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“No. I just think you’re most upset that you won’t get to grill her for information.”
She paused as she said the words and it hit her. He was here to grill Gran for info regarding his father. That meant he didn’t know about the money. She should be relieved. She was. But she was also annoyed with him for trying to manipulate her.
Hoping to dislodge her contrariness, she shook her head and said, “I don’t believe Gran was important to you. She was neither caring nor attentive. She didn’t inspire gushing feelings of warmth and affection, even from me.”
Dalton opened his mouth as if he might protest, but then he shut it again with a fair-enough shrug.
“My grandmother was efficient and competent. She ran the Cain household like it was inside of a Swiss pocket watch. But she was not the kind of woman people love. People tolerate her, mostly because they like her cooking. But they don’t love her.”
She straightened, crossed back to the desk and grabbed her school keys. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, my afternoon class starts in five minutes.”
She plucked her purse and tote bag from the corner behind her desk and marched toward the door, holding it open for Dalton with something of a dramatic flair.
She couldn’t help wondering if she’d pushed too far. Dalton straightened, his expression impossible to read. His mouth was set in a humorless line, but mischief danced about his eyes.
He walked toward her slowly, without ever taking his hands from his pockets. Instead of preceding her out the door, he stopped, close enough that she inched back a step until the doorknob pressed into the small of her back.
His stance was vaguely threatening—there was something in the way he stood too close. Or maybe it was just that, for her, he was always too close. Or maybe it was the way he looked at her, his gaze steadily taking in every one of her features and imperfections.
When he spoke, it was slowly, as if each word was meant to build her dread, but foolish girl that she was, she didn’t feel the threat, only the thrill.
“Laney, if you are so convinced I’m the bad guy here, then I’ll play the bad guy. I’m more than happy to be the big bad wolf to your industrious little piggy.”
Refusing to back down from him, she bumped up her chin. “I’m not afraid of you.”
He did another one of those slow, lingering perusals of her face, and her cheeks burned under his gaze. “Maybe you should be.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe she should be afraid, but she wasn’t. She straightened her spine, and the action closed some of the distance between them, bringing her breasts to within a micrometer of his chest.
“Maybe,” she said. “But I’m not a little girl anymore and—”
“Thank God.”
She ignored his muttered interruption. “And none of the Cains have power over me anymore. I’ve made sure of that.”
Of course, that was a bald-faced lie, because if he found out about the money, then he most certainly would have power over her—a lot of it.
She pushed past him, even though it meant brushing her chest against his, even though it made heat stir in her belly and her nipples tighten against the cloth of her bra.
She was three steps down the hall when he asked, “Just how sure about that are you?”
She kept walking.
Ten steps later he said, “How’s that theater camp of yours?”
Her steps slowed, even as her heart rate picked up. He didn’t know what he was talking about. He couldn’t. He must just be guessing based on what she’d said earlier.
“The Fairyland Theater or something, isn’t it?”
Damn it!
She stopped, pressing her eyes closed. If he’d really been guessing, he wouldn’t have come so close.
She turned around to glare at him. “The Woodland Theater.”
Dalton, damn him, stood right where she’d left him, hands in his pockets, smirk on his face.
It took a great deal of restraint—restraint she would not have had just a few years ago—not to stalk down the hall and slap that smile off his face. She was not a woman of violence, but it had been a trying day.
“Cut to the chase, and stop wasting my time. What exactly do you know about the Woodland Theater?”
“I know it’s your pet project. It’s the class you teach after school. I know you spend two hours every day after normal school hours running this enrichment program and that it’s mostly underprivileged kids—some who are scholarship kids here at the school, others who are bused in from other neighborhoods. Thirty kids total. And I know the program is funded entirely by donations.”
He knew more than she wished he did.
True, not all of his information was correct—it was thirty-two kids, and nearly half the kids were not, strictly speaking, “underprivileged.” Though that was a term she had problems with. All of the kids in her program had a hard time of it. She wasn’t sure the emotionally neglected kids from wealthy families had it any better off than the poor kids.
“I see you did your research,” she said flatly. Sure, of all the secret knowledge he could have, she should probably be glad this was it. On the other hand, Woodland was hers. She didn’t want his sticky Cain fingers anywhere near it.
