The Parks Empire: Secrets, Lies and Loves

Ships were visible as lights that rose and dipped with the movement of the sea. They struck her as unbearably lonely as they sailed off into the night.

But she knew the loneliness was in herself. She swallowed the painful knot in her throat when Cade came over and stood beside her.

“I used to watch the ships when I was a kid,” he said. “I wanted to go on a grand adventure with the sailors, a modern-day Jason on the trail of the golden fleece.”

She heard and understood the undertone of sadness when he chuckled at his boyish ideas. It reached down into her own heart and opened places she’d thought were closed forever.

“We all have dreams,” she said in hardly more than a whisper. “And we all have to grow up.”

“Some more quickly than others. You, I think.”

“And you,” she murmured.

“Perhaps,” he said.

She knew a lot about his life now and wondered if he was thinking of his mother, who’d been sent away to a very private hospital, it was rumored, for the mentally ill. Mark Banning had told them this news.

“When your mother was sent away?” she asked.

He was silent for a long moment. “Yes. It was like the sun went out.”

His voice was so low she had to strain to hear. “Do…do you ever see her?”

“No. My father thinks it would serve no purpose. She has the best of care and, according to him, she wouldn’t be interested in any of her children anyway.”

“I’m sorry.” She couldn’t deny the compassion she felt for him and his loss.

“Into every life…” He shrugged philosophically.

“Some rain must fall,” she finished when he stopped.

His smile appeared, a beacon in the dark. “We’re getting awfully serious, young Sara.”

“I don’t feel young. I haven’t for a long time.”

He touched her shoulder. Warmth flowed from his hand all the way to the center of her. Without meaning to, she leaned into him when he stepped closer. He slipped both arms around her, clasping his hands over her tummy and tucking her against his body.

For some reason, it made her ache inside, as if her heart were weeping. She laid her hands over his. They stayed that way for a long time, not speaking as they watched a few stars appear.

“Without the glare of city lights,” he said, “you can see a million stars. At the ranch, the only way to tell the ocean from the night sky is to note where the stars begin.”

“You have a ranch?”

“Yes. I plan to go up Friday night. Stace and I would like to have you join us.”

“I may have work to do,” she hedged, wanting to go but not sure if she should. When she glanced up, he lowered his head and gently touched her lips with his.

“Sara,” he said, his voice soft, husky.

A tremor rushed over her. He tightened his hold, then stepped to the side, turning her at the same time. They faced each other, their expressions solemn, their eyes questioning. She wondered if his doubts were the same as hers. At the moment, it didn’t matter.

Slowly she raised her hands and caressed along his shirtfront. “Warm, so warm,” she said.

“Burning up,” he admitted.

Cade cupped her face in his hands and sipped from her lips as if he’d found a rare and perfect wine, a nectar of incredible sweetness stolen from the gods. And like all mortals who dared the fates, he knew he would pay…someday…somehow….

He groaned as need pushed aside the dire musing. He took her mouth in a kiss of fire, of insatiable passion. He needed more from her.

“Have to touch you,” he said in half apology, half anticipation.

“Yes. Oh, yes.” Sara wanted nothing between them—no clothing, no second thoughts, no past filled with hatred and regret. She pushed her hands under his shirt and caressed his back.

The muscles flexed beneath her fingers, hinting at raw power kept under tight control. She wanted to experience that power for herself, to feel it against her…in her.

She turned her head and sighed shakily. “This is…we shouldn’t…It’s so…unwise.”

“I know,” he whispered, his mouth hot on her neck just below her ear. “Stop me. If you can.” Cade chuckled ruefully, knowing she was as caught up in the moment as he was. Something primitive and wild flashed through his blood, driving out sanity in the face of this terrible need. For her. For this woman.

“Come. We need to go inside,” he said, feeling her tremble again. He held his breath as he turned them toward her door.

“Stacy,” she said.

“I have the monitor on. With the doors open, we’ll hear if she calls out.” He guided her inside.

Sara felt the sofa touch the back of her knees. She tossed the sweater on a chair and kicked off her shoes when Cade did. He enclosed her in a warm embrace and together they sank onto the cushions.

