Having been exposed to his imposing glare many
times, Rae just glared back. “It never stopped you from lecturing him before over something stupid.”
“If you will remember, miss, my concerns were always for Mr. Merriman’s personal excesses, not his business ones, but if I may say so, he’s made very few.”
“Well, this one was a doozy.” She gripped the shovel handle tightly. “He agreed to sell the estate to Atlantic, then he came to me and told me what an idiot he’d been about the whole thing and that he was completely out of the deal. Next he told me he deeded over the place to me because he wanted to go into seclusion with what’s-his-face—”
“Sri Patel.”
“Thank you, Burrows. He wanted to go into the monastery with Sri Patel, because the Buddhist monk rescued him from bandits years ago, and they had had great philosophical discussions. Uncle Merry isn’t even a Buddhist!”
“Episcopalian, although he wasn’t a practicing member of the church,” Burrows commented.
“Then,” she went on, intent on venting her disgust with her favorite relative, “he gave me a song and dance about how he knows I love the ‘old place,’ and that I’ll take good care of it.
Annnd
”—she pointed a finger at the stoic butler—“that it would be in better hands with me, than with him, because I wouldn’t have even considered allowing it to be desecrated for condos. I fell for his line of bull like the righteous sucker I was. But Atlantic never accepted the down payment back, Burrows! He never told me that! And now I’m stuck fighting Atlantic.” And Jed, she thought.
“Mr. Merriman has always avoided confrontation, miss.”
“I’d like to confront him on the seat of his pants,” she muttered, jamming the shovel into the mud. “Why didn’t he just come to me in the first place, if he wanted to go live in a monastery and discuss philosophy with his old friend? Why did he have to make a deal with a land development company? And where the heck were his lawyers during all this?”
“I believe he felt you were quite happy with your life in New York, and wouldn’t be interested in the estate—”
“Well, he was wrong,” she broke in. “New York was only a convenient base for my business.”
Burrows nodded in understanding. He ought to, she thought. The first thing she’d done upon moving in yesterday was to hook up her computer. That and a telephone modem were all she needed for monitoring the investments she made for her clients. She already felt more at home here than she ever had in her Manhattan townhouse.
“Mr. Merriman insisted on handling the sale of the estate himself rather than relying on his lawyers. His professional specialty was real estate law,” he said in answer to her third question.
“Which he never actually practiced, thank goodness!” Rae said, realizing nobody would ever be able to answer the question of why Uncle Merry had gone to a land development company—except Uncle Merry. She hoped the razor slipped when the monks gave her uncle the traditional head-shaving. “But now I know how he managed this mess without anyone finding out until it was
too late. Do you suppose he did something illegal?” she worried aloud, thinking of Jed’s assurance that the estate couldn’t have been legally deeded over to her with the agreement of sale still outstanding.
“It would not have served Mr. Merriman’s purpose to leave you without legal recourse, Miss Rachel,” Burrows said. “I suspect, though, that he did operate in a gray area of the law in order to deed the estate over to you. Something that would be open to several interpretations. However, if I may say so, miss, as a last resort you could probably have Mr. Merriman declared mentally incompe—”
“Burrows!” she gasped in shock. “I could never do that. Uncle Merry’s crazy, but he’s not senile.”
The butler smiled the tiniest of smiles. “I didn’t doubt you for moment, Miss Rachel.”
She blinked. “Thank you, Burrows.” A thought occurred to her. “Why did you let him go halfway around the world without you? You always traveled with him before, and now Uncle Merry’s nearly eighty—”
She was interrupted by the dogs, who, having completed their mission, now raced into the herb garden.
“Get out of the damn mud!” she ordered Samson, as he leaped around her, happily trying to lick her face. The dog slunk away at the reprimand. Rae sighed and sat down on the edge of the hole. “Come here, you big goof.”
She was knocked down by one hundred pounds of happy Great Dane. Although she playfully fended him off, Samson still managed to get in a few kisses. Finally, she gasped, “Enough already! Up!”
Once Samson had backed off, she sat up. Delilah, more dignified, settled next to her. Rae put an arm around the dog and tugged affectionately on its ears.
“What will you do now, miss?” Burrows asked in a grave voice.
