It wasn’t a request.
Liam brought the sliced bread back to the table. Sean looked at it. On a good day he wouldn’t be able to eat it—peppers didn’t belong in bread, they belonged on a burger—today, he definitely couldn’t. “Thanks, Gran, but I—”
“Try it. Your Olivia works hard at her business. The least you can do is try it.”
Especially if he was going to steal her inheritance out from under her. The words weren’t said, but they didn’t have to be. His conscience was shouting them from the rooftops.
He took a bite. So did his brothers.
Damn. The woman could cook.
“It’s good.” Bryan helped himself to another slice.
Gran slapped his fingers. “Don’t reach, Bryan. Is that how you behave at that Mr. Spielberg’s dinner parties?”
Bryan raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know, Gran. When I go to one, I’ll let you know.”
She slapped his fingers again. “Wrong answer, young man. Don’t be flip with me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sean bit his lip. Here they were, all over thirty, and Gran was treating them as if they were three.
He wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank God for family.
Which Livvy didn’t have.
Jesus. He had to stop thinking about her and her life and what she did and didn’t have. This project put enough pressure on him; Livvy and that dilemma only upped it.
On second thought, maybe he would have that glass of wine.
“So how are your assignments coming, boys?” Gran finally served herself the best smelling rosemary chicken Sean had ever tasted, her signature dish and a reminder of home.
“How’s it going?” Bryan’s fork clattered to his plate. “I seriously have no idea why people procreate. You ought to see these five kids. I get the place all clean and nice, and by the time I’ve finished the last room, I have to start all over again. It’s like each kid is their own tornado. Inversely proportional to their size, too. That little one . . . whew. She can create a mess of epic proportions.”
“She’s hurting, Bryan. Acting out. Have patience.” Gran looked at Sean and Liam. “Her father was the pilot of that plane crash a few years ago. Sad.”
Bry took another slice of bread. “I know exactly what she’s feeling, Gran.”
They all did. Only Mac hadn’t been old enough to remember that awful day they’d gotten the news about their parents.
“I know you do.” Gran squeezed Bry’s hand. “Liam? How’s Cassidy?”
Liam shook his head. “She’s Cassidy.”
There was only one Cassidy in town who anyone meant when they said, “Cassidy.”
Cassidy Davenport: spoiled socialite daughter of their town’s version of Donald Trump.
“Now, Liam, don’t judge her by what everyone says about her. I mean, look at Bryan. Do you really think everything they’ve printed about him is true? He hasn’t dated all those women.”
Sean and Liam didn’t look at Bryan. Because he had. Bry was definitely enjoying the fruits of his labor.
“Don’t worry, Gran. I’m letting Cassidy prove herself.” Liam glanced at Sean and arched an eyebrow.
Sean shoveled another helping of potatoes in to keep from laughing. Poor Cassidy was hanging herself just by breathing. Liam had been through a rotten breakup with a woman like her who’d only seen dollar signs when she’d looked at him and hadn’t dealt well with the reality that Liam’s bank account hadn’t matched her father’s. He’d been crushed, at first, and it’d shaken all three of them.
“Good. I’m glad to hear it.” Gran waved her glass around for a little more wine.
Sean almost choked on another helping of potatoes. Gran never had two glasses of wine. He handed Liam the bottle. “You okay, Gran?”
“I’m fine, why do you ask?”
“No reason.” He was not about to accuse her of drinking too much. She’d caught him more than a few times in high school with beer he shouldn’t have been able to buy but had. She’d never found his fake ID, though, thank God. It had served him well for the four years he’d used it.
“I hear the estate is lovely inside.” Gran spooned another helping onto his plate.
If one didn’t mind bird feathers and alpaca sperm. Seriously, he’d caught Rhett making a go of it again the moment his back had been turned in the barn this afternoon.
Lucky bastard.
“It is, Gran. I could bring you out one day.” When it was well and truly his.
“Wonderful. How about next Wednesday?”
Sean snorted on the mashed potatoes. “Wednesday?” He’d been thinking more along the lines of next year once the place was up and running. And his. He wanted to own it before he brought her out. Wanted to make her proud of him. Prove her faith in him. She’d always told him he could do anything he put his mind to. Considering he’d grown up thinking his mind was screwed up, her faith had meant a lot. Yeah, there was a lot more at stake than money on this project.
“Yes, Wednesday. That’s when Hetta and Dafna are going. We can make it a group outing.”
“Hetta? Dafna?”
“Merriweather’s friends. Hetta lives across the hall here, and Dafna stops by all the time. We’ve gotten to be quite friendly.”
“Why are those women going to the estate?”
“Olivia’s offered them whatever they want from the house. Isn’t that generous? She’s such a nice girl, that Olivia. I don’t know why her grandmother never saw it.”
Because her grandmother was a hard-headed, prejudiced old cow who didn’t care who she hurt with her hollow promises.
And now he had to deal with three other senior citizens with their own agendas because Livvy couldn’t give the women whatever they wanted from the estate. What if it had a clue in it?
Sean cursed under his breath. He really needed to get a jump on her and figure out where that next clue was, because with Gran erasing that last one from his phone, he was back at the same starting place as Livvy.
