Chapter 5

The carnival was like most that Michele had seen in the States. There were a few rides for children, a number of exhibits and games, and the place was packed. The only obvious difference was that the carnies here called out to customers in three languages. Most of the patrons were tourists, a large majority American, all clearly willing to accept the games as honest, the exhibits as containing at least a reasonable facsimile of what was so luridly painted on the outside of the tents, and the rides as safe.

Mrs. Fortune’s tent was surprisingly subdued, given its atmospheric background. It was a soft violet in color, and boasted only a sign in Old English script above the tent flap promising that tarot readings were conducted inside. Outside and to the right of the opening stood a man, and he made no effort to try and entice the milling tourists to enter the tent. He merely studied the crowd, occasionally smiling or nodding if someone looked his way.

Jackie, who had no interest in anything other than a possible glimpse into her friend’s future, had Michele by the arm and was leading her inexorably to the tent.

Michele had accepted her fate, but as they drew near the man outside the tent, she found her whole attention focused on him. He was certainly a fascinating-looking man. He was extremely large, for one thing, his formal white suit tailored exquisitely on a frame that didn’t seem to hold a bit of fat. And he was, Michele thought, very old, even though his erect posture held the years at bay. He had a healthy thatch of snow-white hair, a full white beard, and dark eyes that shone benignly and contained a friendly, tolerant wisdom. Elegant hands were folded casually over the top of a gold-headed cane, which he used to lift aside the flap of the tent.

“Ladies.” His deep voice was rich in tone and incongruously gentle for so large a man.

“How much?” Jackie demanded without preamble.

“You have a card?” he murmured. When she produced it, he added softly, “One free reading, then.”

“Yours,” Jackie told Michele, and pulled her friend inside.

Experienced in the various trappings of fortune-tellers, Michele was surprised by the interior of the tent. There were no velvet hangings, no burning candles or incense, and no peculiar statuettes or symbols lying about. There was only a comfortable couch on one side of a low, plain, glass-topped table, with a chair on the other side. And bare tent walls.

The woman who rose from the chair at their entrance was also something of a surprise to Michele. She was petite and delicate. Instead of the usual gypsy-type draperies, she wore a very modern and tasteful ruby-red dress that enormously flattered her snowy hair and milky complexion—to say nothing of a still-splendid figure.

“Welcome,” she said softly, her voice low and sweet.

Jackie shoved Michele forward and waved her card. “My friend’s come for her reading.”

“Please sit down,” Mrs. Fortune invited, seating herself gracefully in the chair.

Michele sat, with Jackie beside her, and watched as Mrs. Fortune leaned forward to open a carved wooden box at the side of the table. The woman seemed to hesitate only an instant, then drew out a deck of tarot cards wrapped in cloth. She unwrapped the cards and set the cloth aside, then held the deck out to Michele. “Cut the cards, please.”

Obeying, Michele studied the woman curiously. She was absolutely lovely, her face totally unlined even though Michele felt she was very old. Her eyes were a vibrant green, so unusual a shade that they seemed iridescent, their depth and clarity curiously compelling.

Michele had a sudden and rather unnerving impression that if any mortal human had been granted the ability to open a door into the future, this woman had. She had remained purposefully silent and sat very still, all too aware that many so-called clairvoyants were adept at reading body language and listening to subtle changes in voice as they skillfully guided their “clients” through the practiced fakery of what was called in the craft of a professional seer a “cold reading.”

But the beautiful old lady didn’t even glance up, and she never once asked Michele anything. She laid the tarot cards out on the table slowly in a complicated pattern, studying each one in silence for an instant before placing the next. When the pattern lay complete, she began speaking in her soft, clear voice, her tone holding no drama or mystical theatrics. One delicate finger lightly touched each card as she interpreted it.

