LITMIR.BIZ

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      Her mother had been the grounded one, and her father the dreamer. A terrific doctor but still a dreamer. And he’d signed a simple lease for all of this, including their home.

      Morgan reached for the phone to call her dad, but drew back suddenly. She couldn’t call him and give him the news. He’d barely arrived at the house he’d rented in Arizona for the month. She looked down at the letterhead on the notice, then reached for the phone again and dialed the first number listed.

      A very pleasant female voice announced, “You have reached the offices of Development and Acquisitions for the E.P.G. Corporation. Our offices are closed now, but if you know the extension of the party you wish to contact, please enter it now or leave a message after the tone.” Morgan hung up and dialed the second number. This time a man answered. “You’ve reached the main offices of the E.P.G. Corporation. How may I help you.”

      Morgan tried to explain the contents of the letter, but the man politely but firmly cut her off. “Ma’am, that’s a matter for our development and acquisitions department. I can give you their number if you’d like?”

      “I have it,” she said. “I just need to talk to someone and not a recording about a property on Shelter Island.”

      “You’ll need to call back during office hours and I’m sure that someone can help you then.”

      “What office is this?”

      “Corporate towers, ma’am. And everyone is gone for the day.”

      “There’s no one—?”

      “Ma’am, even if Mr. Grace was in town, he’d have left by now.”

      Mr. Grace? She felt the blood drain from her head and she asked, “Ethan Grace?”

      “Yes, ma’am, but he’s not here, and even if he was—”

      She put the phone down, cutting off his polite response. Ethan Grace. She wasn’t sure what the P stood for, but now she knew what the E and the G stood for in the company name. It was his corporation. The Graces owned a lot of the island, she knew that, but she’d never suspected that they owned this place and she’d never known his company’s name. Or that the building and home could be pulled out from under them this way.

      If she’d known about the letter yesterday, she could have spoken to Ethan when she’d found him half-conscious in his bedroom, but now he was “being taken care of,” and there was no way she could go back there again. She stopped that thought. She’d walked onto the beach yesterday without any trouble. She’d gone up the stairs and entered the house without anyone stopping her. If she did it once, she could do it again. And he was the boss, injured or not, over everything.

      Speaking directly to him, instead of someone in one of his many corporate divisions, sounded sensible. That was another thing she’d learned at the clinic—the fewer people between you and what you needed, the better everyone was in the end. If she could convince Ethan to renew the lease, her father wouldn’t have to know about the notice. If she was incredibly lucky, she might even be able to convince Ethan to sell the complete property to her father, if they could get the money somehow. Besides, it would be bad PR for the company to just shut them down.

      She stood and placed the letter back in the envelope. After slipping it into her pants pocket, she braced herself to face Ethan Grace again. The man she’d found last night had been vulnerable and in real pain. And when she saw him again, she knew it would be a different situation completely. He was regarded as a genius in the business world, but he was also known to be hard-hitting, bordering on ruthless and giving no quarter to anyone. Traits, she was sure, he shared with his pirate ancestor. But instead of sailing to the south and pillaging and plundering small settlements, he was headquartered in Seattle and he used, from what she heard, a corporate jet or helicopter to pillage and plunder floundering companies. He would be a formidable match.

      A knock sounded on the office door and Sharon peeked inside. Middle-aged, she was dressed in jeans, a T-shirt worn under an open blue smock and tennis shoes. She had a pleasant face and was usually smiling, but this time she looked a bit contrite. “Sorry, I forgot to get this to you,” she said as she handed her an envelope.

      Morgan took it and looked down at her name scrawled in black ink just under what appeared to be an embossed monogram. “What is it?” she asked.

      “Don’t know. He just said to give it to you.”

      “He who?” she asked as she looked up at the other woman.

      “The guy who brought it. Don’t know him. Never saw him before.” She had her jacket over her arm and was obviously in a hurry to get going. “Forty or so, preppy, gray hair and great smile. Drove a huge black SUV with tinted windows.”

      It didn’t sound like anyone Morgan knew, either. “Okay, thanks.”

      Sharon said what she always did when she left for the day, “Safe trip home,” then laughed at her own joke. Morgan lived right behind the building, all of fifty feet from the office.

      “Same to you,” Morgan responded, not able to muster a laugh this time. Not when she knew that her father could lose that very home—and the offices—within three months.

      She turned, looked down at the envelope Sharon had handed to her and tucked her forefinger under the flap to open it. Inside was a folded sheet of paper along with a smaller piece of paper that fell to the floor. Picking it up, she saw it was a check for two hundred dollars. She was stunned to read the person’s information in the top left corner.

      E.P.G. Corporation. Then she read the accompanying letter. Thanks for your help. If this isn’t sufficient, please bill the address at the top. The signature was a tangle of letters that she could barely make out, but she had no doubt it belonged to Ethan Grace. He was paying for her services. She suddenly smiled. And he’d just given her the opening she’d been looking for to contact him in person again.

      Chapter Three

      “Did you give the check to the doctor?” Ethan asked as James came into the makeshift office in the guest house.

      James’s graying hair was damp from the rain outside, and the shoulders of his beige jacket were dark. “Yeah, it’s done.”

      “Good, good.” Ethan pushed back in his chair, careful to keep his bad foot safely resting on the ottoman. “Was it enough?”

      “Don’t know. I gave it to her receptionist. She said the doctor was in with a patient and that she’d be a while, so I left it with her.”

      Ethan dropped his pen on the contracts he’d been scanning, and sank back in the leather swivel chair. After sitting at his desk for the better part of the day, his shoulders and injured leg had cramped. He wore shorts because they were easier to put on than long pants, with a plain white shirt he’d left unbuttoned.

      “That place is ancient,” James said.

      “What?”

      “The doctor’s office. It’s in that old building on the sound side of the main street. I don’t see how anyone could practice medicine there.”

      He remembered the property where the doctor had set up his practice after he’d moved it out of his home at the same location. The office, a nondescript building with a flat roof, two large windows in front and parking in front, had been built closer to the street. He’d been in there a couple of times years ago and remembered the tiny rooms, the waiting area with green vinyl chairs and month-old magazines.

      “I guess it works for him,” he said, wondering why Morgan would have become a doctor, only to come back here to take over her father’s practice, such as it was.

      “Speaking of doctors,” James said. “What did Dr. Perry say when you called him?”

      “That I’ll live,” he murmured.

      “Well, does that make us lucky or not?”

      Ethan

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