скачать книгу бесплатно
Harper snorted. “No. He knows better. Oliver will leave the battle to the courtroom. But don’t be surprised if he shows up at the apartment ready to give you the third degree. He’s a seasoned businessman, so he’ll be on the hunt for any loophole he can exploit.”
Lucy’s first thought was that she wouldn’t mind Harper’s brother visiting, but his handsome face wouldn’t make up for his ill intentions. He intended to overturn Alice’s wishes and was probably going to be successful. Lucy didn’t have the means to fight him. She could blow every penny she’d saved on attorneys and still wouldn’t have enough to beat a man with his means. It was a waste of money anyway. Things like this just didn’t happen to women like her. The rich got richer, after all.
That did beg the question she was afraid to ask while the others were still around. “Phillip, Alice and I never really discussed her finances. How much money are we talking about here?”
Phillip flipped through a few papers and swallowed hard. “Well, it looks like between the apartment, her investments, cash accounts and personal property, you’re set to inherit about five hundred million dollars, Lucy.”
Lucy frowned and leaned toward the attorney in confusion. “I—I’m sorry, I think I heard you wrong, Phillip. Could you repeat that?”
Harper took Lucy’s hand and squeezed it tight. “You heard him correctly, Lucy. Aunt Alice was worth half a billion dollars and she’s left most of it to you. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but congratulations. It couldn’t happen to a better person.”
Lucy’s breath caught in her throat, the words stolen from her lips. That wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t possible. It was like her numbers were just called in the lotto. The odds were stacked against a woman like her—someone who came from nothing and was expected to achieve even less. Half a billion? No wonder Alice’s family was upset.
The help had just become a multimillionaire.
* * *
So that was the infamous Lucy Campbell.
Oliver had heard plenty about her over the years from his sister and in emails from his aunt. For some reason, he’d expected her to be more attractive. Instead, her hair was a dark, mousy shade of dishwater blond, her nails were in need of a manicure and her eyes were too big for her face. He was pretty sure she was wearing a hand-me-down suit of Harper’s.
All in all, she seemed incredibly ordinary for someone with her reputation. Aunt Alice was notoriously difficult to impress and she’d written at length about her fondness for Lucy. He’d almost been intrigued enough to pay a visit and learn more about her. Maybe then he wouldn’t have been as disappointed.
She had freckles. Actual freckles. He’d never known anyone with freckles before. He’d only remained calm in the lawyer’s office by trying to count the sprinkle of them across her nose and cheeks. He wondered how many more there were. Were they only on her face, or did they continue across her shoulders and chest?
He’d lost count at thirty-two.
After that, he’d decided to focus on the conversation. He’d found himself responding to her in a way he hadn’t anticipated when he first laid eyes on her. The harder he looked, the more he saw. But then she turned her gaze back on him and he found the reciprocal scrutiny uncomfortable. Those large, doe eyes seemed so innocent and looked at him with a pleading expression he didn’t care for. It made him feel things that would muddy the situation.
Instead, Oliver decided he was paying far too much attention to her and she didn’t deserve it. She was a sneaky, greedy liar just like his stepmother and he had no doubt of it. Harper didn’t see it and maybe Alice didn’t either, but Oliver had his eyes wide open. Just like when his father had fallen for Candace with her pouty lips and fake breasts, Oliver could see through the pretty facade.
Okay, so maybe Lucy was pretty. But that was it. Just pretty. Nothing spectacular. Certainly nothing like the elegant, graceful women that usually hung on his arm at society events around Manhattan. She was more like the cute barista at the corner coffee shop that he tipped extra just because she always remembered he liked extra foam.
Yeah, that. Lucy was pretty like that.
He couldn’t imagine her rubbing elbows with the wealthy and esteemed elite of New York City. There was new money, and then there was the kind of person who never should’ve had it. Like a lottery winner. That was a fluke of luck and mathematics, but it didn’t change who the person really was or where they belonged. He had a hard time thinking Manhattan high society would accept Lucy even with millions at her disposal.
His stepmother, Candace, had been different. She was young and beautiful, graceful with a dancer’s build. She could hold her own with the rich crowd as though she’d always belonged there. Her smile lit up the room and despite the fact that she was more than twenty years younger, Oliver’s father had been drawn to her like a fly to honey.
