“No, I’m sure that God will keep your secret,” Jamie said. “Did Amanda say what would happen to me after the baby is born?”
“I asked her that very thing, and she said that you were Gus’s problem and none of her concern.”
“And how would Gus handle this ‘problem’?” Jamie persisted.
Mary Millicent tilted her chin back, took her index finger, and swiped it across her throat.
Jamie scrambled to her feet. “But Amanda is a good person. She wouldn’t let something like that happen.”
“It’s easy to be ‘good’ when you have someone do your dirty work for you,” Mary Millicent said with a giggle. “When her new puppy chewed up her favorite doll, Gus hung it by its neck from the second-floor gallery. Amanda had a wonderful time putting on a funeral out in the backyard. She made a floral wreath and wore her favorite dress and sang her favorite hymns and even shed a few tears.”
Jamie backed away from the bed.
“Hey, where are you going, girl?” Mary Millicent demanded. “I’m not through talking yet.”
Jamie turned and hurried across the room, with Mary Millicent yelling for her to stop. With her heart pounding, she hurried down the stairs-for the last time, she promised herself.
Back in her apartment, she calmed herself by hugging Ralph. She still didn’t know anything for sure. Except for one thing. She was going to leave this place and have the baby someplace else. Someplace where she felt safe. And then she would find an attorney to help her untangle the mess she had gotten herself into. But not just any attorney. She would go to a public library and use a computer to track down Joe Brammer. If he didn’t want to represent her, he would help her find someone else. Someone she could trust.
Her decision made, Jamie felt as though a world had been lifted from her shoulders.
Except that she had to get herself off this ranch. And that would take planning. Careful planning.
Chapter Twenty-one
GUS WAS JUST heartbeats short of ejaculating when he realized that Felipe was knocking on the door.
The door opened just the tiniest crack, and Felipe announced that Gus had a phone call.
“Shit!” Gus muttered. Something must be terribly wrong for Felipe to interrupt. But he would have his pleasure before dealing with whatever it was.
“Quickly,” he told the woman, rolling onto his back.
Suzette was her name. She crouched beside him and within half a minute Gus’s body shuddered its way to a climax. Then he pushed her away and told her to leave.
She regarded him for a heartbeat or two with her huge dark eyes before grabbing her clothes and racing toward the door.
Gus clutched a pillow to his chest, allowing himself a moment for the aftermath of the orgasm to subside. He took a deep breath and willed his racing heart to slow down. “Damn,” he muttered. “Damn! Damn! Damn!”
Beautiful Suzette. She was like something out of a Toulouse-Lautrec painting, with those eyes and her masses of dark curls, pouty mouth, lily-white flesh, black garter belt, and even an authentic French accent. The last time he had asked her to stay with him for a time. And they had talked about French cinema. She was quite knowledgeable.
This time he had planned to have her stay the night. She had sung French cabaret songs for him and made a production of taking off her clothes. He had pulled her to the bed and kissed her all over.
But the mood had been destroyed. And probably it was just as well. He liked her too much.
And suddenly tears sprung to his eyes. It was one of those moments when he would have gladly given all his worldly goods just to be normal.
When he was twelve years old, he had asked the endocrinologist in Zurich to promise him that if he ever had children, they would not be dwarfs. The doctor had refused to make such a promise.
Gus had undergone a vasectomy when he was seventeen. By then he knew that he was as tall as he was ever going to be and that his ugly, disproportioned body would be his for life. With his family’s vast wealth, he realized there would be women willing to marry him, but no woman was ever going to love him. He had kept a succession of mistresses, each for a shorter period of time than her predecessor, until he decided to end the practice. For several years now, Felipe-who had served as Gus’s bodyguard/valet since his prep-school days-arranged his sex life for him, booking both the hotel suite and the woman, always in the middle of the night, when it was easier for Gus to slip in and out back entrances unobserved. Because of his short stature, Gus preferred to be in bed when the woman arrived. Nothing pleasured Gus more than watching a beautiful, long-legged woman pleasure him, especially if she was skillful at prolonging the process. He preferred never to have the same woman twice but on occasion broke his own rule. This was Suzette’s fourth time.
Felipe brought his cell phone. “The ranch,” he said.
Gus called Montgomery’s private line.
“Jamie Long is gone,” she said in a near-hysterical voice as soon as she answered the phone.
“Gone?”
“Oh, Gus, I am so dreadfully sorry,” she moaned. “The security office called to say that the front gate had been opened. I went immediately to Jamie’s apartment. She’s gone, Gus,” she said, her voice breaking. “Packed up and gone.”
“On foot?” Gus asked.
“No, in her car,” Montgomery admitted, her words interspersed with gasping sobs.
“Okay, Montgomery, take a deep breath and calm down,” Gus said.
He could hear her sniffling a bit and drawing in her breath. “That’s good,” he said. “Now, how did the girl get access to her car?”
“She demanded that it be brought over here so she could start putting her possessions in it. She said she wanted to be ready to leave here as soon as possible after the baby was born. At first I told her that the car wasn’t in running condition and a part had to be ordered for it. Then I stalled for more time, telling her it was hard to find parts for a car that old. But she went to the motor pool and saw the car up on blocks and covered with dust and realized that no one had touched it in months. She told me that she was going on a hunger strike and wouldn’t eat a morsel of food until the car was up and running and parked out back. I didn’t know she had an extra key to the car,” she moaned, the sobs beginning again. “I’d gone over her apartment with a fine-tooth comb. Not just when you told me to take her copy of the contract. I went through it several times. Every inch of it. And there were no keys. Not a one. I swear there weren’t. I would have taken them if there were.”
“Well, obviously, the girl got the car started some way,” he said, his tone hard and flat.
There were several seconds of silence before Montgomery said, “Yes. Of course, she did.” Her voice was calmer now. Almost too calm. “I am so sorry, Gus. I have failed you and our darling Amanda. And Sonny. I have failed you all, and I want to die. I just want to die.”
Gus took a deep breath in an effort to control his anger. “Now, Montgomery,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice. “What we need to do is work our way through this. How long ago did the girl leave?”
“Less than thirty minutes.”
“Do you have any idea what caused her to bolt?”
“I think she was getting suspicious. Jamie knew that Amanda was claiming to be pregnant with a baby due about the same time as the one she was carrying. And she got upset when I wouldn’t allow her to call the secretary in Bentley Abernathy’s office and when she realized that she wasn’t really enrolled in the correspondence course. Then she quizzed me about when and how she would receive the money that would be owed to her after the baby was born. She wanted some sort of documentation showing that arrangements had been made and the money would be put in her bank account as soon as the baby was born. I told Amanda to call and reassure her, but I don’t think she ever did. And…” Montgomery paused.