Envy(129)

“I was puzzled when I first read about the vasectomy,” Daniel admitted. “Wouldn’t a child have secured your ties to us and the Matherly fortune? And therein lay the answer.” He looked Noah full in the face. “You didn’t want a child competing with you for a share.”

Noah uncrossed his ankles. “That’s the first thing you’ve said during this conversation that’s incorrect, Daniel.”

“You deny it?”

“Not at all,” he said blandly. “You’re wrong in that I’d ever settle for a measly share.”

Daniel snorted with contempt. “Don’t count your chickens yet, Noah. That document I signed tonight is worthless.”

“You think so?” he asked smoothly.

“I was only playing along, seeing how far you would go. What I really find galling is that you attached Howard Bancroft’s name to that document. He would never have drawn up a—”

“Oh, but he would,” Noah said, interrupting. “He did. Rather than let it be circulated that his father was a Nazi officer who was personally responsible for exterminating thousands of his kindred.”

Daniel received that news like a punch to the gut. “You used that to coerce him?”

“So,” Noah said with a slow smile, “you knew about his whoring mother?”

“Howard was my friend.” Daniel practically strained the words through his clenched teeth. “He confided in me years ago. I admired him for making his life into what it was instead of letting what he couldn’t change defeat him.”

“Well, it did, didn’t it? In the long run, he couldn’t live with the tragic truth.”

“A truth you threatened to spread,” Daniel said, seeing the clear picture now.

Noah shrugged and smiled beatifically. “See, that’s the difference between you and me, Daniel. Come to think of it, between me and just about everybody. You go after what you want, but you fall short of total commitment. Your conscience has drawn an invisible line, and you never step across it. You’re shackled by principles and ethics. And while that moral demarcation is admired, it’s terribly restricting.

“I, on the other hand, suffer no such impediment. I am willing to do whatever it takes to get what I want. I stop at nothing, and I let nothing stand in my way. My credo is: Find a man’s weakness, and you own him. To achieve the goal I’ve set for myself, I’ll go to any lengths.”

“Even to talking a man, a good man, into committing suicide.”

“I didn’t talk Howard into anything. He thought that up all by himself. Although I’ll admit that he did me a huge favor when he stuck that pistol in his mouth. What do you suppose he was thinking about when he pulled the trigger? Heaven? Hell? His mother with her legs spread? What?”

Daniel’s beloved friend Howard had suffered untold heartache over his terrible secret. All his life he had tried to atone for it with good deeds, kindness, and tolerance. At last, he had come to terms with it.

Then this travesty of a human being had tortured him with it. Worse yet, he could stand there and smile about it.

Daniel realized he was looking into the face of a pure, unrepentant depravity. Noah’s indifference to the evil he had done enraged him. Tears of godly wrath blurred his vision. Heat blasted through his veins as though the temperature of his blood had reached the boiling point in a matter of heartbeats.

“You are despicable,” he growled, and charged up the last two steps.





Chapter 30


Parker was the first thing Maris saw when she opened her eyes, and nothing could have pleased her more. He was sitting in his wheelchair beside the bed watching her while she slept. Even before stirring, she smiled into her pillow and asked drowsily, “How’d you manage to get up and into your chair without waking me?”

“Practice.”

She sighed and stretched luxuriously, then sat up and drew the sheet as high as her collarbone. “What time is it?”

“Time for you to clear out. Unless you want Mike to catch you flagrante delicto.”

He was wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. His shoulders and arms, as she knew, were well formed, the muscles taut and defined. His belly was flat, and beneath it, his sex was appreciably full, even while relaxed.

Beyond his lap were his legs. Last night she had made a point to show no interest in them because of his self-consciousness. Apparently, their lovemaking had convinced him that his apprehension was unnecessary. He wouldn’t be sitting here now with his legs exposed, making no attempt to cover them, if he didn’t want her to see them.

So she looked.

And it was impossible to conceal her reaction. She stopped just short of gasping out loud, but the sudden catch in her breath couldn’t have been missed, especially since he was watching her so closely.

His features were rigidly set. His eyes were shuttered. His voice sliced like a razor. “I warned you that it wasn’t pretty.”

“Oh, my darling, you were terribly, horribly hurt.”

She slid from the bed to kneel in front of him. Shark attack was the first thing that came to mind. She’d seen pictures of victims who’d barely escaped with their lives, having huge chunks of their flesh mangled or ripped away. Parker’s scars could be compared only to something that vicious.