True Colors

She didn’t reply. She simply stared at him. She saw him glance at her left hand, and she thanked God that she’d remembered to take off her wedding band. But the engagement ring Henry had given her—a diamond-cut emerald with small diamonds—was still there. She remembered how Henry had laughed at her choice, because the ring was so inexpensive. He’d wanted to give her a three-carat diamond, and she’d insisted on this ring. How long ago it seemed.

“You’re engaged?” he asked heavily.

“I was,” she corrected. True enough, she was, before Henry married her a week after the engagement.

“Not now?”

She shook her head. “I have a friend, and I care about him very much. But I don’t want commitment anymore.” She wished she could cross her fingers behind her. She’d told more lies and half-truths in two minutes than she had in two years.

His features were more rigid than usual. “Why isn’t your friend here with you, then?”

“I needed a breathing space. I came alone to dispose of Aunt Mary’s things.”

“Where were you living?”

She smiled. “Back east. Excuse me, I have to get these things in the refrigerator.”

He stood aside, hesitating. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Presumably he ate at the restaurant where she was going to work. “I suppose so.” She glanced at him. “Are you sure they won’t mind giving me work without references?”

“I own the damned restaurant,” he said shortly. “They can’t afford to mind. The job’s yours, if you want it.”

“I want it,” she said. She unlocked the door and hesitated. Since he didn’t know her circumstances, he was probably doing it out of pity and guilt, but she felt obliged to say something. “You’re very generous. Thank you.”

“Generous.” He laughed bitterly. “My God, I’ve never given anything in my life unless it suited me or made me richer. I’ve got the world. And I’ve got nothing.” He turned and walked to his car, leaving her staring after him with wide, sad eyes.

Meredith let herself into the house. It had shaken her to see him again after so many barren years. She dropped the groceries on the kitchen counter and sat down, her mind going back to their first meeting.

She’d been seventeen then, a week shy of her eighteenth birthday. But she’d always looked older than she was, and the uniform she wore as a waitress molded itself lovingly to every soft curve of her slender body.

Cy had stared at her from the first, his narrow eyes following her as she waited on one table and then another. She’d been nervous of him instantly, because he radiated self-confidence and a kind of bridled arrogance. He had a way of narrowing one eye and lifting his chin that was like a declaration of war every time he studied someone. Actually, she found out later, it was because he had a slight problem focusing on distant objects and was too stubborn to go to an ophthalmologist. She wondered if any of the people he’d intimidated with that level glare ever knew what caused it.

His table drew its regular waitress, and she’d seen him frown and ask the girl something. Seconds later, he’d moved to a table that was in Meredith’s territory.

The very idea that a man who looked like that should seem interested in her made her toes tingle. She’d approached him with a gentle smile, her face flushing with excitement when he looked up at her and smiled back.

“You’re new here,” he’d said. His voice was deep and slow, with delicious sensuality in it.

“Yes.” She’d sounded as breathless as she felt. She could still remember how cold her hands had suddenly become. “I just started this morning.”

“I’m Cyrus Harden,” he said. “I have breakfast here most mornings.”

She’d recognized the name instantly. Most people in Billings did. “I’m Meredith,” she said huskily.

He lifted an eyebrow, and the smile deepened. “Are you past the age of consent?”

“I’m…twenty,” she said at once, lying through her teeth. If she’d told him her real age, she knew instinctively that he’d have dismissed her.

“That’ll do. Bring me some coffee, please. Then we’ll discuss where we’re going tonight.”

She rushed back behind the counter to pour the coffee, running headlong into Terri, the older waitress who worked with her.

“Careful, chick,” Terri said under her breath when Cy wasn’t looking. “You’re flirting with disaster. Cy Harden has a reputation with women as well as in business. Don’t get in over your head.”

“It’s all right. He…he’s just talking to me,” Meredith stammered.

“Not when you look that flustered, he isn’t,” Terri replied worriedly. “Your great-aunt must live in a world all her own. Honey, men don’t automatically propose marriage to women they want—especially men like Cy Harden. He’s out of our league. He’s rich, and his mother would savage any woman who tried to get him to the altar unless she had money and connections. He’s upper crust. They marry among themselves.”

