Donovan's Child Read Online Free Page B

To your father, who loves your mother even though he betrayed her.”
    Her eyes went to jade, mysterious. Deep. “I’m going nowhere, Donovan.”
    â€œWait. Learn. The evening is young yet. You can still change your mind.”
    â€œIt’s obvious that you don’t know me very well.”

Chapter Three
    D inner, Abilene found, was more of the same.
    A verbal torture chamber. But at least it was brief. She saw to that.
    Ben joined them in the dining room, which was the next room over from the enormous living area and had more large windows with beautifully framed views of the desert and distant, barren peaks.
    There were several tables of varying sizes, as in a lodging house, or a bed-and-breakfast. They ate at one of the smaller ones, by the French doors to the courtyard, just the three of them. Olga brought the food and a bottle of very nice cabernet and left them alone.
    Abilene asked, “Why all the tables? Are you thinking of renting out rooms?”
    Donovan raised one glided eyebrow. “And this is of interest to you, why?”
    Ben answered for him. “Once, Donovan thought he might offer a number of fellowships….”
    Abilene smiled at Ben. At least he was civil. “Students, then?”
    â€œOnce, meaning long ago,” Donovan offered distantly. “Never happened. Never going to happen. And I decided against changing the tables for one large one. Too depressing, just Ben and me, alone at a table made for twenty.” He gave Ben a cool glance. “Ben is an engineer,” he said. “A civil engineer.”
    Ben didn’t sigh. But he looked as though he wanted to. “I had some idea I needed a change. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was a very good engineer.”
    â€œI saved him from that,” Donovan explained in a grating, self-congratulatory tone. “In the end, an architect knows something about everything. An engineer knows everything about one thing. It’s not good for a man, to be too wrapped up the details.”
    Ben swallowed a bite of prime rib and turned to Abilene. “But then, my job here is to deal with the details. So I guess I’m still an engineer.”
    She sipped her wine. Slowly.
    Donovan glared at her. “All right. What are you thinking?”
    She set down her glass. “I’m thinking you need to get out more. How long have you been hiding out here in the desert?”
    A low, derisive laugh escaped him. “Hiding out?”
    She refused to let him off the hook. “Months, at least. Right? Out here a hundred miles from nowhere, with your cook and your housekeeper and your engineer.”
    â€œAre you going to lose your temper again?” he asked in that so-superior way that made her want to jump up and stab him with her fork.
    â€œNo. I’m not.”
    â€œShould I be relieved?”
    She glanced to the side and saw that the corners of Ben’s mouth were twitching. He was enjoying this.
    Abilene wasn’t. Not in the least. She was tired and she was starting to wonder if maybe she should do exactly what she’d told everyone she wouldn’t: give up and head back to SA. “I’m just saying, maybe we could go out to dinner one of these nights.”
    â€œGo out where?” Donovan demanded.
    â€œI don’t know. El Paso?”
    He dismissed her suggestion with a wave of his hand. “It’s a long way to El Paso.”
    â€œIt’s a long way to anywhere from here.”
    â€œAnd that’s just how I like it.”
    â€œI did go through a small town maybe twenty miles east of here today.”
    â€œChula Mesa,” said Donovan in a tone that said the little town didn’t thrill him in the least.
    Abilene kept trying. “That’s it. Chula Mesa. And just outside of town, I saw a roadhouse, Luisa’s Cantina? We could go there. Have a beer. Shoot some pool.”
    â€œI’m not going to