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“Hi, Daddy.” She blew a kiss at a photo of her father wailing away on the sax in the smoky darkness of a jazz club. Having greeted the house, she followed the dark aroma of French roast to the kitchen.
“Still the same as you remember?” her mother asked as she cracked the oven door and peered inside. Two mugs waited, steaming, on the butcher-block table.
Addy wrapped cold hands around the heavy ceramic mug and inhaled deeply, drawing in the rich scent. She’d first tasted coffee the day she turned six and the only thing she’d wanted for her birthday was to be allowed to watch her dad play with his band. Perched sleepily on a chair in the corner of the club, up far past her bedtime, waiting for the late set to start, her mother had let Addy sip a milky café au lait to stay awake. Smoke, jazz and coffee were inextricably linked for her from that night on.
“I think I’d run screaming out the door if you ever redecorated.”
“Your brother and sisters would have me committed. But before they invade, how was your day? Other than finding your true career path in mud wrestling, that is.”
“Disturbing.” Her mother’s raised eyebrow encouraged her to continue. Addy bit her lip and tried to find the right words for her questions. In the end, the simplest way seemed best. “Mom, did you know that Great-Aunt Adeline died?”
Susannah briefly closed her eyes and dropped her head beneath the light of the stained-glass lamp hanging above the table. When she looked back at Addy, her eyes, and her words, were calm. Measured. “Yes, I’d heard.”
“Why didn’t you tell us? Tell me?” If she hadn’t known, Addy was sure her siblings were equally in the dark.
Her mother paused before speaking.
“You wouldn’t even remember meeting her. You were just a baby. But I used to send her pictures of you. Your brother and sisters, too, but I always hoped she’d feel some kind of bond with you at least. Since you were named for her.” She shrugged. “I honestly didn’t think you would even hear about it.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Addy murmured, mostly to herself.
“Who told you?”
“Aunt Adeline’s attorney.”
“What?” Confusion battled surprise on her mother’s face.
“Apparently you were more successful than you thought. I’ve been named in her will.” Addy’s irritation blossomed anew at the mere thought. She knew her anger was a mixed-up tangle directed at both her great-aunt and Spencer Reed, but she resolutely shut thoughts of the disturbingly attractive man out of her head. “Maybe she thought she could buy her way back into your good graces on her deathbed.”
Ceramic mug met wood tabletop with a forceful clatter.
“Watch your mouth, Adeline Marie Tyler.” Her mother’s voice crackled with real anger. “You may not live under my roof anymore, but in this house we don’t disrespect the dead, or their last wishes.”
Susannah jumped up and paced the tile floor, eventually stopping to yank plates and water glasses from a cabinet. She turned and thrust the stack of plates at her eldest daughter. “If Aunt Adeline changed her feelings at the end and then died before she found a way to tell us, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Go set the table.”
Addy stood and took the dishes, but remained stubbornly in one spot.
“I don’t want anything from her. She meant nothing to me.”
Her mother cupped a hand against Addy’s cheek, brushed a tangle of curls behind one ear. Gentleness rested in her touch.
The shrill peal of the telephone rang through the house.
“Answer that. Set the table. You’ll figure the rest out later.” Her mom patted her cheek and turned back to the stove.
She set the plates down in the dining room before heading to the tiny phone table in the hall. Answering the phone with her mind on other things, she was confused by the voice she heard. She moved the handset away from her ear, stared at it for a moment and then put it back.
“Excuse me? Who is this?”
“Spencer Reed, Ms. Tyler. I wanted to let you know—”
“How did you get this number? It’s not even mine.”
She could hear the impatience in his words and pictured his lips thinning as he pressed them together. “There are a lot of ways to get information if you’re willing to pay for it. But in the case of your mother’s home phone number, your aunt gave it to me years ago.”
