Читать книгу Fortune's Secret Heir - Allison Leigh - Страница 10

Chapter Three

Ella’s eyes went wide as she stared back at Ben and he could already taste success.

“I’m not a charity case.”

“I didn’t say you were,” he said truthfully.

“If my detective skills turn out to be as bad as my bartending skills, you can fire me.”

“Your bartending skills were fine.”

“And I reserve the right to quit, too, if...um...I decide the job doesn’t suit.”

“Why wouldn’t it suit?”

Her dark lashes fell and her auburn head dipped a little. She had her hair in a ponytail again. And even though there was nothing particularly attractive about the loosely fitted white shirt she wore tucked into a plain blue skirt, he had to remind himself again that she was off-limits. He’d put her there, square and fair, by the very act of employing her, even if it was through a temporary agency.

Ben never mixed business with pleasure. Ever. Especially with someone as young and seemingly wholesome as Ella Thomas. She was white picket fences and babies and happily-ever-afters. And he was anything but.

His mood effectively darkened, he pushed out of his chair again and paced across to the window. He didn’t see the view. In his head, he was picturing Henry. The two-year-old boy who, for the better part of the past year, Ben had let himself believe he’d fathered. Finding out that he hadn’t during the same time he’d learned his father wasn’t who he said he was had been sour icing on a bitter cake.

He pinched the bridge of his nose until Henry’s image in his mind faded. “Do we have an agreement or not, Ella?” He turned on his heel to face her.

“I guess you’re not interested in reviewing my résumé.” She sat forward and retrieved the sheet of ivory paper she’d set on his desk.

He doubted there was anything on it that he hadn’t already discovered for himself. He shook his head.

“And if I decline your generous offer?”

“Then I’ll figure something else out.” He wouldn’t want another prospect from Spare Parts, at any rate. His only interest in the temporary agency was the fact that Ella worked for them.

She pulled a manila folder out of her purse and tucked the résumé neatly inside it. Then she stood and seemed to brace herself before she approached him, her hand outstretched. “We have an agreement.”

He’d just as soon not touch her, because even though he’d put her out of his reach, he’d still spent too much time over the past few days thinking about touching her all over. But he shook her hand briefly. “You’ll work here,” he said. “Ordinarily, I’m not here during the day, so that—” he gestured at his desk and the computer there “—will be all yours. You can park under—”

“Mrs. Stone told me,” she interrupted quickly. “I don’t have a car.”

“I’ll arrange one for you.”

She looked pained. “I’m fine with the bus. And on nice days, I like to ride my bike, anyway.”

He wanted to pinch his nose again, because he didn’t want to be having lascivious thoughts about college girls who rode bicycles. Instead, he headed toward the stairs. He’d been prepared to have her start immediately, but he obviously needed another night to get his head on straight. “Suit yourself. You can have weekends off. I’ve already put together my notes and a list of women with whom my father might have been involved.” A task that had almost been enough to keep him occupied once he’d learned the truth about Henry. “You can start on that tomorrow, if you’re ready.”

“Okay.” Her footsteps sounded light on the stairs behind him.

“It’s a long list,” he added grimly.

Her steps slowed. “I’m sorry.”

He’d reached the second floor, where the kitchen and formal dining room were situated, and he glanced back at her. “For what?”

She lifted her shoulders in the cheaply fitting blouse. “My father died when I was eight. But I can only imagine how difficult a task this must be for you.”

“It’s your task,” he reminded her, deliberately overlooking the compassion in her open gaze. “That’s why I’ve hired you. Mrs. Stone,” he barked, and his housekeeper immediately appeared. She’d come with the house, having worked with the prior owners for twenty years. He figured that she tolerated his presence only because she had to, if she didn’t want to give up the house.

“Give Ms. Thomas the spare house key.” He ignored Ella’s surprised start as easily as he ignored Mrs. Stone’s emotionless stare. “She’ll be working in my office from now on, so make sure she has everything she needs.” He looked at Ella. “I have a conference call in a few minutes from Tokyo, so I’ll leave you with her.”

She gave him a bemused nod, not speaking until he started back up the stairs again. “What do I do if I, you know, make any finds?”

Call me. “Leave a daily report on my desk,” he said instead. “Nothing complicated. Just whether you’ve made any progress.”