“But we’re just talking,” Meredith protested, forcing a smile while all her dreams crashed to earth.

“See that it stays just talk. He could hurt you badly.”

The sound of authority made her bristle, but she couldn’t really afford to antagonize a co-worker, so she just smiled and finished getting Cy’s coffee.

“Was she warning you off?” he asked when she put the cup and saucer in front of him on the red-and-white-checked tablecloth.

She gasped. “How did you know?”

“I took Terri out once,” he replied easily. “She got too possessive, so I broke it off. It was a long time ago. Don’t let her get under your skin, okay?”

She smiled, because now it all made sense. He was interested, and Terri was just jealous. She beamed. “I won’t,” she promised.

Remembering her own naiveté that day, Meredith groaned. She rose from the chair she’d been sitting in and went to put the groceries away. How could anyone have been so stupid? she asked herself. At eighteen, with a sheltered upbringing, she’d known nothing. To a man as worldly as Cy, she must have been a pushover. If she’d had any idea how things were going to turn out, she’d never have…

Who was she kidding? She laughed bitterly. She’d have done exactly the same thing, because Cy fascinated her. He still did, after all the grief and pain. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen in her life, and she remembered those long lovings in his arms as if they’d happened yesterday.

Now she’d landed herself back in his orbit again and taken a job that she had no business taking. She was living a lie. But as she remembered the reasons for her visit, her blood began to boil. Cy had discarded her like garbage, she and the child she’d been carrying. He’d turned his back on her and left her to fend for herself with a theft charge hanging over her head.

She hadn’t come back to rekindle an old love affair. She’d come back for revenge. Henry had taught her that everyone had a weakness that could be exploited in business. And some people were better at hiding their Achilles’ heels than others. Cy was a past master. She’d have to be very careful if she was going to locate his. But in the end she’d get the upper hand, and he’d be out in the cold. She meant to cost him everything, to put him in the same horrible position he’d put her in so long ago. Her eyes narrowed as she considered the possibilities, and a cold smile touched her disciplined mouth.

Meredith was no longer a naive eighteen-year-old deeply in love with a man she couldn’t have. She held all the aces this time. And when she played her hand, it was going to be the sweetest pleasure since Cy’s treacherous kisses.

CHAPTER THREE

MEREDITH HAD BROUGHT some old clothes with her, so that she wouldn’t arouse Cy’s suspicions by looking too prosperous. Now, as she dressed for her new job, she was glad.

She stepped into a neat denim skirt that matched her white cotton long-sleeved blouse. She put on soft-soled loafers and discarded her Gucci purse for a brown vinyl one. Then she put up her hair in a neat French braid at the back of her head and left the house to catch a bus to work.

Billings was gorgeous first thing in the morning, Meredith thought as she savored the cool morning air. This spacious city was a world away from the bustle of Chicago. She missed her son, and even Mr. Smith and Don, but the change had already revived her fighting spirit and made her feel less depressed. The incredible pressures she faced daily in her work had been getting to her lately.

Meredith stepped off the bus in front of the restaurant. It was a prosperous one, very large and attached to a hotel. She noticed through the window that all the waitresses wore spotless white uniforms. It had been a long time since she had felt nervous around people, but here, without the cocoon of her wealth to cushion her, she was ill at ease. She found the cashier and asked for the manager.

“Mrs. Dade is just through there,” the woman said pleasantly. “Is she expecting you?”

“I think so.”

Meredith knocked on the door and walked in, surprised to find the woman almost twenty years older than she was. Perhaps she’d been harboring the subconscious thought that Mrs. Dade might be one of Cy’s old lovers, but she had to revise that opinion now.

“I’m Meredith…Ashe,” she said hesitantly. The name sounded strange. She was so used to being called Kip Tennison.

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Dade said, smiling as she stood up behind her huge polished wood desk. She was a tall woman, her red hair mingling with silver above a broad, happy face. “I’m Trudy Dade. I’m glad to meet you. Cy said that you’d just lost your aunt and needed work. Luckily for both of us, we’ve got an opening. Have you had experience at waitressing?”

“Well, a little,” Meredith replied. “I used to work at the Bear Claw years ago.”

