He stared at her. ‘That’s a good plan. Actually...it’s inspired. It should land you the job for sure.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Except my area of expertise is Australian history, rather than personal or family history. But research is research, right? Regardless of the topic, the skill-set is the same.’
‘I’d have thought so—especially if you can showcase those skills in action.’
She slumped. ‘The thing is...’
He leaned towards her. ‘What’s the thing?’
‘While I might be finding it easy enough to trace my mother’s side of the family...’
‘Yes?’
The grey of his eyes looked like smoke—all misty and mysterious like a Scottish moor she’d like to explore.
‘Callie?’
She snapped back. ‘The problem is I’ve absolutely no idea who my father might be.’
‘What, nothing?’
‘Nichts. Nada. Nothing. My mother refuses to talk about him, and his name isn’t on my birth certificate. Something really bad must’ve gone down.’
‘But this is your father. Everyone has the right to know who their father is.’
‘You think so?’
She was less convinced. It didn’t stop her from aching to know where she had come from, though. She hitched up her chin. Besides, there was the job to consider. She was determined to do everything in her power to win it.
‘Of course they do. Even if it’s just to access a medical history. That stuff can be important.’
‘But what if he’s violent—a criminal? What if he beat my mother up and raped her? I can’t see how me knowing that will help anyone.’
He rubbed a hand over his face.
‘And even if he didn’t...’ things inside her hardened ‘... I just know he has to be a nasty piece of work. What I do know is she loved him.’ The kind of heartbreak her mother had evidently suffered only came from the deepest love...and the deepest betrayal. ‘And, as I was born only four months after my mother emigrated to Australia, I’m thinking it’s a fairly safe bet that he’s American.’
Owen nodded.
‘I’m guessing that when she told him she was pregnant he wanted nothing to do with her or a baby.’ But of course she had no proof of that.
‘Or perhaps she loved him so much she left to protect him from a scandal? Maybe he was someone important?’
‘Or already married.’ She surveyed him for a moment. ‘You said you and Frances liked to watch Law and Order. Does that mean you enjoy a good mystery?’
‘I must do. I work with computer code. It’s a lot like trying to put the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Does your mother know what you’re trying to do?’
‘I haven’t said as much, but... She knows me. She knows I’ll dig. I haven’t told her about the job yet, or how I plan to win it.’
He rested his elbows on his knees, his eyes gentling. ‘Callie, don’t you think if you told her how important this job is to you she’d tell you the truth?’
He smelled like warm cotton and talcum powder, and something homemade baking in the oven.
‘You’ve been watching too many sappy rom-coms,’ she teased, to hide the way her pulse had quickened.
Breathing him in felt nourishing in a way the tin of soup she’d heated up for her dinner last night hadn’t. She battled a bolt of pure temptation. It would be so easy to lean across and kiss him.
She shot to her feet to pace around his office, in an attempt to distract herself from the shape of a mouth she had a feeling would now figure prominently in her dreams.
‘You don’t want to distress your mother?’ he asked.
‘She’s just become engaged.’ She glanced over her shoulder to smile at him. ‘I’m so pleased for her. I’ve never seen her so happy.’ She traced a finger along a square glass case that held a signed ball—a baseball, she supposed. ‘You really like these Mets, huh?’
‘More than life itself.’ He paused. ‘And your mother?’
She was going to be facetious and say she was pretty sure her mother wasn’t a Mets fan, but she bit it back and returned to her seat instead. ‘This is the first time I’ve seen her truly happy in a romantic relationship.’
Understanding dawned in his eyes. ‘And you don’t want to mar that by bringing up the past?’
‘Correctamundo,’ she said, doing her best Fonz impression. ‘It’s cool. I’ll just work it out for myself. In fact I want to work it out myself. Only then will I be able to prove my worth and convince the producers of Mystery Family Trees to hire me.’
‘Except you don’t have a single lead.’
‘You think? I’d place all my twenty million dollars on a bet that Frances knew what happened. I’m betting that’s what they fell out about. And I’m guessing Frances wished she’d given my mother more support and has regretted not doing so ever since. Hence the letters.’
‘It’s a possibility... But Frances wasn’t a prude or a stickler. She wouldn’t have cared about her daughter becoming a single mother.’ He glanced up. ‘What’s your plan?’
‘To read Frances’s letters and see if she makes any mention of it, or see if there’s some clue in them. Other than that... She must have an address book somewhere. I could ring her friends...tell them who I am. Maybe they’ll agree to meet with me. Someone will know what happened back then. They always do.’
He stared.
She stifled the urge to roll her shoulders. ‘What?’
‘You’re going to all this trouble for a job?’
‘It’s a good job.’ She hitched her chin at his office. ‘This looks like a good job too—seems to me you’re getting to call a lot of your own shots. What lengths would you go to to keep it?’
He huffed out a laugh, as if acknowledging the hit. ‘Okay... The thing is, Frances didn’t have many friends. If she did before I knew her, she’d lost touch with them by the time my mother and I moved here.’
