Cinda’s mood instantly lifted. Richard’s father. She loved this man. “Papa Rick! How are you?” He hardly ever called. Couldn’t wrest the phone from his wife’s hands, no doubt.
“The Dragon Lady fell asleep in her lair, so I snatched up the phone when it rang an hour or so ago. And it’s lucky for you I did.”
“For me? Why? Is something wrong?”
“Only if you don’t like the young man who called for you.”
Cinda sat bolt upright on the sofa. Her pulse picked up. Anticipation flitted through her, drying her mouth. “A young man called for me?”
“He did. And like I said, it was a good thing I answered and not Ruth.”
“No kidding.” She and Papa Rick were in this conspiracy together to survive the Dragon Lady. “But why would the, uh, young man call you? You’re in the Hamptons. And I certainly haven’t given anybody your number there. This doesn’t make sense.”
“Cinda, slow down. All I know is he sounded Southern.”
“S-Southern?” Cinda could have kicked herself for that stutter in her voice. Thank God, Papa Rick couldn’t know how her heart was leaping right now. Only two days ago she’d been wishing every call was Trey’s. And now, just maybe, here it was.
“So,” she said, trying to play it cool, “Who was he? What’d he say? What’d he want? Why did he call you?”
Okay, so she blew the cool part.
Rick Cavanaugh chuckled in her ear. “My, don’t you sound eager.”
Cinda took a deep breath. She wasn’t certain yet that she wanted to confide in Papa Rick, or if she even should. After all, Richard had been his son, too. “Eager? No. Just curious is all. Like I said, I can’t imagine why anyone would call you looking for me.”
“It wasn’t exactly your young man who called—”
“I don’t have a young man.” Immediately, Cinda grimaced, rapping her forehead with her knuckles. She’d been too quick to protest.
“Of course you don’t.” Papa Rick’s voice remained friendly and teasing. “You should have one, you know, honey.”
Cinda was pleasantly taken aback. Papa Rick thought she should have a young man? That was enlightening.
“At any rate,” her father-in-law was saying, “our Miss Reeves—oh, you remember our Miss Reeves, don’t you?”
Cinda gave an indelicate snort. He may as well have asked her if she remembered the axe-wielding monster she’d felt certain had resided in her bedroom closet when she’d been a child. “Yes. Tall. Big hair. Humorless. The saint and scourge of social secretaries. The one everyone is afraid of. Well, except Major Clovis, who isn’t afraid of anyone. You mean that Miss Reeves?”
“Yes. Well, our Miss Reeves was at your apartment earlier this evening, making her rounds, as it were, checking on things—”
“She was? Why?”
“The Dragon Lady thought it would be a good thing to do.”
“I see.” So The Real Mrs. Cavanaugh had her spy snooping around in Cinda’s absence. There wasn’t much Cinda could say about it. The penthouse was in the elder Cavanaughs’ names. “So what did she find?”
“A blinking phone message, actually. From two days ago.”
“Two days ago?”
“According to the date and time on your voice mail.”
“Oh, I can’t believe this. I have been so lax about checking it up there. Every time I did, it seemed like there were no messages. And then I got busy here and just stopped thinking about it. I figured by now everyone knew I was in Atlanta.”
“Well, not everyone, I’d say.”
Suddenly it all made sense. Her caller was Southern and last January she’d given Trey Cooper her New York number. Despite her excitement, Cinda wanted to groan. Trey probably believed that she had no intention of returning his call. What must he think? Putting that aside for the moment she concentrated on Papa Rick. “Hey, have I told you lately that I love you?”
“No. I don’t think you have.”
Cinda grinned at the mock hurt in his voice. “I love you.”
“That’s nice to know. I love you, too.”
“Then it’s mutual.” Though warmed by his affection, Cinda worked to get them back on track. “All right, so your Miss Reeves took down this phone message for me and called to tell the Drag—I mean Mother Cavanaugh about it, but got you instead. So, what did you tell her to do?”
“You know it doesn’t work like that. Our Miss Reeves instructed me to call you to see if you know this man. Do you?”
Well, obviously, it wasn’t only in her home where control over the staff had long since been ceded. “I don’t know, Papa Rick. You haven’t told me who called.”
“Well, that makes it hard then, doesn’t it? Let’s see. It was…Oh, for the love of Mike. Where did it get to? Hold on. I seem to have misplaced the note.”
He’d lost the note. Cinda pitched over onto the sofa’s cushions while she listened to sounds of fumbling and searching at the other end. Please, God, let him find the—
“Aha, here it is. Oh, wait a minute. Now I have to find my glasses.”
Cinda vaulted up to a sitting position and shoved her hair back from her too-warm face. “Papa Rick? Look in your shirt pocket. Your reading glasses are always in your shirt pocket.”
Silence. Then… “Well, I’ll be darned. What do you know? There they are. Now let me put them on.”
Cinda put her free hand to her aching forehead. God love Papa Rick, the big old bear of a man. It was a good thing this kind and sweet gentleman had inherited his vast wealth and hadn’t had to earn it because he would have ended up on the street.
“Okay, I think I’m ready now. Do you have something to write with, dear?”
Cinda gasped. She didn’t.
“I’ll give you his number. Oh, wait, how’s my beautiful granddaughter, the light of my life—after you, of course?”
“Thank you. She’s fine. Chubby. Happy. Healthy. She can sit up on her own now.” Cinda fumbled for paper and pen. Until this very moment, there had always been a pen and a notepad of paper on this end table. But not tonight. Cinda scurried around the room, looking. Opening cabinets. Searching through drawers. “I expect she’ll be crawling in a few months, if not heading up her own corporation.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful. I really miss seeing her.”
The wistful note in his voice caused Cinda to slow down. Her features crumpled into a sympathetic mask. “I know you miss her. I swear I’ll bring her up to see you.” She bit the bullet. “Or why don’t y’all come down here?”
“Ruth won’t cross the Mason-Dixon Line. You know that.”
“Then come without her.” As she listened to Papa Rick telling her all the reasons why he couldn’t come without his wife, Cinda rushed into her gourmet kitchen and snatched a paper towel off the roll. She next opened a drawer of the built-in desk and found a permanent laundry marker. “Oh, sure you can. Just tell your pilot where you want to go, and he’ll fly you here.”
“That’s true. I could do that.”
“See?” Using her teeth, and praying she didn’t get the indelible ink all over her face in the process—she could see a dermatologist having to sand that off—she bit down on the pen, spit the lid out, and