One More Dance by Roxanne Rustand (best ebook reader for pc txt) 📗

But her roommates were talkative enough. Then I drove clear up to Charlesburg—four hours away—and asked around about her family. As always, you were right. They spell trouble with a capital T. Have you told Jared that you were checking up on her background?”

“You know how he is—always leaping to the defense of the downtrodden and misunderstood.” Sylvia snorted. “So I simply reminded him of his current and future duty to this family. I also reminded him of his ‘long-standing’ commitment tonight.”

“The children’s hospital gala?”

“I told him that he’d promised to be my escort. He brought me home just a few minutes ago. Nice affair, actually. Big crowd, successful benefit.” She reined in a tired sigh. “See and be seen, as they say.”

“Is it worth it, Syl?” Dexter’s voice held a note of reproach. “Maybe your kids don’t care about all of this.”

“My children are my life. And I’m going to see that they take their rightful places in society.”

“Well...maybe they want something different for themselves. Maybe they don’t care about all the status and money and power.”

“Don’t care?” Sylvia lifted her chin. “They’re too young to understand their father’s legacy right now, but they’ll thank me in the future. You can bet on it.”

“You should be thinking about who you want all this for—you or them.” Dexter regarded her for a long moment, then his shoulders slumped and he turned to the door. “Because I think you’re going to drive them away, and then you’ll have nothing. Nothing at all.”

She clenched her fingers on the back of a chair until her arthritis ached and her knuckles were white, still staring at the door long after Dexter was gone. He had no clue. No clue at all about how hard things were right now.

Which meant, she supposed, that she’d been a success. Smoke and mirrors—her life now amounted to that and nothing more, because Ellsworth had died so young.

A stock market plunge had decimated their investments just before his death, but then he’d always been foolish—too focused on his constituents to pay proper attention to his family’s financial security. One avaricious, sleazy little constituent in particular. She'd extracted quite a cozy nest egg for herself in exchange for her silence after the senator died in her arms on the dance floor of some tacky bar.

He’d been careless about other matters as well—like maintaining adequate life insurance—and he'd left his family in luxurious housing Sylvia could scarcely afford, with mounting debts beyond anything left in the bank.

So now she worked long hours on full commission in an upscale dress shop, on the pretext that she was simply bored and needed something beyond her volunteer activities to fill her time. She found creative ways to keep up a good front—buying designer garments and accessories that had been returned to the shop soiled or damaged, and then discounted. Or skillfully refurbishing the classic pieces she already owned.

But above all, she had a plan—a perfect plan—to ensure that the future would be far, far better.

And her children were the ones who could make that happen.

CHAPTER SIX

PRESENT DAY

Kate rubbed her arms, trying to stir some warmth into her cold flesh. Was it twenty degrees in here? Thirty?

At ten o’clock, the hallway lights had dimmed, leaving just the harsh glare of ceiling lights in the empty hospital waiting room and the glow of the red exit signs at either end of the hallway she’d been pacing for the last two hours.

Bright light taunted her from behind the double doors marked Staff Only. More than once she’d stopped at those doors to rest her forehead against the frosted windows, willing someone to come out.

Desperately needing to hear good news.

The last announcements hadn’t been promising. Blood loss. Concern about reducing the pressure in Jared’s brain before permanent damage occurred. From the nurse’s grim expression, things were going worse than expected, and there wasn’t a single thing Kate could do to help except pray.

She’d certainly kept the line to God open the entire evening—praying Jared would survive, praying that he wouldn’t have permanent damage. Praying that Casey, Julia, and Sylvia would arrive in time for goodbyes if he was beyond hope, though that thought renewed her silent tears every time.

I wish I could go back...do things right. Take back things I’ve said... I’d be a better wife. A better mom.

The silence of the hospital mocked her as she hesitated at the doors once again, then resumed her pacing.

At the sudden ring of her cell phone she nearly jumped out of her skin, then fumbled to pull it from her jacket pocket. Her heart raced as she squinted at the name on the screen.

“Tom?”

“How are you holding up, Kate?” Jared’s law partner’s voice was warm and sympathetic, but she could hear a note of hesitance, too.

“All right, I guess. No—” She shoved a hand through her hair. “It’s awful, waiting to hear. Casey won’t arrive till sometime tomorrow, and Sylvia’s on her way.”

“But no news is good news, right? He must be holding up in surgery or they would’ve come out to tell you by now. I’m just so sorry I can’t be there with you.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to be. H-how’s Neta?”

“She’s doing okay.” The single word held a weary acceptance that spoke of all the trials they’d been through with his wife Neta’s worsening cancer and coping with their three young children. “I hate to keep you on the phone, but thought you should know that a deputy came out to see me tonight. He left just a few minutes ago.”

“About the accident?”

“And about the deceased. We talked at the house, then drove to the office and looked over the planner that Jared keeps on his desk. We couldn’t find anything about an appointment this afternoon. There weren’t any messages on his office phone, either, and his cell was destroyed in the fire.”

Icy fingers clenched Kate’s stomach, sending a queasy feeling up her throat. “You have no idea who that woman could have been?”

“None.” After a long pause,