The Promise - By Danielle Steel Page 0,8

been asked to build a medical center in San Francisco, by the same group who were behind the Hartford Center. You won't have time for a wife. I'm going to be counting on you very heavily for the next year or two. Frankly, darling, I wish you'd wait.” It was the first softening he'd seen, and it almost made him wonder if there was hope.

“Nancy will be an asset to both of us, Mother. Not a distraction to me, or a nuisance to you. She's a wonderful girl.”

“Maybe so, but as for being an asset … have you thought of the scandal?” There was victory in her eyes now. She was going in for the kill, and suddenly Michael held his breath, a helpless prey, not knowing where she would strike, or how.

“What scandal?”

“She's told you who she is, of course?”

Oh, Jesus. Now what? “What do you mean, who she is?”

“Precisely that. I'll be quite specific.” And in one smooth, feline gesture, she set down the demitasse and glided to her desk. From a bottom drawer she removed a file, and silently handed it to Michael. He held it for an instant, afraid to look inside.

“What is this?”

“A report I had a private investigator look into your artistic little friend. I was not very pleased.” An understatement. She had been livid. “Please sit down and read it” He did not sit down, but unwillingly he opened the folder and began to read. It told him in the first twelve lines that Nancy's father had been killed in prison when she was still a baby, and her mother had died an alcoholic two years later. It explained as well that her father had been serving a seven-year sentence for armed robbery. “Charming people, weren't they, darling?” Her voice was lightly contemptuous, and suddenly Michael threw the folder on the desk, from which its contents slid rapidly to the floor.

“I won't read that garbage.”

“No, but you'll marry it.”

“What difference does it make who her parents were? Is that her Goddamn fault?”

“No. Her misfortune. And yours, if you marry her.

Michael, be sensible. You're going into a business where millions of dollars are involved in every deal. You can no longer afford the risk of scandal. You'll ruin us. Your grandfather founded this business over fifty years ago, and you're going to destroy it now for a love affair? Don't be insane. It's time you grew up, my boy. High time. Your salad days are over. In exactly two weeks.” She burned as she looked at him now. She was not going to lose this battle, no matter what she had to do. “I won't discuss this with you, Michael You have no choice.” She had always told him that Goddammit, she had always …

“The hell I don't!” It was a sudden roar as he paced across the room. “I'm not going to bow and scrape before you and your rules for the rest of my life, Mother! I won't! What exactly do you think, that you're going to pull me into the business, groom me until you retire, and then run me as a puppet from a chaise longue in your room? Well, to hell with that. I'm coming to work for you. But that's all. You don't own my life, now or ever, and I have a right to marry anybody I bloody well please!”

“Michael!”

They were interrupted by the sudden peal of the doorbell, and they stood eying each other like two jaguars in a cage. The old cat and the young one, each slightly afraid of the other, each hungry for victory, each fighting for his survival. They were still standing at opposite ends of the room, trembling with rage, when George Calloway walked in, and instantly sensed that he had stepped into a scene of great passion. He was a gentle, elegant man in his late fifties who had been Marion's right hand man for years. More than that, he was much of the power behind Cotter-Hillyard. But unlike Marion, he was seldom in the forefront; he preferred to wield his strength from the shadows. He had long since learned the merits of quiet strength. It had won him Marion's trust and admiration years ago, when she first took her husband's place in the business. She had been only a figurehead then, and it had been George who actually ran Cotter-Hillyard for the first year, while he determinedly and conscientiously taught her the ropes. And he had done his job