low bid, Pinnacle won the contract…and the stress of cutting the deal cost Dad his life.”
He heaved a deep sigh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Dara would have preferred that in place of the sympathetic, caring tone, he’d continued behaving like the coldhearted shark she’d thought him to be in the first place. At least then she wouldn’t be fighting tears right now.
She hadn’t let self-pity dictate her actions to this point, and she refused to allow it to control her emotions now. Dara looked around the office, forced herself to see the place she’d so often visited over the years. Dozens of times since the funeral, she’d tried to talk herself into coming here, packing up her father’s personal belongings and bringing them home. But there had always seemed to be a valid reason to put it off: weeds in the flower beds; students’ papers to grade; a trip to the vet with her cat, Lucy…
Everything looked exactly as he’d left it—a fact that surprised her, since she’d expected Kurt Turner would have assigned the office to someone else by now—except for the plaque on the wall behind his desk: In Memory of Jake Mackenzie, it read, Friend and Father to Us All. Despite her bravado, tears of pride stung her eyes as she acknowledged that he’d earned the affection and respect of those men and women who’d commissioned the trophy.
Kurt Turner may well be full owner of Pinnacle Construction now, but Mackenzie blood and sweat had built it. If she had to beg, borrow and spend every red cent she’d saved over the years, she’d replace that missing money.
And if it takes the rest of my days, I intend to clear his good name!
“I wish I could share your confidence, Miss Mackenzie, but it looks as though we have a clear case of embezzlement.”
Dara hadn’t realized she’d spoken her vow aloud, a fact that only served to increase her distress. She wanted to tell Lucas to get out, right this instant, before he defiled her father’s memory any further. Don’t shoot the messenger, she reminded herself, citing the age-old proverb; Kurt Turner was the enemy, not Noah Lucas.
He stood, an action that Dara supposed was his way of saying their meeting had ended.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me, Miss Mackenzie. I only wish we’d arrived at a more satisfactory outcome.” He extended his hand. “The only thing left for me to do is find out what he did with all that money.”
Did he really expect her to shake his hand, after he’d said something like that? Fury had Dara gripping the arms of the chair with such force that her knuckles ached. Rising slowly, she faced Lucas head-on. “I realize you have a job to do, Mr. Lucas,” she said, retrieving her coat and purse from the chair beside hers, “but so do I.” She stopped just short of the door and said over her shoulder, “Since we’ll be at loggerheads, you’ll forgive me if I don’t wish you luck.”
The moment she got home from her meeting with Noah Lucas, Dara phoned the pastor’s office. “If no one has volunteered to take over Naomi King’s Sunday-school class,” she said, “I’ll be happy to do it.”
“Wonderful!” the preacher thundered into her ear. “Stop by the church this evening, and I’ll see that you get the materials you’ll need.”
A little of Scarlett O’Hara’s mind-set, she thought, driving to the church, would go a long way in keeping her mind off her problems. She’d worry about the accusations against her father tomorrow. Meanwhile, in the battered cardboard box the pastor had handed her, Dara found keys that would unlock the church basement, the office and the classrooms. The student roster and Naomi’s lesson plans were inside, as well, along with a teacher’s manual that complemented the workbooks each student had been issued.
She’d taught Sunday school before, but not since her father’s death. Dara’s last class had been a spirited group of junior-high kids whose pointed questions and heartfelt opinions had left her exhausted yet exhilarated at the end of every class.
Teaching this class of first and second graders would be especially challenging, for Dara would, in effect, be setting down a foundation upon which they would hopefully build a lifetime of spiritual beliefs. In her mind, it was the answer to two prayers: the work involved with preparing for class would keep her from thinking about Noah Lucas’s investigation and the teaching itself would fulfill her personal belief that every parishioner should do his or her share to help the church.
She arrived half an hour earlier than necessary and organized the materials she’d use for today’s lesson. Then, sitting at the small wooden desk near the windows, Dara prayed: Father, be with me as I help these youngsters learn about Your will and Your way. Open my mind and my heart to Your word and keep me alert so I’ll not miss even one opportunity to glorify You in their eyes. Amen.
Her intent had been to review her lesson plan until the children arrived. To the casual observer, it would appear she was doing exactly that. But church and Sunday school were the furthest things from her mind as she paged through the teacher’s manual on her desk. Rather, Noah Lucas occupied her thoughts. Know Thine Enemy hadn’t become a cliché because it was bad advice, she’d told herself. And during the past week, she’d made it her business to learn as much as possible about the man who had seemed determined to prove her father had been a thief. Dara had asked anyone who might have come into contact with Noah why he’d come to Baltimore, if he was married, whether he had children—surely a good-looking man like that was married.
Dara lurched with surprise when the fresh-faced sixand seven-year-olds, dressed in their Sunday finest, filed into the room, giggling and chattering as they found places to sit. The moment she saw the wide-eyed innocent faces she knew volunteering to teach this class had been the right thing to do.
There was Pete Chapman and little Tina Nelson; Donny Murphy and Marie Latrell. She’d gone to school with Sammy O’Dell’s father, played softball with Lisa Johnston’s mother. She knew every child in the room…
Except for two.
Angie and Bobby Lucas.
Alice, the pastor’s secretary, escorted the children in and in a discreet tone filled Dara in on their background. The Lucas children had come to town a year or so ago when their widowed father decided to make Columbia, Maryland, the headquarters for his CPA and financial services firm. When he’d registered as a parishioner, Noah Lucas had told Alice he hoped being based in the Baltimore-Washington corridor would triple his clientele within two years. Dara knew enough about the area to believe he could accomplish his goal if he attacked everything the way he’d sunk his teeth into that nasty matter at Pinnacle.
She watched his children carefully. The boy, blond, blue eyed, was the spitting image of his father. Would he be tall and muscular someday? With a thick burnished mustache and a barrel chest?
Dara turned her attention to Noah Lucas’s daughter. His wife must have been a dark-haired, dark-eyed, delicate beauty, if her little girl was any indicator.
What must it be like, Dara wondered, growing up without a mother? She’d been twenty-seven when her own mother had died two years ago, and still Dara missed the maternal love that had flowed steadily and easily from parent to child. But to be so small, so young and vulnerable, when death stole a beloved parent…Dara’s heart ached for these two motherless children.
They