Her expression cleared, making him wonder if she was relieved. Maybe she wanted to keep as much distance between them as he did. If that was the case, so much the better.

“Daily reports.” She nodded and clasped her purse to her narrow waist. Her eyes were sparkling, bluer than the Texas sky, and her wide smile showed off that faint space between her two front teeth. “I can do that.”

And he could keep his mind where it belonged.

He nodded once and headed upstairs to his office again, determined to put Ella Thomas out of his head, no matter how difficult a task that would be.

* * *

“You’re going to work for the Ben Robinson?” Ella’s brother, Rory, dumped his backpack on the small round kitchen table and eyed her with astonishment. “Robinson Tech, Robinson?” He barely waited for her nod. “You know his father, Gerald Robinson, was the first one to venture into hybrid—”

She lifted her hand, cutting him off before he could launch into another of his technical, mind-numbing descriptions. “I know. Gerald Robinson’s brilliant.” And according to his son Ben, a philanderer, as well. She finished wrapping the peanut butter sandwich she’d made for Rory’s lunch and tucked it in a paper sack, along with an apple and a few sticks of string cheese. “You have enough money to buy your milk for lunch?”

He made a face and shoved the sack into his backpack. “I’m too old to drink milk.”

“You’re sixteen. You’re not too old.” She’d made her own sack lunch, too. “At least don’t buy soda. Get fruit juice.”

“When’s Mom gonna switch back to days?”

“She’d tell you to drink fruit juice rather than soda, too.” The Thomases’ kitchen wasn’t overly large. In a matter of three short steps, Ella could reach the sink, the fridge and the stove. And Rory, even as horribly thin as he was, took up a good portion of space. She stepped around him, automatically avoiding knocking into his crutches after a lifetime of practice, and stuck her lunch into the messenger-style bag she used to carry her textbooks. “And I think she’s got another month on nights, before she gets to switch back to days.” Their mother was a medical technologist working at the hospital, and the only thing regular about her schedule was its irregularity. But the pay was enough to keep a modest roof over their heads, and the medical insurance that came with it was even more crucial, considering Rory’s cerebral palsy.

“I hate it when she’s gone all night.”

Ella rubbed his unruly hair. Unlike her, his dark hair didn’t have a hint of red. He looked more like their mother, while she took after their father. “I know, bud.”

Typically, he shrugged off any displays of affection from her. In that, he was a pretty normal teenage brother. “So what’re you gonna be doing at Robinson Tech? Can you get any good deals on equipment? Maybe you’ll even get a new computer. Or their latest phone. Or at least an upgrade on—”

She waved her hand, cutting him off. “Don’t get excited. I’m not going to be working at Robinson Tech and there won’t be any new stuff. I’m just doing a job for Mr. Robinson. And what do you need with more computer equipment, anyway? Your bedroom barely has room for a bed, you have so many gadgets.”

“Software doesn’t take up room, and they’ve got a new OS coming out that’s looking really sweet. You could always ask, you know.”

She didn’t know what an OS was and didn’t care. “No, I certainly could not ask. You have everything you need for school? You’ve got chess club afterward—” She broke off when he rolled his eyes.

“Geez, Ella. I’m not five. And you forget stuff more ’n I ever do,” he reminded her.

That was true enough. Beyond him, she could see out the kitchen’s lone window that looked out on the street. “Your bus is here.” She waited for him to pull on his hooded jacket, then helped him on with his backpack and followed him through the house to the front door. “I don’t know how long Mr. Robinson wants me to work today, so if I’m not home to start dinner, Mom’s got—”

He was already moving down the ramp that had replaced the three front porch steps years ago, before he’d graduated from his wheelchair. “I know, I know, Ella,” he said impatiently. “Lasagna in the freezer. ’Bye already!”

It was a chilly morning and even though Ella’s instinct was to linger and make sure her brother got on the bus all right, she didn’t. She waved good morning to their neighbor Bernie, who was fastidiously sweeping nonexistent leaves off his own porch, and went back inside. She turned off the gas fireplace that had been keeping the living room warm, made a mental note to get the Christmas tree undecorated and hauled out of the house—since Christmas had been two weeks ago—and pulled her own jacket out of the closet.

Riding her bicycle to work was a fine idea, and something she’d done many, many times. It was more convenient than the bus, actually, since there was no schedule to worry about. But with rain in the forecast, the bus was more sensible. With her jacket covering her jeans and flannel shirt, she pulled the messenger-bag strap across her shoulder and set out herself for the nearest bus stop, about eight blocks away.

