The Cost of Silence

“I’m not.”

He waited, apparently unfazed. She tried not to reach across the table and slap that smug arrogance from his face. He was so sure, wasn’t he? So sure he had her number. And that number, he assumed, was twenty-five thousand.

“Apparently you haven’t ever looked up the average cost of raising a child from birth to age eighteen, Mr. Malone. I have. Would you like to know what it is?”

He smiled. “About ten times that.”

“Exactly.” She sat back in her chair, though she didn’t allow her spine to touch the fabric. “So you’re correct. I’m unimpressed.”

He raised one brow. “You want more?”

“No, actually. I want less.” With effort, she kept her voice down, so that she wouldn’t wake Eddie. But God, she was mad. She was so hot, blazing angry. “I want less ingratiating B.S. I want less of your insulting, patronizing arrogance. This check isn’t a bequest, or a gift. This is a payment.”

“A payment?”

“Yes. Or rather, a payoff. I’m not an idiot, Mr. Malone. Victor never felt the urge to toss this kind of money my way before. Why now? What does he want? I’d be willing to bet the answer is in that nice envelope you’re holding. So why don’t you show me?”

The look he gave her now was odd—part contempt and part grudging admiration, as if she’d turned out to be a worthier opponent than he’d expected. She could feel his scorn, but in a strange way she was glad the poker faces were gone. The cards were on the table now, and the game was almost done.

With a cool smile, he opened the envelope and unfolded a sheaf of papers. He flattened them so that they could be more easily read, then extended them to her.

“It’s a confidentiality agreement. In a nutshell, he would like you to agree that you will not disclose to anyone that he is the father of your child. If you sign, you’ll also be agreeing to renounce any interest in the estate and relinquish any claim you may have to it.”

She took it. She gave it a cursory look, though the black squiggles didn’t even seem to form words in front of her fury-glazed stare.

Then she leaned over and picked up the check. She folded the check inside the papers, neatly. With an almost tender care.

And then she tore it all into pieces.

“Ms. York, I think you might want—”

As if it had been rehearsed, Jimbo chose that moment to come home.

He opened the door with his own key and blundered in, singing. His gorgeous, toned body was barely covered by his yoga pants, which rode low on his hips. He wore no shirt at all, displaying his colorful tattoos. At chest level, he held a pile of take-out boxes so high that only the spiky blond tips of his hair could be seen above the cartons.

“Hey, sugar lips. Lookee what Daddy brought home from Mamma Loo’s!”

Red Malone stared for a split second, and then, running his fingers through his hair, he began to chuckle darkly. “I see. The new meal ticket, I presume?”

“Hey.” Jimbo cocked his head around the food. He clearly didn’t like the tone. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m nobody. I’m gone.” Still smiling, Red stood. “No. Really.” He put his hand out to prevent Allison from rising. “Don’t bother. I can find my own way out.”

CHAPTER FOUR

ATTORNEY LEWIS PORTERFIELD, who usually ate his lunch in lonely, Gothic splendor, obviously wasn’t happy to have Red as his guest today.

Well, too bad. Red wouldn’t say he was having the time of his life, either. The firm’s impressive, mahogany-walled conference room had obviously been decorated by a mortician. The lighting was as dim as what you’d get from candle sconces in an underground tomb.

Room was cold as a crypt, too, though that sensation might have been coming from Lewis.

The lawyer’s small, pasty form was almost invisible in the high-backed armchair at the head of the table. He could be located primarily by watching the ghostly glisten of his boiled calamari as he rhythmically lifted one forkful after another to his lips.

Red had often wondered why on earth Victor used this guy. Sure, Lewis could write a contract so tight even Houdini couldn’t wriggle out of it. But so could Colby, and probably a thousand other lawyers in the San Francisco Bay area alone. And they could do it without giving everyone the dead-eye creeps.

“So, tell me again.” Lewis took a sip of water, the only beverage Red had ever seen him drink. “In your estimation, is Ms. York saying no because she means no? Or because she is holding out for a larger payment?”

“I can’t be sure.” Red had said this five times now, but apparently Lewis planned to keep asking until he got an answer he liked. “I got the impression she really meant it. But it’s hard to be sure. She’s…complicated.”

The calamari hovered a few inches from Lewis’s lips. “Complicated how?”

Red shrugged. “I don’t know. She looks like the girl next door. And she lives simply, almost…” He thought of the squeaky clean, threadbare apartment. “Well, let’s just say that if she’s a gold digger, she’s not a very good one. Plus, you can’t help sensing that there’s this sweet quality in her personality, in spite of the situation. But she’s got a backbone. She’s far from weak.”

He wondered suddenly what Nana Lina would think about Allison. His grandmother was the shrewdest judge of character Red had ever met. She liked women who had what she called “starch.”

Lewis tapped his cloth napkin to his lips, three times, as always. “Is she beautiful?”

Beautiful? With that short nose and those freckled cheeks? All skin and bones, and wash-and-dry hair? Hardly.

But Red had hesitated a moment too long. Victor set down his fork with a ring of sterling against fine china. “Ah. She is, then. Is that why she’s complicated? Your mind can’t process her properly because she’s simultaneously a beauty and a tramp?”

Red’s shoulders twitched. God, what a judgmental— He knew this was merely how Lewis talked, but still. Red needed to get out of this room. He needed to breathe fresh air and eat something that didn’t look like boiled slime.

A whole hour of this crazy Victorian scenario was too much. Red sometimes wondered whether Lewis put it all on, for fun. Maybe at home Lewis wore a Giants cap and Nikes and burped up his beer while he watched American Idol.

Hell, the guy was only about fifty, Victor’s age. Maybe Lewis had a girlfriend, too. One who—

But no. That was taking even a comedic fantasy too far. If there was a female out there who would date Lewis Porterfield, Red didn’t want to meet her. “I think tramp might be a little extreme, don’t you?” Red was proud of his restraint. “For all we know, she was deeply in love with Victor.”

Lewis raised one eyebrow. “There’s already a new man in her house. Besides, you said she hated Victor.”

“Love can turn to hate pretty quickly.” Red tapped the table irritably. “But I’m not saying she did love him. I’m only saying we don’t know.”

Pause. Then Lewis’s mouth twisted in something that might have been a smile. “And, of course, there’s the fact that she’s…complicated.”

Oh, great. Sarcasm. That was the annoying part about Lewis. He might look like a caricature of a Victorian lawyer, but his brain was sharp and relentless.

Red shoved his plate of calamari away, untouched. “Okay, look. If I had to commit one way or another, I’d say she’s not going to take Victor’s money, no matter how high the offer goes. She needs it, but there was a kind of, I don’t know, steel behind her eyes. She said no, and I think she meant it.”

“Very well. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really matter because we have to follow Victor’s wishes, in any case.”

“What do you mean? I thought Victor’s wishes were for me to make that offer, and—”

“That was plan A.”

Oh, hell. “And what is plan B?”

“We wait a week. If she hasn’t accepted the offer by then, we go back, and we’ll offer her fifty thousand.”