Rags To Riches Baby

He’d been amused by her reaction to him initially. At least until they started reading the will. Once he realized who she was and what she’d done, it wasn’t funny any longer.

Harper believed one hundred percent in Lucy’s innocence. They’d been friends since college. She probably knew Lucy better than anyone else and normally, he would take his sister’s opinion as gospel. But was she too close? Harper could be blinded to the truth by her friendship, just as their father had been blinded to the truth by his love for Candace. In both instances, hundreds of millions were at stake.

Even the most honest, honorable person could be tempted to get a tiny piece of that pie. Alice had been ninety-three. Perhaps Lucy looked at her with those big, sad eyes and told Alice a sob story about needing the money. Perhaps she’d charmed his aunt into thinking of her as the child she never had. Maybe Lucy only expected a couple million and her scheme worked out even better than she planned.

Either way, it didn’t matter how it came about. The bottom line was that Lucy had manipulated his aunt and he wasn’t going to sit by and let her profit from it. This was a half-billion-dollar estate—they weren’t quibbling over their grandmother’s Chippendale dresser or Wedgwood China. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—let this go without a fight. His aunt deserved that much.

With a sigh, he reached for his phone and dialed his attorney. Freckles be damned, Lucy Campbell and her charms would be no match for Oliver and his team of bloodthirsty lawyers.

Two (#ua46c798d-2e51-58dd-a4da-5cb72c897b6a)

Lucy awoke the next morning with the same odd sense of pressure on her chest. It had been like that since the day she’d discovered Alice had died in her sleep and her world had turned upside down. Discovering she could potentially be a millionaire and Alice’s entire family hated her had done little to ease that pressure. It may actually be worse since they met with Phillip.

Someone would undoubtedly contest the will, which would put Alice’s estate in limbo until it was resolved. When she asked Phillip how long that would take, he said it could be weeks to months. The family’s attorneys would search for any way they could to nullify the latest will. That meant dragging their “dear aunt’s” reputation through the mud along with Lucy’s. Either Alice wasn’t in her right mind—and many would argue she never had been—or Lucy had manipulated her.

It made Lucy wonder if she could decline the inheritance. Was that an option? While the idea of all that money and stuff seemed nice, she didn’t want to be ripped to shreds to get it. She hadn’t manipulated Alice, and Alice hadn’t been crazy. She’d obviously just decided that her family either didn’t deserve or need the money. Since she never discussed it with anyone but Phillip and hadn’t been forthcoming about her reasoning even to him, they would never know.

Alice had been quirky that way. She never left her apartment, but she had plenty of stories from her youth about how she enjoyed going against the flow, especially where her family was involved. If it was possible for her to listen in on her will reading from heaven, Lucy was pretty sure she was cracking up. Alice would’ve found the look on Wanda’s face in particular to be priceless.

While the decision was being made, Lucy found herself at a loss. What, exactly, was she supposed to be doing with her time? Her client was dead, but she was still receiving her salary, room and board. After the funeral, Lucy had started putting together plans to pick up her life where she’d been forced to drop it. She had a year left in her art history program at Yale. Her scholarship hadn’t covered all four years and without it, there was no way she had been able to continue.

Working and living with Alice had allowed her to save almost all of her salary and she had a tidy little nest egg now that she could use to move back to Connecticut and finish school. Then, hopefully, she could use the connections she’d established the last few years in the art world to land a job at a prestigious museum.

Alice and Lucy had bonded over art. Honestly, Lucy’d had no experience as a home health nurse or caregiver of any kind, but that wasn’t really what Alice needed. She needed a companion, a helper around the apartment. She also needed someone who would go out into the world for her. Part of that had included attending gallery openings and art auctions in Alice’s place. Lucy had met quite a few people there and with Alice Drake’s reputation behind her, hopefully those connections would carry forward once she entered the art community herself.

