The Gift of Happiness Read online

  “Don’t bother. I’ll take you to the hospital,” he said crisply, and headed for the door that led to the hallway, pulling her along. She hung back.

  “This is crazy,” she protested. “You can’t leave a party when you’re the guest of honor. What will people think?”

  He sounded amused. “What do I care? And you are the last person I would expect to care about what others think. Really, Kate, you aren’t at all what you seem to be.”

  “Katherine,” she corrected him automatically, apparently forgetting that she hadn’t wanted him to call her anything except Miss Farlough.

  “And do please call me Luke,” he murmured. Reality hit her suddenly, and she stopped dead, refusing to take even one more step and in great danger of being dragged across the floor.

  “No!” she said sharply. “Let go of me, dammit, and go back to your party!” She couldn’t afford to have him pay the slightest attention to her. It would destroy her, and very possibly him also. She was beginning to care about that. Surprisingly, against all odds, she liked this man.

  “What, for Pete’s sake, is the matter now?” he exploded impatiently. “Good grief, you’d think I had rabies, the way you’re acting!” He stared down into her shuttered face, taking in the tight and wary expression in her deep green eyes. She in turn stared into the sternest face she’d ever seen, with implacable eyes and a determined chin. “Now,” he said softly, “I am going to take you to the emergency room at the hospital. You are going to go without any fuss. Do you understand me?” She looked into his eyes and her own widened. She just couldn’t find any strength for defiance, and she nodded. “Afterwards,” he continued with scarcely a pause, “you and I are going to sit down and talk. I’m beginning to think that there’s a motive behind all this tonight, and I want an explanation.”

  She immediately began to shake her head at this, not trusting his patience if she were to speak, but he ignored this and turned to go out of the kitchen. As his bulk led her slighter frame, two men garbed in uniform appeared in the doorway. One was older with graying hair and a thin face with a tight mouth, and the other was the young man from the bar. The older one headed for them with an exclamation.

  Luke cut through the other man’s words. “Miss Farlough has hurt herself, and I’m taking her to the hospital to see if she needs stitches. Would you inform Mr. Farlough for us? We shouldn’t be too long, I’d imagine.” His tone was impatient as he clearly wanted to get going.

  Katherine stared at the gray man bitterly, with hatred. He looked back at her with no expression on his face, but in his eyes there lurked a furtive gleam of malice. She burst out, “You’ll be good at informing James, won’t you, Joss? But then,” she added sweetly, “you’ve always been good at it before.”

  The servant smiled at her slowly, the thin lips stretching tightly over his teeth. Neither noticed the intent expression on Luke’s face or the attention that the tall young man was paying to them. “Of course, whatever you say, Miss Farlough,” Joss murmured politely, the gleam in his eyes belying any subservient attitude. There was a subtle amusement threading his words. Looking at him, Katherine felt an upsurge of hate that left her trembling. She feared this man.

  Luke quickly pushed past the older man, pulling her along with him. “Then be quick about it, man,” he snapped. “And stay out of the way.” Joss sent a suddenly vicious look toward him, and Katherine watched his face as they left the room, her head turned back. It had been a mistake on Luke’s part, she realized. He had just made an enemy.

  The trip to the hospital was brief. “Come on,” a low-toned voice sounded right beside her ear. Katherine stirred lethargically. A hard hand slipped under her shoulders and she opened her eyes to stare irritably into the impenetrable ones of the stranger bending over her. Then she truly woke up and remembered where she was, and with whom.

  “Do me a favor,” she told him, pushing at his arm, “and don’t do me any favors.”

  “Cut the act.” The voice sounded amazingly amused. She stubbornly refused to look up. “And for heaven’s sake, come on!”

  She stood on shaky legs for a minute, with one hand on the car to see if she needed support. When she found she could stand unaided, she doggedly set out for the brightly lit glass doors of the emergency entrance of the large Frankfort hospital and ignored the hand stretched out in an offer of help. The wooziness was dispelled as she walked, and soon she found herself almost clear-headed.

