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“Excuse me…” A woman, smiling slightly, stopped at the booth.
“Yes?” Maude said, her thinly penciled brows going up. But it wasn’t Maude the woman’s gazed fixed on. It was Elizabeth.
“I know this is so…well, pushy, but I told myself if I don’t grab the opportunity, I might not get another.” Her pretty face lit up in a wide, warm smile. “Hi, Elizabeth. I’m Lindsay.”
Elizabeth could think of absolutely nothing to say. After the fiasco of both her and Gina’s testimony, she’d thought the day couldn’t get any worse. She’d been mistaken.
“Lindsay,” she repeated.
Gina gave a little gasp, then covered her lips with her fingers. She glanced quickly at Elizabeth. “Is this—”
“Lindsay Blackstone.” Lindsay’s smile went even brighter, if possible. “And I’ve just sat in on your hearing so I know who you are.” She gave Elizabeth an imploring look. “Please don’t be offended, but I just wanted to introduce myself.” She stuck out her hand and her smile flashed again. “I don’t think you’d welcome a hug, would you?”
“Hello.” Elizabeth took her hand, gave it a brief squeeze. What else could she do? “This is my friend, Gina D’Angelo, and her lawyer, Maude Kennedy. Gina, Maude, this is Lindsay…” She paused, unable to bring herself to say the S word.
“I’m Elizabeth’s sister,” Lindsay said with a wide smile.
There was a moment of stunned silence at the table. “We’ve had some e-mail correspondence lately,” Elizabeth explained in the lull.
“I was aware that you had a sister,” Maude said, studying them both with frank interest. “And now that I’ve seen you together, the physical resemblance is definitely there.”
“I never made a connection with the Lindsay Blackstone on TV,” Gina said on a note of wonder. She gave Elizabeth a wide-eyed look. “This is the Lindsay you mentioned who sent you the e-mail? Your sister?”
“It seems so,” Elizabeth said dryly.
“You mean you didn’t go around bragging about me?” Lindsay teased with an amusing laugh. “I’m hurt.”
“Sorry.” Elizabeth was vaguely familiar with the canceled show—”Lindsay’s Hour”—but she hadn’t made a habit of watching it. Mornings were her peak writing time, so she didn’t watch much television at all during the day. She recalled seeing it, though, but had never guessed at any connection between herself and the woman who was the show’s star. The woman whose life seemed charmed.
Lindsay’s charm was now fully unleashed. “Well, as they say, pride goes before a fall. I guess that’ll show me.”
“I was a big fan,” Gina said.
“Thank you.”
“The similarities between you two are quite amazing,” Maude said, gazing from one to the other. “But you’re certainly different types as far as hair and eyes go.” Elizabeth’s dark auburn hair and clear green eyes were startlingly different from perky, blue-eyed and blond Lindsay.
“I’ve only figured it out recently,” Lindsay said, still smiling. “According to my adoptive parents, we were separated by some stupid mix-up in the courts. This happened when Megan, our other sister, and I were still infants. We never knew that Elizabeth existed, can you believe that? It all came out when she won the Newbery. I guess you could call our reaction a mix of delight and amazement and…well, we were furious and sad, too. You should have been there when we confronted our parents. They had a lot of explaining to do, I can tell you.”
Elizabeth drew a long breath. “Lindsay, I don’t think this is the time to discuss our personal circumstances.” But inside she was trying to take in the fact that her sisters hadn’t known about her until the newspaper article. Had Lindsay mentioned that in her e-mail? She’d zapped it after that first, fast read-through. Had she missed it?
Eyes wide, Lindsay put a hand against her cheek and looked somewhat apologetic. “You’re so right. Like I said, I’m pushy sometimes. Megan’s always telling me I talk first and think later. But how could I pass up this opportunity when it’s been so difficult trying to reach you?” She gave Elizabeth a cajoling smile. “Can we get together…please? It would mean so much to Megan and me.”
Their orders arrived just then and Elizabeth escaped having to reply. Not to be deterred, Lindsay shifted to one side, waiting while their plates were placed in front of them. Then she laid her card at Elizabeth’s place. “I’ll go now and let you enjoy your lunch, but please use my private number to call me…anytime. Or Megan. I’ve jotted hers down, too. She’s doing her residency. Presently it’s an ER rotation. I think that lasts six weeks, then it’s—” She stopped, smiled again in charming apology. “Okay, okay, I’m done. Call one of us, Elizabeth. Please? Now that we know you exist, we’ll have all the time in the world to get to know each other. After all, we’re family. What could be more natural?” Still smiling, she backed away.
“So that’s what a TV personality looks like in person,” Gina breathed as they watched Lindsay make her way through the lunch crowd, waving to first one then another of the seated diners. One man rose hastily, beckoning her over to an already full table. With a bright smile of recognition, she went over and stood talking.
