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Living with a bipolar wife had taught Zane that losing his head only made everything worse. Retreating—whether it was into work or into himself—had been the best way to handle her.
She’d also taught him that there was a difference between his personal life and business. In the latter, he could uncork the frustration that built up at home, striking quickly and lethally during deals, allowing him a sorely needed outlet.
And the McCords were just asking for it.
Dragging his gaze away from Livie’s image, he refocused on the old family portrait above the fireplace. There was a measure of serenity at seeing the picture that’d been painted just before his mom, his daughter’s namesake, had suffered a fatal fall during a horseback ride. His father had tried his best to raise the three boys on his own, but they’d missed their mom terribly.
And sometimes her death even made Zane wonder if all the women in his life would leave before their time.
At any rate, her absence had bonded all of them, and it had molded Zane into a man early on, as he’d taken up where his father had to leave off in raising Jason and Travis. Even now, at the age of thirty-six, Zane felt as if he was still in charge of so much: their holdings, their tanglings with the McCords.
Jason was speaking again: “At first, I wasn’t sure why the McCords would be so interested in the ranch right now. I thought maybe they wanted to sell off the acreage, if those rumors about money trouble in their jewelry business are true. But then, what difference would that relatively small cash influx make? Then I thought about the silver mines on the property.”
“Those are abandoned, Jace. Tapped out. That’s why the McCords leased the land to us.”
“I take it that, during this latest nanny search, your ear hasn’t been to the ground.”
He stiffened until Jason chuckled, revealing that he’d only been injecting a little humor where some was sorely needed. But Zane took his duties as oldest brother seriously. Having the McCords get the best of them during his watch was never going to happen.
“One of my assistants,” Jason said, “heard that Blake McCord has been buying up as many loose canary diamonds as possible on the world market.”
Diamonds?
Zane started to see where his brother might be going with this.
Jason added, “I imagine you’re remembering those news reports from several months ago?”
“The Santa Magdalena Diamond,” Zane said. He’d filed the information in the back of his mind, way behind Livie and other more urgent matters, but he sure as hell hadn’t forgotten.
A flawless, forty-eight-carat canary gem with perfect clarity, the Santa Magdalena Diamond was legendary, said to transcend even the beauty and brilliance of the Hope Diamond itself. Supposedly, the piece had been mined in India, and was cursed, because it had resulted in bad luck for everyone who ever owned it. It was only when the gem rested with its rightful owner that any personal misfortunes would end.
The diamond had been missing for over a century, but fairly recently, divers had uncovered a wrecked ship that was supposed to have been carrying the jewel, in addition to other treasures of murky origins.
Really, the only reason the Foleys were interested in the diamond was because their great-grandfather, Elwin Foley, had been on that ship, which might have also been populated by thieves, although that never had been proven. When the transport went down, a few passengers had survived, including Elwin, and according to family stories, he’d snagged the gem, along with a jewel-encrusted chest of coins. But since no one had found either object since, the tale had passed into legend.
However, the ship’s recent discovery had resurrected all the rumors, especially since the diamond and the chest hadn’t been located.
“The Santa Magdalena Diamond came to my mind, too,” Jason said. “I’ve been going through a lot of scenarios, but the best I can figure, maybe the McCords believe that Elwin Foley did get away with the gem when he survived the wreck, and he hid the diamond somewhere on the land where Travis’s ranch is located now—land that used to belong to Elwin before it passed to Gavin, who lost it in that poker game. And don’t you think the Santa Magdalena would pay a few bills for a cash-strapped business?”
“The theory’s a stretch,” Zane said.
“But the timing’s pretty telling. The divers find the shipwreck, rumors recirculate about Elwin taking the diamond, then the McCords express a heightened interest in the property.”
“Whatever their intentions, I’m not about to let Travis be hassled by that family.”
“Glad you’re on board then.” His brother sounded as confident as ever.
Zane shot a skeptical glance at the phone. “What exactly did I board, Jace?”
Right about now, his sibling was probably grinning to himself about one of his genius ideas that kept Foley Industries in the black. “If the McCords want to give us trouble, I say we find out about it ahead of time. Cut them off at the pass.”
“Your lawyer friends—the ones who got you that information about the McCords looking into the lease—will only get us so far.”
“Exactly. I’ll be taking matters into my own hands until we know Travis isn’t in for some harassment.”
