Читать книгу Daddy's Choice - Doreen Malek Owens - Страница 7

Carol Lansing was dreaming, and the dream was very loud. The pounding noise went on and on, and it wrested her up from the depths of sleep. By the time she finally opened her eyes and tore the tangled sheets off her legs she realized that the pounding was actually hammering and it was coming from overhead, on the roof.

Carol pushed her hair out of her face as the room swam into focus around her. She was trying to remember the previous night, but she was still half asleep. Everything was dark; the drapes were drawn across the bedroom window. The sight of them made her recall, suddenly, when she had closed them and where she was. This was her father’s beach house, the house he had left her after his death, and she was staying here for the summer to study for the upcoming bar exam.

The hammering, incredibly, seemed to be increasing in volume. Carol peered at the bedside clock and then closed her eyes again, sighing heavily. It was ten minutes after seven in the morning. At this ungodly hour some idiot was up on the roof making enough noise to rouse corpses that had been slumbering for centuries, not to mention an overworked law student who had just finished final exams five days earlier.

Carol swung her bare feet over the side of the bed and struggled into the robe she had left draped over a chair. She took one step and crashed full-force into a packing box on the floor. Muttering to herself, limping on her stubbed toe, she stumbled barefoot out to the living room.

The early morning sunlight blinded her and she stopped short, belting the robe around her waist and then shuffling over the pegged pine-board floor to the front door. The cottage consisted of a large parlor dominated by a fieldstone fireplace, with a kitchen and dining area to the back and two bedrooms off to the side. It was filled with cast-off rattan furniture and rag rugs, the remnants of her father’s use and the debris of several tenants. Carol bypassed the second bedroom, putting her hands to her temples. The noise seemed to be surrounding her, as if she were inside a vibrating drum. By the time she reached the front of the house she was so angry that common sense had deserted her completely. She yanked open the door and confronted a startled workman, who stared back at her, metal tape measure in hand.

“What is going on here?” Carol demanded.

The workman took in her disheveled, recently-out-of-bed appearance, the bare feet, the carelessly knotted bathrobe tie. He said cautiously, “This house was supposed to be empty.”

“Obviously it’s not,” Carol snapped, planting her hands on her hips.

They stared at one another.

“Would you mind telling me why you’re creating such an infernal racket at a few minutes past dawn?” Carol inquired pointedly, raising her brows.

“We’re renovating the house,” the man said. “Putting on a new roof and aluminum siding, adding a covered deck.”

“Oh, no, you’re not,” Carol said firmly. “I’m the new owner here, and I never authorized any improvements, so you can just run along, you and that cretin up on the roof.”

The man held up his hand. “You’d better talk to the boss,” he said.

“And who is that?” Carol asked, tapping her bare foot and lifting her chin pugnaciously.

The laborer pointed to the sky. “The cretin up on the roof,” he said simply.

Carol swept off the porch and into the yard, her injured toe throbbing, lifting the hem of her robe as she walked. She was appalled to see two trucks in her driveway and several more workers employed there, moving equipment and shouldering boxes of tools. She turned abruptly and looked up at the shingled roof where a tall, slim figure was silhouetted against the early morning sun, kneeling and hammering, facing away from her.

Carol shaded her eyes and called loudly, “May I speak to you a moment, please?”

The hammering continued, uninterrupted.

Carol repeated her question. No response. Exasperated, she cupped her mouth with her hands and shouted at the top of her voice, “Hello!”

The man wheeled around and looked down at her, then set his hammer on the tar-paper shingles and got to his feet. She watched as he stepped nimbly across the sloping roof and then climbed over its edge. Carol drew in her breath as he hung, suspended by his fingers, and then dropped the remaining distance to the ground. He landed directly in front of her and she took a step back.

“Something I can do for you, miss?” he said mildly, folding his arms.

His action drew her attention to his body. He was wearing a short-sleeved, navy T-shirt that clung to his broad shoulders and slim torso. It exposed his arms, which were deeply tanned and well defined with long, ropy muscles. His faded jeans clung to his narrow hips, the heavy tool belt encircling his waist dragging the denim material low enough to expose the upper part of a flat, ridged abdomen. Carol raised her eyes slowly to see him examining her quizzically, the light blue eyes in his bronzed face direct and challenging.

She cleared her throat. “I’d like to know what you and your men are doing on my property,” she said firmly.

“Renovating the house.”

“I can see that. But it’s my house and I never engaged anybody to do this work.”

