That’s a good point, but why would he also take you to a casino, and, most revealing of all, why would he sit up in bed with you and watch the sunrise? Guys who only want sex from a woman roll off her afterward and go to sleep.”
To Kate’s shame, she clutched at that morsel of consolation, not because she believed it, but because she desperately needed something to reduce the humiliation she felt.
“However,” Holly continued brightly, “that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a cold, calculating bastard with a giant ego and that you’re entitled to exact whatever petty revenge you can tonight.”
“How can I do that?” Kate asked, leaning back against the vanity table and eyeing Holly with fascination.
“You have to treat him as if he was nothing but a completely forgettable flirtation.”
“He’s not going to buy that. He knew how I felt. I left to go and break up with Evan and promised to hurry back.”
“Yes, but he can’t be one hundred percent sure you did it! Furthermore, he can’t be one hundred percent sure that you weren’t just using him as a temporary stud in Evan’s absence. In fact, he can’t be one hundred percent sure that you didn’t know who he was all along and that your goal wasn’t to pry some juicy details about his life out of him to share with all your friends!”
“Who would do such a thing?” Kate scoffed.
“The women in your new social circle—which also happens to be the same social circle he’s accustomed to,” Holly said flatly. “Believe me, I know what they’re like. I grew up in their Temple of Brittle Humor and Barren Hearts. Evan understands instinctively how the game needs to be played; that’s why he wanted you to be here tonight. He’ll make sure Wyatt sees you with him, laughing and talking and holding your head up. In doing that, Evan will be illustrating to Wyatt that he’s so insignificant that nothing he does could possibly matter to either of you.”
“And to think,” Kate said with a rueful smile, “I’m supposed to be the one with the knowledge of psychology.”
“They don’t write psychology books to cover the mind-set of the elite few. Anyway, you get the picture now, right?”
“Right.”
“So, here is the only emotion you’re allowed to display when you bump into Wyatt tonight. Here is the only emotion that will get you some revenge—”
“I give up,” Kate said, smiling at Holly’s dramatic pause. “What is it?”
“Amusement! You are going to treat him with amusement—as if you know an amusing little secret that he doesn’t know.”
“What sort of secret knowledge could I possibly have?” Kate asked, frustrated.
“That is the very question he’ll start asking himself. That is the question that will trouble him for a long time.”
Matt and Meredith exchanged smiling glances with Mitchell as he tried to maneuver his aunt in their direction while she clung to his arm, chattering happily and making him stop every few steps so she could introduce him to someone else. He was over a foot taller than she, and in order to hear her, he had to tip his head way down.
Matt walked over to the bar and ordered vodka for Mitchell. By the time Matt returned with the drink, Mitchell was finally arriving with his aunt. Holding the drink out to him, Matt said, “Here’s your reward for the successful completion of a long and arduous journey.”
“I can use it,” Mitchell replied. Lifting the glass to his lips, he glanced up …
And he saw Kate.
He froze, staring, his brows drawn together in disbelief that she was here, and that the jean-clad girl with curly red hair who’d kissed him on the balcony in St. Maarten was the glamorous redhead in a sophisticated satin gown strolling casually through the roomful of wealthy socialites, many of whom were drawing her aside to kiss her on the cheek and chat with her.
“That’s Kate Donovan,” Matt provided, following his gaze. “Her father died recently, and I understand she’s going to try to run his restaurant. Have we ever eaten at Donovan’s when you were here?”
“No.”
“We’ll have to do that when you’re here next time.” Drily, he added, “I never had much luck getting reservations with less than two weeks’ notice when her father was alive. Maybe Kate will give us a break.”
Olivia happily made her own contribution to the discussion. “Did you know Kate just got engaged down in the islands?” she asked Meredith an
d Matt.
“No,” Meredith said, watching Mitchell’s gaze stray briefly to Kate again.
Olivia nodded emphatically and included Mitchell in the question. “Isn’t that a romantic way to get engaged?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said smoothly, curtly.
“The announcement was in the Tribune on Thursday,” she added. Peering forward, she saw Kate leaving the people who’d stopped her to talk, and Olivia called out cheerfully, “Kate, dear, come over here!”
Satisfied when Kate looked up and nodded, Olivia turned to Mitchell and added, “You’ve met the future bridegroom, Mitchell.”
