Danger in a Red Dress (5 page)

“Absolutely. The important thing is that you’ll listen in on Mother’s conversations and watch her for any surreptitious movements.”

Melinda leaned back in her chair.
Ah. Here we go.

“What?” Hannah asked.

The rustling stopped, and Melinda could imagine Carrick looking earnestly across at Hannah, seducing her with his handsome green eyes, bending her to his will. “If she doesn’t tell the federal government where my father ’s money is, they’re going to drive her out of this house. Maybe put her in prison.”

“I don’t understand why they think she knows where the money is,” Hannah said, biting off the words. “Your father took it with him. Isn’t it fair to assume he still has it? That he’s spending it?”

She continued. “By the condition of this house, I’d have to say your mother is broke.”

Melinda flinched.
The girl was right. Balfour House deserved so much better. If only the fall of the Balfours had not occurred on Melinda’s watch!

“The details are difficult and complicated, and there’s more to this than meets the eye.” Carrick was glib, assured. “But I assure you, if my mother won’t voluntarily tell the government what they want to know, then I, as her only living relative, need to find out and tell them for her. That’s where you come in.”

“You know what I said about Nelson spying on her.” The girl sounded stiff and offended.
What had she said?

“It’s for her own good,” Carrick intoned.

“I don’t think I’m making myself clear. I do not spy on my patients.”

“You really don’t have a lot of choice, now, do you?”

“What do you mean?” Hannah asked cautiously.

“In New Hampshire, your nursing certification has been pulled for immoral behavior. Now here you are in Maine, trying to work without any certification at all.”

“I didn’t know that you . . . ,” Hannah stammered to a halt. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you the truth. I admit, I was desperate.” Her voice wobbled in weak feminine appeal.

Good luck with that. Carrick cared about one thing . . . well, two things: getting his way, and getting his hands on whatever might remain of the vanished fortune.

Hannah’s voice strengthened. “But it doesn’t matter whether I have current certification or not. I work for my patient.”

“I’ll have you arrested for impersonating a nursing professional.”

“You can’t do that.” Hannah sounded incredulous.

Melinda could almost hear her infatuation with Carrick crumble.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I can. I have witnesses who will testify that you lied about your credentials. I introduced you to Nelson as a registered nurse, and you agreed you were. And of course your friend at the coffeehouse apparently doesn’t know about the case against you in New Hampshire, or she wouldn’t have been so eager to help you get a job.” He paused delicately. “I mean . . . that young woman wouldn’t have deliberately lied to me, would she? Because then she would be an accessory to this crime.”

“So you want me to spy on your mother, to find out where your father hid his fortune so you can give the information to the federal government?” Melinda could hear Hannah’s incredulity, and her dawning suspicion that Carrick’s motives were not perhaps as pure as he had painted them. “You described this house as a prison, but this seems more like an asylum, with madness around every corner.”

“So you’ll do it,” Carrick said with satisfaction.

“No. No!” But Hannah sounded frantic, on the verge of tears.

He had neatly and completely trapped the girl in an impasse of her own making.

Yet for Melinda, her appearance here, now, was a sign. A sign Melinda
must
do what she had only wished she
could
do.

Turning off the speaker, she stashed it in the desk, then pushed her wheelchair through the door, down the corridor, and into the old-fashioned elevator. She punched the button for the basement, and waited patiently through the slow descent, planning each word, each tone, each expression.

She got to the long corridor just as Hannah walked out of the butler’s office, white-faced and shaking.

She stopped cold, looking as guilty as a child caught with her fingers in the cookie jar. “Mrs. Manly, I . . . I . . .”

“Oh, dear.” Melinda pasted on her rueful face. “Please, can we talk?” She glanced past Hannah. “Is Carrick in there? Let’s include him.” She started forward.

Hannah moved back, and her expression was openly distressed. “I understand why you don’t want me here, and I don’t want to force myself on you.”

