Trust Me (10 page)

It was that house,
he told himself. That house had too much symbolism attached to it. Being there had thrown him off-balance, and he stayed
that way for the rest of the evening. He had managed to regain his outer composure, at least. But that was as far as it went,
and as a result, he’d had an exquisite gourmet dinner that he hardly tasted, and a bland conversation with Carly that had
accomplished nothing at all. The evening had faded out with a pathetic fizzle and the awkwardness of an eighth-grade date,
and Max went back to his hotel early, thoroughly disgusted with himself.

A flock of gulls scattered in front of him as he continued down the beach, sucking in deep breaths of the damp sea air. Blood
beat a hot rhythm in his temples, and he ran until all he could feel was the ache in his lungs and the burn in his muscles.
He gave himself up to the pain, welcoming the too-brief respite from thought.

Back at the Ritz, hot and exhausted, Max left his car with the valet and strode into the lobby, nodding to the staff as they
greeted him. They all knew him by then. His driver’s license still said New York, but he had been living in his suite at the
hotel for the past few months while he worked at Syscom, getting his company through the transition period. The Ritz was starting
to feel as familiar as his Park Avenue apartment ever had.

Aware of several curious glances directed at him, Max squared his shoulders as he walked, meeting every gaze until the other
person was the first to look away. It was a trick he had learned long ago, to give the appearance of confidence back in the
days when he had needed to fake it. It annoyed him that even now, on a deep, childish level, wearing sweaty workout clothes
into the lobby of San Francisco’s most exclusive hotel still stirred up that old fear of not looking right, of tipping off
the in-crowd that he didn’t belong.

To hell with it
, Max told himself.
I might look like a slob, but at least I look like a rich slob.

The message light on the phone was blinking when he entered his suite. He stripped off his windbreaker, sat down at the desk,
and pressed the button for his voice mail.

“Max? It’s Carly. It’s… um… about noon, and I’m at the house. I’ll be here for a while, so… give me a call if you get this
message, okay? I just found something that I really want to show you.”

Max frowned. The house? He didn’t have Carly’s home number, so she must have meant Henry’s house. He wondered what she was
doing at the mansion for “a while” on a Saturday afternoon. Playing with dogs, combing cats? Shouldn’t she be out enjoying
the day? What did Carly Martin do when she wasn’t caring for four-legged creatures? He picked up the phone and dialed.

Pauline answered on the second ring. “Oh, Mr. Max, it’s you. Are you coming for lunch?”

Max hadn’t planned on it. “Carly left me a message about an hour ago. Is she still there?”

“Oh, she’s still here,” Pauline said dourly. “I didn’t expect to be fixing lunch today, but now that I am, I hope you’ll join
us.”

“Thanks,” Max said. “But I—”

“It’s vegetable soup, and I made it myself. I would have made my famous chicken soup, but Miss Martin doesn’t eat chicken.
Now, I don’t think that’s healthy. A person needs protein, and I told her so, but she seems to think that she knows best.”
The housekeeper sighed. “I’m sure that you eat chicken, Mr. Max.”

“Yes,” Max said. “I’ve been known to.”

“Good. I’ll make a batch of soup just for you, and you can take it back to the hotel. Although you really should be staying
here. If Henry knew that his own grandson was sleeping in a hotel with all this space right here in the house, he would be
very upset.”

She made a disapproving noise. “I should tell you that the hospital still won’t let me see your grandfather. I suppose that
just because I’ve lived with him for twenty years and devoted every waking moment to his comfort, I shouldn’t expect any special
treatment. Someone really should speak to them about it.”

It was clear to Max who that “someone” was. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

“That would be very good of you,” Pauline said. “You really should come over. Miss Martin has something she wants to show
you, and… what?” She paused, and Max heard muffled voices in the background. When the housekeeper came back on the line,
her voice was frosty.

“Miss Martin would like to speak with you herself,” Pauline said. “I’ll go out and cut some flowers for the table, since I’m
sure you want privacy, and I’d hate to intrude. I just hope that the soup doesn’t burn while I’m away.”

There was another pause, then he heard Carly’s voice.

“Max? Hi. Are you really coming for lunch?”

“Do I have a choice?” Max asked. “Is Pauline still there, or did she actually leave?”

Carly chuckled. “She left. Quite a powerhouse, isn’t she? She’s a bit opinionated, but once you get used to her, you realize
that she’s got a heart of gold. I keep trying to get her to call me Carly, but she’ll have none of it.”

Her voice was light and smooth, threaded with humor, and Max found himself picturing the way her eyes crinkled at the corners
when she smiled. He cleared his throat. “She said that you have something for me?”

“Right,” Carly said. “That’s why I called. It’s not urgent, but it’s important. I think you’ll want to see it.”

“What is it? You’re being very obscure.”

“I don’t mean to be. It’s just that after last night…”

Max felt himself tense. “What about last night?”

“Well,” she said, “I was thinking about what you said, and then this morning, when I stumbled across this book, I knew right
away that you should see it. It’s part of what you… need.”

What did Carly think he needed? Psychoanalysis, probably, after the scene he had made. Max tapped his fingers on the desktop,
hoping that she wasn’t planning on giving him some kind of self-help manual.

“What is it, Carly?” he asked again.

“It’s an album,” she said. “More than a year of photos and press clippings, all the way up to last month’s
Fortune
article. It’s all about you, Max, and he saved everything. He must have been so proud of you.”

“I wasn’t snooping,” Carly asserted later, after Max had arrived at the house and submitted to being fed Pauline’s soup. “Obviously,
I consider Henry’s personal papers completely off-limits. But I was in the library, looking for one of the cats, and this
was just sitting there, open, on Henry’s desk. I saw your picture, and as soon as I realized what it was, I knew that you
should see it.”

