Slightly Irregular (7 page)

The poles were now braced with two-by-fours, and Sam was busy unpacking and assembling the furniture. My lanai was a mess of paper, plastic, and other stuff that I had to step over to get to the sliding door.

“Want some water?” I asked.

“Just got some.”

“Make yourself at home,” I teased. “What happened to Harold?”

“He went out for lunch.”

I peered inside the house. “Lunch at three thirty?”

“The cement has to harden before I can drape the fabric.”

“I thought it was quick set.”

“It is, but I want to give it an extra half hour or so.”

I swallowed a groan as I went in and grabbed my drink. I was still stuffed from brunch.

Sam stepped inside and said, “I’m going back to the store to replace the fan. Rattan will be more appropriate, and I want to get some potted plants as well.”

This time I groaned aloud. “Plants?”

“Native plants. Minimum care and feeding.”

“Maximum replacement.”

He shook his head. “I’ll pick up one of those automatic watering bulbs. You’ll do fine.”

“I doubt that,” I mumbled.

“I heard that.”

The house was quiet, at least for the moment, so reluctantly I decided to retrieve my book so I could continue my studying
in air-conditioned comfort. No sooner had I grabbed the study guide than I heard car tires on the crushed-shell driveway. Not enough time for Sam to get to the store, shop, and return, so it had to be Harold. So much for peace and quiet. I tied my sarong up around my neck and was on the way to my bedroom when the chime from the doorbell startled me.

Peering through the narrow window on the side of the door, my heart stopped. A polished Bentley was parked on the grass. I felt the muscles in my shoulder knot as I retraced my steps and reached for the knob. Of course she had to pick today. My mind swirled as I indexed the things I would have done had I known she’d actually show up. Oh well, nothing I could do now.

Plastering a pleasant smile on my face, I opened the door wide. Standing regally on my front porch was Cassidy Presley Tanner Browning Rossi. My mother.

“Hi, Mom,” I greeted, adding the customary country club air kiss on either side of her face. Well, not her face. She was wearing a scarf tied forward and giant dark glasses, so the only thing I could see was the tip of her nose and her newly—and overly—plumped lips.

“Finley,” she returned, her mouth moving a lot like guppy lips. Not that guppies have lips, but the analogy was working for me.

“Welcome to my home,” I said enthusiastically. My arm swung in a wide arc. “Please, come in.”

As usual, my mother thumbed her nose at the hot afternoon weather by wearing a tailored green suit with a pale mint silk blouse beneath. I often wondered if she was the last woman in Palm Beach County to still wear panty hose. Slowly, she removed
her scarf and glasses. Faded bruises around her hairline told me she’d had yet another thread lift, along with some collagen and Botox. Her vanity was unwarranted, given the fact that she didn’t even look her true age. Then again, very few people knew her true age. She’d lied about it so often, and for so long, it was possible that even she didn’t know she was about to hit fifty. Lisa’s wedding created a problem; she couldn’t shave a decade off her age with her daughters around. Quite the conundrum. She had been twenty-two when I was born and twenty-five when Lisa came along, so she’d have no choice but to own up to her fifty years.

She glanced around the great room, but thanks to the Botox, I couldn’t gauge her reaction.

“When do you plan on decorating?”

Direct hit
. No matter how old I got, her zingers still stung. “It is decorated, Mom.”

“Oh.”

“You hate it,” I said, my spirits sinking.

“I just never would have considered decor best suited to an outdoor eatery. But then again, it makes sense. You and your friends are partial to those waterfront bars.”

“Would you like something to drink?”
Arsenic, perhaps?

“I’d like to see the rest of the cottage first.”

“Follow me,” I said, with a mental picture of holding a gun to my head and slowly pulling the trigger. In under thirty seconds my mother had me committing virtual suicide.

I got a lot of “uh-huh”s as we went from room to room, then what I hoped was the final noncompliment when we reached my bedroom.

“I had no idea you’d be napping in the middle of the day,” she said, her puffy lips managing a scowl as she looked at my unmade bed.

“I had a late night,” I explained. I detoured her away from the bathroom, where I’d left my brunch outfit crumpled on the floor. I wasn’t usually such a slob, but with Harold here, the quick change was a must.

“Yes, I know,” she said.

“You know what?” I asked as I led the way back toward the kitchen.

“About your second job.”

It took me a minute to follow the winding path that was her logic. “I don’t have a second job.”

We returned to the great room. I sat on the sofa and offered her the chair across from me. She opted to stand.

“But Mr. Caprelli said you were a babysitter.”

“Hang on. You spoke to my boss?”

“Of course, I needed Mr. Caprelli’s address for the invitation.”

“Are you having a party or something?” First I was hearing about it.

She shook her head as if I’d just suggested she vacation in Iraq. “I called him to ask if he would serve as your escort.”

The hair on my arms stood up, and my skin tingled with dread. “My escort for what?”

“Well,” she began as she lifted her scarf off her shoulders and began to retie it, “since you so abruptly ended your relations with Patrick, and even though I have a million things to attend to, I had to find you a suitable escort for the wedding.”

Blood rushed to my head rendering me temporarily deaf. “So you called Tony?”

“He’s successful. He’s a lovely man. He comes from a very influential family in New York. Did you know his father owns one of the largest investment firms and is considered a financial genius? His mother is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. He’s perfect as an escort. He’ll photograph quite nicely, too.”

“Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“I’m far from being facetious. The photographs are Lisa’s keepsake memories that—”

My door opened, and Liam appeared. Normally, I would have been furious about him just bursting into my home, but I was stuck on planet Cassidy.

