gestured, pulling the door open for her. “The office is here. I don’t suppose you want me to accompany you inside, so I’ll wait and walk you home.”
“That’s not necessary.” Her chin came up at the suggestion that she might need an escort.
“Maybe not, but I’m waiting.” He smiled at her baffled glare. “Take your time.”
She whirled and stalked inside, letting the door bang behind her.
He turned his back on the plate glass window that showed the outer office of Courtland and Broadbent, surveying the street. Traffic flowed by, tourists thronged. Nothing out of the ordinary.
It had been an accident. What else could it have been? It was ridiculous to go putting familiar faces on lurking dangers. When Corrie came back, he’d do his best to convince her that it had been an accident. The last thing they needed was to have her run to Baxter with tales of assault.
He didn’t have to wait long. He heard the door swing and turned. Corrie came down the single step, her expression—what? Curiously blank, that was the closest he could come.
“Corrie? What’s wrong?” He took her arm, and his touch seemed to recall her.
She focused on him, frowning. “The lawyers. Neither of them is in today.”
“Then why—”
“The receptionist says no one from the office called asking for me. The message was a fake.”
“Well, that didn’t accomplish much.” Corrie frowned at the stout figure of Mrs. Andrews, retreating back to her kitchen domain.
“I’m never sure how much she actually hears.” Lucas held the door for her. “Let’s go into the garden to talk.”
“We don’t have anything to talk about. Mrs. Andrews was a dead end, whether she’s telling the truth or not.”
But she walked into the garden anyway. Lucas’s presence was comforting, although the very idea would probably be repugnant to him. He had no desire to be her rescuer, any more than she wanted him to be, but he was.
Lucas waited until she sat at the small table near the roses and then took the chair opposite her. More wrought iron, but green this time instead of black. A faint breeze ruffled the roses, sending their rich scent through the air.
“I can’t see any reason why Mrs. Andrews would lie about the call,” he said.
Corrie lifted her eyebrows. She wasn’t quite as accepting of the woman’s motives as Lucas seemed to be. But then, he might have a good reason to pretend to believe her.
“Would she lie if Deidre told her to? Or if it was Deidre’s voice on the phone?”
Lucas’s face tightened, lines deepening around his eyes. “Why do you have it in for Deidre? Just because Mrs. Andrews said it was a woman on the phone, that doesn’t mean it was she.”
“Deidre has been pretty open about her feelings. Maybe you think she wouldn’t do anything rash, but I’m not so sure.”
“That’s ridiculous. Anyway, I’d have noticed Deidre in the crowd.” He glared at her as if she were to blame. “I’m telling you, she wasn’t there.”
Her temper flared at his stubbornness. “Somebody set me up. Why not Deidre?”
“This could have been just coincidence.” But his expression said he didn’t believe that himself.
“Right.” She let the contempt in her voice say it all. “If not Deidre…” A chill brushed her spine. “Mrs. Andrews would say anything her employer told her to, wouldn’t she?”
“Baxter? That’s even more ridiculous. Baxter’s the one who brought you here. Why would he want to get rid of you?”
“I can’t imagine. But then, I haven’t been able to understand why he does anything.”
She thought of the story Lydia had told, about the portrait of Trey. A man who would try to destroy the only thing he had left of his dead son would do anything. The chill intensified in spite of the warm, humid air. No, she was wrong. The portrait hadn’t been the only thing left of his dead son. She was.
“Baxter may be autocratic.” Lucas’s frown deepened. Was he thinking of something specific? “But he never acts irrationally.”
“Unless you agree with Deidre that he was irrational to bring me here.”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t understand it, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a good reason.”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that. But if you eliminate Deidre and Mr. Manning from planning today’s little accident, the pool of candidates is pretty small.”
She watched his expression as he tried to cope with that. He didn’t like it, but she’d figured out by now that Lucas had a certain innate honesty. That honesty wouldn’t let him pretend, however much he might want to, that she was wrong.
Poor Lucas. He didn’t want to be allied to her in any way, but he also couldn’t connive at violence. That left him in the unenviable position of trying to protect her and defend his family at the same time.
“Daddy!” Jason plunged out of a dense clump of azaleas and darted toward his father. “I didn’t know you were home yet. Hi, Cousin Corrie.”
Lucas’s face softened at the sight of his son. He put his arm around the boy and drew him close. “What are you doing out here? Aren’t you supposed to be with your grandmother?”
Jason frowned, looking for a moment very like his father. “I guess.”
“Why aren’t you?”
For a moment longer the child pouted, and she had a sense of strong emotions withheld. Then the words seemed to burst out of him. “Grandma never lets me do anything! She just wants me to sit and work puzzles and read storybooks. That’s no fun.”
Lucas brushed fine blond hair back from his son’s forehead. “I thought you liked puzzles. Grandma got you that new dinosaur puzzle, remember?”
“I know. But I already worked it, and I wanted to play cowboys in the garden.” He flashed a glance toward Corrie. “Cousin Corrie understands. She’s a cowgirl.”
She shook her head, smiling, not willing to be drawn into their dispute. “Only once in a while. Most of the time I wait tables.”
“I want to learn to ride. Please, Daddy.”
Lucas looked troubled, and she wondered what really lay behind this apparent dispute over what Jason could do. “Grandma thinks it’s not a good idea.”
“Just ’cause I have asthma, she doesn’t want me to have any fun.”
“Jason, you know that’s not true. Grandma loves you very much.”
Judging by Jason’s mutinous expression,
