COUNTERPOINT
An original romantic serialFrom Alina Adams the author of "When a Man Loves a Woman" (DELL 4/00), "Annie's Wild Ride" (AVON 8/98), "Inside Figure Skating" (METROBOOKS 11/00 & 9/99), "Thieves at Heart" (AVON 12/95) and "The Fictitious Marquis" (AVON 6/95)
Available weekly by e-mail from http://www.AlinaAdams.com
Brought to you by:
http://www.KidSave.org
Dedicated to Helping Children All Over the World
CHAPTER THREE
Victoria figured that sitting stuck in unmoving traffic along the Embarcadero was the perfect place to bang her head against the steering wheel in frustration. The level of her own stupidity that morning, mortified her. All she'd wanted was to talk Robin out of pulling the plug on Gabriel's clinic. What she'd managed, was to make a complete fool of herself for no good reason. She couldn't understand Robin's vendetta against Gabriel's clinic. It wouldn't be because the project had been initiated by Douglas. Relations between father and son may have been chilly, but Robin tended to go along with Douglas' recommendations. In Victoria's experience, the younger Mr. Cooper's interest in the Elizabeth Fund stayed limited to making an appearance at the annual Fund Raising Gala, such as the one scheduled for that night. He never got involved with the day to day operations. Until Gabriel.
Maybe, Victoria considered the possibility, it wasn't Gabriel that Robin had a problem with, but Victoria. Until she'd arrived, the fund had stayed under the auspices of Douglas and Robin Cooper. It was all in the family, no outsiders. Victoria wondered if Robin resented her coming in and taking over -- and if he was taking that resentment out on what he perceived to be Victoria's pet project.
By seven o'clock that evening, one hour before their Gala was officially scheduled to start, Victoria had managed to work herself into a panic. Not that she allowed that panic to affect her work. She went about her business -- double-checking the hall's caterers, waiters, decorators, security -- appearing the picture of calm and professionalism, while, inside, her heart beat so fast, she feared a repeat onset of her childhood bout with rheumatic fever.
This fund-raiser was the most involved project she'd tackled for Cooper Shipping to date, and she was anxious to succeed. Not only because her job was at stake, but, because, for as long as she could remember, Victoria had believed that responsibility for other people's happiness rested exclusively on her shoulders. She could not stand to see anyone unhappy. Because, for some reason, she was convinced it was all her fault. Gabriel teased Victoria, claiming she went into not-for-profit work to fix the world. She might have argued with him. If she hadn't secretly believed it.
To that end, Victoria poured her heart into every project she undertook, be it subsidizing a unique art program at an inner-city school, or planning an extravagantly budgeted banquet. She'd even gone the extra-mile for the Elizabeth Fund, and secured permission for them to provide roulette wheels, along with blackjack, craps, and pool tables for gambling purposes, as long as, at the end of the night, all winning were turned over to charity.
Before the Gala began, Victoria walked Douglas Cooper through the facility. Naturally, he, along with the ever-traveling Robin, had seen and signed off on all the blueprints and preproduction. But looking at a designer's plans on paper wasn't the same as being confronted with three-dimensional reality.
"Is everything all right?" Victoria asked nervously. She held her breath, waiting to be berated over some small detail that had skipped her scrutiny. She couldn't help it. Despite knowing that she was quite competent at her job, Victoria still could not shake the conviction that she deserved to be blamed... for something.
Hands behind his back, Douglas Cooper surveyed her efforts. A man in his sixties, with green eyes, silver hair combed neatly back off his forehead, and a powerful, broad chest testifying to six mornings a week spent lifting weights at the gym, Douglas had a reputation for thinking through every word before he allowed it access to the public. In the six months Victoria had worked for Cooper Shipping, she never heard him raise his voice.
"Everything is fine, Miss Morgan. Excellent, as a matter of fact." He dispensed the compliment perfunctorily, his mind clearly brimming with another matter. Douglas hesitated, turning to face Victoria. Despite being widowed for fourteen years, he still wore a wedding band on his left hand, and it was that wedding band that Douglas now twisted round and round against his finger, exhibiting possibly his only nervous habit. "Miss Morgan, I've been meaning to talk to you about my son's actions regarding Dr. Scott's clinic. I would intervene if I could, but, when it comes to the Elizabeth Fund, my hands are tied. The final word is, ultimately, Robin's."
"Yes, I know." Victoria had only spent the past twenty-four hours religiously rereading the conditions of the Elizabeth Fund, looking for any loophole to use to her advantage. "I had hoped to convince Mr. Cooper to change his mind when I went to see -- "
"You went to see Robin?" The alarm in Douglas Cooper's voice surprised Victoria, and added to her growing sense of unease.
"I -- yes. This morning."
"How did he, uhm,... behave?"
"Well," Victoria couldn't help herself. "I did receive a very interesting lesson in Greek mythology."
Douglas' lips squashed into a rigid line of displeasure. He took a deep breath. "I apologize, Miss Morgan. For whatever Robin did or said to you, I apologize."
For reasons she couldn't pinpoint, Victoria felt strangely put off by his apology. Maybe it was because she expected a father to, at least publicly, always stand up for his son no matter what the circumstances. And here Douglas was, not only declining to defend his child, but leaping on the assumption that Robin had done something wrong. His act made Victoria feel for Robin, and wonder if the man in front of her wasn't partly responsible for the younger Mr. Cooper's relating so strongly to Hades, the bringer of chaos.