“You should not have done that,” I explained, desperately trying not to grit my teeth or allow steam to come rushing out of my ears. I gave a sideways glance to Liam, who was wearing a grease-stained T-shirt and ragged jeans. His hair was mussed. “I already have an escort to the wedding.”

My mother’s spine straightened. “And that would be whom?”

“Liam,” I said, pointing to the unkempt man near the doorway.

I thought for a moment that my announcement had the Botox draining from my mother’s forehead. Botox or not, I knew there was a frown in there somewhere, but she rammed her sunglasses on her face and marched her heeled feet to the door. Sidestepping Liam, she waltzed out without another word.

I, on the other hand, was grinning, bordering on giddy. That moment ended when I remembered Liam’s entrance. Standing, I asked, “Are the words ‘my house’ somehow confusing to you?”

“No, Ellen sent me. She’s been calling you for the last two hours, and when you didn’t answer your landline or your cell, she called and asked me to come check on you.”

“It’s Sunday.”

“For me, too,” he said. “I was working on my car.”

“I hope you were working on pushing it off a bridge.”

He cocked his head to one side. “Call your boss so I can get back to what I was doing.”

As he turned to leave, I said, “Don’t ever walk in my house without an invitation again.”

“Speaking of invitations, I accept.”

“Accept what?”

“I’ll escort you to your sister’s wedding.”

I was still staring at the closed door five minutes after he left.

Favors you do for friends; everyone else pays.

I sat down and
listened to the half-dozen voice mails Ellen had left on my machine. With each one, her voice sounded more irritated than concerned. “So why send Liam?” I muttered as I copied her home number onto the Lilly Pulitzer notepad I kept near the phone, along with a matching pen, of course.

Curious, I wanted to check my set-on-vibrate cell phone. So I grabbed my purse—a major score if I did say so myself. Coach. White leather with cute little tassels. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Only three of the original four tassels were still in place, which is why I paid less than thirty dollars for it in an eBay auction. My mother had cut me off from Jonathan’s trust fund more than a year ago, her version of teaching me to fend for myself and be more responsible.

Jonathan and my mom married when I was still a toddler. He’d adopted me when I was three and always treated me as if I was as good as, if not better than, my sister. I’d discovered my
illegitimacy and adoption when I was thirteen, after sneaking into my mother’s lingerie drawer. My goal had been to check out the La Perla. Instead, I got the whole scoop on attempts to notify Misters Finley and Anderson. Eventually, my mother explained the whole story, but it was Jonathan who’d sat next to me, gently stroking my hair and my self-esteem.

At any rate, he’d left Lisa and me individual trusts but had given my mother the power to control any withdrawals. Lisa had full access while I was cut off, sending me into the nether world of discount designers and factory damage.

I was a master at it now. Not even Becky had clued in to the fact that my designer stuff was secondhand at best, gently used at worst. And I’d like to keep it that way. A girl’s gotta have her secrets.

Just thinking about secrets, my mind drifts to Liam. Forget that I know virtually nothing about him. The one thing I do know is that he keeps everything close to the vest. Thankfully not literally. A guy in a vest does nothing for me. The mere thought of secrets instantly had Liam’s face taunting my thought processes.

I was still fuming mad about the babysitting thing, and even angrier at myself for allowing things to go as far as they had. He thought nothing of bursting into my home without so much as knocking. For all he knew someone could be in here holding me hostage at gunpoint. And therein lay the rub. He was completely wrong for me, and yet in the past, he’d risked his personal safety for me. Did he have to be chivalrous and irritating at the same time?

I took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly as I slid the
bar on my iPhone and instantly discovered I had seventeen more messages from Ellen and one from Becky. I deleted them without listening, sure they were just repeats of the “call me immediately” mantras she’d left on my landline. Dane-Lieberman owned me five days a week, and Sunday wasn’t one of them.

“Lieberman.”

“Ellen, this is Finley returning your—”

“So Liam finally found you.”

“It’s Sunday. I was at the beach, not in the witness protection plan.”

“Excuse me?”

I winced. Probably not the smartest move to be a wiseass to one of my bosses. “Sorry, sunstroke,” I muttered. “What do you need?”

“I’ve scheduled an eight o’clock meeting with Miss Egghardt. You handled the estate. The appointment is with Lenora Egghardt regarding her uncle’s estate and some sort of money order she received.

“From the tenants Lenora wasn’t sure existed?”

“Probably. And she now insists she has knowledge of some real property currently in the possession of those elusive tenants and thinks it is possible that they are distant cousins. Looks like you’re going to have to reopen the estate, and I just want to make sure you exercised due diligence in your attempts to deal with the heirs. I want you at that meeting.”

Luckily, she couldn’t see me roll my eyes. “I’ll be there.”

“Be there at seven thirty. I want you to bring me up to speed on this before I review any real estate documents. I’ll need to be
sure we didn’t close the estate
again
, without dotting all the ‘i’s and crossing all the ‘t’s.”

“I think you’ll find everything was in order. I followed the law. Notices were filed in the
Palm Beach Post
,” I said, feeling a little irritated by the implication that I’d failed to do my job. While I may not be the most enthusiastic employee, I was good at what I did, especially when it came to trusts and estates. “How did this end up on your desk? Usually Vain—er, Mr. Dane handles this sort of thing.”

“I’m assuming it’s because of the potential contractual issues. I did meet with Mr. Egghardt once. It doesn’t matter. Just be here at seven thirty. My office.”

“My pleasure.” I felt my nose growing. There was nothing pleasurable about being at work at seven thirty in the morning.

I speed-dialed Becky. She answered on the third ring. “Your boss just became a pain in my butt.”

“Ellen? Makes sense. She seemed kinda desperate to find you. And in spite of what you think, she likes you. Thinks you have potential.”