“I wonder how it feels to have a face that everybody recognizes?” Gina mused.
“Not everybody,” Maude said, giving Elizabeth a smiling look. “I never saw her before. I take it she’s a local celebrity?”
Gina, not Elizabeth, answered. “Yeah, at least she is in Houston, I guess. She had her own talk show produced at WBYH, but it was canceled after—” She looked at Elizabeth. “It ran about a year, didn’t it, Liz?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Are you like me, Elizabeth, not much time for television?” Maude might not be a fan; nevertheless, she was intrigued. Her gaze was on Lindsay, still chatting across the room. “Why was the show canceled?”
Gina shrugged. “Ratings, I suppose. Isn’t that always the reason a show is axed?”
Maude smiled faintly. “Again, I plead ignorance.”
“But now that I’ve actually seen her,” Gina said, noting the buzz among the lunch crowd as they began to recognize the celebrity among them, “I’m surprised she didn’t make a go of it. She’s very charismatic, isn’t she? And talk about cogones, she’s got ’em! It took balls to approach Liz after she ignored the e-mail. I’ve seen Liz squash lesser individuals who tried to intrude on her privacy.” She gave Elizabeth a thoughtful look. “Are you telling me you never knew the Lindsay who sent that e-mail was one and the same as Lindsay Blackstone of television fame?” There was obvious admiration on Gina’s face.
“I guess I’m just not the starstruck type,” Elizabeth said with a shrug, knowing it was difficult to resist someone with Lindsay’s infectious personality. But she was honest enough to admit her reaction seemed less noble now that she’d learned her sisters never knew she existed. They hadn’t chosen to shut her out of their lives. They hadn’t known about her. She studied her soup without enthusiasm. Maybe sometime in the future she’d make an effort to get to know Lindsay and Megan, but for now, the time just wasn’t right.
Even though her appetite was gone, Elizabeth picked up her spoon. “Can we eat our lunch now?”
Four
“Hot damn, I think you did it, Ryan!” Slapping his hand on the tabletop, Austin grinned with glee as he watched Ryan collect papers and notes, a couple of pens and a scattering of paper clips, then toss them into his briefcase. “I knew you’d cream Gina on the stand, but it was really inspiring the way you rattled that bitch she’s living with now.” He rubbed his hands together. “Hell, you made it look easy. We’ve got ’em, haven’t we?”
Ryan closed the lid of his briefcase and snapped the locks shut. He preferred spending the lunch recess alone. He stayed focused that way, but Austin was like a pesky pup, dogging his tracks and peppering him with questions. He’d done his best to prepare him for his testimony this afternoon, but he didn’t have a good feeling about it. “It’s a mistake to count your chickens before they hatch, Austin.”
Something about the grim set of his features finally signaled to Austin that his lawyer’s behavior was something less than joyful. His glee morphed into impatience.
“It’s not chickens we’re dealing with here,” he snapped. “It’s a couple of dykes with an agenda. Which is to take me to the cleaners. So I repeat, do you think we’ve destroyed their case? Am I going to come out of this without writing a check that’ll make me very unhappy or not?”
Ryan was silent. He’d been pretty brutal to Gina and her friend and he wasn’t feeling particularly proud of himself. Elizabeth’s testimony had been especially powerful and he’d had to use strong tactics to make his point. Hell, it was natural she’d want to stick up for Gina. That’s what character witnesses did. Their mission was to paint a glowing picture of the person they’d mounted the stand to defend. Elizabeth had done that all right, big time. As a result, he’d crossed a line professionally grilling them both the way he did. He knew in his gut the women weren’t lesbians. And Elizabeth’s explanation about the New Year’s Eve party had the ring of truth. Whether both were telling the truth about Austin’s abuse was more difficult to judge, and that was troublesome. There were no hospital records, Gina had never called the police, she’d made no formal complaints anytime, anywhere. With no paper trail, it was Gina’s word—and her friend Elizabeth Walker’s—against a man Ryan himself had known for several years. On the other hand, his acquaintance with Austin was not personal, but almost exclusively professional. And very casual. Still, word of that kind of behavior got around, didn’t it? And although he had never heard a word about it, the gossip mill at LJ and B was alive and well. On the other hand, anyone gossiping about Curtiss Leggett’s son would be severely chastised at the firm. That, in itself, would keep a lid on gossip. So, the question remained, were the allegations of the two women manufactured to put the squeeze on his client, as Austin claimed? If so, that kind of mean-spirited, grasping behavior deserved the full brunt of his expertise to rebut it.
