Нора Робертс – A Will And A Way (страница 3)

She stared at him a moment, nearly nose to nose with him in heels. Then, because she’d been taught to do so at an early age, she took a deep breath and waited for her temper to ebb. “I don’t want his money.”

“You’ve made your point.” He lifted a brow in the cynical, half-amused way that always infuriated her. “You’re fascinating the relatives by the little show you’re putting on.”

Nothing could have made her find control quicker. She angled her chin at him, hissed once, then subsided. “All right then.” She turned and stood her ground. “I apologize for the interruption. Please finish reading, Mr. Fitzhugh.”

The lawyer gave himself a moment by taking off his glasses and polishing them on a big white handkerchief. He’d known when Jolley had made the will the day would come when he’d be forced to face an enraged family. He’d argued with his client about it, cajoled, reasoned, pointed out the absurdities. Then he’d drawn up the will and closed the loopholes.

“I leave all of this,” he continued, “the money, which is a small thing, the stocks and bonds, which are necessary but boring, the business interests, which are interesting weights around the neck. And my home and all in it, which is everything important to me, the memories made there, to Pandora and Michael because they understood and cared. I leave this to them, though it may annoy them, because there is no one else in my family I can leave what is important to me. What was mine is Pandora and Michael’s now, because I know they’ll keep me alive. I ask only one thing of each of them in return.”

Michael’s grip relaxed, and he nearly smiled again. “Here comes the kicker,” he murmured.

“Beginning no more than a week after the reading of this document, Pandora and Michael will move into my home in the Catskills, known as Jolley’s Folley. They will live there together for a period of six months, neither one spending more than two nights in succession under another roof. After this six-month period, the estate reverts to them, entirely and without encumbrance, share and share alike.

“If one does not agree with this provision, or breaks the terms of this provision within the six-month period, the estate, in its entirety will be given over to all my surviving heirs and the Institute for the Study of Carnivorous Plants in joint shares.

“You have my blessing, children. Don’t let an old, dead man down.”

For a full thirty seconds there was silence. Taking advantage of it, Fitzhugh began straightening his papers.

“The old bastard,” Michael murmured. Pandora would’ve taken offense if she hadn’t agreed so completely. Because he judged the temperature in the room to be on the rise, Michael pulled Pandora out, down the hall and into one of the funny little parlors that could be found throughout the house. Just before he closed the door, the first explosion in the library erupted.

Pandora drew out a fresh tissue, sneezed into it, then plopped down on the arm of a chair. She was too flabbergasted and worn-out to be amused. “Well, what now?”

Michael reached for a cigarette before he remembered he’d quit. “Now we have to make a couple of decisions.”

Pandora gave him one of the long lingering stares she’d learned made most men stutter. Michael merely sat across from her and stared back. “I meant what I said. I don’t want his money. By the time it’s divided up and the taxes dealt with, it’s close to fifty million apiece. Fifty million,” she repeated, rolling her eyes. “It’s ridiculous.”

“Jolley always thought so,” Michael said, and watched the grief come and go in her eyes.

“He only had it to play with. The trouble was, every time he played, he made more.” Unable to sit, Pandora paced to the window. “Michael, I’d suffocate with that much money.”

“Cash isn’t as heavy as you think.”

With something close to a sneer, she turned and sat on the window ledge. “You don’t object to fifty million or so after taxes I take it.”

He’d have loved to have wiped that look off her face. “I haven’t your fine disregard for money, Pandora, probably because I was raised with the illusion of it rather than the reality.”

She shrugged, knowing his parents existed, and always had, mainly on credit and connections. “So, take it all then.”

Michael picked up a little blue glass egg and tossed it from palm to palm. It was cool and smooth and worth several thousand. “That’s not what Jolley wanted.”

With a sniff, she snatched the egg from his hand. “He wanted us to get married and live happily ever after. I’d like to humor him….” She tossed the egg back again. “But I’m not that much of a martyr. Besides, aren’t you engaged to some little blond dancer?”