Oliver looked up and noticed his driver had arrived back at his offices. It was bad enough he had to leave in the middle of the day to deal with his aunt’s estate. Returning with fifty thousand in his pocket was hardly worth the time he’d lost.
“Thank you, Harrison.” Oliver got out of the black sedan and stepped onto the curb outside of Orion headquarters. He looked at the brass plaque on the wall declaring the name of the company his father had started in the eighties. Tom Drake had been at the forefront of the home computer boom. By the turn of the new millennium, one out of every five home computers purchased was an Orion.
Then Candace happened and it all fell apart.
Oliver pushed through the revolving doors and headed to his private elevator in the far corner of the marble-and-brass-filled lobby. Orion’s corporate offices occupied the three top floors of the forty-floor high-rise he’d purchased six years earlier. As he slipped his badge into the slot, it started rocketing him past the other thirty-nine floors to take him directly to the area outside the Orion executive offices.
Production and shipping took place in a facility about fifteen miles away in New Jersey. There, the latest and greatest laptops, tablets and smartphones produced by his company were assembled and shipped to stores around the country.
Everyone had told Oliver that producing their products in the US instead of Asia or Mexico was crazy. That they’d improve their stock prices by going overseas and increase their profit margins. They said he should move their call centers to India like his competitors.
He hadn’t listened to any of them, and thankfully, he’d had a board that backed his crazy ideas. It was succeed or go home by the time his father handed over the reins of the company. He’d rebuilt his father’s business through ingenuity, hard work and more than a little luck.
When the elevator doors opened, Oliver made his way to the corner suite he took over six years ago. That was when Candace disappeared and his father decided to retire from Orion to care for their two-year-old son she’d left behind.
Oliver hated to see his father’s heart broken, and he didn’t dare say that he’d told him so the minute Candace showed up. But Oliver had known what she was about from the beginning.
Lucy was obviously made from the same cloth, although instead of romancing an older widower, she’d befriended an elderly shut-in without any direct heirs.
His aunt Alice had always been different and he’d appreciated that about her, even as a child. After she decided to lock herself away in her fancy apartment, Oliver gifted her with a state-of-the-art laptop and set her up with an email address so they could stay in touch. He’d opted to respect her need to be alone.
Now he regretted it. He’d let his sister’s endorsement of Lucy cloud his judgment. Maybe if he’d stopped by, maybe if he’d seen Lucy and Alice interact, he could’ve stopped this before it went too far.
Oliver threw open the door to his office in irritation, startling his assistant.
“Are you okay, Mr. Drake?” Monica asked with wide eyes.
Oliver frowned. He didn’t need to lose his cool at work. Letting emotions affect him would be his father’s mistake, and look what that had done. “I am. I’m sorry, Monica.”
“I’m sorry about your aunt. I saw an article about her in the paper that said she’d locked herself in her apartment for almost twenty years. Was that true?”
Oliver sighed. His aunt had drawn plenty of interest alive and dead. “No. Only seventeen years,” he said with a smile.
Monica seemed stunned by the very idea. “I can’t imagine not leaving my apartment for that long.”
“Well,” Oliver pointed out, “she had a very nice apartment. She wasn’t exactly suffering there.”
“Will you inherit her place? I know you two were close and the article said she didn’t have any children.”
The possibility had been out there until this afternoon when everything changed. Aunt Alice had never married or had children of her own. A lot of people assumed that he and Harper would be the ones to inherit the bulk of her estate. Oliver didn’t need his aunt’s money or her apartment; it wasn’t really his style. But he resented a woman wiggling her way into the family and stealing it out from under them.
Especially a woman with wide eyes and irritatingly fascinating freckles that had haunted his thoughts for the last hour.
“I doubt it, but you never know. Hold my calls, will you, Monica?”
She nodded as he slipped into his office and shut the door. He was in no mood to talk to anyone. He’d cleared his calendar for the afternoon, figuring he would be in discussions with his family about Alice’s estate for some time. Instead, everyone had rushed out in a panic and he’d followed them.
It was best that he left when he did. The longer he found himself in the company of the alluring Miss Campbell, the more intrigued he became. It was ridiculous, really. She was the kind of woman he wouldn’t give a second glance to on the street. But seated across from him at that conference room table, looking at him like her fate was in his hands...he needed some breathing room before he did something stupid.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen before tossing it onto his desk. Harper had called him twice in the last half hour, but he’d turned the ringer off. His sister was likely on a mission to convince him to let the whole issue with the will drop. They’d have to agree to disagree where Lucy and her inheritance was concerned.