He shrugged and withdrew a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. “It’s my guess that you’re not George Lansing,” he said dryly, opening the sheet and looking at it.

“I’m his daughter.”

“Well, your father needs to work on his communication skills. I contracted with him to do this job on May 12. I was scheduled to begin today and have the job done by August 15.” He handed Carol the paper and she saw that it was a cover letter for a contract with something called Kirkland Construction Company.

“My father is dead,” Carol said flatly.

“I’m sorry to hear that, but the contract stands,” the man said evenly, watching her. His thick blond hair had been bleached to the color of lemon peel from long hours in the sun and his face was so sun-browned that his eyes looked ethereally pale.

“What are you talking about? This is my house now and I don’t want you here!” Carol said incredulously.

“If your father is dead, then his estate is responsible for his contracts.”

“I am his estate and I’m telling you to go!” Carol said, her outrage building with every passing second.

The man held up his hands. “Don’t get mad at me, lady, I’m just explaining the situation. I have a contract, I’ve begun the work, I expect to complete it and get paid for it at that time.”

Carol tried to keep her temper in check. “Look, Mr…”

“Kirkland. Taylor Kirkland.”

“Mr. Kirkland, I inherited this place when my father died suddenly of a heart attack at the end of May. He said nothing to me about renovating it, maybe he intended it as a surprise, but I don’t even plan to keep this house, much less put out money to improve it. I was just going to spend the summer here studying for the bar exam and then put it on the market in the fall. I’ve sublet my apartment in New York, so you see I have no place to go for the next couple of months, and you’re making far too much noise for me to be able to concentrate on anything. So if you will please clear your men out of here, I’ll make sure you get paid for the day.”

“Nope,” he said shortly, and took the paper from her outstretched hand, stuffing it back into his jeans.

“What do you mean?” Carol demanded as he turned his back on her and headed for the house.

“I delayed other projects and hired extra men to do this job, and I’m going to finish it.”

“But I don’t want you to do the work!” Carol said to his back, enunciating very clearly, as if speaking to someone with impaired hearing.

“That’s your problem.” He climbed hand over hand up the front porch railing and then launched himself onto the roof with the grace of a puma scaling a mountain crag.

Carol simply couldn’t believe it. “And what if I said I was calling the police?” she yelled up at him.

“Go ahead and call them. I’ll just show Tom Delaney my contract and you’re going to look pretty foolish.” He picked up his hammer and began to pound the shingles again, effectively ending the conversation.

Carol glared up at him for a few enraged moments, stymied, then stalked back up the porch steps.

“You can tell your boss that I’m going to see my lawyer today,” Carol said regally to the first workman, passing him as she went back into the house.

He waited until she had closed the door and then scrambled up to join the tall blond on the roof.

“What’s going on, Tay?” he asked his boss. “That little lady is pretty upset.”

“Mother Superior is trying to expel us, but we’re staying,” Tay said lightly.

“What?” the workman said, bewildered.

“I contracted with her old man and now that he’s dead and she’s inherited the place, she wants to cancel the deal.”

“Can she?”

“Not without a hassle, Mike. The last time this happened to me, when old Hendrickson died, I won, and his kids had to let me finish the addition to his house. So I’m going to continue unless I get some legal papers that tell me I can’t.”

Mike shrugged and walked off, delivering himself of a parting comment. “Hey, Tay, you should schedule an eye exam as soon as possible.”

“What’s that?” Tay said, glancing up at him.

“If that stacked brunette looks like a nun to you, I think you need a pair of glasses.”

Tay smiled faintly and went back to nailing a shingle into place.

Carol returned to the bedroom, stripped off her nightclothes, and took a bracing shower. Then, still wrapped in a towel, she dialed her father’s lawyer in Avalon and got his voice mail. She explained the situation and asked for him to call her back. Then she made coffee and tried to endure the din surrounding her, closing her eyes when something crashed from the roof to the ground outside the kitchen window. She retreated into the living room with her cup of coffee and waited for the phone to ring.

Contracts law was not her specialty, but her memory of the few courses she had taken made her fairly certain that she could force Kirkland to stop work. She was just annoyed that she would have to spend precious studying time getting rid of this intractable man and his crew of industrious noisemakers.

