Her Forbidden Bridegroom. Susan Fox P.

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      CHAPTER TWO

      AT THE sight of Lorna Farrell standing so primly at the open door, Mitch stifled the same private shock he’d felt when she’d walked into John Owen’s office with Kendra.

      Lorna Farrell was slim and petite. Her dark head of glossy, shoulder-length hair curved under, her eyes were large and deeply blue, and her facial features were fine and delicate enough for a Renaissance portrait. The resemblance between her and Kendra was unmistakable.

      Five years had smoothed out her features and turned her into a beauty. She had polish now, class, and the poise of a queen. But what she had by the bucketful was a resemblance to Kendra she’d not had five years before. No doubt it was now that stronger resemblance that had made her think she could engineer another try at Doris.

      Mitch might even have given her some leeway had she simply tried to contact Doris again. His stepmother had finally confided that she’d given up a child for adoption years ago, but she’d denied the possibility that Lorna Farrell could be that child. A simple blood test might have thwarted Miss Farrell a second time. Surely she knew how easily she could be proved a liar if someone called her bluff.

      But instead of inflicting herself directly on Doris, she’d managed to wedge herself into Kendra’s life. That alone undermined her in his eyes. In the past few hours, he’d found out that Lorna had worked for John Owen long before Kendra had become engaged to him, but she’d had no business befriending Kendra, no business at all crossing the line as far as she had.

      Kendra was a sweet, naïve child-woman. Strong-willed, a little spoiled, but blinded by the optimism and generosity of youth. She hadn’t yet learned that the world was full of liars and opportunists. She hadn’t been bitten by the bitter truth that jealous people would do their damnedest to knock her down for having money or that the greedy ones would play her for a fool to get a piece of it.

      Lorna Farrell’s slick intrusion into Kendra’s confidence marked her as the second kind. And though Mitch had long thought his stepsister needed to wise up to the ways of the world, he was determined that Lorna Farrell wouldn’t be the one to educate her.

      Lorna didn’t speak and neither did he as he strode through the open door into her apartment.

      Lorna had done much better for herself these past five years than the cramped one-room apartment she’d had back then. These rooms were painted bright white, and the furniture was tasteful blend of nice pieces, though probably second hand. She liked color and she liked interesting little accents, like the whimsical caricature of a gangly palomino pony with inch-long eyelashes that stood almost a foot tall on the floor in front of an antique bookcase lined with hardcover and paperback books.

      The dove gray sofa was plush and artfully scattered with old-fashioned needlework pillows. There were a few inexpensive but tasteful paintings on the walls and she had a fondness for dark tables with delicate legs. The dining room had a bowl of vivid silk flowers in the middle of the table, and every surface throughout the two rooms he could see were polished to a deep luster.

      Everything was neat and orderly without a single thing out of place. Was this the rigid care of a woman who’d only recently come up in the world and appreciated that enough to take religious care of everything? Or was she an opportunist who liked to have nice things and by such diligent care demonstrated not only a lust for material possessions but a hunger for more and even better?

      Because he was so suspicious of her, he discounted the idea that she kept her things so neat and orderly because it was an admirable habit.

      He didn’t bother to take off his Stetson. Though it was polite to do so and expected indoors, he didn’t intend to pay her the compliment. He heard the tremor in her voice and sent her a surly glance.

      “Would you like to sit down, Mr. Ellery? Can I get you something? Coffee? A s-soda?”

      He watched color flash across her cheekbones at the small stutter and took note of the СКАЧАТЬ