“Your past. You are descended from a very old line, their roots in the dark Celtic moors. In your veins runs the hot blood of a warrior strain, and in your soul is the knowledge of a terrible conflict you were born to resolve. An unexpected meeting cast all that you feel into chaos. There is a man you cannot trust, yet cannot turn away from.”

Michele didn’t stiffen, but only because she was concentrating fiercely on remaining motionless. Still, she could feel her pulse quicken, and the hands clasped together in her lap were cold.

The old lady went on without looking up. “Your present. You stand between enemies. Old, old enemies. All around you are the shifting patterns of things seen—and unseen. Events set in motion by your blood, but not by your hand. Old hurts must be avenged; the need for revenge is a terrible hunger, a dreadful thirst, and it must be satisfied. Danger is everywhere, a trusted voice, a strange but familiar face, eyes veiled against you. You feel great doubts and fears, but great passions as well. You risk much. Star-crossed lovers.”

Michele heard Jackie gasp, but she herself remained utterly silent. She had a peculiarly detached feeling, staring at that delicate hand as it moved lightly from card to card, and listening to the soft, relentless voice.

“Your future. You will feel torn between what was and what must be. Two paths lay before you, one leading to the destruction of all you hold dear, the other leading to a triumph of the heart and the spirit. Neither way is without pain. Neither way is without tragedy. Even now, the events set in motion entangle you and all you care about; even now, the seeds sown decades ago grow twisted to bear a dark and bitter fruit. You cannot change what must be, but only preserve with your own will a hopeful future. The confusion of heart against mind is a battle you must fight and win if you are to find contentment. You must abandon much to win all. You must find courage in the truth you feel, for that alone will show you the way.”

The old lady looked up then, her vibrant eyes darkened with compassion. Gently, she said, “It was always intended, child. Always meant to be. You were destined to love the enemy of your family.”

Michele gazed into those sympathetic eyes, and she could almost feel them looking into her soul. “I don’t believe in fate,” she whispered.

“Yes, you do,” Mrs. Fortune said quietly. “You’ve always known what he could be to you.”

Michele didn’t remember rising or turning away. She didn’t remember walking from the tent. She just found herself outside, walking steadily beside a very silent Jackie, and when she heard her own voice shake she wasn’t surprised. “Did you arrange that? Pay her to say that?”

“No.” Jackie was too subdued to take offense. “If I had—she wouldn’t have said what she did. The last thing I wanted to hear was that you were fated to love Ian Stuart.”

“I don’t believe in fate,” Michele repeated.

“Are you in love with him? Michele? Are you?”

“Yes.”

“That appears to have gone rather well,” he said, coming into the tent.

She looked up from the cards still lying in their pattern on the table and stared at him. Her vibrant eyes held a speculative gleam. “Cy, what happened to the stacked deck?”

Mildly surprised, he said, “Wasn’t it in the box?”

“No.”

“Well, no matter, sweet. You were able to follow the script, after all.”

“I wasn’t following a script.”

“No?”

“No. I read the cards just the way they fell. Each had only one possible interpretation.”

He looked down at the pattern on the table, then back at her. In the depths of his benign eyes was a tiny smile. “Now, fancy that,” he said placidly.

She shook her head slightly and leaned forward to gather up the cards. Conversationally, and as if to herself, she said, “I don’t know why I’m surprised. After all these years, you’d think I would have become accustomed to it.”

“To what, love?”

“Your witchery.”

Cyrus Fortune folded both elegant hands on his cane and looked at her with a tender smile playing about his firm lips. In a sedate tone, he said, “She cut the deck. You dealt the cards and read them. How could I have possibly controlled that?”

A soft laugh escaped her, the sound tinged with love and wonder. “You didn’t control it. You simply knew it would happen just that way.” Then she sobered and looked up at him gravely. “Cy, if you had arrived on time thirty-five years ago…”

“Those two people would not now exist.”

“Could you have ended it then?”

He hesitated. “There was a chance.”