Knowing he wasn’t talking about the broken water line, she sighed. “Whatever I have to do to keep the estate from being turned into a marina-condominium complex.”
An image of Jed standing in the maze flashed through her mind, and she shivered. As a child she’d loved him, and after he’d gone to college, she always thought of him with affection. He had been a friend, but now she felt as if she didn’t know him anymore. He’d grown into a man—an attractive man. She pushed the thought away. Jed was right about one thing, though. What was for her a remembered and beloved refuge of freedom was just a piece of property to him. He’d probably been sent by the company because he knew Uncle Merry personally. She couldn’t blame him for doing his job. Anyway, it would teach Uncle Merry a lesson if Atlantic leveled their legal cannons at him. All she asked was that they not set their sights on her too. Atlantic would be damn sorry if they did, she thought. Realizing who her opponent at Atlantic would probably be, she swallowed heavily. Uncle Merry’s escape route was looking better and better by the moment.
“Do the Buddhists have nunneries, Burrows?” she asked.
“I believe so, miss.”
“Good. Call one of them and get me a standing reservation, would you?”
By some miracle, the plumber actually arrived a short time later and began the process of replacing the split water line. After a needed shower, Rae was just wrapping a large terry towel around her when the telephone rang.
Knowing Burrows was still out “supervising” the plumber, she stepped over to the bathroom telephone and picked up the receiver. Her uncle had insisted on a phone in every room—even the bathrooms—not for convenience, but because he hated to hear them ring more than three times.
“Barkeley residence,” she said briskly into the mouthpiece.
“Rae? It’s Jed.”
She clutched the towel more tightly against her damp breasts in unconscious reflex.
“What a surprise,” she said in a soft voice that belied the tension building inside her.
“How’s the broken water line?”
“Drier than I am,” she muttered, then blushed when she realized what she’d said. “What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you about the estate—”
“I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong number, Jed,” she interrupted. “You meant to call Uncle Merry’s lawyers.”
She hung up the phone.
It rang again.
Snatching up the receiver, she said angrily, “I told you—”
“Have dinner with me tonight.”
Stunned by the unexpected invitation, Rae dropped the receiver and the towel at the same time. Falling to her knees, she scrambled to pick up both of them.
“What did you say?” she asked breathlessly, as she tucked the receiver between her shoulder and ear. She rewrapped her towel around her bare torso, her fingers fumbling with the ends.
He chuckled at her question. “Have dinner with me tonight. We’ll just talk about old times, and how crazy your uncle is—”
Her laugh interrupted him. “You’re a smooth talker, Jed Waters. But I have enough sense to know that the conversation would eventually wind up with a discussion of the estate, which I am not about to discuss with you.”
“And which I don’t intend to discuss with you. Not tonight. This is an invitation to have a nice quiet dinner with an old acquaintance.”
“I would have preferred a nice quiet dinner with an old
friend
,” she said sadly, and replaced the receiver on the hook.
The telephone didn’t ring a third time.
Jed sent flowers instead.
Cradling the bouquet of roses in her numb embrace, Rae stared at the card: “For Morticia Addams. With love from an old friend.” The word friend was underlined.
With a laugh, she shook her head. Under any other circumstances, she would have been touched by the gesture. She looked up at Burrows, who was just shutting the front door after the delivery man.
“Flowers. How nice,” she said in a wry tone. “And from Jed.”
“If you will allow me, miss,” Burrows said, taking the roses out of her hands. “I’ll see to them.”
“Thank you.” Rae smiled. “But don’t bother with a vase, Burrows. Just put them in the trash.”
The butler merely raised an eyebrow at her odd request. “Shall I dip them in battery acid to hasten their demise?”
“Nice touch.”
• • •
Seated across the desk from his boss, Jed gazed steadily at Henry Morrison’s reddening face.
“He … he’s gone?” Henry finally sputtered, his face turning an alarming shade of burgundy. “Barkeley’s up and gone to a damn monastery?”
“I did warn you, Henry, that Merriman was a little … eccentric,” Jed said, fully expecting the president of Atlantic Developers to explode like an overinflated balloon.
