he didn’t really have any incentive to mislead me. I asked him to take the case on a contingency basis. He wouldn’t have earned a cent if he hadn’t overturned the will.” She lifted her chin. “I can’t afford to contest this will frivolously, Mr. Logan.”
“Then don’t contest it at all,” he said softly. “Your uncle wanted a will that would stand up to any challenge, and that’s what I gave him.” Standing, he came around the side of the desk. “Look, Melanie, I’ve got an idea.”
His smile was warm and utterly charming, which made her instantly suspicious. Warm, charming people didn’t ordinarily work well—or very long—with Joshua Browning.
“Since you’ve acknowledged that I’m not technically a monster,” he said, his tone teasing. “why don’t we start over? We’ll sit down, you’ll agree to call me Clay, and we’ll talk this whole thing over calmly.”
She nodded slowly, banishing the suspicion. This was, after all, what she had hoped would happen. Calm. Cooperative. That wasn’t so hard. She could do that
“Good. How about over here, then?” Clay gestured to a large leather sofa directly under the skylight, the most cheerful spot in a room like this. Its only drawback was that it faced a small, strange display of antique handcuffs and thumbscrews that Joshua had collected over the years. More obsession with power.
But rather than quibble with Clay’s choice of seats—that was no way to start a cooperative chat—Melanie sat, settling herself at an angle to the display. If she didn’t turn her head much, she couldn’t even see the nasty little items.
When she leaned back, though, the sofa suddenly hissed and writhed beneath her. She leaped to her feet, startled beyond speech. A very large reddish-brown cat—so like the color of the sofa that she hadn’t even seen it—was huffily rearranging himself, angry at the disruption but too lazy to get out of the way.
Clay laughed and, reaching over, dumped the fat, furry feline unceremoniously onto the floor. “Get lost, Fudge. You’re in the way.”
“Damn cat,” the parrot complained from his perch. “Useless beast.”
Melanie stared from Copernicus to the cat, then turned her bewildered gaze to Clay. She finally found her voice. “Is that yours?”
Clay shook his head, patting the now-empty spot, encouraging her to take her seat again. “Good Lord, no. That lazy feline belonged to your uncle.”
“Joshua had a cat?” Melanie tried to picture it. For years, she and Nick had begged their uncle for a pet, but he’d always refused. Too much hair, too much trouble. And now—this? “My uncle hated cats. He never had a cat in his life.”
“I gave this one to him a year ago,” Clay said mildly.
“Fudge shared tuna sandwiches with him, ate them right off his plate.” He eyed her speculatively. “You’ve been gone a long time, you know. A lot can change in eight years.”
“Obviously.” She sank onto the sofa, a little dizzy suddenly, slightly disoriented. She felt like the blindfolded player in that old children’s game, twirled first this way and that until she had no idea which way she was facing.
It had been a mistake to come here. She should have waited until Monday, when she could have met Clay in his office. This place had too many memories, too much emotional residue. Right now, her thoughts were so off balanced that she wondered if she could even find the words to state her case.
“I think I’d better just come straight to the point,” she said, her voice hardly as steady as it should be. “Nick is at a ball game with a friend, but they’ll be back soon.”
“Okay,” he said, settling comfortably against the sofa.
“I’m listening.”
“Okay,” she echoed. Her voice sounded hollow in her ears.
“As you may have guessed, I want to talk to you about Joshua’s will. I…well, I wanted you to know that, in spite of what my uncle may have told you about me, I really am not a crazy teenager anymore. I’m twenty-four. I work. I live a perfectly sensible, even frugal…”
She hesitated. His gaze was curious, polite, but somehow unnerving. This was going to be much harder than she had anticipated. And perhaps, though these were the words she’d practiced in front of the mirror, she was going at it all wrong. Even she could hear that she still sounded angry, defensive.
She started over. “I want my inheritance, Clay. I believe I deserve it, and I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to convince you of that. Anything you need—credit reports, bank accounts, work references—I’m prepared to make it all available to you.”
He raised his brows. “This is a fairly dramatic turnaround, isn’t it? May I ask what happened to change your mind so completely?”
She flushed. “I’ve already admitted I overreacted. I’ve given this a lot of thought since that afternoon. In fact, I’ve thought of almost nothing else. I’ve realized that I have nothing to hide, nothing to fear from an inspection of my finances or my lifestyle.” She tried to smile. “You just reminded me that a lot can change in eight years. You’re right. Perhaps my uncle changed—I don’t know. But I do know that I changed, a lot. In fact, if you’ll give me a fair chance, you’ll discover that I’m a very different person from the headstrong girl my uncle remembered.”
That much was certainly true, she thought, aware of how bitter the words tasted in her mouth. The old Melanie could never have spoken such conciliatory sentences, not for a hundred million dollars. Even now, if it wasn’t for Nick, she might happily have suggested that Mr. Clay Logan take the damn Romeo Ruby and—
“I’d like nothing better than to discover just that,” he said. She had to admit he handled his victory well—his smile wasn’t the least big smug. “I believe Joshua wanted you to have his estate if you were ready to handle it. It would please me to be able to turn it over to you.” He leaned forward. “I’ll have my secretary send you a list of everything I’ll need first thing Monday morning. We can get started right away.”
But she didn’t stand. She couldn’t allow him to dismiss her—not yet. Her needs were more urgent than she had let on.
“How long do you think it will take?” she asked, trying to sound calm, unharried. “I mean, for you to complete your…evaluation and make a decision?”
He frowned. “I don’t know. It depends on what I find. As you know, the will stipulates that you have twelve months in which to prove that you should inherit. I can’t imagine that it could possibly take that long.” He tilted his head, studying her face. “Why—is there some urgency?”
“Yes,” she said uncomfortably, plucking at the buttons that quilted the leather of the sofa. “You see, I really need to move—to get out of the house I’m in.”
“Are you behind in your payments?”
She colored again. “No, no, of course not. I don’t get ‘behind’ in my payments. It’s just that I need to get into a better neighborhood—a safer neighborhood. I’ll sell my house, of course, but I’m afraid that will take too long. We need to move very soon.”
Uh-oh. She was babbling, not outlining the
