LITMIR.BIZ

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need to pay you to leave town. I can get rid of you whenever I like.”

      “Can you really?” she asked with genuine interest. “It would be fascinating to watch you try.”

      “You don’t believe it?” His smile was calculating. “For instance, I could buy the mortgage on your aunt’s house and foreclose.”

      “The house doesn’t have a mortgage,” she said easily. And it didn’t. Henry had paid it off, anonymously, through a Realty company in Illinois.

      Cy was surprised. Something niggled at the back of his mind for just an instant before he dismissed it. “I could fire you.”

      “I can get another job,” she said. “Even you can’t control quite every business in Billings. I seem to remember that you used to have enemies. I could go to one of them for work.”

      His eyes flashed. “Try it.”

      “Why don’t you ask your mother why she wants me to leave?” she asked quietly.

      “I know why. She thinks you’ll worm your way into my life again and leave me bleeding, like you did years ago.”

      She laughed softly. “You don’t bleed,” she said huskily. “If you did, it would be pure gold, or silver.”

      “You cheated on me and helped another man steal from me. You’re the one who might bleed money, not me.”

      “Think so?” The pain and anguish of the past contorted her features, made her eyes darker. “What you and your mother did to me didn’t count?”

      “We did nothing to you,” he said tersely. “Although we could have. I could have sent you to prison for that theft.”

      She shook her head. “Because a good attorney would have cut Tony to pieces on the witness stand. Where is the dear boy now?”

      “I don’t know,” he said coldly.

      “Don’t know, and don’t care.” She nodded. “Well, that’s too bad. I liked Tony, despite what he and your mother did to my life.”

      “My mother did nothing to you!”

      Her gaze was level and unflinching. “Nothing?” She leaned forward. “Ask her. I dare you. Ask her why I’m here, why I won’t leave. Ask her for the truth.”

      His eyes glittered. “I know the truth. Don’t push me. You’re only here on sufferance.” He threw down his napkin and got up, towering over her. “You won’t find me as vulnerable this time.”

      “The reverse is also true,” she said quietly. “And you can tell your mother that my price is now beyond her pocket.”

      “Careful, honey,” he said softly. “You’re on my home ground now, and I fight to win.”

      “Then you’d better start polishing your sword, big man,” she replied. “Because this time you’re going to have to make the first cut count. Have a nice evening.”

      She turned and walked over to the next table without batting an eyelash.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      MYRNA HARDEN ATE NOTHING that evening. Her interview with Meredith hadn’t gone at all the way she’d planned it. She hadn’t wanted to make threats, but the younger woman had frightened her. This wasn’t the shy young girl who’d once cringed at her cold tone, who’d been beaten and sent packing. No. This new Meredith was an unknown quantity, and when Myrna hadn’t been able to ruffle her composure, she’d said things she never meant to say.

      She’d wanted to tell Meredith how desperately she’d searched for her, how upset she’d been at her own irrational actions. She hadn’t wanted to leave a young, pregnant girl at the mercy of a heartless world, and when Meredith had sent back the small wad of bills she’d given her, along with all the expensive things Cy had tried to give her, she was even more afraid. Meredith’s people wouldn’t have had much to give her. The young girl, alone and pregnant in a large city, would have been at the mercy of any stranger who wanted to hurt her.

      Shocked and horrified at what she’d done, Myrna had hired private detectives, unbeknownst to Cy, in a furious attempt to track Meredith down and provide for her. The thought of her own grandchild being aborted or put up for adoptions by strangers had haunted her for years. Her best efforts hadn’t produced one scrap of evidence that would point to Meredith’s whereabouts. The girl might have disappeared from the face of the earth.

      Myrna gave up trying to eat and pushed the plate away. She was alone tonight, as she frequently was. Cy had business, he’d said. Even his attitude had changed over the years. He was no longer the loving, considerate son he’d once been. Meredith’s departure had twisted something inside him, made him hard and uncaring and cruel at times. He blamed the girl, when it was Myrna’s manipulating that had caused his pain. She closed her eyes. Meredith had accused her of feeling guilt, and of course, she had. Guilt, shame, anguish, all those things. She felt the weight of her villainy tonight, along with her memories. Meredith’s pleading face, Cy’s unyielding one, Tony’s innocent complicity, came back to torment her. Cy had stayed drunk for days afterward, refusing to leave his room, even to speak to his mother. When he regained his composure, he became a playboy of the worst kind, and for months the business suffered.

      He’d weathered his storm, but he wasn’t the same. Myrna laughed bitterly. She wasn’t the same, either. Her plotting had caused so much tragedy that even the terrible fear that had triggered her actions couldn’t justify them. She thought of the child and wished she knew if Meredith had really had it. Was it safe? Was it happy? Was it in the hands of loving people and not sadists who might abuse it? The same thoughts had grieved her all the long years, had given her no peace. She got up from the table, leaving the maid to clear away, and she strolled aimlessly into the living room. A mausoleum, she thought, looking around at the exquisite decor. She was entombed in this luxury, with no real friends and no living relatives except her son. She was alone, as perhaps she deserved to be.

      Her long fingers touched a Ming vase on a side table, caressing its beauty, its faded colors. She was like that, she mused. Old and faded and delicate, for all her bluster. Meredith hated her, and it was no more than she deserved. She hadn’t really expected to get away with her sins. Nobody did. Payment might take twenty years, but inevitably your trespasses ricocheted right back to you.

      Myrna shivered as she felt the approaching storm. Meredith couldn’t be bought, she couldn’t be intimidated. There was no way to make her leave, and if she stayed, there was every chance that Cy would learn the truth. All of it.

      Her eyes closed on a shudder. Her son would hate her when he learned what she’d done.

      Restlessly, she walked over to the darkened window and looked out at the cold, bare silhouette of the trees on the horizon. Farther, in the distance, were the lights of the refinery near the Yellowstone, like beacons against the dark sky. She couldn’t confess her crime, not yet. She’d just have to bide her time. There was so much Cy didn’t know about her past, about the reasons she’d fought so hard for respectability. She’d even married Frank Harden for that, when she didn’t love him. The man she’d really loved had gone off to Vietnam shattered by her cold mercenary plotting, and he’d been killed there. That, too, was on Myrna’s conscience. She’d sacrificed love all her life in the pursuit of wealth and power, to arm herself with the things that would protect her son from the devastating childhood she’d had to suffer.

      Nobody knew, not even the one great-uncle she had left, what she’d had to endure as a little girl because of her mother. No one would know, ever, she swore. She’d made her bed, now she had to lie in it. But what she’d done to Meredith, to Cy, to the man she’d loved—her soul ached with the bruises her actions had dealt it.

      But there might still be time to spare herself the humiliation of having Cy know what she’d done. If she begged, she might gain Meredith’s compassion and get her out of Billings in time. The damage was done, the child was lost. She was almost certain now that

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