his family background and his Harvard business degree had helped influence the man in his favor. Losing Diane had changed John, had made him cold. Now her marriage of less than two years seemed to be in trouble. She’d beseeched John to come to her sister’s house for a meal so that she could ask him for help. How could he have refused, even with the risk of scandal? But the urgency of the situation seemed lessened upon his arrival, because whatever her motives had been in inviting him, she’d told him nothing. Least of all did she ask for any sort of help. She had only said that she regretted her marriage and that she still had a tenderness for him. But now they’d caused this terrible gossip that would threaten her good name, as well as his.
“Are you listening to me?” Claire persisted, dragging him back to the present. “It isn’t just your reputation you’re risking, it’s Mr. Calverson’s and hers—and even the bank’s.”
He gave her a hard look. “I’m not risking anyone’s reputation. But I can’t think how this problem, if it is a problem, has anything to do with you, Claire,” he remarked coolly.
“That’s true,” she had to admit. “But you’re my uncle’s friend as well as his banker. In a way, you’re my friend, too. I would hate to see your reputation compromised.”
“Would you, really? Why?”
She flushed and averted her face.
He leaned back, watching her with faint affection and touched by her concern. “Do you have a secret regard for me, Claire? A tendresse?” He teased her softly. “How very exciting!”
The flush grew much worse. She watched feverishly as the familiar Gothic lines of the bank came closer. He would get out of the carriage—and she would be alone with her embarrassment. Why, oh, why, had she opened her mouth?
He saw her gripping her purse with both hands. While he disliked her intrusion into his privacy, she was just a sweet child whose observations shouldn’t upset him. He indulged her more than any woman he’d ever known. He’d have thrown a man out of his carriage for less than what she’d just said to him. But she had a kind heart and she cared about him. It was difficult to be angry about that. She kindled protective feelings in him, too.
If it hadn’t been for Diane, he could well have cherished this child. He leaned closer as the carriage began to slow down. “Well, Claire,” he persisted in a deep drawl, “are you besieged with tender feelings for me?”
“The only feeling I have right now is a consuming desire to lay an iron pipe across your skull,” she said under her breath.
“Miss Lang!” he said with mock outrage, and made it worse by chuckling.
She turned and glared at him, her gray eyes sparkling with temper. “Ridicule me, then. You make me ashamed that I was ever worried for you,” she said flatly. “Ruin your life, sir. I will never concern myself with it again.”
She banged against the ceiling with the handle of her parasol and was out of the carriage before he could do anything more than call her name.
She fumbled the parasol open and got onto the wooden sidewalk, which was a relief from the mud, at least. In front of the bank, which was about to open, she spotted Kenny Blake, a friend of hers from school days, and ran to greet him.
“Oh, Kenny! Thank goodness I found you! Can you give me a ride home? Our buggy’s axle broke.”
“You’re not hurt?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Just a little shaken, that’s all.” She laughed. “Fortunately, it was very near the blacksmith’s shop and the livery stable. I was able to get help, but they were so crowded that nobody could spare the time to drive me home.”
“You could have hired a coach.”
She shook her head with a rueful smile. “I haven’t any money,” she said honestly. “Uncle spent the last little bit we had on new spark plugs for the motorcar, and until his pension comes, we have to be very careful.”
“I can make you a loan,” he offered. And he could have, because Kenny had a very good job managing a men’s clothing shop in town.
“No, you can’t. Just give me a ride.”
He grinned, and his plain face lit up. He was medium height, blond, blue-eyed, and very shy. But he and Claire got along well, and he wasn’t shy with her. She brought out all the best in him.
“Wait until I finish my business in here, and I certainly shall,” he assured her.
She let go of his arm, feeling cold eyes on her back. She glanced around at John Hawthorn in his expensive suit and bowler hat, his silver-headed cane in one hand as he leaned elegantly on its length and waited for Mr. Calverson to unlock the door from the inside. Calverson trusted no one except himself with that key. He was very possessive about things he owned—something that John would have done well to have remembered, Claire thought.
At the stroke of nine, Mr. Calverson opened the huge oak doors and stood aside to let the others enter. His eyes were on his gold pocket watch, which was suspended from a thick gold-link chain. He nodded as he closed the case and stuck it back in the watch pocket of his vest. He looked rather comical to Claire, the short, stout little man with his flowing blond-and-silver mustache and his bald head. She really couldn’t imagine any woman finding him attractive, much less a beauty like Diane. But then, only John thought she’d married old man Calverson for love. Everyone else in Atlanta knew that Diane had expensive tastes—and that her family’s ruined fortunes had left her, at the age of twenty-two, with no tangible assets save her beauty. She had to marry well to keep her sisters and her mother in fancy clothes and insure that the elegant mansion on Ponce de León kept running smoothly. But Mr. Calverson had more money than she could ever spend. So why was she risking it all for a fling with her old flame John?
“The bank isn’t in trouble, is it?” she asked when she and Kenny were in his buggy on the way to Claire’s home.
“What? Why, certainly not,” he said, shocked. “Why do you ask?”
She shrugged. “No reason. I just wondered if it was solvent, that’s all.”
“Mr. Calverson has managed it quite well since he came here a few years past,” he reminded her. “He’s prosperous…anyone can see that.”
So he seemed to be. But it was a little strange that a man who came from farming stock should amass such a fortune in so short a time. Of course, he did have access to investment advice, and he foreclosed on land and houses and such.
“Our Mr. Hawthorn was glaring at you,” Kenny remarked.
“He gave me a ride and insulted me.”
His hands jerked on the reins and the horse protested loudly. “I shall speak to him!”
“No, Kenny, dear. Not that sort of insult. Mr. Hawthorn wouldn’t soil his hands by putting them on me. I meant that we had a sort of disagreement, that’s all.”
“About what?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss it,” she said stiffly.
“Well, it’s not hard to guess about what,” he remarked. “Everyone knows he’s panting after the bank president’s wife. You’d think