“I think you were right when you told me everything happens in its own time,” she said. “And this is the time. They were meant to love.”

“Yes.”

“It isn’t over, is it?”

“No,” he said gently. “It’s just beginning.”

“Have you told him?” Jackie asked in a strained voice.

They were on the terrace of the hotel having a late lunch—or were supposed to be. Neither had done more than pick at her food, and both had been virtually silent until now.

Michele shook her head. “I want to. I’ve wanted to a dozen times. I just…somehow, I haven’t been able to say the words.”

“It was bad enough thinking you just had to have some insane fling. But this…”

“Don’t you think I know?” Michele’s voice was unsteady despite all her attempts at control. She looked at her friend, her emotions confused and uncertain. “Jackie, I didn’t go looking for this. It scares the hell out of me, what Dad and Jon are going to do when they find out.”

“Do they have to find out?”

“It isn’t just an affair!”

Jackie looked away, finally, from her friend’s glittering eyes. “All right. What does Ian say?”

“We’ve tried to talk about it. But there aren’t any answers. No matter what we do, this is going to have a terrible effect on our families. The tension between them has never been stronger. Our fathers are competing for that big contract, both of them pushing to get their current projects finished. I don’t know what’s going on in Atlanta now, but Jon was convinced the Stuarts had paid off some of the inspectors, bribed them to stall the project.”

“They’ve done it before,” Jackie said flatly.

“Have they? That’s the worst part of this feud, Jackie, and you’re blind if you can’t see it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing’s ever proven. Accusations on one side, denials on the other, over and over. But it’s a private battle. Oh, half the South knows about it, but it’s still private. We don’t go to court, don’t gather evidence to present to a jury. That isn’t the way it’s done. We just sling mud back and forth, and go on hating because it doesn’t end.”

Jackie was silent for a moment, then shook her head and met Michele’s gaze with a stubborn glint in her own. “All I know is that you can’t stop it. You heard what Mrs. Fortune said. Choose the wrong path, and you’ll destroy everything you care about. And it doesn’t take a clairvoyant to tell either of us that the wrong path is any kind of relationship with Ian Stuart.”

Michele drew a short breath. “She also said I was destined to love him.”

“She didn’t say he was destined to love you.”

That hurt, all the more because Michele felt so vulnerable and because the horrible, dark suspicions just wouldn’t go away. There was a part of her that believed Ian cared about her, that it wasn’t just passion, but so much had happened between them so quickly that she felt raw and unsure.

“Forbidden fruit,” Jackie said in a taut voice. “Maybe he wanted a taste, too.”

“He wouldn’t risk so much for that,” Michele whispered. “Not simply that.”

“What’s he risking? His father wouldn’t disown him,” Jackie said, unknowingly echoing Ian’s own words. “He’s an only child, an only son. Besides that—maybe his father thinks that’s all a Logan woman’s good for. He might not give a damn that Ian’s slept with you; it’d only give him something new to taunt your father with.”

“Don’t.”

Jackie looked down, knowing Michele was on the ragged edge and hurting. “I don’t want to keep saying such things. But you’ve got to face the fact that you’re risking everything. Your father and Jon could never accept Ian as your lover. Never. Michele, they’d rather see you dead.”

Michele got up from the table and walked away. She was moving, blindly, hardly aware that she was retreating to her room like a wounded animal seeking its burrow. She desperately wanted Ian, wanted his arms around her and his body hard against hers. She wanted him to push away the darkness that seemed to be closing in on her, the confusion and pain.

Her friend’s statement that both her father and brother would choose to see her dead rather than in the arms of the man she loved was a terrible thing to hear. But worse than hearing it was the devastation of believing it was true.

“Michele?”

“Leave me alone, Jackie.” She was standing by her balcony doors, staring out.

“We can go home,” Jackie’s voice was pleading. “Today. Nobody has to know. Things can be the way they were—”

“Nothing can ever be the way it was.” That was the only truth she was utterly certain of. Nothing in her life would ever again be as it had been.