Their bodies meshed as if they’d done this a thousand times. They stretched out on the supple leather—thighs locked, chests and abdomens touching, hands reaching, searching beneath the barriers of their clothing until they could touch living flesh.

“Your skin is as smooth as flower petals,” he murmured as he imprinted kisses over her face.

“So is yours,” she said just as ardently, completely entranced by the growing intimacy.

His low laughter delighted her, and she laughed, too. It felt natural and reassuring.

“I need more,” he said.

She let him unfasten the buttons on her blouse, helped shed it and the bra, then waited, her heart surging like a storm-driven tide, as he unfastened his shirt and wrapped her in it so that skin nestled against skin.

“You’re burning me up,” he told her, his mouth stirring her to madness as he kissed along her neck, then drew back enough to lave her peaked breasts with his tongue until she gasped and moaned with hunger.

Arching slightly, she moved against him, feeling the enticing hardness against her tummy. He clasped her thigh in one hand and positioned it over his hip.

“Oh,” she cried softly as sensation whirled through her at the greater contact. She only had to press slightly to experience even more.

He moved with her, their breathing shallow and rapid as the flames danced and leaped through their entwined bodies.

“Cade,” she whispered. “You must…you must come to me….”

“I want to,” he assured her. “But I didn’t expect this. I didn’t prepare for it.” He caught her hand when she tugged at his jeans, then pressed her palm against his chest. “No more. I don’t have protection.”

She bit into her bottom lip as disappointment hit. “You, uh, the operation…”

“A vasectomy was Rita’s idea. I never had one.” He gazed into her eyes. “Unless you’re protected, we have to stop…now.”

A tangle of questions wrapped around them, buzzed like angry bees between them as they contemplated each other solemnly. His smile was unexpected—a rueful acknowledgment of their predicament.

“Okay, let’s quit while we’re ahead,” he said.

He swung up and away from her. The night air from the open door swept over her, chilling the ardor to embers but not quite putting the fire out. She sighed.

“Me, too,” he said. He leaned down and kissed her lightly, picked up his shoes and departed.

Sara wrapped her sweater around her shivering body. Sitting there in the dark, she went over the events of the evening. There had been such strange undercurrents between them. And then the passion.

She’d never known a man like Cade. Gentle. Caring. A wonderful father. There was something deeply honorable about him. She felt it in her bones. She should tell him why she’d come to San Francisco. Before he found out in a different way. Like when the police came to arrest his father.

“Complexities,” she said aloud and sighed again.

Chapter Five

Two nights later, the ring of the doorbell startled Sara as she sat in the den and tried to read a long novel about a rich family and their problems.

She personally thought it would do the fictional characters good to take on a poor family’s problems and see how life felt when there wasn’t enough money to buy one’s way out of difficulty.

Rising, she went to the front door. It was too late for Stacy to be up and she assumed Cade would use the back door since the den was in the rear of the house. That left Tyler to be calling at nine-thirty in the evening.

She was right. Flicking off the dead bolt, she opened the elegant portal and invited him in. “Did you just get off work?” she asked, seeing his suit.

“Yeah.” He rubbed a hand over his face after entering the town house. “Got anything to eat?”

“Ham-and-cheese sandwich or omelette?”

“Omelette. Three eggs. I’m starved.”

After locking the door, she led the way into the kitchen. “Don’t they let police detectives eat in this city?” she asked with a sympathetic glance.

“Not if they can help it.” His smile was weary.

She prepared a large omelette and poured it into a skillet. While it cooked, she dropped an English muffin into the toaster, considered, then added one for herself. In a few minutes, she handed Tyler a tray with his food and carried one for herself with the toasted muffin, strawberry jam and a glass of milk on it.

They ate in the den with the trays across their laps. “So what’s happening?” she demanded when her brother remained stubbornly silent.

He roused from his introspection. “Trouble.”

The hair prickled on the back of her neck. “What kind of trouble?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know.” He finished off the omelette and the last drink of milk. “Got any coffee?”

“I’ll make you a latte.” She prepared the steamed milk and coffee, did one for herself, then returned. “Help yourself,” she said dryly, noting that he had devoured the other half of her muffin and jam and was swallowing the last of her milk.

