His pace faltered. “For thirty kids? You’re joking.”
“No. If you’re paying, then I’m giving myself a raise and hiring someone else to help.” This wasn’t actually about the money. She just wanted a number big enough to scare him off. “Besides, this way we can double enrollment.”
He placed a hand on her arm. “Hey, this isn’t a golden ticket, you know.”
“Are you sure? Because you sure made it sound like it was.”
Despite her resolve, she could hardly keep a quiver from her voice. It might be a cliché, but she felt like she was playing with fire here. As much as she wanted to believe it was about protecting her grandmother, or even about the money, she worried that it was something more—that she was looking for his buttons to push just because it had always been so much fun to push them.
In all those years they’d lived under the same roof—Dalton the stoically perfect, obnoxious rich kid, Laney the trashy poor girl—she’d never actually gotten a rise out of him. But, dear Lord, trying to had been her favorite pastime. Why hadn’t she grown out of it?
She looked down at his hand on her arm and then back up at him. She tried to forget how much fun it was to needle him, to remember the part she had to play. The Cain family had typecast her a long time ago, just as much as she had typecast them.
“Look, you need something from me, and it’s not a small thing either. I’m not doing this to be greedy. I’m just trying to protect my grandmother.” Well, that at least was true. “Letting you see her is going to upset her. It’ll be hard, and sometimes it takes her weeks to recover from a single bad day.”
She expected some kind of reaction from him there. Most people—nearly everyone—didn’t like to talk about her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s. When the topic couldn’t be avoided, usually there was a lot of awkward hemming and hawing. But Dalton just looked at her.
So she continued. “Besides, it’s not like the Cains can’t spare the money. Cain Enterprises is worth billions. You could probably trim this much from the corporate-office floral budget without anyone blinking an eye.”
“We don’t actually have a corporate floral budget.”
“Don’t pretend you can’t afford it.” By now they’d reached the doors to the cafeteria. She could hear the kids on the other side. The Tisdale kids were finishing up their afterschool snacks. The kids who were bused in from Houston Independent School District had arrived. She could hear the eager gurgle of noise bubbling out through the door. This was her real life, she reminded herself. This was where she belonged. Pushing Dalton’s buttons might be fun, but her obligations lay beyond this door with the children she taught.
“Do we have a deal?”
“We do.”
“A hundred thousand dollars for the chance to speak with my grandmother?”
Chagrin flickered across his face, and she could have sworn his jaw was spasming. “Yes.”
“Okay, then.” She turned her back on him and set off through the cafeteria doors, but he stopped her before she could disappear into her inner sanctum.
“When will you be done here? I’ll send a driver to pick you up, and we can visit your grandmother tonight.”
She let out a scoff of derision before she realized he was serious. “Um… no. Not a chance.”
He gave her a flat look. “You just agreed.”
“Yes. But I didn’t just agree to give away the milk for free.” Then she waved her hand dismissively so he wouldn’t think—okay, wouldn’t know—that she had sex on the brain. “I agreed to help you after you’ve paid me that ridiculous amount of money. Not before. You want access to my grandmother, you pay up.”
“You want me to just give you a hundred thousand dollars? It’s not that simple.”
“Of course I don’t want the money. Don’t just give it to me.” She fluttered her hand around. “Do all that stuff we agreed to.”
“All that stuff we agreed to? Like I should just run off and have my lawyers set up a trust for the charity you work for and drop a hundred thousand dollars into it.”
“Exactly.” Again, she turned to leave, trusting that this was where he’d come to his senses and walk away. Again, he stopped her.
“Come on, Laney. I don’t have that kind of time. I need answers now.”
“And I’m sure that with the full power of Cain Enterprises behind you, you’ll make it happen quickly.”
He narrowed his gaze, but he didn’t contradict her. Just when she was sure he was going to tell her to forget it, he nodded.
It was bizarre, how easily she’d gotten everything she’d asked for. In the end, despite the rumble of kid voices calling to her from the cafeteria, she had one last question she couldn’t let go of.
“Tell me something, Dalton. Why go to all this trouble? I know you’ve always been your father’s go-to guy, but this is crazy. Why are you still jumping through so many hoops for him?”
“Because he still controls Cain Enterprises. If I don’t find this missing heiress, I’m going to lose it all.”
Four
Less than twenty-four hours later, Laney held a nearly half-inch-thick stack of papers in her hand. She ran her thumb over the edges and watched the pages flutter.
“So he really did it?” she asked. “He did everything he said he would?”
Her next-door neighbor Brandon took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes. As far as I can tell. Though, I’m no expert, mind you.”
Brandon owned the duplex where she lived. The cottage, in a funky little college neighborhood, was charming, cozy and perfect for her minimalist life, since his half was bigger than hers. She’d always suspected he was gay beneath his button-down lawyer exterior, but he’d never shared so much as a millimeter of his private life with her. She didn’t mind, though, since it was his prerogative. Besides, he was the kind of neighbor one could trust with spare keys, and he’d come over to kill bugs for her on more than one occasion—even big, nasty spiders. And he seemed totally willing to offer legal advice in exchange for wine, which in her mind put him up for some sort of handiest-neighbor-of-all-time award.
Laney tossed the stack of papers onto her coffee table and reached for her glass of wine. “You’re a lawyer.”
“An intellectual-property lawyer.” Brandon leaned forward to pour more wine into his own glass.
“That’s still two years of school and a bar exam closer to being an expert than I am.”
“Do I think he intends to donate the money to Woodland Theater? Yes, I do.”
“Oh.” Laney tried to drown the sick feeling in her belly with a gulp of wine.
She hadn’t really believed he would do it. She hadn’t actually intended to take his money. She’d thought if she made it difficult enough for him to see Gran that he’d back off and leave them all in peace. She should have known better. Cains never backed down from a fight. They were in it until the end. She should have remembered that.
She groaned and dropped her chin into her palm. “I’m in over my head. I should have known better than to try to go up against a Cain.” She looked up at Brandon. “I’m going to get crushed, aren’t I?”
“You make it sound like you’re facing Dalton on the field of battle.”
“Well, in my experience, any dealings with the Cains are like war.” Brandon gave a snort. “You wouldn’t agree?”
Brandon