“So what do you think about switching, Sean?” asked Bryan.
Sean shook his head and looked up. His grandmother and brothers were staring at him. “I’m sorry, what’d you say?”
“Your assignment. She must be a babe if you haven’t even told us word one about her,” Bry said with his smart-ass smirk that the media called smoldering, but Sean called annoying. “I’m thinking I might have to check her out if you’re not calling dibs on her. Maybe we can switch jobs.”
Sean refrained from flipping him off only because Gran was sitting at the table. “You have your own client to deal with.”
“And she’s quite lovely if I remember correctly from the newspaper,” said Gran.
Bryan shrugged. “Yeah, she’s hot, but she’s got five kids. Nothing destroys a woman’s attractiveness faster than a bunch of kids hanging around.”
“Ahem.” Gran cleared her throat.
Way to go, idiot. Sean wanted to kick him. Gran had had a bunch of kids hanging around for years and, as far as any of them knew, she’d never dated. Maybe it hadn’t been by choice.
Liam’s glare said everything Sean didn’t. And more.
Bryan looked sick. “I’m, uh, sorry, Gran. I, uh—”
Gran raised her hand. Such a tiny movement. Such a tiny hand. And yet so very effective. The three of them looked at her.
“I raised you better than that, Bryan Matthew. That woman has a lot to offer someone, and those children are blessings. You should be so lucky to have her even think about going out with you. With comments like that, you don’t deserve her.”
Bryan winced. Gran didn’t pull any punches when they were wrong and this time was no different. Bry really shouldn’t be down on the woman. It wasn’t as if she’d wanted her husband to die in a plane crash and leave her to raise all those kids
.
Just like it wasn’t Livvy’s fault that her grandmother was pitting them against each other.
Hell. If Gran could wither Bry’s inflated self-importance with just a wave of her hand over one comment, she was going to have a field day when he sabotaged Livvy’s search.
Wednesday promised to be a banner day.
Chapter Fourteen
LIVVY tapped the eraser end of her pencil against Merriweather’s latest joke, er, clue, as she sat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen. Wood. The woman wanted her to find a piece of wood. If that wasn’t a needle in this mausoleum’s haystack, she didn’t know what was. The house was made of wood. Corbels, lintels, mantels . . . so many “els” that she didn’t know which one she should start investigating first.
She’d been up since six taking care of the menagerie, once she’d shoved the snoring pack off her bed. She should have banished them last night; they’d sounded like a chorus of foghorns as they slept and it’d woken her up early.
Her neck had a crick in it, and Georgia, the pillow hog, was the reason. And her real hog had taken exception to that fact. He’d been the one to steal her pillow back at the co-op, so when he’d sniffed her hand this morning, he’d turned his snout up, practically pirouetted on his hooves before prancing off to his oversized dog bed to glare at her while she filled his trough. It’d taken her three apples to coax him over to eat.
God, what a pitiful testimonial to her love life. Forget sleeping with fleas; what did it say when she slept with a pig?
She took another bite of her asparagus and sundried tomato egg white omelet with a schmear of homemade pesto on top before starting off on round two of this wild goose chase. Hmmm, maybe she ought to get Calliope and Callista in on the act. Nah, Sean would have a fit about their feathers being all over the place.
Sean.
Her cheeks heated at the thought of what’d happened in the study yesterday. The rest of her body did, too, and Livvy couldn’t find it in herself to regret it.
She did, however, regret listening for him to come home last night.
No. Not home. He’d come back. This wasn’t anyone’s home.
She’d tortured herself for hours wondering what he’d had to do, where he’d gone, what his plans were. Had he had a date?
Why did she care?
She shuffled her foot that Paula was using as a pillow. She didn’t care. Not really. She was curious. Yes, that was it; she was curious. He was a good-looking man and he’d kissed her (before she’d kissed him), so, yes, she could wonder if he was kissing anyone else.
Although . . . he’d said that it wasn’t a good idea for anything to happen between them, so maybe there was someone else.
And maybe she was reading way too much into the situation for a guy she wouldn’t see after a few weeks.
Or . . . could she?
Well, look at her. A possible turnaround in her fortune and she was considering turning a few other things around. Wow. You just never knew what life would throw at you.
She was more than a little glad it’d thrown Sean her way.
SEAN checked the back of the last wooden picture frame in the foyer that he could reach without a ladder. He thought about getting the ladder off his truck to check the rest because he wouldn’t put it past Merriweather to have hired someone to glue the next clue on the back of the highest, farthest portrait in the room, figuring Livvy would give up at some point.
Except that Livvy had enough fire in her to not give up.
And maybe that’s what Merriweather had counted on.
Livvy had been up early, the dogs following her as if she were the Pied Piper while she ran her hands all over every wood surface she saw, pressing on the paneling as if a secret door would spring open; all the while a certain part of him had sprung to life at the thought of her hands doing the same thing to him.
He exhaled and once more adjusted himself in the stupid thin pants. Focus, Manley.
Right. The clues. Where the hell would Merriweather have hidden the next one?
