But John wasn't intimidated by his father's flashing eyes. "It's been a long time since I was a boy. If I were to get full control of this company tomorrow, I could turn it into something big within a year."

"You'd ruin it."

"I'd build it. It's static now, standing still, just like everything and everyone in this G.o.dforsaken town." He couldn't resist elaborating on that, because he knew it would irk Eugene. "No one does anything here. Small brains, small thoughts. If not for St. George Mining, these people would be living like they did thirty years ago. They don't know what ambition is. Well, I do. I'd make something of the company that no one else around here could dream of."

Sniffing in a breath, Eugene drew himself up straight. "You may just live to eat those words, boy. Mind you, when it happens I won't be around to gloat, but you can bet your boots I'll be up there, leaning against those pearly gates, watching to see which one of you does what."

John felt his stomach tighten. "Which one of us?" He had a.s.sumed Eugene would leave something to the others, but he was thinking in terms of money or a trust. "You're going to let Pam have a say in running the company? Or Patricia? Neither of them knows anything about this business."

"Cutter does."

John didn't breathe for a minute. He was sure he'd heard wrong. "Cutter?" When Eugene nodded, he said, "Cutter Reid?"

"Ain't no other Cutter around."

John was incredulous. "Cutter Reid has nothing to do with this."

"Someday he will. I'm leaving him Little Lincoln."

"You're . . .?leaving him . . . Little Lincoln." It was a statement, disbelieving, but a statement nonetheless.

"That's right."

"Cutter Reid?"

"That's right."

Talk of Little Lincoln, the mountain that John had been lobbying to open for years, was bad. Talk of Cutter Reid, who was a constant thorn in John's side, was even worse. But it was the smugness in Eugene's voice that broke John's composure.

"Have you gone mad?" he roared in an uncanny and unwitting imitation of his father. "You can't do that! Little Lincoln may contain some of the richest pockets of tourmaline we've found yet. You can't leave that mountain to Cutter Reid! He's not in the family-he's not your flesh and blood-and he doesn't know a thing about management. Cutter Reid? You're out of your mind!"

"I don't think so. Neither did Joe Grogan."

"Then that old lawyer is as crazy as you!" He turned away, sure that what he was hearing was a joke, but in the next breath he turned back, less sure. "You're kidding, aren't you?"

Eugene shook his head.

"Cutter Reid is a no-good troublemaker!"

"He's a good worker."

"He's lazy! If he had his way, he'd have the men taking breaks every hour!"

"The others respect him. He's a leader."

"He's an instigator."

"He believes in human dignity."

"Is that why he lives in that filthy shack in the woods? Is that why he bombs around town on that motorcycle, making enough noise to wake the dead? Is that why for years he stole whatever money he could find?" When Eugene was unmoved, he threw in his ace. "Is that why he hangs around Pamela? I just came from town, and there he was, snuggling up to her outside Leroy's store. I'm telling you, he's sick. She's just a girl, not thirteen to his twenty. It's obscene!"

Eugene was perfectly calm. "I trust him."

"To fool around with your daughter?"

Eugene snorted. "He's not doing that. He likes Pam. Everyone likes Pam. She's friendly and agreeable. She's also one of the few people who knows Cutter for who he is, rather than where he came from. He'll go places one day, John, and I intend to give him a boost."

"But why?" John cried. "Why Cutter Reid? You've always had a thing for him, right from the day you hired him. Is he your little project? Your cause? Is that what this is all about? You took a kid who was headed for jail, put him to work and turned him around, so you have a personal investment in him now? Is it an ego thing for you? But you won't be around when he inherits Little Lincoln. Why in the h.e.l.l would you waste a prime piece of mining property like that?"

"It won't be a waste."

"He won't know what to do with it."

"He'll know," Eugene said, and gave John a curious look. "But what I don't understand is why it's botherin' you so much, the thought that I'm giving him some land. You're goin' to have the business, and the good Lord knows how much other property the business owns. We've got mountains all over the county. Little Lincoln isn't much more than a hill, when you come right down to it."

"But it's rich."

"And it'll be years before he can get at it, for pity's sake. We have a contract with families who live there sayin' that no mining will be done till they leave. That may not be for another twenty or thirty years."

John had spent his share of time in the past thinking of ways to circ.u.mvent that contract. "I'd offer them money to move them sooner. Cutter wouldn't do that. He wouldn't have the money to do it."

"Which is probably why I'm willing that land to him," Eugene said. "I've already offered those folks money, and they don't want it. They want to stay where they are. You'd pressure them, but I won't have it." He shook his head conclusively. "No, Cutter was born and raised here. He feels for the people more than you ever could."

"'Feeling for the people' isn't what keeps a business running."

"It's what's kept it running so far."