“Look at what he’s done to you already. You’re so brittle, a touch would shatter you into a million pieces. This is tearing you apart. No matter what you do now it’s only going to hurt you. Michele—”

Michele jerked around, but whatever she would have said was lost as the phone rang loudly. She drew a breath to steady herself, then went to the bed and sat down as she lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

“Michele.”

She felt suddenly cold, a tremor of fear chasing down her spine. Her father never called her like this, not unless something had happened. “Dad? What’s wrong?”

“Jon’s been hurt.” His voice was flat. “Early this morning at the building.”

“How bad is it?” She was terrified of hearing the answer, more terrified of not hearing it.

“I don’t know. They haven’t been able to tell me anything definitive yet. He was barely conscious when they brought him in, but he managed to say who was responsible.”

“Responsible?” The coldness spread through her body. “It wasn’t an accident.”

“No, it damned well wasn’t,” her father said, his control slipping and allowing the harsh and malignant feelings he was experiencing to sound in his voice. “Jon caught a saboteur, Michele, red-handed. He managed to choke the truth out of him before the bastard’s handiwork brought a wall down almost on top of him.”

Michele couldn’t have asked; she didn’t want to hear. But her father was going on in a voice vibrating with hatred and filled with utter certainty.

“The son of a bitch thought he’d keep suspicion off himself by being out of the city when it happened, but his hired gun couldn’t talk fast enough. Ian Stuart planned it all weeks ago, then called yesterday and set his man to work. If Jon hadn’t gotten a tip and gone out there, the damage would have been ten times as bad.”

“No.” She thought she said it aloud, but her father apparently heard nothing.

“Come home, Michele.”

“I’ll be on the next plane,” she murmured.

“The car will meet you.”

Michele hung up the phone, vaguely surprised to see that her hand was steady. She felt hollow inside, all her emotions numbed and still.

“What’s happened?” Jackie demanded anxiously. “You’re white as a ghost.”

Tonelessly, Michele repeated the conversation. “I have to go home,” she finished.

“Start packing. I’ll call the airline. And I’ll pack, too. I’m going back with you.”

Michele didn’t try to dissuade her friend. The next two hours passed in a blur, and it wasn’t until they were on a plane bound for Atlanta that the numbness retreated and left her feeling emotionally battered and so confused she could barely think.

Ian? No! It couldn’t have been him. It was all some horrible mistake; it had to be. There had to be another explanation for what had happened. He’d said he wouldn’t fight her brother, that Jon could hate him to hell and back and he wouldn’t fight him. Could he have lied about that and made her believe him? Could he have held her in his arms with a desire she knew was real while plotting coldly against her family?

She didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t believe it despite her father’s certainty and her own agonizing doubts. How could she love a man capable of such treachery? There had to be another answer…

“Michele?” Jackie’s voice was tentative. “You couldn’t have known Ian would—”

“I don’t know that he did.”

“But your father said that man named Ian as his employer.”

“Then it’s his word against Ian’s, isn’t it?”

There was a moment of silence, and then Jackie said, “You must believe it. You didn’t leave a message for Ian.”

Michele kept her head turned away, directing her gaze out the window even though she saw nothing. “No, I didn’t leave a message. I just ran like a coward. Afraid to face him.”

“What could he have said if you had stayed to face him? That he didn’t do it? Of course he’d say that. Michele, this time somebody got hurt. Jon got hurt. And Lord help the Stuarts if he was hurt badly.”

“I know.” Oh, yes, she knew. The fuse had been lit now, and it was only a matter of time before hate exploded. What had the fortune-teller said? That the desire for revenge was a terrible hunger and thirst? Michele knew only too well that her father was hungering now, that whatever restraints had held the feud away from the brink of violence had been snapped. Her father wouldn’t wait for proof; he had all he needed.