“Great-aunt,” she shot back, not willing to let him claim an ounce more family intimacy than absolutely necessary. “It would have been kinder of her to use the number herself and call my mother just once in the last twenty or thirty years. Speaking of which, why doesn’t this bequest go to my mother? She’s the nearest relation. Or why not my brother and sisters, too? Why just me?”
He paused before speaking. She could picture him leaning back in an oversize leather chair, looking up at the ceiling. He would treat even her snippy questions with serious thought, she knew—and wondered why she was so certain of that.
“Maybe she thought it was too late to make amends to your mother but not too late to try with you. And you are her namesake. She felt that connection.”
His voice had softened with the last words, but she refused to be drawn in on such a sentimental appeal. “How would you know? Are you in the habit of quizzing your clients about their intentions? Don’t you just have to witness things and perhaps insult the client as a side benefit?”
Her shoulder was getting sore from leaning against the wall and she found herself twirling a curling strand of hair around one finger.
“Your great-aunt was more than just a client to me. Why don’t you meet me for a drink or dessert after you and your family have finished dinner, and you can ask me all the suspicious questions you like?” He was teasing her, and she was glad he couldn’t see her through the phone.
“Tell the truth. You’re smiling just a little bit,” he said.
She almost laughed.
What are you? Twelve? Why not just ask him to pass you a note during study hall? She stood up straight and shook her head, scowling at how easily she’d been suckered in, despite herself.
“I don’t think—”
He cut her off immediately.
“Don’t say anything. I’ll be at Francesca’s at nine. Do you know it?”
“I don’t care how great their tiramisu is. I’m not waiting an hour for a table just to have coffee and dessert.”
“No waiting. I know the owner.”
“Of course you do.” Everyone else in the city had to call a month in advance for a reservation and hope the maître d’was in a good mood. But he knew the owner. Of course. “Don’t wait for me to order your coffee.”
“Just think about it over dinner.” She waited, already sure that he couldn’t possibly hang up the phone without one last push at her. “Come and share something sweet with me, Addy Tyler. You might be surprised how much you like it.”
She didn’t know if he could hear her softly voiced, “Ha!” as she quietly depressed the off button on the phone, severing the connection. Let him wait. She had no intention of thinking about that man for one more minute of her evening.
The gust of freezing air that announced the arrival of one of her siblings drew goose bumps on Addy’s skin beneath the terry robe. When the chill wind didn’t stop, and the cacophony of sound accompanying it clarified into two feminine voices bickering at top volume, she sighed and headed to the front door.
“Close the door, creeps. There’s snow enough outside without letting it in the house.”
Her sisters turned as one at the sound of her voice. Maxie, the baby, muttered one last dig at Sarah and sprinted over to Addy for a hug. Sarah, with raised eyebrows and a look of supreme frustration tensing her face, turned and shut the door.
Cold air radiated from Maxie’s jacketed body as she squeezed her sister. Maxie stepped back and eyed Addy’s attire, wrinkling her nose.
“Put on some pants. Vorks vonders vith ze chill factor,” she said, her voice rolling with the heavy Russian accent of a wicked seductress from a James Bond flick.
“Dress yourself, brat.” She paused to take in the enormous column of white fur perched precariously on Maxie’s short, spiky curls. “Or maybe not. Nice hat, Ivana.”
“Today I am Russki, nyet?” Her voice lapsed back into its typical American youthful enthusiasm. “I couldn’t resist, Addy. As soon as I saw it, all I could think about was horse-drawn sleighs and daschas in the woods and lots of ice-cold vodka in front of a roaring fire. Can’t you just picture it?”
Even Sarah was smiling as she walked over to the two of them and slung an arm around each sister’s shoulder for a group squeeze. Everyone in the family was used to Maxie’s soaring flights of the imagination and her tendency to dress herself up to suit them. “Of course we can, Max,” Sarah said. “And you can borrow my copy of War and Peace or Anna Karenina if you want to pick up a bit more atmosphere. Just please stop trying to set me up with that guy, okay? You may be acing art school, but postgrad veterinary science is kicking my butt. I just don’t have time for a whirlwind romance right now. From what I’ve read, they seem to take up quite a lot of time and energy.”
