Diamonds and Deceptions Read online

  Cursing the stupidity of inept secretaries in particular and the universe in general, Parks walked over to where the envelope lay and picked it up. When he tore it open, he found the subpoena inside. A subpoena ordering him to show up at a local hospital in order to have his DNA tested.

  This was that bastard’s work, he thought. Tyler Carlton. Marla’s young whelp had already been here once, claiming that he was his father, asking for recognition. As if that would ever happen. He’d thrown the money-grubber out, had security “escort” him out of the building. He’d screened his calls, making sure he had no contact with the pretender. If Carlton thought he was going to show up for testing, he was just as naive as his silly mother had been.

  About to throw the subpoena in the trash, Parks saw that it had been issued with the backing of the D.A.’s office. Damn Jackson. The man had been looking for a way to come after him for years.

  Furious, crumpling the offending document and throwing it to the floor, Parks stormed out of his office to go and fire his secretary’s substitute.

  Brooke smiled as her father gently helped ease her into the passenger side of his dark sedan. After three days in the hospital, she was more than ready to go home. The surgery to remove the bullet had gone well, and the surgeon who’d operated on her said that he’d never had a patient recover so rapidly. It was music to her ears.

  “I won’t break, Dad.”

  He’d almost lost her. He was taking nothing for granted again. Derek closed her door. “I don’t know about that.”

  Brooke winced a little as she buckled up, but the pain was outweighed by the triumph of regaining her independence. “The doctor said I’d be good as new with a little rest. Better.”

  “Let me pamper you for a while,” Derek said, getting behind the wheel. Starting up the car, he glanced at his daughter. Her color had returned, but there was a sadness to her now. A sadness that he knew had nothing to do with the terrible incident that could have cost Brooke her life and cost him everything. “You should forgive him, you know.”

  Brooke stared straight ahead at the road. She wasn’t going to go there anymore, wasn’t going to think about him, ache for him, silently rail at him. It was over, in the past, and she needed to move on. Her voice was hollow as she asked, “Who?”

  Derek sighed quietly. She was stubborn, just like Marla had been. In so many ways, Brooke reminded him of his late sister. “You know who I’m talking about, Brooke. Mark.”

  There was no point in talking about Mark. He hadn’t been to the hospital since she’d sent him away. If he’d cared, he would have tried again. In his place, she would have. Over and over. That he didn’t just meant she was right. He was probably relieved to be out of the charade he was forced to play. “How do we even know that’s his real name?”

  “It is.” Derek took a left turn at the light. “Brooke, he was just doing his job.”

  Her voice rose, emotion threatening to overwhelm her, but she managed to bank it down. “Don’t defend him to me, Dad. He could have been up-front with you, told you who he was.”

  Derek shook his head. “Not the way I was in the beginning. I would have just denied everything and sent him away.”

  Sent him away. Then none of this would have happened. And her heart wouldn’t be aching like this. “Would that have been so bad?”

  “Yes.” Surprised by his firm tone, Brooke turned to look quizzically at her father. “For one thing, he wouldn’t have been there to save your life.”

  “He wouldn’t have been there to mess it up, either.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.

  He hated seeing her like this, hated seeing his daughter in pain. “Love can only mess up your life if you turn your back on it.”

  Her defenses immediately snapped into place. “Who’s talking about love?”

  “I am. You are.” He glanced at her before looking back on the road. “You’re in love with him.”

  “No, I’m not,” she declared vehemently. Then, because she knew her father could see right through her, she relented. She’d never lied to him and she wasn’t going to allow Mark-whoever-he-was make her start now. “All right, but it’ll pass. Like the flu.”

  “No, it won’t.” His tone told her that he knew better. “Not your first one. Not if it’s real.”

  “You’re talking about Mom again, aren’t you?” Right now she just wasn’t in the mood for the old story. “Well, Dad—”

  The time for secrecy was over. All secrecy. “No, I’m not. Jenna was a wonderful woman who tried to make me forget the pain I felt.”