"And not terribly efficiently, if you ask me."

Eugene drew himself up to his full height, which, to John's frustration, hadn't shrunk at all with age. "I ain't askin' you." He started for the door.

But John wasn't through talking. He had to get Eugene to change his mind-and his will. "All right." He followed his father into the hall. "You have a personal interest in Cutter. If you want to help him, leave him some money. The guy lives like a pauper."

Eugene paused at the top of the stairs. "If he lives that way, it's because he banks most all of his paycheck, just as I taught him to. He's got money. He wants to spend it, he can."

"Okay." John could deal with that argument, too. "So he's being prudent, just like you taught him. Leave him a little more money, and he won't feel that he has to be so prudent."

Halfway down the stairs, Eugene said, "He's happy with his life. He wants to splurge, he can."

John grasped the railing with both hands. "But he's going to need more money anyway. Pretty soon he'll meet someone and want to get married, then he'll have kids coming right and left. He'll need funds, but it'll be years before he sees a dime from Little Lincoln, and then only if he puts money into it."

Eugene's smile, as he looked up from the bottom of the stairs, was a knife twisting in John's gut. "You've got his life planned out for him, eh, John? You've always been orderly, ever since you were a boy lining your toys up in your room. But Cutter's life ain't your toys. You ain't got much of a say in it."

He took a breath and went on. "To be perfectly honest, I don't know what Cutter's got planned. Don't think he does. Don't think he wants to plan much ahead right now. And that's why Little Lincoln is the perfect thing for him. By the time it's ready to be mined, he'll know what he wants." He arched a brow and said pleasantly, "Tell you what. You keep your money in the bank, and by that time you might have enough to buy him out. Course, Little Lincoln won't come cheap. And by that time, at the rate you're goin', Cutter will hate your guts enough to take you for a real ride." He walked to the front door and left.

Pride was only one of the feelings that prevented John from going after him. The other was a raw anger that kept him immobilized, standing where he was gripping the second-floor railing, for a time. It was only when his fingers began to ache that he realized what he was doing. Returning to his room, he finished packing with a vengeance.

"Pam!" he bellowed, trotting down the stairs with his bag. "Get down here, Pam!" Had he not been her only source of transportation home, he'd have left without her. Having to suffer her company was bad enough under normal circ.u.mstances. Given his present mood, it was going to be unbearable. "We're leaving, Pam," he shouted. "Get her out here, Marcy! I'm getting the car!" He stormed out of the house.

It was another fifteen minutes before they got on the road. The sudden departure plans had caught Marcy baking a chocolate cake. She had to clean up the kitchen before she could pack, then had to dash to take food to her mother, who was laid up with a broken rib.

"Did he hit her again?" John asked in disgust when, breathless, she finally climbed into the backseat of the car.

"She's okay," Marcy said and tucked herself into a corner.

Pam turned around in the front seat. "Is someone with her?"

"Lizzie."

"Where's Jarvis?"

"He ran off. He'll be back in a week or two. Always is."

"It's her own d.a.m.n fault," John snapped. "He was beating her before they got married, still she went ahead with it. It was a stupid thing to do."

Pam turned on him. "She had her reasons for marrying him."

"Sure. She wanted someone to warm her bed, so she picked the first man who came along."

"Maybe she was lonely. Maybe she was scared. Marcy was just a baby. Honestly, John, can't you imagine what she was feeling?"

"Frankly, no. It was a stupid thing to do. So now she's living with the decision."

"She doesn't deserve what he does to her."

"Then she should kick him out."

"She does, and he keeps coming back."

"Then she should go to court."

"She doesn't have the money to do that."

"So she sits there and takes it. She's as stupid now as she was back then. Some people just don't learn."

Pam made a face. "You're a pill, John."

"The feeling's mutual," John said and stepped on the gas.

He made record time back to Boston. While the speed took the edge off the worst of his anger, enough remained to keep him geared up. He kept thinking of Cutter, then of Eugene. Then he thought about Patricia, and kept thinking about her, so that by the time he parked the car in the courtyard of the townhouse on Beacon Hill, he was s.e.xually excited.

Pam and Marcy took off as quickly as they could, which was just fine with John. Dropping his bag by the back door, he took the stairs two at a time. Patricia was in the parlor, sitting at the roll-top desk, writing out invitations for a party she planned to give. Having already paused to greet Pam, she raised her eyes when John appeared at the door.

Tossing his head toward the upper floor, he turned and took those stairs two at a time also. He went straight to Patricia's bedroom-Patricia and Eugene's-and began to strip. By the time Patricia slipped through the door, he was naked and fully aroused. She barely had time for a whimsical smile before he pulled her to him and began to shove her clothes aside.

"John?" she asked.