Zane waited for it.
“The McCords have a few soft spots,” Jason said, elaborating. “One of them is named Penny.”
Penny. Penelope McCord. Zane recalled one of the daughters of the other family—the quiet twin in a set of burnished blond-haired sisters. A jewelry designer who basically kept to herself.
In a contest between her and Jason, the so-called lady killer, she had no chance at all.
“What are you intending, Jace?” Not that Zane had sympathy for any McCord, but…hell, a lady was a lady, and there were limits.
“Nothing fancy. I just discovered we’ll be attending the same wedding pretty soon. I’ve done business with the groom, so he invited me to his big, high-society bash. I figured I might just happen across her table, sit myself down for a rest, offer my own sort of olive branch in polite conversation…”
“…and feel her out for what she might know, without being too obvious about it.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, and when Jason didn’t say anything, Zane knew he was probably in his desk chair, relaxing with his hands behind his head, content with the plan.
“Okay,” Zane added. “A wedding sounds like a good place to casually learn if the McCords have discovered the location of the diamond, and to find out just how true these rumors about the McCords’s finances are.”
“And if that wedding should turn into something afterward…”
Zane raised an eyebrow. “Jace.”
“I’m talking about a coffee date—or whatever.”
No, his brother was talking about more than that. Zane knew how Jason loved his women, especially ones as lovely as Penny McCord.
Zane was just about to mention it, when he heard something outside the door.
“Wait a sec,” he said to his brother, then went over to check on the noise.
But…nothing.
Still, he thought he smelled a hint of sunshine-like perfume that traced the rough edges of his heart until it felt about ready to fall out of him.
Steadying himself, he closed the door to the dim hallway—and to the very idea of sunshine, too.
Melanie was halfway through the drive to Austin when her nerves finally settled.
She’d only managed to calm down by gazing out the black-tinted window at the passing scenery, as well as chattering with Monty, the town car driver, who, as she now very well knew, had four daughters with tempers as quick as their mama’s and tastes way beyond his table wine budget.
The conversation almost made her forget that she’d been standing in a hallway and eavesdropping on her boss. And that her boss had only said that she was…“spirited.”
She tried not to let that bother her, but it did. Deep inside, she’d been hoping to hear Zane Foley say that she had a great smile. She’d been wishing for a lyrical description that would’ve belonged in a song, like maybe there was something in the way she moved…
Right. Anyway, after telling herself that she was being eleven kinds of fool, she’d found that she was sitting there still listening to him and Jason talking about the McCords.
And the Santa Magdalena Diamond.
If Melanie hadn’t been confused and intrigued by her new boss before, she sure was now. Since she hadn’t been living under a rock, she’d heard about the diamond and how it had been connected to the recent shipwreck discovery. Hearing Zane and Jason discuss all of it just piled one more question upon the other questions that had been weighing in her brain about the Foleys.
Monty glanced in the rearview mirror, checking on her during a lull in their talk. On the downhill side of his thirties, he had thick-lashed, dark eyes that tipped up at the corners in perpetual good humor, dusky skin scraped by a five-o’clock shadow, and a long nose that topped a smile.
“You need me to turn the air on higher?” he asked.
She crossed one leg over the other, aiming her body in his direction and away from the window. “No thank you. It’s just…”
“Come on, spill it out to me. Long rides go by a lot quicker with a good discussion.”
He was too nice to shut out, but she wasn’t going to “spill” anything about Zane Foley.
“I remembered that I left my suit jacket back at the house,” she said instead. “Excellent start, don’t you think? Mr. Foley probably believes I don’t have a brain in me.”
Laughing, he shrugged. “Listen, once I fill up my stomach with leftovers from Cook’s fridge, I’ll be turning this baby right back around, to be on standby for Mr. Foley in Dallas. I’ll fetch that jacket for you and make sure you get it soon enough.”
“Really? I hate to be such a bother.”
He made a dismissive gesture, and she thought it was sincere.
She told him where she left the jacket, before adding, “Must be nice for Mr. Foley to have a driver whenever he needs one. He’s worked for it, I know, but what perks, huh?”
He rested his hand on top of the steering wheel. “Mr. Foley doesn’t take nearly the advantage of his good fortune as I would. Sure, he has a great place in Austin, but he uses it to house Livie more than anything else. He’s never around to enjoy it. And he has that nice town home, too. But with his money? It could’ve been a castle.”