“I remember. I thought I recognized you.” Her gray eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I’m sorry about your aunt.”

“I’ll miss her,” Meredith said softly. “She was the only real relative I had in the world.”

Mrs. Dade’s perceptive gaze swept over Meredith, leaving no detail untouched. She nodded. “It’s hard work, but the tips are good, and I’m not a slavedriver. You can start now. You’ll get off at six, but you’ll have to work some evenings. That’s unavoidable in this business.”

“I don’t mind that,” Meredith said easily. “I don’t need my evenings free.”

Mrs. Dade’s eyebrows arched. “At your age? For heaven’s sake, you’re not married?”

“No.” Meredith didn’t say it rudely, but there was something in her manner that made the other woman visibly uncomfortable.

“Off men, then?” Mrs. Dade smiled and didn’t pursue it, going on to detail Meredith’s duties and her salary, along with information about uniforms and territory.

Meredith was busy giving herself a lecture on keeping to the part she was playing. It wouldn’t do to assume Kip Tennison’s persona every time someone pried too deeply. She forced a smile and listened with every indication of interest, while at the back of her mind she wondered how long it was going to be before Cy Harden made his next move.

LATE THAT AFTERNOON, Cy walked into the gardens at the huge Harden estate. His eyes lingered halfheartedly on the Greek revival columns on the house’s wide front porch. He remembered playing on that porch as a child, with his mother nearby, watching him. She had always been far too possessive and protective of her only child, a condition that, in later years, had caused friction between them. In fact, their relationship had fallen apart with the departure of Meredith Ashe. Cy had changed, in visible and not-so-visible ways.

He hung his hat on the antique hat rack in the hall and wandered absently into the elegant living room, gathering the usual impressions of pastel brocades and thick neutral shag carpeting and the priceless antiques his mother loved.

She was sitting on her wing chair, crocheting. Her dark eyes lifted and she smiled at him a little too brightly. “You’re home early, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I finished early.” He poured himself a stiff whiskey and sank onto his own armchair. “I’ll be out for dinner. The Petersons are hosting a business discussion on some new mineral leases.”

“Business, business,” she muttered. “There’s more to life than making money. Cy, you really should marry. I’ve introduced you to two very nice young women, debutantes…”

“I won’t marry,” he said with a cold smile. He lifted his whiskey glass in a mock toast. “I took the cure. Remember?”

His mother went pasty white and dropped her eyes to her thin, nervous hands. “That…was a long time ago.”

“It was yesterday.” He threw down the rest of the whiskey and got up to refill the glass. Remembering was painful. “She’s back in town, did you know?”

There was a funereal stillness in the room. “She?”

The word came out sounding as if his mother had choked on it. He turned. “Meredith Ashe. I gave her a job at the restaurant.”

Myrna Harden had lived with her terrible secret, and her guilt, for so long that she’d forgotten anyone else shared it. But Meredith did. Ironically, the very information she’d used to get Meredith out of town could now be turned against her with even more devastating results. The ensuing scandal could ruin her by destroying the failing relationship she had with her son. She panicked.

“You mustn’t!” she said frantically. “Cy, you mustn’t get yourself involved with that woman again! You can’t have forgotten what she did to you!”

His face gave away nothing. “No, Mother, I haven’t forgotten. And I’m not getting involved with her. Once was enough. Her great-aunt died.”

She swallowed nervously. “I didn’t know.”

“I’m sure there are bills to pay, loose ends to tidy up. She came from somewhere. She’ll probably go back there as soon as she’s got it all together.”

Myrna wasn’t so sure. “She’ll inherit the house.”

He nodded, staring into his second whiskey. He swirled the liquid carelessly. “She’ll have a roof over her head. I have no idea where she’s been all these years, but I know she had nothing when she left town.” His face hardened and he tossed down the whiskey as if it were water.

“That’s not true,” Myrna said quickly. “She had money!” Myrna had given her a wad of bills which Meredith had promptly returned. Myrna had always refused to believe, however, that the girl hadn’t kept enough of it to get out of town. It eased her conscience to think it.

Cy stared at his mother over the glass, curious about her expression and about the fear in her normally calm voice. “Tony gave back the money that was supposedly stolen. Had you forgotten?”

