Read Night Whispers for Free Online Page B

and fascination. Even Sara was gaping at her. Ingersoll took the cup of coffee she handed him, but he remained near her desk, obviously intending to eavesdrop.
    Sloan didn't care that he was there; in fact she scarcely noticed. She'd never received so much as a birthday card from her absentee father and whatever his reason for suddenly tracking her down now, it wasn't going to matter. She wanted to convey that to him very firmly and completely and impersonally. She put her coffee cup down on her desk, shoved her hair off her cheek, picked up the receiver, and put it to her ear. Her finger trembled only a little as she pressed down on the flashing white button. "This is Sloan Reynolds."
    She'd never heard his voice before; it was cultured and tinged with amused approval. "You sound very professional, Sloan."
    He had no right to approve of her; he had no right to any opinion whatsoever where she was concerned, and she had to fight down the impulse to tell him that. "This isn't a convenient time for me," she said instead. "You'll have to call back some other time."
    "When?"
    A recent newspaper picture of him flashed through her mind—a handsome, lithe man with steel gray hair who was playing doubles tennis with friends at a Palm Beach country club. "Give it another thirty years, why don't you."
    "I don't blame you for feeling annoyed."
    "Annoyed—You don't blame—!" Sloan sputtered sarcastically. "That is
extremely
nice of you, Mr. Reynolds."
    He interrupted her tirade in a pleasant, but no-nonsense tone. "Let's not argue in our first conversation. You can berate me in person for all my paternal shortcomings, in two weeks."
    Sloan took the phone from her ear momentarily and glared at it in frustrated confusion, then returned it "In two weeks? In person? I'm not interested in anything you have to say!"
    "Yes, you are," he said, and Sloan felt a flash of furious admiration for his sheer gall and the force of his will, which seemed to prevent her from hanging up on him. "Maybe I should have said it in a letter, but I thought a phone call would accomplish things more quickly."
    "Just what is it that you want to accomplish?"
    "I—" he hesitated. "Your sister and I want you to join us at the Beach for a few weeks so we can all get to know each other. I had a heart attack six months ago—"
    The "Beach," Sloan surmised, was clearly the insiders' term for Palm Beach. "I read about your illness in the newspaper," Sloan said, managing to convey studied indifference along with the reminder that all she knew of her own father was what she read. Geographically, Palm Beach was not very tar away, but socially and economically, Palm Beach was in another galaxy. To add to its own prestige, the Bell Harbor newspaper always carried the Sunday social section from its illustrious neighbor to the south, and it was there that Sloan saw frequent pictures and mentions of her socially prominent father and her accomplished sister.
    "I want the three of us to get to know each other before it's too late."
    "I can't believe your nerve!" Sloan exploded, angry and bewildered by the unexpected sting of tears she felt at the emotionally charged phone call. "It is already much too late. I have no desire whatsoever to know you, not now, after all these years."
    "What about your sister?" he countered smoothly. "Don't you have any interest in getting to know her?"
    Sloan's mind promptly conjured up the same photograph at the country club. Her sister, Paris, had been her father's tennis partner. With her dark head thrown back and her right arm extended in perfect form for a perfect tennis serve, Paris hadn't looked as if her life was anything except… perfect. "I have no more interest in getting to know her than she's had in getting to know me," Sloan said, but she felt as though the words had a hollow ring.
    " Paris feels as if she's missed out on a very important part of her life by not having known you."
    According to the frequent mentions of Paris that Sloan