An Unlikely Match

“You can’t mean to represent us for two dollars.”

“It’s that or nothing,” he retorted with a shrug. “You’re the one who wanted to pay me. Call it a retainer, if it makes you feel better.”

Frowning, she reluctantly laid two crumpled dollar bills on the desk. He swiftly traded the receipt for them and slipped them into his shirt pocket. “That takes care of that.”

She made a face. “Look, even if your aunts did drag you into this, I don’t expect you to knock yourself out settling our little insurance claim, not for two bucks.”

He smiled. “I have a question for you.” He folded his arms atop his desk blotter. “Why are you trying to get me off this case?”

Shock flashed across her face, followed swiftly by guilt. “I—I don’t know what you mean.”

“Tell me what you’re hiding.”

“What makes you think I’m h-hiding something?” she hedged, averting her gaze.

“This isn’t my first day on the job,” he pointed out, hardening himself against those suddenly woeful eyes. “And you’re a terrible liar.”

“I’m not lying!”

“You’re stalling the insurance company,” he accused in his most lawyerly voice. “Why?”

Biting her lip, she shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

“I’m trying to, because I can’t help you if I don’t know why you’re doing this!” He leaned toward her. “Is it your goal to remain at Chatam House indefinitely?”

She broke, blurting, “I only want my grandfather and your aunt to have a chance to get together!” She quickly clapped her hand over her mouth.

“I knew it!” Asher cried, smacking a hand against the desktop. The lawyer in him crowed, even while the annoyed nephew was exasperated.

But Asher Chatam, who had known Ellie for quite some time, was worried.

He now had at least a part of the truth.

He wasn’t at all sure, though, that he wanted the rest of it. Because he wasn’t sure that he could protect her—not if her foolishness was as great as he feared.

Chapter Three

She had told him! She had told Asher of her deepest hope, despite Dallas having warned her that he would be appalled, even offended, at the very suggestion of Odelia and Kent rekindling their romance. Ellie suddenly feared what else she might tell him if he pressed hard enough.

“I need to know everything about the fire, Ellie,” he said in a soothing voice that she dared not trust, not after the grilling she’d just endured. “Tell me about that night.”

Dismay filled her, followed quickly by irritation that she’d let herself be cornered like that. She shifted in her seat, crossed her legs and hemmed and hawed before finally telling the story.

She and her grandfather had moved a quantity of furniture into storage to make room for the workmen who were renovating their seventy-year-old house. As the work progressed, they had replaced one room’s furnishings with that of the next, swapping out contents as the necessary renovations were completed.

“They did the roof first, then moved inside, starting upstairs,” she told him. “They were ready to move downstairs to the bedroom that had been my grandmother’s, so we took her antique French Empire bed suite to storage that night. It’s easily worth more than everything else in the house put together, and Grandpa takes good care of it, calls it part of my legacy.”

Asher’s brown eyes regarded her intensely. “Go on.”

Ellie took a deep breath and explained that she and her grandfather were still trying to fit the bed suite into the rented space without damaging it when Dallas had arrived. Asher’s brows rose as she repeated the story that Dallas had told her. Out jogging that evening, Dallas had stopped by the Monroe house on impulse to discuss a date Ellie had gone on the previous night. Dallas had ostensibly seen the fire through the front window. She waved down a passerby, who happened to be Garrett Willows, the gardener at Chatam House, as he drove down the street on his motorcycle.

Willows had called 911. The Fire Department had arrived within moments and put out the fire a short while later. That was apparently when Dallas remembered that Ellie and her grandfather were moving furniture into storage that night. Willows had offered to take her there so she could break the news in person. That was also when she’d called her aunts, who had immediately offered sanctuary.

“And that’s all there is to it,” Ellie said, not quite meeting his gaze.

“And how did the fire start?”

She gulped, then made herself look at him, noticing that as she did so his gaze dropped to her lips. “Apparently a can of paint remover spilled, then a hot lamp tipped over, the one we always left on when we were away from the house at night.” She shrugged and looked down at her hands. “I don’t know how it happened in an empty house. Someone said there was a loud noise, like a car backfiring nearby.”

“And you think something like that could have knocked over a can of paint remover and a lamp?” he asked skeptically.

“There could have been a collision at the track yard,” she insisted. “The switching lane is just a few hundred yards from the house. It isn’t used much, but when it is, we can feel it, almost like the ground is moving.”

“But if your theory is correct,” he mused, “then the paint remover had to be open when it tipped.”

“The workmen sometimes just set the cap on the neck and didn’t screw it down until they were done,” she told him. “They warned me about an open can more than once when I came into the room where they were.”

Asher leaned back in his chair. “Plausible,” he admitted, but his tone implied that he found it just barely so.

He stroked a fingertip over the cleft in his chin. “You, ah, mentioned going on a date the previous evening.”

Ellie blinked at the change in subject. “What about it?”

“Just wondering if you’ve broken anyone’s heart lately.”

She scoffed, laughing. “Hardly.”

“There hasn’t been anyone special then?”

“I wish,” she quipped. “What there have been are a lot of first dates, emphasis on the word first, as in not many second dates.” She wrinkled her nose. “I just don’t seem to find any keepers, if you take my meaning. Dallas says I’m too picky, but I notice that she doesn’t have a steady boyfriend, either.”

He smiled then abruptly sobered again. “By any chance, might one of those first dates have been with Garrett Willows?” he asked carefully.

Ellie blinked and frowned, shaking her head. “I never met him before that night. Why?”

“I’m just trying to understand the overall situation.”

“But I’ve told you what happened.”

“You put forward a supposition,” he pointed out, “but you’ve as good as said that you don’t really know what happened.”

She slid to the edge of her seat and laid a hand on his desktop beseechingly. “Look, however it happened, it wasn’t malicious.”

Asher beetled his brow. “And how do you—”

“It just stands to reason,” she said too quickly. “I mean, it’s not as if we have enemies.”

“Then who set the fire, Ellie?”