Her face went even paler. “I’m sure she had some money,” she faltered, lowering her eyes with raging guilt. “She must have.”

Cy’s eyes were thoughtful and bitter. “I was never comfortable with her part in it,” he said. “Tony gave us the story as if he’d learned it by heart, and Meredith swore to me that he’d never touched her, that they’d never been lovers.”

“A girl like that would have many lovers,” Myrna said, flushing.

Cy’s eyes went dark as he remembered the way it had been with Meredith, the fever that burned between them. He could still see her trembling because she wanted him so badly. Could she have been that way with any other man? She’d been as obsessed as he had, every bit as involved. He’d been too insanely jealous and angry to listen at the time his mother had accused her. It took only a couple of days after she left town for him to begin doubting her part in the so-called theft. It really had been very convenient that Tony subsequently produced all the “stolen money,” and that Myrna insisted the boy not be arrested. The whole matter blew over after Meredith left town. But she hadn’t looked guilty. She’d looked…defeated.

He hadn’t questioned that. Perhaps he should have asked questions, but he’d deeply resented his helpless attraction to Meredith at the time. It had been almost a relief to have her out of his life, to close once and for all the door to his sexual excesses, to the headlong, wanton passion she had kindled in him. There had been a brief affair or two since then, but no woman had been able to make him lose control the way Meredith had. He wasn’t sure he was even capable of it now. He felt dead inside. That was how Meredith had looked the last time he’d seen her, standing with her head bent in the hall of his home. She’d looked as if something inside her had died, and her accusing eyes had burned indelibly into his mind. He could see them even now.

He turned. “It’s all past history. There’s nothing left to build on, even if I were tempted. She was a fling. Nothing more.”

Myrna relaxed a little. “I’m glad to hear it. Really, Cy, a waitress with a full-blooded Crow Indian for a great-uncle. Not our kind of people.”

Under his heavy brows, his eyes glittered. “Isn’t that a little snobbish for descendants of a British deserter?”

Myrna actually gasped. “We don’t speak of that!”

He shrugged. “Why not? Everybody has a black sheep in the family tree.”

“Don’t be absurd. Sheep don’t climb trees.” She put down her crocheting. “I’ll tell Ellen that you won’t be in for dinner.”

She walked past him, her mind whirling with fear and new complications. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She couldn’t have Meredith Ashe in Billings, not now, when she was doing her best to get Cy married. Dragging up an old love affair was the last thing he needed. She’d have to get Meredith out of town, and fast, before she had time to play on Cy’s sympathy or make any hints about what had happened.

The baby…had she kept the baby she was carrying? Myrna ground her teeth at the thought of Cy’s child being put up for adoption. The baby would have been a Harden, her blood. She hadn’t allowed herself to think of that at the time. She only considered what was best for Cy, and she knew Meredith wasn’t. She’d cut that woman out of his life with surgical precision, and if Myrna could help it, she wasn’t coming back into it now. But she did want to know about the child. If Meredith hadn’t had an abortion, there might be a way to get the child. She’d think about that, and about how to explain it to Cy without involving Meredith in his life again. Having successfully coped with the menace once, she was confident of her ability to do it again.

THE DAY PASSED QUICKLY for Meredith. She gained confidence as she worked, and she liked the people she worked with. They all accepted her at face value, helping her learn the routine and covering for her when she was slow at getting orders to customers. She especially liked Theresa, who was twenty and a raven-haired brunette, a Crow, like Meredith’s late great-uncle.

Mealtime, however, meant crowds. The food was of sufficient variety and price to attract local people as well as out-of-towners. Many conferences were held in Billings, and not only in the cattle industry. The visitors liked the simple but elegant fare provided—even the southerners. That morning she’d waited on a gentleman from Alabama who was disappointed that grits weren’t served for breakfast this far north. She noticed that he was back for dinner, though, and giving her frankly interested looks. She fended them off politely. Men had no part in her life anymore.

He was persistent, however. Meredith was busy warding him off once again while he ordered his evening meal when a familiar face came into view at a nearby table. Cy. And not only Cy. Myrna Harden, too.