Today, Lucy found herself sitting in the library staring at the computer screen and her readmission forms for Yale, but she couldn’t focus on them. Her gaze kept drifting around the apartment to all the things she’d never imagined would be hers. Certainly not the apartment itself, with its prewar moldings, handcrafted built-ins and polished, inlaid hardwood floors. Not the gallery of art pieces that looked like a wing of the Met or MoMA. It was all lovely, but nothing she would ever need to worry about personally.

Except now, she had to worry about it all, including the college forms. It was September. If this court hearing dragged through the fall, it would mess with her returning to school for the spring semester. Phillip had recommended she not move out, even if she didn’t want to keep the apartment. He was worried members of the family would squat in it and make it difficult for her to take ownership or sell it even if the judge ruled in her favor. That meant the pile of boxes in the corner she’d started to fill up would stay put for now and Yale in January might not happen.

All because Alice decided Lucy should be a millionaire and everyone else disagreed.

The sound of the doorbell echoed through the apartment, distracting Lucy from her worries. She saved her work and shut the laptop before heading out to the front door. Whoever was here must be on the visitor list or the doorman wouldn’t have let them up. She hoped it was Harper, but one glance out the peephole dashed those hopes.

It was Oliver Drake.

Lucy smoothed her hands over her hair and opened the door to greet her guest. He was wearing one of a hundred suits he likely owned, this one being navy instead of the black he’d worn to the lawyer’s office the day before. Navy looked better on him. It brought out the blue in his eyes and for some reason, highlighted the gold strands in his brown, wavy hair.

She tore her gaze away from her inspection and instead focused on his mildly sour expression. Not a pleasure visit, she could tell, so she decided to set the tone before he could. “Oliver, so glad to see you were able to find the place. Do come in.”

She took a step back and Oliver entered the apartment with his gaze never leaving hers. “I have been here before, you know. Dozens of times.”

“But so much has changed since the nineties. Please, feel free to take a look around and reacquaint yourself with the apartment.” Lucy closed the door and when she turned around, found that Oliver was still standing in the same spot, studying her.

“You know, I can’t tell if you’re always this cheeky or if you’re doing it because you’ve got something to hide. Are you nervous, Lucy?” His voice was low and even, seemingly unbothered by her cutting quips.

Lucy crossed her arms over her chest and took a step back from him, as though doing so would somehow shield her from the blue eyes that threatened to see too much. “I don’t have anything to be nervous about.”

He took two slow strides toward her, moving into her personal space and forcing her back until the doorknob pressed into her spine. He was over six foot, lurking over her and making Lucy feel extremely petite at her five-foot-four-inch height. He leaned down close, studying her face with such intensity she couldn’t breathe.

Oliver paused at her lips for a moment, sending confusing signals to Lucy’s brain. She didn’t think Harper’s arrogant older brother would kiss her, but stranger things had already happened this week. Instead, his gaze shifted to her eyes, pinning her against the door of the apartment without even touching her. By this point, Lucy’s heart was pounding so loudly in her ears, it was nearly deafening her during his silent appraisal.

“We’ll see about that,” he said at last.

When he finally took a step back, Lucy felt like she could breathe again. There was something intense about Oliver that made her uncomfortable, especially when he looked at her that way.

As though nothing had just happened between them, Oliver stuffed his hands into his pockets and started strolling casually through the gallery and into the great room. Lucy followed him with a frown lining her face. She didn’t understand what he wanted. Was this just some psychological game he was playing with her? Was he looking to see if she’d sold anything of Alice’s? How could he even tell after all these years?

“So, I stopped by today to let you know that my attorney filed a dispute over the will this morning. I’m sure Phillip explained to you that all of Aunt Alice’s assets would be frozen until the dispute is resolved.”

Lucy stopped in the entry to the great room, her arms still crossed over her chest. Harper was right when she said that her brother would likely be the one to start trouble for her. “He did.”