Michele stared out the plane window at the blanket of clouds below, fear for her brother and the painful uncertainties about Ian tearing at her, and filled with the knowledge that any hope of peacefully stopping the feud was gone now.

“You cannot change what must be…”

Was there nothing she could do except endure, stand by helplessly and watch while everyone she loved was torn apart by this?

The company limo was waiting when she and Jackie emerged from the frenetically busy terminal at the airport. Their luggage was quickly stowed, and they were driven directly to the hospital. It was still November in Atlanta, and far from paradise a cold rain was still falling. The city looked bleak and dreary, especially at night.

At the hospital, they were directed to the right floor, and as soon as they stepped out of the elevator Charles Logan strode toward them. He was still upright and vigorous in his sixties, conceding nothing to age except the gray streaking his brown hair and the lined, weathered face of a man who had worked much of his life outside. His gray eyes were the only similarity between him and his daughter; he was a tall man and powerfully built, his rugged features holding none of the delicacy Michele had inherited from their Celtic ancestors.

“Dad? Is Jon—?” She hurried toward him with Jackie at her heels.

“It’s all right,” he said, hugging her briefly. “A mild concussion and broken wrist, but he’ll be able to go home tomorrow.”

The relief was overwhelming, but Michele was still very aware of the tautness in her father’s expression and the cold gray gleam in his eyes. “Can I see him?”

“Room 484. He’s awake.”

“I’ll wait out here,” Jackie said, obviously as relieved as her friend to hear the news.

With the somewhat courtly air he inevitably adopted whenever he was around young women—especially pretty ones—Charles Logan offered his arm to Jackie. “Why don’t I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“Sounds good to me. Michele, tell Jon I said hi.”

Nodding, Michele left her father and Jackie and made her way down the hall to Jon’s room. She opened the door cautiously, but he was sitting up and looked around quickly, his frown smoothing away. There was a strip of bandage over his right eye, and his left arm was held in a cast from fingers to elbow.

“Michele! Sorry to drag you back from your vacation. Dad shouldn’t have called you.”

She crossed the room and bent over the bed to kiss him lightly. “Don’t be stupid.” She kept her voice easy with an effort as he smiled at her.

Jonathan Logan was a tall and physically powerful man like his father, and he shared the slightly rough-hewn features that made both men ruggedly good-looking. He had medium brown hair and had inherited blue eyes from both parental sides. But his father’s genes were clearly strongest in him. Like the elder Logan, Jon was stubborn, a bit arrogant, and easy to anger. He was close to his sister despite a five-year difference in age, and his protectiveness of her stemmed both from his affection and from an extremely strong sense of family responsibility.

Michele had always adored her big brother, but love had never blinded her to his faults. He had never quite accepted the fact that she was a grown woman perfectly capable of taking care of herself; to Jon, she was still the little sister with a troublesome streak of rebelliousness.

“You don’t have much of a tan,” he noted critically.

“I have enough. Haven’t you been listening to the surgeon general?”

Jon grunted. “I’ve been listening to too damn many doctors in the last few hours. Pull that chair over and have a seat.”

She obeyed, trying to keep her expression calm under his searching scrutiny. Apparently without success.

“You look worried to death,” her brother said softly. “Cut it out. I’m fine.”

Michele linked her fingers together in her lap and looked at them for a moment, then raised her gaze to his. “Jon, what happened?”

“I’m sure Dad told you.”

“Yes. But I want to hear it from you.”

He shrugged. “I got a tip yesterday afternoon—”

“From whom?”

“Beats me. A man, or sounded like it. Maybe one of Stuart’s people turned traitor. He called the office and said if we didn’t want anything to happen to the building we’d better keep an eye on it during the night.”

Michele felt a helpless sense of anger sweep over her. “And of course you didn’t even consider increasing security or calling the police.”

Jon avoided her eyes. “I knew who it was, and I wanted to catch them at it. Hell, I’d been waiting for a chance like that for years.”

