Here Comes Trouble. Leslie Kelly

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ if she tried, not even for chocolate. Not for Hershey’s. Or Dove. Or Godiva. Or even those crunchy See’s toffee candies.

      “Mmm…toffee,” she whispered through a hiccupping little sob.

      Not having the toffee candies made her cry harder. Not even thoughts of how much she was going to love her baby boy or girl and how good a mother she was going to make helped.

      Because Peter was threatening to take that away from her, too. Once he’d recovered from his shock last night, he informed her that there was no way he was paying child support. And that she might end up paying it to him because he could decide to sue for custody, and since she was an immature college dropout barely out of her teens, he would probably get it.

      What if he was right?

      He didn’t want to raise this baby, she knew it. He was being hateful. That expression of amusement in his eyes, as he’d informed her he had to think about it first and would be in touch, said it all.

      He didn’t want to be a father. He just wanted to be cruel, which seemed to be what he did best.

      “I have to tell Sabrina. She’ll know what to do.”

      This wasn’t something she could share over a cell phone, however. She needed to see her big sister face-to-face. Which might prove tricky, since Sabrina hadn’t told her where she was going.

      Fortunately, however, Allie knew a secret about Jane, Sabrina’s secretary at Liberty Books—a secret Peter Pecker had revealed during their last phone call so many months ago. He’d told her about his affair with Jane, hoping she’d tell Sabrina…and hurt her some more. Allie had kept it to herself. Until now.

      Allie wasn’t fond of blackmail, but she’d learned a lot of hard lessons at the school of Peter. Jane would know where Sabrina was, and Allie had ammunition against Jane.

      Now, it appeared, was a very good time to use it.

      

      “WHAT ON EARTH is that?”

      Hearing the shock in Sabrina’s voice as they reached the top of the hill beside his grandfather’s new home, Max steeled himself to explain. His own first closeup view of the house had been much the same.

      The three-story mausoleum had been built about a hundred years ago and it wore every one of those years on its face. With missing tile shingles on the roof, shutters that couldn’t be closed dangling outside most of the windows, peeling layers of varying colors of paint, and a sagging porch that had begun to separate from the front door—requiring a little hop to go inside—the place was silently begging for a wrecking ball.

      Max was loudly begging for one.

      Especially to maim, kill and annihilate the clocks. The former occupant had apparently owned a clock factory and had liked to sample the wares. Blue ones, red ones, open-billed ones…cuckoos with glittering emerald eyes and shiny black ones, with carefully detailed feathers or fake-looking plastic talons. With open wings or military epaulets or garland wreaths dangling from their beaks.

      Two dozen of them, at least, though it seemed more like a thousand. The noise was enough to make a man lose his mind.

      And the clocks weren’t the beginning and the end of the insanity, oh, no. The inside of the house was, itself, a crazy maze, with oddly shaped rooms, doors that opened to interior brick walls, chimneys rising from no fireplaces. Like it had been built little by little—piece by piece—with no thought given to the finished product.

      Grandfather loved it—right down to the last cuckoo and threadbare rug. No big surprise.

      Max supposed that with a few million dollars, the cast and crew of Trading Spaces and that wrecking ball, it could be made into something inhabitable.

      “I guess you’re wondering about the house.” But as Max followed Sabrina’s stare, he realized she was not looking at the building. She was looking at the enormous structure beside the building. The one he hadn’t noticed until right now, probably because his brain was used to blocking out the more impossible sights a life with Mortimer Potts often provided.

      He closed his eyes briefly, but, unfortunately, the mirage hadn’t disappeared when he reopened them.

      Rising from the tangled brush, brambles and honeysuckle vines—which had grown from beyond their original perimeter against the falling-down stone fence to encroach all the way to the side patio—was a monstrosity. A gigantic thing, swaying in the light morning breeze.

      Standing twenty feet high and covering most of the side yard, it was an enormous mass of colors all swirled together on a billowy fabric. A tent…but not a garden variety camping-in-the-backyard one. This was like something out of an old Arabian Nights film. Emblazoned with brilliant splashes of red, green and gold, the thing stood like an enormous jewel beneath the bright summer sky.

      “Damn.”

      Mortimer was in one of his Middle East moods again. His grandfather had spent a number of years in Egypt after the Second World War. He liked to claim he’d been granted an honorary sheikhdom from a Bedouin tribe with which he’d spent one winter, cut off from the rest of the world in a secret, sand-battered camp.

      As with many of Mortimer’s stories, Max wasn’t certain if this one was true or not. All Max knew was that whenever Morty had walked like an Egyptian, he and his brothers had been stuck drinking goat’s milk and eating camel tongue.

      “Is there a circus in town?”

      There was almost always a circus in town when his grandfather was around. And the memory of all those circuses, all those towns—all that adventure—made him smile, despite his fears that the potential investor was about to be scared off. Any sane woman would be.

      Especially if Mortimer came out brandishing his sword.

      “Not a circus. But there could be animals.”

      She merely gaped.

      “I don’t think there would be any dangerous ones,” he quickly added. “Though you can never be entirely sure. He did once rescue a tiger headed for the dinner table of some sick, twisted millionaire.”

      “He? Are you talking about Mr. Potts?” she asked, her eyes wide, as if she wasn’t sure if he was pulling her leg.

      He wasn’t. Though he’d like to, if it meant he actually got to touch one of those long, beautiful legs.

      “Es salaam aleikom!”

      He tore his attention off Sabrina Cavanaugh’s slender thighs and braced himself for introductions. This could be tricky.

      “What did he say?”

      “That’s hello. I think. Though he could be offering you some camel tongue,” Max muttered. Then he fell silent, watching Sabrina absorb Mortimer Potts.

      A mane of thick white hair blew around his grandfather’s shoulders, which were still strong and straight despite his age. His face was smooth, nearly unwrinkled, but dark and leathery after years in the blazing sun of Africa or South America. Even from several feet away, his blue eyes shone brilliantly—alight with intelligence and a genuine love of life—as he approached. His steps were firm, his legs СКАЧАТЬ