“Sorry. I was still hungry.”

She handed him the steaming mug and settled onto the sofa again. “Has Mark Banning found our dear uncle?”

Tyler shook his head. “Someone tried to hack into my computer, though, and set up a worm to send everything I had on file to a third computer.”

Alarm spread through Sara. “Who?”

“I couldn’t trace ’em. They covered their tracks well.”

“Did they find out anything about our quest?”

“No. Fortunately I use a separate drive for all Internet searches and then check it for viruses and worms after each session on the Net. That’s when I discovered someone was trying to implant a tracking program on me.”

“We haven’t tried to hide,” she reminded him. “We use our real names. Do you think Walter Parks had anything to do with the hacker?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, I live next door to his son. Cade remembers me from years ago. If he mentioned me to his father, then Walter would know the Carltons—at least some of us—are back in town.”

“And he might wonder exactly what we’re doing here,” Tyler concluded.

“Only if he has a guilty conscience. Otherwise why would he care?”

Her brother snorted. “I’ve done some research on his business dealings. He’s known to be a ruthless competitor. I doubt his conscience bothers him much.”

“Cade doesn’t seem at all like his father,” she murmured, recalling the son’s determination to be a better parent to his daughter than his father had been to him and his siblings.

“Have you found out anything from him?” Tyler asked.

“Like what?”

“How the family business is prospering? The old man has been doing a lot of buying lately. There’s been a large payment to a foreign diamond dealer of dubious reputation through an overseas bank. There’s also been a couple of mysterious deliveries to his store of late. Uninsured deliveries by courier.”

“So?”

Her brother shrugged. “So, I don’t know. Too bad the company is family-owned. Their records are private, so it’s more difficult to check on their business dealings. But not impossible,” he added. “Twenty-five years ago, the Parks empire seemed to take off. Where did the money come from?”

“The Carlton diamond business that apparently somehow disappeared into thin air without a trace just as Father did during that ill-fated yachting party?”

“That’s what I think,” her brother confirmed her guess.

Sara sipped the latte while she thought. “You and Nick and Mark Banning have the inside track on the investigation. I feel rather useless in the grand scheme of things. What do you want me to do?”

“Feed me when I drop by?” Tyler suggested with a grin, then became serious again. “The son knows the business. Can you get him to talk about the family’s fortunes? See if he knows how much was inherited from his mother’s side of the family. Walter Parks didn’t have much but ambition and a sharp mind before he married. As soon as his father-in-law died, two years after the marriage, Walter changed the name of the company from Lindsay Mining to Parks Mining and Exploration.”

Sara glanced at her brother in surprise at this news. “You have been busy. There’s something that occurs to me as sort of suspicious. Remember Mark told us that shortly after the party on the yacht, Walter sent his wife to a Swiss sanitarium?”

“Swiss, huh? I don’t think Mark knows that. I’ll have him start checking—”

“Sorry, that was just a manner of speaking. In novels, people always get sent to reclusive Swiss hospitals high in the mountains when their kin want to get rid of them. Anyway, Anna Parks was sent overseas somewhere when Cade was a child. He said the children never saw her, that his father said she wouldn’t care about them.”

“So?”

Sara frowned intently into the middle distance while she marshaled her thoughts. “Don’t you think that’s rather convenient and coincidental? According to Mother, Anna was present at the celebration aboard the yacht. What if she saw her husband have a quarrel with his partner? Maybe they got into a fight and our father, sorry, my father—”

“It’s okay. I still think of Jeremy Carlton as my father, too,” Tyler assured her.

“So maybe Jeremy fell and broke his neck or something. Then Walter panicked and threw the body overboard and Anna witnessed the whole thing. If she insisted her husband go to the police with the truth, then he might have needed to shut her up. What better way than to get her committed to an asylum for the insane in a foreign country?”

“Good point,” Tyler murmured.

“Also,” Sara continued. “When did he go into the retail business? It seems to me it would take a lot of money to open a jewelry store, and now he owns two of the most prestigious ones in California. Was that after our family somehow lost everything?”

