“I gave you everything.”
“And it’s killing me. I—I can’t go on like this.…This house we built together is not a home. It’s a monument like the pyramids or the Taj Mahal, tombs built for the dead to impress the living. You’re not rich…not really. You don’t have money. Your money has you.”
You’re killing me.
He’d remembered how eagerly she’d run to the door every night when he’d come home in the beginning of their marriage. Until he’d made it clear he didn’t like such exuberant displays of affection—in bed or out of it. But divorce?
He’d said, “So, how much are you going to take me for?”
“I don’t want a dime of your precious money.”
“One day some slick lawyer will call me and show us both what a liar you are.”
She’d stuck to her noble sentiment, taken a low-paying job. She’d rented a one-bedroom apartment. He’d hired a guy to keep tabs.
Even before she’d called three days ago, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. Still, he’d been surprised and pleased; but furious, too, that he was so happy to hear from her.
She’d said she’d changed her mind about the divorce; she’d had something important to tell him, something too important and too thrilling to discuss over the phone.
“You want more money, don’t you—”
She’d begun to sob. “I wish…I wish I’d never met you.”
He’d been about to apologize.
“You are a bastard.”
Bastard. Her tearful insult had pushed him over some wild edge. He’d been vicious, gotten her completely distraught. She’d slammed the phone down. He’d had a premonition that had taken him to a cold, dark place in his heart and terrified him. Desperately he’d tried to call her back. Six times he’d dialed that number he’d known by heart.
She’d raced out and jumped in her car.
He’d jumped in his.
He’d been the first at the scene.
Marcie couldn’t handle stress or fighting. She hadn’t been the best driver under normal circumstances.
Luke imagined her racing up that narrow road that wound through limestone cliffs out to the lake and to the house in the hills they’d built together as newly-weds.
His house now.
In her fury, she’d taken the turn too fast. There’d been an oncoming car in her lane. She’d swerved and lost control. He saw her slim body hurtling into unforgiving rock.
Too late, he’d realized she’d been coming to tell him about their baby.
“She was a damn fool about you to the end,” Sheila had said. “She truly believed the baby—my grand-baby—might work the miracle she couldn’t. That’s why she was so pathetically eager to attempt a reconciliation. She’d thought that if the two of you adored the same child…Why couldn’t she see what a coldblooded bastard you are? This divorce thing was your fault! You killed her! She loved you—poor fool. Not that you can understand that. You murdered my daughter! And my grandson!”
Marcie had loved him.
Which was the last thing he’d wanted her to do.
She’d been several months along. Why hadn’t she told him she was pregnant sooner?
Words from the mourners came back to him.
“—terrible accident! Not your fault—”
“—leaving him, you know—”
“—do you blame her—”
“—going to take him to the cleaners—”
“—nothing you could have done—”
Never as long as Luke lived would he forget holding her, watching Marcie’s eyes glaze, feeling her slim body go slack in his arms. When she’d told him about the baby he’d realized she’d loved him…not his money.
If only.
Luke McKade didn’t believe in second chances.
“Nothing he could have done—”
Luke opened a drawer and slammed Marcie’s picture inside facedown. He wanted to forget her.
He flexed the fingers of his right hand. “Nothing? Like hell!”
He closed his eyes and saw Marcie’s beautiful face, so still and untouched by death as she’d lain in her coffin. The image was etched like a brand in his brain. He’d taught her to lie still when they’d had sex.
Not your fault.
Wrong.
He’d married a vulnerable young woman for her class—to improve his image, to add glamour to the lie that was his life. Everything about Luke McKade was a lie, including his official bio. There was no Luke McKade. The press’s Man of the Year was a myth. Every word in every article, in every magazine and newspaper that had ever been written about him were fantastic fabrications that a poor, ambitious boy with a head full of dreams had invented so that nobody would ever know what he really was—a Pueblo Indian woman’s bastard born in shame and despair to a man…
“Cut!”
Even in his wild, dark mood, Luke wasn’t about to think of his rich, powerful father…or the rest of that blue-blooded bunch he wanted to have nothing to do with in New Mexico.
He yanked Marcie’s picture out of the drawer and set it on his desk. He would keep it there until the sight of her beautiful face no longer made his gut clench. Only then would he put it away.
But he couldn’t look at it. Not tonight.
When he sprang to his feet and headed toward the door, the phone rang.
Curious, he stopped to read his Caller ID.
Brandon Baines.
Baines wasn’t calling about Marcie. Lawyers, who defended Mexican drug lords like Spook Rodriguez and Texas big shots’ kids gone wrong, didn’t call old law school classmates just to be nice.
Five years ago, Luke had sent Baines a client, a very special client.
Baines had screwed up so royally, they hadn’t spoken since.
The client had gotten five years in the federal pen with no chance of an early parole. At the sentencing, the eighteen-year-old client had screamed at Luke, “You deliberately set me up.”
“This is good,” Baines had said without missing a beat. “We’ll appeal.”
“You think this is good—’cause you charge by the hour. I’ll tell you what’s good, you slick, lying jerk. When I get out, I’m gonna shoot myself a lawyer—” the boy had turned on Luke “—and a bastard.”
Luke had lunged at him.
“This is good,” Baines had said, grabbing Luke, holding him back as three deputies stepped protectively in front of the prisoner.
“I’ll show you who the bastard is, you no-good, spoiled, son of a bitch,” Luke had snarled.
“Easy. Little Red’s your half brother, McKade,” said Baines.
“The hell he is. Nobody can know that. Understand? Nobody!”
Luke McKade’s official bio didn’t mention a pampered little brother gone wrong, didn’t mention Big Red Longworth, the famous ex-governor of New Mexico who was their biological father. Luke had deleted those folders from his database. They didn’t exist. He’d deleted