The Tycoon's Son

He took a swallow from his coffee cup, deliberately stalling before his response. “Are you expecting someone?”

“Uh...no. No one in particular. Why do you ask?”

“You keep glancing out the window. I just thought maybe you were expecting a delivery or something.” Her behavior continued to be what he considered strange, at least for the Vicki Dalton he once knew—back before his whole world turned upside down on him.

He was now more convinced than ever that she was hiding some kind of secret and he was determined to find out what it was. In spite of the fact that she had hurt him and left him empty and angry, she had remained the one and only woman he truly wanted. Now, for reasons he did not clearly understand, they had been thrown together again. He had a second chance and he was not going to let it go without a fight. He would find out exactly what had happened all those years ago when she walked out on him.

“Vicki...” He saw the way she jumped at the sound of his voice. “Are you all right? I’ve never seen you so jittery.” His words came out as half concern and half irritation.

The buzzer intruded into their conversation once again. Someone had opened the front door of the market. Vicki breathed a sigh of rehef as she turned to see who it was. Her relief immediately turned to anxiety when she saw Alice Thackery.

Wyatt eyed the disagreeable woman. He lowered his voice so that only Vicki could hear him. “We’ll continue this conversation later. I want to get out of here before she pins me to the wall about something I might have done twenty-five years ago.” He nodded curtly to Alice, acknowledging her presence as he left.

Alice watched him until he was out of sight, then turned toward Vicki. Her tightly pursed lips only added to the harshness of her unsmiling features. Her tone was sarcastic and condemning. “Well, I see it didn’t take long for Henry’s boy to come sniffing around here.”

Vicki refused to acknowledge her comment. “Is there something I can help you with, Mrs. Thackery?”

The woman ignored Vicki’s question, preferring to continue with her train of thought. “He has live-in servants up there, you know.” She divulged the information as if she were gossiping about some sort of illicit behavior. “No reason for him to be doing his own marketing.” She pointedly stared at Vicki, as if waiting for her to answer some sort of unspoken accusation.

By no stretch of anybody’s imagination did Vicki feel she owed Alice Thackery any type of explanation, nor did she have any intention of giving her one. She stood her ground, determined to wait it out.

The awkward silence lasted for several seconds before Alice finally became flustered and grabbed the nearest thing to her without even looking to see what she had picked up. She plopped it on the counter with an exaggerated flair. “I’ll take this.”

“Are you sure?”

Alice refused to look at the item she had placed on the counter, as if to do so would have cast doubt on her selection. She pursed her lips in a hard line as she stared straight ahead. “I’m sure.”

Vicki suppressed a grin as she rang up the sale for a package of bubble gum. She could not stop that same grin from turning up the corners of her mouth as she watched Alice Thackery huff out of the market and down the sidewalk, passing the sheriff’s station and volunteer fire department on the way toward her house in the next block. Then the smile slowly faded.

Apprehension shuddered through her. She had the uncomfortable feeling that the disagreeable busybody was going to be responsible for causing her a lot of problems. If anyone would be able to spot the distinct physical resemblance between Wyatt and Richie, it would be Alice Thackery. Vicki could almost feel the dark clouds gathering overhead.

Thankfully, the rest of the morning passed with business as usual, until about eleven o’clock.

“Vicki.” Wyatt stepped through the connecting door, his sudden appearance startling her. His voice held an air of absolute authority. “I think we should finish our conversation now.”

Her nerves were pulled about as taut as they could be without snapping. Wyatt, Mrs. Thackery and now Wyatt again. Would this day never end? She took a steadying breath before looking in the direction of Wyatt’s voice. “What conversation was that?” He was at her side before she was even aware that he had moved.

His manner softened, but there was still an antagonistic edge to his voice. “The one where I was about to ask you to have lunch with me. We could talk over old times and catch up on what’s been going on without interruptions from your customers.”

She closed her eyes for a moment as she tried to collect the panic welling inside her and shove it back into some out-of-the-way corner. Was it her imagination or had he added extra emphasis to the words old times? The last thing she wanted to discuss with Wyatt Edwards was old times. “I couldn’t possibly have lunch with you. I have to be here. Noreen doesn’t come to work until two o’clock.” She hurried over to the magazine rack and began straightening the periodicals, just as she had done the day before.

He stood behind her, reached over her shoulder, and took the magazine from her hand. He replaced it on the rack, then grabbed her shoulders and turned her around to face him. He leveled a stern look at her. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Vicki, but we have to talk. We need to clear the air about—” He felt her body stiffen and saw the way her eyes filled with a very real fear that he did not understand—a fear that threatened to turn into all-out panic.

She shook loose from his grasp, determination on her face as she stepped back from him. “I...I’m very busy here. I don’t have time to talk about unimportant things.”

“Unimportant things?” He felt a stab of anger that carried over into his voice. She had walked out on him, and he wanted to know why, needed to know why—had to know why. “I’m talking about us—about what happened fifteen years ago.”

She turned away so that she did not have to look at him. She could not keep the anger out of her voice. “The past is just that, Wyatt. It’s the past. It’s over and done and can’t be changed. Now, if you’ll excuse me...” She walked away from him without waiting for a response.

