But something bothered him still. Her refusal to talk about her father for one thing. It seemed an odd omission. And when Duncan had showed Abby the letter from Howard Lander, she went white, her expression beyond distraught. Was she really that empathetic, or was there something she wasn’t telling him?
Now, he lay awake...on his back...staring up at the ceiling. Wishing he could hold her and touch her and kiss her and bury himself in her welcoming warmth. Abby had told him she didn’t want a broken heart. Is that what was happening? Were the two of them falling in love? Against all odds, had Duncan come to America and found a missing piece of himself?
He doubted his own instincts. He’d been drowning in family drama for days now. Everything was magnified. The good. The bad. Maybe sweet Abby was an attractive life raft. A distraction.
After 2:00 a.m., he managed to sleep for an hour at a time. But at sunup, he was out of bed and in the shower, determined to get his life back on track. Tonight, he looked forward to spending time with Abby. The prospect was the dangling carrot that would propel him through the day.
When his grandparents’ bank opened at nine, Duncan was on the doorstep. Five minutes later—despite the fact that he didn’t have an appointment—he was sitting in the bank president’s office.
The man seemed curious, but welcoming. “How can I help you, Mr. Stewart?”
Duncan drummed his fingers on the leather-covered chair arms. “Just before he died, my grandfather made an extremely large withdrawal from one of his accounts. Were you aware of that?”
The man nodded. “I remember. An amount like that is hard to forget.”
“And you didn’t try to stop him?”
A frown appeared on the dignified president’s face. “We are not in the business of keeping customers away from their money, Mr. Stewart. Your grandfather filled out the appropriate paperwork, and he made the transfer to a bank in a nearby town. I assumed he was opening another account. Not my business to interfere.”
Duncan ground his teeth. “Were you also aware that my grandfather was experiencing signs of dementia?”
The man paled. “I was not. Your grandfather was a well-respected businessman. It would never have occurred to me to interfere with his transaction.”
“Even for his own good?”
“We’re not social workers, Mr. Stewart. We’re bankers. Did others know about this?”
“Unfortunately, no. Or if my grandmother did, she never admitted it to any of us.”
“Then how are you making this assumption?”
“It’s not an assumption. It’s fact.” Duncan reached into his coat pocket and extracted the crumpled letter. “Take a look.”
Duncan saw the man’s face change as he absorbed the contents of the letter. His shock and dismay were much the same as Abby’s had been. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “This is dreadful.”
“Aye. Have you heard of this fellow?”
“Oh, yes...unfortunately. He’s lived in Candlewick for many years. And you know his daughter, I’m sure?”
“His daughter?” Duncan’s stomach clenched the moment before the words were spoken aloud.
The bank president nodded. “Abby Hartmann. Poor girl has had to deal with her father’s transgressions her entire life. He’s a grifter and a con man. I’ll admit, though, this is the first time I’ve ever known him to attempt something on this scale.”
Duncan had gone blind and deaf. The other man was still talking, but none of it made sense. Outside the bay window, a storm lashed the streets, ushering in the first serious cold front of autumn. Colorful leaves fell like rain. Duncan studied a rivulet on the glass and watched it slide from top to bottom.
The only two words echoing in his head were the most unbelievable. Abby Hartmann.
The feeling of shock and betrayal was absolute. Suddenly, every word she had ever spoken to him was suspect, his worst fears realized. He’d been worried about her attempt to sell Stewart Properties. That seemed laughable now. He had told her more than once how much he hated lies, and all the while she had been as duplicitous as a woman could be.
He lurched to his feet. “Thank you for your time,” he muttered. The gaping hole in his chest made it hard to breathe.
“If you decide to pursue legal action, I’ll cooperate in any way I can. I am very sorry, Mr. Stewart. Sorrier than you know.”
With a curt nod, Duncan managed to find the door and escape. Outside, he hovered on the stoop and watched the driving sheets of rain. He was cold to the bone, but he stepped out into the deluge anyway.
There was only one destination left. And he knew the way.
* * *
Abby hummed now and again as she diced and chopped vegetables for the soup she was making. Morning had brought a modicum of peace. Every family had skeletons in its closets. Surely Duncan would understand that her father was not under her control. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t keep her blood relation from wreaking havoc.
Even so, she dreaded the moment of truth. Having to confess her connection to the man who had robbed the Stewarts was going to stick in her throat.
Pride was partly to blame, but it was more than that. She ached for the upheaval in Duncan’s life. Izzy’s death was shockingly sudden yet inevitable. But Howard Lander’s perfidy was the equivalent of the sports term piling on.
Duncan was already having a hell of a month. Now, he had even more to bear. The weight of his responsibilities to Stewart Properties and to his family must be daunting.
When her doorbell rang, she turned the soup pot on low and wiped her hands on a towel. As she approached the front door, she saw the outline of a man’s head through the small fan-shaped piece of glass.
Her heart beat faster.
She yanked open the door. “Duncan. Good grief. You’re soaked. What are you doing here? Let me get you some towels.”