Dalton’s smirk twisted into a smile but not a pleasant one. “Did you really expect any less of me?”
“No.” She’d just been blindsided, because he’d stuck his finger in a different pot than one she’d been expecting. “Of course I’m not surprised. This is what Cains do, isn’t it? You find someone’s weakness and exploit it.”
For just an instant, Dalton’s smile faltered. “Maybe I don’t want to be that kind of Cain.”
“Well, then, maybe you shouldn’t be threatening my theater program.”
“Maybe I’m not.” He stepped away from her classroom door, letting it close behind him as he walked toward her. “I don’t think the Woodland Theater program is your weakness. It seems like a great program. Exactly the kind of thing I’d expect you to be involved in.”
She eyed him warily. “And…”
“And it should continue. I’m sure finding funding is difficult in this economic climate.”
“So you are threatening me.”
“Not at all. Think of it as promising. If you help me, I can make sure your afterschool program has enough funding for years.”
“Aah. So you’re not threatening. You’re bribing.”
“Exactly.”
“How much money are you talking about?”
“How much do you need?”
“I’m serious, Dalton.”
“So am I. You want me to fund the whole program. I’ll fund it. You’ll never have to write another grant proposal. You’ll never have to go brownnosing for money again. All you have to do is let me talk to your grandmother.”
For a long moment, Laney stood there, frozen in the hall, considering his offer. The ticking clock on the wall seemed overly loud, giving the impression that she and Dalton were all alone in the school, even though Laney knew the other teachers must still be working in their classrooms.
She didn’t want to say yes. She didn’t want Dalton anywhere near her grandmother. She didn’t want him in her life at all. But the offer he was making her was far too tempting to walk away from.
It wasn’t even that she couldn’t resist the money he was offering. She could. Money was just… money. If funding got tight, she’d find a way to make it work. She always had in the past.
No, she couldn’t resist the offer because he’d made it so tempting. Not many people would walk away from that kind of promise. So if she did, it would look suspicious. A Cain would never understand someone turning down money. He’d want to know why she’d done it. He’d get curious. He’d start digging. And there were secrets she didn’t want him to know.
No, if he was going to be unearthing any skeletons from the past, they needed to be his father’s skeletons, not her grandmother’s. She needed to keep him focused on that mystery, even if it meant helping him.
“Okay.” She turned and started walking again, trusting that he’d catch up with her. “Let’s talk numbers.”
She heard the rhythm of his steps as he jogged a few steps and then fell in line beside her. “How much does it cost a year to run this program?”
“A hundred thousand dollars.” She threw out a number.
His pace faltered. “For thirty kids? You’re joking.”
“No. If you’re paying, then I’m giving myself a raise and hiring someone else to help.” This wasn’t actually about the money. She just wanted a number big enough to scare him off. “Besides, this way we can double enrollment.”
He placed a hand on her arm. “Hey, this isn’t a golden ticket, you know.”
“Are you sure? Because you sure made it sound like it was.”
Despite her resolve, she could hardly keep a quiver from her voice. It might be a cliché, but she felt like she was playing with fire here. As much as she wanted to believe it was about protecting her grandmother, or even about the money, she worried that it was something more—that she was looking for his buttons to push just because it had always been so much fun to push them.
In all those years they’d lived under the same roof—Dalton the stoically perfect, obnoxious rich kid, Laney the trashy poor girl—she’d never actually gotten a rise out of him. But, dear Lord, trying to had been her favorite pastime. Why hadn’t she grown out of it?
She looked down at his hand on her arm and then back up at him. She tried to forget how much fun it was to needle him, to remember the part she had to play. The Cain family had typecast her a long time ago, just as much as she had typecast them.
“Look, you need something from me, and it’s not a small thing either. I’m not doing this to be greedy. I’m just trying to protect my grandmother.” Well, that at least was true. “Letting you see her is going to upset her. It’ll be hard, and sometimes it takes her weeks to recover from a single bad day.”
She expected some kind of reaction from him there. Most people—nearly everyone—didn’t like to talk about her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s. When the topic couldn’t be avoided, usually there was a lot of awkward hemming and hawing. But Dalton just looked at her.
