Overnight Heiress

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She paled slightly, then sank onto the ledge beside him. “And so it starts?”

“Soon, Meg. Soon.” He pulled a sheaf of papers from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “I’ve dictated a statement based on what you told me yesterday. If you’ll sign it, I’ll send it on to them. That ought to keep them quiet for a while.”

Meg took the pages. When she looked up from them, her eyes were bright with relief. “You kept it to the minimum.”

“That’s all they need for now. Later, yes, they will ask more questions than you’ll ever want to answer about your kidnapping. But this will keep them away until you’ve had a chance to orient yourself. And until you’ve had time to confer with the Carlton lawyers.”

“When?” she asked.

“Tomorrow. Edward’s personal attorney, Fallon Teague, is flying in late tonight I’ll delay this report as long as I can so that he can begin preparations before the Stemples or Blake are questioned—”

“Blake? Why would they question him?”

He heard the thread of panic in her voice, quickly masked, and cursed himself for causing it. “Even if they don’t, Meg, he will hear the news when it’s released. And it will be released. Or leaked. This was too big a case for someone to pass up the opportunity for publicity. But for now we’ve all agreed to play it low-key and quiet.”

“You mean, not tell?”

He nodded.

“I—Then I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t tell Patrick any more than you did. I mean, about a family emergency taking me out of town. I...thank you for calling him last night, Lucas. I didn’t think of it until very late. He’s been a good friend to me. He deserved to know a lot more than just that I won’t be back.”

“And he will, Meg. In fact, I don’t see any reason why you can’t tell him...but Fallon might, so please wait until after you talk to him tomorrow before you begin contacting your friends.”

“Lucas—”

The breeze once again caught a wayward curl and teased it across Meg’s cheek. Without thinking, Lucas lifted his fingers to it and eased it back in place. He heard Meg suck in a startled breath before he realized what he had done, but by then it was too late. His fingers rested on her cheek. She closed her eyes and turned her face slightly, into his touch, before her eyes flew open and her mouth parted in a silent question.

Not now, he told himself. Maybe not ever. Meg Carlton was a warm and loving woman, and it would be too easy to take advantage of her confusion or even her gratitude in her present mood. Lucas commanded his fingers to move from the softness of her cheek, to reach instead for the statement she held gripped in one hand. “If you’ll sign this,” he said, “I can get it in tonight’s mail instead of faxing it.”

Yes. Confusion. He saw that in her eyes. And he saw her understanding of his delaying tactics, with her and with the FBI.

“Of course,” she said, standing. “And tomorrow morning? You will be here, won’t you?”

Was it a question or an order? Lucas couldn’t be sure. It seemed this fragile-looking woman wasn’t quite so unprepared to take her place in the Carlton empire as she thought. He shouldn’t come back—Fallon was more than capable of guiding her through the morass of paperwork and protocol facing her—but he knew that nothing short of a major disaster would keep him from her side during this initial interview.

“Yes,” he told her. “Yes, I will be here.”

Four

Meg sighed with pleasure as the soft wool crepe settled over her body. Oh, yes. She could get to like this. She soothed the softly draping emerald green skirt in place and glanced in the full-length mirror in her dressing room.

She’d done easier things than that which she would be called upon to do in just minutes, but she’d done harder ones, too. It helped, a lot, that thanks to Marianna Richards and the experts she had called in, Meg now looked the part she was being called upon to play.

She touched her hair, not yet daring to disturb the new style. It was shorter than she had ever worn it, but feathered so that it looked longer and fuller. And it accented her eyes and cheekbones in a way that made her wonder if some fairy magic hadn’t been at work on those, too, while she slept.

At a discreet knock on her door, Meg slipped her feet into the two-inch heels Marianna had insisted upon and which brought her height to an even six feet. Old tapes played hard and loud. She found herself wanting to kick off the shoes and slump to hide her height. Instead, she threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin.

Edward’s housekeeper waited patiently in the hall. She wasn’t an unkind woman, or a suspicious one, just aloof. Even though Jennie had affectionately referred to her as Tommy, Meg hadn’t yet figured out how to chip away any of the woman’s layer of strict professional decorum. “Okay, Mrs. Tompkins,” Meg said. “Lead me to the wolves.”

The wolves waited in Edward’s study, a wonderful room, full of leather and dark polished walnut. There were three of them, Fallon Teague and two men who accompanied him. She studied them from the open doorway before entering the room and easily identified Teague. She recognized the type from the late-lunch crowd at Patrick’s. Strictly Type A, power lunch, constantly accessible either by cellular phone or pager—except she didn’t think that Fallon Teague would stoop to carrying his own phone. No, one of the other two would do that, as well as carry any necessary papers.

She searched for Lucas and, yes, found him standing in the back of the room against one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Her heart gave that funny little rush it had the day before, when he had touched her cheek, and suddenly the men in the room didn’t seem nearly so intimidating. She stared at Lucas until he shifted and turned slightly and saw her in the doorway. His eyes acknowledged her presence as a small smile—of approval?—softened the frown that had darkened his face.

She took the one step that placed her in the room, and Fallon and the two men looked up from the cluster of chairs in front of Edward’s massive desk.

Type A and suspicious.

She returned their steady appraisal.

First Fallon and then his associates stood. All remained silent, as she did, waiting.... Waiting for what?

Finally a shadow of a smile rewarded her patience. “Miss Carlton,” Fallon said, “welcome home.”

Meg sank into the deep leather chair beside the fireplace in Edward’s study after the men left. For a first meeting, it hadn’t been too bad, a few affidavits, a little uncomfortable conversation and, until Lucas had put a stop to it, a gentle probing by the attorneys about those events of twenty-five years ago that remained shrouded by the mists of time.

There would be more, much more, the next day and in the days afterward, as Meg resumed a life she had never dreamed of. As she did what she knew now she must do—protect Danny from the claims his father and even the grandparents who had turned their backs on him quite probably would make on him and his interest in the Carlton wealth if anything should happen to her.