The Father Factor. Lilian Darcy

thirty seconds later, he heard the smooth purr of her expensive car drift past him. They waved to each other again—casual hands, polite smiles—and he wondered what it was going to take for this to get easy.

      Go back and erase the past, maybe?

      Six years back, to Linnie and Ryan’s wedding, and then another five to the night of Shallis’s sixteenth birthday party, when he’d almost kissed her. That little word “almost” was the only thing that gave him any hope and any self-respect, when he looked back on his behavior that night.

      He’d wanted to, and Shallis at that point in her life would have practically fainted with ecstasy in his arms. Yeah, her crush had been as obvious to him as the sweet champagne on her breath, and as innocent and doomed as a baby doe caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

      She wouldn’t have turned him down, even though she wouldn’t have had a clue what was really happening. She’d have gone as far as he wanted, believed everything he said. The sweet-natured seventeen-year-old boy who’d been agonizingly and just as innocently in love with Shallis that year wouldn’t have had a chance.

      And Linnie, who’d considered herself just about engaged to Jared at the time, would never have known…unless Shallis herself had told her. Jared would have gone on his merry way, feeling like a winner after an easy victory, as usual.

      Two sisters wrapped around his little finger, when he didn’t have serious plans for either of them.

      But he hadn’t done it. He’d run his fingers softly through Shallis’s golden hair. His mouth had come within an inch of hers. She’d sighed up at him, her eyes huge and awed and gorgeous, as she waited.

      She was young enough to trust him, to have faith in her own feelings, and to believe that Linnie would forgive her such a betrayal, because this was love, and love conquered all.

      He didn’t understand how he’d been able to read her layered feelings so clearly, but somehow he had.

      Finally he’d muttered, “I can’t do this,” and he’d torn himself away, left with an enduring sense of protectiveness toward Shallis Duncan that he didn’t understand, either.

      It was one of the few moments in his life that had had the power to convince him, over the past six years, that he had any sense of honor in him at all.

       Chapter Four

       “H ere’s another thing that doesn’t make sense,” Sunny Duncan said to her daughter.

      “Show me, Mom.” Shallis hid a yawn behind her hand as she spoke.

      Last night’s function at the Grand Regency had run until after midnight, and she hadn’t gotten enough sleep. To be honest, though, her serial yawns weren’t happening just because her job had kept her up late.

      Instead, blame Jared.

      No, blame herself for the fact that he’d stuck around in her head all night, along with memories of those tingles running up her legs when he’d worked on her knee. She was shocked at how powerful the memories were. Fingers were just fingers. A knee was just a knee. This shouldn’t happen.

      With a quiet day at the hotel today, she’d taken the morning off work, but she’d known her mother was going over to Gram’s to sort through more of her things so she’d set her alarm for seven anyhow, and they’d both arrived at Gram’s house at eight.

      Now it was just after ten, and the two of them had worked for two hours without a break. Even with the windows open, the place felt dusty and musty because of the things they’d unearthed, and Shallis craved coffee and some kind of carbloaded, totally unacceptable snack.

      “It’s a bill for roof shingles,” her mother said, holding out a creased invoice. “From a slate company.”

      “Fifty-six Chestnut has a slate roof,” Shallis said.

      She shivered suddenly. What was that old saying? Someone is walking over my grave.

      “So you’ve been past the house?”

      “Yesterday evening. I didn’t tell you—” And I know why I didn’t tell you. Because I ran into Jared there, and I had his fingers on my knee all night. “—but I got out of the car to take a look at the place, and saw that the roof had been repaired with new slate. I actually thought—”

      She stopped, because it sounded too strange, and her mother finished the sentence for her, looking a little spooked, also.

      “—that your grandmother would choose slate if it was her place, even though it costs a bundle. I know. Of course she would.”

      “But it can’t be her place.”

      “Exactly. This is her place. My Lord, I grew up here, and I visited her here practically every day. I love this house, but good gosh, Shallie, it’s nowhere near as big and nice as the places on Chestnut Street. It doesn’t make sense that she’d own a house there that she never told us about, and never lived in, and never sold.”

      “It doesn’t, does it?” Shallis frowned.

      “Was anyone home?”

      “I think it’s unoccupied. Although from what I could see it hadn’t been that way for long. Since February, maybe.”

      “We need to take this invoice over to Mr. Starke’s office right away.” Sunny caught sight of her daughter’s expression. “Yes, and talk to his grandson. You managed it yesterday without hitting the man. I can probably do the same.”

      There was the definite suggestion that this would be an act of heroic restraint on Sunny’s part.

      Shallis hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Have you talked to Linnie since the weekend?”

      Sunny sighed. “Oh, trust me, honey, I know her cycle as well as she does. I called her last night and I could tell just by the sound of her voice that she’s not pregnant again this month.”

      “Nobody told me how bad it’s been hitting her.”

      “Did you really need to hear it, out in L.A., with so much else to think about?”

      “Yes, I did! I didn’t need to be shut out. She’s my sister. How can you stay close if you don’t know what’s going on? And nobody considered that. Not Ryan or you or dad. Nobody told me it was threatening her marriage.”

      “Threatening her marriage? No!” Mom looked shocked. “Her and Ryan? No! It’s not doing that.”

      “She seemed pretty upset about it last night, Mom. She stopped trying to pretend with me—the way you’ve all been pretending to me for months!”

      “What? The same way you didn’t admit to us how miserable you’d gotten in L.A?”

      Two points to Mom, to level the score.

      “Okay… The thing is,” Shallis said, “is whether Linnie’s going to get even more upset about what’s happening with her and Ryan if she has to deal with Jared being back in town as well. She says she’s not.”

      “But you don’t think we should believe her.”

      “I’m not sure that we should risk having her find out the hard way that she was wrong,” Shallis said slowly. “And I want to know how you feel, yourself, about Jared being involved in dealing with Gram’s estate. We could go to another lawyer. He offered me that option himself, and I said I’d discuss it with you. If you want to bail out, now’s the time. If you think there’s any risk to Linnie at all…”

      “I never trusted Jared when he and Linnie were going out. I wasn’t sorry when he dumped her, in my heart of hearts, even though she felt for a long time as if he’d broken hers.”

      “Why didn’t you trust him, Mom?”

      “Because he’s the type who does break hearts.”

      “So