The New Hand, Part Thirty-One

by J. Rosemary Moss

Genre: Slash Fan-Fiction (Bonanza)
Rating: PG-13

LINK TO PART ONE

~

David took a straight-backed chair, turned it around and sat on it backward. Then he watched as Adam followed suit, so that the two men were facing each other—eye to eye.

He looked away from Adam for a moment, struggling for the words he wanted. “Engaging in that affair with Stephen might be the worse thing I’ve ever done,” he said at length. “Not because of the affair itself, but because of the way I used the kid.”

Adam nodded, but kept silent.

David took a deep breath. “When I met you, Adam, I recognized you as a challenge. A challenge I wanted to take on.”

Adam raised his eyebrows at that. “I couldn’t have made that much of an impression on you,” he said wryly. “You went straight after Stephen.”

But David shook his head. “No, you have the timing wrong. I met Stephen first, a full week before I met you. And I met the other two bidders at about the same time.”

He waited for Adam to nod his understanding and then resumed the narrative. “Those other two bidders were hardly worth the effort of opposing them,” he explained. “I knew I could win the bid without a problem. That’s why I decided to use Stephen. I found him attractive enough and I knew that he could make my life even easier.”

Adam narrowed his eyes at him. “You had Stephen start giving you information even though you knew that you could have beaten out the other two bidders without a problem?”

David nodded and leaned forward a bit. “Imagine that you’re sitting down to a game of whist. You and your partner are quite good—but your opponents barely know the rules of the game. There’s no way for you to lose and it’s almost excruciating to play against such rank amateurs. So you and your partner employ a few hand signals. You’re opponents will never notice and, in the end, all you’re doing is hastening the game to its inevitable conclusion.”

He paused and cocked his head at Adam. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” he answered with a slow, reluctant smile. “When I told Abby that you could use a good talking to, I didn’t know the half of it.”

David laughed. “That’s probably true, but you’ll have to content yourself with the right hook you gave me earlier.”

Adam’s face softened. “I am sorry about that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” David assured him with a wink. “Now let’s go back to that whist table. Suppose you and your partner get two new opponents—only this pair know what they’re doing. Playing against them is a challenge and a pleasure. You wouldn’t think of cheating—firstly, because they would recognize the hand signals and secondly, because you wouldn’t want to spoil the game. You’d want a real, hard-fought victory.”

Adam nodded. David noticed that he even managed another small smile.

“I think I can understand what happened now,” Adam told him. “You saw me as a worthy challenge—and therefore you began to regret the fact that Stephen was giving you inside information.”

“Exactly,” David agreed. “I never took any information about the Ponderosa or your bid from Stephen. I did my own research, of course, but everything was on the up and up.”

He paused for a moment, bringing Stephen’s features to mind. “I liked the kid well enough, Adam. But after I met you, I was looking to end things. I didn’t think he’d be devastated. In all likelihood, he would have married eventually to suit his father—though heaven knows how he would have handled a wife.”

He took another deep breath before continuing. “Meanwhile, I was sure that you were a, ah, fairly broad minded individual. My instincts are usually reliable. But I wasn’t sure if you’d ever crossed that line before and I didn’t know how you’d react to my advances.”

He sighed and cocked his head at Adam. “And then you found out about the information Stephen had procured for me. I knew then that I had lost any respect you had for me. So all I could do at that point was ask you not to reveal anything—to let me find a respectable way to withdraw my bid. That way at least Stephen wouldn’t suffer.”

David paused yet again. These last words were the hardest to get out. “I thought losing your respect was the worst of it—but then Gregory Miller told me that you had forced Stephen to confess to his father. And then I found Stephen slumped over his desk with his brains blown out and—well, you know the rest.”

Adam got up from his chair abruptly and began pacing the room. David stood up as well. “What is it?” he asked.

Adam stopped pacing. When he turned back to David, there was an odd, strangled expression on his face.

“Did you know that Gregory Miller was the man who hinted at your affair with Stephen?”

LINK TO PART THIRTY-TWO