Children of Dynasty Read Free Page B

Davis Campbell and be the biggest in the Bay Area.”
    Suddenly, the blend of basil and sweet tomatoes wasn’t as appetizing as before.
    Though she hated to break the news during dinner, she put down her fork.
    “Dad.”
    His face sobered.
    “There’s something you should know.”
    Briefly, she told him the rumors circulating about trouble within Grant Development, and that both Chatsworth and Campbell appeared to be fueling them.
    John shoved back his half-eaten plate. “Davis had been against me for almost thirty years, so there’s no surprise there.” His voice was grim. “But it disturbs me that he’s got the Senator in his pocket.”
    The memory of Sylvia Chatsworth’s possessive certainty of Rory made Mariah’s stomach ache. “I think maybe it has something to do with his daughter and Rory Campbell.” She couldn’t keep an acid note out of her voice.
    Her father gave her a sharp look. “Did you see him at the party?”
    “I saw him,” she admitted. “For the first time in eight years.”
    Although John had never taken the inflexible stance against Rory that Davis Campbell had against her, he’d obviously felt relief when she was safely in Southern California and Rory married to another woman.
    Now he studied her, his face troubled. “I’ve always thought you should live your life the way you wanted … but you don’t want to see him again.”
    The part that stung was that Mariah did want to see Rory. Even as everything in her knew it would be a mistake. “He’s with Sylvia Chatsworth, Dad,” she protested. “You don’t have to worry.”
    He ran a hand through his silver hair, a sure sign he was concerned. “You and I are the same. We’ve never moved on from our first loves.”
    He glanced toward a gilt-framed photo of her mother on the counter. It could have been a picture of Mariah, with a smooth line of jaw, blond hair falling over her shoulders.
    “Catharine was even more slight than you. Like a pale bisque doll near the end.” He touched a fingertip to the cool glass, as though he could reach the sweet soft corner of his wife’s mouth if he moved his hand in just the right way. When he rubbed his palm over his own face, Mariah imagined he was aware of the loose flesh and wrinkled skin.
    She touched his hand and saw a sparkle of tears matching her own. Memories of her mother were hazy; golden eyes like her own, a soft touch while being tucked in, playing tag in the spring grass.
    John cleared his throat. “I came home, one of those perfect sharp blue days, and saw her with you out on the lawn. She said you’d set a record at twenty steps. The two of you in the afternoon sun were the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
    Mariah had always figured he remained in this house because it held so many memories. “Why do you single out that day?”
    “When we went inside, the phone rang. It was her doctor, asking us to come in again after her routine physical.”
    Ovarian cancer, swift scourge of the youngest women, had stolen Catharine from them when Mariah was but three. When the loss came back to her, it was in bits and pieces; the hospital’s antiseptic smell, crying and being carried out of the memorial service, the mound of flowers turned sodden in the rain.
    “After the call, I tried to kiss her and rekindle the spark, but the fine light was gone.” John’s eyes rested on that faraway day. “Light has never held that quality for me since.”
    Seeing his sadness undimmed by years, Mariah tried to ignore a familiar twinge of pain. Whenever she wondered if the kind of joy her parents had shared would come to her, she was forced to admit her father was correct. No one had ever moved her like Davis Campbell’s son.
    Rory had been right last night, too; she had wondered “what if” so many times she’d lost count.
    And, as the rain made rivulets down the kitchen window, she did so again.

CHAPTER 2
     
    T wo hours later, Mariah busied herself straightening the living room of