Payback. Jasmine Cresswell

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СКАЧАТЬ well for them, right up to the end.

      What the two of them had lost was mutual respect and any vestige of trust. Which made for a pretty comprehensive indictment of their relationship, she thought wryly. Her own final act of betrayal had simply been an exclamation point to punctuate the end of a relationship that had already died.

      Luke was wearing the traditional starched white chef’s jacket and black cotton pants. The jacket was pristine, presumably because he’d changed before leaving the kitchen. He’d discarded the mandatory head gear and his short-cropped hair stood up in a thick, dark crest above his tanned complexion and smoke-gray eyes. Despite spending twelve-hour working days inside various kitchens, Luke looked as if he made his living outdoors. She knew he started each morning, almost regardless of the weather, with a five-mile run along the lakeshore, which partly explained the permanent tan and the impressive physique. She admired his self-discipline, but even when they first started dating and the gloss was still pretty blinding, she’d wished he could be a little less perfect.

      They’d needed to break up before Kate was willing to admit the extent to which she’d been intimidated by Luke’s assets. He had so darn many, aside from self-made wealth and good looks: his warmth, his friendliness, his easy sense of humor and his ability to roll with the punches while still working at a fiendish pace.

      Then there was his storybook Italian family. She’d loved hearing tales about his brothers and sisters, not to mention his ever-expanding crop of nieces and nephews. She’d envied him the casual camaraderie of his five siblings and the general aura of controlled chaos surrounding his family life, although toward the end of their relationship she’d begun to wonder why she’d never met any of his relatives face-to-face. She knew Luke well enough to realize that any girlfriend he was serious about would be required to get along with his family.

      Even more than his family, she’d envied the ease with which Luke showed his emotions. If he was happy, he laughed. When he cooked for her, he hummed as he worked, completely indifferent to the fact that he was always off-key. When they made love, his passion was all-consuming, his attention totally devoted to her. If he was angry, he yelled. And when the anger passed, it was forgotten, with no lingering bitterness or need to prove he’d been right all along.

      She’d been with Luke the night he learned that his maternal grandfather had died from complications after supposedly routine surgery, and he’d cried as he heard the news. Apparently he’d never received the memo informing him that macho men were required to keep a stiff upper lip at all times. Kate’s grandparents, Southern aristocrats who believed that gentlemen and ladies should avoid behaving like men and women whenever possible, would have been appalled by Luke’s emotionalism. She had simply loved him more for his lack of inhibitions.

      Luke’s ability to grieve openly had haunted her in the aftermath of her father’s disappearance. He had seemed to know instinctively how to integrate death and mourning into the natural order of his life. Kate, by contrast, had floundered. Her father’s death brought nothing but unanswered questions and the hurt of issues left permanently unresolved. Her sadness at his loss seemed too complicated to grasp, let alone to express in something as mundane as tears.

      Kate instructed herself to stop wallowing in the past and focus on coping with the present. Luke had paused to chat at several tables as he crossed the dining room, but now he was only steps away from the hostess station. Steps away from her. Kate wished she could greet him with a casual smile and a throwaway comment about…something. Unfortunately, when your last encounter involved the sort of brutal betrayal that left you internally bleeding, it was a bit difficult to come up with anything that didn’t sound either snide or demented.

      Luke halted a couple of feet away and simply stood there, saying nothing. She pretended to look at him but was actually careful to avoid meeting his gaze. Her brain was a blank, but eventually she managed to manipulate her mouth into a smile. At least, she hoped it was a smile and not a grimace.

      She held out her hand. “Luke, thank you for meeting with me on such short notice.”

      He ignored her hand. “You’re welcome.” His icy tone belied the polite words. “I assume you’re here to talk about your father.”

      “Yes, if we could.” She let her hand drop to her side, her voice chilling to match his. If she’d expected the passage of seven months to heal the wounds of their parting, she had obviously been delusional.

      “Let’s go to my office.” He turned without waiting for her to respond, not bothering to check if she was following as he wove a swift path to the tiny room set aside for him to make phone calls, pay bills and meet with vendors. Unlike the colorful dining rooms, or the shiny stainless steel of the spacious kitchens, his offices in all three restaurants were tiny, white-walled cubes. Small enough to be oppressive, and cold enough to form a suitably icy background for their conversation, Kate thought bleakly.

      “I hope your mother wasn’t upset by what we discussed this morning.” Luke stood behind his desk and didn’t suggest that either of them should sit down. If body language was anything to go by, his attitude to this meeting was several degrees less enthusiastic than her own.

      “Of course my mother is upset.” Kate bit back the urge to suggest he should refrain from making ridiculous statements. “Six months ago she found out that the man she’d loved for twenty-eight years was a bigamous, cheating liar. Then she was informed he’d been murdered. The next cheery little revelation was that her supposed husband had left far less money than anyone would have thought possible. What funds did exist went straight to probate, where the lawyers are having a grand time charging huge sums of money to unravel a quarter century of my father’s carefully manufactured deceptions. In the meantime, my mother’s been forced to sell her home of a dozen years and adjust to the fact that at least half her friends weren’t actually friends at all, merely hangers-on, out for what they could get. Now you summon her to your presence so that you can pass on the news that—big surprise!—maybe Ron Raven is alive after all.” She let out an exasperated breath. “How in the world do you think she feels?”

      Luke’s voice and expression both remained cool. “Right now I imagine she’s teetering somewhere between overwhelmed and devastated.”

      “Your imagination is correct. I’m wondering what the upside of your revelation was supposed to be.”

      “The fact that Avery might be able to uncover the truth about what really happened to her husband?”

      Kate made an impatient sound. “Where my father is concerned, truth is likely to remain unavailable however much we scrabble in the dust he left behind.”

      “It’s clear you disapprove of my decision to tell your mother what I saw.”

      “Yes, of course I disapprove. In effect you told her that Ron Raven cared so little about her that he was willing to fake his own death to avoid ever seeing her again. Thanks so much for your comforting words!”

      He winced at her sarcasm. For a moment, his guarded expression broke down, revealing unmistakable self-doubt. “I felt I owed your mother the truth precisely because Ron lied to her for so many years.”

      Kate wasn’t ready to acknowledge that Luke might have found himself in an almost impossible position. “You should have talked to me,” she said tersely. “Not my mother.”

      Luke’s smile was wintry. “Maybe, but I was never into masochism, Katie. Having my balls cut off and shoved down my throat comes way down on my list of ways I want to spend the morning.”

      Goose bumps erupted all over her arms when he called her Katie, even though the endearment СКАЧАТЬ