The Perfect Distraction. Jessica Bird

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      One of her pillows was at the foot of the mattress. As if someone had dropped it there.

      It hadn’t been her. When she’d slipped out of bed, everything had been pretty much in place. But why would Spike have moved it?

      She got up and walked over to the pillow. When she picked it up, she caught a whiff of aftershave. As if the thing had been held against a man’s cheek.

      How odd.

      She put it against the headboard and stretched out on the bed. As she smelled the masculine scent again, she took a deep breath.

      And yearned for what she couldn’t have.

      Chapter Four

      A week later, Mad decided that one nice thing about the ocean was you never had to deal with traffic. Especially not the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, getting out of Manhattan, parking-lot-on-a-highway variety.

      She turned the AC up a little higher and eyed the shoulder with evil in her heart. Her Dodge Viper was small enough to fit on the asphalt strip between the steaming cars on the road and the scratchy grass that ran up to the guardrail.

      Too bad she was a lawful citizen.

      With a curse, she glanced at her watch. Quarter after six.

      Which meant, twenty miles away at the Maguire family estate, her half brother had just given the nod for the hors d’oeuvres to be passed. Cocktail hour would be over at precisely seven o’clock and the guests would sit down for dinner. Dessert would be cleared at eight. Coffee, brandy and cigars for the men would be offered on the terrace thereafter. Everyone would be out of the house at nine sharp.

      It had been her father’s timetable and she knew without a doubt that Richard had adopted the same schedule now that he was in charge. Dinner parties weren’t so much thrown in the Maguire family as dealt like cards.

      She thought about calling ahead and telling Richard that she’d be late, but she didn’t have a cell phone and she wouldn’t have dialed his number even if she’d had one.

      It was time to approach the start line with him. So she needed to get her head together. The way she looked at it, this weekend at home was her crucible. A three-day event marked with obstacles.

      It made no sense that someone with her athletic accomplishments found it so difficult to stand up to her family. And she was surprised by how stressed out she was, but then it had been a long time since she’d dealt with them. Her job on the ocean had allowed her to put old problems on the back burner, taking her far away from any contact with Richard or Amelia, lulling her into the false sense that everything was fine….

      Allowing her to run away and keep running, which was her first instinct when it came to conflict.

      So it was good that this issue with her trust had come up. Sometimes you needed to be forced to slay your dragons.

      And she wasn’t really going in without back up, even if she was alone in the car. She had a great new lawyer, one she had absolute faith in. Mick Rhodes had been all business when she’d met him at his firm’s office. He’d reviewed the trust documents she’d brought with her, told her exactly how he was going to proceed, and warned her about what Richard was likely to do in response.

      Which apparently wasn’t anything Rhodes was too worried about.

      If she had any hesitation about her attorney at all, it was because clearly the only reason he was taking her on was that Sean had asked him to. Rhodes was a heavy hitter corporate litigator, not a private client T&E guy. And she knew this because while sitting in the man’s waiting room, she’d read all about him in the newest issue of Business Week. He’d been on the cover.

      Anyway, with Rhodes in her hip pocket, she felt like she was going into battle with a Sherman tank. And didn’t that make her feel better about her odds.

      Except…well, the trust was only part of it. She really did need to learn how to relate to Richard. They were tied together through her father, and though that man was dead, the web he’d spun remained in the business he’d started. As well as in the bad blood he’d left behind among his children.

      Forty-five minutes later, she spotted the Greenwich exit on the highway. As she got off, she tried to remember when she’d last been to the family house. It hadn’t been since her father had died. So that was four years? Five?

      Richard was the one who’d inherited the place and she was willing to bet everything was exactly the same now that he was living there. Say what you would about her half brother, he’d always been a loyal child. Loyal to the point of obsession. The son had not so much admired the father as he had aspired to be the father.

      So yes, everything was going to be as it had been.

      Mad drove through the town proper, smiling at the shops she recognized, assessing the new ones that had cropped up. She had memories of visits to the ice cream shop and the stationery store and the fruit market. The trips had always been chaperoned by different people. The nanny. The housekeeper. The cook. And she’d love the excursions not just for the excitement of it all but because she’d been with kind people whose company she’d felt comfortable in.

      Beyond the town center, she came up to a pair of stone pillars that were marked with brass plaques engraved with the name Maguire in Old English text. As she eased into the driveway and proceeded down the alley of trees, her hands tightened on the Viper’s gearshift and steering wheel.

      Relax, she told herself. Just relax…This is going to be fine.

      Because you’re going to make it fine.

      She forced herself to breathe and took refuge in the summer splendor that surrounded her. The canopy of maples overhead formed a verdant tunnel and the grass that flowed over the grounds was a smooth, liquid green. Waning sunlight trickled through the leaves and dotted the drive…until it seemed that gold coins had been tossed from the heavens and were still bouncing as they landed.

      What a beautiful color, she thought. So yellow, so bright.

      She pictured Spike’s eyes and wanted to curse.

      Thoughts of that man were always popping into her mind, usually when she least appreciated the shocking jolt. Like now. Or when she was trying to fall asleep.

      Boy, she and Spike had really gotten off on the wrong foot, hadn’t they? Their few interactions had had the rhythm of a skipped record, mostly jarring, bad interruptions of what two people should be like when they met up. If only they’d had a little more time.

      Yeah, but then what? He was all about blondes like the Doublemint twins and she didn’t have a lot of chewing gum in her.

      And yet…even though it was crazy, she hoped she’d see him again. Maybe at Alex and Cass’s wedding? Assuming she could get to the ceremony given her sailing schedule?

      Or maybe…not at all. Maybe she would never run into him again.

      Somehow that made her feel hollow.

      Enough, she thought, taking the last bend in the drive. She had plenty to deal with considering she was about to take Richard by the horns. For her to waste time pining after some man was not only pathetic, СКАЧАТЬ