The Accidental Bodyguard. Ann Major

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СКАЧАТЬ family’s do-goody dark horse, a Miss Bethany Ann—he’d made a scribble that she wanted to be called Chandra—had come from out of nowhere and galloped away with the family fortune.

      Both the girl and her story intrigued him. He furrowed his black brows as he tried to read his nearly illegible scrawl.

      Bulk of fortune goes into charitable foundation. Complete control given to Miss Bethany Ann.

      Weird little girl. Prematurely born in Calcutta when her mother and father were on a round-the-world tour.

      India—so he and she had been born in the same hellhole.

      An oddball from birth, she was claustrophobic. She was also a vegetarian who refused to eat beef. Never fit into the family. When she was two and had begun to talk, she’d told her family that her name was Chandra, not Beth. She had babbled frantically of memories of another life and of belonging to another, poorer family. When she grew older she said her enraged older sister, in an effort to save the family from shame, had shut her inside a box and buried her alive beneath a house when she found out Chandra had gotten pregnant by the town’s local bad boy whom she loved instead of her betrothed.

      Under hypnosis Chandra had spoken in a foreign language that a language expert at the University of Texas had identified as an obscure dialect of Hindi. Upon investigation, a family in a remote area of India where this dialect was spoken had been found. Names, dates and facts of this family’s history exactly fit Chandra’s story.

      Gertrude and all the Morans had flown to India. A seven-year-old Chandra had led everybody to a ruined house and insisted they dig up a brick floor. Chandra’s former sister, a woman by then in her midfifties, had burst into guilty tears when a crumbling box with the bones of a young girl and those of her unborn child had been discovered, and Chandra had accused her of burying her alive. The grave of the dead girl’s bad-boy lover was visited next. Apparently he had stepped in front of a train and had been sliced to death shortly after he’d been told that the dead girl had run away.

      Weird. Lucas, who knew more than he wanted to about India and reincarnation, had underlined the word three times. This girl, Bethany, Chandra, whatever, had wanted to share the Moran money with those less fortunate. Understandably alarmed, the entire Moran clan had been determined to erase the inappropriate “memories” and eradicate such inappropriate attitudes. They had taken the little girl to countless doctors, psychologists, and finally to a hypnotist who was no help at all, since he had said this looked like a genuine case of reincarnation if ever there was one. He pointed out that Chandra’s claustrophobia was perfectly natural under such circumstances.

      Gertrude Moran had fired the hypnotist on the spot and refused to take the child to any more “charlatans.” After Bethany’s parents had been killed in a car accident, the old lady had done everything in her power to make the girl forget her “former life” and mold her into a true Moran. But the impossible child had been kicked out of every fancy boarding school she’d been sent to, and the old lady had had to take charge of the girl’s education herself. Gertrude had taken the child everywhere and taught her about investments, real estate, bonds, ranching and stocks.

      But apparently the shape of Bethany’s personality had been as difficult as the old lady’s. Not that the girl hadn’t appeared gentle and loving and generous and biddable. But no matter how intelligent and receptive she had seemed on the surface, her character had been as true to its own shape as the most uncarvable stone. She continued to sympathize with those less fortunate than she. At the age of twelve she had her name legally changed to Chandra. As she grew older she had a tendency to date bad boys—because she said she was looking for the man she had loved in her former life. When she was eighteen and on the brink of marriage to Stinky Brown, a slick charmer Gertrude Moran had considered totally unsuitable, she and her grandmother had had a disastrous quarrel. Chandra had broken off with Stinky and run away without a dime, never to be seen or spoken of or to again.

      Until now.

      For a fleeting moment Lucas felt an unwanted respect for a girl who could stand up to Gertrude Moran and walk away from such a huge fortune. Then he reminded himself there was no such thing as selfless good, that somebody always paid.

      Lucas’s last words on the yellow page were Holly’s. “The conniving little do-goody bitch. I tell you her do-goody act was all fake.”

      Could be, pretty lady. Fortune hunters and con artists damn sure came in all sorts of interesting shapes and varieties. But this kid with the innocent face and the freckles and the masses of golden hair was damn good.

      Lucas lifted a picture of a seven-year-old girl standing before a hut in India with her “other family.” Next he looked at a grainy black-and-white newspaper picture of her standing beside some look-alike heiress buddy named Cathy Calderon. They both wore ragged jeans, steel-toed work boots and hard hats as they posed in front of a concrete blockhouse one of her church groups had recently completed for a Mexican family.

      Couldn’t tell much other than the fact that Bethany Chandra damn sure had long legs and a cute butt.

      Been there. Long legs and a cute butt had cost him big time. Joan had started by taking half of his estate. She’d won child support, lots of it. Then she’d dumped the boys back on him.

      His housekeeper had quit the first day, shaking both fists and screaming, “Your sons are savages, Mr. Broderick. If you don’t pack them off to a military school, and soon, you’ll be sorry.”

      No housekeeper he’d hired since had lasted more than a week, and his once elegant house was a shambles.

       Forget Joan and the housekeeper problem.

      The intriguing fortune hunter with the intriguing backside was living in an impoverished barrio and running a huge, privately endowed, highly successful, nonprofit organization called Casas de Cristo, which built houses for the poor all over northern Mexico. She had tribes of wealthy philanthropists who trusted her enough to donate their millions. She had church groups and college kids from all over the United States providing money and free labor.

      Missionaries were a tiresome, impractical breed. He should know. His father had played at saving the world. What the hell? The more starving Indians he’d fed, the more babies they’d produced with more mouths to be fed. One thing was sure. The old man had damn sure failed to provide for his own sons. Lucas had had to work his tail off to get a start at the good life.

      Thus, Lucas was mildly surprised that he felt such distaste at the thought of defaming this girl when such an immense fortune and therefore his own lucrative fee were at stake. All he had to do was drum up a few witnesses to say that Bethany was cheating her benefactors by building her houses for less than she said or that she was taking bribes from the poor families selected to have houses built for them.

      He loathed do-gooders. Why should it bother him that there wasn’t a shred of evidence that she was anything other than what she appeared to be—that rare and highly bizarre individual like his father who actually wanted to help other people?

      Odd that he didn’t particularly relish having to prove that Gertrude Moran had been senile when she’d drawn up her new will, either.

      But that last part would be easier.

      A flash of movement flickered across the golden urn that sat in the center of a library table. The urn, conspicuously located but now forgotten, was surrounded by stacks of legal documents, coffee cups, wineglasses, beer bottles and half-eaten sandwiches. Lucas glanced from it out the window, where he got a double surprise.

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