  They had to wait a bit before a doctor could see them, and she felt momentarily amused at the odd sight the two of them must have presented to the hospital staff and other patients. She was aware of how incongruous the pair of them must have seemed. Her long hair was tousled and her jeans dusty, and the man beside her, so quiet, was as sleek and dark as she was rumpled and fiery. There could not, she surmised, be a pair so totally the opposite of each other as we are. Inexplicably, this made her feel depressed.

  Eventually she was sitting on an examination table and a young man in a white coat was attending to her hand. To her immense irritation, Luke insisted on accompanying her to the room and he sat in a chair nearby, watchful and silent. She stared at her arm as the doctor murmured soothing words that she ignored, and she didn’t flinch when he gave her an injection. She also watched without blinking or expression as he expertly and quickly gave her wound twelve stitches. While he was bandaging her numbed hand, he told her that the stitches should be taken out in about ten days, and then he gave her some painkillers which she stuffed uncaringly into her pocket. She was unaware of a dark gaze that noted her reactions, and that never left her tired face. She stood indifferently as the bill was settled, but gave a start at a sudden hand on her shoulder.

  She looked back at Luke as he stood watching her, absent-mindedly rubbing a thumb along the sharp bone of her shoulder blade.

  “When did you last eat?” he asked suddenly. Her eyes slid away from his as she shrugged. “When?” he repeated. “This morning? Yesterday?”

  She didn’t answer but merely watched the ground mulishly. A hand propelled her toward the door. “Let’s go,” he said impatiently.

  As Luke headed the car out on one of the major roads, she protested, “This is the wrong way.” He made no reply, but kept on driving. She sat up and watched closely, wondering what this man was up to. She soon found out as he pulled into the car park of a twenty-four-hour restaurant, and she slumped with resignation when he swung into an open space. She had begun to suspect that once Luke Dalton had set his mind to something, there was little on this earth that could stop him.

  He said briefly, and not urgently, “Get out,” and did so himself. There was nothing else for her to do but the same.

  “Do you know,” she said acidly, “that you are the most obstinate and odious man I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet?”

  He laughed as if he were delighted, and held open the door for her to pass inside. She went by him shakily, the picture of his white teeth gleaming and the laugh lines pronounced as he’d thrown back his head imprinting itself on her mind. She folded her arms tightly across herself as they waited to be seated.

  When they had both slid into the booth, the waitress came to take their orders. Katherine, when asked, contrarily said that she wanted nothing. As the waitress blinked at this bald statement and Luke frowned, she turned her head to stare out of the window indifferently. She heard Luke’s low voice giving an order for two cups of coffee and a large breakfast of scrambled eggs and ham with toast. He waited until the waitress had disappeared and then turned to her.

  “Kate. Kate!” She looked around coldly. He was, again, furious. “You can be as rude as you like to me. I can take care of myself. But that waitress has a job to do, and you’re not making it pleasant for her!”

  Two steaming cups of coffee were brought, and she stirred a little cream into hers absent-mindedly. “So what?” she asked carelessly. “I’m nothing to her, and she’s nothing to me. If anything, I’m a nuisance to be forgotten when I walk ou
t of that door. What difference does it make how I act? Who really gives a damn in the long run?” One corner of her mouth quirked humorlessly, and she set down her spoon to cradle her coffee cup with two cold hands, awkwardly cuddling her injured one as close as she could to the warmth. “I’m a realist, Lucas.”

  “No, you’re not,” he observed, leaning back in his seat and scrutinizing her. “You’re a cynic, and do you know what cynics are? They’re disillusioned and hurt romantics. Who’s hurt you, Kate? Who has hurt you so badly that you lash out at the world in general, and you don’t care if you’re hurt or not? You wouldn’t even care if you were to die tonight, would you? It just doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” she hissed at him in a sudden fury, desperate to stop the flow of truth coming from his lips. “The name is Katherine. Do I have to spell it?”