“Stop fretting and follow me. We’ll get this cleared right up.” Melinda wheeled herself through the door and found Carrick pulling books from the bookcase, fluttering through the pages, then shoving them back in place. Cocking her head to the side, she watched until Hannah cleared her throat.

“What do you want?” Carrick snapped. “I told you the conditions to which I’m holding you.”

“Are you looking for something, son?” Melinda asked.

Carrick contained his start very well. “Mother! You left your room!”

“I had to. I couldn’t drive this poor child away because of my bad mood. More important, I know you’re right, Carrick. I do need a nurse, and I appreciate you finding someone of such upstanding character.” Melinda lavished a closemouthed smile at him.

Before Carrick could speak, Hannah said, “Actually, I have a blot on my record.”

Carrick cast her a lethal glance.

But all her attention was on Melinda. “My last patient was Donald Dresser, and the Dresser family has accused me of seducing him for an inheritance.”

“Who made the accusation?” Melinda knew very well. Only a minute ago, she’d read the file on the Internet.

“Jeff Dresser,” Hannah answered.

Melinda snorted. “Jeff Dresser. As if anyone in his right mind would believe him. His son was so awful to Carrick after Nathan left. . . . Remember, dear?”

Carrick looked down at the book in his hand as if he’d forgotten that he held it. “I remember.”

“I’d like to put a spoke in his wheel,” Melinda said with relish. “So the problem’s in New Hampshire?”

“Yes, Mrs. Manly.” Hannah watched her, hope kindling on her face.

“I’ve known the governor of New Hampshire since he was born. Don’t worry, Hannah. Little Scottie Mac-Donald will do what I tell him. You’ll be reinstated in no time.” Melinda gestured her toward the door. “If you took care of that old coot Donald Dresser and managed to wheedle a few dollars out of him, then I know that you’re a good, patient nurse, and the right one for me. But I wonder, do you know anything about giving a party?”

“Giving a party?” Carrick leaped across the room. “What do you mean, giving a party?”

Yes, that got his attention, didn’t it? He didn’t want her to take control of her life. He liked her better isolated and brooding, afraid of the world and all its perils.

“The government has given me a deadline—tell them what I know about your father’s fortune by November third, or go on trial for collusion in the defrauding of the Manly Corporation’s stockholders.” Melinda Balfour Manly, of the Balfours of Maine, would be held up to the scorn of the world, on charges that would rekindle the scandal and the gossip and the pain. “I will have to leave my home to attend this mockery. I am old. I am ugly. I am ill. And as I look back, I wonder how this came to pass.” Melinda lifted her chin. “But then I remember how this house used to be when I was a child, so full of lights and gaiety. So I’ve decided to make myself happy, turn back the clock, and throw the annual Balfour Halloween party one last time, and when I am done, society will gossip about me, but not in pity.” She took Hannah’s hand and squeezed it hard, determined to seize this one last opportunity to lift herself out of this brew of misery Nathan had cooked up. “My dear, when we get done, the world will stand in awe of Melinda Balfour Manly.”

SIX

Gabriel Prescott watched Carrick Manly wend his way through the clustered tables at B’wiched, the latest and best of the sandwich shops in New York City, and wished for a better way to break the news.

But while Gabriel was very good at manipulating situations to suit his needs, when it came to tact, he could sometimes be found . . . lacking.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand the need for tact. His family, the family who had given him a last name and treated him as if he really was their brother . . . they had demonstrated over and over how important the use of tact could be in relationships. His sisters always told him he could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. But in times of stress, he sometimes said things a little too bluntly.

Or a lot too bluntly.

The new senator from South Carolina and her husband stopped Carrick to hug him with the assurance of old friends.

Gabriel wasn’t sweating this encounter with Carrick. They’d met before, many times. In fact, the first time they’d met, it had been a carefully orchestrated encounter, not long after Gabriel had first begun to suspect his father’s identity.

That contact and the possibility that Carrick was his blood relative had left Gabriel feeling as if he was looking into a mirror distorted by old money and a long distinguished lineage. They had nothing in common. Nothing.