Oliver settled into his executive chair with a shake of his head and turned to look out the wall of windows to his view of the city. His office faced the west on one side and north on the other. In an hour or so, he’d have a great view of the sun setting over the Hudson. He rarely looked at it. His face was always buried in spreadsheets or he was doodling madly on the marker board. Something always needed his attention and he liked it that way. If he was busy, that meant the company was successful.
Free time...he didn’t have much of it, and when he did, he hardly knew what to do with it. He kept a garden, but that was just a stress reliever. He dated from time to time, usually at Harper’s prodding, but never anything very serious.
He couldn’t help but see shades of Candace in every woman that gave a coy smile and batted her thick lashes at him. He knew that wasn’t the right attitude to have—there were plenty of women with money of their own who were interested in him for more than just his fortune and prestige. He just wasn’t certain how to tell them apart.
One thing he did notice today was that Lucy Campbell neither smiled or batted her lashes at him. At first, her big brown eyes had looked him over with a touch of disgust wrinkling her pert, freckled nose. A woman had never grazed over him with her eyes the way she had. It was almost as though he smelled like something other than the expensive cologne he’d splashed on that morning.
He’d been amused by her reaction to him initially. At least until they started reading the will. Once he realized who she was and what she’d done, it wasn’t funny any longer.
Harper believed one hundred percent in Lucy’s innocence. They’d been friends since college. She probably knew Lucy better than anyone else and normally, he would take his sister’s opinion as gospel. But was she too close? Harper could be blinded to the truth by her friendship, just as their father had been blinded to the truth by his love for Candace. In both instances, hundreds of millions were at stake.
Even the most honest, honorable person could be tempted to get a tiny piece of that pie. Alice had been ninety-three. Perhaps Lucy looked at her with those big, sad eyes and told Alice a sob story about needing the money. Perhaps she’d charmed his aunt into thinking of her as the child she never had. Maybe Lucy only expected a couple million and her scheme worked out even better than she planned.
Either way, it didn’t matter how it came about. The bottom line was that Lucy had manipulated his aunt and he wasn’t going to sit by and let her profit from it. This was a half-billion-dollar estate—they weren’t quibbling over their grandmother’s Chippendale dresser or Wedgwood China. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—let this go without a fight. His aunt deserved that much.
With a sigh, he reached for his phone and dialed his attorney. Freckles be damned, Lucy Campbell and her charms would be no match for Oliver and his team of bloodthirsty lawyers.
Two (#ua46c798d-2e51-58dd-a4da-5cb72c897b6a)
Lucy awoke the next morning with the same odd sense of pressure on her chest. It had been like that since the day she’d discovered Alice had died in her sleep and her world had turned upside down. Discovering she could potentially be a millionaire and Alice’s entire family hated her had done little to ease that pressure. It may actually be worse since they met with Phillip.
Someone would undoubtedly contest the will, which would put Alice’s estate in limbo until it was resolved. When she asked Phillip how long that would take, he said it could be weeks to months. The family’s attorneys would search for any way they could to nullify the latest will. That meant dragging their “dear aunt’s” reputation through the mud along with Lucy’s. Either Alice wasn’t in her right mind—and many would argue she never had been—or Lucy had manipulated her.
It made Lucy wonder if she could decline the inheritance. Was that an option? While the idea of all that money and stuff seemed nice, she didn’t want to be ripped to shreds to get it. She hadn’t manipulated Alice, and Alice hadn’t been crazy. She’d obviously just decided that her family either didn’t deserve or need the money. Since she never discussed it with anyone but Phillip and hadn’t been forthcoming about her reasoning even to him, they would never know.
Alice had been quirky that way. She never left her apartment, but she had plenty of stories from her youth about how she enjoyed going against the flow, especially where her family was involved. If it was possible for her to listen in on her will reading from heaven, Lucy was pretty sure she was cracking up. Alice would’ve found the look on Wanda’s face in particular to be priceless.
While the decision was being made, Lucy found herself at a loss. What, exactly, was she supposed to be doing with her time? Her client was dead, but she was still receiving her salary, room and board. After the funeral, Lucy had started putting together plans to pick up her life where she’d been forced to drop it. She had a year left in her art history program at Yale. Her scholarship hadn’t covered all four years and without it, there was no way she had been able to continue.