  “Oh, you’ve made yourself quite abundantly clear, my dear,” he replied mildly. Then he shifted his long, powerful body to sit forward, and his eyes captured hers. He was deadly serious now, and she shrank back in her seat as if to try and escape from his compelling eyes. “I want some answers, Kate. I want some answers to some very uncomfortable questions. Why the scene tonight? You were very deliberate in everything that you did, even down to this stupid persistent rudeness you insist on inflicting upon me! You deliberately set out to provoke your father into fury, and you deliberately set out to try to make an enemy of me, interestingly enough after I had to listen to your father tell me time and time again how much he would have liked me to get to know you better! Why?” His voice had grown softer and softer as he talked, and this somehow enhanced his determined expression. He frightened her, for he seemed so ruthless. He was, after all, no better than her father.

  She dropped her eyes so that he could not see the expression in them. “What difference does it make?” she asked bitterly.

  “Stop parroting that stupid defeatist phrase at me!” His words hit her like a bullet and she flinched openly.

  “It makes a world of difference! You were so alive tonight!” he exclaimed in impotent fury, capturing her uninjured hand and squeezing the thin bones until she looked up with a yelp of pain. “You fairly vibrated with rage, and your eyes glowed with more life in them than any of the other colorless saps at that party! Where did it all go, Kate? Was it an illusion? Do you perform best in front of an audience? Was that vibrant laugh a fake after all? Answer me!”

  Tears spilled over onto her cheeks at his low, intense words, and they ran down her face. “Shut up!” she hissed furiously, jerking her hand away to wipe at her eyes roughly. “Just shut up, will you? You don’t know a thing; you don’t know one damn thing!”

  He sat back, strangely mild now as he watched her glare at him with rage. “Then why don’t you explain things to me?” he asked her gently, not taking his eyes from her face.

  The intensity of the murmured exchange was dispelled when the waitress brought the breakfast to the table. Luke motioned for her to place the meal in front of Katherine, and she did so hesitantly. Katherine smiled up at her and thanked her quite nicely. The little waitress, a bit startled, murmured a bemused welcome in return and then hurried away to bring them more coffee. With new steaming cups in front of them, the waitress left and they were again alone.

  “Thank you,” said Luke, smiling at her faintly. She looked with some reluctance away from the food, for her stomach was beginning to twist hungrily.

  “For what?” She picked up her fork clumsily and attempted to spear a piece of ham. He took her knife and fork away from her and cut up the meat into bite-sized pieces.

  “For being so nice to her. The waitress, I mean. There, try to eat that now,” he murmured, and pushed the plate back to her. She dug in heartily. He waited in silence until she had cleared away every bit of the eggs and ham and started on the toast. “Feeling better?”

  She nodded unsmilingly, the look in her eyes tentatively friendly. She didn’t feel quite so shaky.

  “Feel more like talking?” he asked carefully, gauging her reaction.

  “Can I give you some advice?” she said suddenly, urgent. He raised one eyebrow in question. “Whatever you do, wherever you go, don’t, absolutely do not trust my father. Ever.” She wiped her mouth and looked at him. He was sitting very still. “He is a snake, a viper. He would just as soon bite off your hand as thank you, if you were to give him something to eat. He doesn’t like you. You’ve got in his way by buying those waterfront warehouses, and he doesn’t take kindly to interference. He hates you, Luke, and would like to see you destroyed.”

  Incredibly, he smiled. She stared into his face with consternation. She saw that smile and began to regret what she had just said.

  “Forget it,” she muttered, sliding her eyes away and picking up a piece of toast. She began to know a real fear. What if Luke was already so friendly with her father that he would perhaps tell him what she had said? She knew James well enough to be afraid of the consequences, should he hear of this indiscretion. He was angry enough as it was. “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “Quite the contrary, my dear,” he said quietly. “You’ve hit bang on target. You have just confirmed my own suspicions. You’ve told me nothing new.” She sagged in her seat with relief, and his gaze sharpened on her. “Did you really think that I could have been so stupid as not to have seen it?” he asked, with a thread of amusement. “I’ve been warned by others before you, my dear!”

  She stirred at that and asked him curiously, “Who warned you about James?”

