A Convenient Affair

“Just about.”

“What did I tell you?” Satisfaction almost dripped from his voice. “You can give me all the details over a nice long dinner.”

Hannah brushed off her hands and stood up. As she fitted the lid back on the box, she said casually, “You were absolutely right, Brenton. The only trouble with your scenario is that Isobel cut it right down to the wire and died without a penny to her name. So I was right, too—because in fact she didn’t leave me anything at all.”

She’d taken two steps toward the door before she realized that Brenton hadn’t moved, except for his mouth dropping open.

That was pretty much the identical reaction she’d had, of course. Not inheriting hadn’t surprised her—but the fact that there was nothing to inherit had been a stunner.

“Nothing?” Brenton’s voice was almost a croak. “But…but she was a wealthy woman!”

“She appeared to be a wealthy woman,” Hannah corrected. “In fact, she was something of an expert at appearing to be well-off.” She succinctly repeated Ken Stephens’s rundown regarding Isobel’s condo, furniture, jewelry, china, silver, and furs.

She was just starting to tell Brenton about the odd little Lovers’ Box when she realized that would lead almost inevitably to telling him about the scene at Cicero’s.

Brenton seemed too shocked to notice that her story had abruptly broken off. “Nothing,” he repeated. “She left you nothing at all?”

Hannah’s eyes narrowed. “Exactly why is that so important?”

“Oh, I just…” His voice was little more than a whisper. “I was so certain. At least, she always seemed to indicate that you’d get everything she owned.”

“I did. She just didn’t own much of anything.”

“But it was like she told me that you would—” He broke off.

Hannah braced her hands on the table. “You seriously thought I was going to be rich, didn’t you?”

He didn’t answer, but his gaze shifted uneasily away.

And you were planning to end up with a good share of my supposed wealth, weren’t you? Now she understood. That was why Brenton had invited her out tonight, after months of casual friendliness. That was why he’d trotted out the line about getting to know her, and that was why he’d left it dangling instead of going on to tell her how special she was, and how important she’d become to him. He’d left it to Hannah to fill in the blank, and she’d done exactly as he’d expected she would.

Now she could see precisely how careful he’d been to say nothing that could be taken as a commitment. Nothing that he couldn’t escape. Even that invitation to dinner had been very carefully phrased….

Hannah kept her voice level. “Are we still going out tonight, Brenton?”

She didn’t quite know what she’d do if he said yes, for she’d rather share a meal with a rattlesnake. But she suspected that Brenton was so eager to escape that he wouldn’t stop to consider the possibility she was bluffing.

“Actually…” His voice almost rasped. “You don’t feel like celebrating, I’m sure, under the circumstances. So maybe it would be better if we didn’t.”

How thoughtful it was of him, Hannah mused, to put her feelings first! “Then how about taking me out for a nice dinner to commiserate?” she asked gently.

He swallowed hard. He looked, she thought, like a hunted rabbit. “The Jones case,” he said. “I really do need to burn the midnight oil on it, so—”

“And of course it would be foolish to spend money on me at the Flamingo Room if there’s no chance of getting it back.”

She could see the truth written in his face.

Too annoyed to think it through, Hannah said, “If I’d told you Isobel had left me a million or two, would you have proposed to me tonight, Brenton? Or would you have waited till you could check out the facts with Ken Stephens, just to be certain I was telling the truth?”

She stopped there, but only by biting her tongue hard. No matter how much he deserved it, she couldn’t tell him to jump off a cliff; he was still her boss.

And it was suddenly and perfectly clear to Hannah that not only was Brenton Bannister a jerk, but he was the kind of animal who became most dangerous when cornered. Almost accidentally, she’d done precisely that, by forcing him to admit—if only by a look—what he had plotted.

She’d been concerned about what kind of revenge Cooper might take on her—but she was terrified of what Brenton might do.

She was an embarrassment to him now, that was clear. Perhaps he even saw her as a threat, able to damage his career by telling this story. And in Brenton Bannister’s narrow view of the world, whether she was an embarrassment or an active danger, the answer was obviously the same: Hannah would have to go.

He would stay within the rules, for he was too clever to break them and give her cause to charge him with sexual harassment or discrimination. But one way or another, he’d get rid of her—and soon.

Unless she did something to prevent it.

But what could she possibly do?

She forced herself to smile at him. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s just as well we’re not going out. We’ve both got work to do to have the Jones case ready for trial. In fact, I’m going to take a box of papers home with me now. But first, I want to thank you, Brenton. It has been a very special evening.”

And, she thought wryly, it had certainly turned out to be one which would change the rest of her life.

CHAPTER THREE

BY THE time Hannah got halfway back to Barron’s Court, she was regretting the impulse which had made her seize a carton of Jacob Jones’s papers. She’d done it only as a sort of bluff—so that Brenton wouldn’t be able to accuse her of walking out on undone tasks—rather than because she had any real intention of working tonight; with her mind going in circles, she’d be too afraid of missing something important.

But as she walked the few blocks from the law firm to Barron’s Court, the box had grown as heavy as the weight that seemed to have descended on her shoulders. She propped the carton on a corner of a small table in the lobby, glad of a moment’s relief, while she waited for the elevator.

How much different things looked than they had early in the morning, she thought, when she and Brutus had stood right here, fresh from a walk and feeling great. In one day, she’d near-as-nothing lost both her home and her job….

And Cooper Winston would no doubt add, with a note of glee in his voice, that she’d lost her expectations, as well. He probably thought the only reason she’d come to visit Isobel in the first place had been to look over her circumstances and decide if the old woman was worthwhile prey!

Impatiently, Hannah pushed the button again. The way her luck was running, the elevator had probably broken down. At least, the lighted dial above the polished Art Deco doors said that the darned thing hadn’t moved off seven since she’d come in.

All she wanted to do was get upstairs, fix herself a cup of tea, climb into her bed, and pull the comforter over her head while she waited for a new day to dawn. Whatever happened tomorrow, she told herself, it couldn’t possibly be as bad as today had been.

She was bracing herself for the climb up the long flights of stairs—and wishing even more that she’d left the carton of papers in the law library—when the elevator finally began to move. “And there’s absolutely no doubt,” she muttered, “the way my day has been going, who is going to get off when it gets to the lobby.” It was like the man had radar, knowing precisely when and where he was least wanted.

She stepped to the side as the door opened. To her surprise, however, instead of Cooper, the occupant was a jeans-clad workman who was straining to carry a thick slab of dark-stained wood which was nearly as broad as his outstretched arms. He nodded to Hannah as he maneuvered the slab out into the lobby, then stopped just a few steps away to readjust the padding which had started to slip away from the wood.

She said, “It would be easier to move something that size on the service elevator. You do know Barron’s Court has a service elevator? It allows this one to be left free for the residents to use.”