He didn’t say a word, but he waited obediently until she returned with a handful of her thickest terry cloth. In another situation, she might have helped dry him off, but something about his body language warned her not to touch.
When he was no longer dripping, they moved to the living room. Abby switched on the gas logs and sat down on the sofa. Duncan remained standing, his big frame rigid. His expression was impossible to read.
“The soup won’t be ready for a few hours,” she said. “but if you’re hungry for lunch, I make a mean grilled cheese.”
Her attempt at humor fell flat. Duncan’s face was stark and pale. His dark eyes glittered with strong emotion.
He jammed his hands in his pockets and paced. “Tell me this, Abby. Were you in on it? Was all of this a grand scheme to devalue the company so that you or someone else could waltz in and snap it up for a song?”
If he had slapped her, the shock couldn’t have been any greater. “You don’t mean that...surely.”
His scowl frightened her. “Look at it from where I’m standing. You had an inside track with my grandparents’ lawyer from the beginning. No sooner did I move into my grandmother’s house, than there you were, metaphorically holding my hand, making yourself indispensable. You even admitted you thought I should sell everything. How convenient for you and your father that I wanted to go back to Scotland.”
Tears clogged her throat, even as her heart shredded. “You were the one who asked me out, Duncan. Are you forgetting that? I told you it wasn’t a good idea. Now that’s coming back to bite me. But I never did anything to harm you or your family. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.”
“Five million dollars.” He looked around her modest house. “Where is it now, Abby? Where’s the money? Tucked away in a Swiss bank account somewhere? Waiting for me to leave North Carolina so you can swoop in and take over everything my grandparents worked for all their lives?”
How could a man who had made love to her so tenderly stare at her with such visible disgu
st?
Her chin wobbled. “It’s gone. I went to see my father yesterday afternoon. It’s gone. He gambled it all away.”
Duncan’s gaze narrowed. “You lied to me, Abby, and so damned convincingly. You stood in my house and read the letter I handed you and yet you never bothered to mention that you knew the charlatan my grandda was describing. Howard Lander. Your father. Why don’t you have the same last name he does? Is there a husband waiting in the wings? Is he in on this, too?”
She knew Duncan was hurt. She knew he was lashing out in his pain. But knowing didn’t make the insults any easier to bear. “I legally changed my name five years ago, because I was ashamed Howard Lander was my father.”
“A convenient answer.”
“It’s the truth.”
Duncan shook his head slowly. His face was an open book for once. Disillusionment. Pain. Deep regret. Gut-level sorrow. “You were good, Abby. I have to hand it to you. I suppose it helps when your father is a con man. I actually considered the possibility that I might be falling in love with you. Ridiculous, isn’t it?” He paled further. “That’s why you didn’t want me to meet him the day I was here with you and you were picking out dresses. You were so upset. I thought he had done something to hurt you. But it was far more sinister than that. You didn’t want to risk me finding out about the money.”
“I didn’t know about the money,” she shouted, tears streaming down her face. “When you showed me that letter yesterday, I wanted to die.”
“And yet you didn’t say a word.” He threw the accusation at her without remorse, his tone flat and cold.
Silence reverberated in her little house. She scrambled for a way to make him listen.
“I was in shock. It stunned me. But that’s why I invited you to dinner tonight. I was planning to tell you everything, every last wretched detail. You have to believe me.”
His expression never changed. No matter what she said or did, Duncan was going to think the worst of her.
It was a hell of a moment to realize that she loved him, body and soul.
She took three steps in his direction. If she could touch him, they might be able to break through this agonizing impasse. When she laid a hand, palm flat, on his chest, he didn’t flinch. His icy gaze was painful, but she bore it bravely.
“Think, Duncan,” she said. “Think of what we had Monday night. That was special. You felt it, too. I gave you everything. I held nothing back. Tell me you know how much I care about you.”
Beneath her fingertips, his heart slugged in his chest. He was living and breathing, his skin hot to the touch, even through his crisp dress shirt.
But the ice that encased him never cracked.
If he had been hotly furious, she might have reached him. Instead, the man she had come to know so intimately was locked away somewhere he couldn’t be reached.
With two fingers, he lifted her arm away from his chest and dropped it.
“Too little, too late, lass. I’ll clean up this mess. Somehow. And if I find solid evidence that you conspired with your father to defraud my family, I won’t have the slightest compunction about putting you behind bars right alongside him.”
* * *
The remainder of Tuesday was a blur for Duncan. He left Abby’s house and went straight to his grandparents’ empty mansion on the mountaintop, because it was the only place he had to go.
He’d forgotten that the minister had promised to come by with a potluck lunch. The containers were stacked neatly on the porch. With a guilty grimace, Duncan carried them inside and called the pastor to apologize and say thank you. The man’s genuine concern bolstered Duncan in spite of the hellish day he was having.
The food smelled amazing, but Duncan had no appetite. He roamed the house moodily, feeling angry and off-kilter and so much more.
The rooms mocked him. He had seen Abby in almost all of them. Her presence was everywhere. Her scent. Her ghost. How could he have been so wrong about her?