  “Nobody you would know. A tired, worried old man. I think you’d like him.” He studied her reflectively. “I had my own reasons for coming to the party tonight, and one of them was to see what kind of trap your father planned on springing on me. That he’ll try something, I’ll bet my eyeteeth. Just what, though, is still a mystery.”

  “He’s going to try to ruin your business.” She spoke tiredly, propping up her forehead with her uninjured hand. “It’s his specialty—he’s quite good at it, you know, having done it before. Just how, I don’t know. I overheard a conversation I wasn’t supposed to, and I don’t think he really knows yet either. But I do know what the trap is supposed to be.”

  “Well,” he said unworriedly, “I think I can handle the business aspect of it. He’ll find himself with more than he bargained for when he takes me on.” Looking at him, and remembering that dark strength she had sensed when she’d first met him, Katherine had no doubt that what he said was true. “Just what is the trap, by the way?”

  “It’s me,” she whispered, suddenly ashamed of her father, more so than she’d ever been before. And, she found, she was somehow ashamed of herself, as if her father’s unscrupulous intentions in some way reflected on her own character. His eyes narrowed on her in shock, and he leaned forward abruptly.

  “What did you say?” he asked tersely. “I—don’t think I heard you quite right.”

  She repeated louder, and with infinite bitterness, “I said it’s me.” He sat as one stunned. “I am the trap.”

  Chapter Three

  After a moment, he asked, “Just what in sweet hell were you supposed to do?” His tone was slightly rough. He hadn’t moved from his position, and his coffee sat in front of him untouched. Nevertheless, Katherine got the impression that after her bombshell, he had in some way relaxed after that first tense moment of shock. She looked into his eyes and found them comfortingly calm and steady.

  She couldn’t confess to such a reaction herself. She was shaking again as she realized just what a precarious position she was in. She had opened herself to infinite dangers when she had confessed to Luke her father’s intentions. In the midst of her most consuming rage, she had never conceived of such an action. She had merely thought to refuse his demands. Now, in a surprisingly short time, she found herself talking to her father’s enemy—and a total stranger at that—and aligning herself in what started to appear uncomfortably like a conspiracy. She s
aw that this was the best way to thwart her father, though, and she couldn’t regret telling Luke any of it, even if she would have to suffer the consequences. But she had never confided to anyone as much as she had to Luke. She couldn’t understand what had prompted her to tell him everything. All she knew was that she felt better, as if a load had been taken from her shoulders. She felt relieved. At the same time, she knew that this knowledge would most likely send away one of the most attractive men she’d ever met. She liked Luke far too much, and she was glad she had told him, and at the same time very, very sorry.

  She stared into her coffee and drank a little. “I was to be nice to you.” Flooded with a sense of shame and degradation, she spat out suddenly as if she’d swallowed poison, “A sound piece of flesh, a prize, a pawn, a lure!” She looked at him as if she hated him, but she wasn’t focusing on his face. Her eyes were looking inward. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Kate!” A hiss penetrated the darkness of her thoughts, and her eyes began to focus on the concerned face of the man in front of her. “Kate! Snap out of it! Come on, look at me. Look at me!” She watched his face, and the anger faded from hers, leaving her eyes dull and lifeless.

  She said, a brittle quality in her voice as if something was stretched tight and about to snap, “Then he was going to play the coup, and destroy you while your guard was down. I don’t know what he has in mind. He’s going to try to ruin you, I know that. Maybe he would’ve tried to make me steal something from you, I don’t know.” She sighed and straightened in her seat.

  “Didn’t your feelings come into the matter?” he breathed incredulously. “Doesn’t your father care that his scheme to destroy me could very well have destroyed you too? He was going to use you as much as he was attempting to use me!” A big, clenched fist came down on the table with enough force to set the cups rattling in their saucers, and she jumped a mile. People began to look around at them, and he suddenly stood, his face more grim than she had ever seen it. “Come on,” he said shortly, throwing some money carelessly on the table. “Let’s get out of here!” As they exited the restaurant, she caught a glimpse of a clock and felt shocked. It was almost three o’clock in the morning.