Shadows At Sunset - Anne Stuart [73]
“It’s entirely possible. Every now and then I’m interested in being healthy. And a nice tan is always an asset.” He turned to Coltrane, who’d been listening with an unreadable expression on his face. “What do you think, Coltrane. Want my sister?” His eyes were glittering with amusement. “For that matter, which one would you like? You can’t have both. Alan Dunbar tried that and it backfired. Not that Daddy hasn’t been paying him off nicely ever since, and Jilly and Rachel-Ann are still close, but I wouldn’t recommend it if I were you. Pick one and stick to her.”
“You’re drunk, Dean,” Coltrane said.
“Not drunk, dear boy. Just celebrating. I’m getting ready to declare my independence, and it’s a heady feeling. I haven’t had much of a sense of power in my life, and it does tend to go to my head.”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Jilly said, rising. “If you’re not going to serve dinner then I’ll go out and get something. I’m not in the mood for this—”
“Sit down!” Dean thundered.
“Fuck you,” Jilly snapped, as Roofus lumbered to his feet with a yip of annoyance.
“Make her stay, Coltrane,” Dean begged in a petulant voice. “I’ve got it all planned.”
“I can’t make your sister do anything,” Coltrane murmured. “You’ll have to ask her.”
Jilly was already halfway to the door when Dean’s voice reached her. “Jilly, please.”
Never in her entire life had she been able to say no to him when he used that sweetly plaintive voice, and he knew it. It didn’t help that she knew she was being manipulated.
She tried to hold her ground. “Why, Dean? What’s going on? What kind of game are you playing?”
“We’re waiting for our final guest,” Dean said.
“And who’s that?” It couldn’t be any worse than Coltrane, watching her out of those mysterious green eyes. It was a crime that such a dangerous man could be quite so tempting. But then, maybe that was exactly why he was dangerous.
“Who do you think it is, Jilly?” came a voice from behind her. “Your loving father.”
As Jilly turned to look into Jackson Dean Meyer’s brown eyes, she realized with a sinking feeling that things could get a great deal worse, after all.
Brenda de Lorillard pulled herself free from Ted’s easy embrace, the song fading from her lips. She’d been singing “Night and Day” in her husky alto while they danced on the balcony. She’d always contended that was the most erotic song ever written, and Ted, bless his heart, agreed with her.
But right then eroticism was the farthest thing from her mind. She looked up at Ted with panic in her eyes.
“What’s wrong, honeybunch?” he asked gently.
“He’s here,” she whispered.
“Who is?”
“The Bad Man. He’s back. And he’s going to hurt the girls.”
17
For a moment Jilly was frozen. She could hear Roofus growling, low in his throat, and even Coltrane’s restraining hand wasn’t having a calming effect. “I thought you were in Mexico,” she said, looking her father in the eye. She was taller than he was, a fact that made him acutely uncomfortable. One of the many reasons he’d never liked her, she supposed, though his lack of interest stemmed from when she was very little.
“What gave you that idea?”
“Coltrane.”
“Coltrane lies for me at times.”
“Fancy that,” she said lightly.
He tilted his head to look at her, and she looked back, surveying him as offhandedly as she could manage. His tan, his hair, his suit were all perfect. If anything he looked younger than when she’d last seen him, in his late forties rather than the midsixties she knew him to be. “How long has it been, Jillian?” he said jovially, a perfect impersonation of an indulgent father. “A year?”
“Two and a half,” she said, wishing to God it had been twice as long. It wasn’t right to hate your own father, even if he’d never evinced the slightest interest in you. But she hated him, quite intensely. Not so much for what he hadn’t given her, but for what he’d done to Rachel-Ann and Dean and their mother.
She couldn’t remember if she’d ever loved him, ever trusted him, even when she was a young child. Her mother had loved her three children with unstinting love, but Jackson