The Bravo Billionaire

The file—or, technically, the series of files—contained a number of pictures snapped on the sly by one of the detectives he’d hired. There she was in her little white blouse and short black skirt, grinning at a customer, her order pad poised, pen ready to roll. And there she was at some Hollywood nightspot, with what looked like a strawberry daiquiri in front of her and a wide, happy smile on her face. And at Venice Beach, wearing cutoff shorts, a skimpy little nothing of a top and inline skates, being pulled along by a high stepping, beautifully groomed pair of Afghan hounds. In that picture, he couldn’t help but notice, her legs looked especially long, her breasts particularly high and full.

Jonas sat back for a minute and rubbed at his eyes. Full breasts and long legs, he reminded himself, were not the issue here.

He looked at the screen again, began bringing up the pictures one by one, noting as he did so that the love of animals came through good and clear. The cat and the iguana. The Afghan hounds. A shot taken in a pet store, with a parakeet on her head and a mynah bird on her shoulder, one at what looked like Griffith Park with someone’s tiny Chihuahua balanced on her outstretched hand.

Jonas stared off in the direction of the limestone mantel, thinking of Bob and Ted, the pair of miniature Yorkshire terriers his mother had owned. Though as a general rule, Jonas had no liking for small dogs, Bob and Ted had surprised him. They were smart and obedient and not particularly prone to yipping. And they’d been fiercely dedicated to their mistress.

Not too long ago, Bob and Ted had moved in with Emma Hewitt. Blythe, in the hospital then for what would be her final stay, had told Jonas she wanted the woman to have the dogs. He hadn’t objected. He’d figured that the kennel keeper was an appropriate choice to inherit the Yorkies. At that point he hadn’t known that the Yorkies weren’t everything his mother intended for Emma Lynn Hewitt to inherit.

Jonas scrolled through the personal information file. The phone numbers had not been updated. There was the number of the deli where she’d worked five years ago, and the number of that studio apartment in East Hollywood where she’d lived when she first came to Los Angeles.

He had the current numbers somewhere, didn’t he? The business number, at least, should be easy enough to find in the phone book or online.

But he knew where he would be certain to find them both.

He got his palm planner from his briefcase, left the study and went upstairs again, this time to his mother’s suite. In her white, pink and gold sitting room, which Blythe had recently redone in grand Louis XVI style, he picked up the phone. As he’d expected, she had the kennel keeper on autodial. There were three numbers: home, mobile and business.

Jonas wasn’t about to talk to the Hewitt woman on his mother’s phone in his mother’s rooms with his mother’s things around him, reminding him all too poignantly of what he’d told his little sister earlier that evening: that Blythe was not coming back.

He found a white leather address book in a drawer beneath the phone and got the numbers from it, entering all three in the palm planner. Then he returned to his study.

He sat down at his desk again, picked up the phone and glanced at the serpentine clock on the mantel. It was nearing eleven. He called the home number.

She answered on the third ring. “Hello?” He heard fuzziness in her voice, a slight slurring, as if he’d wakened her. An image flashed through his mind: the kennel keeper in bed, wearing something skimpy and eyeflayingly bright, the Yorkies snuggled in close, one on either side of her.

He blinked to clear the image. “How long is ‘a few days’?” he asked in a gentle and reasonable tone.

Evidently, the sound of his voice was enough to banish sleep, because she said his name—his given name—flatly, all traces of fuzziness gone. “Jonas.”

“How long is ‘a few days’?”

He heard her take in a breath and sigh as she let it out.

He began again. “I asked how—”

“I heard you.” She heaved another sigh. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know yet. I have to think this over. I have to…consider what all this will mean.”

“What’s to consider?”

“Plenty. I know you don’t believe me, but this was a pretty big shock to me, too.”

He tapped his palm planner lightly on the desktop. And then he set it down and stared at it, not really seeing it, reluctantly coming to grips with the fact that he did believe her. He’d seen the look of sick astonishment on her face when he’d entered that conference room and she looked up from the new will. He’d wanted to think she was in on his mother’s scheme. But now he’d had some time to mull it over, he supposed he had to admit that that angle just didn’t add up.

If she’d been in on it, why would she be giving him the runaround now?

She wouldn’t—unless she was hoping he’d make her an offer.

Fine. An offer, then. “How much do you want?”

She didn’t say anything.

So he went ahead and started laying it out for her. “Sign an agreement giving up all claim to my sister and I’ll pay you—”

“Don’t even tell me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t take any money from you.”

“Of course you can take money from me.”

“No, I cannot.”

“Why?”

“Blythe was my friend. I can’t take money to betray my friend.”

“This is no betrayal.”

“To me it would be. I’m sorry. I won’t take your money.”

“It seems to me, Ms. Hewitt, that if there has been any betrayal in this situation, it’s already occurred.”

“Pardon me?”

“The way I see it, my mother betrayed all of us. You. Me. And Mandy, too.”

“Your mama did not betray anybody.” There was indignation in her voice now. Indignation with a Texas twang.

Jonas rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was getting a headache between his eyes. “All right. Perhaps I’ve used the wrong word. How about tricked? Is that better? Or maybe just plain old screwed.”

“Blythe Bravo did not—”

“She screwed us, Ms. Hewitt. Or at least, she screwed me. And my sister.”

“That is not true. Your mama absolutely without a doubt wanted only the best for you. And for your sister.”

“The best. That would be you?”

There was silence on the line again. Finally, the dog groomer said softly, “Well, I guess your mama thought so, now didn’t she?”

Jonas picked up his palm planner and then set it down. He looked at the spines of the books on a shelf about ten feet from where he sat—all gold-tooled leather, beautifully bound. A number of harsh remarks were passing through his brain, things to the effect that he did not consider a woman who’d been raised in a trailer in some place called Alta Lobo, Texas, to be the best thing for him.

He wisely did not let those remarks get out of his mouth.

“So what do we do now, Ms. Hewitt?”

“Well, I don’t know yet.”