Already, remorse flooded his gut. He had been cruel, harsh. What if he were wrong? The facts seemed crystal clear. Then again, his world was in such turmoil, he scarcely knew down from up. It was not hyperbole to say that Abby had been his salvation in recent days. Could her kindness be motivated by a mixture of greed and guilt? Or was she genuinely innocent? Was she speaking the truth when she said she didn’t know what her father had done?
He wanted that to be true. God how he wanted that to be true. But his own parents had fooled him completely once upon a time with convincing lies. How could anyone ever know for sure what was in the heart of another person?
He contemplated going to a hotel, but that required more energy than he possessed at the moment. Sometime around six, he dug out a bottle of his grandfather’s best scotch and opened it. If he was going to wallow in his own misfortune, he needed company. Right now, the whisky was the best he could do.
* * *
By the time the sun rose again, he was no closer to a solution for his problems, but he had a hell of a headache.
When the doorbell rang midmorning, his heart lurched. Abby...
He strode down the hallway, yanked open the door, and felt his heart fall to his feet. The woman standing on his porch was a stranger.
Before he could speak, she poked him in the chest with a sharp finger. “What did you do to her, damn it?”
The blonde with the runway body and the street-fighter attitude backed him into the house.
“Could you please not shout?” He put his hand on the top of his head and tried not to throw up.
The woman slammed the door...with her on the inside now. “I’ll ask you again. What did you do to my friend?”
“Have we met?”
“Don’t play coy with me, Duncan Stewart. I’m talking about Abby. What did you do to her? She’s not answering her phone. Her car isn’t in her garage, and she’s not at work.”
He cherry-picked the questions. “She took some time off. I’m sure she’s fine.” Even as he spouted the lie, all he could think about was the way she looked when he walked out of her house. Devastated. Defenseless. Shattered.
“Where’s your kitchen?” the blonde asked, her voice curt.
Duncan pointed. “Through there.”
She took his arm and force-marched him down the hall. In the cheery breakfast nook, she shoved him into a chair and turned to the counter to fill his coffee maker.
Duncan began to wonder if this was some kind of bizarre nightmare. “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” he asked. “And do you have any acetaminophen?”
The blonde scowled. “My name is Lara Finch. I’m here to sober you up, because I need your help. I’m worried about my best friend.” She reached in her purse and tossed a plastic bottle in his direction.
At this point, it seemed easier to go along with the crazy woman. Duncan swallowed two capsules. Without water. And waited for the coffee. When the blonde handed him a steaming cup several minutes later, he almost wept.
She poured herself a mug as well and took a seat across the table from him. “When was the last time you saw her? Last night?”
He shook his head. “No.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s been a long time. Almost twenty-four hours.”
Lara frowned. “She told me she was fixing dinner for you last night.”
“Well, she didn’t. I was here. Alone.”
The blonde shook her head as if clearing bad information. “Okay. Let’s start again. What did you do to her?”
Duncan sighed, wondering how long it would be before his head stopped pounding. “Abby and I had words yesterday morning. At her house. I left. That’s it.”
“You were at the bank yesterday, weren’t you?”
“I’m not sure my whereabouts are any of your business.”
Lara ignored him. “The bank president told you that Abby Hartman
n is Howard Lander’s daughter. So you put two and two together and came up with five.”
“What do you know about all this?”
“She came to me Monday afternoon. She was distraught.”
“Because she knew the ax was about to fall.”
“Oh. My. God. Listen to yourself. You don’t even believe what you’re saying...do you?”
He stared at his coffee. “No.” Suddenly, his heart jerked. “Why are you worried about her?”
“She’s disappeared.”
His heart stopped. “Then we have to find her.” Now, in the light of day and with a few hours’ sleep under his belt, the truth came to him. He was a fool, plain and simple. It didn’t matter if Abby had lied or not. He wanted her. He needed her. It was as simple as that.
“We’re wasting time,” he said. “I’ll be ready in five minutes. You’re familiar with Candlewick and the surrounding area. Start making a list of any conceivable places she might have gone.”
When he returned in less time than he had promised, Lara stood and crooked a finger. “Give me your keys.”
“Oh, hell no.”
She grinned. “Well, it was worth a try. Come on, Mr. Tall, Dark and Gorgeous. We’ll take my car, then, ’cause I know all the back roads. Let’s go find our Abby.”
Sixteen
Duncan hated being a passenger. But he would have done anything to find Abby, even if it meant tolerating the kamikaze driving of her best friend.
Not only did Lara have a death wish on the narrow two-lane roads, she relished the chance to berate him. “You know Abby is pure gold.”
“Yes.” He opened his mouth to defend himself, but no words came out. He’d made the biggest mistake of his adult life and that was saying something, because he pulled some boneheaded stunts in his time. “I was upset. I felt betrayed. She saw the name in the letter. I showed it to her, damn it. Why didn’t she say something then?”
Lara shook her head slowly, her expression bleak. “I’ll tell you why, Duncan Stewart. Because I think my sweet friend was falling in love with you, and she couldn’t believe that yet again her son-of-a-bitch, worthless father was ruining her life.”
On Temporary Terms Page 15
