A Convenient Affair

Hannah frowned. “He lived at Barron’s Court, too?”

“In the penthouse I inherited from him. Now that I think about it, perhaps Isobel was the inspiration for his whole scheme to turn the old Barron’s Hotel into condos in the first place. Before that, my grandparents lived in one of the big old mansions south of Grand Avenue—and he could hardly have installed Isobel in the guest room without Gran noticing. But we’re drifting from the point.”

“The Lovers’ Box.” Hannah touched it with a fingertip.

“I want the box so I can put it back where it belongs, Hannah—in my mother’s hands. I’m willing to pay good money for it, just as I was willing to pay Isobel.”

“Oh, really?” Skepticism dripped from Hannah’s voice. “Then—if Isobel was so mercenary—why didn’t she sell it to you?”

He’d thought until then that he was making progress. She’d been softening, he was sure of it, until he’d gotten careless and made a misstep. What was wrong with him, to make him forget that she was a demon of a negotiator?

“Because it wasn’t a matter of money to her, by then,” he said irritably. He knew even as he said it that he was handing Hannah a weapon. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself; once he’d opened the wound his pain seemed to overflow.

“She liked the feeling of power she got from keeping me dangling,” he went on bitterly. “She liked knowing that even though my grandfather had been dead for years, she could still remind his family that she hadn’t gone away. She liked being a thorn in the flesh—cashing her pension check every month, still living just one floor down from the family home, running into me in the elevator from time to time and politely asking how I was doing, as if she were an old friend of the family. And she liked keeping that box where she could look at it now and then and smile.”

And what about you, Hannah? he asked himself. Are you going to be just like her? Are you going to use all that against me?

“I’m sorry,” Hannah said. “I imagine Isobel was always like that. But whatever she did really has nothing to do with me.” She toyed with her wineglass and said casually, “So how much did you offer her for the box?”

He stared at her for a long moment. Well, he thought, he had his answer. She was going to hold him up for everything she could get. “Surely you don’t think I’m going to tell you.”

“You mean you won’t pay me as much as you’d have given her?” She shook her head sadly.

“I’m sure as hell not going to make you a free gift of the information.” His voice was hard-edged. “At least you’ll have to do that much on your own. Isobel did everything else for you. Not only did she give you the box, but she handed you complete instructions on how to bargain with it. She made sure, from the way she wrote her will, that you’d know it was worth more than anything else she could leave you. And by dangling my name, she told you precisely how to cash in on it.” Cooper snapped a bread stick in half. “So I suppose the only question remaining now is how much you’re like her.”

“What?”

“It’s quite apparent you’ve inherited Isobel’s sadistic nature,” he said deliberately. “The unknown is whether you’ve developed it into a fine art, as she did. How much am I going to have to pay to get back what’s mine?”

Hannah stared at him. Cooper put the bread stick between his lips like a cigar and waited to see if the strategy would work. Whatever figure she named, of course, he had no intention of paying it. But once she’d set a price, no matter how outrageous, he could force her into a final compromise. Asking leading questions hadn’t succeeded in getting her to name an amount; would goading her to fury work any better?

“Nothing.”

Her voice was so quiet that he almost thought he’d heard wrong. “What did you say?”

“I mean no amount of money would be enough,” she said. “You’re not getting the box—no matter what.” She fumbled in her bag and tossed a handful of cash onto the table. “That should cover my half of the bill.” She stood, picked up the Lovers’ Box, and stepped away from the table. Then she turned toward him again. “One more thing, Mr. Winston. Since I’ve just paid for a glass of wine that I never intended to drink, I might as well get some good out of it.”

She picked up her still-full glass and with one smooth and efficient turn of her wrist threw the contents at him.

He saw it coming as if in slow motion, first a few droplets and then a tidal wave of red wine, and he closed his eyes against the onslaught. But she hadn’t aimed at his face; the liquid sloshed across the breadth of his chest instead, soaking his favorite tie, the front of his once-white shirt, the lapels of his charcoal suit.

“Excuse me,” Hannah said to the waiter, who had rushed forward, his tray of hors d’oeuvres still balanced, to fumble with a napkin. “I do hope I didn’t get any on the carpet.”

Then she walked away, head high, spine straight, with the Lover’s Box held firmly in both hands, leaving only silence in her wake.

The breeze had picked up, whipping through the canyons of downtown. But Hannah was steaming, too agitated to sit still, so instead of hailing a cab she walked all the way back downtown to Stephens & Webster.