  “Pain?”

  He made up his mind. “What I’m going to tell you, I’ve never told anyone before. Not even your mother. But she knew without asking that there had been someone before her. Someone I could never forget. She accepted that and she was a remarkable woman.” He spared Brooke a glance, trying to gauge how to tell her. “But she’s not who I want to tell you about right now.”

  “More secrets?” Brooke felt her stomach quiver uneasily. How much more was there that she didn’t know about her father? It seemed as if ever since Mark had come into her life, nothing was what it had been before.

  “No, no more secrets,” he promised. “I want to get everything out in the open.” He took a breath, knowing this was going to shock her. “I fell in love with Walter Parks’s wife.”

  She could only stare at him. Her father and another man’s wife? Especially Walter Parks? It seemed too incredible to believe.

  “What?”

  “Yes, Anna Parks. She was a beautiful woman, full of life, full of energy. Walter sapped all that away.” He could hardly keep the animosity out of his voice. “He treated her as if she was some lowly servant to be ordered around and then ignored. It was clear that he’d just married her for her father’s money and connections. Once he had that, he stopped pretending that he had any interest in her whatsoever. He all but locked her up in that big house he insisted on buying.”

  She was trying to follow this. “If she was locked up, how did you—?”

  “Twenty-five years ago, Walter threw an elaborate party on his yacht.” He shivered as he recalled the events. But then, how was he to know that they would change his life so drastically? “He invited a lot of his so-called friends and business associates, among them my brother-in-law and his family. I was included. Walter had to be feeling particularly good about himself that day because he allowed Anna to come, too.”

  His voice grew soft as he recalled seeing the woman for the first time. “That’s when I met her. That’s when I fell in love with her. She didn’t have to tell me how unhappy she was, I could see it in her eyes.” Just as he could when he looked into Brooke’s, he thought. The light turned red and he turned to look at his daughter. “You know how there are some people you can just look at and know everything about them instantly?”

  Brooke sighed as she shook her head. “I would say yes, except that in my case, it turned out that I didn’t know anything.”

  He patted Brooke’s hand. The light turned green again. “You knew the right things, honey. Mark’s a decent man who loves you.”

  She didn’t want to talk about Mark. Not now, perhaps not ever. “What about Anna?” she pressed. “What happened between you and her?”

  He knew she was avoiding the subject, but he didn’t mind. It had been years since he allowed himself to relive the events of that night, and he needed to. Needed to if he was going to be able to be of use to the D.A.

  “Things got a little involved. The party went on for hours. Anna had a little too much to drink and was afraid that her husband would cause a scene if he saw her, so I took her downstairs to one of the cabins and sat with her. She fell asleep for a little while.

  “I left her alone and came back on deck. That’s when I found we’d gone back to the dock and everyone had left the party. Everyone except for Walter and Jeremy. They were topside, toasting something. I didn’t hear what was said, but I saw Walter slip something into
my brother-in-law’s drink.” His mouth became grim. “It had to be poison. Jeremy collapsed almost immediately, gasping and thrashing. Walter had this smug look on his face as he stood over him. When Jeremy finally stopped, Walter took his pulse. Then he put out to sea again. When we were out far enough, I saw Walter dispose of the body by throwing it overboard. He never saw me.

  “I went back downstairs and hid with Anna. The second Walter turned the boat around and put into the harbor, Anna and I waited for our opportunity. We slipped out the first chance we got. Not knowing what else to do, I brought her to my house. We wound up spending the night together.” He paused significantly, as if to relive those moments. “She was worried about her children, so in the morning, I took her home. Walter wasn’t there. It was the last time I ever saw her,” he concluded heavily.

  Brooke’s eyes were wide as she was reeled in. “Did he kill her, too?”