A four-year-old kid going through the kind of upheaval Owen had been would’ve noticed everything. He would’ve kept watch and noted every person who entered the building, working out who belonged and who didn’t. He’d have kept watch for the father who scared him. Her heart burned at all he must’ve gone through.
‘I do know the few people she did keep in touch with, though. And I remember the names of those she occasionally talked about from the good old days.’
He did...?
He leaned back slightly. ‘I’ll make a deal with you.’
‘What kind of deal?’
‘I’ll do whatever I can to help you find out who your father is...’
Her heart leapt. He was smart. He knew how to put a puzzle together and he had inside information. She’d be crazy to refuse his help.
‘And in return?’
‘If you decide you’re going to donate your inheritance to charity...’
‘Yes?’
‘Will you sell the apartment block to me first, rather than donating the building lock, stock and barrel?’
She stared. ‘You can afford to buy it?’ Just exactly how good was this job of his?
In the next moment she dismissed the thought. If he had that kind of money he wouldn’t be living in a basement apartment—not even one as nice as this.
His eyes had turned opaque. ‘There’s a co-op I know that would be interested in taking it and its current residents over.’
A charity? It was funny... Yesterday she wouldn’t have thought he was the kind of man to concern himself with the down and out. Today she could see how wrong she’d been.
‘I’m not asking for a discount—you’d be offered the market value.’
It was a no-brainer. ‘You have yourself a deal.’
‘Or,’ he continued, ‘if you decide to keep your inheritance but sell the building�
�’
‘You’ll have first dibs.’
‘Thank you.’
They shook on it.
‘A party!’ She leapt to her feet as the inspiration occurred to her. ‘That’s what I’ll do. I’ll throw a party for everyone. A block party. And then they’ll all like me. Just you wait and see.’
* * *
‘So what is she like?’
Owen glanced at his mother as they passed into Washington Square Park through the western entrance. Sixteen-year-old Lissy trailed along behind, dragging her feet and looking bored in the way that only a teenager could.
‘She seems nice enough.’ They stopped to watch a game of chess in action. White Knight moved to C4 and he could see at a glance how he could win the game in three moves if he were playing black.
‘And all the letters Frances sent?’
They walked on. A squirrel scampered across the grass, all twitchy motion, and he started to feel twitchy too, though he had no idea why. ‘It appears she knew nothing about them. It was Donna who intercepted and returned them all.’
‘That makes a strange kind of sense.’
It did? He stared at her before swinging around to find Lissy had fallen even further behind and had started talking to some guy who was way too old for her. And who was eyeing her up in her short, short skirt like a Rottweiler would a piece of porterhouse.
He slammed to a halt. ‘Lissy!’
With an eye-roll, she gave the guy a wave before continuing towards them. ‘Spoilsport,’ she muttered, drawing up on his other side. And then she rolled her eyes. ‘Relax... I know him, okay?’
‘How?’ he demanded, and winced. He didn’t mean to sound so damn censorious, and he could’ve kicked himself when her face closed up and she didn’t bother answering. ‘Look, Lissy, I’m sorry. It’s just—’
But he was talking to thin air. Lissy had hurried on towards a small group of girls.
His mother shook her head. ‘When are you going to learn, Owen?’
The mild reprimand made him feel even smaller. But, damn, his little half-sister had turned into a ball of sarcastic prickliness over the last year. The sunny-natured kid who’d once adored him was long gone. She worried the heck out of him. She was boy-mad, and the clothes she wore were designed to attract the attention of every male in a ten-mile radius.
He ground his teeth together. The kind of attention from the kind of guy that had a brother’s every protective hackle rising.
They were moving in the direction of the fountain in the middle of the park, with the familiar shape of the Washington Square Arch up ahead on their left, when he saw Callie and Barney seated on the grass with three teenage girls around the same age as Lissy. He halted and stared.
‘Owen, if I didn’t know you better I’d say you were ogling that young woman.’
He snapped to attention, shook himself. ‘That’s her. That’s Callie Nicholls.’
‘It appears she’s made some friends.’
When? How? When did she have the time...?
Lissy ambled back, but the barely suppressed excitement in her eyes belied her affected nonchalance. She surreptitiously pointed to one of the girls in Callie’s circle. ‘That’s Angelina Michaels.’
She said it in a reverent tone that clued Owen in that Angelina was somebody. He racked his brain. ‘Who is she again?’ But then he remembered. ‘The basketball star at your school?’ From memory, she was a year ahead of Lissy.
‘She’s a goddess. You should see her play. Amazing!’
A smile built through him. Maybe this was his chance to redeem himself a little in her eyes. ‘Would you like to meet her?’
She shushed him. ‘We can’t just go over there!’
‘What if I can swing a casual introduction because I know the person she’s talking to?’
Lissy stared, a gleam starting up in the depths of her eyes. ‘Then I might, perhaps, forgive you for being such a bossy bore so far today.’
His jaw dropped. ‘Bossy bore?’
‘The moment you clapped eyes on my skirt this morning you started being as prissy and snippy as an ancient aunt in one of those Dickens or Austen books I have to read for school.’