Carol sighed and took a sip of her drink. She had decided to spend the summer in Strathmere, a small New Jersey shore town, because it was quiet and out of the way, the perfect place to study. She had finished law school in May. Her father had seen her graduate and then died two weeks later, leaving her this house, where she had spent her childhood summers. Carol hadn’t been back to the cottage in Strathmere since she was ten, when her mother had died. There had been too many memories in the house for either remaining Lansing to enjoy staying there, so her father had rented it out during the succeeding years. Carol had no idea why he had decided to renovate it; he had been dating someone during the last year of his life and maybe he had wanted to bring Gloria to the house. Carol herself had only decided to come to Strathmere after his death, when she had remembered the town’s isolation and knew the house would be empty. She had felt that fifteen years was enough time to make the absence of her mother from the house less keenly felt, and she was right. Now only the good memories remained, and she had been looking forward to a quiet summer.

Strathmere was located between Ocean City and Avalon on a barrier island off New Jersey’s coast. Between the island towns and the peninsula, which ended in Cape May, flowed the Intracoastal Waterway on the west and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. With its elderly clapboard houses, single main street, and dusty, unpaved alleys housing fishermen and boat mechanics, Strathmere was not a tourist attraction. It had no boardwalk or amusements like Sea Isle City or Avalon or Wildwood farther to the south. It was isolated, accessible by only one bridge and clinging to the northernmost tip of the strip island. It had one decidedly noncontinental restaurant/bar and a handful of permanent residents whose families had been living in the little town for generations. The abandoned schoolhouse just a few doors away from Carol’s cottage was two hundred years old, built by laborers with their own hands; the streets leading away from the main drag to the water were little more than pebble-strewn footpaths, just wide enough to accommodate cars. Since its location discouraged “summer people,” its population was low all year ‘round, and it was the perfect place for Carol to hole up with her books and block out the rest of the world until the ordeal of the bar exam was behind her.

And now here she was in the midst of this sudden and infernal din, saddled with a raucous construction crew that refused to depart. That man Kirkland was certainly rude. She intended to make short work of him and his deafening little band.

The telephone rang. Carol went into the kitchen to answer it, avoiding the bedroom extension because of the noise right above that room.

“Hi, John,” she said in response to the greeting from her father’s lawyer, John Spencer.

“What seems to be the problem?” John asked.

“I described the problem on your voice mail,” Carol replied crisply. “I have this construction crew at my house and I want to get rid of them. Whatever they’re doing, I don’t want them to do it, and the boss refuses to call them off and leave.”

“Which company is it?” John asked. Carol heard the rustle of papers in the background as he took notes.

“Kirkland Construction.”

“Tay Kirkland?” John asked in surprise.

“Yes. That’s who he said he was, anyway.”

“He’s usually pretty reasonable.”

Carol made a disgusted sound. “Not on this occasion, I’m afraid.”

“Well, look. I don’t know what’s going on, your father never said anything to me about renovating the cottage, and if he signed a contract, he did so without my knowledge. I’ll give Kirkland a call and see if I can resolve the situation.”

“He’s up on my roof, if you want to talk to him,” Carol said dryly. “Do you want me to get him?”

“He’s usually in his office after he lets his crew go at three,” John said. “I’ll talk to him then. If you want to stop by my place around five, I should have something for you.”

“Fine,” Carol said shortly. “I’ll see you at five.”

She hung up the phone and went to the kitchen window, gazing out at the driveway where Tay Kirkland was now standing at the mouth of his pickup truck, directing the action. The sun glinted off his blond hair and ignited the gold in his watch as he raised his arm to gesture to one of his men. Carol studied the scene for a few moments, then went back to her bedroom. She went though the clothes she had brought with her, choosing a blue sundress with a bolero jacket and a pair of sandals that would not put pressure on her injured toe.

She would curl up in here to study and try her best to block out the noise. It was only for one day. After that the problem would be solved.

The construction crew departed precisely at three, and Carol enjoyed an hour and a half of blissful silence before she got into her father’s car to make the trip to Avalon. The weather was pleasant, with a sea breeze all the way, and she left the windows open for the salt air. Her good spirits had been restored by the time she reached John Spencer’s office, which was housed in a converted Victorian summer home about two blocks from the beach. But her upbeat mood dispelled rapidly when she saw who was sitting inside the lawyer’s suite, waiting for her.

“Tay came right over when I called him about your situation,” John said to Carol, almost apologetically, correctly reading the expression on her face when she spotted his companion. “He brought the contract with him.”

Kirkland rose to his feet as she entered the room and then sat again when she did.

The secretary, who was leaving for the day, pulled the office door shut behind them and then Carol heard the thud of the outer door closing, as well. She looked from one to the other of the two men slowly.

The silence echoed.

