Amazing Gracie

Which she didn’t, she insisted. This was purely an exercise, a gathering of facts. Nothing more.

Two hours later she was searching a country road for the lane that would take her to Kevin Patrick Daniels, current manager of the property. If that run-down state was his idea of management, he ought to be a quick sell.

She knew the type. Never spend a dime unless the roof is actually falling down. Which it was. No doubt he’d rather accept her offer than put a new coat of paint or a new roof on the place. Her adrenaline pumped just thinking about the negotiations. She felt more alive than she had in months. Hopeful.

And that was before she glimpsed the Daniels estate. Jessie hadn’t exaggerated a bit. It was Tara on steroids. Every bush was tidily trimmed, every blade of grass on the rolling hillside had been neatly shorn to the precise same length. The house and the columns across the front were pristine white, which probably required regular touch-ups. The windows, tall and stately, glistened.

Oh, yes, indeed, Gracie thought, staring at it with a mixture of awe and disgust. Stealing that neglected Victorian from Kevin Patrick Daniels was going to make her day.

3

The discussion had gone on for an hour, about fifty-nine minutes longer than it needed to, Kevin thought. Most of it had covered the same ground over and over. It was time to put an end to it.

“Absolutely not,” he said with finality, leveling a look straight into his cousin’s eyes. “I will not finance another one of your ridiculous, get-rich-quick schemes, Bobby Ray. It’s time you grew up and got a job, like the rest of us.”

“When did you ever hold down an actual job?” his cousin retorted. “All you do is play around with your inheritance—and ours, I might add—like it’s Monopoly money.”

“That Monopoly money has kept you and Sara Lynn afloat for the past five years,” he reminded Bobby Ray. “That’s about four years longer than the marriage would have lasted without it.”

Bobby Ray didn’t even flinch at the shot. Kevin’s opinion of his marriage was clearly old news to him by now. Kevin had repeated it often enough. He’d seen Sara Lynn for the little gold-digger she was from the minute she took up with Bobby Ray. His cousin, reeling from his second divorce and unable to handle life as a bachelor, had jumped straight from the frying pan into the fire.

“If I’d had that money, I could have been a rich man by now instead of living off what you dole out,” Bobby Ray complained bitterly. “I feel like a damn beggar.”

They had been over this turf again and again. Kevin actually felt a certain amount of sympathy for the position his uncle had left Bobby Ray in, but Uncle Steven had known what he was doing. Bobby Ray might be the same age as Kevin, thirty-six, but he had the attention span of a five-year-old. He was on his third wife, even though it was Kevin’s opinion that his heart remained with the first one. Kevin had lost count of the number of jobs he’d had and the number of failed business ventures he’d tried, then lost interest in.

“Unfortunately, you gave your father proof-positive that you lack a certain financial savvy,” he said, wishing there were a kinder way to state the obvious. There wasn’t, so he hammered home his point…again. “Be grateful your father had the foresight to put your trust into my hands so you couldn’t blow all of it. Maybe if you’d shown the slightest evidence of responsibility, he wouldn’t have done that. Instead, you took thirty thousand dollars from him and sank it into a taco stand.”

“It was a fried chicken franchise,” Bobby Ray protested, his expression sullen.

“Oh, yes, that’s right. Next door to a Kentucky Fried Chicken,” Kevin reminded him.

“This chicken was better. It was Ella Mae’s recipe. Everybody in the Northern Neck of Virginia loves Ella Mae’s chicken.”

“Maybe so, especially when she cooked at your mama’s house and served it up free. But you don’t take on a national franchise with a thirty-thousand-dollar investment and an advertising budget of zilch. The only people who ever ate there were related to you, and as big as our clan is we couldn’t support an ice cream stand on the boardwalk in summer, much less an entire restaurant year round. This latest scheme of yours is every bit as ill conceived. Get a job, Bobby Ray. It’ll do you good.”

“Go to hell.”

“No doubt about it,” Kevin said. Bobby Ray Daniels wasn’t the first member of his family to wish him a speedy end and a fiery destination.

The Daniels family wealth, accumulated over generations, thanks to wise investments and savvy handling, had never once been endangered until the current crop of cousins had landed on earth. Thanks to some very unfortunate marriages, the genetic pool had spawned—with one or two notable exceptions—an entire generation of irresponsible males and throwback southern belle females, who wouldn’t deign to lift a finger if the house was burning down around them.

Entrusted with what was left of the family fortune, Kevin had his work cut out for him. He wasn’t sure which his cousins resented most, the fact that he held the purse strings or the fact that he didn’t give a damn about the money they craved. He’d have given them each their fair share and been done with it if he hadn’t known they’d be back on his doorstep within a year, desperate for more.

What every single one of them needed, far more than they needed cash, was self-respect. Kevin didn’t have a clue how to go about giving them that, except by forcing them to actually work for a living. He’d opened door after door, only to have them blow the chances. He was running out of friends who’d hire them. There was a chance that Dick Flint in Richmond would find something for Bobby Ray. Dick had half a dozen used car dealerships and a penchant for losing at poker. He owed Kevin bigtime.