How dare he try to dredge up all the pain and humiliation he put her through fifteen years ago! He had walked out on her without so much as a goodbye note. He hadn’t even waited around long enough to discover that she was pregnant with his child. She was afraid to look back, afraid her anger and her newly opened wounds would cause her to blurt out that most closely guarded and important secret of her life.

“It’s not over, Vicki. And it won’t be over until things are settled between us. I want answers—”

She whirled around and glared at him. Fifteen years of pent-up emotion tried to get out just as desperately as she tried to keep it under control. It was a toss-up as to which would win. She did not want a confrontation with him, she just wanted him to leave her alone. “Drop it, Wyatt. Let it die a quiet and welldeserved death.” Her words were strained, and she turned away again before she said something she would regret.

He grabbed her arm and spun her back to him. “I have no intention of leaving it alone, not until I’m satisfied that things are finally settled.”

“Settled?” She felt her eyes widen in shock. She could not believe what she was hearing. “There’s nothing to settle.”

He had tried to forget her, to put what she had done to him out of his mind, but he had never quite been able to accomplish it. She had disappeared out of his life without so much as a word, and had never made any attempt to contact him. He never understood why she had gone away. Then he heard she had married. That news had crushed every hope he had secretly harbored that she would some day return so they could be together again—until now.

Vicki did not even have time to catch her breath before he pulled her into his arms. At first his embrace was somewhat tentative, but he quickly gained confidence. Memories came flooding back, every feeling she ever had for him ignited deep inside her. She immediately shoved away from him, but not in time. His embrace had made a shambles of her self-control. His sky-blue eyes had the smoky blue she remembered so well, conveying the depth of his passion. It was shockingly apparent that the physical pull between them was still as strong as ever, much to her dismay.

“No, it’s not settled, Vicki. It’s a long way from being settled.” Then Wyatt tmrned and walked out the door.

A very shaken Vicki staggered backward a couple more steps, finally bumping into the counter. Her heart pounded so hard that she had trouble catching her breath. Everything she had so desperately tried to erase from her life had resurfaced with astonishing clarity. Wyatt Edwards seemed to have more control over her emotions than she did. His embrace left her with the uncomfortable feeling of being helpless...and extremely vulnerable.

It took a huge effort to pull herself together and continue with her workday, but somehow she managed it.

At two o’clock Noreen arrived promptly for work. “Good afternoon, Vicki.”

“Hi, Noreen. Things are pretty quiet around here. I think I’ll run home for a little while. I should be back in a couple of hours.” Vicki grabbed her purse from beneath the counter and called over her shoulder as she left the market, “If you need me before that, give me a call.”

Vicki hurried the one block to her house. She went directly to her bedroom, shut the door, then sat on the edge of her bed. She hugged her shoulders in an attempt to make her body stop trembling. She could still feel his arms around her. It had affected her the same way it had when he held her close fifteen years ago. She needed to pull her emotions together and somehow find a way to deal with this latest emotional upheaval in her life.

If only there had been some sort of warning, she could have done something to prepare herself. But now it was too late. She had once again felt the passion of Wyatt Edwards and knew in an instant how much she had missed his touch.

She went to her closet and stared at the small locked box on the top shelf. After what seemed like an eternity, she took it from the shelf and set it on the bed. She paused a minute, uncertain about whether or not she really wanted to open it, then retrieved the key and unlocked it. She carefully removed a stack of photographs, taking one and putting the others back in the box. She stared at it for a long time. It was a picture of Wyatt and her at a party, the night they had ended up making love on the beach.

It was the night their son had been conceived.

She closed her eyes as she held the photograph to her heart. In a barely audible voice she whispered the feelings that she had tried so desperately to bury. “I’ve tried to purge you from my existence, erase the memory of what I thought we once meant to each other. But, God help me, I havcn’t been able to do it.”

She forced away the tears that tried to well in her eyes. It had been a little less than a month after the photo was taken that Wyatt had disappeared from her life. His father said Wyatt had felt smothered by her. She tried to think, tried to put herself back in that place again. Was it possible that she had unconsciously made emotional demands on him following their night of lovemaking? She had not meant to. Making love had been as much her responsibility as it had been his.

She shook her head. She did not know what had happened.

She replaced the photograph, locked the box, and put it back on the shelf. Then she did something she had never done before. Rather than going back to work, she poured herself a glass of wine and took it to the glass-walled back porch.

She sat all alone and sipped her wine while she thought about the future. She had handled the shock of losing her mother when she was still in high school, of Wyatt leaving her, of discovering she was pregnant with Wyatt’s child, of her husband dying and now her father’s death. She did not know if she had enough strength left to endure any more—and that most certainly included Wyatt’s sudden reappearance in her life.

Richie had been without a father and role model during his formative adolescent years. He would soon be fifteen. Somehow she had to find a way to make everything work out while seeing to it that her son was protected from any more emotional upheavals. She sat quietly on the porch, vacillating between memories from the past, the problems of the present, and her fears of what the future held.

“Mom! What are you doing home?”

Richie’s voice startled her. She had not heard him come in. She glanced at her watch. “Oh...I didn’t realize it was so late.” She looked over at her son, who was standing in the doorway. “I just needed a little break from work, that’s all.” She stood up, taking her empty wineglass with her. “I’d better get back to the store. You get busy on your homework and I’ll start dinner in a couple of hours.”

“I don’t have any homework. I did it all at school.”