Hidden Riches
shouldn’t. Maybe you should be running hard in the other direction.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know me, Dora. You don’t have any idea where I come from, and you wouldn’t understand it if you did.”
“Try me.”
He shook his head, started to get up.
“Try me,” she said again, and made it a dare.
“I want dinner.” He tugged his jeans on again and turned his back on her to uncover their cold steaks.
“Fine. We can talk while we eat.” It wasn’t an opportunity she was going to let slip by. Pulling on her robe, she took a seat at the room-service cart. He’d gotten only one cup for coffee. Obviously, she mused, he’d figured it would keep her awake when he wanted her to sleep. She poured some into the brandy snifter and drank it black and cool. “Where do you come from, Skimmerhorn?”
He was already regretting his words and the position they put him in. “Philadelphia,” he said simply, and cut into his steak.
“Moneyed Philadelphia,” she corrected. “I know that.” So, she would prime the pump. “I also know that the money came from both sides, and that your parents’ marriage had the scope of a high-powered merger.” She shook salt onto her steak. “And that they indulged in a number of public spats.”
“They hated each other, for as long as I can remember.” He shrugged, but the movement was stiff. “You got the merger right. Neither of them was willing to let go of any of the joint assets, so they lived together in mutual disgust and animosity for twenty-seven years. And ironically—ormaybe suitably—died together when their driver lost control of the limo and crashed.”
“It was hard for you, losing them both that way.”
“No.” He lifted his eyes, met hers. “It wasn’t. I didn’t feel anything for them when they were alive but a kind of mild contempt. I told you, you wouldn’t understand.”
She waited a moment, eating because the food was there and filled a hole. “You’re wrong. I think I do. You didn’t respect them, and somewhere along the line you’d given up loving them.”
“I never loved them.”
“Of course you did. A child always loves until the love is abused badly enough—and often long after. But if you stopped, it was because you needed to. So when they died, if you felt anything, it would have been guilt because you couldn’t feel more.” She paused again, measuring him. “Close enough?”
It was a bull’s-eye, but he wasn’t ready to say so. “They had two children they didn’t particularly want,” he continued. “Elaine, and then me, because it was important to carry on the name. I was reminded of that over and over while I was growing up.”
You’re a Skimmerhorn. You’re the heir. The least you can do is—not be so stupid. Show some gratitude. Be less of a nuisance.
“My responsibilities,” Jed continued tightly, fighting back the ghosts of resentment. “And their expectations. Your parents wanted you to go into the theater; mine wanted me to make more money from the family fortune.”
“And in our own ways, we let them down.”
“It’s not the same, Dora. Your parents’ ambitions for you came out of pride. Mine came out of greed. There was no affection in my house.”
He hated saying it, hated remembering it, but she’d spun the wheel and he couldn’t stop it until it had completed the circle.
“Your sister—”
“Meant no more to me than I meant to her.” He said it flatly, without passion, because it was pathetically true. “An accident of fate made us both prisoners in the same cell, but inmates don’t always develop a fondness for each other. The four of us spent most of our time avoiding one another.” He smiled a little at that, humorlessly. “Even in a house that size it wasn’t always easy.”
Though she knew he hadn’t intended it, her sympathy was stirred. “Wasn’t there anyone you could talk to?”
“About what?” He gave a short laugh. “It wasn’t any secret that my parents hated each other. The fights they had in public were only the preliminaries. They’d always finish them up at home. If they weren’t at each other’s throats, they were at mine or at Elaine’s. I turned to petty larceny, malicious mischief and short cons. She turned to men. She’d had two abortions before she was twenty. They managed to keep them quiet, just as they managed to keep my trouble with the law quiet. Shipping us off to boarding school didn’t help. I got kicked
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