Controlled Burn (2 page)

Her grandfather
was sitting at the kitchen table, working on some kind of puzzle book with reading glasses perched low on his nose. When he looked up, he frowned and then took the glasses off to stare at her.

“I found Jessica outside,” Rick said. “She says she’s your granddaughter.”

Marie gasped, and Jessica felt a pang of concern when she put her hand to her chest. “What? She can’t be.”

“If her
hair was short, she’d look just like you did years ago, Marie,” Joe said, and she wished she knew him well enough to know if the rasp in his voice came from emotion or not.

“I can’t believe Davey wouldn’t tell us he had a baby.”

“Davey hasn’t told us anything in almost forty years.”

“I’m thirty-four,” Jessica said, as if that explained everything, and then she immediately felt like
an idiot. “I’m sorry. I should have called first.”

“Did Davey send you because that damn doctor called him?”

“I came because of the call, yes.” She couldn’t bring herself to admit yet that her father had no idea she was here or why.

Silence filled the kitchen, and she became aware that the Broussards had a real clock hanging in their kitchen—the kind with a second hand that marked
the awkward seconds with a
tick tick tick
.

Jessica was torn. The logical analyst voice in her head—the part of her that had earned her a cushy corner office in her father’s investment business—wanted her to set up a time to speak with them about the doctor’s call and then check into the hotel room she’d reserved. But her inner eleven-year-old wanted to hug her nonfictional grandmother.

“It’s a long flight,” Rick said, stepping out from behind her so she could see him. “You hungry?”

His quiet words breaking the silence also seemed to break the tension, and Marie gave her a shaky smile. “Have a seat and tell us all about yourself. Rick, are you going to stay for a while?”

“I’ll stay for a little bit,” Rick said, and though his voice was even enough, the look he gave
Jessica made it clear he wasn’t just a tenant in this house and he wasn’t sure what he thought of her yet. “I want to hear
all
about Jessica.”

Chapter Two

Rick wasn’t sure exactly what to make of Jessica Broussard. The only thing he knew for sure about Joe and Marie’s surprise granddaughter was that she smelled pretty damn good for a woman who’d just flown across the entire width of the country.

She didn’t look too bad, either. Her long, blond hair was in a long and straight ponytail, and if she was wearing makeup,
it was subtle. A soft sweater that looked more fashionable than warm reached her thighs, which were encased in black leggings that disappeared into similarly nonfunctional boots. The soft leather might make her legs look amazing, but they weren’t keeping her feet warm. And she was tall enough so it wouldn’t be awkward to kiss her.

Not that it mattered, since he had no intention of kissing
Jessica. But, being tall himself, it was something he tended to notice about women.

But what he didn’t know about her was why she’d flown all the way from San Diego to Boston at the drop of a hat to show up on the doorstep of people she didn’t even know.

“I’m really not hungry,” Jessica said, pulling out a chair to sit. “But I’d love a glass of water if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at all.” Marie pulled out the chair next to Jessica’s. “Rick, would you get Jessica a glass of water, please?”

Smiling, he opened the cabinet and took down one of Marie’s “company” glasses, rather than grabbing one of the plastic tumblers they usually used. After rinsing it out, he filled it with ice and water from the fridge.

“Thank you,” Jessica said when he set
it down in front of her. But she didn’t take a sip immediately. She wrapped her hands around it as if she just needed something to do with them.

Instead of taking the fourth seat at the table, Rick leaned against the counter and folded his arms across his chest, watching her.

“What do you do for work, Jessica?” Marie asked, and he felt a pang of sadness at the anxiety in her voice. She
would try not to show it, but the woman was a wreck on the inside.

“I work for my father, actually, at Broussard Financial Services. We do financial planning and manage investments and things of that nature. As his vice president, I handle everything when he’s unavailable, so of course I returned Dr. Bartlett’s call yesterday. It sounded urgent.”

“Are there other people in the office?”
Marie asked. “If you’re here, who’s running things now?”

“We do have staff. And I have my laptop. Other than rescheduling a few face-to-face meetings, most of my work can be done remotely.”

“Let me ask you something,” Joe said, fiddling with his reading glasses. “Does your father know you’re here?”

“No, he doesn’t,” she answered after a long silence, and Rick got the feeling she
didn’t want to answer the question. The granddaughter they didn’t know showing up in Boston unannounced when their son couldn’t even be bothered to return a call was interesting, but he really hoped she wasn’t up to no good in some way. “The doctor couldn’t discuss your situation with me because I’m not on the form, but my father is unavailable, so I decided to come in person.”