“I’ll call Dick Flint, if you’d like,” he offered.

Bobby Ray stared at him as if he’d suggested he take up sky-diving. “You want me to be a used car salesman?” he asked, as he straightened the monogrammed cuffs on his two-hundred-dollar shirt.

“I want you to do something that would excite you, something at which you’ll succeed.” Something that would justify those expensive, imported shirts and pay for the fashionable lifestyle to which Bobby Ray and Sara Lynn aspired.

“Well, it sure as hell won’t be selling those broken-down heaps Dick Flint passes off on an unsuspecting public,” Bobby Ray snapped. “One of these days you’re going to push me too far, Kevin. Me or one of the others.”

Kevin was tiring of Bobby Ray’s idle threats. One of these days he was simply going to pummel some sense into the overgrown jerk, just as he’d tried to do on more than one occasion when they were kids. Come to think of it, it hadn’t worked then, either. Instead, he leveled a look straight into his cousin’s eyes.

“Meaning?” he asked, his tone icy.

Not even Bobby Ray was able to mistake the fact that he’d gone too far. “Forget it,” he grumbled. “Just forget I stopped by. Forget I exist.”

As if I could, Kevin thought as his cousin stormed out of the house. The wills of various and sundry uncles had made sure of that.

As it always did, talking to Bobby Ray had worked up a mighty big thirst. Kevin wandered into the kitchen of his ridiculously huge house and found a pitcher of lemonade in the refrigerator. Molly, the housekeeper as far back as he could remember, made sure they were never out, just as she’d always kept the cookie jar crammed with ginger snaps, once she’d discovered he was partial to them.

Kevin filled a tall glass with ice cubes, then poured the lemonade right to the brim. He took a sip and felt his lips pucker. Perfect. Just enough sugar to take the edge off but not enough to ruin the sour taste of lemons. There was nothing better on a hot summer day.

Not that it was summer yet, but it sure felt like it. The temperature had hit eighty by noon and was still climbing. The humidity was every bit as thick as it was in mid-August. It struck him that was a sure-fire indication that he ought to spend the afternoon doing just what he always did in the middle of a sultry summer heat wave…absolutely nothing.

Carrying his lemonade and a handful of cookies, he headed outside and settled into a hammock spread between two massive oaks. Why work up a sweat—mental or physical—when he didn’t have to. He’d dealt with just about as much family business as he could in one day without throwing up.

First, Cousin Carolanne had dropped by hoping for a handout to pay off her charge cards. Then Tommy had called from North Carolina needing money for a lawyer to get out of his latest jam. Bobby Ray had been the final straw. A nice nap seemed called for.

He was just drifting off when he heard the roar of a distant engine. Since Greystone was not exactly on a superhighway, the sound was enough to disturb his rest and cause speculation about who was coming calling unannounced. With any luck at all, it wouldn’t be another of his devilish cousins. Of course, he’d had enough practice saying no today to be getting really good at it. He supposed uttering it a few more times wouldn’t be a strain. He probably wouldn’t even have to sit up and glower at them fiercely to make his point.

He took a long, slow sip of lemonade and watched the lane leading up to the house until he spotted a flashy red convertible zipping along the cedar-lined drive. Since he hadn’t seen any bills from auto dealerships on his desk that morning, he had to assume it didn’t belong to anyone in the family. He relaxed again and closed his eyes.

He didn’t intend to budge one inch from his current comfortable position in order to greet the uninvited guest. Aunt Delia would probably accuse him of being deliberately rude if she was observing the scene from her suite just above him. He glanced up and grinned at the sight of the shadow behind her curtains. Yep, he’d get a lecture over supper, all right. Aunt Delia was very big on manners and she told him repeatedly that his were atrocious. He’d promised to change…sooner or later.

At the moment, though, it seemed to him that his uninvited guest had probably hightailed it here on some mission or another and it wouldn’t do at all to show so much as a hint of retreat. Normally he was as keen as the next man to do business across a desk or over a fine lunch, but certain circumstances required a different tactic. Pure instinct told him this was one of those times.

It was several minutes, during which he was aware of the car getting closer and the engine cutting off, before he sensed a presence and bothered opening his eyes again. The sight before him was enough to cause his pulse to skip a beat or two, but he tried real hard not to let his reaction show.

The woman was a knockout. Tall and curvy and classy, all at the same time. The demure outfit she wore did absolutely nothing to mute her sex appeal, and it was definitely at odds with that fire engine red convertible. Kevin had always been fascinated with contradictions and this woman radiated them. Amazing, absolutely amazing.

“Mr. Daniels?”

“Yo,” he said without moving.

“Kevin Patrick Daniels?”

He hid a grin as he heard the impatience in her tone. “Yep, that’s me. You a process server, darlin’?”

“No, though I have to wonder why that would be your first guess. Do you spend a lot of time in trouble, Mr. Daniels?”

“Not half as much as I’d like to.”

“Perhaps if you would haul yourself out of that hammock occasionally you’d have more success at it.”

He marveled at her tart tone. Ms. Whoever-she-was seemed to have taken an instant dislike to him. That was promising. Nothing got his adrenaline flowing better than a real challenge.