He paused with a sheaf of papers in his hand. All this soul-searching and second-guessing of himself was a useless exercise. His treatment of Elizabeth Walker on the stand had nothing to do with her connection to the man who’d driven his father to suicide, and everything to do with his client. That would have been over the line, and he didn’t consider himself petty.
“Hello? Counselor…anybody home?”
“Hmm? Oh, sorry, Austin. I was just practicing my closing statement,” Ryan lied. He picked up his briefcase from the table and fell into step with his client, both headed for the doors. “Why don’t you go grab yourself some lunch and I’ll meet you here when we reconvene?” He shot back a cuff to look at his watch. “In about an hour and a half.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Austin said, ignoring the dismissal.
“I didn’t hear a question.”
“Is she going to be awarded big money?” he repeated in exasperation. “Jesus, Ryan, what else would I be asking about?”
“What about custody? Isn’t that what you’re most interested in?”
“Custody and the settlement amount go hand in hand,” Austin said, getting more agitated by the minute. On the steps of the courthouse now, he suddenly faced Ryan. “What’s going on here? Are you having doubts about the case? Are you starting to believe those two? Because if you are, I need to know about it. I can get another lawyer—”
Ryan stopped, fed up with the whole nasty situation. “Listen, Austin, if you don’t like the way I’m handling your case, there are thirty-five or forty other lawyers at LB and J who would jump to take my place. I didn’t ask for this job, I was put in a position by your father where it was flat-out suicide to refuse it. And now that I’m up to my ass in your life, I realize that Curtiss Leggett wasn’t particularly looking out for your welfare in ordering me to wrap the whole thing up neatly. What your father wants besides that is to shield the firm from any hint of scandal. Now, the question remains, Austin…why would he think there was a chance that the firm would be embarrassed?”
“I don’t know what he thinks.” Austin sounded like a surly teen.
“Maybe there’s some substance to those allegations Gina and Elizabeth Walker were making? Maybe your old man has picked up something from the office grapevine? Or maybe he has a more reliable source.”
“Meaning what?” Austin’s face was turned away, closed.
“Meaning he’s family, Austin. Your family. Families have secrets.”
“He doesn’t know my secrets,” Austin said sourly, his gaze on the lunch hour traffic. “There’s nothing for him to know. Gina’s lying. Liz is lying.”
“Everybody’s lying,” Ryan said evenly. “But not you.”
Austin turned and looked him squarely in the eye then. “No, not me.”
After a moment, Ryan began to walk again. “Then if you stick with that attitude on the stand this afternoon, you’ll be in good shape, depending on what you really want. If it’s to avoid writing a big check, maybe. Gina claims she doesn’t want much. But if it’s custody of your little girl, that’s more iffy.”
“You worry too much,” Austin said, his good humor restored by the prospect that he might not have to part with real money.
“Yeah, well, that’s my job,” Ryan said. Approaching his car, he opened the door and tossed his briefcase inside. What was really sticking in his craw was the custody issue. When it came to the little girl, Ryan had a bad feeling about handing her over to Austin. He’d felt these vague negative stirrings before in other cases…and it was always when he’d gone to the wire for a client who, when it was all over, turned out to be a liar.
Pity that little girl.
“Jesse, we’re home!” Gina tossed her purse on a chair, kicked off her shoes. “God, I feel like an ex-con getting out of prison. How do you stand being cooped up all day in front of that monitor, Liz? I’d go crazy. Louie! Jesse!” She pulled the comb from her hair and freed her thick, dark mane. Balancing on one leg, she reached for one of the staid, black pumps borrowed from Elizabeth for the hearing and took it off. She glanced into the den while massaging her cramped toes. “Where are they?”
Elizabeth tucked her purse into a drawer. “I’ll check my office.” Jesse had quickly learned to play simple computer games and she sometimes broke the rule not to open the machine when Elizabeth wasn’t there to supervise. “Not in here,” she told Gina. “They’re probably outside.”
“Probably.” Gina headed across the den to the patio doors. “If Louie would let her, Jesse would spend the whole day outside. She’s such a tomboy.” Gina sighed, savoring the cool wood floor on her bare feet. “My feet feel as if they’re out of prison, too,” she muttered, opening the French doors to a burst of enthusiastic barking in the area beyond the patio. “Louie! Jesse! Where are you?”
“Over here.” Louie’s voice came from the gazebo. He began to rise from an old-fashioned glider. There was no sign of Jesse. “How’d it go?”
“We’ll know tomorrow,” Elizabeth said. “The judge will give us his decision then.”
“Oh, shoot, I’ll ruin these panty hose if I go out there.” Stepping back, Gina lifted the hem of her skirt—also borrowed from Elizabeth—and wiggled out of the panty hose. Then, sighing with relief, she stepped barefoot onto the flagstone surface. “Where’s my honey?” she called, raising her voice in the singsong way that Jesse loved.
