“How are you?” Ambrose asked.
“Fine.”
Ambrose shook his head sadly. “I know I already said this at the funeral, but Blythe is missed. Greatly.”
Jonas dipped his head in acknowledgement of the lawyer’s sympathetic words. Since the death of his mother, Blythe Hamilton Bravo, seven days before, Jonas had heard a lot of condolences and he’d done a lot of nodding in acknowledgement.
“And how is that beautiful little sister of yours?”
“Mandy’s doing well.”
Jonas’s sister, Amanda, had been adopted by his mother two years ago. At the time of the adoption, Jonas had been furious at Blythe. The way he saw it then, she had no business taking on an infant at an age when most women were well into their grandmothering years.
But Jonas’s fury had not lasted. How could it? Mandy was…special. She had the knack for melting even the hardest of hearts. Jonas still wasn’t sure how she’d done it, but somehow, the sprite had managed to break down even his considerable defenses. Within a month of the baby’s coming into their lives, Jonas had accepted his fate. He loved his little sister and he would do anything for her.
Ambrose leaned closer and spoke more confidentially. “You know, don’t you, that if there is anything I can do, not only as your family’s attorney, but as a—”
“I do know, Ambrose. And I appreciate your thoughtfulness.”
“Damn it.” Ambrose lowered his voice even further.
“She was too young. Only sixty…” Blythe had died of a particularly virulent form of leukemia. It had struck suddenly and killed her within two months of the original diagnosis. “I know it must be difficult, for both you and the child.”
“Honestly Ambrose, we’re managing.”
The lines of concern between the silver brows deepened—and then relaxed. “Well. I’m glad to hear it.” Ambrose clapped Jonas on the arm and let go of his hand. “Let’s move on to the West Conference Room, shall we? We’ll be more comfortable there.”
It was not Jonas’s intention to become comfortable. “Ambrose. What’s this about?”
Instead of answering, Ambrose said mildly, “Right this way.” He herded Jonas around the corner and down another wide hallway. Jonas allowed himself to be led, though he disliked having his questions evaded almost as much as he disliked being made to wait.
And this was not the first time Ambrose had refused to give him answers on this subject. Last Friday, when the lawyer had called to set up this meeting, he would only say that it concerned Blythe’s will. Before her death, Blythe had asked Ambrose to invite Jonas to his offices. Certain issues required discussion.
“What issues?” Jonas had demanded.
“Monday, Jonas. My office. Two o’clock?”
Jonas had tried to get the lawyer to simply come out to the house or drop in at Bravo, Incorporated. Ambrose had held firm. He’d said that Blythe had felt that a neutral setting would be better for everyone.
“Why a neutral setting?”
“I’ll explain it all on Monday.”
“Ambrose. Who the hell is everyone?”
But Ambrose wouldn’t say. “Please forgive me, Jonas. You’ll have all the information you need on Monday. At my office.”
Jonas had let the lawyer off the hook. After all, the man was only doing his job, following his client’s wishes—the client being Jonas’s exasperating mother, in this case. Who could say what Blythe Bravo had gotten up to in those last grim weeks before her death?
“All right, Ambrose. Monday. Two in the afternoon.” He’d ended the call.
So now it was Monday. It was 2:04 p.m.
And some answers had better be forthcoming.
“Here we are,” Ambrose said cheerfully, stopping before another pair of carved double doors. A bronze plaque on the wall to the left of the doors read, West Conference. Ambrose slid adroitly around Jonas and opened one of the doors. “After you.”
Jonas didn’t see the kennel keeper until he’d stepped over the threshold.
She was sitting all the way down at the end of the table, in one of the twelve high-backed cordovan leather swivel chairs, her back to the west wall, which consisted of one huge pane of glare-treated glass. Beyond the glass lay Century City in all its smoggy splendor, high-rises shimmering beneath the August sun.
The kennel keeper, whose name was Emma Lynn Hewitt, wore a snug-fitting jacket the color of orange sherbet. If she had a shirt on under the jacket, Jonas couldn’t see it. He could, however, see a tempting swell of cleavage. Her silky pale blond hair curled, soft and shiny and unrestrained, around her very pretty face. It wasn’t long, that hair, only chin-length, but still, it always managed to look just a little mussed, a little wild. Though the conference table blocked his view, he knew without having to look that her tight, short skirt would be as orange as her jacket. And that her shoes would have very high heels and open toes.
By all rights, Emma Lynn Hewitt should have looked cheap. But somehow, she didn’t. Somehow, she managed to look…sweet. Sweet and way too damn sexy. She also came across as if she meant business. He didn’t know how she did that, though he suspected it had to be in the way she held herself—chin high, slim shoulders back.
Just another of Blythe’s strays, he reminded himself, a little nobody from a bend-in-the-road town in Texas. As it had turned out, his mother’s investment in the woman’s dog grooming and boarding enterprise had been a profitable one, so he couldn’t fault the perky Texan on that count. Still, he had always disliked her.
Though he effortlessly schooled his face to betray nothing, Jonas noted a certain raw feeling in his gut—as if someone had taken a cheese grater to it. He was thinking the obvious: What in hell is she doing here? But he didn’t speak the question aloud. It would have been bad strategy, was too likely to betray his dismay. The Bravo Billionaire, as any dedicated tabloid reader would avidly tell you, did not experience feeble emotions like dismay.
There was a blue folder in front of the kennel keeper. And one in front of each of the two chairs to her left and to her right. Her folder was open. She’d apparently been reading the contents while she waited for him and for Ambrose. Judging by the strange, rather stricken look on her face, what she had read must have surprised—even shocked—her.
The cheese grater sawed another layer off the lining of Jonas’s stomach. He realized he no longer felt the urge to ask what she was doing here.
No. All at once, he didn’t even want to know.
Ambrose said, “Jonas. You’ve met Ms. Hewitt?”
“I have.”
The woman started to stand, then appeared to think better of the move and kept her pretty little butt in the chair. She swallowed. And nodded.
He nodded back.
“Have a seat.” Ambrose had him on the move again, ushering him down the long table toward the chair—and the folder—to the right of Emma Hewitt.
Jonas sat. Ambrose crossed behind the kennel keeper and took the chair to her left.
Once settled in his chair, Ambrose opened the folder on the table in front of him and then reached in his breast pocket and pulled out a pair of half glasses. “Ahem. Jonas.”