Carrick was designer suits, Ivy League schools, East Coast founding families, and country clubs.

Gabriel was foster homes, long days of loneliness, gang fights, and half-remembered nightmares that woke him in a cold sweat. He had started with nothing. He had made a million, twice, and lost it, twice, by the time he was twenty-one. He was thirty-eight now. He owned the largest security firm in the United States, had interests in a dozen different start-up enterprises and a nose for business. He knew his way around a boardroom. He knew how to fit into the Prescott family, loving his foster sisters and their husbands, and adoring their children.

But he was more at home with his fists. With a gun. With facing adversity. With winning.

Which was not to say Carrick didn’t project power. He did. But it was a different kind of power. At the age of twenty-six, Carrick owned an apartment in Manhattan and Balfour House on the coast of Maine. He spoke to all the right people, knew how to sail a yacht, and he played polo—polo, for God’s sake. Yet Carrick discussed money with sharp intelligence, and displayed a shrewd aptitude when summing up people’s weaknesses.

Gabriel wasn’t blind to Carrick’s failings; since employing Gabriel, Carrick had occasionally treated him as an English aristocrat would treat a servant. Once, when Gabriel had failed to act on Carrick’s concerns with what Carrick considered enough respect, he’d thrown a full-blown, petulant outburst. Neither the attitude nor the tantrum had sat well with Gabriel. But Gabriel assumed he would gain maturity and be the kind of man the other Manly brothers had become—powerful, astute, and dominant.

After all, Carrick was family.

Gabriel needed to handle this matter delicately. Because there was a pretty good chance Carrick wasn’t going to like being related to someone with Gabriel’s background.

“Good to see you, Gabriel. How’s it going?” Carrick extended his hand.

Gabriel shook it and gestured Carrick into the chair opposite.

Before Gabriel could speak, the waitress, with flame red hair, ivory skin, and a butterfly tattoo on each wrist, stepped up to the table and placed the menus before them. “I’m Jasmine, your server. What can I bring you to drink?”

Irritated as hell, Gabriel turned on her.

She took a step back.

And he realized he must have his warrior face on. It frightened women, especially young women, and Jasmine was only doing her job. “How’s your iced tea?” He tried a smile.

She wasn’t buying it. She stayed well back from him as she answered, “We make it fresh every day.”

“Flavored?” He smiled wider.

She stepped back again. “Plain black tea and ginger peach green tea.”

He gave up on conciliation and ordered briefly. “Black tea, nonsweetened, and keep it coming.”

“You bet.” She wrote on the tablet.

Carrick took the menu from the waitress, and ordered a cappuccino with such charm one of her knees buckled. She wove her way toward the kitchens.

Turning on Gabriel, Carrick demanded, “What’s with you? What’s with the iced-tea interrogation?”

“I want it made today, I want it made in a clean pot, and I don’t want any of that chai shit.” Damn the waitress. Now Gabriel didn’t know the right time to break the news to Carrick. Before the drinks arrived? After the sandwiches were half eaten?

“You Texans are crazy. Chai tea is all the fashion.”

“Fashion?” Gabriel said, irritated. “I don’t care about fashion.”

“I can see that.” Carrick eyed Gabriel’s jeans, black tee, and running shoes.

God, New Yorkers were snobs. “
Chai
is the Chinese word meaning
We swept the tea leaves off the floor
.”

“Right.” Carrick didn’t laugh.

In fact, Gabriel suspected he allotted a set number of minutes to chitchat, spent them not listening, and when those minutes were up, he ruthlessly turned the conversation to himself.

Those minutes were up. “I need to hire you again.”

Shit. No. Gabriel didn’t want to work for Carrick.

But before Gabriel could get a word in edgewise, Carrick waved him to silence. “I hired this girl to take care of my mother. Hannah Grey. Hannah told me she was a home-care nurse and she had experience with arthritic patients. I admit, I didn’t do the research.” Carrick smiled like a guy who hated to admit his fault. “She had such an innocent face!”