The Reluctant Heiress

“Who’s Mrs. White?”

“My landlady. She lives in the other half of this duplex.” Her disquiet compounded itself. A woman with a camera crew just crossed the street to knock on Hal Pederson’s door. Hal worked graveyard shift at the grocery warehouse and slept from two o’clock in the afternoon until ten. He wouldn’t appreciate being awakened after having just gone to sleep.

The two news vans at the curb in front of her house had been there when she arrived. A third van pulled up, the satellite dish on its roof already rotating to seek the strongest signal.

“CBS just got here,” she told him, identifying the logo on the side of the vehicle as someone knocked on her front door. “And there’s a woman with a microphone at the house across the street. It’s one thing to have them outside my door, but now they’re disturbing my neighbors. Should I call the police?” she asked him, her distress mounting as the knock repeated. “Or would that just make this all worse?”

“I’ll call. The police can’t stop the press from talking to your neighbors, but they’ll get them off of their lawns. And yours. I’m on my way,” he told her. “Don’t open the door until I get there. I’ll come around back.”

The line went dead before she could do much more than open her mouth. She’d been about to ask how long he would be. The address on his card indicated his office was in Washington, D.C.

Thinking it could be nearly three hours before he arrived, she hung up the phone—only for it to start ringing again.

She didn’t recognize the name on the caller ID. But then, except for Mrs. White’s, she hadn’t recognized the names or numbers of any of the other people who’d called since she’d come home, either.

Feeling besieged, needing an ally, she thought about calling Stacy Fisher. It was Stacy who’d talked her into blowing some of the money she was saving to buy a house on the week with her in Hawaii.

“You need to do something fun for yourself,” her ever-adventurous—and only single—friend had insisted. “You can buy a house when you’re married. You need to lie on a beach and drink mai tais while some buff, bronzed hunk rubs suntan lotion on your back.”

The beach and the mai tais had materialized. So had the hunks, actually. Jillian hadn’t been as receptive to them as Stacy had, though. She preferred men who could converse without staring at her chest or feeling compelled to impress her with what kind of cars they drove and how well their stocks had performed last quarter. Or without using the words dude, righteous and gnarly.

Stacy had said she just needed more practice. She’d been stuck in the Eric rut so long before she’d had the good sense to dump him, that she’d forgotten about the frog-kissing a woman had to do.

She hadn’t talked to Stacy since they’d returned from Hawaii a couple of days ago, so the fearless, bubbly blonde she’d known since college had no idea what was going on. Still, Jillian knew she could always count on her for solid, no-nonsense advice. Stacy, who now taught seventh grade at a middle school on the other side of town, had once taught in the inner city where lock-downs and crowd control had been as common as chalk dust. Her advice on how to handle the intruders outside her door would probably be to turn a hose on them, so she’d be no help there. But being the people person she was, she could give her a little practical perspective on how to deal with her colleagues at school.

That morning, talk about the Kendrick scandals had pretty much been an echo of yesterday. Gina Wasserman, the librarian, had claimed, again, that there was no way she could have sat in front of a camera and listened to her husband tell the world he’d been unfaithful to her. “Katherine had to be devastated,” she’d insisted, speaking of the man’s wife as if she were her dearest friend, “but she showed such class.”

“Unlike whoever that other woman was,” had sniffed the grand dame of fifth grade, Yvonne Bliss. “She knew he was married. She knew he had a family. What did she think? He was going to leave Katherine Kendrick for her?”

According to Carrie Teague, Jillian’s outspoken teaching partner, some women simply didn’t think in those situations. They were attracted to the power. What Carrie had been more interested in was how much his “secret daughter,” as the press had started calling her, had been paid to keep quiet. The married mother of two was absolutely certain it must have been a fortune.

The gossip had changed tone, however, after the reporter had shown up. Thanks to Yvonne, who’d been in the office at the time and who also happened to be the biggest gossip in the school, news of his presence and his photograph had spread through the halls like an annual virus.

Once word was out about Jillian’s identity, some staff had practically tripped over themselves explaining that they’d never have said what they had if they’d known they were talking about her and her mother. Others had chosen a speculative silence. Or outright skepticism.

Ted Gunderson, the built and balding coach who’d smiled broadly every time he’d seen her the past couple of days had walked up to her in the hall with his hands on his hips and a frown on his face.

“You’re not really his daughter, are you?” he’d asked.

