“Harleigh?’ I tapped on the closed bedroom door. The cocktail party started in less than an hour, and I did not believe in arriving fashionably late.
“Just a minute,” she called out.
I adjusted my cufflinks and looked at my hands. They were scratched up, and my nails looked rough from this morning’s manual labor.
When she opened the door I was disappointed. I didn’t exactly know what to expect, maybe I thought she’d be in a shimmery dress. I expected cleavage and maybe some leg. I didn’t expect her to look like she was wearing laundry she picked up from the floor.
“Why aren’t you ready?” I demanded.
She shrugged. “I am ready. I told you I didn’t have anything for a cocktail party, and this was all I could find.”
The dress, if it could be called that, hung on her like a stretched out potato sack. Tossed over the dress was some kind of shawl that looked like a shredded blanket. I shook my head. That’s when I realized I expected to see her mother’s daughter. Someone who dressed to enhance her assets. Harleigh barely had any makeup on.
I stepped into her room, forcing her back.
“Don’t be ridiculous Harleigh, you’re an heiress. You must have something.” I crossed her room and threw open the door to her closet. It wasn’t nearly as large as I expected.
The old man had an entire changing room as his closet. I knew from having helped to clean out between wives, that the wives’ room also had a walk-in. This closet could hardly be called a walk-in. And it was mostly empty.
“Where are your clothes?” I asked.
“All in there,” she said with a gesture. “Devin, I don’t have the wardrobe you think I do. I never had.”
“What have you been spending your money on?”
She blinked at me as if she wasn’t quite sure what I said.
“Rent. Food. The clothes I do have. You know my father essentially cut me off when I moved out. All I had was my mother’s baby pay-off.”
“The old man didn’t cut you off, you left.”
She rolled her eyes and threw her hands around. She fell onto her bed with a flop. “Stop it, okay. Just, I’m done. Every choice I have ever made has been wrong. I went to college for the wrong thing and dropped out. I come home and…” she trailed off.
“It was Tina’s big idea to let me try living on my own. She didn’t want me around. I mean I didn’t want to be around either. Even so, Daddy’s reaction was driven home that I had to do it on my own and not to expect any help from him.”
I searched through the items she had in her closet as she talked.
“What did you think would happen when you reached your majority?” I asked.
“You mean twenty-two when the baby money stopped? Not a clue. Maybe I would have just come back. I wasn’t exactly a success out there.”
“Why are all your clothes either jeans or tank tops? Or this black stretchy fabric?”
“Those are for yoga, and that’s all I wear,” she answered.
“I seem to remember you always in dresses, and ribbons in your hair.”
“I was a child, Devin. That was Mom’s doing. She always dressed me up like a little doll. And when I moved in with Daddy, I was shipped off to boarding school and all of my clothes were school uniforms or the polar opposite.”
“No,” I stepped out of her closet. “It hasn’t been that long, has it?” I looked at her and was floored by the realization that I had known her for her entire life.
“I haven’t had any kind of formal or semi-formal party dress since I was at least sixteen. Maybe seventeen.”
“Here,” I handed over something that looked like a net lace mini dress, the kind that girls wore to music festivals. It was black and had fish scale-like sequins scattered about. “Wear this. Do you have some black underthings? This should work.”
“That’s a bathing suit cover-up,” she complained.
“It’s more suitable than what you have on. I’ll be downstairs.”
I straightened a painting as I made my way down the entry staircase. Everything was almost returned to pre-rampage condition. Seth had done an acceptable job cleaning up, and the restoration crew had returned the mahogany to its original condition. The floor still needed to be refinished in the spot where the paint had been left. The rug was a complete write-off and had been disposed of.
The empty space on the wall from the missing Picasso gave a sense of unsettled foreboding around our situation. I hated it. It didn’t help that Jessie, the household manager hadn’t called me back yet, regarding getting staff back in here.
“How’s this?” She asked from the landing.
The mesh-covered her from neck to just past her hips. Even though she was covered, it still somehow emphasized her assets.
I pointed at her leggings. “Lose the leggings, they make the outfit look low rent.”
“Are you kidding me? It’s too short,” she complained.
I leveled my gaze at her.
“Fine!” She threw up her hands and stomped back up the stairs.
Moments later she was back. I about swallowed my tongue. She had legs for days with shapely calves and strong thighs. She had replaced the full-length leggings with something that looked like short-shorts. Her curvaceous ass and the tops of those luscious thighs were covered, but they were shorter than the fringe that hung from the hem of the dress.