“Zat’s vhy zey call zem vhirlvinds, dahlink.” The playful accent was back, and forgiveness floated on the air kisses Maxie blew at Sarah. “And I’ll take whichever book describes the clothes better, please.”
“War and Peace,” Sarah said decisively.
“I don’t know how you read all of those incredibly long books, on top of all that studying,” Addy whispered directly into her sister’s ear as they turned and hugged each other hello. “Give me a nice, uncomplicated set of engineering plans any day.”
Melting snowflakes sparkled like tiny jewels in Sarah’s long, straight dark hair, the only one of the siblings not to inherit their parents’ waves and curls. She poked a careful finger at Addy’s still-muddy tangles. “It keeps me sane. And you liked Jane Eyre. Admit it.”
“Yeah, sure. It was okay. But do you know how long it took me to read that thing?” Addy scoffed out loud, although she’d been wondering for the past month if she should ask her sister to recommend another book to her. Studying civil engineering hadn’t afforded a lot of time to read grand, sweeping love stories, and she’d found herself oddly caught up in the story between the governess and the aristocrat, the tragedy and the joy of it.
“Let me guess. There was a fire at a farm and you had to stop, drop and roll in the pigsty, right?” Maxie’s teasing words and gentle tug at her hair reminded Addy that she still needed to clean up for dinner.
“Trust me, and don’t ask.”
Family dinner at the Tyler family homestead was, as always, a raucous affair, as stories, complaints and triumphs came pouring out of all of them. Addy braced herself for the onslaught of opinion and advice as she dropped her bombshell.
Standing in front of the plate-glass living room window after dinner, her head was full of conflicting voices arguing caution versus a take-the-money-and-run approach. Watching the exhaust billow in clouds from her truck as it sat running on the street in her hopeful attempt to warm the interior before her drive home, she found herself pulling up a picture of the irritating Spencer Reed in her mind’s eye. Dislike wound up with embarrassment, like a ball of snakes, settled heavily in her stomach as she recalled their childish bickering. She tried to remove her emotions from the equation, to look at her great-aunt’s bequest fairly and without prejudice, and found that she couldn’t do it.
No doubt Mr. Spencer Reed would have no difficulty shutting off his emotions and approaching the situation coldly and with a logical mind. But Addy couldn’t stop herself from feeling angry and insulted.
She only hoped she wasn’t letting her dislike of the urbane lawyer, with his pristine suits and polished manner, affect her good judgement.
“Take it, take it, take it, take it,” the voice hissed softly in the quiet room.
After a brief moment of toe-curling startlement, Addy reassured herself that in fact neither the devil nor her subconscious was whispering to her in a disembodied voice from the coziness of her mother’s living room.
“Speak to me, oh wise one,” she intoned.
Her brother, several feet taller than the skinny brass lamp behind which he was attempting to hide, cocked his head to one side and grinned the grin that unraveled scores of women on a Friday night at Sully’s Tavern as he walked over to her.
“I know this whole thing is freaking you out a little bit. I just think you should check it out is all. The woman is dead.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the kitchen, as if expecting their mother to come running to scold. “No disrespect intended, but she can’t hurt you now. Or make you do anything you don’t want to do. So why not take the chance to go after something you’ve always wanted.”
She knew her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes as she hugged him, her handsome brother with the wicked smile and the dark eyes that reminded her so much of their father. He was the only one in her family who knew of her secret dream, probably because it echoed so strongly in him, too.
But she couldn’t explain to him, because she didn’t understand it herself, that somehow she did feel hurt. A small, sharp pain like a bruise had lodged itself in her chest ever since Spencer had told her that her great-aunt was dead.
“How did you get to be so wise at twenty-four?”