Tyler ground the heels of his hands into his eye sockets as if he could erase the weariness. He covered a huge yawn before answering. “He has a way of taking over any enterprise he’s involved in while his partners—I use that term loosely—have a way of losing out.”

“Or disappearing,” Sara reminded him. “Tyler, be careful. I feel threatened. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but I have this odd feeling, like a noose tightening around us. Both of us.”

He patted her arm as he rose. “I always pay attention to hunches and odd feelings. I think we’re making someone nervous—”

“Walter Parks,” she said grimly, also standing and walking toward the front to see him out.

“Yeah. Are you going to back out?”

“No. Why would you think that?”

“Just a feeling.” He gave her an insouciant grin, then nodded his head toward the other town house. “He was pretty interested to see who rode up front with me and who rode in the back with Nick when we went to dinner Saturday night. Anything going on between you two that I should know about?”

Sara sighed and wrinkled her nose at her smart-mouthed sibling. “He’s very attractive,” she finally admitted.

“Aha,” Tyler said softly as they arrived at the front door and paused there.

“It’s confusing. He doesn’t seem ruthless. In fact, he’s a wonderful father.”

“Even an animal looks after its own.”

“I know. He’s my enemy and yet…” She shrugged.

Tyler studied her for a few seconds, then rubbed his brow as if his head hurt. “Sometimes lightning strikes, and there you are, burned to the core.”

The words were so startling, so much like a confession, that Sara was startled. “Tyler, have you met someone? Are you in love?”

His brief laughter was tinged with bitterness. “Hardly. It was nothing. A one-night stand.”

Sara was confused. “But if there’re feelings—”

“Forget it,” he said. “The lady obviously did.”

With very mixed emotions, Sara studied him. Tyler—who’d vowed he would never marry or have kids and “all that stuff” as he used to scornfully mutter—in love?

Well, maybe not in love, but certainly a chord had been struck in him by someone. Unfortunately, it appeared the same thing hadn’t struck her.

“Wait,” she requested when he opened the door. “Cade has invited me out to his ranch with him and Stacy this weekend. I told him I might be busy.”

“Go,” Tyler said at once. “This could be a chance to pry some info out of him. See if you can find out how the Parks empire is faring money-wise. Maybe he knows of some new deals his father is putting together. Or what was in those packages the courier dropped off.”

“Right, like he’s going to tell me they’re smuggling diamonds or something.”

Her brother gave her a sardonic glance. “Men have been known to disclose a lot during a weak moment.”

Her face flushed hotly in a sudden surge of guilt and remembered passion. Tyler touched her cheek. “Perhaps you and he have already had that moment?”

She shook her head. “There is an attraction. That’s what worries me. I want to believe that Cade is decent and honorable, then I think of his father and what Mother told us. It gets me confused and angry and frustrated.”

Tyler nodded. “I know the feeling. Maybe you’d better stay out of it, let me and Nick and Mark handle everything.”

Sara shook her head. “I came here to help. I’ll stick it out. And do my part.”

“No matter what it takes?” he asked.

“No matter what it takes.”

They agreed to meet Monday and discuss the weekend, then said goodnight. Sara locked the door and returned to the den. She cleaned up the dishes and went to bed, but not to sleep. Too many restless thoughts filled her head.

“Miss Carlton, guess what?” Stacy demanded Friday morning when Sara stopped at the adjoining town house to pick up the youngster for the short walk to school.

“What?”

“Dad and I are going to the ranch tonight and you’re invited!”

“Yes, your father kindly included me,” Sara admitted. She’d been over and over all the arguments about why she should go, but her conscience had bothered her all week. It seemed underhanded to take advantage of Cade’s and Stacy’s trust in her. “I don’t think I should intrude on your private time.”

“Please, you have to come. You haven’t seen my pony. She’s so beautiful. She can do tricks, too.”

“I think you’ve taken Miss Carlton by surprise,” Cade said, opening the door wider and handing his daughter a bright red lunchbox. “The invitation is still open. Can you join us?”

Sara tried to think of a plausible excuse to refuse, but some willful part of her urged her to accept. “You’re spending the night?”

