Every Breath You Take Read online

  “It is my eightieth birthday,” Cecil said tiredly, letting his hand drop to his side. “I am responsible for Olivia, Caroline, and young Billy; but when I’m gone, there’s no one left to look after them. I know that Olivia has developed an affection for you. No doubt she thinks of you as an ally, since you’ve both seen fit to ignore my request to park your cars on the street.”

  Mitchell flicked a surprised glance at Olivia, and she thought she saw a glint of amusement in his eyes before he returned his attention to Cecil.

  “I know that William felt a bond with you from the moment he met you, and our William was an excellent judge of character. Caroline and young Billy tell me you’ve been spending time with them now that William is go—has disappeared, and I assume you share their affectionate familial regard.” He paused, but Mitchell neither confirmed nor denied it, so Cecil put out his hand again and forged ahead. “Like it or not, you are my grandson. I need to know—and so do they—” he emphasized, “that you now accept that role, and that you agree to look after them should anything happen to me. Will you shake hands on that?”

  Olivia marveled at how cleverly Cecil had rephrased his request, as if he were making it on behalf of Caroline and herself, and she was inordinately pleased that, this time, Mitchell hesitated only a second before reaching across the desk for his grandfather’s handshake.

  “That’s settled then,” Cecil said abruptly, casting off his mantle of helpless frailty as if it were an ill-fitting garment. “Olivia, Caroline, take Mitchell into the living room and make sure he meets the right people out there.”

  Olivia frowned. “Are you going to make some sort of announcement about who he is or where he’s been all this time?”

  “Certainly not! A formal announcement would open the door for additional questions that I have no desire to answer. I’ve already mentioned to a few people that Mitchell has been kind enough to ignore his business affairs in Europe so that he can spend a few weeks with us. When you bring Mitchell into the living room, I want you to behave as if you assume they already know who he is and, in fact, may already have met him here in the past.” Satisfied that the matter was settled, Cecil started for the door.

  “How in heaven’s name am I going to do that?” Olivia asked.

  He turned, and irritably demonstrated how to do it: “You walk up to a group of people, Olivia, and you say to them, ‘You’ve all met Mitchell, haven’t you?’ And when they say they haven’t, you act surprised. They’ll spend the rest of the evening wondering how and when they offended me enough to be left out of the loop.” He turned away again, took two steps, then turned back, a sly smile curving his mouth. “Better yet, now and then, when you take Mitchell up to someone, you should begin by saying, ‘Mitchell, you remember so-and-so, don’t you?’ They won’t remember meeting him, of course, but they’ll be even more shocked that he doesn’t remember meeting them. That will give Mitchell the upper hand.” With that, he walked out.

  Olivia looked at Mitchell to gauge his reaction to all this, but he was staring hard at Cecil’s back; so she said, “Cecil is full of subtle but devious little tricks.”

  “Cecil is full of—” Mitchell jerked his gaze to Olivia’s horrified face and bit back the rest of his sentence. Caroline’s announcement diverted them both.

  “I’m really not up to making small talk tonight or being barraged with questions about William for which there are no new answers. I’d rather wait here.”

  “I’ll take you home,” Mitchell said quickly, but she shook her head and smiled up at him. “Cecil is right—it’s best to present you to everyone tonight, when so many of Cecil’s friends are already here.”

  “I am not a debutante,” he pointed out sardonically.

  “No one’s going to mistake you for a debutante,” Caroline said wryly, “but some of these women are going to look at you like you’re a divinely dark and handsome bonbon.”

  He reached for her arm to draw her out of the chair. “Some other time.”

  Caroline pressed back farther into the chair and firmly shook her head. “This is the best time and the best way. Go with Olivia now. Please, do it for me—” she urged when he still looked unwilling. “After tonight, Billy and I will be able to go places with you without my having to worry that people will think I’ve already replaced William with a boyfriend.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Mitchell agreed impatiently, then he gave Olivia his arm, and she took it.

  Chapter Three

  AT THE ENTRY TO THE LIVING ROOM, OLIVIA PAUSED, ALLOWING him to take a good long look at the elegant socialites who were there, while she provided him with tidbits of information about their lofty pedigrees and important achievements. “The gentleman who Cecil just spoke to is the grandson of the founder of Universal Rubber. He’s going to run for senator, and we all think he’ll be president someday. The attractive brunette with him—the one who is looking in our direction right now—is his wife.”

  Mitchell let her go on, but he knew at a glance who these people were and what they were: self-important, pompous men who believed “good breeding” set them above all others; self-indulgent, vain women who were bored with their lives and their men, and who entertained themselves with charity work and torrid little affairs. The scene in this room wasn’t new to Mitchell at all, except that it lacked the international flair and diversity he was accustomed to. Other than that, this was simply a miniature, and somewhat provincial, scene from his own life.

  “The gentleman in the dark gray suit and maroon tie is Gray Elliott,” Olivia confided. “Gray is from a fine old Chicago family, and he is the youngest person ever elected to the office of Cook County state’s attorney. He’s already proving his mettle and making a very big name for himself. In front of Gray is Evan Bartlett and his father, Henry. The Bartletts have handled legal affairs for the Wyatts for as far back as I can remember—longer than that, for generations.”

  Mitchell looked at the elder Bartlett and assumed Henry must have handled the messy details surrounding his birth—the falsified birth certificate, the terms of the divorce, the payoff to his mother.

  “… young Evan is a brilliant attorney,” Olivia chattered enthusiastically, “who is already taking over the reins from Henry—”

  Young Evan, Mitchell thought drily, will be going through old files tomorrow after his father tells him what he remembers about Mitchell Wyatt.

  Olivia paused to scrutinize Mitchell’s features and assess how he was reacting. “Are you bored already?” she asked, looking crestfallen.

  Mitchell was worse than bored, but she was so transparently eager to impress him and make him want to be a part of all this that he found himself saying, “Not at all.”

  She looked doubtful. “Are you planning to leave us soon?” she asked bluntly.

  “Yes, in two weeks.”

  She averted her face instantly, her hand clutching fiercely at his arm while a tremor seemed to shake her entire body. Mitchell automatically slid his arm around her back to brace her and looked for the closest chair. “You’re ill—” he began, but the episode passed as swiftly as it had occurred.

  “I am rarely ill,” she replied stiffly, “and if I were going to be ill, I assure you, I would never let it happen in front of company!” To prove it, she lifted her face and looked at him with proud defiance and a sheen of tears in her faded amber eyes.

  Mitchell’s jaw tightened at the sight of those tears. He rejected her right to feel dismay over his leaving. He’d known in Cecil’s study why she’d wanted him to look at those portraits of his relatives. He knew why she was so damned anxious to take him into the living room tonight and introduce him to everyone as her nephew. In the last thirty-four years, she hadn’t so much as tried to send him a secret note telling him who he was or who she was to him, and now she intended to atone for that with a few empty gestures. Her woebegone face and clinging hand weren’t manifestations of any real affection for him; they were manifestations of her guilt and fear.