The Wager

Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue

The sound of skidding tires and metal crashing against metal finally stopped. So did the screams. Lying in the rain beside the mangled car, Laura Harte opened her eyes and listened. But all she heard now was the steady beat of the August rain and the distant hum of traffic from the San Francisco road. She drew in a breath and winced at the sharp ache in her ribs.

Then she caught it—the metallic scent of blood. Tamping down on a spurt of panic, Laura struggled to sit up and gasped as white-hot pain shot through her shoulder. Her stomach pitched. Her vision blurred, but not before she’d noted the odd angle at which her arm hung. Gritting her teeth, she managed to half walk, half crawl from the twisted car to the side of the dark road where her mother lay in a crumbled heap. The fear that had bolted through her when she’d seen the lights of the truck coming at them hit Laura again as she stared at her mother’s pale face. “Momma, can you hear me?”

Her mother’s eyelashes fluttered. “Looks like I ruined your big celebration,” she said, but the grimace that followed diffused the lighthearted remark.

“I don’t care about the awards banquet,” Laura soothed. Right now she didn’t care about her job, the promotion, anything—only her mother and the ragged sound of her breathing. “You’re going to be all right. Just hang on while I go get help.”

“No. There’s not enough time,” her mother said, her voice raspy. She caught Laura’s hand, held it. “There are things I need to tell you…things I should have told you a long time ago. About me, about your father.”

“Shh. Don’t talk anymore. You need to save your strength.” Biting back the panic threatening to choke her, Laura tried to keep her voice calm as she said, “You can tell me all about your great romance with daddy again later. Right now, try to lie still. I’m going up to the road to flag down help. We need to get you to a hospital.”

“T-too late for…hospital.”

“No, it’s not,” Laura insisted. She didn’t care if her mother was a nurse. She was wrong. It wasn’t too late. It couldn’t be too late. Then she heard it—the squeal of sirens—and nearly wept with relief. “Listen! Do you hear that? Sirens! That means help is on the way. All you have to do is hang on a little longer.”

Her mother squeezed her fingers, but her grip had grown weaker. “I’m sorry, baby. I always thought I’d have more time,” she said, her voice thready. “I need to tell you about your father…to explain…”

“I know all about Daddy.” Did her mother’s insistence on talking about her dead husband mean the injuries were even worse than she feared? Hadn’t she read somewhere that when a person was dying their thoughts focused on the past? No! Her mother was not dying, Laura told herself as tears ran down her cheeks and mingled with the rain. To comfort herself as much as her mother, Laura repeated the oft-told tale. “Daddy was a navy aviator who came to the base hospital where you worked as a nurse. He was the most handsome man you’d ever seen, with beautiful blue eyes and a kind smile. The two of you fell madly in love and after a whirlwind courtship, you got married.” The beautiful, tragic tale of her parents’ romance cut short by her father’s death in Vietnam had been as much a part of her life as breathing. Her father may have died before she was born, but Laura had grown up loving him.

“We were so much in love,” her mother whispered.

“I know,” Laura said softly, growing more terrified with each moment by her mother’s labored breathing and the gray cast to her skin. Then she heard it—voices calling out, footsteps. “Over here,” Laura cried out. “And please…hurry!”

“Laura,” her mother gasped. Her fingers tightened. “Remember I love you.”

“Momma, don’t—”

“Promise me you’ll go to Paul. Tell him—” A harsh cough stopped her.

“Don’t talk anymore,” Laura ordered, alarmed by her mother’s coughing and the pain in her dark eyes. The hand that held hers seemed to have grown colder.

“Go to Paul. Tell him I said to give you the key to the second box. And please, try to understand, darling,” she said, her voice growing weaker still. “Try to forgive me.”

“Momma, you’re not making any sense. What key? What box—”

But it was too late. Her mother’s eyes closed. The hand holding hers went limp. And then came that anguished animal scream of pain. It wasn’t until much, much later that Laura realized that the scream she’d heard that night had come from her.

One

“You don’t have to do this.”

Laura looked up from the second safety-deposit box she was about to open into the solemn hazel eyes of Paul Shaw, her mother’s attorney and oldest friend, the honorary uncle who had seen her through the bleakness of her mother’s funeral. “Yes, I do. It was the last thing…” Her voice broke, and Laura swallowed past the lump in her throat at the mention of that terrible night. “It was important to her.”

Reaching across the table, her uncle covered her hands with his own. “It’s only been a few weeks since the accident. You’ve barely recovered physically, let alone emotionally. Going through the rest of Juliet’s things now is only going to upset you. Why don’t you wait a few weeks? Give yourself a little more time.”

But going through the remainder of her mother’s legal papers and documents would be painful whenever she chose to do it, Laura reasoned. She still didn’t understand why her mother had needed a second safety-deposit box or why her uncle had been listed as a signer and not her. But whatever her mother’s reasons had been, they no longer mattered. She needed to do this for herself, Laura admitted. Once she had, maybe she’d be able to put the nightmare of her mother’s death behind her. “I’d rather just get it over with now.”

