Her Reason To Stay. Anna Adams

her faded jeans and knit shirt. By comparison, Raina’s white suit must have cost more than the rent Daphne had paid last year.

      “I’m leaving, but I want you to remember I only asked for family. Goodbye, Raina.”

      Patrick stood—to make sure she didn’t pick her sister’s pocket on the way out? “Wait,” he said. “Why don’t you—”

      “No.” She wanted out of this room with its smells of polish and coffee and paper. She needed fresh air that wasn’t weighed down with judgment and skepticism.

      Her sneakers made no sound on the plush mushroom-colored carpet. She opened the door and slipped through. The receptionist sprang from her chair, mistaking Daphne for someone who mattered.

      She held her head high, startled that no one recognized her as a woman limping on the last of her courage. At the elevator, she punched the down button. Four times. Fast.

      The conference-room door opened. No way would she check to see who’d exited the den of intimidation.

      She made for the door marked Stairs. She pounded down, half sliding on the metal balustrade, praying she’d come out in an alley rather than the foyer.

      The gods must have been playing with her. At the bottom she stumbled straight into the marble atrium of Blah-Blah-Blah-and-Gannon.

      The latter burst out of the elevator so abruptly the doors rattled on their runners. Swearing beneath her breath, Daphne walked quickly. She wouldn’t run, but she wanted out of this building before Patrick caught her.

      He beat her to the revolving door, stepping in front of her. He held out his hands. “I don’t think you understand.”

      “I didn’t. I do now.”

      “I’m all Raina has left, but that doesn’t mean I don’t give a damn about anyone else. And Raina doesn’t want to hurt you.”

      Daphne stared at him. “You see a different Raina than I did.”

      Patrick smiled. A hint of sensuality curved his lips, but she didn’t want to respond to it.

      “Don’t leave like this,” he said.

      “I don’t blame her. We don’t know each other, and I just blew up all her beliefs about her happy family.”

      “She doesn’t want you to go.”

      “Since when?”

      “I guess since she realized you really were walking away.”

      “So she changed her mind a split second ago.” Not good enough. Daphne deserved better than a halfhearted plea delivered by someone else. “You know, that sentiment might be more convincing if she’d had the guts to deliver it herself.”

      Patrick took her arm. She pulled away with a youdie look that had always stood her in good stead.

      “We were cold to you,” he said.

      “You have a talent for cold.”

      “Think of the coincidence. Raina’s mother died and the estate went to her. It’s been well publicized.”

      “You’d be surprised how few Honesty newspapers sally beyond the town limits. That, combined with the fact I don’t read the financial pages, means I didn’t know Raina was rich.”

      He glanced toward the passersby who eyed them curiously. “Out of nowhere—” he lowered his voice “—you arrive, claiming Raina’s family wasn’t really hers, but that you are.”

      “It sounds improbable right now, but until I saw the two of you sitting behind that table as if you were under siege, I assumed she’d be as happy as I was to find a sister.”

      For a moment, he said nothing. Upstairs, he’d been as impassive as Raina. But now he looked uncomfortable.

      “Raina and I made assumptions, too,” he said. “Come back up, and we’ll all start over.”

      “Forget it. I made a mistake.”

      “I’m trying to explain what we thought. Raina’s mother asked me to protect her. I have to do that.”

      “She’s a grown woman.”

      “And totally untouched. Honesty is a safe place where few things have challeneged her. She’s used to her life being a certain way and you’ve changed that. But she is a good person. Get to know her, and see what I mean.” He touched her again, squeezing her wrist as if to emphasize his sincerity. She looked down, causing him to release her.

      “You all but accused me of planning to rob Raina the second she turns her back on an open checkbook.” His intensity had the strange effect of a rope around her throat. She was strong enough to ignore a passing attraction to some guy. She wouldn’t let him distract her. “You think I’m after my sister’s money. I don’t need it. I can find a job. I’ve found a way to start over too many times to tell you.” Good God. It was like in the old days, when she’d drink too much and buttonhole strangers to confess her worst sins. “I never found family before.”

      She didn’t realize her voice had broken until he lowered his head. Above him, the atrium soared to a glass dome. His dark lashes glinted in the diffused light. No doubt part of Mother Nature’s foul plan to make him look sensitive.

      “I have to go,” she said.

      “I know I’m making this worse, but I just want to ask for another chance. For Raina,” he said. “Accept our apologies for thinking you might be here for whatever handout she could give you.”

      “I don’t see how you stay in business. The other attorneys must rake you over in court if you’re this articulate.”

      “I hardly ever make a fool of myself like this.” He stepped out of her way. She could have left.

      “Why should I stay? Raina didn’t care enough to come downstairs to insult me, herself. None of what you or I say matters because this is between me and her.”

      She got as far as the revolving door.

      “Raina’s still mourning her mother. Her father died when she was in college. She has no one else.”

      Daphne was already reaching for the door, but she thought of Raina, braced behind the big table, her arms wrapped around her waist. His shot hit Daphne right where she was weakest.

      “No one,” he said again.

      Maybe he wasn’t that bad in court. “You know things about me. Have you investigated me?”

      “No,” he said. He was a good liar, but she’d been a jury consultant. She’d made her living sitting in on voir dire to assess which jurors would vote her client’s way in a court case. She understood psychology and body language, and she was hard to fool. She eyed him steadily until he continued. “I looked. Aside from the financials, I found stuff on your track-and-field results.”

      She almost told him he hadn’t dug deep enough, but why send him straight to the truth about her past? He and Raina would think even less of her.

      “She’s alone. You could help her. She might help you, too.”

      “Alone’s a bad place to be.”

      A man in a business suit burst through the door from outside, shaking rain off his umbrella. Patrick pulled her away from the door.

      “People have already tried to take advantage of Raina.”

      “I don’t doubt that.” It was the way of the world. “But I didn’t, and I wouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have come here. This place…It makes me think of families and old-fashioned closeness. I’m used to bad guys who wear their evil on their sleeves.” She couldn’t articulate her experience of the town thus far. Of course, her exposure had been limited, so maybe she should see more before passing judgment. “My sister is content in a world I’m not sure I could live in even if I wanted to.