Granted the question was none of her business, and, for the remainder of the evening, Victoria did her best to put it out of her mind, while, at the same time, keeping a watchful eye out for the self-proclaimed chaos-bringer to appear. She suspected he'd be making his grand entrance fashionably late, and so busied herself with other, administrative tasks. Which was how she preferred it. Shy by nature, the only way Victoria could ever feel even vaguely comfortable at so grand an event was if she knew she was mingling for someone else. And this evening, fortunately, she had a whopper of a cause to inspire her. If Robin Cooper was determined to cut Elizabeth Fund's grants to Gabriel's clinic, then Victoria would damn well go out there and find him another foundation.
To that end though, she needed her brother's cooperation. It had been hard enough convincing him to abandon the clinic for a few hours and come to the Gala. Actually getting him to talk to people would probably take another tussle. Victoria found Gabriel leaning against a marble pillar, scandalously sipping a beer straight from the bottle, and observing the show with equal parts amusement and condescension. Standing nearly six feet tall, with thick, curly blond hair, eyes so deep blue they were practically purple, and a twice-broken nose -- once from a high-school fight that got him six months in Juvenile Hall, the second thanks to his hobby, boxing -- Gabriel was made even more attractive by the fact that he genuinely had no idea of the effect his looks had on women.
"You're not mingling," Victoria chastised.
"What you mean is, I'm not groveling."
"We need to get your funding back."
"Actually, Vicky," Gabriel said, "I have a plan. In a couple of minutes, I intend to abandon this overstuffed-turkey of a room, yank this medieval strangulation device off my neck -- "
"It's called a bow-tie, Gabriel."
"Drive back to my clinic, and carry on dispensing antibiotics, casts, birth-control pills, and stitches. When the bills come, let Robin Cooper's creditors go door to door and rip them out of folks' heads." His anger simmered on a slow-boil, ready to erupt with the slightest provocation. It pretty much convinced Victoria that now was not the time to parade him in front of potential benefactors.
"Look at that son-of-a-bitch." Gabriel jerked his chin toward a distant corner, and shook his head, almost biting the neck of his beer-bottle. "I'm willing to put money down, here and now, that he never experienced an instant of hardship in his life. What does he know about people in trouble, people with nowhere else to turn?"
Victoria followed Gabriel's gaze, although it hardly required a clairvoyant to surmise the object of his venom. She scanned the Gala's revelers, nervously searching for Robin. Unfortunately, all the men gathered about the green billiard table furthest from them, looked more or less the same. Each tailored his suits on 95 Mount Street in Mayfair, ordered his shirts from Charvet in Paris, and purchased their cashmere socks from a genuine Mongolian.
And yet, despite the widespread similarity, Robin Cooper still proved impossible to overlook. He stood at the head of the table, dressed in a white dinner jacker over black tuxedo-tie, surrounded on one side by a woman in a scarlet dress with strands of maroon pearls for sleeves, and on the other by her twin, wearing a violet suede miniskirt so short, it might have been a belt in a previous life. He balanced an ivory pool que between both hands, caressing it playfully as he surveyed the table. Victoria moved towards him, as, all rationality aside, watching him handle his que, stroking it up one side and down the other then clearing off the surplus chalk-dust by blowing silkily along the tip, made her wish that she could take its place for the next shot.
"How about it then, Robin?" Yet another millionaire prompted, "What are you waiting for?"
"Don't rush him." Ms. Suede Miniskirt rested her protective hand along the shoulder of Robin's white dinner jacket, and rubbed against his arm, comforting a man who didn't appear particularly in need of comfort. "He's thinking."
Robin winked at his unsolicited protector while unobtrusively sliding her hand off his arm. Indicating the unbroken triangle of six balls at the far end of the table, he offered, "One shot. Ball in each pocket."
Glancing across the green felt in his search for takers, Robin spied Victoria watching. He raised an eyebrow. Unsure of how to respond, she simply looked away. But not before she'd acknowledged another of his patented, sardonic smiles.
"Gentlemen," Robin reached into his pocket and withdrew ten of Elizabeth Fund's specially made, $1,000 dollar chips, neatly laying each one out on the paneling in front of him. "Place your bets."
Victoria did not want to think about the many uses Gabriel's clinic could conceive of for the amount Robin was now proposing to gamble with. So she just watched silently as the men congregated around the pool-table casually reached into their pockets and came up with the chips to match his offering.
Robin swept the entire pile aside as if its total worth was, in fact, that of a handful of plastic, and lined up his shot. In spite of herself, Victoria felt her heart hammering along her ribcage as she waited for the moment of impact. Robin drew back his elbow, then let it go with a crack, the tip of his que smacking the white ball and sending it reeling towards six others.
He immediately filled the side and the upper pockets, but the red #2 and the blue-striped #11 took their sweet time, bouncing off four walls, then off each other, before drunkenly moseying inside their specified pouches.
Robin swept up his winnings with one hand, then, carelessly, tossed them in Victoria's direction. "Here you go, Miss Morgan. Don't spend it all in one place. After all, it's the last Cooper money your brother will ever see."
She'd tried to be good, tried to give Robin the benefit of the doubt, tried to convince herself that her suspicions about him were unfounded. But, this was no murky suspicion. Robin was out to get Gabriel. Or Victoria. Or both of them. Either way, she refused to stand for it. It didn't matter that they were surrounded by men and women who'd paid a substantial sum of money to attend the fund-raiser. It didn't matter that she was thisclose to making a scene, or that her employer, Douglas Cooper, was standing barely five feet away, a witness to her unprofessional outburst.
Robin had gone too far.
Now he would find out what happened when you attacked somebody Victoria Morgan loved.