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One of the gentlemen at her side moved quickly to help her get up.

"Thank you, Thomas." She glared at me. "Go to my office," she commanded. I glared back and then headed that way while she continued to make excuses for my behavior.

When I entered her office, I looked up at the portrait of my grandfather. He had such a warm, gentle smile. I wondered what it would have been like to know him. How had he put up with Grandmother Cutler?

The door burst open behind me as my grandmother came in like a storm. Her shoes snapped against the wooden floor as she pounded past me and then whipped herself around, her eyes burning in rage, her lips pencil-line thin.

"How dare you? How dare you behave in that manner while I was speaking with my guests? Not even my poorest workers, people who come from the most depressing and lowly backgrounds, act like that. Is there not even a shred of decency in your insolent body?" she ranted. It was as if I had stepped before a coal stove just when the door was open and confronted the raging fire and all its uncovered red heat. I closed my eyes and retreated a few steps, but then I opened them and spit my words back at her.

"You can't speak to me of decency anymore. You're a hypocrite!"

"How dare you? I'll have you shut up in your room; I'll—"

"You won't do anything, Grandmother, but tell the truth . . . finally," I ordered firmly. Her eyes widened in confusion. With a bit of glee I announced my surprise. "I went to see Mrs. Dalton this morning. She's very sick and was happy to finally lift the burden of guilt from her conscience. She told me what really happened after I was born and before."

"This is ridiculous. I won't stand here and—"

"Then I went to see my mother," I added, "and she confessed as well."

Grandmother stared at me a moment, her rage lowering slowly like the flame on a stove, and then she turned and went to her desk.

"Sit down," she ordered and took her own seat. I moved to the chair in front of her desk. For a long moment she and I simply stared at each other.

"What is it you have learned?" she asked in a far calmer tone of voice.

"What do you think? The truth. I found out about my mother's lover and how you forced her to eventually give me up. How you arranged for Ormand and Sally Jean Longchamp to take me and then pretended they had abducted me. How you paid people and got people to go along with your scheme. How you offered a reward just to cover up your actions," I said, all in one breath.

"Who is going to believe such a story?" she replied with such cold control it sent a chill of fear down my spine. She shook her head. "I know how sick Mrs. Dalton is. Did you know that her son-in-law works for the Cutler's Cove Sanitation Company and that I own the Cutler's Cover Sanitation Company? I could have him fired tomorrow just like that," she said, snapping her fingers.

"And if you and I go upstairs together, right now, and confront Laura Sue with this story, she will simply break down and cry and babble so incoherently no one would understand a word. Most likely with me standing beside you, she would not be able to remember anything she had told you." She gave me a look of triumph.

"But it's all true, isn't it?" I cried. I was losing that firmness, that confidence that had put a steel rod in my spine. She was so strong and so sure of herself, she could stand her ground and turn back a herd of wild horses, I thought.

She turned away from me and was quiet for a long moment. Then she looked back.

"You seem to be someone who thrives on controversy . . . harboring that boy here while the police were after him." She shook her head. "All right, I'll tell you. Yes, it's true. My son is not your real father. I begged Randolph not to marry that little tramp. I knew what she was and what she would become, but like all men, he was hypnotized by surface beauty and by her sweet-sounding, syrupy voice. Even my husband was charmed. I watched how she turned her shoulders and dazzled them with her silly little laugh and desperate helplessness," she said, twisting the side of her mouth up in disgust. "Men just love helpless women, only she wasn't as helpless as she pretended to be," she added with a cold smile on her lips. "Especially when it came to satisfying her desires.

"She always knew what she wanted. I didn't want that kind of a woman as part of my family, part of this . . . this hotel," she said, holding her arms out. "But arguing with men who are under a woman's spell is like trying to hold back a waterfall. If you remain under it too long, it will drown you.

"So I retreated, warned them, and then retreated." She nodded, the cold smile returning. "Oh, she pretended to want to be responsib

le and respectable, but whenever I gave her anything substantial to do, she would complain about the work and the effort, and Randolph would plead for her to be relieved of this or that.

" 'We have enough ornaments to hang on our walls and ceilings,' I told him. 'We don't need another.' But I might as well have directed all my words to the walls in this office.

"It wasn't long that she began to show her true nature—flirting with everything that wore pants. There was no stopping her! It was disgusting! I tried to tell my son, but he was as blind to that as to anything else. When a man is as dazzled by a woman as he was, it's the same as if he had looked directly at the sun. After that, he sees nothing.

"So I gave up and sure enough, as you have undoubtedly learned, she had an affair and got herself into trouble. I could have thrown the little tramp out then. I should have," she added bitterly, "but. . . I wanted to protect Randolph and the family and the hotel's reputation.

"What I did I did for the good of everyone and for the hotel and family, for they are one in the same."

"But Daddy . . . Ormand Longchamp . . ."

"He agreed to the arrangements," she said. "He knew what he was doing."

"But you told him everyone wanted it that way, didn't you? He thought he was doing what my mother and Randolph wanted, right? Isn't that true?" I pursued when she didn't respond.

"Randolph doesn't know what he wants; he never did. I always made the right decisions for him. Marrying her," she said, leaning over the desk, "is the only time he has ever gone against my wishes, and look how it turned out."