Night Whispers (Second Opportunities 3)

"She'll just have to bear up under the strain," Noah said with thinly veiled sarcasm.

"I think a party for Sloan is a terrific idea," Paris said, flinching a little under her father's icy stare but refusing to lower her gaze.

"Paris," he warned in a withering voice, "your attitude is beginning to annoy—"

"You are always annoyed when you're wrong, Carter," Edith said. "I happen to agree with Noah and Paris. We must give a party to introduce Sloan to everyone, and the sooner the better."

"Fine," he said, throwing up his hands; then he retaliated against Paris by coolly pointing out to her the negative results of her unprecedented opposition to him. "You said you wanted to spend as much time as possible with Sloan while she's here. Instead of that, you're going to have to spend it organizing a party which she isn't going to enjoy, and getting out invitations to people who will come to gape at her but who won't accept her."

"They'll accept her," Noah said icily, "if you act as if you expect them to. If you're afraid you don't have enough influence to ensure that, then I'll be happy to lend my influence at the party, since we know all the same people." Having thrown down the gauntlet, Noah softened his voice and looked at Paris. "You won't need to give up any of your time with Sloan, Paris. I'll have Mrs. Snowden arrange the party and handle all the details.

"Paris, I assume you have a party guest list of some sort that you can give me?" She nodded, and he said, "Fine, then all you have to do is tell your staff to get the house ready today, and I'll have Mrs. Snowden do everything else."

"I shall handle the staff," Edith announced. "Sloan and Paris can spend the day getting their hair done, and whatever else it is young women do that takes all day when there's a special party to attend."

Sloan walked in just as Edith spoke, and she looked in confusion from Paris's smile to Carter's glower. "Are we going to a party?" she asked when everyone stopped talking and looked at her.

"We're giving a party for you and it's going to be wonderful!" Paris exclaimed. "Noah, thank you so much for volunteering Mrs. Snowden. I'm afraid she'll have to handle invitations by telephone."

"Mrs. Snowden enjoys a challenge."

"I really don't need a party," Sloan ventured cautiously. "I don't want anyone to go to any trouble for me."

Carter looked at the other three. "I told you she'd feel that way," he said triumphantly.

Sloan was about to reinforce Carter's opinion when Noah arrogantly informed her, "This isn't your decision to make. It is appropriate for your family to introduce you to their friends, and a party is the ideal way to do it."

Sloan sensed the hostile undercurrents between the two men and couldn't imagine how a simple party could have caused it. She considered ignoring Noah's order to keep her opinions to herself, but Paris looked so excited that Sloan couldn't bring herself to make another protest, and Edith looked so stubborn that she knew there wasn't any point in making one.

"In that case," she told Noah with an uncertain smile, "I'd like Courtney to be invited." When he nodded, she decided to retreat from the discussion and the room, and she looked at Paris. "I think I'll go upstairs and take a shower."

Paris slid back her chair and stood up. "I keep our guest lists and Christmas card lists and all that on the computer. I'll get a guest list for you right now," she told Noah. To Sloan's surprised pleasure, Paris caught up with her in the doorway, slipped her arm through Sloan's, and said, "This is going to be so much fun! We'll do a little shopping this morning, get our hair done, have a massage. Paul said he had some errands to do…"

Sloan was so distressed by the prospect of being put on display like a curiosity for a bunch of strangers to observe, judge, and conjecture about that she let Paris lead her past the staircase and around it to a closed door on the right, behind the living room. When Paris dropped her arm to open the door, Sloan remembered her shower and stepped back; then she realized what she was looking at and changed her mind. The open door revealed a large, luxuriously paneled room that could only be Carter's office. It was from here that Gary Dishler emerged from time to time.

A carved mahogany desk was at the opposite side of the room, with a credenza and bookcases built into the wall behind it. Paris walked over to the desk, removed a key from a drawer, and unlocked a pair of doors on the wall behind it. She opened the doors, and Sloan's gaze riveted on the computer monitor that had been concealed behind them. The screen was illuminated, the computer ready for use, a message flashing asking for the user to type in a password.

Paris slipped into a high-backed maroon leather chair at the desk and swiveled around to the computer.

Sloan's heart began to beat with excitement as she stationed herself beside Paris. "I use FRANCE as my password," Paris said innocently.

Sloan watched Paris pull up a file named "Palm Beach Guest List" from a computer folder called "Address Lists," then send the file to a printer. She leaned down and opened another cabinet door to the right of her knee that revealed a high-speed laser printer and the computer's central processing unit.

Sloan glanced at the CPU, but her primary interest was the icons displayed on the monitor that indicated what programs and possibly what kind of information Carter was accessing on the computer. Before she could do more than glance at all that, Paris retrieved a page from the printer and sat back up, blocking Sloan's view of the computer screen. "Do you think Carter would mind if I used his computer later?" Sloan asked as casually as she could. "I'd like to check my E-mail, and I'd like to send a few messages."

"It sounds funny to hear you call him by his name," Paris confided with a smile. "And no, I'm sure he won't mind if you use the computer, unless he's using it himself."

"Does he use it often?" Sloan asked, her excitement building.

"Yes, but not for very long. He can access the computer at the bank in San Francisco and see what's happening. He uses it mostly for that and for other business things."

Sloan knew the bank meant Reynolds Trust in San Francisco. "What sort of other business things is he involved in?"

"I don't know. Father doesn't like to discuss business. He says it's too complicated for Great-grandmother or me to understand." She removed the remaining pages from the printer, closed and relocked the doors, put the key back in the top right-hand drawer of the desk, and took a pencil from a leather holder on the desk.