Samantha thought about the possibility of seeing her grandmother again. Her grandmother had abandoned her family, had left the people who loved her for another man, and Samantha wasn’t sure she could forgive the woman. On the other hand, she thought of t
his man Barrett, a man she didn’t know but who may actually be her grandfather.
“I might like to see him,” she said, then added quickly, “but not her.”
Mike’s shock showed. “You can forgive a man for being a gangster, but you can’t forgive a woman for adultery? Murder seems worse than sleeping with someone besides your spouse?”
She ignored his comment. “What is it you want me to do?”
“Nothing much. I’ll write a letter to Barrett telling him that Maxie’s granddaughter wants to meet him. It’s my guess he’ll answer right away, then we go to meet him. Simple.”
“What if he wants to see me alone?”
“I thought of that, actually, so I need a good, solid reason to be your escort. You wouldn’t like to get married this afternoon, would you?”
“I’d rather be roasted alive,” she answered sincerely.
Mike laughed. “Liked being married, did you?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You know, there’s a reason for all the divorce in this country.”
Dave had told him little about Samantha’s marriage, saying only that he had encouraged her divorce and had helped her obtain it, but even so, Mike was startled by her hostility. Looking down at Samantha’s hand on the table, he knew he shouldn’t touch her because she seemed to have such an aversion to being touched—at least by him, anyway—but he couldn’t seem to help himself.
Picking up her hand, he looked at it, so small in his own, then kissed the palm. “I could show you one heck of a great wedding night.”
Angrily, she jerked her hand out of his grasp.
He sighed. “Is it me you hate or all men?” He was surprised at how much he wanted her to say that she didn’t hate him personally.
But Samantha didn’t answer his question as she looked at her eggs. “Why don’t you tell him the truth?”
It took Mike a moment to remember who they’d been talking about. “You mean tell Barrett that I want to write about him?”
“I can fully understand his aversion to writers.” She said the word writers with disgust in her voice.
“I take it that writing is another mark against me,” he said with a sigh. “Want to tell me why?”
He didn’t even expect her to answer. “All right, keep your secrets. Ever hear of Al Capone? Of course you have. The reason you’ve heard of him is not because he was the biggest gangster or even the most violent. You’ve heard of him because Capone loved publicity. He used to take corps of pressmen along with him when he went fishing. The man thought everything he did was worth recording. Actually, in his day in New York, Barrett was bigger than Capone, but Barrett hated publicity of any kind. Wouldn’t even allow a photo to be taken of him, and never gave an interview.”
“So now you think that if you wrote and told him the truth, saying that one maybe-granddaughter and one nosy writer wanted to meet him, he’d say no?”
“I’m sure of it. That’s why I have to be something close and personal to you. Sure a husband is out? Okay, then how about a fiancé?”
“How about my half brother?”
“If Barrett has seen Maxie, he’d know that was a lie.”
She tried to think of something else for him to pretend to be, for she didn’t want the implied intimacy between them even for one afternoon.
He knew what she was thinking as clearly as though he could read her mind. “What is it you have against me anyway?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you really want to marry me? Settle down, have a couple of kids?”
“I hadn’t planned on getting married this week,” he answered.
“Then you’re not in love with me? Deeply, really in love?”
“We haven’t had a conversation yet that wasn’t full of hostility.”