Taylor Kirkland was now wearing a dark blue, pinstriped suit of tropical wool, with a light blue shirt and a navy-and-white-figured tie. He sat with a manila folder in one tanned hand, the other resting lightly on the arm of his chair. Carol noticed that the blond hairs on his fingers were bleached almost white, and that his nails had recently been scrubbed scrupulously clean. The color of his shirt made his eyes look even more vivid than before, and his wavy hair had recently been wet combed into submission. It was now drying and curling around his ears and onto his forehead, lightening to a color millions of women regularly tried, and failed, to achieve in beauty salons.

Carol looked away from him deliberately.

John cleared his throat. “Well, I suppose we should get down to business,” he said.

“By all means,” Carol said.

“I’ve read Tay’s contract and I must say that everything in it looks to be in order,” John said. “Your father did contract for Tay’s firm to do the work on the house and it was scheduled to begin today. Tay is within his rights to insist on completing the job.”

Carol glared at him. “Even if I don’t want the work done?” she asked.

John sighed. “He can insist on specific performance from the estate, Carol. You’re not a layman, you know the rules.”

“I can get an injunction to keep him off the property until this is resolved in court. That’s in the rules, too.”

“To what end?”

“To the end of peace and quiet,” Carol said shortly.

John shook his head. “The court calendar is dead down here at the best of times—the fishermen don’t sue each other and the tourists stick to Avalon. The case will come up in a week and Tay will be back working on the house in ten days.”

“I take it you think I’d lose?” Carol inquired darkly.

“I think there’s a good chance of it.”

“So I let Kirkland here finish a job I don’t want done and for which I don’t have the money, or he sues me for interference with the performance of his contract and holds me up for a year on selling the house,” Carol said succinctly.

John pressed his lips together in silence. They both knew that was about the size of it.

“Thanks a lot, Kirkland,” Carol said sarcastically, and rose to go.

Kirkland, who up to this point had said nothing at all, rose abruptly and put his hand on her arm. Carol started and pulled back as if he had burned her. She looked up at him, riveted by the intensity of his gaze.

“I’m not trying to take advantage of you,” he said quietly. “I’ve hired extra men, cleared my schedule of other contracts, and invested a bundle in the materials for your job,” he said. “If I’m forced to stop it now, I won’t be able to unload the materials or get back the business I turned away. If you’ll just let me finish the job, I’ll take payment in the form of a builder’s lien against the property and you can pay me once you sell it. John says cottages like that one, so close to the water, go in a matter of weeks down at that end of the street. And you’ll get a lot more for it once it’s fixed up and modernized.”

“I see that you two boys have already figured this all out for me,” Carol said pointedly, folding her arms.

“It’s not like that,” Kirkland said softly.

“How is it?”

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. “I know you’re a lawyer…”

“Not quite yet, Mr. Kirkland, and it looks like your busy little troop of hammering devils just may keep me from ever becoming one.”

“Look, Miss Lansing. I really don’t want to give you a hard time. Can’t we reach some sort of compromise?”

His tone was low, almost seductive, and Carol realized that, without seeming to, he was charming her.

“Like what?” she said warily.

“I could adjust my schedule and work from eight to four so you could sleep an hour later in the morning every day,” he said reasonably.

“And the noise?” she asked archly.

He sighed. “I could use electric staple guns instead of hammers, pad the windows and doors while we’re there, to muffle the sound, and do the noisiest roofing at the end of the day when it won’t be as disturbing to you,” he replied.

Carol glanced at John, whose expression said, He’s trying, isn’t he?

Carol looked back at Kirkland, who was waiting tensely, his tall frame motionless.

“All right!” Carol said, throwing up her hands.

John grinned, and Kirkland permitted himself a half smile, his light eyes warming just a little.

“Why do I feel that I’ve just been outgunned?” Carol said wearily.

“Not ungunned,” John said. “Merely enlightened. You’ll make a tidy profit on the house once it’s renovated, even with the costs of the work deducted.”

“John, I understand that,” Carol said, holding up her hand. “But my concern at the moment is having a quiet place to study during the summer, not becoming a real estate profiteer.”

“I’ll do everything I can to help you study,” Kirkland said evenly, and Carol looked at him again.

It seemed that he meant it.

Carol nodded resignedly.

“Can you two shake on it?” John said genially, obviously relieved that he wouldn’t have to take legal steps to resolve their differences.

Kirkland extended his hand, and Carol reached out to grasp it. His palm was callused and work-hardened, but large and warm. Her fingers disappeared into it and then he relaxed his grip. She snatched her hand back hastily.

