Читать книгу The Missing Heir - Jane Toombs, Jane Toombs - Страница 12

M ari remained upstairs until she heard the doorbell. As she started for the stairs, Pauline’s voice floated up to her. “Why, hello there, Russ, how nice to see you.”

He greeted the housekeeper, then asked after Joe Haskell. When Mari was halfway down the steps, he glanced up, saw her and smiled. “Pauline,” he said, “I’m taking Mari to dinner.”

Pauline’s expression gave nothing away as she said, “I had no idea you two were acquainted.”

“We’re both horse people,” Russ told her, as though that explained everything.

Pauline nodded. “Enjoy your dinner.”

After they were outside, Mari said, “She’s always courteous, but somehow she unnerves me.”

“Who, Pauline? She’s harmless.”

“Maybe so, when you’ve known her as long as you must have.” Mari paused to turn and look back at the house. “There must be a great view from the cupola,” she said.

“Old Joe used to have a telescope up in that round room at the top. Is it still there?”

“I don’t know.”

“You mean you’ve never been up there? When I was a kid I spied on everything with that telescope, pretending I was watching for ore boats.”

“I suppose you were actually watching girls.”

“What else?” He handed her up into a one-horse buggy, got in beside her and clicked to the horse.

She’d already noticed he was wearing casual slacks with an olive polo shirt, the color turning his green eyes opaque. Unreadable. Which did nothing to alter his attractiveness. She could almost hear Willa warning her, “Handsome is as handsome does.” But to date everything Russ had done qualified as handsome, as far as Mari was concerned.

“You clean up well,” he told her, his gaze taking in everything from her sandals to her red earrings. “Nothing to spice up an evening like a buggy ride with a pretty girl beside you.”

“This is my first buggy ride.”

“I can guarantee it won’t be your last.”

He meant because she was on the island, she told herself, not anything more personal. She couldn’t expect him to spend all his time with her.

As the horse clip-clopped down the hill toward town, Mari wished she could ask him about the Haskell family. He was too young to have been a contemporary of Isabel’s, but he must have heard about her. But Mari feared to bring up the subject because he then might connect her stay at Joe Haskell’s with the missing Isabel. What if she wasn’t Isabel’s daughter? What would he think of her then?

She’d come here expecting to meet the man who might be her grandfather and go through whatever tests he might wish her to have as proof that they were related. That would take maybe a week, she’d figured. But now everything was up in the air, leaving her in limbo.

“I do hope Mr. Haskell is soon well enough to come home,” she said.

“We all do. Hope you like fish.”

She blinked. “Fish?”

“My choice of restaurant for tonight serves the best Lake Superior whitefish I’ve ever eaten.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever tasted whitefish, but I do like fish in general.”