The Bravo Billionaire. Christine Rimmer

wasn’t about to talk to the Hewitt woman on his mother’s phone in his mother’s rooms with his mother’s things around him, reminding him all too poignantly of what he’d told his little sister earlier that evening: that Blythe was not coming back.

      He found a white leather address book in a drawer beneath the phone and got the numbers from it, entering all three in the palm planner. Then he returned to his study.

      He sat down at his desk again, picked up the phone and glanced at the serpentine clock on the mantel. It was nearing eleven. He called the home number.

      She answered on the third ring. “Hello?” He heard fuzziness in her voice, a slight slurring, as if he’d wakened her. An image flashed through his mind: the kennel keeper in bed, wearing something skimpy and eyeflayingly bright, the Yorkies snuggled in close, one on either side of her.

      He blinked to clear the image. “How long is ‘a few days’?” he asked in a gentle and reasonable tone.

      Evidently, the sound of his voice was enough to banish sleep, because she said his name—his given name—flatly, all traces of fuzziness gone. “Jonas.”

      “How long is ‘a few days’?”

      He heard her take in a breath and sigh as she let it out.

      He began again. “I asked how—”

      “I heard you.” She heaved another sigh. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know yet. I have to think this over. I have to…consider what all this will mean.”

      “What’s to consider?”

      “Plenty. I know you don’t believe me, but this was a pretty big shock to me, too.”

      He tapped his palm planner lightly on the desktop. And then he set it down and stared at it, not really seeing it, reluctantly coming to grips with the fact that he did believe her. He’d seen the look of sick astonishment on her face when he’d entered that conference room and she looked up from the new will. He’d wanted to think she was in on his mother’s scheme. But now he’d had some time to mull it over, he supposed he had to admit that that angle just didn’t add up.

      If she’d been in on it, why would she be giving him the runaround now?

      She wouldn’t—unless she was hoping he’d make her an offer.

      Fine. An offer, then. “How much do you want?”

      She didn’t say anything.

      So he went ahead and started laying it out for her. “Sign an agreement giving up all claim to my sister and I’ll pay you—”

      “Don’t even tell me.”

      “Why not?”

      “Because I can’t take any money from you.”

      “Of course you can take money from me.”

      “No, I cannot.”

      “Why?”

      “Blythe was my friend. I can’t take money to betray my friend.”

      “This is no betrayal.”

      “To me it would be. I’m sorry. I won’t take your money.”

      “It seems to me, Ms. Hewitt, that if there has been any betrayal in this situation, it’s already occurred.”

      “Pardon me?”

      “The way I see it, my mother betrayed all of us. You. Me. And Mandy, too.”

      “Your mama did not betray anybody.” There was indignation in her voice now. Indignation with a Texas twang.

      Jonas rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was getting a headache between his eyes. “All right. Perhaps I’ve used the wrong word. How about tricked? Is that better? Or maybe just plain old screwed.”

      “Blythe Bravo did not—”

      “She screwed us, Ms. Hewitt. Or at least, she screwed me. And my sister.”

      “That is not true. Your mama absolutely without a doubt wanted only the best for you. And for your sister.”

      “The best. That would be you?”

      There was silence on the line again. Finally, the dog groomer said softly, “Well, I guess your mama thought so, now didn’t she?”

      Jonas picked up his palm planner and then set it down. He looked at the spines of the books on a shelf about ten feet from where he sat—all gold-tooled leather, beautifully bound. A number of harsh remarks were passing through his brain, things to the effect that he did not consider a woman who’d been raised in a trailer in some place called Alta Lobo, Texas, to be the best thing for him.

      He wisely did not let those remarks get out of his mouth.

      “So what do we do now, Ms. Hewitt?”

      “Well, I don’t know yet.”

      “Ms. Hewitt, you are trying my patience.”

      “You know, I got that. I got that loud and clear.”

      “I could make you a very rich woman.”

      “Well, that is real nice. But no thanks. I mean it. I truly do. I will call you, as soon as I can make up my mind what to do.”

      Right then, he heard one short, sharp bark. “Oh, sweetie,” she said. For a minute, he thought she was talking to him. But then she did talk to him, and he realized the difference. “That was Ted. He says hi.”

      Damn her. She had the dogs. She wasn’t getting him or his sister.

      “You have yourself a nice night now,” she said.

      “Ms. Hewitt—”

      “’Bye…” The line went dead.

      Jonas pulled the phone from his ear and stared at the thing. She had hung up on him.

      Nobody hung up on him.

      Except, apparently, for Emma Lynn Hewitt.

      He called again the next night. She told him that no, she had not made up her mind yet.

      He hung up on her that time, because he knew if he didn’t that he would end up raising his voice. Jonas Bravo was not a man who ever needed to raise his voice.

      After that, he gave up on phone calls. For two entire days he did nothing about the problem, though it seemed to him that the whole time a clock ticked away relentlessly inside his head, counting down the seconds, the minutes, the hours, moving him closer to the date by which he had to be married to Emma Lynn Hewitt—or possibly lose Mandy.

      By the time those two days had passed, it was Thursday night, ten days since Blythe’s death, eleven days before the deadline set out in the will. And three days since the meeting at McAllister, Quinn and Associates.

      Three days. If that wasn’t a damn few, he didn’t know what was.

      And he’d come up with another angle, another offer he could make her.

      Friday, he spent almost three hours closeted with his top corporate attorneys, getting the whole thing in order, lining out exactly what he was willing to do and how it would be accomplished. One of his secretaries typed the thing up.

      By then, it was after four. He put the finished prospectus in his briefcase and called for the limousine. A half an hour later, his driver pulled up in front of Emma Hewitt’s place of business in Beverly Hills. The driver got out and opened Jonas’s door for him.

      Jonas paused on the sidewalk to reluctantly approve the clean, simple lines of the building. The large plaque on the wall by the big glass door gave the establishment’s name: PetRitz. And a brief description of the services provided: Grooming, Boarding, Animal Care. Not a billboard or a tacky picture of a pink poodle in sight. He gave Ms. Hewitt no credit for this clear display of good taste. In Beverly