  “Not literally, but he killed her spirit.” And for that, more than any of the other offenses on Walter’s’ extensive list, he would always hate the man. “I heard that he sent her off to a sanitarium, convinced everyone that she’d had a nervous breakdown. No one contested it. I should have. But I didn’t. I went to Marla and told her what I saw.

  “She was afraid Walter would kill me if he knew what I had witnessed, so she told me to go as far away as I could. She did the same after the police told her the official verdict for Jeremy’s death was drowning. She figured Walter had found someone to bribe. I wandered around for a little bit, but I discovered that I couldn’t stay away from San Francisco.”

  He smiled ruefully at his daughter. “I guess I kept hoping Anna would come back. Then I met your mother and, well, you know the rest.” Gripping the steering wheel, he made a sharp right before resuming his narrative. “My point is, I missed my chance because I allowed myself to get overwhelmed. Don’t you do the same.”

  In this department, Brooke thought, she and her father were worlds apart. She didn’t need that lying son of a gun, Mark, in her life. She would never know when he wasn’t lying. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Dad, but this is different.”

  “Every situation is different,” he said, though he didn’t see her point, “but he loves you.”

  Despite everything, she could feel her heart quickening inside her chest. “Did he tell you that?”

  Derek would have liked to give her that added assurance, but there were to be no more lies between them, not even little white ones. “Some things don’t need words.”

  And some things, she thought, shifting forward in her seat again and staring straight ahead, do.

  “Hey, Maddy, hear the latest?”

  Maddy Jones glanced up from her cluttered desk at the Chronicle. The as-yet-to-be-taken-seriously journalist looked at the man, Colin Woods, peering into her cubicle. As she did so, she eased a folder closed. Her desk was littered with things she had yet to get to. It was a display of chaos, in direct contrast to her mind, which kept a thousand things in their proper order.

  “Which latest?”

  The man moved in closer, lowering his voice, enjoying his moment. “My source at the D.A.’s says that it looks like there’re more apples on the Walter Parks tree than the old man’d like us to know about.”

  “Oh?” She didn’t even pretend to be above this kind of gossip. It was what got her blood moving. “Tell me more.” And then a question struck her. “What’s the D.A.’s office got to do with it?”

  “They’re the ones backing a subpoena. Robert Jackson handled it personally.” The current D.A. was thought to be the darling of the tabloids because he made no secret of the fact that he was systematically bedding every attractive woman within a hundred-mile radius. “Seems he subpoenaed Old Man Parks to give a DNA sample to prove that this claim is legitimate.”

  She laughed shortly, picturing the uptight, condescending gem emperor. “Bet that makes Parks mad as hell.”

  “No bet.”

  “Thank you, Colin.” She flashed a grin at him. “You just made my day.”

  Everything else in Maddy’s well-organized head was pushed back. She could smell a media sensation in the offing.

  He sat in his car, watching the house. Mark carefully rotated his neck and shoulders, trying to get rid of a nagging kink. He’d followed Derek and Brooke from the hospital. When they arrived home without incident, he’d positioned himself across the street, a silent, free-lancing guardian angel.

  There was no way he was going to take a chance on Parks sending out a second hit man to do the job right. Especially not after Tyler had convinced the D.A. to issue that subpoena asking for a sample of Parks’s DNA.

  The old bastard had to know the end was within sight. That the things he’d tried to keep buried all these years were finally beginning to surface. That had to make him desperate. Parks knew that once Derek talked, he would be facing a murder charge. They couldn’t kill him twice. He had nothing to lose by killing Derek.

  Unlike him, who had everything to lose.

  Who was he kidding? He’d already lost it, Mark silently taunted himself. But lost it or not, there was no way he was going to take a chance on anything happening to Brooke or to her father. Not while he was alive.

  He reached for the sandwich that was already growing stale on the seat next to him. It was going to be a long night.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Brooke’s voice seemed to echo up and down the long corridor as she looked at her father anxiously. “I mean, if you wanted to sell the store, pull up stakes and just move away, I’d go with you. There’s no need to put yourself through this.”