It could have been worse. The Thomases could have lived farther away from the bus line than they did. And with all the walking and bicycling that Ella did every day, she’d never had to particularly worry about indulging in whatever food she wanted.

Genetics probably helped there, too. Elaine was the same height as Ella and slender. And before he’d died, Ella’s father had been tall and lanky.

Not unlike Ben Robinson.

She still couldn’t believe he’d wanted to hire her.

Frankly, the more she thought about it, the more she considered his quest a little odd. It certainly wasn’t a regular occurrence in the world she’d always occupied.

If her father had had extramarital affairs that produced other children, would she have wanted to know?

It wasn’t as if Ben didn’t have brothers and sisters already. Heavens. He had seven! A twin brother who also worked at Robinson Tech, two other brothers and four sisters. It boggled her mind imagining the chaos eight children would have provided in the Thomas household. It made her smile, just thinking about it.

But then the Robinsons and the Thomases had very little in common, besides both residing in Texas. When she’d indulged her curiosity about Ben on the internet, she’d seen the photographs of the sprawling Robinson estate. Well, photographs of the stone walls and iron gates surrounding it, at least. There’d been a few aerial shots that showed multiple wings and a sparkling pool and a whole lot of trees that hid pretty much everything else from sight.

Certainly there’d been no picture of Ben Robinson sprawled poolside.

She was smiling over that thought, too, when she boarded the bus.

“Looking fine today, missy,” the bus driver greeted her.

“Thanks, Del.” She swiped her bus pass over the reader. “How’s your grandson doing?” The teenager went to the same school as Rory.

“Oh, he’s fine. Just fine. His mama and him are hoping to buy their own place soon.”

Ella pocketed her pass again, grinning at the driver. “You’re not going to know what to do with yourself if they actually move out.”

The driver hacked out a laugh and put the bus into motion. “Reckon that’s true, missy.”

It was early yet, only a few other riders already on the bus, and she chose a seat midway back on the window. The trip to Ben’s house would take the better part of an hour, but she didn’t have to make any transfers to another route, and that meant she had a good forty-five minutes to study.

Unfortunately, when she pulled out her textbook for her Intro to Taxation course, she seemed incapable of focusing on it. Same way she’d seemed incapable of getting more than an hour of sleep at a stretch the night before.

All because she couldn’t get Ben Robinson out of her head.

Finally, she gave up on the textbook and put the heavy tome back in her messenger bag. She had nearly two weeks to go before the class started. Presumably she’d have her infatuated fascination with Ben under control by then. It wasn’t as if anything would ever happen between them. He was totally out of her league.

But a girl could daydream, couldn’t she?

Staring sightlessly out the window beside her, as the bus pulled up to one stop after another, letting people on and letting people off, that was exactly what she did.

* * *

“At least you’re not late this time.” Mrs. Stone greeted her at the front door again.

Ella almost wanted to ask the woman if she ever smiled but figured the question wouldn’t be taken well. So instead, she just offered a “good morning,” and followed the housekeeper inside. Even though Mrs. Stone had given Ella a spare key the afternoon before, Ella hadn’t been able to summon the nerve to actually use it. Instead, it remained unused on the key chain that held her own house key, tucked safely inside her bag.

Like the day before, the house was quiet as a tomb inside, and she followed Mrs. Stone up to the third-floor study.

“Mister has already left for the office,” the housekeeper finally said when she gestured at Ben’s empty desk. “I suppose you know what you’re supposed to do.”

Ella wondered if Mrs. Stone knew what Ella’s purpose there was. Not that it mattered. Mrs. Stone had a job to do, the same as Ella did.

She set her messenger bag on the floor behind the desk and tried to act as if she wasn’t totally intimidated simply pulling out the leather chair that Ben had occupied the afternoon before.

“Lunch will be at noon,” Mrs. Stone intoned. “I’ll bring you a tray.”

“Oh.” Surprised, she gestured toward the admittedly worn bag. “I didn’t know. I brought a sandwich.”

Mrs. Stone stared. “The Mister said to prepare lunch.”

“Which probably beats my PB and J all to pieces.”

“PB and J?”

