She, in turn, hadn’t mentioned the Jupiter Stones and her afternoon with Sofi and David Rubin. There were too many uncertainties, and not a single guarantee that confiding in her grandfather would mean he’d return the favor. Likely enough, he’d clam up even more. And what David had told her was too fresh, too raw. It was one thing to believe Tam had gotten hold of a few sapphires and was smuggling them into the states as a nest egg-not that she’d have needed one with Jared. But maybe she’d wanted to make a life for herself and Mai without him. After all, what did Rebecca really know about their relationship and the terms they’d come to before Tam’s death? Jared certainly hadn’t told her.
Still, it was quite another thing for Tam to have gotten hold of Empress Elisabeth’s Jupiter Stones. Until she knew more, Rebecca would keep her mouth shut.
Not a gracious loser, she left the parlor and tried eavesdropping from the stairs. She couldn’t hear much. She was about to give up when her grandfather appeared in the parlor door and glared up at her. “I’m dismayed,” he said, “to see that the Blackburns’ sense of honor and decency has deteriorated to the point a granddaughter of mine would stoop to listening in on a private conversation.”
Rebecca jumped up and peered over the mahogany side-rail down at him. “Jared saw our man, didn’t he? He must have gone to San Francisco before coming here to Boston -”
“Rebecca, if you persist, Jared will leave and neither you or I will learn anything. So I suggest for once in your life you don’t cut off your nose to spite your face and please retire to your room. I’m perfectly capable of dealing with Jared on my own.”
Her grandfather always went into his haughty Bostonian act when he was on the verge of losing his temper. Rebecca didn’t respond and headed upstairs and stayed there.
She passed a near-sleepless night. There were haunting memories of Jared’s smile, echoes of the things he used to whisper to her when they’d made love, memories of the way he’d made her feel. She doubted he was ever tormented by similar memories of her. She hadn’t been his first lover.
And there were questions that kept her awake. What-ifs and fears. About the Frenchman and how his reappearance would affect their lives. About what had so unnerved Jared Sloan that he’d ventured back to Boston after so many years, back to the Eliza Blackburn house where he’d be accosted by enough uncomfortable memories of his own. About her grandfather and what he’d known for twenty-six years and had never told anyone, at least not her.
About the Jupiter Stones.
And about Mai, the hours-old infant she’d rescued from the chaos that was Saigon in April 1975. Sometime toward dawn, Rebecca flicked on her bed-stand lamp and examined the pretty, intelligent face of Jared Sloan’s daughter on the front page of The Score. If only Mai could have known Tam.
“My baby means everything to me,” Tam had told Rebecca not long before she had died.
Would the Frenchman hurt Mai?
When she still couldn’t sleep, Rebecca tried to accept her grandfather for being the taciturn, unsparing man he was. He was hardest on those he cared about most-and particularly on himself.
By five-thirty, she gave up, took a shower and got dressed, not bothering with anything remotely corporate, just a shirt, jeans and sneakers. She let her damp hair dry haphazardly. Downstairs she peeked in the front parlor: Jared was sacked out on the couch with an ancient afghan pulled up over him and his clothes lying in a heap on the floor. He wasn’t tossing and turning. It was all Rebecca could do not to march in there and wake him up.
Athena was already studying anatomy at the kitchen table. Rebecca helped herself to a cup of coffee and joined her, averting her eyes from the grim photographs. A sturdy, brilliant woman, Athena was of the unshakable conviction that into each woman’s life must come at least one bona fide rake of a man. Rebecca couldn’t resist telling her that her rake was conked out in the front parlor.
“Him?” Athena was thrilled. “Yes, he’s perfect! So handsome, no? He’s broken many hearts, I’m sure. What did he do to you?”
Rebecca poured milk from a carton into her coffee. She usually had her coffee black, but one needed some protection from Athena’s notoriously strong brew. “He had a baby by another woman while professing to be in love with me.”
That ignited Athena, and Rebecca was pleased to see she wasn’t the only hard case when it came to two-timing men. Athena ranted and commiserated and loudly suggested that Jared Sloan would make a fine specimen for her anatomy class, but she restricted herself to snorting at his sleeping figure when she headed off to med school.
A few minutes later Jared staggered into the kitchen in his undershirt and jeans, and Rebecca had to catch her breath at the memories of sleepy mornings on their trip to Florida after her freshman year at B.U. She’d dumped men and had been dumped since, but she’d never loved anyone with such abandon and trust-such naiveté-as Jared Sloan. Maybe it was because he was her first lover, maybe it was because he’d been her friend. What difference did it make? Whatever they’d had together was over.
He poured himself a cup of coffee. “Did I hear you and that firebrand med student planning to carve me up?”
Rebecca grinned. “Just a little.”
“Pleasant conversation to wake up to. Bad enough I had to fight off that damn cat all night. I thought your grandfather hated cats.”
“He’s not fond of them, but he tolerates Sweatshirt.”
“Sweatshirt?”
“He’s mine.”
“I should have known.” He sat across from her at the table, and he did look tired and restless. “Still hate me, R.J.?”
His expression was serious all at once, but Rebecca smiled over the rim of her steaming mug. “Only when I think about you.”
“Ouch-the infamous Blackburn honesty. It serves me right for asking.” Suddenly he set down his mug and ran one finger along the inside of the handle, watching what he was doing as if it were the most important thing he had on his mind. Finally he said, “R.J., I’m sorry about that business with The Score. If I’d known-”
“You’d still have punched that guy.”
He laughed unexpectedly. “Maybe.”
“No maybe about it, Sloan. You haven’t changed since you were ten years old and nailed that snotty little rich kid who picked on my brothers for wearing hand-me-downs. I don’t remember his name-he used to have birthday parties in the park in Louisburg Square with the maids in uniforms, silver platters, clowns.”
“Which you crashed,” he pointed out, his eyes dancing.
She shrugged, unrepentant. “Have squirt gun will travel.”
“He’s an attorney now, I hear-very upstanding. Throws parties for his kids in the park, I’m sure.”
“What do you suppose he thought of our pictures in The Score?”
Jared looked at her. “Do you care?”
“No.”
He smiled at her total absence of hesitation. “Have you had any fallout from all this?”
Twisting her mouth to one side in thought, Rebecca leaned back and gave him a long look. “Just what’s sitting in front of me.”
Jared picked up his coffee and gave her a teasing look. “No men calling up for dates with the rich, beautiful, famous R. J. Blackburn?”
“A few,” Rebecca said, and she had to smile. He was so much the old Jared who’d never been intimidated by anything about her-her looks, her intelligence, her heritage, her high standards.
His eyes darkened for a moment. “The Score said you’re not married.”
“I’m not. Never have been-and not because of you, either. The prospect of not being married at thirty-five doesn’t keep me awake nights, you know. What about you?”
He gave her a deliberate smile. “The prospect of not being married at forty doesn’t keep me awake nights.” Then he changed the subject. “Your grandfather’s not up, I take it?”