Max nodded. “Thank you,” he said briefly.

Henry’s lawyers hadn’t told Max anything more than the terms of the Tremayne trust, leaving him to find his own answers to
the questions that plagued him. How Henry had learned about Max, what he knew about his grandson’s life, and what he thought
about it all… The timing of the documents seemed to answer the first question. And now, a partial answer to the second—and
perhaps the third—was being offered.

He and Carly were sitting in the solarium, looking out over the back lawn, where the dogs were chasing each other in circles,
fighting for possession of a battered stick. Light streamed through the tall windows, each topped with a stained-glass panel
that cast rainbow glints into the room. Bushy green plants grew in ornate urns all around them, and among the normal varieties
of houseplant, Max saw several terra-cotta pots of what could only be catnip, judging from the reactions of the felines who
dropped by for a nibble.

One blissful tabby hopped into Max’s lap and began to knead his thighs with her paws. He lifted one hand to brush her away,
but she immediately settled down into a fuzzy lump and went to sleep, her purrs rumbling gently against his skin. He frowned
down at her.

The album, a red leather-bound book, sat on the table in front of him. He had not yet touched it.

Carly followed his gaze. “I thought you might want to take it back to the hotel,” she said. “But if you want to look now,
alone, I’ll go and—”

Max shook his head. “No. Not now. I’ll wait.”

He still felt unsteady, and he did not want to risk another episode like the one the previous night. Over the phone, Carly
had described the album as containing photos of him in locations from New York to San Francisco. He had been photographed
in restaurants, in hotels, in cars, and on the street. They were the kind of pictures that a private eye would take with a
long lens, she said. Max didn’t know why he was so astonished to learn that his grandfather had been investigating him in
turn. It certainly made sense.

But how much had Henry’s hireling uncovered over the past year? Only Max’s adult life, or did the scrapbook also tell the
darker story of his teens? Were the foster-care documents in there? The truancy reports? The arrest records for breaking and
entering, for petty theft? None of that information would have been difficult to dig up. Max’s stomach clenched as he imagined
his grandfather paging through that red book, thinking about him, judging him.

The suspense was gnawing at him, but he did not touch the book. It was not the time. Not in front of Carly, or anywhere near
her. He wondered why she had brought the album to his attention. It seemed to be a simple gesture of kindness, but she had
no reason to be kind to him. On the contrary, he could think of several reasons why she might have it in for him. She could
have brought out the album in an attempt to provoke him into another emotional outburst, hoping to use it against him. Or
she might be attempting to gain his trust, thinking—wrongly—that she could charm him just as she had charmed his grandfather.

She smiled at him, and he gazed back at her, letting his eyes move critically over her, as if she were a statue or a painting.
Her hair was smoothed into its usual braid, and in the sunlight, her blue eyes matched the floral print on her cotton sundress.
She lacked only a wide-brimmed hat and wicker basket filled with roses to look like a casting director’s idea of Girlish Innocence.

“What are your plans for the afternoon?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said. “I don’t really have any, I guess.”

Perfect. He wanted to talk to her, and this wasn’t the place to do it. He hadn’t missed the ever-so-slightly ajar kitchen
door, or the flicker of motion behind it as Pauline hovered just beyond, listening in on the conversation.
God help me,
Max thought,
if I’m ever that old and bored.

“Actually,” Carly amended, “I do need to run over to the clinic. One of the cats has an abscess on her foot, and I want to
pick up some antibiotics.”

“I’ll take you there.”

“Max, you don’t have to drive me around.”

“I know that. But I want to. If you don’t mind.”

“Mind?” A tinge of color touched her cheeks. “No, I don’t mind.”

D
uring the drive to the clinic, Carly began to get the feeling that she had imagined the previous night’s encounter in the
Tremayne dining room. It wasn’t that she suddenly expected Max to confess all of his innermost thoughts to her, but it seemed
to her that sharing such a raw and honest moment was a strong step toward forming a friendship. They should have been more
relaxed around each other, but instead, things seemed to have taken a step backward. The dark fissures that had opened up
in him had been resealed with a seamless veneer of poise and politeness that kept the conversation flowing smoothly but left
Carly feeling disturbed.

Even so, Max was good company when he wanted to be, and she fell quickly into the lure of his charm. They chatted as he navigated
the city streets, then, somehow, the subject of love came up. Carly had jokingly referred to her first flame, a sophisticated
“older man” of ten, whom she and her nine-year-old friends had chased around the playground threatening to kiss.

“Did you catch him?” Max asked.

Carly grinned. “I was bigger than he was, so it wasn’t much of a contest. That was technically my first kiss, except that
he was struggling so hard that I actually bit him on the chin.”

“And then you lived happily ever after?”

“No. That was the high point, unfortunately. He went off to private school, and it was years before I saw him again. By then,
he had purple hair and a motor scooter, and the magic was gone.”

Max chuckled, and she felt a warm pleasure at the sound.

“Sounds like it wasn’t meant to be,” he said, down-shifting as they approached a stop sign. Carly noticed his fingers as he
gripped the gearstick. His hands were strong and square, like working hands. Only the cleanly groomed nails and lack of calluses
marked them as belonging to a businessman.

“And what about the real thing?” Max asked casually. “Have you ever been in love, Carly?”

She shot a sideways glance at him. It was a strange question, unexpectedly personal, and something about the studied nonchalance
of his voice suggested that he had a reason for asking. But what could it be?

“I don’t know,” she said cautiously.

“You don’t?”