“Never mind. Thank you. Lunch at noon will be great. But I can come down—” she realized she didn’t know where the kitchen was located because she’d never seen it “—or up,” she added ruefully, “to the kitchen. I don’t need waiting on.” The woman was still staring. Not quite a glare but definitely no humor there, either. Maybe she didn’t want interlopers in her kitchen. “But, whatever you’re used to,” she said weakly.

“Mister never has people working in his office,” Mrs. Stone said and turned to leave.

Presumably that meant she was delivering a lunch to Ella at noon just as she intended.

Nervously twisting her watch, Ella sat down in the leather chair. It was on casters. Surprisingly old-fashioned for a man who was firmly entrenched in a modern tech world. In fact, the entire study seemed steeped in old-fashioned touches. The clock on the wall behind her looked as if it had come out of an old railway station. The desk itself was gigantic, with warm inlaid wood on the top and worn metal corner braces that reminded her of a steamer trunk.

There was a manila folder sitting on the center of the desktop with her name scrawled on the front. When she hadn’t been stalking her new boss online the night before, she’d been reading whatever she could find on how to locate missing people. Not that his siblings—if there were any to begin with—were missing.

She’d decided the hunt wasn’t any different than doing a person’s genealogy. And these days, genealogy websites abounded.

She flipped open the folder. The notes inside were typed. Neat. Chronological. She had a hard time envisioning Ben preparing them himself. Probably had had a secretary do it.

There were also a couple of sticky notes stuck to the inside of the folder; handwritten in the same slashing style as her name on the front. That she had no trouble imagining as Ben’s. He’d written the password for his computer network on one. And on the other, a directive to make herself at home and help herself to drinks in the fridge.

She leaned back in the chair and looked around the study. If there was a refrigerator here, it was cleverly hidden. Besides, she had a bottle of water in her messenger bag.

She gingerly opened the center drawer of the desk and was glad to see it contained the computer keyboard and a few pens and pencils. The moment she tapped the keyboard, the sleek monitor on top of the desk leaped to life and she keyed in the password he’d left, opened an internet browser and turned back to read through all of Ben’s notes.

That task took longer than she’d expected, because there weren’t only notes about Gerald Robinson’s history. There were copious notes about the extensive Fortune family and the mysterious, supposedly deceased Jerome Fortune.

By the time she did finish, she decided she needed to make some of her own notes. Reading about Gerald Robinson’s life had been fascinating enough that she didn’t feel so odd when she began pulling open the drawers of Ben’s desk in search of a notepad. When she reached the last of the four drawers, she’d found everything from a bottle of Scotch and two crystal glasses to a single snapshot of a cute blond-haired toddler boy. But no blank paper. Rather than hunt through anything else of his, she retrieved the spiral notebook from her messenger bag that she used for school notes and flipped to a fresh page.

Ben’s material chronicled Gerald’s life from his founding of Robinson Tech, known until recently as Robinson Computers, his marriage to Charlotte Prendergast and the subsequent births of their children. It covered a lot of years. From the dates Ben had provided, Ella knew that Gerald and Charlotte had been married nearly three and a half decades. She drew out a visual time line of these known dates. On another sheet, she drew, contrastingly, the brief time line of Jerome Fortune’s life span. If Gerald was not Jerome, that young man had had a regrettably short life.

She idly traced her pen over Jerome’s time line, while studying Gerald’s. She hadn’t been hired to determine that the two men were one and the same. Ben already believed that they were. There wasn’t anything interesting of note on Gerald’s time line until he’d founded his computer company. Before that were just the basics. Birth date. The names of his supposed parents—both deceased.

“Lunch.”

She nearly jumped out of her skin when Mrs. Stone spoke.

Without asking, the housekeeper carried the tray she held over to the table near the windows. She set out the place setting, a plate with a silver dome covering it and a crystal glass filled with what look like iced tea. When she was done, she tucked the tray under her arm and headed back out the doorway. “I’ll collect everything in an hour,” she said as she left.

“Yes, ma’am,” Ella murmured under her breath. But curiosity as well as hunger pangs propelled her across the room to see what was under the dome. She was relieved to see a flaky croissant brimming with—she filched a tiny bit on her fingertip to taste—chicken salad, a steaming cup of some sort of soup and a glistening fruit tart.

Definitely beat out her poor little peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Knowing she’d spent more time that morning thinking about the Gerald/Jerome connection than hunting down any of his possible offspring, she carried the food back to the desk and ate while she began methodically searching the whereabouts of the women listed in Ben’s notes.