Working and living with Alice had allowed her to save almost all of her salary and she had a tidy little nest egg now that she could use to move back to Connecticut and finish school. Then, hopefully, she could use the connections she’d established the last few years in the art world to land a job at a prestigious museum.
Alice and Lucy had bonded over art. Honestly, Lucy’d had no experience as a home health nurse or caregiver of any kind, but that wasn’t really what Alice needed. She needed a companion, a helper around the apartment. She also needed someone who would go out into the world for her. Part of that had included attending gallery openings and art auctions in Alice’s place. Lucy had met quite a few people there and with Alice Drake’s reputation behind her, hopefully those connections would carry forward once she entered the art community herself.
Today, Lucy found herself sitting in the library staring at the computer screen and her readmission forms for Yale, but she couldn’t focus on them. Her gaze kept drifting around the apartment to all the things she’d never imagined would be hers. Certainly not the apartment itself, with its prewar moldings, handcrafted built-ins and polished, inlaid hardwood floors. Not the gallery of art pieces that looked like a wing of the Met or MoMA. It was all lovely, but nothing she would ever need to worry about personally.
Except now, she had to worry about it all, including the college forms. It was September. If this court hearing dragged through the fall, it would mess with her returning to school for the spring semester. Phillip had recommended she not move out, even if she didn’t want to keep the apartment. He was worried members of the family would squat in it and make it difficult for her to take ownership or sell it even if the judge ruled in her favor. That meant the pile of boxes in the corner she’d started to fill up would stay put for now and Yale in January might not happen.
All because Alice decided Lucy should be a millionaire and everyone else disagreed.
The sound of the doorbell echoed through the apartment, distracting Lucy from her worries. She saved her work and shut the laptop before heading out to the front door. Whoever was here must be on the visitor list or the doorman wouldn’t have let them up. She hoped it was Harper, but one glance out the peephole dashed those hopes.
It was Oliver Drake.
Lucy smoothed her hands over her hair and opened the door to greet her guest. He was wearing one of a hundred suits he likely owned, this one being navy instead of the black he’d worn to the lawyer’s office the day before. Navy looked better on him. It brought out the blue in his eyes and for some reason, highlighted the gold strands in his brown, wavy hair.
She tore her gaze away from her inspection and instead focused on his mildly sour expression. Not a pleasure visit, she could tell, so she decided to set the tone before he could. “Oliver, so glad to see you were able to find the place. Do come in.”
She took a step back and Oliver entered the apartment with his gaze never leaving hers. “I have been here before, you know. Dozens of times.”
“But so much has changed since the nineties. Please, feel free to take a look around and reacquaint yourself with the apartment.” Lucy closed the door and when she turned around, found that Oliver was still standing in the same spot, studying her.
“You know, I can’t tell if you’re always this cheeky or if you’re doing it because you’ve got something to hide. Are you nervous, Lucy?” His voice was low and even, seemingly unbothered by her cutting quips.
Lucy crossed her arms over her chest and took a step back from him, as though doing so would somehow shield her from the blue eyes that threatened to see too much. “I don’t have anything to be nervous about.”
He took two slow strides toward her, moving into her personal space and forcing her back until the doorknob pressed into her spine. He was over six foot, lurking over her and making Lucy feel extremely petite at her five-foot-four-inch height. He leaned down close, studying her face with such intensity she couldn’t breathe.
Oliver paused at her lips for a moment, sending confusing signals to Lucy’s brain. She didn’t think Harper’s arrogant older brother would kiss her, but stranger things had already happened this week. Instead, his gaze shifted to her eyes, pinning her against the door of the apartment without even touching her. By this point, Lucy’s heart was pounding so loudly in her ears, it was nearly deafening her during his silent appraisal.
“We’ll see about that,” he said at last.
When he finally took a step back, Lucy felt like she could breathe again. There was something intense about Oliver that made her uncomfortable, especially when he looked at her that way.
As though nothing had just happened between them, Oliver stuffed his hands into his pockets and started strolling casually through the gallery and into the great room. Lucy followed him with a frown lining her face. She didn’t understand what he wanted. Was this just some psychological game he was playing with her? Was he looking to see if she’d sold anything of Alice’s? How could he even tell after all these years?