  She knew it was the right thing to do, but after the incident with the gunman, she knew where her priorities were. She would never forgive herself if anything ever happened to her father because of this.

  “I’m sure,” he assured her. “Besides, there’s not a box big enough to pack my conscience away in, Brooke.” He patted her hand that rested on the wooden bench. “I’ve put this off for too long. Maybe if I’d come forward right away, a lot of people’s lives would be different.”

  So now she knew what the pervading sadness in her father’s eyes was all about. “You’re thinking of Anna again, aren’t you?”

  “Among others.” Anna might not have been shipped off to God only knew where, and Marla wouldn’t have packed up the kids and disappeared. He looked now at his daughter, running a hand affectionately along her cheek. “About the only good thing that did come out of it, besides you, is that you met Mark.”

  She folded her hands primly before her. “Dad, let’s not go through that again.”

  “I’ll go through it as many times as it takes to make you come around.” He felt he owed that to Mark. “He’s been protecting us, you know.”

  Brooke blinked. She hadn’t a clue what her father was talking about. “Who?”

  “Mark.” He was surprised she’d remained oblivious to it. Brooke was usually sharper than that. “I saw his car outside the house. He followed me to and from the bookstore while you were in the hospital. His car was two lengths back when we left for court this morning.” He saw the frown forming on Brooke’s face. “Whether you like it or not, the man’s become our guardian angel. That says a great deal about a man when he doesn’t think he stands a chance in hell of getting the woman he loves to ever forgive him.”

  Brooke pressed her lips together. But before she had a chance to say anything, the assistant D.A. was opening the outer office door. He stepped back as far as he could in order not to take up any room. “The D.A. is ready for you, Mr. Ross.”

  Mr. Ross.

  That, Brooke thought as she rose to her feet, was going to take some getting used to.

  Giving her father an encouraging smile, she hooked her arm through his. “Okay then, let’s go, Dad. ‘Second star to the right, straight on until morning.’”

  Derek smiled. “I always did favor Peter Pan.”

  Robert Jackson, the tall imposing D.A., dominated the small
office the same way he did a courtroom, but Brooke’s eyes were immediately drawn to the six-foot, dark-haired man sitting beside him.

  The latter had the exact same coloring as she did, the same black hair, the same green eyes. He could have easily been her brother.

  Or her cousin.

  Which was exactly what he was, she quickly learned once the introductions were made.

  Nothing could have pleased her more.

  “You know,” she confided as she shook his hand with her free one, “until this moment, I thought there was just my father and me. I always wanted to be part of a large family.”

  “Then,” Tyler told her with a smile, “are you in for a treat.” He glanced toward Jackson. “Okay if I show the others in?”

  “Others?” Brooke asked as the D.A. nodded.

  Rather than answer her, Tyler opened the door to an adjoining room. “Come on in,” he said to his siblings, “it’s time to let Brooke and Uncle Derek know what they’re in for.”

  Stunned, Brooke exchanged looks with her father as four people entered the room, three in the front and one lagging slightly behind. The one male in the group looked like an exact carbon copy of the man she’d just been told was her cousin.

  Tyler put his arm around the other man’s shoulders. “This is Conrad, my twin brother. And these two lovely ladies—” he nodded at the two who had entered first “—are my sisters, Sara and Kathleen.”

  Brooke’s attention was completely riveted to the latter. She instantly recognized the woman’s face from the dust jacket of the book that was lying on her nightstand. “Kathleen,” she echoed.

  Kathleen, the oldest of the four, was the only one whose hair was blond and whose eyes were blue. It set her apart from the others as did, she felt, her talent. She couldn’t help the slightly superior smile that nudged at her lips. “Yes.”

  “Kathleen Carlton,” Brooke repeated, still unable to believe what her eyes were telling her. “Like the mystery writer.”

  It was obvious to everyone that this was one of the things Kathleen loved best about what she did—the recognition. “I am the mystery writer.”