Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [20]
“Maybe not quite the richest.” Venetia was one of the few girls Morgan had ever met to whom the fact that he was Fitz McBain’s son obviously meant little more than her wide-eyed awe of the moment. Like his father, he was used to the sudden magic of the McBain name acting as a magnet for every available attractive woman in sight. Some of the most beautiful women in the international society of both Europe and America had tried their best to get either father or son to the altar. And some were still trying.
“You’re not in the least impressed,” he said, taking her hand in his and squeezing it, “and rightly so. I’m just the hardworking son of a successful father. We’re in more than just oil now. Fitz had an urge for real estate, maybe because of those six years living in the trailer in the middle of nowhere. Anyhow, he bought lusher, greener acres in semitropical islands, in the Caribbean; he had an urge for cities so he acquired bits of Park and Madison in New York and plots in downtown Houston and Dallas; he learned to enjoy wines, so then there was a château with a vineyard in France…. You name it, Fitz bought it. And then, because he can’t bear things just to sit there not making money, he built hotels or converted the existing buildings into hotels. And when he’d finished those projects he turned his interest to shipping, tankers, freighters. He’s been working since he was thirteen years old. I was born when he was only twenty, and now he’s forty-four. I’m still wondering what he’ll get up to next.”
“Does it worry you?”
She was listening intently, obviously deeply interested in what he had to say. It broke down any barriers between them, and Morgan suddenly found himself saying something he’d never admitted to any other woman before.
“Sometimes it does, yes. I’m not always sure that I’m going to be able to live up to his standards, his expectations of me.” Morgan was serious now. “It’s not always easy being the son of a famous and successful father.”
Vennie leaned back in her chair. His words had brought her back to her own dilemma. The questions reared themselves once more in the front of her mind. Her future. What was she going to do? What could she do that could possibly succeed the way Jenny had done? There was just no way to make Jenny proud of her; she had no talents, no achievements, she was just an ordinary girl—with a famous mother.
“I know, Morgan,” she said in a small voice that was like a sigh. “I know just what you mean. You see, my mother is Jenny Haven.”
Lydia spoke across Morgan, who was sitting between them. “Venetia, I think we’ll have coffee in the drawing room and leave the men to their port.”
“Of course. I’ll get Marie-Thérèse to bring it in to us.” Coffee was, thank heavens, the one thing that Marie-Thérèse could be trusted to take care of alone, possibly because she drank gallons of the stuff herself. Venetia smiled her excuses to Morgan and the other male guests, and followed Lydia and the ladies from the room.
Morgan turned to watch her go. She was a slender, almost childlike figure in her layers of noncolor knits, stylish with that particularly English nonconformity. And she was lovely. He turned his back to the table, accepting the glass of amber port that Roger Lancaster offered. She was Jenny Haven’s daughter. Of course, that had been the resemblance that tantalized him. How odd. He’d always thought his father had been in love with Jenny Haven, although as far as he knew they had met only once. But there was no doubt Jenny Haven had been Fitz McBain’s idol in his lonely teenage years.
Morgan sipped his port appreciatively as Roger Lancaster began to outline some of the points he wanted him to make to Fitz when he saw him next.
Venetia chatted easily with Lydia’s guests, some of whom were mothers of her own friends, but it was as though she were in limbo, waiting for the dining-room door to open and Morgan McBain to reenter