Stranger in the Moonlight Read online

  “All right,” Travis said. “Get Forester to handle this merger.”

  “But he can’t—”

  “Do it?” Travis said. “I know it but he doesn’t. Maybe it’ll fall through and Dad will fire the ambitious little twerp.”

  “Or maybe he’ll succeed and your father will give him your job.”

  “And you said you didn’t believe in fairy tales,” Travis said, grinning. “All right, where’s this reunion?”

  She gave him the time and address.

  He stood up, looked at his desk, and all he could think of was seeing his mother again. It had been too long. On impulse, he picked up the brass plaque of Kim’s words and slipped it in his pocket. He looked back at Penny. “So what do you call a ‘normal’ car?”

  As she left, she gave him one of her rare smiles. “Wait and see.”

  That evening a Town Car and driver were waiting downstairs for Travis. It stopped at his apartment building, the doorman opened the door, and the elevator was held for him. He spoke to no one.

  His was the penthouse apartment, with views all around. The same decorator who’d done his office had filled his apartment with her idea of good taste. There was a huge antique Buddha in an alcove, and the couches were upholstered in black leather. Since Travis was in the apartment as little as possible, decorating it had never interested him.

  There was only one room that held truly personal items, and he went to it now. It had originally been a walk-in closet, but Travis had requested that it be filled with glass shelves. It was in this small room—which he always kept locked—that he put his trophies, awards, certificates, those symbols of what Kim had taught him about having “fun.”

  It was those two weeks in Edilean, spent with feisty little Kim, that had given him the courage to stand up to his father. His mother had tried, but her sweet nature was no match for a man like her husband.

  But Travis had found that he could hold his own. The first time he saw his father after having met Kim, Travis said he wanted physical instruction as well as academic. Randall Maxwell had looked at his young son in speculation and saw that the boy wasn’t going to give in. An instructor was hired.

  As Lucy had said about her son, he was a natural athlete. For Travis, the strenuous activity was a release from the grueling academic work he was given to do, and as Travis learned what they had to teach, the instructors left and a new one arrived. By the time Travis was college age, he was trained in several martial arts. His nose had been broken twice, once in boxing, once by an instructor’s foot in his face.

  His father had wanted Travis to continue being tutored for college, but Travis said that the minute he was of age, he’d leave and never return. At that time his mother was still living at home. Her life was as isolated as Travis’s, but then, she’d never been a very social person.

  Travis went to Stanford, then Harvard Law, and it was while he was away from the prison that was the only home he’d ever known that he discovered life. Sports—extreme sports—drew him. Jumping out of planes, being dropped by helicopter onto a snow-covered mountain, cliff diving. He did it all.

  He passed the bar exam but had no interest in spending his life in an office. Even though his father demanded that his son work for him, Travis refused. In anger, his father shut down his trust fund, so Travis got a job as a Hollywood stuntman. He was the guy who got set on fire.

  When his father saw that his ploy didn’t work, that he hadn’t made his son knuckle under to him, he turned his attention to his wife and made her miserable. One afternoon Lucy accidently saw a way to intercept a business transaction of her husband’s. With only a moment’s hesitation, she sent $3.2 million into her own account. She then spent about ten minutes packing a bag, took one of her husband’s cars, and fled.

  Randall told his son he wouldn’t go after Lucy if Travis would stop trying to kill himself and work for him.

  Travis would have done anything for his mother, so he left L.A., went back to New York, and worked for his father. Whenever possible, Travis relieved his stress by participating in any violent sport he could find.

  Now, he looked about the room at the trophies, the medals, the souvenirs. On the wall behind the shelves were many framed photos. The Monte Carlo races. His face was dirty and the champagne he’d sprayed when he’d won had made streaks, but he’d been happy.

  There were pictures of some of his more outrageous Hollywood stunts with fire, explosions, leaping off buildings. Interspersed among the pictures of the sports were the ones with the women. Movie stars, socialites, waitresses. Travis hadn’t been discriminate. He liked pretty women no matter where they were born or what they did.

  He closed the door, leaned back against it for a moment, and looked around him. He would turn thirty this year and he was tired from all of it. Tired of being under his father’s control, tired of making money for a man who had too much of it.

  His mother had been right to run away and hide, but he knew how guilty she felt that Travis was protecting her. But the way he saw it was that she’d spent a lifetime protecting him, so he owed her.

  Right now Travis’s worry was that his mother was marrying some man just to release her son. His fear was that his mother’s guilt was overwhelming her, and she was going to start the divorce proceedings just to give her son freedom.

  But Travis knew that his mother had no true idea what she was asking for if she went for a divorce from Randall Maxwell. Ruthless was too mild a word for the man.

  On the other hand, there was no way Travis could describe how much he’d like to have his own life back. Even though the last four years had worn him down, before he got out, he wanted to make sure that his mother wasn’t walking into something just as bad as her marriage had been.

  Travis left the trophy room and locked it securely. Only he knew the combination, and none of his many girlfriends had ever seen inside it.

  He went to his bedroom, a sterile place with no personality, and into his closet. One side contained his sports clothes, the other his work suits. At the end were what Penny would call “normal” clothes, jeans and T-shirts, a leather jacket. It took only moments to throw them into a duffle bag.

  He stripped down to his briefs and glanced at his body in the mirror. He had almost no fat on him and he worked to keep his muscles strong. But his skin was marked with scars from burns, punctures, surgical repairs. He’d broken his ribs more times than he could count, and under his hair was a deep scar from where a misfired piece of steel had come close to killing him.

  Minutes later, Travis was dressed and ready to go to dinner with a man who needed some reassurance that the business he’d started from scratch would continue. Travis knew that what the man really needed was a shoulder to cry on. With a sigh, he left the apartment.

  It was 8:00 P.M. and Travis had been driving for hours to reach Edilean. The car Penny had bought for him was an old BMW. The engine sounded good, but he could barely get eighty out of it. No doubt that was Penny’s idea of how to keep him from exceeding the speed limit. She’d put a packet of hundreds in the glove box, and he’d had to smile. If Travis used a credit card, his father would know where he was. He well knew that his father kept close watch on him. It was one thing to have charges in Paris but another to have little Edilean, Virginia, show up on the statement.

  “Just until Mom is safe,” he said aloud as he downshifted. At least Penny hadn’t insulted him by getting an automatic. She’d let him have some fun!

  At the thought of that word, Travis thought of last night. Trying to comfort a man nearing seventy hadn’t been easy. But Travis knew that if he didn’t attempt it, no one else would. His father often said in disdain that Travis didn’t have a shark’s heart. It had been meant as a put-down, but Travis took it as a compliment.

  He’d managed to get away from dinner by eleven. He wanted to sleep because he planned to leave early for Edilean.

  But the next morning, just as he was ready to leave, his cell rang. It was his father. It