Jesse squealed, emerging from a pile of raked leaves that hadn’t been there when they’d left this morning. “Here I am, Mommy!” Laughing, she ran flat-out for her mother, arms open wide. The golden retriever raced by her side. Both outdistanced a tow-headed boy, who was just a fraction of an inch taller than Jesse. Gina laughed as thirty-five pounds of small female energy crashed into her legs and two short arms closed tight around her thighs. The dog leaped around them, grinning and barking ecstatically.
“Missed me, didn’t you, punkin?” Gina framed Jesse’s small face between her hands and gave her a kiss on the nose.
“You were gone a long time, Mommy.”
“It sure seemed like it to me, too, baby.” Gina plucked a few dead leaves from her daughter’s tangled mop. “But I came home as soon as I could. Hi, Cody,” she said to the little boy, who smiled shyly while hanging on to the dog’s collar.
“Was she a good girl, Louie?”
The aging man was dusting leaves and debris from his pants. “She’s always a good girl,” Louie Christian said, giving Jesse a wink.
“What is it with that wink?” Gina asked, pretending to frown.
“Don’t go in Papa Louie’s kitchen, Mommy,” Jesse warned. Beside her, Cody buried his face in the dog’s ruff.
“Why, what would I find in Papa Louie’s kitchen?” Gina asked.
“They wanted to make play dough,” Louie explained. “From scratch.”
“No, from flour and salt, Papa Louie,” Jesse said.
Louie gave Gina another wink. “My mistake.”
Gina’s hands went to her hips. “So you said absolutely not because a kitchen is no place for two five-year-olds, except for eating. And besides, fooling around with flour and salt and who-knows-what-all to make play dough is a project to be supervised by moms. That is what you said, isn’t it, Louie?”
Louie scratched his bearded cheek. “Well…”
Jesse was jumping up and down and Cody was grinning. “He let us do it because we knew how, Mommy! We learned at school, didn’t we, Cody?”
“Uh-huh.” Blond head bobbing.
“I’m afraid I didn’t realize exactly what was required to make play dough,” Louie said apologetically. “And then there seemed to be flour everywhere and Archie was going to track it back into the den, so I turned my back for a moment to put her outside, then Cody said he knew how much water it took, but apparently he overestimated a bit and then—” He was shaking his head. “Actually, it was the mixer that did most of the damage, I’m afraid.”
Gina reached up and flicked something white and sticky from Louie’s beard.
“Oops.” Jesse covered her mouth and her smile. “I thought we cleaned you all up, Papa Louie.”
“But did you clean up Papa Louie’s kitchen, young lady?” she asked sternly.
“Papa Louie said we’d better go outside while the gittin’ was good,” Jesse said. “So we did.”
“It was too overwhelming for them to clean up,” Louie said, looking pained. “And I couldn’t leave them outside without supervision. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want that.” Gina rolled her eyes. “Look, Louie, you’re going to have to be more forceful with them, Jesse especially. She can talk the tail off a tiger if you let her. Now, next time—”
“Next time I won’t let them in the kitchen,” Louie said, looking relieved to get only a lecture.
“No, next time you won’t let them talk you into beginning a project that even an experienced childcare worker would hesitate over.” After a moment, she gave a resigned sigh. “Okay, the damage is done, but we have to go over to Papa Louie’s house now and clean up.” She took Jesse’s hand and motioned for Cody to follow. When Louie made to join them, she shook her head. “Uh-uh, Louie. They did the mess, they’ll clean it up. You go back to the glider and let Elizabeth tell you about the hearing.”
“Good idea.” Elizabeth, smiling faintly over the situation, nudged Louie toward the gazebo.
“Is it good news?” Louie asked, not ready to sit.
“Tell him, Liz.” And with that, she picked up her pace, tugging Jesse along with Cody, and headed toward Louie’s house just visible through a thick hedge of oleander.
“Want some more iced tea?” Elizabeth asked, noticing the glass on the table beside the glider.
“No, no, I’m nearly floating now.” Instead of relaxing, Louie sat up straight on the edge of a cushion as Elizabeth took a seat in a white wicker chair. “I’m surprised the hearing’s over. I thought it would go into a second day. Did Austin do the decent thing and withdraw his motion?”
“Austin and decency is an oxymoron,” Elizabeth said with a grimace. “Gina and I testified this morning, then he took the stand after lunch. Judge Hetherington—”
“Old Lock-’em-up Larry,” Louie muttered as he tossed what was left of his drink into the grass.
“You know him?” Elizabeth asked.
“I’ve watched him preside in a couple of high-profile cases,” Louie said, “but that was years ago. I hope he’s mellowed in his old age.”