“Have I?”
“Yes. She’s engaged to Evan Bartlett.”
Mitchell stared at the vodka in his glass. “Really, to Evan Bartlett?” he said with a cold, ironic smile.
Meredith’s gaze flew to Matt’s and he gave an imperceptible nod of understanding. This was Mitchell’s “Kate.”
Kate’s knees shook and she wished she had more than a few drops of champagne left in her glass to give her courage, but she managed to look calm and composed as she obeyed Olivia’s summons and prepared to face the man who had used her and left her. “Hello, my dear,” Olivia said. “I hope you and Evan will be very happy,” she added, and then pressed a kiss to Kate’s cheek.
It was the identical ritual Kate had been through fifty times that night—a greeting, followed by best wishes, followed by a salutatory kiss on the cheek. She’d assumed an hour before that this was some sort of prescribed engagement ritual known to everyone in Evan’s social circle. Mentally she braced herself for Mitchell to follow the same ritual as Olivia added with quaint formality, “May I present my nephew, Mitchell—”
Somehow, Kate managed to execute her plan flawlessly: She looked at Mitchell’s shuttered eyes as if she knew an amusing little secret. “We’ve already met,” she replied, leaning slightly forward and turning her cheek in automatic expectation of his salutatory kiss.
“—and we’ve already kissed,” Mitchell replied coolly, ignoring her cheek.
Matt stepped swiftly in front of a startled Olivia, smilingly tucked her hand through his arm, and escorted her toward her table.
Stunned, but utterly determined to appear lighthearted and calm no matter what he said or did, Kate tipped her head to the side and gave him a playful smile. “Haven’t you any good wishes for me?” she teased.
“Let me think of the right one.” He paused a moment; then he lifted his glass in a mocking toast, and said, “To your continued success in climbing up the social ladder, Kate.”
Mitchell’s accusation that she was a social climber caused Kate’s resolve to slip several notches. “Don’t tempt me to throw another drink at you!”
“That would be inexcusably middle class,” he said scathingly, “and you’re trying to move up into the big leagues. In the big leagues, we cheat, we lie, and we fuck each other’s brains out in private, but we do not indulge in public displays of temper.” Mitchell saw the banked emerald fires leaping dangerously into flames in her eyes, and he deliberately threw verbal gasoline at her. “Take some advice and remember the rules the next time you pick up a stranger in a hotel—”
“Shut up!” Kate pleaded furiously.
“—so that you can cheat on that pompous asshole you’re marrying!”
Kate’s temper and anxiety exploded simultaneously, and she silenced him with the only means available—she flung what was left of her champagne at his face. There wasn’t enough liquid to reach her target, but a few drops hit his chest and splotched his shirtfront, and with a mixture of fright, shame, and satisfaction, she braced for an explosive reaction.
“That gesture lacked the spontaneity it had in Anguilla—” he remarked imperturbably as he began casually flicking droplets off his shirt,“—however, this color is a definite improvement.”
Kate gaped at him; then she jerked her head to the left, where a solicitous waiter was already lowering a tray of champagne. Belatedly desperate to appear normal, Kate traded glasses with him and picked up a napkin with shaky fingers; then her attention swerved back to Mitchell as he continued in that same cool, conversational drawl, “Hand me your napkin and paste an apologetic smile on your face—”
Kate automatically handed him the napkin.
He took it and completed his sentence, his gaze on the spots he was dabbing off his shirt. “—or else Bartlett may figure out he’s marrying an amoral bitch with an ugly temper.”
“I’m warning you—” Kate said frantically, but she had nothing to threaten him with, so she glanced around to see if they were being observed and tightened her grip on the stem of her champagne flute, because it seemed like the only solid reality to cling to in a world gone mad.
When she didn’t complete her threat, Mitchell slanted a glance at her and noticed her fingers tightening on her champagne glass. Without taking his eyes off his shirtfront, he said in a silky voice, “If you so much as tilt that glass in my direction, you’ll be sprawled on your ass before the first drops hit the floor.”
Mistaking her stillness for indecision, he lifted his head and looked at her with eyes like shards of ice. “Test me, Kate—” he invited softly. “Go ahead. Test me.”
