Quinn and Associates, Attorneys at Law, had been warned not to make Jonas wait. Young, faultlessly groomed and predictably gorgeous, she glanced up when he got off the elevator, which opened about ten yards from her desk. Her stunning china-blue eyes went round as dinner plates as she regarded him across the expanse of parquet floor and good Oriental rugs.
She bounced to her feet. “Mr. Bravo. This way. Mr. McAllister is waiting for you.” She bustled to the big elaborately carved double doors that led to the inner sanctum and quickly pulled one of the doors wide. Jonas gave her a curt nod and went through, heading down the wide wood-paneled hallway toward Ambrose McAllister’s corner office.
The receptionist rushed along in his wake. “Um, Mr. Bravo. Mr. McAllister asked me to show you to the—”
Jonas froze her in her tracks with a sharp backward glance. “I can find my own way.”
“Oh. Well. Of course, whatever you—”
“Thanks.” He didn’t have to look behind him again to know that she had returned to the reception area where she belonged. He passed a few secretaries’ nooks. Ambrose’s minions looked up, muttered swift, respectful, Hello, Mr. Bravos and went back to what they were supposed to be doing.
Ambrose’s door opened just before Jonas reached it. The lawyer who had handled the personal legal affairs of the Los Angeles Bravos for over three decades didn’t miss a beat.
“Jonas. Here you are.” Ambrose took Jonas’s hand and shook it. Though he was well into his seventies now, Ambrose McAllister’s handshake remained firm and his bearing proud. “So good to see you.” Silver brows drew together in a perfectly orchestrated expression of concern—real concern, in this case, Jonas knew. Ambrose honestly cared for the members of the Bravo family and had become something of a family friend over the years. But he was a lawyer, and a damn good one. Good lawyers knew how to manufacture appropriate expressions on demand.
“How are you?” Ambrose asked.
“Fine.”
Ambrose shook his head sadly. “I know I already said this at the funeral, but Blythe is missed. Greatly.”
Jonas dipped his head in acknowledgement of the lawyer’s sympathetic words. Since the death of his mother, Blythe Hamilton Bravo, seven days before, Jonas had heard a lot of condolences and he’d done a lot of nodding in acknowledgement.
“And how is that beautiful little sister of yours?”
“Mandy’s doing well.”
Jonas’s sister, Amanda, had been adopted by his mother two years ago. At the time of the adoption, Jonas had been furious at Blythe. The way he saw it then, she had no business taking on an infant at an age when most women were well into their grandmothering years.
But Jonas’s fury had not lasted. How could it? Mandy was…special. She had the knack for melting even the hardest of hearts. Jonas still wasn’t sure how she’d done it, but somehow, the sprite had managed to break down even his considerable defenses. Within a month of the baby’s coming into their lives, Jonas had accepted his fate. He loved his little sister and he would do anything for her.
Ambrose leaned closer and spoke more confidentially. “You know, don’t you, that if there is anything I can do, not only as your family’s attorney, but as a—”
“I do know, Ambrose. And I appreciate your thoughtfulness.”
“Damn it.” Ambrose lowered his voice even further.
“She was too young. Only sixty…” Blythe had died of a particularly virulent form of leukemia. It had struck suddenly and killed her within two months of the original diagnosis. “I know it must be difficult, for both you and the child.”
“Honestly Ambrose, we’re managing.”
The lines of concern between the silver brows deepened—and then relaxed. “Well. I’m glad to hear it.” Ambrose clapped Jonas on the arm and let go of his hand. “Let’s move on to the West Conference Room, shall we? We’ll be more comfortable there.”
It was not Jonas’s intention to become comfortable. “Ambrose. What’s this about?”
Instead of answering, Ambrose said mildly, “Right this way.” He herded Jonas around the corner and down another wide hallway. Jonas allowed himself to be led, though he disliked having his questions evaded almost as much as he disliked being made to wait.
And this was not the first time Ambrose had refused to give him answers on this subject. Last Friday, when the lawyer had called to set up this meeting, he would only say that it concerned Blythe’s will. Before her death, Blythe had asked Ambrose to invite Jonas to his offices. Certain issues required discussion.
“What issues?” Jonas had demanded.
“Monday, Jonas. My office. Two o’clock?”
Jonas had tried to get the lawyer to simply come out to the house or drop in at Bravo, Incorporated. Ambrose had held firm. He’d said that Blythe had felt that a neutral setting would be better for everyone.
“Why a neutral setting?”
“I’ll explain it all on Monday.”
“Ambrose. Who the hell is everyone?”
But Ambrose wouldn’t say. “Please forgive me, Jonas. You’ll have all the information you need on Monday. At my office.”
Jonas had let the lawyer off the hook. After all, the man was only doing his job, following his client’s wishes—the client being Jonas’s exasperating mother, in this case. Who could say what Blythe Bravo had gotten up to in those last grim weeks before her death?
“All right, Ambrose. Monday. Two in the afternoon.” He’d ended the call.
So now it was Monday. It was 2:04 p.m.
And some answers had better be forthcoming.
“Here we are,” Ambrose said cheerfully, stopping before another pair of carved double doors. A bronze plaque on the wall to the left of the doors read, West Conference. Ambrose slid adroitly around Jonas and opened one of the doors. “After you.”
Jonas didn’t see the kennel keeper until he’d stepped over the threshold.
She was sitting all the way down at the end of the table, in one of the twelve high-backed cordovan leather swivel chairs, her back to the west wall, which consisted of one huge pane of glare-treated glass. Beyond the glass lay Century City in all its smoggy splendor, high-rises shimmering beneath the August sun.
The kennel keeper, whose name was Emma Lynn Hewitt, wore a snug-fitting jacket the color of orange sherbet. If she had a shirt on under the jacket, Jonas couldn’t see it. He could, however, see a tempting swell of cleavage. Her silky pale blond hair curled, soft and shiny and unrestrained, around her very pretty face. It wasn’t long, that hair, only chin-length, but still, it always managed to look just a little mussed, a little wild. Though the conference table blocked his view, he knew without having to look that her tight, short skirt would be as orange as her jacket. And that her shoes would have very high heels and open toes.
By all rights, Emma Lynn Hewitt should have looked