He set the egg down before he could heave it at her. “For someone who turns their pampered nose up at television, you don’t have the same intellectual snobbery about gossip rags.”

“I adore gossip,” Pandora said with such magnificent exaggeration Michael laughed.

“All right, Pandora, let’s put down the swords a minute.” He tucked his thumbs in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. Maybe they could, if they concentrated, talk civilly with each other for a few minutes. “I’m not engaged to anyone, but marriage wasn’t a term of the will in any case. All we have to do is live together for six months under the same roof.”

As she studied him a sense of disappointment ran through her. Perhaps they’d never gotten along, but she’d respected him if for nothing more than what she’d seen as his pure affection for Uncle Jolley. “So, you really want the money?”

He took two furious steps forward before he caught himself. Pandora never flinched. “Think whatever you like.” He said it softly, as though it didn’t matter. Oddly enough, it made her shudder. “You don’t want the money, fine. Put that aside a moment. Are you going to stand by and watch this house go to the clan out there or a bunch of scientists studying Venus’s flytraps? Jolley loved this place and everything in it. I always thought you did, too.”

“I do.” The others would sell it, she admitted. There wasn’t one person in the library who wouldn’t put the house on the market and run with the cash. It would be lost to her. All the foolish, ostentatious rooms, the ridiculous archways. Jolley might be gone, but he’d left the house like a dangling carrot. And he still held the stick.

“He’s trying to run our lives still.”

Michael lifted a brow. “Surprised?”

With a half laugh, Pandora glanced over. “No.”

Slowly she walked around the room while the sun shot through the diamond panes of glass and lit her hair. Michael watched her with a sense of detached admiration. She’d look magnificent on the screen. He’d always thought so. Her coloring, her posture. Her arrogance. The five or ten pounds the camera would add couldn’t hurt that too angular, beanpole body, either. And the fire-engine-red hair would make a statement on the screen while it was simply outrageous in reality. He’d often wondered why she didn’t do something to tone it down.

At the moment he wasn’t interested in any of that—just in what was in her brain. He didn’t give a damn about the money, but he wasn’t going to sit idly by and watch everything Jolley had had and built go to the vultures. If he had to play rough with Pandora, he would. He might even enjoy it.

Millions. Pandora cringed at the outrageousness of it. That much money could be nothing but a headache, she was certain. Stocks, bonds, accountants, trusts, tax shelters. She preferred a simpler kind of living. Though no one would call her apartment in Manhattan primitive.

She’d never had to worry about money and that was just the way she liked it. Above or below a certain income level, there were nothing but worries. But if you found a nice, comfortable plateau, you could just cruise. She’d nearly found it.

It was true enough that a share of this would help her tremendously professionally. With a buffer sturdy enough, she could have the artistic freedom she wanted and continue the life-style that now caused a bit of a strain on her bank account. Her work was artistic and critically acclaimed but reviews didn’t pay the rent. Outside of Manhattan, her work was usually considered too unconventional. The fact that she often had to create more mainstream designs to keep her head above water grated constantly. With fifty or sixty thousand to back her, she could…

Furious with herself, she blocked it off. She was thinking like Michael, she decided. She’d rather die. He’d sold out, turned whatever talent he had to the main chance, just as he was ready to turn these circumstances to his own financial advantage. She would think of other areas. She would think first of Jolley.

As she saw it, the entire scheme was a maze of problems. How like her uncle. Now, like a chess match, she’d have to consider her moves.

She’d never lived with a man. Purposely. Pandora liked running by her own clock. It wasn’t so much that she minded sharing things, she minded sharing space. If she agreed, that would be the first concession.

Then there was the fact that Michael was attractive, attractive enough to be unsettling if he hadn’t been so annoying. Annoying and easily annoyed, she recalled with a flash of amusement. She knew what buttons to push. Hadn’t she always prided herself on the fact that she could handle him? It wasn’t always easy; he was too sharp. But that made their altercations interesting. Still, they’d never been together for more than a week at a time.