Unavailable.
She’d used that word outside, too, and he wondered what it meant. Most people would say he was on vacation or at a remote fishing cabin or chained in a basement somewhere. The use of
unavailable
seemed deliberate, meaning she didn’t care for them to know what Davey Broussard was up to.

“I feel bad that you came all the way out here,” Marie said. “Dr. Bartlett overreacted and shouldn’t have
called.”

“Needs to mind his own damn business,” Joe muttered.

Rick cleared his throat. “Maybe he did overreact this time, but it’s not a bad idea to go over your legal papers and discuss your options once in a while.”

“We can talk about all that tomorrow,” Marie told them. “Right now I want to hear about my granddaughter.”

Rick did, too, actually. He watched her slowly relax
as she told them about growing up in San Diego. She’d graduated second in her class and gone to the University of Denver for her degree. Then she’d joined her father’s company and worked her way up to second in command, poised to take the reins when he retired. She’d never been married, but she owned a lovely condo and drove a convertible Audi.

He wondered if Joe or Marie would press for
the details she’d left out. There was no mention of her mother or siblings. Had she wanted to join her father’s company or was it simply expected of her? For almost an hour he stood there while they talked, but she never said anything that wouldn’t be out of place in a professional bio.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Marie said after a while, resting her hand on Jessica’s arm. Rick watched the
younger woman’s gaze settle on the touch, her smile a little on the shaky side. “I should start supper. Is there anything you don’t like? Or do you have any food allergies?”

“I... No. I like most foods and I’m not allergic to anything that I know of.”

“Oh, good. I have a lasagna in the freezer. I can pop it in the oven so we can get you settled in while it cooks.”

“Oh, I appreciate
the invitation, but I really should go and get settled into my hotel. Is there a time we can get together tomorrow to talk?”

Rick and Joe exchanged amused looks when Marie held up her hands and shook her head. “Oh, you don’t need a hotel, honey. We have a guest room upstairs. It has its very own bathroom and everything.”

“That’s really generous, but I already have a reservation.”

“No sense in wasting money like that,” Joe argued.

“I’ll be working a lot, too. Just me and my laptop, you know?”

“You can work here,” Marie said. “We have really good internet so Rick can talk to all of his girlfriends on Facebook.”

“Hey!” He laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t have girlfriends on Facebook. And that’s not why we have internet.”

“Imagine what people would think
if my granddaughter stays in a hotel,” Marie pushed.

“None of your friends know you
have
a granddaughter,” Jessica pointed out.

Joe snorted. “Trust me, they will.”

Rick pushed away from the counter and walked toward the table. “You may as well just give me the key to your car so I can bring your bags in.”

“Go ahead and pull the car into the driveway, too,” Joe said. “Get it
off the street.”

“I...” Jessica gave Rick a look that was clearly a plea for help, but there was nothing he could do for her. Marie had made up her mind and she was possibly the most stubborn woman he’d ever met.

“I would really like for you to stay with us,” Marie said quietly, touching Jessica’s arm again.

Her granddaughter just nodded, her smile less anxious this time, and pulled
the rental’s key out of her sweater pocket to hand to Rick.

After parking the very compact car in the shadow of his truck, Rick popped the trunk and pulled out her suitcase. Then he wheeled it around to the other side of the car.

He wasn’t sure what to do about the stuff on the front passenger seat. While he’d noticed she had a small pocketbook on a thin chain across her body, she’d
left a tote bag and some other stuff in the car.

After a moment’s hesitation, he zipped the expensive-looking sunglasses into the case he found and dropped it into the top of the bag. A pen and a tin of mints went in after it, and then he looped a scarf through the tote’s handles.

He lifted the tote out of the car and noticed a small legal pad had been under it. The house’s address was
scrawled across the top, so she’d probably pulled the pad out to enter it into the navigational system. But the list of addresses under Joe and Marie’s house, written in much smaller letters down the page, caught his eye as he was in the process of putting it in the bag.

The street names were all familiar and when he read the abbreviations and dollar amounts listed with each one, he realized
they were meant to be comps—lists of houses for sale in the area that might have a comparable value to Joe and Marie’s.

So it looked as if their granddaughter had amused herself on the plane by researching their home’s worth. What she might not be aware of was that, with an actual backward, two-car garage—with accompanying driveway—and spacious third-floor apartment, he’d take a wild guess
at high six-figures.

Or maybe she
was
aware of it and the amount factored into her urgent need to meet her grandparents after thirty-four years. For all he knew, her
unavailable
father had something to do with it.

He didn’t want to believe it, though. He’d seen her face when Marie had walked into the room and Jessica wasn’t going to be winning any poker tournaments anytime soon. She’d
been trembling. It was subtle, but he’d noticed. And there had been a lot of emotion in her big-eyed expression. He didn’t know her well enough to read them, but it was obvious meeting her grandmother meant something to her beyond dollar signs.