There was an awkward silence, then John said briskly, “Well, I’m glad we were able to come to terms on this. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get home—my wife will probably carve me up with the roast.”

Kirkland shook hands with John, glanced once more at Carol and said, “I’ll be back at your house at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, then,” and left.

John packed his briefcase as he said, “Wait just a moment, Carol, I’ll walk out with you.”

Carol paused as he punched a button on his phone and then picked up his keys. She walked beside him as they left his office and he stopped to lock his door before proceeding down the steps that led to the street.

“How are you getting along, Carol?” John said. “You must miss your dad.”

“I do, but I’ve been so busy I don’t think his absence has really sunk in yet. Since I was away at school I really didn’t see him much, just talked to him on the phone.”

“Ever hear from Gloria?” John asked warily.

Carol shook her head. “She’s afraid that I’m going to contest the bequests to her in my father’s will, but I don’t plan to do that. She can keep whatever he gave her as long as I never have to see her again.”

“No love lost there, I take it.”

Carol shrugged. “When I saw that she was depositing my father’s money in a bank account with her name on it, I was not favorably impressed.”

John nodded. “I think that’s why he never told me about his renovation of the cottage. He was afraid I would attempt to talk him out of it.”

“Why?”

John glanced at her nervously.

“Tell me,” Carol said levelly.

John shrugged. “I think he planned to give the place to Gloria once it was redone. He just happened to die before he changed the provision in his will that left the cottage to you.”

Carol was silent.

“I’m sorry,” John said gently, “but I thought you should know in case she comes sniffing around, offering up witnesses to testify about his intent to give it to her.”

“Are there any?”

John shrugged. “Who knows? But I don’t think she’ll get anywhere. Any judge in the world would determine that she has already been well compensated for her period of ‘companionship.’ If she does file a complaint I don’t think it’s likely to get past a preliminary hearing. I just wanted you to be prepared for the possibility.”

Carol nodded. She wasn’t worried about Gloria; all Gloria wanted was money, and so more money would make her go away. Carol was much more concerned about passing the bar exam.

They had reached John’s car, a green BMW sports car, and as he unlocked it he said, “Why don’t you come home with me and join us for dinner? Beth would love to see you.”

“Thanks, John, but I’d like to get back to Strathmere. I still have unpacking to do and I want to be ready to hit the books early tomorrow.”

“Okay, but you have to give me a rain check.”

“I will.”

John tossed his briefcase onto the passenger seat of his car and slid under the wheel. As he started the car Carol said suddenly, “John, what do you know about this Taylor Kirkland?”

The older man squinted up at her as he adjusted his seat belt. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, he’s going to be on my property every day all summer, isn’t he?” she replied obliquely.

John thought a moment. “He’s a local boy, quiet, minds his own business. He built that construction company up all by himself from what I hear. His father was a fisherman. I don’t know many other personal details, but in business Kirkland has a reputation for being quite fair and aboveboard. That’s why I was surprised when he gave you trouble.”

“I guess he’s just determined to follow through on the contract my father signed,” Carol said glumly.

“You can’t blame Kirkland for that.”

“But I’d really like to,” Carol said, grinning, and they both laughed.

“Sure you won’t take me up on that offer of dinner?” John asked, glancing at his watch.

Carol realized that she was detaining him. “No, go ahead. And thanks for your help.”

“Call me if you need anything else,” John said, and shut his car door. Carol stepped back as he glided out of his parking space and then pulled out of the lot.

Carol walked toward her father’s car—his used backup model; Gloria hadn’t come after it because she was doubtless more satisfied with the new foreign sports sedan she had received. Carol was just getting into the driver’s seat, warm from sitting in the late afternoon sun, when a wave of dizziness came over her. She had to lean forward with her head on her crossed arms, hands gripping the steering wheel for support.

How long had it been since she’d eaten? She realized with alarm that supper the night before had been her most recent meal. She’d been in such a snit over her unwanted visitors all day that she’d forgotten about food.

The dizziness passed and she lifted her head. She knew from experience that she couldn’t drive back safely unless she had something to eat, and John’s car was now out of sight. She glanced across the street at a restaurant she’d been in with her father several times. Like John’s office, it was housed in a restored Victorian-style home. The first-floor rooms of the old house had been converted into a large dining salon. Usually the place required reservations but she was probably early enough on a weeknight to just walk in and be seated. She stood gingerly, then relocked her car and went across the street.

She was right. The dining room was only half full and she was given a secluded table near the back. She had just picked up the menu when a masculine voice next to her said, “Are you following me?”