So she continued. “Besides, it’s not like the Cains can’t spare the money. Cain Enterprises is worth billions. You could probably trim this much from the corporate-office floral budget without anyone blinking an eye.”
“We don’t actually have a corporate floral budget.”
“Don’t pretend you can’t afford it.” By now they’d reached the doors to the cafeteria. She could hear the kids on the other side. The Tisdale kids were finishing up their afterschool snacks. The kids who were bused in from Houston Independent School District had arrived. She could hear the eager gurgle of noise bubbling out through the door. This was her real life, she reminded herself. This was where she belonged. Pushing Dalton’s buttons might be fun, but her obligations lay beyond this door with the children she taught.
“Do we have a deal?”
“We do.”
“A hundred thousand dollars for the chance to speak with my grandmother?”
Chagrin flickered across his face, and she could have sworn his jaw was spasming. “Yes.”
“Okay, then.” She turned her back on him and set off through the cafeteria doors, but he stopped her before she could disappear into her inner sanctum.
“When will you be done here? I’ll send a driver to pick you up, and we can visit your grandmother tonight.”
She let out a scoff of derision before she realized he was serious. “Um… no. Not a chance.”
He gave her a flat look. “You just agreed.”
“Yes. But I didn’t just agree to give away the milk for free.” Then she waved her hand dismissively so he wouldn’t think—okay, wouldn’t know—that she had sex on the brain. “I agreed to help you after you’ve paid me that ridiculous amount of money. Not before. You want access to my grandmother, you pay up.”
“You want me to just give you a hundred thousand dollars? It’s not that simple.”
“Of course I don’t want the money. Don’t just give it to me.” She fluttered her hand around. “Do all that stuff we agreed to.”
“All that stuff we agreed to? Like I should just run off and have my lawyers set up a trust for the charity you work for and drop a hundred thousand dollars into it.”
“Exactly.” Again, she turned to leave, trusting that this was where he’d come to his senses and walk away. Again, he stopped her.
“Come on, Laney. I don’t have that kind of time. I need answers now.”
“And I’m sure that with the full power of Cain Enterprises behind you, you’ll make it happen quickly.”
He narrowed his gaze, but he didn’t contradict her. Just when she was sure he was going to tell her to forget it, he nodded.
It was bizarre, how easily she’d gotten everything she’d asked for. In the end, despite the rumble of kid voices calling to her from the cafeteria, she had one last question she couldn’t let go of.
“Tell me something, Dalton. Why go to all this trouble? I know you’ve always been your father’s go-to guy, but this is crazy. Why are you still jumping through so many hoops for him?”
“Because he still controls Cain Enterprises. If I don’t find this missing heiress, I’m going to lose it all.”
Four
Less than twenty-four hours later, Laney held a nearly half-inch-thick stack of papers in her hand. She ran her thumb over the edges and watched the pages flutter.
“So he really did it?” she asked. “He did everything he said he would?”
Her next-door neighbor Brandon took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes. As far as I can tell. Though, I’m no expert, mind you.”
Brandon owned the duplex where she lived. The cottage, in a funky little college neighborhood, was charming, cozy and perfect for her minimalist life, since his half was bigger than hers. She’d always suspected he was gay beneath his button-down lawyer exterior, but he’d never shared so much as a millimeter of his private life with her. She didn’t mind, though, since it was his prerogative. Besides, he was the kind of neighbor one could trust with spare keys, and he’d come over to kill bugs for her on more than one occasion—even big, nasty spiders. And he seemed totally willing to offer legal advice in exchange for wine, which in her mind put him up for some sort of handiest-neighbor-of-all-time award.
Laney tossed the stack of papers onto her coffee table and reached for her glass of wine. “You’re a lawyer.”
“An intellectual-property lawyer.” Brandon leaned forward to pour more wine into his own glass.
“That’s still two years of school and a bar exam closer to being an expert than I am.”
“Do I think he intends to donate the money to Woodland Theater? Yes, I do.”
“Oh.” Laney tried to drown the sick feeling in her belly with a gulp of wine.
She hadn’t really believed he would do it. She hadn’t actually intended to take his money. She’d thought if she made it difficult enough for him to see Gran that he’d back off and leave them all in peace. She should have known better. Cains never backed down from a fight. They were in it until the end. She should have remembered that.
