Free Forever in My Heart by Jo Goodman Page A

Beryl. It was his idea.
     
Anyway, do you think I would be in this position if he didn't need the money? You should be delighted I'm willing to do this. Money in his coffers means money in yours, or hadn't you thought that far ahead?"
     
"But your father can have the money by selling the land."
     
"Save your breath, Beryl," Rushton said. "Connor knows that. It's only because he is stubbornly insisting on buying the land that there's a problem."
     
Connor couldn't help himself. "It's my home," he shouted. The echo of his words seemed to slam against the walls of the carriage.
     
Beryl recoiled in response. Rushton's mouth thinned and his jaw tightened. Swearing under his breath, Connor drew back the communicating panel and rapped out an order for Hickes. The carriage stopped almost immediately and Connor opened the door. "I'll walk the rest of the way."
     
Beryl leaned forward to try to stop him but Rushton put out his arm, blocking her. "Leave him," he said.
     
"But we'll arrive before he does. What will we say?"
     
"We'll circle the block until he gets there."
     
Unhappy but mollified, Beryl leaned back in her seat as the carriage began to roll again. "Must you sell the land, Rush?"
     
"Yes. The fall in the market makes it absolutely necessary. No matter what Connor thinks, I'm not doing this to spite him." He looked sideways at Beryl. "And I'm not doing it to satisfy your social aspirations or to keep you in a style to which you've only recently become accustomed."
     
Beryl's arm looped inside Rushton's and she snuggled closer to him.
     
"Do you think I care a fig for social aspirations or indecent wealth?"
     
Rushton looked down at her upturned face. A banner of light briefly illuminated her pained expression as she made no attempt to hide her hurt. He patted her arm gently, his smile and tone only faintly mocking. "I think you care very much, my dear, else why would you have married the father when you could have had the son?"
     
The brisk pace that Connor set only partially curbed his anger. He wanted to hit something or, better yet, someone. He had never been one to spoil for a fight but tonight he found himself hoping there would be one. He didn't even care if he was the one laid out on the sidewalk as long as he got a few licks in first.
     
Perhaps it was the aura of anger that kept others at bay, but no fellow pedestrians along Seventh Avenue or Broadway came within three feet of him. A stray dog followed briefly but stayed well outside of kicking range. A trio of children mimicked his glowering expression as he passed them but thought twice about asking him for money. Connor noticed none of it.
     
In his mind's eye he was seeing the fine-boned and fragile features of a scheming harlot, the red hair of a temptress, and the wide, clear, green eyes of jade. She was the one he wanted to meet, the one he wanted to hurt. With the money she had stolen he had intended to buy the Colorado ranch from his father. Never again would he have had to worry that the land could be taken away. His father was selling his heritage out from under him and Connor, as hurt and frustrated as he was by this further evidence of betrayal, still reserved the largest fraction of his anger for the whore who had beguiled him rather than the father who had birthed him.
     
Connor halted in front of the spiked iron gate at the corner of Broadway and 50th. He leaned against the rails, catching his breath and clearing his head. Behind him the mansion beckoned invitingly with lighted lamps in each of the front windows. On the upper story a drape that had been drawn back was abruptly dropped in place.
     
His attention on the approaching carriage, Connor didn't sense he had been observed. He straightened, ran his fingers through his hair in an absent, nervous gesture, and waited for his father and Beryl to alight.
     
By the time he reached the front door of the palatial gray stone house his breathing had calmed and his uncertainty was