Oliver looked around at the art and expensive tapestries draping the windows before he turned and nodded at her. “Good, good. I wouldn’t want there to be any awkward misunderstandings if you tried to sell something from the apartment. I’m fairly certain you’ve never inherited anything before and wouldn’t know how it all worked.”

“Yes, it’s a shame. I was just itching to dump that gaudy Léger painting in the hallway. I always thought it clashed with the Cézanne beside it, but Alice would never listen to reason,” she replied sarcastically. Calling a Léger gaudy would get her kicked out of the Yale art history program.

Oliver narrowed his gaze at her. “Which painting is the Léger?”

Lucy shelved a smirk. He thought he was so smart and superior to her, but art was obviously something he didn’t know anything about. “It’s the colorful cubist piece with the bicycles. But that aside, I was just kidding. Even if I win in court—and I doubt I will—I wouldn’t sell any of Alice’s art.”

He glanced over her shoulder at the Léger and shrugged before moving to the collection of cream striped sofas. He sat down, manspreading across the loveseat in a cocky manner that she found both infuriating and oddly intriguing. He wore his confidence well, but he seemed too comfortable here, as though he were already planning on moving in to the place Lucy had called home for years.

“And why is that?” he asked. “I would think most people in your position would be itching to liquidate the millions in art she hoarded here.”

She sighed, not really in the mood to explain herself to him, but finding she apparently had nothing better to do today. “Because it meant too much to her. You may have been too busy building your computer empire to know this, but these pieces were her lover and her children. She carefully selected each piece in her collection, gathering the paintings and sculptures that spoke to her because she couldn’t go out to see them in the museums. She spent hours talking to me about them. If she saw it in her heart to leave them to me, selling them at any price would be a slap in the face.”

“What would you do with them, then?”

Lucy leaned against the column that separated the living room from the gallery space. “I suppose that I would loan most of them out to museums. The Guggenheim had been after Alice for months to borrow her Richter piece. She always turned them down because she couldn’t bear to look at the blank spot on the wall where it belonged.”

“So you’d loan all of them out?” His heavy brow raised for the first time in genuine curiosity.

Lucy shook her head. “No, not all of them. I would keep the Monet.”

“Which one is that?”

She swallowed her frustration and pointed through the doorway to the piece hanging in the library. “Irises in Monet’s Garden,” she said. “You did go to college, didn’t you? Didn’t you take any kind of liberal studies classes? Maybe visit a museum in your life?”

At that, Oliver laughed, a low, throaty rumble that unnerved her even as it made her extremely aware of her whole body. Once again, her pulse sped up and her mouth went so dry she couldn’t have managed another smart remark.

She’d never had a reaction to a man like that before. Certainly not in the last five years where she’d basically lived like her ninety-year-old client. Her body was in sore need of a man to remind her she was still in her twenties, but Oliver was not the one. She was happy to have distance between them and hoped to keep it that way.

* * *

“You’d be surprised,” Oliver said, pushing himself up from the couch. He felt like he was a piece on display with her standing there, watching him from the doorway. “I’ve been to several museums in my years, and not just on those painful school field trips. Mostly with Aunt Alice, actually, in the days when she still left her gilded prison. I never really cared much about the art, but you’re right, she really did love it. I liked listening to her talk about it.”

He turned away from Lucy and strolled over to the doorway to the library. There, hanging directly in front of the desk so it could be admired, was a blurry painting, about two and a half feet by three feet. He took a few steps back from it and squinted, finally being able to make out the shapes of flowers from a distance. He supposed to some people it was a masterpiece, but to him it was just a big mess on a canvas that was only important to a small group of rich people.

Even then, he did know who Monet was. And Van Gogh and Picasso. There was even a Jackson Pollock hanging in the lobby of his corporate offices, but that was his father’s purchase. Probably Aunt Alice’s suggestion. He didn’t recognize the others she’d mentioned, but he wasn’t entirely without culture. Aunt Alice had taken him to the museums more times than he could count. It was just more fun to let Lucy think he didn’t know what she was talking about.