Читать книгу A Convenient Affair - Leigh Michaels, Leigh Michaels - Страница 9

BY THE time Hannah got halfway back to Barron’s Court, she was regretting the impulse which had made her seize a carton of Jacob Jones’s papers. She’d done it only as a sort of bluff—so that Brenton wouldn’t be able to accuse her of walking out on undone tasks—rather than because she had any real intention of working tonight; with her mind going in circles, she’d be too afraid of missing something important.

But as she walked the few blocks from the law firm to Barron’s Court, the box had grown as heavy as the weight that seemed to have descended on her shoulders. She propped the carton on a corner of a small table in the lobby, glad of a moment’s relief, while she waited for the elevator.

How much different things looked than they had early in the morning, she thought, when she and Brutus had stood right here, fresh from a walk and feeling great. In one day, she’d near-as-nothing lost both her home and her job….

And Cooper Winston would no doubt add, with a note of glee in his voice, that she’d lost her expectations, as well. He probably thought the only reason she’d come to visit Isobel in the first place had been to look over her circumstances and decide if the old woman was worthwhile prey!

Impatiently, Hannah pushed the button again. The way her luck was running, the elevator had probably broken down. At least, the lighted dial above the polished Art Deco doors said that the darned thing hadn’t moved off seven since she’d come in.

All she wanted to do was get upstairs, fix herself a cup of tea, climb into her bed, and pull the comforter over her head while she waited for a new day to dawn. Whatever happened tomorrow, she told herself, it couldn’t possibly be as bad as today had been.

She was bracing herself for the climb up the long flights of stairs—and wishing even more that she’d left the carton of papers in the law library—when the elevator finally began to move. “And there’s absolutely no doubt,” she muttered, “the way my day has been going, who is going to get off when it gets to the lobby.” It was like the man had radar, knowing precisely when and where he was least wanted.

She stepped to the side as the door opened. To her surprise, however, instead of Cooper, the occupant was a jeans-clad workman who was straining to carry a thick slab of dark-stained wood which was nearly as broad as his outstretched arms. He nodded to Hannah as he maneuvered the slab out into the lobby, then stopped just a few steps away to readjust the padding which had started to slip away from the wood.

She said, “It would be easier to move something that size on the service elevator. You do know Barron’s Court has a service elevator? It allows this one to be left free for the residents to use.”