I adjusted my pants, a familiar feeling in my groin had me realizing I wanted those legs around me. It was purely a physical reaction to a beautiful woman. But, damn, if I wasn’t having lustful thoughts about her as she sashayed down the stairs. Light hit one of the fish scale things and a spark of blue danced, emphasizing her eyes. When she paused on the last step, I met her. I reached up and touched a curl she had artfully arranged in front of her ear.
“Am I acceptable?” She asked.
“You look amazing. You look cutting edge and high fashion.”
I let my gaze devour her as I helped her into the passenger seat of my car. Her legs and her cleavage were on display. I almost told her to go back and put on that horrible frumpy librarian outfit I found her in. I was torn between wanting to show this sexy woman off and wanting to cover her back up so I stopped having salacious thoughts about her.
“I’ll put the top down on the way back, if you want,” I said as I slid in behind the wheel.
“That would be great.”
Her smile went straight to my cock. It was already willing to be her slave. Stupid libido.
She was gracious and perfect once we arrived. She wasn’t some scared lost little girl in a sea of strangers who needed to cling to me, as I had expected. She was vibrant and capable. As much as Harleigh claimed to not be involved in her father’s life or business, she seemed to know more than a few people that Smith had invited.
“Hopper.” Smith caught my attention and waved me over to where he and McGrady were already deep in conversation.
“Well? Have you secured her agreement?”
“I believe we have come to an arrangement,” I answered.
“I was surprised he included that stipulation in the will. I mean, elephants?”
I chuckled and nodded. The old man had been an odd dichotomy of kind and caring, and manipulative. Sometimes he forgot that the manipulations that worked in business were not meant for the people he cared about.
“His intentions were in the right place, even if his choice of getting it done seems excessive. He never once had a conversation with me regarding his wishes. All of this could have been avoided.” I shook my head.
“You’re saying you would have married Harleigh had the old man asked it of you?” Smith asked.
“I don’t know. We’ll never know. He wanted me to take care of her. I thought that meant managing her accounts, ensuring her allowance fund was maintained. Who knows what that would have looked like had he gone about all of this differently. I understand his need to keep her safe from leeches who are only after her money. I’m sure there was another way of doing it. But this marriage thing is what we were dealt,” I said.
“And it looks like you’ve been dealt a real wild card when it comes to Tina.”
Smith looked distracted. I followed his gaze. He watched Harleigh, looking at her with pity. Maybe the old man had wanted me to protect her from geezers like himself. She would make someone a lovely trophy wife. Apparently I was first in line to find out.
Returning my attention back to the conversation, I shook my head. “She’s unpredictable,” I agreed.
“She’s a bit more than that. I understand she stole the Picasso?”
I shrugged nonchalantly. “Sanderson is helping to handle all of that. The insurance company has been contacted. I expect them to take care of hiring investigators, what have you. They’ll instruct us what to do.”
“You aren’t concerned she’ll contest the will? You might step up your timeline just in case.”
“It’s hard to step up ten days. We already are on a tight schedule. Besides, if Tina had thought she would get more by contesting, why risk grand theft by taking the Picasso?”
“Get married Hopper. Start acting like this marriage thing was something you were already considering. Don’t give anyone a reason to think you are trying to scam the terms of the inheritance with a fake wedding.”
I nodded. It was exactly the news I had anticipated receiving this evening.
“Excuse me,” I said before stepping away from the men.
I had an urge to find Harleigh and get out of there. A glance of the open den did not reveal her location. I stepped out onto the patio with its space heaters and dim lighting. Visions of her running off to marry the first Cassinova who smiled at her flashed into my head. She’d run off and we would both lose out. Anger started to swell when I didn’t find her.
A flicker of colored lights from those fish scales things on her dress caught my attention. The anger I felt burning surged in strength. That slimy shark, Martin, from McGrady’s firm was crowding into her space again. I recognized that predatory lean. When he reached out and stroked his knuckles down Harleigh’s arm, everything in me coiled for the strike. I strode across the space, ignoring others as I cut through their conversations.
The next time he reached out to touch her, I caught his hand in mine and lowered his arm. He struggled against me. But he wasn’t a challenge.
“I would appreciate you not touching my fiancée, Martin,” I snarled.
“You aren’t engaged, we all know that’s a sham,” he said as he sneered at me.
I ignored him. “Are you all right? Has he been bothering you, again?” I asked. My hand lifted and I ran it over the skin where he had dared to touch her. Anyone watching would think I wanted to erase any memory of his touch from her skin.
She smiled, but it was one of those fake ones meant to let anyone looking on know that everything was perfectly fine. “I’m okay.”
I leaned in and kissed her temple. “We should go.”
I turned to Martin. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.”