“Hey, everyone knows that bartenders are the world’s cheapest psychologists. Besides, I’ve always been smarter than you. Mom still thinks you’re the one who broke her Belleek vase.”
“Christopher Robin…” she warned. She was still ticked about that.
He winced. “Jeez, Addy, don’t say that where people can hear you, will ya?”
Her brother’s given name was a standing joke in the family. Claiming delirium from the pain of giving birth to a boy with such a big, fat head, their mother had years ago absolved herself of all responsibility. Outside the home, he introduced himself by his last name, and all the world knew him as Tyler.
Addy and her sisters were forbidden, on pain of severe sibling torture methods, to mention Christopher Robin Tyler’s given name in public.
“It’s written in the bylaws of sisterhood, baby brother,” she teased. “Thou shalt torture thy brother at any opportunity.” She stood up on tiptoe and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I get busted out of the union if I let you slide.”
His hands on her shoulders were gentle as he gave her a little shake.
“Just think about it,” he said and walked her back over to the window to keep an eye on the running truck.
“I will,” she promised.
After saying her goodbyes and collecting the copy of Pride and Prejudice Sarah had pulled off their mother’s shelves with a smile at Addy’s hesitant request, she stepped carefully down the slippery walk to her truck, heading for the short but chilly drive home.
When the snowball that exploded against the back of her head turned out not to contain rocks, she realized her baby brother really was grown up after all.
She had deliberately stayed late at her mother’s house, but the temptation to drive by Francesca’s and try to see in the plate-glass window front was nearly irresistible. At the intersection of the street that would let her perform a casual drive-by peek, she pulled over to the curb and sat through three changes of the light.
Had she been able to banish his voice from her head, she might have given in to the temptation to stop and see if he was still waiting for her.
But she couldn’t get him out of her head. So she drove home.
Back in her one-bedroom apartment, she slid naked between the flannel sheets of her bed and pulled the down comforter up to her chin. By the light of a bedside lamp, she opened the covers of the book and tried to still all the noise in her head with the elegant words of another time and place.
She fell asleep in a confusing swirl of clipped British commentary on marriage, money and misunderstandings, with some smart-aleck Chicago commentary on the side. The opening sentence of Jane Austen’s novel trotted on light feet in circles through her mind: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
In her last conscious thoughts before the dreams overwhelmed her, she wondered if, as a woman in possession of a good fortune, she’d have to watch out for rapacious wife hunters. And realized that she’d decided to find out more about Great-Aunt Adeline’s bequest.
Racing out of her apartment building front door at five o’clock the next morning, already running late for a breakfast meeting, she came within inches of flattening the FedEx man.
After catching him and then listening to him crab about early morning deliveries, she signed where he pointed, her handwriting illegible with cold fingers in thick mittens, grabbed the package without examining it and ran for her truck.
Scraping the accumulated snow off her truck warmed her up a little, although the icy vinyl bench seat sucked the heat right back out of her bones when she slid her butt across it.
Hidden patches of black ice and a need to drive defensively amidst skidding semi tractor-trailers necessitated a strict eyes-on-the-road policy. Not until she made the slow turn into her company’s parking lot, rear wheels fishtailing a little bit even at a crawl, did Addy have a safe moment to glance at the return address on the FedEx envelope.
“Damn it!”
Shooting pain lanced up her leg as she rapped her knee sharply against the dash, sliding out of the truck while glaring at the blue-and-white envelope. She hobbled into the building, smacked the offending object onto the middle of her desk and limped off to dig up some much-needed coffee.
Voices echoing from the conference room reminded her that their video teleconferencing call with the client from Japan was about to begin.
She just needed one minute.
Ripping off the cardboard strip labeled Tear Here, she yanked out the pages, and knew that if someone were to see her and ask why she was snarling, she’d be unable to give a good answer.
But just seeing that man’s name on a return address made her want to heave a rock through a plate-glass window.
Preferably his.