Cooper Winston had deserved every last drop, she told herself. The moment when it was apparent he’d seen the deluge coming and knew he couldn’t do a thing to prevent it would be part of Hannah’s scrapbook of precious memories for the rest of her life. It was just too bad it had been only a glass of wine, and a small one at that; if he’d ordered the bottle, she’d have smashed it over his head.

Of course, she admitted, there was the little matter of effectively squashing any faint possibility that he might consider taking his legal business to Stephens & Webster. And if he were to complain about her conduct to Ken Stephens…

“He still deserved it,” Hannah muttered unrepentantly.

Besides, when she thought about it, she decided that he was unlikely to say anything to anybody about the incident. He’d look like a fool if he told that story—and if there was one thing she was certain of about Cooper, it was that he didn’t like looking silly. Experienced businessman that he was, he would never admit that he’d been outmaneuvered in a straightforward business proposition by a young woman whose law school diploma was practically still warm from the press, much less that Hannah’s final counteroffer had been a glass of wine.

No, his revenge would be of a different sort. And she was fairly sure there would be consequences of her actions—even though the whole thing had been his fault in the first place. If he hadn’t leaped to unwarranted assumptions about her, Hannah wouldn’t have lost her temper at all.

So what if Isobel hadn’t been any plaster saint? That wasn’t exactly a news flash, though Hannah still had a little trouble picturing her elderly cousin as a courtesan extraordinaire. Fluffy, agreeable, and charming weren’t words that sprang to mind where Isobel was concerned.

But then, what made Hannah assume that she knew the criteria for being a good mistress? Maybe fluffy, agreeable, and charming were precisely what men like Cooper’s grandfather weren’t looking for.

Still, whatever Isobel’s history, it didn’t mean that the inclination for extortion and blackmail ran through the rest of the family, as Cooper so clearly believed.

He’d been remembering his fifteen million dollars, of course. But though Hannah admitted that her timing could have been a lot more convenient, there had been nothing shady about her actions in the restaurant chain deal. She’d simply discovered, at the very last minute, a loophole that everyone else had overlooked altogether.

What really annoyed her about the Lovers’ Box was the fact that right up till the last minute she’d actually been feeling sympathetic. She’d been almost ready to wipe away a tear as she handed his treasure back to him. The last foolish question she’d asked had been prompted more by curiosity than anything else; she’d been not only wondering exactly how much the box was worth to him, but she’d been toying with the idea of how grateful he’d be when she told him he didn’t have to pay her anything at all…

Not far from the law office, on a sudden whim, she stopped to take a closer look at Cooper’s treasure.

In strong sunlight, the Lovers’ Box looked even less likely as an object of obsession. It was pretty enough, but on close inspection she could see a basic crudity about the carving and a certain lack of grace in the proportions of the box. One thing was certain; Cooper had been right when he said that no one else would pay as much for it as he was willing to do.

You probably should have grabbed the five hundred bucks and run, Hannah thought wryly. But no, she’d had to probe for the whole story. What on earth had she been thinking of?

And what was she going to do now?

Perhaps more important, what would Cooper do? He was momentarily stymied, but Hannah didn’t expect that state of affairs to last long. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d thought out another plan by the time he’d changed his shirt.

But what would he try next? Persuasion? Threats? Outright burglary?

She’d have to deal with those things when and if they came up. In the meantime, she decided, there were a few basic measures she could take in the name of self-protection.

As soon as she’d stashed the Lovers’ Box in a hiding place that she hoped was safely out of Cooper’s reach, she dusted one problem from her hands. But there was still Brenton Bannister to consider. Brenton, and his promise of a very special evening. One, he had seemed to imply, which would change the rest of Hannah’s life.

The uneasy flutter she’d felt in the pit of her stomach when he’d issued the invitation came back again, even more strongly.

Hannah was in the law library, still poring over Jacob Jones’s files, when Brenton came in. “What’s keeping you?” he said. “I’ve been waiting.”

Hannah stopped fitting together the bits of an invoice which had crumbled with age. “You said you had clients all afternoon. I told your secretary I’d be here if you needed me.”

“Very discreet of you to put it that way.” He chuckled. “I always knew you had sense, Hannah. She said you were very bright-eyed when you came in, and that you looked as if you’d had quite a surprise.”

“I suppose you could put it that way.” Hannah fitted the last piece of the invoice into place, glanced at it, concluded that the information it contained carried no importance to the legal matter at hand, and put it in the finished stack.

“So tell me the good news. How did you and Ken Stephens get along? And when will Isobel’s estate all be wrapped up?”

“Oh, it’s pretty well finished already,” Hannah said dryly. “All but the dust settling.”

“I was right, wasn’t I?” Brenton pushed aside a stack of papers and sat down on the corner of the table. “She left you everything she owned.”