Quiet Walks the Tiger - By Heather Graham Page 0,63
her actions during his absence. He was strangely silent instead, his attention on his driving, his hardened jaw and cold eyes rigid in the profile she glanced at covertly from the lowered shade of her lashes. It seemed to Sloan that the tension in the car mounted until it was thick and tangible and she was drowning in it. “Don’t you think we should talk,” she finally exploded, unable to bear the uncertainty a moment longer. “I really don’t care to argue in front of the children,” she added with cold hauteur.
His eyes slid from the road to her for a moment, searing her with disdainful ice. His hand shot across the car, and she flinched thinking he was coming for her, but he wasn’t. He snapped the button on the glove compartment and the door fell open. With his eyes back on the road, he felt for a plump envelope, found it, tossed it on her lap, and slammed the door closed.
“I have no intention of arguing in front of the children,” he said, “but neither am I in a mood to discuss anything with you while driving. Don’t worry, the children are not at the house.”
“What?” Sloan exclaimed, baffled by his words and the envelope lying in her lap. She glanced from it to Wes, afraid to touch it, unaware of what it might contain. “Where are the children?” she demanded.
“At a motel by Hershey Park by now, I would imagine,” Wes replied briefly.
The import of his words sank slowly into Sloan’s mind, and she was then struck by a fury that overwhelmed her in shattering waves. “What?” she shrieked, twisting to face him in the car. “How dare you send my children away, how dare you take it upon yourself—”
“They aren’t your children anymore, Sloan; check the envelope on your lap. It’s the final judgment. Legally, they are my children now, too.” His gaze flicked to her steaming face with a quelling authority. “I didn’t send them away, I sent them on a little vacation—with Cassie and George as well as Florence.”
“A little vacation!” Sloan repeated incredulously, pushing the envelope from her lap to the floor with vengeance as she struggled against tears of anger and the impulse to fling herself at him and cause any bodily harm that she could. “You bastard!” she hissed. “You decide to waltz back in and just flick them aside—”
“You can stop now, Sloan!” Wesley’s voice growled low with the sharp edge of deadly warning. “I’m not flicking anyone aside; I’m more aware of their welfare at the moment than you are. You want to hide behind them. I think it’s going to be to their benefit not to be around while you and I settle the immediate future.”
“I don’t see where there is a future. Immediate or otherwise,” Sloan hissed, grudgingly admitting to herself that the concern he was showing the children was sincere, but she wasn’t about to say so. She was still seething with a rage that was in part a debilitating jealousy that she abhorred. Where had he been for all this time?...“Since you haven’t bothered with a call for six weeks,” she said aloud, “I hardly see any justice to your sweeping in like the north wind and thinking you can call the shots—”
“I will call the shots,” he interrupted her curtly, “and that should be no surprise to you; I told you as much in Belgium. And if we’re discussing justice, Mrs. Adams, let’s bear in mind that you owe me.”
“I don’t owe you anything!” Sloan snapped. “You’ve already subjected me to payment in full.”
Wes laughed, startling her with an honest twinge of amusement. “Payment in full? Taking a look at that school I so magnanimously funded makes you more in debt than ever.”
Sloan crunched down on her lip uncomfortably. “You’ll get your money back,” she said with quiet conviction.
“I believe I will,” Wes said indifferently. He raised a brow in her direction. “I don’t remember ever accusing you of stupidity.”
The car pulled into the house drive before Sloan could think of a reply to his double-edged statement. Sloan hopped out before he could come around and assist her and hurried for the front door, fumbling in her bag for her key. To her dismay it eluded her fingers and Wes was twisting the lock while she still fumbled. “Allow me,” he mocked her, pushing open the door and ushering her in.
The house seemed empty and hostile with Florence and the children gone, fueling Sloan’s