She had rebuilt her life and her reputation against the odds. Templeton Estates was a huge success. But inside, the longing for Kruger-Brent corroded Lexi’s life like acid leaking from a battery. It turned every triumph to ashes.
Seeing she was upset, Robbie changed the subject.
“You’re in Cape Town a lot these days. Have you come across a guy called Gabriel McGregor?”
Now he had her attention.
“I have. I’ve never met him. He co-owns a company called Phoenix. They’re competitors of ours.”
“Any good?”
“Very good, unfortunately,” Lexi admitted. “He’s a shrewd businessman.”
“But?”
She paused. “I don’t know. Like I say, we’ve never met. But there’s something about him I don’t entirely trust. You know he claims to be related to us? Says he’s a descendant of Jamie McGregor.”
“Isn’t he?”
“I have no idea. I suppose he could be. How do you know him?”
Walking over to his desk, Robbie pulled out a handwritten letter. He passed it to Lexi.
“He and his wife are heavily involved in AIDS relief over there. He wrote asking me if Paolo and I would be interested in working with his charity. I’m flying out to meet with him next week.”
Lexi read the letter, twice. It seemed genuine. But she couldn’t quite shake the feeling of foreboding. Who was Gabe McGregor, really? A lot of people wanted to claim a connection to her family. This man was too rich in his own right to be a fortune hunter. But even so…
She found herself saying: “I’m going out there on business next week, as it happens. I can go and meet him with you if you like?”
Robbie’s face lit up. He’d been trying for years to get Lexi interested in his charity work.
“That’d be great! I can book us on the same flight. It’ll be just like old times. Hey, you remember going to Africa with Dad when we were kids? Those boring old Kruger-Brent tours? Man, Dad never shut up: ‘Jamie McGregor had a diamond mine here, Kate Blackwell went to school here,’ blah blah blah blah blah.” He laughed.
“Of course I remember.”
Those tours with her father felt like yesterday.
Lexi had loved every second of them.
“Jamie! Take Thomas the Tank Engine out of your sister’s cereal right now or you’re going on the naughty step.”
Gabe McGregor fixed his four-year-old son with what he hoped was a stern stare.
Jamie said seriously: “I’m sorry, Daddy. I certainly can’t do that. Thomas has crashed and bust his buffers. Now he must wait for the breakdown train to rescue him.”
“Cheer-ohs! Cheeeeer oooooohs!” Collette, Jamie’s two-year-old sister, burst into ear-splitting wails. “Don’t wanna train! My Cheer-ohs!”
“Stop crying, Collette,” said Jamie angrily. “You’re giving Thomas a head-gate.”
“Jamie!” Gabe shouted.
Marching silently over to the breakfast table, Tara McGregor removed the offending train from Collette’s cereal bowl, dried it with a paper towel and handed it to her protesting son. “Any more moaning, Jamie and Thomas is in the trash. Finish your toast and you can have a chocolate milk.”
To Gabe’s astonishment, Jamie promptly forgot about his train and focused on stuffing peanut-butter toast into his mouth. Pretty soon his cheeks bulged like a hamster’s. “Finished.”
“Are you sure he won’t choke?” Gabe glanced worriedly at Tara. “He looks like a snake trying to swallow a rabbit.”
Tara didn’t look up. “He’ll be fine.”
As usual, Tara McGregor’s morning routine was a ridiculous juggling act: cooking breakfast, feeding and dressing the kids, refereeing World War III and helping Gabe remember where he’d put his socks/laptop/ phone/sanity.
Gabe watched his wife frying bacon for his sandwich with one hand while checking e-mails on her BlackBerry with the other. With her glossy red hair, slender waist and long, gazellelike legs, there was an old-fashioned sexiness about Tara that motherhood seemed only to have enhanced. From behind, she looked like Cyd Charisse. From the front, the impression was more innocent and wholesome. Rosie the Riveter meets Irish farmer’s daughter. Pale skin. Freckles. Large, womanly breasts. A smile so broad it had knocked Gabe off his feet the first time he saw it, and still made him want to take her upstairs and ravish her now, six years later.
By nine o’clock this morning, Tara would be at the clinic, up to her elbows in dying babies.
She’s an angel. One in a million. How the hell did a girl that smart and beautiful ever fall for a guy like me?
Tara Dineen loathed Gabe McGregor on sight.
“That guy? You mean the cheese ball?”
Tara and her girlfriend, Angela, were in a trendy new bar at the Waterfront. Angela had singled out Gabe as a “hot guy.” Tara begged to differ.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Angela. “He’s got Tom Brady’s body and Daniel Craig’s face. He’s edible.”
“And he knows it,” said Tara archly. “Look at him, flashing his cash in front of all those toothpicks.”
As usual, Gabe was surrounded by a gaggle of models, whom he was ostentatiously plying with Cristal.
“Let’s go over there,” said Angela.
“No thanks. You’re on your own.”
Angela made a beeline for Gabe. They chatted for a while, but Gabe’s eye kept wandering back to the redhead giving him death stares from across the bar.
“Doesn’t your friend want to join us?”