LITMIR.BIZ

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I think you’ll be interested in this,” Garrett said in a grim tone, remembering why he had come to this dreary little neighborhood in search of her. “My name is Garrett Holden. Are you acquainted with Robin Underwood?”

      “Garrett!” She held out a hand and her face altered immediately, breaking into a blinding smile that completely transformed her serious, intense expression into one of beauty and warmth. Lively intelligence and a hopeful light shone from her eyes as she opened the door and stepped onto the porch, looking past him. “Robin’s spoken of you often. Is he with you?”

      Garrett stared at her for a moment, ignoring her offered hand as her smile faltered. She didn’t know. She didn’t know. A fierce wave of anger and grief roared through him like a wind-fueled fire. “Robin’s dead,” he said shortly.

      “Wha…?” She put a hand to her throat as ribbons slithered to the floor. She shook her head slowly, speaking carefully. “I’m sorry. I believe I must have misunderstood.”

      He stared at her coldly, not bothering to hide the contempt he felt. “You didn’t misunderstand.”

      Her eyes widened, the pupils going black with shock. Every ounce of pink drained from her face, and he was absently surprised at just how much color she’d really had before. Now she was white as paper. She groped for the porch rail, then carefully lowered herself onto it in a seated position. The whole time, her gaze never left his. “Please tell me this is a very bad joke,” she whispered.

      He shook his head. He suppressed the feelings of guilt and sympathy that rose within him, reminding himself that this woman didn’t need his sympathy. Unless it was to console her on the loss of the wealthy catch she’d been hoping to land.

      “What happened?” Her voice was nearly soundless.

      “Heart attack,” he said succinctly. “He just didn’t wake up. The doctor says he doubted he even felt anything.” He didn’t know why he’d added that last, except that he was human, after all, and the woman in front of him, whatever her motives, looked genuinely stricken by the news. Then again, maybe she was saying goodbye to the loss of the fortune she’d probably been expecting to harvest once she’d talked the old man around to marriage.

      She was shaking her head as if she could deny the reality of his words. Straightening, she crossed her arms, hugging herself and appearing to shrink into a smaller presence. “When is the funeral?”

      Nonplussed, it took him a moment to respond. Surely she hadn’t expected to be invited to attend. “It was yesterday.”

      If it were possible for her to lose any more color, she did. She turned away from him and he could see her shoulders begin to shake. Then her knees slowly gave way and she sagged to the floor.

      Garrett reacted instinctively. Leaping forward, he caught her as she crumpled. The essential male animal beneath the civility of centuries momentarily clouded his mind as his brain registered the close press of yielding female flesh, the rising scent of warm woman—

      She squeaked and yanked herself away from him. She hadn’t fainted, as he’d first assumed. And now her face wasn’t white, it was a bright, unbecoming red as she flushed with embarrassment.

      He only noted it with half his brain, because the other half was still processing the moment before.

      Then sanity returned. God, he was disgusting. This woman had been his stepfather’s…plaything. His seventy-three-year-old stepfather and this…how old was she? Twenty? Twenty-one? And here he was, enthralled by her body as well. He was truly disgusting. And so was she. No way could she have been sexually aroused by, or satisfied by Robin. Yuck. It didn’t even bear thinking about.

      She was backing away from him as his thoughts ran wild. “Excuse me, please. I have to…have to go inside.”

      “Wait—”

      But he was too late. She’d fled, yanking open the rickety screen and the door behind it with incredible speed and slamming both behind her. He was left staring at the undulating lace curtain that covered the door’s window. Ribbon still lay strewn across the porch.

      He swore. “Miss Birch? I have to talk to you.” He raised his voice. “Miss Birch?”

      No answer.

      Then he heard the faint sound of weeping. Deep, harsh, stuttering sobs underscored with unmistakable grief. The kind of sounds it would have been unmanly for him to have made, though he’d felt like it a time or two since Robin’s manservant had come to him four days ago and reported that the master appeared to have passed away during the night.

      Well, that killed any hope that she’d return. No woman with swollen eyes and a runny nose would willingly be seen in public. Dammit!

      He pulled a business card and his gold pen from his pocket and scrawled a note across the back of it: You are mentioned in the will. Call me.

      That ought to get results, he thought cynically as he strode back to his car, glad to be leaving the dingy, depressing area with its faint air of menace. In fact, he’d lay odds that he heard from her before the end of the day. If she thought there was money involved, the grief-stricken act would fly out the window in a hurry.

      He unlocked his sleek bronze foreign car and drove back toward the beltway.

      Thirty minutes later, he pulled into the quiet green oasis of the peaceful, shaded cemetery near Silver Spring where Robin had been buried the day before. Parking his car along the verge, he walked over the spongy earth to the fresh gravesite.

      “Well, you’ve managed to surprise me, old man,” he said aloud, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his suit pants. “How the hell you managed to keep up with something as young as that, I’ll never know. No wonder you had a heart attack.”

      The flowers had wilted considerably just since yesterday in the humid July weather and he made himself a note to call the groundskeeper of the cemetery and ask him to remove them soon. He’d rather see bare earth than these pitiful reminders of mortality.

      “I wasn’t ready,” he said gruffly. “I wasn’t ready for you to go yet.” It was the first time he’d allowed himself to think about what he’d lost. Dealing with the medical examiner, the funeral arrangements, and the never-ending calls from sympathetic well-wishers had helped him to avoid thinking about the loss of the man who had taken a rebellious teenage stepson in hand and given him self-respect and love. Now, the grief rose up and squeezed his chest until he could barely breathe, and he leaned heavily on the gravestone that had yet to have Robin’s date of death inscribed beside his first wife’s.

      “Why?” he said. “What was so important about this woman that you put her in the will? Were you that lonely?”

      It was possible, he supposed. Legions of aging men had been taken in by the solicitous attentions of glowing young beauties who professed devotion. He should know. Hadn’t it happened to his very own father? Of course, there was one significant difference between the current situation and the past. Robin hadn’t left a wife and a small child for the sake of a younger woman. Another was, of course, the age difference. Robin must have been nearly fifty years older than his paramour, a fact Garrett simply couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around.

      Sighing, he laid a hand on the marble of the stone, still cool even in the heat of the summer. “I don’t begrudge you any happiness you might have found with someone who cared for you. But the thought of a woman taking deliberate advantage of your loneliness makes me damn mad.” He paused, wondering why he felt so guilty. “If I neglected you, I am sorry,” he said. True, he’d been busy in the past few years, but he’d always made time for Robin. Hadn’t he?

      Yes. He had, he confirmed as he searched his soul, and he shouldn’t have regrets on that score. If anything, Robin had been the one who had been too busy recently for the several-times-weekly dinners they’d often shared. Robin had been the one who had had plans and had taken a rain check on a number of occasions. He’d been happier in the last year before his death than he’d been since

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