He almost tripped over one of the dogs that’d elected to stay behind instead of following Livvy out to the barn. What was the thing’s name? Peter? Peta? Pickle? He’d never had a dog growing up. Gran hadn’t needed to feed or pay for one more thing, so he wasn’t used to having anything trail after him.
But this little guy—or girl—didn’t seem to get that. It looked up at him with soulful eyes, a little droopy in the corners, its stubby tail thumping the wall with a rhythm all its own.
“I’m just going over here, you know. You don’t have to follow me.”
Nope. The thing lumbered to its feet—Livvy’s organic diet was obviously agreeing with this guy a little too much—and followed him over before plunking back down onto its roly-poly belly with a wheeze.
Sean gave it a pat on its head, then looked around. Where could the next clue be? He’d checked the corbels. He’d run his hands over the lintels. Where the hell could she have put it? What was he missing?
He walked past the salon the animals had destroyed. Just his luck she’d have hidden it in there. No place was safe from the gnawing teeth and curiosity of a group of young goats. Well, not unless she’d drilled a hole in the furniture and stuffed the clue inside . . .
No. She wouldn’t have.
Would she?
Sean discarded that idea. She wouldn’t destroy an heirloom. Not when she wanted Livvy to appreciate them.
But what if a piece already had a hole in it?
A desk. There had to be a desk somewhere. One with little cubby holes and hidden drawers . . . Didn’t those old English aristocrats have a thing for desks like that? Spy desks or something?
There was a desk in the master bedroom.
Merriweather’s bedroom.
IT took Sean ten minutes to realize there was nothing in the desk. Merriweather had cleaned out every drawer and slot, and had conveniently left hidden compartments open.
Damn.
He slumped onto the bed and picked up his little four-legged stalker and set it on the bed beside him. Where would she have hidden the clue? It had to be somewhere significant; this wasn’t something she’d just stuff behind a baseboard somewhere. It was too important.
He replayed the clue. All-important son and the heir was born. Two comments, one idea. The son was important. His birth was important. What was wooden that had to do with his birth? A crib? Bassinet? Sean hadn’t seen either of those anywhere.
He gripped the bedpost. Think, Manley. What would be significant enough for the birth of an heir and made out of wood?
He tapped the post, a solid thump thump under his fingers. This thing was sturdy. Old, too.
Sean looked at the post. It was made of wood. It was an heirloom. And babies in the eighteen hundreds, especially aristocratic ones, were typically born in style. Like in a big, four-poster estate bed.
Sean stood up. Each post had a finial. Which meant each post had a hole in it.
The dog followed him to each corner, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth in a cockeyed smile, a little hop every so often of its front paws as if the clue was a big deal to him, too.
“Probably expecting it to taste like bacon,” Sean muttered as he replaced the second finial. He hoped he wasn’t wasting his time with this.
The third finial gave up the clue.
Sean quickly snapped a picture of it, vowing that Gran was not getting her hands on his phone again, and emailed it to himself just in case.
It looked like another poem.
He ought to destroy it. Cut Livvy off right now so she couldn’t find any more.
The dog yipped, which was about the length of time Sean considered it. It was one thing to beat her to the finish line, another to sabotage her.
And his damn conscience wouldn’t let him flush the clue down the toilet.
&
nbsp; “I know I’m going to regret this,” he said to the dog. Another thing he’d probably regret, but at least no one but him and the dog knew he talked to it. “But it’s only fair.”
He screwed the finial back in place and was going to help the dog down from the high bed just as Livvy showed up with a singing shoulder ornament and the rest of her motley pack of dogs—who immediately took possession of every chair, ottoman, and accent rug in the room, the one saving grace being that none jumped onto the bed where the little pug thing rested with its paws crossed like some royal dignitary.
Orwell’s rendition of “Every Breath You Take”—especially that last line about watching him—upped Sean’s guilt.
“I think I figured it out, Sean.” Livvy set Orwell on that post, of all places, then ruffled the dog’s ears. “So this is where you got to, Georgia. Were you keeping Sean company?”
Georgia. That was the little guy’s, er, girl’s, name. “What’d you figure out?” He kept an eye on the bird. Livvy really needed to get diapers for her pets.
“I think it’s in this room. Noble babies were always born at home in the ducal bed, so Merriweather probably had a plaque or something made up and hung around here to proclaim the joyous occasion. Help me look.”
He set the dog onto the floor with the others and was once more tortured by the sight of Livvy running her hands over every surface. Her small, delicate, graceful hands that had felt so good bunched up against his skin and threaded through his hair and scraping down his back and . . .
Damn pants.
He ought to just give it up and tell her where the clue was, because he didn’t know how much more of this he could take. She kept bending down to check the molding. Stretching to feel around the tops of pictures. Murmuring to herself as she discovered a new possibility, with the sexiest little catch of her breath as if he’d just discovered some secret place on her body—
Head in the game, Manley.
But then she moved to the headboard, leaning over the mattress—lying on the mattress—and Sean finally did give it up. He held out his hand for the parrot to climb onto his hand and was reaching for the finial when Livvy rolled over on the bed.
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