‘If you had more sense I wouldn’t have—’
‘I’d like to meet her.’
His mother’s voice broke through their bickering, reminding Owen that he was supposed to be the older and wiser sibling. It was just that he worried so much for Lissy—was worried she’d fall in with the wrong crowd, worried that some guy would treat her the way his father had treated his mother. He’d do everything he could to protect her from that.
It was Barney who saw them first, giving a clear, resounding bark—he had a big bark for such a little dog—and straining on his lead towards Owen. Callie glanced around, her lips curving into her trademark smile when she saw him. Jumping to her feet, she shook both his mother and Lissy’s hands when he introduced them, before introducing her own trio of... Acquaintances? Friends?
He glanced at the girls and gestured to the books and laptops. ‘What are you all up to?’
‘Callie’s helping us study for our Math final,’ one of the girls said.
He couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘But Callie’s a History major, not Math.’
‘They’re not mutually exclusive,’ she teased. ‘I was probably better at Math than I was at History. I just enjoyed History more.’ Her face lit up. ‘Hey, you might be able to help. Micah is having some trouble with her computer science elective and it’s beyond my skill-set.’
Before he knew what he was about, Owen found himself sitting on the grass tutoring Micah while Callie skilfully steered the others into a discussion about basketball when Lissy mentioned her admiration for Angelina’s game. Then she smiled at his mother and led her to a nearby bench. ‘I was hoping I’d get a chance to meet you and maybe chat a bit about Frances, Mrs O’Sullivan.’
‘You must call me Margaret.’
And that was all he heard. But as he took in Lissy’s glowing face when Angelina invited her to shoot some hoops with her one afternoon the following week, and heard his mother laugh at something Callie said, he found he didn’t mind sitting in the spring sunshine explaining the vagaries of the Math that Micah was struggling with. They were a nice bunch, and he enjoyed the good-natured way they teased each other, and the way they included Lissy in both their discussions and their teasing.
He’d have been happy to sit there for another hour, except Micah gave a start as she glanced at her watch. ‘Gah! I have to go or I’ll be late for my shift at Burger Co.’
Angelina groaned. ‘I promised Mom I’d babysit tonight. If I don’t get home soon it’ll be panic stations.’
The three girls said their goodbyes and were soon gone.
‘That was awesome,’ Lissy breathed as they joined their mother and Callie. ‘Angelina is the best point guard our school has had in ten years.’
Callie smiled. ‘They’re a fun bunch.’
Owen stared at her. ‘How did you meet them?’
When the muscles in Callie’s jaw tightened, Lissy rolled her eyes and his mother shook her head.
He grimaced. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound so...’
Lissy folded her arms. ‘Bossy?’
He resisted the urge to run a finger around the collar of his sweater. ‘Like I was giving you the third degree.’
Callie glanced at Lissy. ‘You get this a lot?’
‘All. The. Time.’
Callie raised an eyebrow at him. ‘It’s a bit much, isn’t it?’
A scowl built through him, but before he could reply his mother spoke. ‘We’re having dinner with Owen this evening. We’d love it if you could join us, Callie.’
What on earth...?
Callie glanced at him, as if she sensed he might be feeling less than hospitable.
He checked himself internally and discovered he wasn’t as averse to the idea as he probably should be.
He huffed out a laugh and shook his head. ‘We would,’ he confirmed.
‘Then I’d love to.’
Her smile seemed to make things inside him click into place—which made no sense. She made no sense. He frowned. Actually, now that he thought about it, could he retract the dinner invitation?
The women all seemed completely at home with each other, strolling along and chatting, and Lissy was utterly delighted to be handed Barney’s lead. He felt oddly left out. Eventually they turned back the way they’d come, and it was only as they drew abreast of the collection of chess tables that the idea hit him.
‘Do you play, Callie?’ He wanted to trounce her. At just one thing. He knew the impulse was childish, but he couldn’t contain it.
‘I do.’ Blue eyes assessed him. ‘And I’m pretty good.’
‘So am I.’
She turned to face him fully. ‘Are you challenging me to a game?’
He wanted to wipe the floor with her—figuratively speaking—and get a sense of control back. He glanced at his mom and Lissy.
‘It’s too early to start preparing dinner yet,’ his mom said. ‘I’m happy to sit here in the park in this lovely sun.’
‘Don’t do it,’ Lissy said to Callie. ‘He’s really good.’
‘So am I, baby doll,’ Callie said, affecting a gangster stance and pretending to straighten her non-existent collar.
Lissy giggled and slipped an arm through Callie’s, apparently BFFs.
Callie played white. He was black.
And she whooped his butt.
And to his shock he found that he didn’t mind at all.
‘Where did you learn to play like that?’
‘My mum is obsessed with the game. It’s a rare occasion that I can beat her.’
Owen’s stomach burned. Had Frances taught him to play because the game had reminded her of her daughter?
Callie swung to Lissy, the glossy auburn highlights in her hair gleaming in the sun. ‘Did you hear I had all of my things stolen?’
Secret Billionaire on Her Doorstep Page 7
