He took a long time before he responded.
“If you could believe what I just told you in front of Vince, why can’t you believe that there never was an affair, at any time?” The words came out like a low-decibel hiss. “Sheila is an accomplished liar who had an agenda from the moment Dad hired her for that secretarial job years ago.
“It’s taken me a long time to admit that my parents’ marriage was a disaster, a merger of two families with enough money to create a dynasty.
“Dad didn’t love Mother. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been unfaithful to her even before Sheila came along. Mother should have divorced him, but she didn’t have the courage because in spite of everything, she was in love with him.”
“That’s tragic,” she whispered.
Cord’s features hardened. “Dad gave himself away when he slapped me. Obviously he wanted Sheila for himself and was furious she’d shown an interest in me.” They were wading into the very core of her pain. Ashley couldn’t stay seated.
“You admit you were strongly attracted to her, too,” she still felt compelled to remind him.
“Not strongly, Ash. I was a typical teen, with a crush on a blonde bombshell. Like most boys my age, I was going through an experimental stage. Don’t tell me you didn’t do the same, because I wouldn’t believe you. But we’re deviating from the real point. Any interest I had in Sheila died a certain death at her apartment when she assumed I would go to bed with her. That was never my intention.”
Ashley had no comeback for that. “If that’s true,” she continued emotionally, “then why did you quit your job with the forest service and expect us to move back in the house with her after your father died?”
When Cord didn’t say anything for a minute, Ashley had the impression he was about to tell her something else she didn’t know. More secrets. It was a nightmare. All of it.
CHAPTER FOUR
“It was all part of a plan I conceived to get rid of Sheila, but it backfired and lost me my wife!”
Ashley reeled from the despair in his voice, but she couldn’t refrain from asking him, “What plan?”
“The one I put into action after Mother’s attorney, Ray Crawford, came to see me at the hospital the day Dad died. He informed me that half the house was in Mother’s name, therefore half the house was legally mine.”
“What?”
“That’s right. Dad had drawn up his own will giving Sheila the house, but Mother’s will superceded it. Dad didn’t want me to have anything. It was his way of slapping me down again for attracting his girlfriend first, for not graduating from Cornell and spoiling all his plans for me.
“If you recall, when you and I visited Dad in the hospital following the plane crash, I had a word with him alone first.”
She nodded, remembering the uncomfortably long wait in the hospital lounge watching a dry-eyed Sheila pace, neither of them saying anything.
When Cord finally opened the door and beckoned them to come in, she felt his pain, but assumed it was because his father was seconds away from dying.
“I had the foolish hope that because he was so close to death, he and I could come to some kind of understanding about the past. But all he had to say to me was that Sheila would be his voice in the company now. He also intimated that since I had abandoned him to live in the Tetons, he was leaving the house to her.”
“He said that!” she cried out once more. “No words of love or comfort for you?” She couldn’t fathom it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The bleak expression in his eyes haunted her. “I was too angry, Ashley. There’d been so much ugly history from the past, I didn’t know how to deal with it, and I refused to burden you when we were already having problems in our marriage. Another mistake I bitterly regret.”
“But that’s horrible!”
“He was a horrible man. Evidently he didn’t think I would ever find out, but Mother’s attorney knew her wishes and made sure that I knew them. Ray and I talked it over, and I came to the decision to fight her and my father, but I had to be careful how I proceeded.
“My first strategy after the funeral was to tell Sheila that you and I were moving back in the house so she wouldn’t have to be alone in her grief. I knew she intimidated you, but at that point in time I had no way of knowing about all the private conversations you’d had with Sheila or how much damage she’d already done to you.”
Ashley moaned, assailed by her own guilt. “That’s true. I never told you the things she said, b-because I didn’t want to believe them.”
“She was a past master at manipulation, but I decided to take her on. Through Mother, I still had a place on the board if I chose to be active.
“From the time of Mother’s death to this day, the board members have wanted me back in the company. In fact, they kept begging me to give up my ranger job, but I couldn’t do that. I was too happy with my work, with you.”
We were happy, Cord.
“But when Dad died, I knew how they’d feel when they heard that Sheila had taken over his role and had been given his shares of stock. That’s when I decided that I had to give up my park job and come back to the family business.