Betrayals by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online

attractiveness; her strong features and height made her seem elegant without being frail. She sat on the boards of numerous nonprofit organizations and was generous with her time, energy and intelligence. People saw her as a well-bred, if formidable, Beacon Hill lady.
    Yet there was another side to Annette Reed: the side that had made her the successful, imposing chairman of Winston & Reed, the woman who had led the company since her husband’s death. It was she who had transformed it into a major player in the volatile and lucrative real estate and construction markets of the northeast United States. However, she seemed ambivalent about her power and her business triumphs. Oddly true to her own background and era, in public she credited her husband for his conception of the company and her son for running it. In private, however, she made sure Quentin knew who was in control. Yet, at the same time, she didn’t hide her frustration with him for acquiescing to her will, seeing it not as respect for her abilities but as a sign of weakness in him. Not that she’d have tolerated anything else. Quentin had come to see that his mother’s need to control stemmed not from strength and intelligence, as he had once believed, but from insecurity and selfishness. As for himself, he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.
    “Quentin—dear, it’s so good to see you.” She pulled off her gardening gloves. “Kim just put out lemonade in the garden. Shall we?”
    As if he had any choice. “Of course, Mother.”
    “I was going to come into the office,” she said, leading him out of the garden house, “but I felt this is a private matter properly discussed at home.”
    Quentin made no comment at her assumption that he, too, would consider the Winston house his home. She gestured to the chair at the white iron table he’d occupied since boyhood, and he sat down obediently, letting her pour two glasses of fresh-squeezed, lightly sweetened lemonade. There was the ubiquitous plate of sugar cookies as well, their sweet smell mixing with the scents of the garden, an unusually large one for Beacon Hill.
    His mother withdrew a folded section of newspaper from the khaki jacket she always wore gardening. “I saw this at the pharmacy earlier this morning and decided I should call you.”
    She shook the paper open as she handed it across to him, her hand steady, and Quentin tried to conceal his reaction when he saw the two photographs occupying most of the front page of the popular national tabloid. He could feel himself going pale, could feel his stomach begin to burn. The picture on the left was a famous shot portraying the final American withdrawal from South Vietnam. It was seared in Quentin’s mind for all time. There, again, was twenty-year-old Rebecca Blackburn carrying an infant and supporting the weight of a seriously wounded Jared Sloan as she got them all into a helicopter, only hours before communist troops entered Saigon. Rebecca’s anguished expression—of shock, horror, betrayal, grief and determination—had captured the mixed feelings of somany as the nation of South Vietnam ceased to exist, and two decades of American hopes and promises ended.
    The photograph on the right was a recent one of Jared Sloan in San Francisco, decking a motorcycle tough who’d insulted his fourteen-year-old Amerasian daughter, looking on from her grandfather’s limousine. Quentin’s gaze lingered on Mai Sloan. He absorbed every detail of her pretty face with its unusual, distinctive features. He could see Tam in her.
    Tam…
    After so many years, Quentin was amazed that he still felt betrayed by her, still felt such unrelenting sorrow over how they’d lost each other. She’d died that last day in Saigon. Her child— Jared’s child— had lived. “It’s painful to look at, I know,” Annette said tartly, snatching the clipping from him. “How Jared could let such a thing happen…” She broke off with an irritated sigh.