Kate’s stricken paralysis gave way to a trembling realization that repelled her so much it reduced her voice to a shaking whisper when she said it aloud. “My God … underneath all your phony charm and slick social polish, you’re actually … a monster.”
Instead of being insulted or angered, he looked at her in baffled amusement, then he chuckled and shook his head. “What were you expecting to find there, sweetheart—a heartbroken, jilted lover?”
Before Kate could react to that, he touched his glass to the edge of hers in a mockery of a toast and said in a bored voice, “Good-bye, Kate.”
He left, and Kate found herself staring straight into Meredith Bancroft’s narrowed eyes. Without a word, Meredith turned on her heel and followed him.
Chapter Thirty-five
“THAT KID GIVES ME THE CREEPS,” MACNEIL TOLD GRAY as he stood outside the interrogation room watching a tearful Billy Wyatt give Joe Torello the details surrounding his father’s “accidental” death. They’d picked the boy up that morning and brought him in for questioning, accompanied by Caroline. “I can’t believe she hasn’t called the family lawyer yet.”
Folding his arms over his chest, Gray contemplated Caroline’s somewhat surprising behavior. “I think she’s feared Billy had something to do with his father’s death from that day in my office when he called Wyatt for us. She looked shocked and a little sickened by his ad-lib performance. Later, when I told her the button found at the well was the same as the ones on Mitchell Wyatt’s coat, she accepted that very quickly. She didn’t ask me if we’d made sure, or checked all of his other clothes for identical buttons, or any of the questions you’d expect her to ask. Caroline has been on Chicago’s best-dressed list several times; she knows handmade buttons are very unusual.”
“I still can’t figure out why she hasn’t called a lawyer yet.”
Gray thought about that for a moment. “She loved William, and she loves Billy. I think she figures her only chance of saving her son is to make him tell the truth and get it off his chest. The family lawyer is Henry Bartlett, and she knows Bartlett will do whatever Cecil tells him to do. Cecil would tell him to shut Billy up and then find a way to get him off.”
“I don’t know how she can stand to be in the same room with the kid.”
“That’s easy. She’s blaming herself for not realizing how much damage Mitchell Wyatt’s presence in the family was doing to her son.”
In the interrogation room, Torello handed Billy a pen and a tablet of paper. “Before you write it all down, let’s go over everything one more time to make sure we’re all clear.”
Caroline was standing behind Billy, her hands protectively on his shoulders. “Does he have to go through it all again? Can’t he just write it down?”
&nbs
p; In response, Torello looked at the kid. “One more time, from the top.”
The fourteen-year-old rubbed his eyes with his palms and said shakily, “I went out to the farm with my dad, just like we planned to do that weekend. I thought we might scare up some quail on the Udall place, so I took the shotgun from the house. While we were walking, my dad told me he was going to sell our farm to the developer who’d bought Udall’s. We started arguing. I told him he couldn’t do that, and then—”
“Why did you think he couldn’t do that?”
“Because the farm was supposed to be mine!” Billy said fiercely, his meek attitude vanishing. “My grandpa Edward always said it would be mine someday, but he forgot to leave it to me in his will.”
“Okay, and then what happened?”
“My dad and I were arguing, and I was so upset that I wasn’t looking where I was going. I tripped and the gun went off.” Reaching for a box of tissues on the table, he scrubbed at his eyes. “My dad was only a few feet in front of me when he fell. I tried to give him CPR, but there was a big hole in his chest, and I got blood all over me, and I freaked out. I was scared my mom would never forgive me and I’d go to jail. The old well was just a few feet away, so I pulled the cover off of it, and I … I … You know the rest.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I dragged my dad over to it, and pushed him down the hole; then I threw the shotgun in after him.”
Caroline lifted one hand from his shoulder and briefly covered her eyes while a visible tremor shook her entire body.
“What about fingerprints on the shotgun?” Torello prompted. “What did you do about those?”
“Oh, yeah. I wiped them off on my jacket before I threw the gun down the well.”
“Then what?”
“I went back to the house, but then I started thinking I’d done the wrong thing. I should have called an ambulance and the police, so I called Grandpa Cecil, and I told him what had happened. I asked him what I should do. He told me to sit still and not call anyone until he got there. It took him a long time, because it had started to snow.”