“You could have been killed!”

“I wasn’t.” His mouth firmed stubbornly. “I decided not to tell Dad, to go myself. It seemed to me the only kind of sabotage the bastards could hope to get away with would have to be pretty subtle, but I knew they’d want it to be crippling as well. I rigged a couple of booby traps in the control room for the electrical system, figuring that was most likely. Then I decided to check the elevator banks, and that was where I caught him. He’d already planted explosive charges to snap the cables.”

“What happened?” Michele asked, dry-mouthed.

“Well, I didn’t know he’d set a timer that was busy ticking away. Once I got my hands on him, he was only too happy to talk. He said he’d been paid in cash—half up front a couple of weeks ago—and been told in detail what he was supposed to do. He’d gotten the call yesterday telling him to get busy. Ian Stuart hired him.”

“He was sure of that?”

“Of course he was sure. For God’s sake, Michele, he called him by name!”

Something was nagging at the back of Michele’s mind, a lesson learned in her own investigative training. Slowly, she said, “Did he say how he was hired? I mean, had he met Ian Stuart in person, or was it some other arrangement?”

Jon was frowning at her. “I didn’t have time to ask. The explosives went off, and instead of just snapping the cables, part of the blast went outward. Half a wall came down on top of me. I didn’t know anything else until our security guys dug me out of there. Unfortunately, the saboteur was long gone by then, and we aren’t likely to find him.”

Michele looked at her brother searchingly. “But don’t you see, Jon? That man could have been hired to say anything. Maybe his job wasn’t so much to cripple the building as it was to have the Logans and Stuarts at each other’s throats. Maybe that’s why you were tipped. Just so that you could be pointed at a specific target.”

“What’d be the point?” But even as he asked, Jon was scowling.

“You know as well as I do. That Techtron contract is worth millions; the Logans and Stuarts are the top commercial builders in Atlanta, but not the only ones. If we eliminate each other, somebody else is going to come out on top. Look, everybody knows that Dad and Brandon Stuart are in a race to finish their current projects. Their bids on the Techtron contract were so close that the decisive question is: Who can start first? If both companies get bogged down in fighting each other, Techtron won’t be able to start their project when they want—unless they hire someone else.”

Jon shook his head. “The Stuarts are behind this. I know they are.”

“Jon—”

“Dammit, Michele, they’ve already tried to sabotage us! They’ve bribed the inspectors to slow us down.”

“How do you know that?”

“I told you. I have a source at city hall.”

“How good a source?”

“He’s never been wrong. And I pay him a fortune to make sure he never is.”

“Maybe somebody else is paying him more.”

Jon moved restlessly on the bed. “Will you listen to yourself for a minute? You’ve dreamed up this whole conspiracy theory just because you don’t want to admit the Stuarts are out to get us. You’ve always given them the benefit of the doubt.”

“What’s wrong with that? Jon, you don’t have any proof. You’ve never had any proof—just reports from elusive sources that you pay to feed you information. Sources who could be taking somebody else’s money to tell you what you want to hear. And I didn’t dream up the fact that everyone in Atlanta knows the Logans and Stuarts would rather fight each other than anything else. You don’t have to tell me the explosion wasn’t reported to the police, or even to the insurance company; the feud doesn’t work that way and everyone knows that, too.”

“So?”

“So, a third party could easily decide they could do what they liked without any threat of being caught or prosecuted. They could know that the Logans and Stuarts would never look further than each other for a villain. Just point us at each other and keep applying pressure until we destroy ourselves.”

“That’s ridiculous, Michele.”

“Is it? Is it any more ridiculous than—than carrying on a battle that started with some petty grievance nobody can even remember more than five centuries ago? Any more ridiculous than hating because we’re supposed to hate, because we’ve been told we should?”

“They’re our enemies,” Jon said, staring down at his immobilized wrist.