Meredith used all of her skills at diplomacy to release herself from the Alabama gentleman and quickly turned in his order. As she did, she remembered that once she’d have switched tables with another waitress to avoid Myrna Harden. Those days were over. She turned and walked over to the table—one of hers—with easy pleasantness, belied only by the cold cruelty of her eyes as they met Myrna Harden’s for the first time in years.

“Good evening. Would you like something to drink before you order?” she asked politely.

Myrna’s dark eyes flickered. “I don’t drink,” she said flatly. “As you might remember, Meredith.”

Meredith looked straight at her, ignoring Cy altogether. “It might surprise you what I remember, Mrs. Harden,” she said quietly. “And my name is Miss Ashe.”

The older woman laughed, too high pitched and much too mocking for pleasant amusement. “My, aren’t you arrogant for a waitress?” She toyed nervously with the utensils in the place setting. “I’d like to see a menu.”

Meredith produced two. “I’ll have a glass of white wine,” Cy told Meredith, shifting back on his chair to gauge her reactions. His mother’s hostility disturbed him. Surely he was the one with the grudges.

“Coming right up,” Meredith said. As she stood at the bar waiting for the drink, she took the opportunity to study her two antagonists. Cy was wearing a dark suit with a conservative tie. His creamy Stetson was parked on a chair at the table, and his thick dark hair was swept back neatly. He didn’t look as if anything would ruffle him, his lean face completely without expression, his deep-set brown eyes staring straight ahead. But his mother was fidgeting beside him. Meredith could see her eyes dart nervously from left to right.

That body language was revealing. Meredith found it as explicit as a confession. She smiled, slowly and with cold malice, and at that moment Myrna looked at her.

Her well made up face went pasty. There was something in the expression on that girl’s face, Myrna thought, something in that cold stare that made her backbone turn to jelly. This wasn’t the same girl she’d sent packing. No. There was something very different about Meredith now, and it made her begin to feel nauseated.

Meredith took Cy’s drink back to the table and placed it before him. She then produced her pad and pen with perfectly steady fingers, mentally thanking Henry for the poise and self-confidence he’d engendered in her.

“These aren’t necessary,” Cy said curtly, pushing the menu away. “I’ll have a steak and salad.”

“So will I,” Myrna said stiffly. “Rare, please. I don’t like well-done meat.”

“Same here,” Cy replied.

“Two rare steaks,” Meredith murmured, letting her eyes slide sideways to meet Cy’s.

“Rare, not raw,” he said, uncannily reading the thought in her mind. “I don’t want it to get up and moo at me.”

Meredith had to fight down a smile. “Yes, sir. It won’t be long.”

She left them to give in the order, then served it minutes later with cool courtesy.

“She’s very efficient, isn’t she?” Myrna said icily as they ate. “I can remember one time when she spilled coffee all down my dress, when you took me to that horrid little café for lunch.”

“You made her nervous,” Cy said tersely. He disliked the memory. His mother had gone out of her way to make Meredith uncomfortable, sniping at her constantly.

“Apparently I don’t anymore,” Myrna said with faint apprehension. She cut a piece of steak very delicately and raised it to her thin lips, chewing it deliberately before she swallowed. “Maybe she’s married. Did you ask?”

Cy glared at her. “I didn’t have to. She obviously isn’t.”

Myrna smiled. “If you say so. Odd, though, isn’t it? A pretty girl of her age, still single.”

“Maybe I’m a hard act to follow,” Cy said cuttingly, and smiled in that unpleasant way that made Myrna shift on her chair.

“Don’t be crude, dear. Pass me the salt, please.”

Cy obliged her. He finished his meal, but he hardly tasted it. Watching Meredith move around the restaurant disturbed him. She was as graceful as ever. More so. There was a new carriage about her, a new confidence combined with a total lack of inhibition. She was nothing like the shy, loving, uncertain girl he’d taken to bed so many years ago. But she still made him burn. His reaction to her was as potent as ever, and he was fighting it with everything in him. Regardless of his mother’s inexplicable hostility toward Meredith, he knew that he couldn’t let the younger woman conquer his senses again. He’d been free from her, and he wanted to stay that way. Being taken over wasn’t in the cards. Never again was he going to give in to that sweet madness.