He knew that she was puzzled; he was usually more urbane in his approach to her. He also knew, as he tugged one piece of clothing after another from her body, that she was a little frightened, and that suited him well. He was the one in charge. Eugene could do whatever the h.e.l.l he wanted with his will; he could be smug and c.o.c.ky, make fun of John, put him down without a care. But the final laugh was on Eugene, because here in his bedroom, on his bed, between his sheets, his wife was putting out for John.

Over the next few months, John sought out Patricia more and more. She became a vindictive compulsion for him, the only source of satisfaction he had in his war with his father. Eugene wouldn't change his will; John argued and argued, tried reason again and again, but the more he went at it, the more it seemed Eugene dug in his heels. Likewise, Eugene dug in his heels when it came to the business. He wouldn't hear of branching off into activities other than mining, and when John even mentioned the possibility of taking the company public, Eugene left the room.

So John left, too, and took out his frustration in Eugene's bedroom, on Eugene's wife.

Sometimes she protested. On the day he returned from Maine with Pam and Marcy, when he took her without even a moment of foreplay, she complained that he wasn't considerate.

"I'll stop," he said tightly, holding himself up on his fists while he was buried deep inside her. "I'll stop if you want. I'll get out of this room and never come back. I'll even move out of the house and take a place of my own. That's long overdue."

But she quickly relented, as he'd known she would. Just as she'd become an obsession for him, he was her addiction. With Eugene rarely there, John gave her peace of mind. She depended on him. He was her ally, the one who was going to convince Eugene to take the steps necessary to provide her with the security she needed.

John didn't always agree with her on what those steps should be. She remained fixated on real estate. She saw men in Boston making millions buying property and then renovating or tearing down and building from scratch. Restoration of the waterfront was just beginning. She was sure that St. George Mining could thrive in property development.

John had other ideas. Those men making millions in real estate were, in his opinion, relative upstarts. Some were from out of town. Others were local lawyers and politicians who had spotted a good thing and were capitalizing on it. None had real cla.s.s, and he had no intention of aligning himself with people like that.

What he had in mind was something more sophisticated. He spent enough of his time with the upper crust to know the kinds of things that impressed them. Old wealth impressed them, but he didn't have that. Excessive wealth impressed them, but he didn't have that either. What he had was access to some of the finest tourmaline in the world, and while it wasn't worshipped as diamonds, rubies, and sapphires were, he had become deeply enough involved in the gem trade to know that jewelers were beginning to branch out. Tourmaline was a rising commodity. He could deal with it and other gemstones as well.

He wanted to build something exclusive and elegant, an establishment that would be to jewelry what Dior was to clothing, Gucci to leather, Chanel to perfume. Patricia thought he was dreaming far too narrow a dream, but he knew that given the choice between one of their plans or nothing, she would opt for his against Eugene's insistence on the status quo.

In the meantime, she grew more and more dependent on him, and he encouraged it. When they were in bed, she clung. He wouldn't have stood it from another woman. G.o.d only knew Hillary didn't.

In the end, Patricia's dependence brought things to a head in a way he would never have dreamed. She wanted him, and with his anger toward Eugene at a high during those few months following the altercation over Cutter, he wanted her right back. So they were careless. Rather than waiting until Eugene was out of town, John came home from work early one day, pointed Patricia toward the bedroom, and made love to her long and hard.

Eugene found them there. Whether it was coincidence or whether he'd begun to suspect something, John never knew. Apparently, he had finished a meeting, learned that John had left for the day, and followed him home.

The look on his face when he opened the door and discovered what was taking place wasn't quite what John would have expected. There was neither humiliation nor defeat. He stared at the two in the bed, John lounging with measured nonchalance while Patricia jumped up and frantically began adjusting the clothes she'd never completely removed, and his features twisted into open disgust. "How long has this been going on?"

"It's not what you think," Patricia cried as she pushed her skirt down from her waist and turned her back to return her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to her bra. "It's not at all what you think."

But he was looking at John. "How long?"

John shrugged. His heart was pounding far louder than it had earlier, at the moment of climax. "A while."

"You sc.u.m."

Fumbling now with the b.u.t.tons of her blouse, Patricia tried again. "Gene, I can explain. I know this must look fishy-"

"If I'm sc.u.m," John said, "what does that make you?"

"Nothing. No relation. I've had it. You're out."

"Don't say that, Gene! John is crucial to the company. He wasn't feeling well, that's all, and-"

"I don't want to hear it," Eugene said.

He didn't look at her once, but kept his eyes on John, who was beginning to worry. In all those times that he'd imagined the pleasure of telling his father that he was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his wife, it had never occurred to him that he'd end up on the street. But that was just what Eugene was saying.

"I want you out. Out of this house, out of my life. Today."

"Gene, no-"