He wasn’t disappointed. With a great bellow, Morrison slammed his hands on the gleaming cherry desktop. The roars continued unabated, though mostly incoherent to the human ear. The man’s paunch actually seemed to shrink as he gave vent to a long tirade.
Silent, Jed waited out the tantrum. He’d given his boss bad news on more than one occasion, and the result had always been the same—an angry outburst, followed by cool logic. It all depended on how long it took Henry to run out of curses and breath.
Merriman had thrown everybody, Jed thought, and Rae had thrown him. Images of her, dirty face and all, had run through his mind as he drove back to the office. She’d grown up. Between the dogs and Merriman, he hadn’t realized how much of an impact she’d had on him. The moment he issued the dinner invitation, though, he knew it was the wrong thing to do. They were on opposite sides of the problem with the estate. For the moment anyway, he acknowledged, as he reminded
himself of his conversation with the company’s legal department. He hoped she’d accepted the roses as the apology they were meant to be. It had been a long time since anyone had pricked his conscience, but Rae had done it with one word.
He refocused his attention on his boss, whose tantrum was beginning to wind down. Surreptitiously, he glanced at his watch. Four and a half minutes. Not too bad for Henry, he decided. If he was extremely lucky, he’d be able to pull off this next part.
“Call Legal!” Henry ordered, his voice still on a shouting level.
“I already have,” Jed said calmly. “While there’s been a breach of contract on Barkeley’s part, our lawyers say the most we can get is our down payment back plus compensation, as we hadn’t made settlement on the property yet. Barkeley was still the owner, and by law, he could deed the place away. Since he already showed good faith by attempting to return the down payment, the lawyers think they can reach a settlement without going to court.”
“I don’t want the damn money! I want the land!”
“How do you think I feel?” Jed asked in a disgusted tone. “I was the one who negotiated the sale in the first place, so I was hoping we could still sue for the estate.”
His boss looked startled by the words, then nodded. “You put in a lot of hard work on this, I know. What about the … what did you say? Niece?”
“Grandniece.” Jed mentally crossed his fingers
and plunged ahead. “Rachel Barkeley. I spoke with her briefly, and—”
“Well, talk to her again. Up the offer.”
“Henry,” Jed said in a soft yet very commanding voice. “The Barkeleys are old money. More money isn’t going to mean a thing to Rae. It didn’t to Merriman. He wouldn’t have cared if we’d offered one-fourth the amount we did.”
“Well, why the hell didn’t you tell me that?”
Jed grinned. “Because Merriman deserved a fair price for the estate, and I still got him to agree to less than you expected to pay.”
Henry chuckled.
“The company should get a good settlement from him,” Jed said, cutting through his employer’s amusement. “I talked to his lawyers, too, and they’re so mad that he left them in the dark that they’ll probably be on our side in this.” Wanting to be able to answer any and all of Henry’s questions, Jed had thoroughly checked on everything before approaching his boss with the bad news. “They want us to give them a figure and then they’ll send somebody over to have Merriman sign the papers. It will take a while, though.” Jed couldn’t help laughing. “The way I figure it, right about now Merriman’s hiking up a mountainside.”
Henry’s eyes widened in shock. “At his age?”
Jed nodded. “His lawyer told me that every year Merriman sends a donation of clothes and canned goods to a Buddhist monastery in Nepal near the Tibetan border.”
“Tibet!” Henry exclaimed, shaking his balding head in disbelief.
“A church probably wouldn’t take him,” Jed
went on, with a straight face. “The head monk at this monastery is an old friend of his. Anyway, the last leg of the trip is by backpack and it takes a full week.”
“He must be something,” Henry said.
“He is,” Jed agreed. So was his niece. “I’ll have our cost figures ready by this afternoon, so a settlement—”
“I’ve already decided what to ask,” Henry interrupted him, and named a figure.
Jed’s jaw dropped in astonishment at the huge amount. “But that’s—”
“Just about what our revenues would have been from the completed complex.” Henry’s eyes gleamed with anticipation. “It’s a fair compensation to ask for damages. And as I have a board of directors to appease, I consider it more than justified. However, I don’t expect to get that much. In fact, I don’t expect to get it at all from that source.”
Sensing what was coming next, Jed frantically tried to say something to block it, but he wasn’t fast enough.