Hidden Talents

word came that Crystal Brooke had a baby son. Gordon freely admitted to being the father.
    The news that her husband had a child by his mistress proved to be too much for Patricia. Not even the sturdy notions of wifely fortitude and family loyalty that had been handed down to her by several generations of stalwart New England forebears could sustain her. She agreed to a divorce, the first in the history of the Ventress family.
    After a stormy confrontation with Roland, Gordon had gone back to Los Angeles to be with Crystal. He vowed to marry her as soon as his divorce was final, but that weekend he and his mistress had both died in a fiery car crash.
    The only survivor had been their three-month-old son, Caleb.
    Roland Ventress had followed in the proud tradition of the Ventress family. He had done his duty by his unwanted heir. With the glaring exception of Caleb's father, the Ventresses always did their duty.
    Roland went to Los Angeles to bury his only son and claim his grandson. He had grudgingly handled the arrangements for Crystal Brooke's burial also, simply because no one else had stepped forward to do it.
    Roland had brought the infant Caleb home to Ventress Valley and informed his grieving wife, Mary, and the rest of the family, which consisted of his nephew Franklin and his niece Phyllis, that in spite of the scandal, the Ventresses would uphold their responsibilities to the boy. Caleb was, after all, Roland's only hope for the future.
    Caleb had been dutifully raised and dutifully educated. He had been instructed in the duties and responsibilities that were expected of a Ventress.
    And he had never been allowed to forget for one moment that he was the result of the scandalous affair that had brought disaster on the Ventress clan.
    If it hadn't been for Caleb, everyone agreed, the scandal could have been dealt with eventually. Perhaps Crystal Brooke could have been bought off. Perhaps Gordon would have come to his senses and dropped his little bleached-blond mistress.
    It if hadn't been for Caleb, everything would have been all right.
    But Caleb existed.
    The indomitable Roland came to terms with that fact. He had then set out to ensure that the bad blood the boy had inherited from his mother was not allowed to surface.
    As for Caleb, he knew now that he had wasted most of his youth trying to satisfy a grandfather who viewed even the smallest of failures as evidence that Crystal Brooke's genes had not been successfully stamped out.
    Looking back on it, Caleb knew that for the most part, things had been all right during the early years, when his grandmother had still been alive. Stricken as she was by her loss, Mary Ventress had eventually recovered sufficiently from her grief to refocus her natural maternal affections toward her grandson.
    Mary had learned to love Caleb although she had never successfully concealed her hatred of the woman who had borne him. Whenever Caleb thought of his grandmother, he could not help but recall the sadness that had always been there, just beneath the surface. He had always known that somehow he was responsible for that deep anguish in Mary Ventress.
    After her death eight years later, Roland had taken over the task of raising Caleb. Franklin and Phyllis had pitched in to help with the job. Both had been as concerned as Roland that young Caleb not be allowed to repeat his father's mistake.
    Caleb was well aware that he had been paying for the cheap photos of his mother all of his life. He understood the realities of blackmail better than anyone else.
    If there was one thing guaranteed to awaken the beast within him, it was blackmail. If there was one type of woman with whom he had vowed never to get involved, it was the sort who could be blackmailed because of sleazy nude photos, photos such as those that had been taken of his mother.
    The realization that he had been planning to start an affair with Serenity Makepeace made Caleb want to smash the heavy glass top of his desk into a million glittering shards.
    “Who took the pictures?” Caleb forced himself to speak in a remote, neutral tone. It wasn't easy. He wasn't accustomed to dealing with such fierce anger. But he'd had years of practice controlling all his emotions, and he'd gotten very good at that kind of thing.
    He was good at a lot of things, he reflected bitterly.
    Serenity looked momentarily confused by his question. “What do you mean? A photographer took the pictures, of course.”
    “What was the name of