“Yes. We’ll leave early Sunday afternoon. Stace and I have a family dinner at my father’s Sunday night.”

Stacy wrinkled her nose. “Do we hafta?”

“Yes,” her father said firmly.

Stacy went back to the original question. “Can you come to the ranch? We got cows and everything. We can help milk.”

“You have milk cows?” Sara asked, surprised.

“Actually I lease the operation. The farmer also takes care of our five horses and two dogs. The ranch is a two-hour drive north of the city. We would really like for you to join us, if you haven’t made plans for the weekend.”

“Uh, no—”

“Please come,” Stacy urged.

“Yes, do,” the father chimed in. “I would consider it a slight repayment for the help you’ve given me and Stace while Tai is unavailable.”

This really was a chance to find out more about his family, she decided, then wondered if she was rationalizing her desire to go. “Okay. It sounds like fun.”

“Yay, she’s going. I told you she would.” Stacy twirled around in delight. “We’re leaving right after school.”

“You’re quitting work early?” Sara asked.

“I thought we would try to beat the traffic, if that’s possible.”

His smile made Sara’s heart do weird things—speed up, skip a couple of beats and generally act silly. “What clothing will I need?” she asked.

“Jeans. A jacket. Boots, if you have them, otherwise sneakers will do. Do you ride?”

“I’ve never been on a horse in my life.” She opened her eyes wide and gave them a horrified grimace.

Stacy burst into giggles, which were underscored by his deeper chuckles. “It’s easy,” the girl assured her teacher.

On the way to school, Sara wondered just how easy the weekend would be.

“This is lovely,” Sara murmured that afternoon after they’d left the city and its traffic behind.

Cade expertly followed the winding coast road north of San Francisco. Bay laurel grew profusely along narrow canyons that opened at frequent intervals to the side of the highway. On one curve, the road had recently been repaved.

“There was a landslide during the March rains,” he told her. “They had to build a bridge-type understructure to make the repair. The highway department would like to close the road, I think, but people object. On nice weekends, this is a busy stretch.”

“It’s very scenic,” she said.

They left the highway and turned toward the west, passing through ranch land where cows grazed.

“This is it,” Stacy said from the back seat. “This is our ranch.”

Cade drove over a grate designed to prevent livestock from crossing it. Fences stretched to either side, but no gate barred the gravel road from access. Black-and-white cows stared at them with casual interest.

“These are the milk cows,” Stacy told her.

Cade drove past a large barn. “The milking parlor,” he explained. “It has the latest equipment.”

A neat white house was set back from the road. Cade nodded toward it. “Roger and Candy Mendolson. They milk two hundred cows twice a day, every day of the year. No time off for good behavior. Fortunately they have help, so everyone gets a weekend off once a month.”

“Gracious,” Sara said. “Teachers complain about only getting a month off during the summer when we’re on the all-year program.”

“Roger and Candy say they wouldn’t have it any other way. Life in a town would drive them nuts.”

“I can identify with that,” Sara muttered darkly, drawing a chuckle from him.

The road sloped upward, then dropped over the top of a hillock. In a secluded dip of land nestled another house, one made of fieldstone on the bottom third, then split logs on the rest. A quarter mile away, the land dropped over a cliff to a rock-strewn beach that stretched northward until it disappeared into the salty haze from the sea.

“This is incredibly lovely,” she said. “The grass is green.”

Cade pulled into a carport and turned off the engine. “We get condensation from the coastal fog. That’s why the fields along the coast stay relatively green in the summer. The cows will graze on dried grass, too.”

Cade helped the two females out, then unlocked the front door. Inside the cottage, Sara surveyed the open living area that flowed into a small but modern kitchen. A natural stone fireplace dominated the main wall. To the left of the fireplace was a set of steps to the second story.

“Your bedroom is back here.” Cade, carrying her suitcase, led the way down a short corridor. “The bathroom is directly across the hall. Linen closet there.” He indicated the doors to each, then entered the bedroom.

The furniture was made of pine and was simple in design. There was a double bed, a tall, narrow chest of drawers between two windows, a lamp and table next to the bed and a cane chair with a blue cushion beside the table.