Promises to Keep by Rose Marie Ferris Page B

things. I don't feel all that adventurous and frankly it's frightening just to hear about them."
    "You may not have felt any bolder when you were doing them," Garth said quietly. "For some people the only way to deal with fear is to deny they're afraid by forcing themselves to meet it head-on."
    "Is that what prompted you to become an auto racer?" she asked softly.
    "There are certain parallels," Garth replied, "but the risks you take in racing are calculated and it wasn't racing I was afraid of. It was boredom."
    "Boredom!" Jessie cried, and Garth nodded. He drank some of his coffee before he continued.
    "Before I'd reached my mid-twenties, I'd discovered what a mixed blessing it was to have been born into a privileged family. Things had always come my way too easily, and I was fresh out of new worlds to conquer. I thought I'd done it all."
    His mouth quirked humorously, and he looked from Dan to Jessie as though he were gauging their interest. Both of them were listening as attentively as Julie.
    "When it came to leading a pleasure-seeking existence, the fact was that I had done just about everything that wasn't outright felonious. As for the future, it threatened to be more empty than the present. All I could foresee was an endless search for bigger and better thrills, and they were getting harder to find and none of them lasted anyway." He grinned, mocking his youthful conceit.
    "If all of this sounds cynical and melodramatic," he said dryly, "it's because it was. And so was I at that age. Of course what I really wanted to do wasn't at all dramatic. I wanted to go into the family business, but my father was understandably reluctant to entrust me with responsibility. Even if I hadn't had a wild and misspent youth, I doubt that he'd have allowed me any real input into the way things were run. I had a good deal of respect for Dad, but his greatest failing as a corporate manager was that he was hidebound by tradition. He saw no need for innovation. If a certain policy had been in effect when he'd assumed control of the company from his father, he stuck to it—even if it could be demonstrated that a new approach would be an improvement."
    Garth fell silent as he held out his coffee cup to Jessie for a refill.
    "So you went into racing," Dan remarked when Garth did not continue his narrative.
    "Like a drowning man clutching at a straw," Garth said. "I'd never felt as
alive
as I did when I was driving in a race." He'd spoken flippantly, and Julie suspected that this was a cover for the intensity of his feelings.
    "And now you run Falconer Construction," Dan said.
    "It's Falconer Engineering Consultants these days —the firm rarely enters into construction contracts since I took over—but yes, I do run it with the help of a fine management team. Julie's uncle, Rupert Hastings, is our vice-president in charge of design."
    "I used to wonder why Rupert and his wife didn't petition the court for custody of Julie after her parents died, or at least keep in touch with her."
    "There had been a falling out between the two couples," Garth replied. "You must have heard about the scandal involving Julie's father."
    "Oh, yes!" Jessie exclaimed irascibly. "We heard about it, and heard about it, and
heard
about it, ad nauseam, from Elizabeth."
    "What scandal?" Julie asked quickly.
    She had been listening to their conversation so quietly that the other three seemed to have forgotten about her and now, in unison, they realized their oversight and turned startled faces toward her. No one answered for a time. Their glances shied uneasily away from her to shift back and forth to one another in a kind of conspiracy of silence.
    "Let it go, Julie,
please
," Dan pleaded. "Don't stir up all that old misery."
    "What scandal?" she repeated. Her eyes were fixed on Garth, targeting her question directly at him.
    "Your father was also employed by Falconer's, Julie," Garth answered as if he were carefully choosing his words. "He was the chief engineer on a