“He never comes to Tall Oaks?”
“No. He’s not there much at all. Birthdays, Christmas, an annual fundraiser for the Dallas Children’s Hospital, and that’s about it. Mr. Foley’s a busy man, but he gives Livie what she needs otherwise.”
Yes, nannies.
Yet, as Melanie had told her boss, she wasn’t one to judge, and she needed to keep that in mind.
Monty seemed to have shut himself off from saying any more about it, so Melanie decided to pursue another avenue.
Then she would stop. Really.
“Funny how life works. I mean, if Harry McCord hadn’t cheated in that card game with Gavin Foley, the Foleys might’ve been the ones with the jewelry empire that the McCords developed.”
“True,” Monty said. “There were five abandoned silver mines on that property. Five. That’s a lot of can-noli they missed out on because their grandfather made a bad bet.” He chuckled. “But, depending on who you talk to outside the family, you’re going to get a different story about that poker game.”
“What do you mean?”
Monty looked over his shoulder, amusement written on his face, then returned his gaze to the front again. “None of this goes out of the car, understand?”
Heck, she didn’t want to summon the wrath of her coworkers by betraying them. “Absolutely.”
Her pulse got a bit louder in her ears.
“It’s sour grapes, that’s what I say. Gavin made the bet, and he should’ve owned up to it. But it must’ve been tough to see that land pay off in so much silver to the McCords.”
“I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like,” she said.
“Fortunately,” he added, “the Foleys found their own strike of luck in their East Texas oil fields, but Gavin always claimed that the McCord silver should’ve been theirs, too. The boys grew up on those sorts of tales, especially young Travis. He practically lived at his grandfather’s knee, while our Zane ran the roost over at his dad’s house.” The driver smiled. “Testosterone Lodge. That’s what they called their household after their mother passed on.”
Melanie remembered the woman in the family portrait in Zane’s study. She’d looked so gentle and caring, traits she’d never really grown up with herself.
“So,” she said, feeling an ache in her chest, “Mr. Foley—Zane—was the second man of the house, right after Rex Foley?”
“Yes, ma’am. And the absence of a woman’s guiding touch is why you have the competitive, aggressive Zane Foley, who lords it over the real estate and oil businesses. He’s the leader of the pack.”
Sitting back in the seat, Melanie allowed the image of Zane Foley’s hazel eyes to mist over her thoughts. She sighed without even knowing it, then recovered when she saw Monty watching her in the mirror.
“He’s a haunted man, too,” the driver said, as if he knew just what kind of effect the boss had on her.
Then again, she wouldn’t be surprised if he attracted every woman who came within ten feet of him.
“The missus—Danielle—did a real number on him.” Monty shook his head. “You’re going to hear about this sooner or later, being a part of the family now, so I’ll tell you. But it’s not to be talked about to anyone else.”
“I understand.”
He slumped a little in his seat. “Danielle was bipolar, and during a time when she went off her medication, she took her life.”
Melanie instinctively covered her heart with her hand. Now Zane Foley’s avoidance of discussing his personal life with the press made sense.
But what had the suicide done to Livie?
To Zane?
She recalled his devastated gaze, and she knew.
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” she said softly.
“We were all sorry. It’s been almost six years now, but she still has an effect on every moment, every inch of space around us.”
Melanie stayed quiet. She was going to live in what amounted to a haunted house, wasn’t she? She was going to walk on the floors where Danielle had walked, brush her fingers along the same walls…
“He married her right out of high school,” Monty continued, “but a short time after that, she started showing extreme highs and lows in her mood. Mr. Foley didn’t know how to handle that, yet he did everything he could. The doctors even put her on meds, but when she went off of them…”
Melanie closed her eyes, wanting to hear, but not wanting to.
He added, “Mr. Foley isn’t a helpless kind of man. He’d always been so good at everything—school, home life, sports and then business. But he couldn’t come up with any way to aid Danielle, beyond getting her all the professional treatment he could. When she overdosed on pills, he blamed himself and buried himself in work.”
She opened her eyes. “How about Livie?”
“She was nothing more than a baby when it happened, but every year she grows to look even more like Danielle. You can imagine what that does to Mr. Foley.”
