The Parks Empire: Secrets, Lies and Loves: Romancing the Enemy

Walter Parks paced the floor in quick, furious strides on Monday morning. Someone was checking into his life, both personal and business, and he didn’t like it, not one bit.

Get rid of one problem, it seemed, and two appeared. That was certainly the case in the present situation. Marla was dead, but her brats weren’t.

Just to be sure the past stayed in the past, he’d had the detective check on them. One, a rather well-known mystery writer, had moved from Denver to New York. One of the twin boys had stayed in Colorado. So far, so good.

He paced some more as rage rose to a choking level inside him. He wanted to punch somebody. He wanted to rip something to shreds, to destroy the things that stood in the way of his complete freedom and relief from worry.

Like the two Carltons who now lived in San Francisco.

Dammit, twenty-five years was long enough to suffer for a moment of madness. He’d paid for it. He’d spent his life always having to watch over his shoulder, wondering if Marla would speak up—

“Mr. Parks, Cade is here,” his secretary interrupted his pacing with the announcement.

He glanced toward the open door. Connie was forty-three, a single mother with a gifted son who attended the university at Berkeley, thanks to him. She’d worked for him for fifteen years. He provided her with a good living and a few other perks. In return, she was a totally reliable secretary and a discreet mistress.

Why couldn’t all of life be as simple?

“Tell him to come in,” Walter said impatiently. “Close the door,” he said to his son as soon as Cade was inside.

A fleeting expression of annoyance crossed the boy’s face. Well, he could just be annoyed. Walter was furious.

“Do you know who lives next door to you?” Walter demanded as soon as they were alone.

Cade was surprised by the question. “Yes, Sara Carlton,” he admitted warily. Knowing his father, he felt there was more to the question than paternal curiosity.

“Yes. Sara Carlton,” Walter repeated in a nasty tone.

Cade waited until the irritation settled before he asked, “What about her?”

His father paced the room like an angry lion, caged and resenting it, ready to lash out at anyone who got in his way. Cade was familiar with Walter’s temper. Usually he waited it out without saying much. At the moment, he didn’t like either his father’s attitude or the subject.

“Do you also know her brother is a detective on the police force here?”

Cade nodded.

“And you never thought to mention it to me?”

“No. Why should I?”

“Someone has been making inquiries about…about the family business,” Walter announced, his face becoming red as his anger rose higher. A vein throbbed in his neck.

Cade noted the hesitation and knew his father had changed what he’d been about to say. Lately, in dealing with the family patriarch, he’d had uneasy hunches that all was not well. His father’s mood swings had grown increasingly unpredictable.

“How do you know?” Cade asked.

His father paused again, as if deciding on how much to tell him. “Someone claiming to be with the IRS called the bank and asked about the company’s accounts and my personal ones. When I called the local IRS chief, he indicated they were looking into certain matters on companies dealing with imported diamonds. He wouldn’t say why.”

“There could be lots of reasons—money laundering or gem smuggling from countries engaged in war. The press calls them ‘conflict diamonds.’” Cade shrugged. “Since we don’t do business with those countries or with smugglers, and the taxes are in order, we don’t have anything to worry about.”

Walter stopped pacing and spun around. “A man in my position always has to worry.”

“Why?” Cade asked, keeping his tone neutral.

His father glared at him so hotly, Cade wouldn’t have been surprised if a laser beam burned right through his forehead.

“People are envious of those who pull themselves up and make it in life.”

By marrying into the business, Cade thought but didn’t voice the accusation. For a second, he felt the overwhelming loss of his mother. Like Sara, his world had changed when he was four. He’d never understood why she had to be sent away.

When asked, his father had sorrowfully admitted that Anna Parks was “unstable” and couldn’t be trusted outside the mental hospital, that she was in the most progressive sanitarium in the world and, if she could be helped, the doctors there were the ones to do it. All he would tell the children was that Anna was safe and happy, insofar as she could be, and living in Switzerland.

Seeing his father’s agitation, Cade tried to figure out what the old man was getting at. “So, is someone threatening you in some way? Did you get a poison pen letter or a call or something like that?”

“No,” Walter snapped. “But I don’t trust the Carlton brother and sister. They’re here to make trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Knowing Sara and having met her brother, Cade couldn’t bring himself to take his father’s odd worries seriously.

“Their father…”

Again the odd hesitation, Cade noted.

“Jeremy Carlton and I were partners on a project long ago,” Walter said, his eyes narrowed as if he saw directly into the past. “Things were going bad for him, but I didn’t know he was in financial trouble. Anyway, there was a rumor about smuggled diamonds, but I never paid it much attention. When Jeremy drowned—”

“Aboard a yacht our company owned at the time,” Cade interrupted. “I was curious and checked into it after Sara moved in next door,” he said when his father gave him a questioning glare.

“Yes,” Walter said. “He drowned and that was the end of it. His family apparently lost everything. They moved to Colorado and I lost track of them after that.”

“I see,” Cade murmured. “What kind of project were you and Carlton working on?”

Walter’s strained features relaxed somewhat. “We were going to produce the most expensive diamond necklace in the world, using nothing but the rarest of flawless stones. That was to be our launch into the market for the ultrarich.”

“Celebrity chasing,” Cade murmured, a degree of scorn showing through.

“Not celebrities. The truly rich,” his father asserted, “are those who can afford a string of polo ponies, who have their own planes and seagoing yachts. Their net worth is over half a billion, and they take pains to stay out of the public eye.”

“A very small market base.”

“In that price range, we wouldn’t have needed many sales to ensure our fortune.”

A chill crept along Cade’s nape at his father’s smile. Cold, greedy and calculating wouldn’t begin to describe it. “The company has done just fine over the years.”

“We’re overextended,” Walter stated flatly.

“The economy has slowed down some, but the rich are with us always. And they always want something bigger and better than their neighbors.”

“In business, a man can never relax. I want you to have the Carlton girl fired.”

“What?” Cade wasn’t sure he’d heard right.