“Are they? Are you sure?”

“Yes. After—” He broke off abruptly.

“After what?” A memory surfaced, and she went on evenly. “Jon, you said something once about Brandon Stuart and Dad years ago. What happened then?”

“Never mind.”

A wave of absolute fury swept over Michele, and her voice shook with it. “Never mind? That’s a hell of a thing to say to me, Jon. You and Dad can’t wait to launch an all-out war with the Stuarts, and you tell me to never mind? Don’t you think it’s my business? Damn you, it’s my family, too! I think I deserve to know why my father and brother hate so deeply they can’t even be rational about it. Tell me!”

“All right,” Jon snapped. He drew a breath, then said, “Thirty-five years ago, Dad and Stuart fell in love with the same woman.”

Despite Ian’s remark that the bitterness between their fathers must have been deepened by a woman, the information still came as a shock to Michele. “What?”

He laughed shortly. “Pretty, isn’t it? Dad wouldn’t say much, but she must have played them off against each other. Dad fell hard, would have done anything for her. And he thought she loved him when—well, when they slept together.”

“What happened?”

Jon shrugged. “A few weeks later, she broke down and told Dad she’d made a mistake, that she had realized she loved Brandon Stuart. She and Stuart announced their engagement, and he was strutting like a rooster for having beaten Dad. I’m not sure what happened then, except that there was some kind of confrontation between them and the woman left. Just walked out on both of them, apparently.”

Michele could see how her father would have been enraged at losing to a rival—particularly a Stuart—but the story seemed incomplete to her. There had to have been more to it than what Jon knew. “And that’s why Dad hates Brandon Stuart so bitterly?”

“Isn’t it enough? Dad loved that woman, Michele, and Stuart took her away from him.”

Slowly, Michele said, “It sounds to me as if she made up her own mind, and probably with a lot of pain. But she ended up without either of them.”

“Maybe she found out she didn’t love Stuart as much as she thought. Dad sure as hell wouldn’t have taken her back after that.”

“Right.” She stared at her brother. “Even though he loved her so much.”

Jon’s eyes narrowed at the sarcasm. “Obviously, you don’t understand how Dad felt.”

“Obviously. Has it occurred to you that Dad and Mom were married a little more than thirty-four years ago? His heart must not have been too broken. Or maybe Mom caught him on the rebound. Is that his story?”

“I didn’t ask,” Jon said tightly.

“Maybe you should. Maybe we should both ask.” Michele wondered if she looked as shaken as she felt. How odd, to find that so many certainties in her life had been built on shifting sand. Her father had always talked as if his children’s mother was the one great love of his life; now it seemed that he had loved once before, and that the emotion had been great enough to spawn an equally powerful hatred.

Holding her voice steady, she said, “That may or may not give Dad a good enough reason to hate. But what about us, Jon? Where is it written that we have to hate because of something that happened before we were born?”

“Michele, they’re trying to ruin us!”

“And if they aren’t?” Everything inside her seemed to be focused on her brother, all her will bent on finding a chink somewhere in the wall of hate. “If someone else is using the Stuarts—and us—for their own gain? Can you at least consider the possibility?”

“Give me some real proof,” he returned flatly. “Something more than theory.”

She rose to her feet and stood gazing down at him for a moment. “Isn’t that funny,” she murmured. “You didn’t need any real proof to believe it was the Stuarts.”

Jon didn’t react or speak again until she reached the door. Then his question dropped quietly into the silence. “What’s happened to you, Michele?”

She half turned to look back at him. “Maybe I don’t want to be a lemming.”

“A what?”

“A lemming. It’s a little animal. Every so often, the lemmings crowd together and rush toward a cliff. They commit mass suicide. Maybe a few centuries ago, someone told them it was the right thing to do.”

After a moment, Jon shifted his gaze back to his broken wrist. “See you at home tomorrow, Michele.”

