money. He’d been too smart to think she could be lured into such a ridiculous scheme with money. But the house, her ties to it, her need for the continuity of family. That’s what he’d hooked her with.
Now she had to leave Manhattan behind for six months. Oh, she’d run into the city for a few hours here and there, but it was hardly the same as living in the center of things. She’d always liked that—being in the center, surrounded by movement, being able to watch and become involved whenever she liked. Just as she’d always liked long weekends in the solitude of Jolley’s Folley.
She’d been raised that way, to enjoy and make the most of whatever environment she was in. Her parents were gypsies. Wealth had meant they’d traveled first class instead of in covered wagons. If there’d been campfires, there had also been a servant to gather kindling, but the spirit was the same.
Before she’d been fifteen, Pandora had been to more than thirty countries. She’d eaten sushi in Tokyo, roamed the moors in Cornwall, bargained in Turkish markets. A succession of tutors had traveled with them so that by her calculations, she’d spent just under two years in a classroom environment before college.
The exotic, vagabond childhood had given her a taste for variety—in people, in foods, in styles. And oddly enough the exposure to widely diverse cultures and mores had formed in her an unshakable desire for a home and a sense of belonging.
Though her parents liked to meander through countries, recording everything with pen and film, Pandora had missed a central point. Where was home? This year in Mexico, next year in Athens. Her parents made a name for themselves with their books and articles on the unusual, but Pandora wanted roots. She’d discovered she’d have to find them for herself.
She’d chosen New York, and in her way, Uncle Jolley.
Now, because her uncle and his home had become her central point, she was agreeing to spend six months living with a man she could hardly tolerate so that she could inherit a fortune she didn’t want or need. Life, she’d discovered long ago, never moved in straight lines.
Jolley McVie’s ultimate joke, she thought as she turned up the long drive toward his Folley. Well, he could throw them together, but he couldn’t make them stick.
Still, she’d have felt better if she’d been sure of Michael. Was it the lure of the millions of dollars, or an affection for an old man that would bring him to the Catskills? She knew his Logan’s Run was in its very successful fourth year, and that he’d had other lucrative ventures in television. But money was a seduction itself. After all, her Uncle Carlson had more than he could ever spend, yet he was already taking the steps for a probate of the will.
That didn’t worry her. Uncle Jolley had believed in hiring the best. If Fitzhugh had drawn up the will, it was air-tight. What worried her was Michael Donahue.
Because of the trap she’d fallen into, she’d found herself thinking of him a great deal too much over the past couple of days. Ally or enemy, she wasn’t sure. Either way, she was going to have to live with him. Or around him. She hoped the house was big enough.
By the time she arrived, she was worn-out from the drive and the lingering head cold. Though her equipment and supplies had been shipped the day before, she still had three cases in the car. Deciding to take one at a time, Pandora popped the trunk, then simply looked at Jolley’s Folley.
He’d built it when he’d been forty, so the house was already over a half century old. It went in all directions at once, as if he’d never been able to decide where he wanted to start and where he wanted to finish. The truth about Jolley, she admitted, was that he’d never wanted to finish. The project, the game, the puzzle, was always more interesting to him before the last pieces were in place.
Without the wings, it might have been a rather somber and sedate late-nineteenth-century mansion. With them, it was a mass of walls and corners, heights and widths. There was no symmetry, yet to Pandora it had always seemed as sturdy as the rock it had been built on.
Some of the windows were long, some were wide, some of them were leaded and some sheer. Jolley had made up his mind then changed it again as he’d gone along.
The stone had come from one of his quarries, the wood from one of his lumberyards. When he’d decided to build a house, he’d started his own construction firm. McVie Construction, Incorporated was one of the five biggest companies in the country.
It struck her suddenly that she owned half of Jolley’s share in the company and her mind spun at how many others. She had interests in baby oil, steel mills, rocket engines and cake mix. Pandora lifted the case and set her teeth. What on earth had she let herself in for?
From the upstairs window, Michael watched her. The jacket she wore was big and baggy with three vivid colors, blue, yellow and pink patched in. The wind caught at her slacks and rippled them from thigh to ankle. She wasn’t looking teary-eyed and pale this time, but grim and resigned. So much the better. He’d been tempted to comfort her during their uncle’s funeral. Only the knowledge that too much sympathy for a woman like Pandora was fatal had prevented him.
He’d known her since childhood and had considered her a spoiled brat from the word go. Though she’d often been off for months at a time on one of her parents’ journalistic safaris, they’d seen enough of each other to feed a mutual dislike. Only the fact that she had cared for Jolley had given Michael some tolerance for her. And the fact, he was forced to admit, that she had more honesty and humanity in her than any of their other relations.
There had been a time, he recalled, a brief time, during late adolescence that he’d felt a certain…stirring for her. A purely shallow and physical teenage hunger, Michael assured himself. She’d always had an intriguing face; it could be unrelentingly plain one moment and striking the next, and when she’d hit her teens…well, that had been a natural enough reaction. And it had passed without incident. He now preferred a woman with more subtlety, more gloss and femininity—and shorter fangs.
Whatever he preferred, Michael left the arranging of his own office to wander downstairs.
“Charles, did my shipment come?” Pandora pulled off her leather driving gloves and dropped them on a little round table in the hall. Since Charles was there, the ancient butler who had served her uncle since before she was born, she felt a certain pleasure in coming.
“Everything arrived this morning, miss.” The old man would have taken her suitcase if she hadn’t waved him away.
“No, don’t fuss with that. Where did you have them put everything?”
“In the garden shed in the east yard, as you instructed.”
She gave him a smile and a peck on the cheek, both of which pleased him. His square bulldog’s face grew slightly pink. “I knew I could count on you. I didn’t tell you before how happy I was that you and Sweeney are staying. The place wouldn’t be the same without you serving tea and Sweeney baking cakes.”
Charles managed to pull his back a bit straighter. “We wouldn’t think about going anywhere else, miss. The master would have wanted us to stay.”
But made it possible for them to go, Pandora mused. Leaving each of them three thousand dollars for every year of service. Charles had been with Jolley since the house was built, and Sweeney had come some ten years later. The bequest would have been more than enough for each to retire on. Pandora smiled. Some weren’t made for retirement.
“Charles, I’d love some tea,” she began, knowing if she didn’t
