The Father Factor. Lilian Darcy

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ realized that once again she’d begun to unload a level of detail that Jared didn’t need. She hadn’t expected him to be such a good listener, in his new professional role.

      “Anyway…” she added in a more businesslike tone.

      “Yes, let’s take a look at the papers you’ve found so far,” Jared said. He sat up straight again and started paging through some of the sheets in front of him. “This is the deed to the house.”

      “That’s right, but before you look at that, there’s one thing we found that we don’t understand and I wanted to ask you about it.”

      Leaning forward, she slid a sheet of paper out of the file folder that came next in the pile. It was a property tax bill dated just a couple of months earlier, and it had a line of her grandmother’s distinctive spiky handwriting scrawled across it in the rich, royal blue ink she always used.

      “Paid Feb. 20,” it said.

      “Look at the address that this tax bill relates to, Jared. Chestnut Street. Gram’s never lived in that part of town, and we’re sure she doesn’t own rental property there or anywhere else. We can’t understand why she’d even have this bill in her possession, let alone why she’d have paid it.”

      “Grandpa Abe lives on Chestnut Street.” He looked at the address more closely. “I’m staying there while he’s out of town. Just a half dozen houses down from this place. I’m trying to picture number Fifty-six, but right now I can’t.”

      “It’s a very nice street, the whole length of it, with all those gracious old Victorians.”

      “It’s beautiful,” he agreed.

      “The grounds of the Grand Regency back onto a part of it.”

      “That’s where you’re working now, right?” He looked up briefly from the paper he was still studying. Knowing he would be seeing her today, he must have done some research. “Their events manager? That’s a big job, at a place like the Grand.”

      “See these gray hairs?” she joked.

      “Oh, yeah, hundreds of them,” he drawled in mock agreement.

      Their eyes met for a moment and they were ready to share a laugh, but then memory intervened and both of them looked quickly away—Jared down at the tax bill, and Shallis toward the window.

      Linnie and Ryan had had their wedding reception at the Grand Regency Hotel six years ago. Jared had heard about their impending marriage, flown in from Chicago and gate-crashed the event, five years after he’d dumped Linnie and practically shattered her heart—she’d cried for months. He’d gate-crashed the church ceremony before the reception, also, hot off the airplane.

      In fact, he’d tried to stop the whole wedding, right in front of the minister at the altar and the entire congregation. “You can’t marry him, Melinda Duncan. I know this is my fault. I’m an idiot. I always thought I had plenty of time, through law school and beyond. But you know it, don’t you? You’ve always known it. You have to marry me!”

      Wrong, Jared.

      Bad call.

      You weren’t even serious, were you?

      You were just testing your power.

      Linnie and Ryan were made and meant for each other, but they’d had a whirlwind courtship and they really hadn’t known each other all that well, on the day of their wedding. Made and meant for each other didn’t always mean that things worked out. Ryan had seen Linnie’s flash of doubt.

      “You know what we always had together,” Jared had claimed, and for a few long, horrible moments, Linnie had remembered all those tears she’d shed for him. She’d bought his whole act.

      Jared had grinned at Ryan, already acting as if he’d won. “Sorry, buddy, but this woman belongs to me.”

      Only then had Linnie been able to speak. “No, Jared, you’re wrong. I don’t.”

      You could have cut the air with a knife, even after Linnie and Ryan had gone through with the ceremony as planned. It took the whole of the wedding reception and some important talks with other family members for the two of them to sort out what they really felt and what they really wanted. A couple of times, Shallis had seriously feared they were headed for an instant annulment or divorce.

      She would never forget it, and she would never forget the way Jared had purely wanted to win, the way he’d selfishly wanted to prove he still had power over Linnie’s heart. Shallis had spent nearly an hour with him at the reception, decoying him safely away from Linnie—flirting outrageously, in fact—so she knew how he’d really felt. He hadn’t cared about her sister, and he hadn’t even pretended to care about Ryan’s feelings.

      Winning was all.

      Shifting the power balance in his favor.

      Showing the whole town who was in control.

      And even though he’d lost the game that day and Ryan had won, Jared had finally left the big hotel with the cocky attitude of a cheating gambler who knows his luck’s going to come around again one day, because he has the aces up his sleeve to prove it.

      A part of her wished the subject of the Grand Regency had never come up, but another part of her was very glad that it had. She didn’t want to lose sight of the kind of man Jared Starke really was, beneath the smooth and adept professional facade, beyond the unwanted havoc he wrought with her woman’s needs.

      What the heck was wrong with her?

      “Back to this mystery property tax bill,” she said, making each word clipped and cool. “Will you follow it up for us? My mother is a little concerned that Gram could have been conned into parting with her money to cover some false tax claim.”

      “If you find anything else of a similar nature, bring it in right away, won’t you? You’re right, there are people who’ll take advantage of an elderly woman living alone, and someone comes up with a new scam every week.”

      “I can’t imagine Gram falling for something like that.” Shallis clicked her tongue and sighed between tight teeth. Jared’s gaze seemed to follow the sound of her escaping breath, and her lips felt dry again. She gathered her train of thought and kept speaking. “She still seemed so sharp in her mind, right up until the day of the stroke, and she was very vocal on the subject of men who preyed on naive women. But we’re definitely confused so, yes, anything else we find I’ll bring right over.”

      She stood up and looked deliberately at her watch. It was after noon. “I’m sorry, I need to get back.”

      “I’m about to order in a sandwich lunch.” Jared stood, also. He narrowed his eyes for a moment, then looked down at his thumbnail and pushed the cuticle back with his middle finger. His head came back up, his regard steady again. “Andrea can pick up something for you, too, if you want. It’ll only take twenty minutes.”

      “I’m fine, thanks.”

      “You’re sure? There are a couple more things we could get through while we eat.”

      He came around the desk and put a hand under her elbow. Suddenly their СКАЧАТЬ