For a long moment, her uncle said nothing. He simply stared at her, his expression somber. “I guess you’re right,” he said finally, and released her hand.

Laura lifted the lid on the metal box, fully expecting to see more bonds, stock certificates and legal papers. Instead there was only a single manila envelope with a file folder inside it. After opening the folder, Laura frowned at the faded newspaper clipping of her father. Since Richard Harte had been killed shortly after marrying her mother, there had been very few pictures of him. And in those rare photos that she and her mother did have of him, he was dressed in his navy uniform.

But not in this photo. In this black-and-white shot, her father wore a tuxedo. And the bride standing beside him was not her mother. Stunned and more than a little confused, Laura glanced up from the news clipping to her uncle. “I didn’t realize Daddy had been married before,” she said. She would have sworn she’d known everything there was to know about her father. But then again, Laura reasoned, she could understand her mother not wanting to share this bit of information with her.

Setting the clipping aside, she picked up the next item—a birth announcement dated nearly twenty-eight years ago from a Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Jardine upon the birth of their son. There was a second announcement from the same couple dated three years later announcing the birth of twin daughters. Laura frowned again, puzzled as to why her mother had kept these announcements and why they were in her safety-deposit box. “I don’t remember Momma ever mentioning anyone named Jardine. Does that name sound familiar to you, Uncle Paul?”

“He was…an old friend.”

At the hesitation in her uncle’s voice, uneasiness began to stir inside Laura. Telling herself that she was imagining things, she reached for the next newspaper clipping. This one was less faded, and her father didn’t look quite as young as he had in the previous one. Once again he was dressed in a tuxedo and standing with the other woman. With trembling fingers, Laura smoothed out the piece of paper and read aloud the caption beneath the photo. “Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Jardine at the Krewe of Rex Mardi Gras Ball in New Orleans.” Suddenly the room started to spin. Her legs nearly buckled. “This can’t be right,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “There’s been a mistake!”

“Laura, honey…”

Frantic, she began digging through the rest of the folder’s contents. There were more newspaper clippings, announcements, magazine articles, all accompanied by photos of her father—her father, the man whose picture sat in her living room, the father she had been told had died before she was born. This man couldn’t be her father, Laura told herself as she tried to stifle her growing panic. Her father was dead. Richard Harte had died twenty-nine years ago, while this man…this man had clearly lived far longer, long enough to have a wife and a family. She repeated the words to herself like a litany as she dug through the rest of the newspaper and magazine clippings, the articles and photos all bearing her father’s image—and all identifying him as Andrew Jardine. A sob tore from Laura’s throat as she spied the clipping dated only a dozen years ago of this smiling man who so resembled her father with his arms wrapped protectively around two young girls. “Andrew Jardine and twin daughters at school fund-raiser,” the caption read.

Pain ripped through Laura like a storm. She squeezed her eyes shut, curled her hands into fists. How many times growing up had she wished that her father had survived that plane crash? That he’d been there to see her grow up—to carry her on his shoulders, to teach her to dance, to sit beside her at the father-daughter banquets at school? And how many times had she consoled herself with the knowledge that had he lived, her father would have loved her, been proud of the person she had become?

Opening her eyes, Laura stared at the face in the news clippings. This man wasn’t her father. He only looked like him, she reasoned. Her mother would never lie to her—certainly never about something so important. Sucking in a breath, she told herself there was a simple explanation for the resemblance between the two men. There had to me. “Uncle Paul, who is Andrew Jardine? And why…why does he look so much like my father?”

“Laura,” her uncle said, his voice heavy with anguish, “Andrew Jardine is your father.”

Laura flinched, the words hitting her like a blow. She stared down at the damning news clippings, the images of the father she’d loved and never known. No, she wouldn’t believe it, refused to believe it. “You’re lying,” she accused, her voice hitching. She wrapped her arms around her middle. “He’s not my father. My father was Richard Harte. His plane was shot down in Vietnam, and he died before I was born.” She knew the story by heart, had listened to her mother’s tales about their great romance, the idyllic marriage cut short by her father’s untimely death. This man couldn’t be her father because that would mean…

“Listen to me, Laura. There never was a Richard Harte. Your mother made up the name. Your father was Andrew Jardine. And he didn’t die in Vietnam. He died in New Orleans about five years ago.”

“You’re lying!” Sobbing, she glared at him through tear-filled eyes. “Why are you doing this to me, Uncle Paul? Why are you making up such horrible lies?”

“It’s the truth, Laura. I swear it on your mother’s grave. It’s the truth.”

Oh, God! He was telling the truth, she realized. All these years, her mother and her Uncle Paul had lied to her.

Which meant her life had been a lie.

She wasn’t Richard Harte’s daughter.

There was no Richard Harte.

The heritage, the good name she’d been so proud of all her life, they weren’t really hers at all.

Hysteria bubbled inside her. How many choices had she made based on who she’d believed herself to be? How many times had she found a relationship lacking because the man had not measured up to the sterling image of her father? When all the while her father had actually been…She choked back another sob.

“I’m sorry, honey.”

She thought of her mother, the person she’d loved and admired most in the world. How could you, Momma? How could you have lied to me all these years?