Tears stung Kate’s eyes.
’ve already slept with him, haven’t you,” he concluded bitterly. took me two months to get you into bed, and he accomplished it in two days.”
’d better leave,” Kate said, and reached down for her suitcase.
’s have a name before you go.”
Wyatt.”
An expression of utter disbelief froze his face. Wyatt?” he repeated. ’ve gotten involved withMitchell Wyatt down here?”
know him?”
know him,” he clipped. ’s Cecil Wyatt’s bastard grandson.”
Other than being taken aback that Evan had apparently met Mitchell at some social function somewhere, Kate attached no particular significance to Evan’s statement. As she knew from boring experience, people in Evan’s lofty social class had widespread connections in many cities, they all kept close tabs on each other, and they gossiped incessantly about all that. Long ago, she’d stopped accompanying Evan to nearly all their gatherings. She was just a social worker and a restaurant owner’s daughter, and since her relationship with Evan remained undefined, they didn’t know what to do with her, other than to treat her courteously for Evan’s sake. Kate did the same thing for the same reason. Occasionally, Evan tried to relate a tale from one of these functions, but as soon as he started talking about who was there and how they were related to so-and-so, Kate’s brain automatically changed to another channel before he ever got to the point. She wasn’t completely sure who Cecil Wyatt was, so the revelation that Mitchell could be his grandson” had no effect.
is onehell of a big coincidence,” he said, sounding as if it might not be a coincidence at all.
is?” Kate asked, relieved that something was distracting him from his hurt feelings.
I met him at Cecil Wyatt’s birthday party, I specifically told him that you and I were going to be down here now, staying at the Island Club. He said he was going to be down here at the same time, staying on a friend’s boat. Forgive me for sounding paranoid, but I find it just a little strange that he supposedly ignored all the women at that party who were flinging themselves at him . . . and he hasn’t been able to find a single woman to suit him anywhere on any of these islands . . . until he ‘happened’ to bump into you—in a hotel that he isn’t staying at—and while I’m away. This whole thing doesn’t look like coincidence to me; it looks like payback.”
has no idea I know you,” Kate interjected. ’ve never told him your name.”
villa you’re staying in is in my name,” Evan retorted.
Kate saw no reason to argue that inconsequential point, but she was stunned that her desertion was driving him to such incomprehensible leaps of fanciful logic. for what?” she said calmly.
Wyatt tell you anything about his background?”
’m not interested in his pedigree or his legitimacy.”
get interested in it, Kate,” he ordered sharply. ’s an ugly little story, and it involves my father as well as me.”
,” she sighed, ’m listening.”
a few months ago Mitchell Wyatt believed he’d been abandoned at birth and that his name had been picked out of a phone book by someone. He attended the best boarding schools in Europe with some of the richest kids in the world, but he was led to believe he was a charity case.”
Inwardly Kate was appalled, but anxious to get this over with. does that have to do with you?”
father created and maintained the entire deception, and Wyatt discovered the truth eight months ago. Now Cecil has suddenly brought him out of obscurity to Chicago, and he’s parading him around like the heir apparent. My father and I are the only ones who know the truth about his pathetic past, and he’s bitter as hell that we do, as well as about the fact that my father actually orchestrated it for Cecil. At Cecil’s party, Wyatt came up to us and you could have cut through the hostility with a knife. I stepped in and tried to smooth things over with a discussion about our vacation in Anguilla. I told him about you and that your father had just died and that I was on my way to his wake.”
you saying you told him my name?” Kate said uneasily.
. At the time I did it, I was completely clueless about what was eating him. I had no idea until the next morning what Cecil and my father had done to Wyatt as a kid.
,” he said with a solemn smile, you go, will you answer a question for me?”
Kate realized he was bringing the ordeal to an end without forcing her to acknowledge that he could be right about Mitchell, and she loved him for that. He believed he was right, she knew, but he didn’t know Mitchell the way she did. Furthermore, no matter how straightforward he was trying to be, he was being jilted for another man, and that was understandably coloring his view of his adversary. She didn’t want to hurt him by siding with Mitchell, singing his praises, or playing devil’s advocate on his behalf. She wanted to get through this as soon as possible, doing as little damage to Evan’s pride as she could, and then she wanted to go to Mitchell and never let on that she knew the heartbreaking story of his childhood. He’d confide in her in his own time. He already had, a little bit. In answer to Evan’s question, Kate nodded and smiled. question is that?”
’ve known you for a long time, and you’re not easy to dazzle, Kate. Or maybe I just didn’t try the right methods. You never seemed to give a damn about social status, or money, or anything else like that, that I had to offer. So my question is this: How in the hell did he accomplish in two days what I couldn’t accomplish in four years?”
, please don’t do this—” Kate said, her eyes filling with sudden tears because she’d never imagined he loved her so much that he would humble himself this way.
me. I need to know. Wyatt’s aunt, Olivia Hebert, told people at the party that he’s building a house here on Anguilla. Have you secretly dreamed of a house on an island? Did he show you around it and make you envision yourself living in it?”
Kate managed to keep her expression noncommittal. It didn’t matter that Mitchell hadn’t mentioned building a house here. They’d been too busy making love and getting to know each other. ,” she said calmly.
the ferry coming over here, I heard that Zack Benedict’s yacht is down here, and according to what I read on the Internet, Wyatt is a bosom buddy of Benedict’s—and a big investor in his films. Benedict’s yacht is undoubtedly the friend’s boat that Wyatt said he was going to stay on down here. Did he take you for a cruise and promise you a life of leisurely cruising with movie stars? Is that what you’ve always wanted?”