“So, I stopped by today to let you know that my attorney filed a dispute over the will this morning. I’m sure Phillip explained to you that all of Aunt Alice’s assets would be frozen until the dispute is resolved.”
Lucy stopped in the entry to the great room, her arms still crossed over her chest. Harper was right when she said that her brother would likely be the one to start trouble for her. “He did.”
Oliver looked around at the art and expensive tapestries draping the windows before he turned and nodded at her. “Good, good. I wouldn’t want there to be any awkward misunderstandings if you tried to sell something from the apartment. I’m fairly certain you’ve never inherited anything before and wouldn’t know how it all worked.”
“Yes, it’s a shame. I was just itching to dump that gaudy Léger painting in the hallway. I always thought it clashed with the Cézanne beside it, but Alice would never listen to reason,” she replied sarcastically. Calling a Léger gaudy would get her kicked out of the Yale art history program.
Oliver narrowed his gaze at her. “Which painting is the Léger?”
Lucy shelved a smirk. He thought he was so smart and superior to her, but art was obviously something he didn’t know anything about. “It’s the colorful cubist piece with the bicycles. But that aside, I was just kidding. Even if I win in court—and I doubt I will—I wouldn’t sell any of Alice’s art.”
He glanced over her shoulder at the Léger and shrugged before moving to the collection of cream striped sofas. He sat down, manspreading across the loveseat in a cocky manner that she found both infuriating and oddly intriguing. He wore his confidence well, but he seemed too comfortable here, as though he were already planning on moving in to the place Lucy had called home for years.
“And why is that?” he asked. “I would think most people in your position would be itching to liquidate the millions in art she hoarded here.”
She sighed, not really in the mood to explain herself to him, but finding she apparently had nothing better to do today. “Because it meant too much to her. You may have been too busy building your computer empire to know this, but these pieces were her lover and her children. She carefully selected each piece in her collection, gathering the paintings and sculptures that spoke to her because she couldn’t go out to see them in the museums. She spent hours talking to me about them. If she saw it in her heart to leave them to me, selling them at any price would be a slap in the face.”
“What would you do with them, then?”
Lucy leaned against the column that separated the living room from the gallery space. “I suppose that I would loan most of them out to museums. The Guggenheim had been after Alice for months to borrow her Richter piece. She always turned them down because she couldn’t bear to look at the blank spot on the wall where it belonged.”
“So you’d loan all of them out?” His heavy brow raised for the first time in genuine curiosity.
Lucy shook her head. “No, not all of them. I would keep the Monet.”
“Which one is that?”
She swallowed her frustration and pointed through the doorway to the piece hanging in the library. “Irises in Monet’s Garden,” she said. “You did go to college, didn’t you? Didn’t you take any kind of liberal studies classes? Maybe visit a museum in your life?”
At that, Oliver laughed, a low, throaty rumble that unnerved her even as it made her extremely aware of her whole body. Once again, her pulse sped up and her mouth went so dry she couldn’t have managed another smart remark.
She’d never had a reaction to a man like that before. Certainly not in the last five years where she’d basically lived like her ninety-year-old client. Her body was in sore need of a man to remind her she was still in her twenties, but Oliver was not the one. She was happy to have distance between them and hoped to keep it that way.
* * *
“You’d be surprised,” Oliver said, pushing himself up from the couch. He felt like he was a piece on display with her standing there, watching him from the doorway. “I’ve been to several museums in my years, and not just on those painful school field trips. Mostly with Aunt Alice, actually, in the days when she still left her gilded prison. I never really cared much about the art, but you’re right, she really did love it. I liked listening to her talk about it.”
He turned away from Lucy and strolled over to the doorway to the library. There, hanging directly in front of the desk so it could be admired, was a blurry painting, about two and a half feet by three feet. He took a few steps back from it and squinted, finally being able to make out the shapes of flowers from a distance. He supposed to some people it was a masterpiece, but to him it was just a big mess on a canvas that was only important to a small group of rich people.
Even then, he did know who Monet was. And Van Gogh and Picasso. There was even a Jackson Pollock hanging in the lobby of his corporate offices, but that was his father’s purchase. Probably Aunt Alice’s suggestion. He didn’t recognize the others she’d mentioned, but he wasn’t entirely without culture. Aunt Alice had taken him to the museums more times than he could count. It was just more fun to let Lucy think he didn’t know what she was talking about.