Since there was no denying what certain lawyers, reporters and a tabloid already knew, she’d reluctantly admitted that she was.

His only response had been to consider her with an even deeper frown—before he’d turned and walked away.

So much for him asking her out.

There had been a few others who’d jokingly asked her not to forget them now that she was famous. Yvonne had glared at her as if she had been the one to come between William and her much-admired Katherine. Carrie, who in the two years Jillian had taught with her had rarely had an unspoken thought, had decided it was obvious that Jillian hadn’t been paid off since she was still working and living in her duplex. She’d also wanted to know if she was coming into money now and what she planned to do with it and if she would share.

The phone stopped ringing. Desperately needing a friendly ear, she grabbed it before it could start again and punched in Stacy’s number.

Hearing her friend’s recorded voice when her answering machine picked up, she blew a breath and punched the off button.

The phone immediately started to ring again. Not recognizing that incoming call, either, she reached behind the table and unplugged the line from the wall jack.

She’d just slipped the now mercifully silent instrument back onto its base when voices from outside penetrated the walls and another knock rattled her front door.

The only way she could think to block the intrusive sounds was to turn on the television in the entertainment unit, raise its volume and escape into her bedroom.

With the sounds outside finally muffled, she headed down the short hall behind the living room wall and turned into her room.

The drapes she’d opened that morning framed a view of the flower-filled yard Mrs. White so lovingly tended—and a tea-saucer-size black photo lens pressed to the outside of the multipaned glass.

Her heart jerked as adrenaline surged. All she could see of the man holding the camera were his bony fingers and a head of wiry red hair. Behind him approached a mountain of muscle with no neck wearing a dark ball cap.

The camera flashed even as she grabbed the door handle and jumped back into the hall. The door slammed so hard it rattled. The bones in her body seemed to rattle, too, when her back hit the wall behind her.

Moments ago she’d felt under siege. With the privacy of her home invaded, she felt violated and vulnerable. A total stranger had been photographing the room where she slept, the room that was, to her, the most personal.

She had always felt safe in her home, rented though it was. And as physically secure as she was likely to feel anywhere. Hayden was a relatively quiet town. Her little corner of it was quieter still. But just then all she felt was surrounded. And angry. And trapped.

The blinds were open in the kitchen, too.

Remembering that, she hurried from the hall, her footsteps pounding along with her heart. When she’d closed the drapes in the living room, her only concern had been with what had been going on out front. Obviously, fences and gates meant nothing to the press Ben had described as “persistent.”

She apparently needed to pay more attention to his assessments.

Her kitchen was a small, efficient ell of white counters and appliances that held her considerable collection of cookbooks and cooking gadgets. Ceramic canisters painted with ivy sat beneath a rack crowded with spices and herbs. When she couldn’t sleep, she baked. Cookies, cakes, lasagnas. Everyone at the school knew when she’d had a bad night, too, since they were the beneficiaries of her insomnia.

She’d done pretty well sleepwise lately. At least, she had before William had made his little announcement.

She dropped the blinds over the sink and was calling herself six kinds of idiot for having ever sought out William Kendrick when a hard knock on her back door almost sent her back into the little hall.

It was only the muffled voice that shouldn’t have sounded so welcome that stopped her.

“Jillian, it’s Ben.”

Relief that he’d arrived canceled any concern about how anxious she appeared to him when she ripped back the chain and yanked open the door.

He looked much as he had yesterday as he slipped inside, glancing over his shoulder as he did. Tall, confident and more attractive than a man had a right to be. He even wore the same beautifully cut navy suit that so perfectly fit his lean, broad-shouldered frame. The shirt and tie were different, though. Crisp white had given way to a light blue that picked up the flecks of silver in his deep-blue eyes.

He could have been built like a tire and had eyes like a rabbit for all she cared. Now that he was there, she just wanted him to tell her how to get her privacy back.

A faint tension radiated from his body as he slipped the chain back in place and glanced at her. That tension seemed to snake toward her, through her. Disconcerted by the oddly intimate sensation, uneasy enough already, she moved farther from the door. And him.

“You didn’t go back to Washington.”

“It seemed more practical to stay in Hayden.” Dismissing the fact that he’d obviously known he would be back, he flicked an assessing glance over her uneasy features. “I was already on my way over here with your other bodyguard when you called.”

“Other bodyguard?” She had bodyguards?