She was able to cross off the first two almost immediately. One had died childless in an automobile accident only a few months after the conference where she and Gerald had met. The other was now a United States senator with an eye toward the presidency, and Ella figured if there were any other children besides the high school–age twins she shared with her husband, the media would have ferreted them out long before now.

She made her notes next to their names and moved on to the third prospect. “You do get around, don’t you,” she commented and looked up to focus again on the computer monitor.

Ben was standing in the doorway, wearing an immaculate pinstriped suit and gray tie, and for the second time, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Who gets around?”

Over the course of the morning, she’d gotten comfortable sitting in his chair, but now she felt nothing but awkwardness and she hopped to her feet. “Sorry about the mess,” she muttered, quickly gathering the empty dishes that Mrs. Stone had yet to retrieve, and swiping croissant crumbs off the glorious desk onto the plate.

“What mess?” He rounded the desk from the other side and angled his dark head, studying her handwritten notes. Aside from Gerald’s time lines, which had numerous additions and comments jotted here and there, her notes were fairly neat. But nothing like his typed stack.

Rather than standing there, inhaling the intoxicating scent of him, she carried the dishes over to the table. She wondered if his thick, dark hair ever got mussed out of the severe way he combed it back from his face.

“Looks like you’ve been busy,” he said. “Mrs. Stone taking care of you?”

She hovered near the table. “Yes. Lunch was unnecessary, but delicious. Thank you.”

“Thank her. She fixed it.” He glanced at the computer monitor, then back at her again. “You’ve found everything you needed?”

She nodded quickly. “I’ve already eliminated two women from your list. If it continues this quickly, you’re definitely overpaying me for the job.”

He picked up her spiral notebook and read what she’d written. “It won’t always go that quickly. Nothing involving my father ever does. Where’d the notebook come from?”

“What?”

He lifted the notebook slightly before tossing it on the desk.

“Oh.” She gestured at her messenger bag sitting on the floor against the wall behind his desk. “I had it with me.”

“Reminds me of my school days,” he murmured. He walked over to her and reached out his arm, but only to open one of the built-in cabinets near where she stood. “Plenty of supplies for you to use,” he said, and moved away again. “No need to use up your own stuff for school.”

“It was just a few pages,” she pointed out. But she pulled out a legal pad from the well-stocked shelf behind the cabinet door and closed it again.

“School’s not in session for you right now.”

“Classes start up again in about a week and a half.” She set the legal pad on the desk, but then didn’t really know what to do. It was his office. Taking the seat behind his desk while he was there seemed too strange. Instead, she ended up just hovering there beside the desk, folding and unfolding her arms. “I, um, I only have one class right now that’ll be on campus. Intro to Taxation. The last class I took was online only.”

“Handy.”

“Depends. Sometimes things are easier in a classroom. But—” she shrugged and unfolded her arms yet again “—it’s what’s been working.” It was also hard knowing where to focus her attention. If she looked at him, she was very much afraid she might stare. Or drool. The man was that handsome. But it was also awkward not looking at him.

God help her. You’d think she’d never been around a guy before. She wasn’t a virgin, for heaven’s sake. She’d had a few boyfriends. Nobody serious enough to stick around through her busy schedule and the demands of her family. But still...

“Well, looks like you’re doing fine. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Mister!” Mrs. Stone appeared, unable to hide her surprise. “I didn’t know you were here. I’ll prepare you lunch immediately.”

“No. I had a few spare minutes but I’m heading back to the office. Make sure Ella leaves in a few hours.” His eyes slid over Ella’s face, a sudden glint of amusement in them. “I’m not paying her overtime.”

With that, he departed as unexpectedly as he’d appeared.

“He never comes home during the workday.” Mrs. Stone glared at Ella as if she was to blame. “I would have had a proper lunch for him prepared.”

“I don’t think he expected lunch,” Ella offered. “It was all delicious, though. Thank you.”

Mrs. Stone didn’t look soothed. As rocky faced as always, she loaded up her tray with Ella’s lunch dishes and strode out of the room. Ella was fairly certain she’d have slammed the door if the doorway had possessed one.

Fortunately, it wasn’t Mrs. Stone’s opinion about Ella that mattered.

And Ben had said she was doing fine.