She left the room, feeling tired and angry. The anger was new, and she welcomed it, because it was better than pain and hopelessness. She was angry at the stubborn blindness of her father’s and Jon’s hatred, angry at whatever long-ago ancestor had started this mess, and angry at herself for not having the courage to tell Jon what had really happened to her.

As for the latter, she realized it was less a matter of courage than a desire to cause the least amount of pain by her confession. God knew this was the worst possible time to break the news to her family, though there would never be a “good” time. Still, if she could somehow stop the feud, or at least defuse it before something horrible happened, before someone else got hurt because of it…

She didn’t get the chance to offer her theory to her father until late the following morning as he was preparing to go to the hospital and get Jon. The brunch they had shared had been silent, with Michele trying to think of the best way to bring up the subject and her father preoccupied with thoughts of his own. In the end, she blurted it out, and like Jon, her father didn’t believe it for a moment.

“Don’t be absurd, Michele. Jon choked a confession out of that saboteur.”

“Maybe he was paid to lie.”

“No, it was the Stuarts all right. And this time they’ve gone too far. Jon could have been killed, to say nothing of the time and cost to repair the damage to the building.”

She felt cold as she looked into the hardness of her father’s eyes. “What are you going to do?”

“Nothing for you to worry about,” he said calmly.

“Not worry? Dad—”

The phone on the hall table rang just then, and her father grasped the interruption. “Get the phone, honey,” he said, laying aside his newspaper and rising from the table. “If it’s for me, tell them I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

He went out into the hall with her to get his coat, and Michele answered the phone with half her mind still occupied with the possibilities her father was considering for revenge. None she could think of was at all comforting.

“Hello?”

“Michele.”

Her heart seemed to stop and then begin pounding against her ribs. Nobody said her name the way he did, and just the sound of it made her ache with longing. But she couldn’t talk to him, not now when everything was so confused, and not with her father three feet away shrugging into his coat.

In a polite voice, she said, “I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.” And hung up the phone.

It was a pity, she thought vaguely, that phone manners didn’t extend to the rest of life. If everyone apologized for the mistakes others made, the world might be a kinder place.

“Are you coming to the hospital with me?” her father asked briskly.

Michele stood in the entrance hall of their stately old home and looked at her father. “No. I haven’t even unpacked yet. I’ll see Jon later.”

Looking at her narrowly, he said, “You’re too pale. Did you sleep well?”

“Not very. Jet lag, I expect.”

“Good thing you’re still on vacation for the rest of the week. You should get some rest, honey.”

“I will.”

When she was alone, Michele admitted to herself that rest was the last thing she could afford. Unless she could somehow prove that neither Ian nor his father was working against her family—and prove it quickly—then violence from both sides wasn’t just probable, it was inevitable.

As so often in the past, the calm but tense status quo between the families had been disturbed. A rivalry that was equally matched and that employed the same tactics could hold steady for years with neither side gaining the upper hand; in world politics, it was called the balance of power, and though it was a brutally delicate high-wire act, at least it preserved both sides. But it required no more than a single nudge to upset the balance.

And someone was supplying that push.

Michele wasn’t even sure that her theory was correct. It was still possible that Ian’s father was bent on delaying his rival’s building. It was even possible that Ian himself had planned the sabotage. But she couldn’t believe that. Despite all the doubts and dark suspicions, the almost instinctive compulsion to believe the worst of a Stuart, she simply could not accept that the man she loved was capable of such treachery.

She wanted desperately to see him, talk to him, but dared not risk that. Too many people knew of the feud, and both she and Ian were familiar faces in the Atlanta social and business worlds. If just one whisper reached her father’s ears before she could defuse the situation between the families…

Michele squared her shoulders and went to get her purse and car keys. She was a trained investigator, and all her experience told her to start with the simplest question and work toward an answer. And she had her question.

Who would have the most to gain by setting the Logans and Stuarts at each other’s throats?