Jessica Broussard was definitely a mystery, and the only thing Rick was certain of was that, for Joe and Marie’s sake, he was going to have to keep
a close eye on her.

* * *

A wave of relief had washed over Jessica when Rick walked out of the kitchen. The entire time she’d been talking to Joe and Marie, trying to make a connection with her grandparents, a part of her had been distracted by the man leaning against the counter.

He hadn’t been looming, exactly, but he was a big guy and made for a definite presence in the room.
His arms being folded had stretched his lightweight sweatshirt across his shoulders, and when he crossed one ankle over the other, it had the same effect on his jeans and thighs. He was very, very distracting.

And then he’d laughed, turning her somewhat wary awareness into a much more potent, very different kind of awareness. His laugh was not only warm and rich, but loud, and she realized
she didn’t have men in her life who laughed like that. Her father rarely laughed at all, and the men around them tended toward polite laughter.

“It breaks my heart to have to ask this because I feel like I should already know,” Marie said, breaking into Jessica’s thoughts, “but is your mother that girl he met at college? I don’t remember her name now and he never brought her home to meet
us, so I can’t even tell you what she looked like.”

“My mother’s name is Emily and I know they met at college, but I don’t know if she’s the same one.” She took a long drink of water, wishing there was a way to avoid telling the rest. “She left us when I was three, so I don’t really remember her.”

“Oh.” Marie fell silent, giving her the sympathetic look Jessica had come to expect years
ago on the rare occasion her mother was brought up. “Did he remarry?”

That made her laugh, though it sounded harsh and humorless. “Several times. He’s currently in the process of divorce number four.”

And, even though he invariably brought those failed marriages down on himself, divorces were hard on her father and one of the reasons the reins of BFS were currently in her hands.

She didn’t even want to imagine how he was going to react when he learned she’d handed those reins over to the staff. Not totally, of course, but she’d delegated like she’d never delegated before in order to manage this trip, and her father wasn’t going to like anything about it.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Marie sighed. “I’ve always tried to imagine him happy, even if he didn’t keep in touch.”

Why?
The word was on the tip of Jessica’s tongue, but for some reason she didn’t ask the question. If her grandparents felt anything like she did on the inside right now, they all had enough on their emotional plates without digging into the reasons behind their estrangement from their son.

“Davey hasn’t been happy a day in his life,” Joe said, his voice gruff with some emotion that went
deeper than anger.

Every time she heard the name Davey, Jessica’s mind tripped over it. These strangers knew her father, but they seemed to know a different version of him and that fascinated her. She wanted to know more about him.

She heard the front door and then the thump of footsteps on the stairs. Rick must be bringing her bags upstairs, and she fought down a rush of panic. Was
she really staying here? With her grandparents?

“We should get you settled in,” Marie said, standing up. “Being on a plane all day like that must be exhausting.”

Jessica couldn’t disagree, especially considering the amount of anxiety that had accompanied her, and the shift in time zones wasn’t going to help. She followed Marie to the stairs, but paused halfway up when a framed photo
caught her eye. She’d barely noticed all the family pictures on display, but this one had been blown up.

Even though he was just a child—young enough to show off two missing front teeth in a huge smile—Jessica had no trouble recognizing her father. And Joe and Marie hadn’t changed very much, either, even though Joe had been a little beefier. They all looked so happy, smiling for the camera,
and the ache in Jessica’s stomach intensified.

She had a few pictures of her mother. There was even a photo of them together, taken just before her third birthday. They’d both been looking at the camera with solemn eyes. Jessica’s mouth had been turned down in what looked like sadness and her mother’s lips had been pressed tightly together.

There were no happy family portraits on David
Broussard’s walls.

When she heard Marie pause at the top of the stairs, she forced herself to look away and climb the rest of the steps. Maybe later she’d look at all the framed photos and try to get a handle on her emotions before having any conversations with her grandparents.

Halfway down the hall, they passed Rick, who was heading back for the stairs. He smiled at Marie, but some
of the sparkle went out of his eyes when he turned it on her. “I put your bags in your room.”

“Thank you.” She already knew she’d lose some sleep trying to solve the mystery of Rick Gullotti. Was he afraid she was there for nefarious reasons? Or did he have nefarious plans of his own that her presence could derail?

Marie led her to the last door on the right, which was standing open,
and Jessica saw it was a slightly barren but very clean guest room. Her suitcase and her tote were set just inside the door, and she saw that he’d thrown the stuff she’d had on the seat into the bag.