“I’m going to have a problem with that girl,” Brianna said, answering his question indirectly. “Ava’s never done that before, although that’s not saying much since she’s only three,” she was quick to add. Brianna shook her head, at a loss how to effectively handle this. “Before I had kids, I used to think I had all the answers. Now even my questions have questions. It seems like every day there’s something new to deal with,” she said with a sigh.
“What does her dad say?” Connor asked.
The question had come out automatically and the moment he said it, he found himself regretting it. He hadn’t meant to get so personal.
Brianna shrugged as she led the way to her office. “Nothing as far as I know.”
Connor read between the lines. Then, to make sure, he glanced at her left hand. Still no wedding ring. She hadn’t forgotten it, she didn’t have one, he thought. “You’re doing this on your own?”
She thought that was obvious. “Can’t you tell?” she asked ruefully.
His tone was serious as he answered the question. “Not really.”
That surprised her. She’d gotten the impression that the man was on top of things. “You’re kidding.” Reassessing the situation, she decided that Connor Fortunado was just being polite.
He looked at her and said in all seriousness, “No. I just see a couple of happy, spirited kids. Nothing to indicate that there’s no dad in the picture.”
“Spirited,” Brianna repeated, amused at the private investigator’s choice of words. “Oh, those two are spirited all right. They’re spirited from sunup to sundown and longer. One thing those two don’t run out of is spirit. Sometimes I really wish they had less of it.”
But he had a feeling he knew better. “No, you don’t,” Connor said.
His comment surprised her. “Oh? Why’s that?”
Connor smiled at her, stepping back so that she entered her office first. It was the kind of smile that told her he wasn’t fooled by what she’d just stated.
“Because spirited kids become the people who turn their dreams into reality.”
He said it with such certainty, she found herself really wanting to believe him.
Chapter Seven
Brianna’s eyes met his and she smiled gratefully at the private investigator. “I think I really needed to hear that,” she told Connor. “That was a very nice thing for you to say.” She gave him a way out. “Even if you didn’t mean it.”
“Oh, but I did,” he said. “I was pretty much a hellion when I was a kid. You can ask any of my sisters—they’ll tell you,” he added as verification. “Even so, things turned out pretty well for me. I got to follow my passion.”
His disarming smile seemed to burrow right into her. Brianna blinked, rousing herself.
“You have sisters?” she asked Connor, trying to envision the tall, handsome man before her as a rebellious little boy. There was a glint in his eye, but she still couldn’t see him that way.
“That I do,” he assured her. There was no missing the fond note in his voice.
“How many?” she wanted to know. She couldn’t deny that the idea of being part of a large family had always intrigued her. It was something that she had always wished for and never had.
“Three,” he answered. Seeing that he had caught her interest and wanting to cultivate that interest so that she felt more at ease with him and more inclined to be forthcoming, he added, “I’ve got two brothers, as well.”
Having grown up alone, she could hardly visualize being part of such a large family. She found herself envying him. “Wow, that is a full house.”
He laughed softly. “I’m sure my mother would agree with you.” Since Brianna seemed so interested in his family dynamics, he felt it only fair to return the favor. “How many siblings do you have?”
Her smile struck him as sad when she answered his question. “None.”
“Oh.” There was a moment of awkwardness because of the sad tone he’d detected in her voice, but then he found a way to turn the situation around. “That means you got to be the center of your parents’ attention.”
Her sad smile seemed to intensify. “You have a nice way of saying things,” she told him, “but no, that wasn’t the case.” Clearing her throat, Brianna changed the subject. “I went through my files after you left and found most of my correspondence with that woman you were asking about yesterday.”
“Charlotte,” Connor said, supplying his step-aunt’s name.
“Charlotte,” Brianna repeated, confirming that was who she’d meant. “Although she did sign all her email Charlene Pickett,” she reminded him, “so don’t let that confuse you.” Brianna paused for a second, debating whether she should ask, then decided he could always just beg off giving her an honest answer. He’d been vague yesterday. “Why the need for different names?” she wanted to know. “Is she wanted by the law or something like that?”
“She should be.” The answer came out without any thought and for now, it was all he allowed himself to say on the subject. Once he found a way to definitely prove that Charlotte was behind all the things that had been going on, he was confident that Charlotte Prendergast Robinson—or whatever she chose to call herself—was going to be languishing in a prison cell for a very long, long time.
When he didn’t say anything further, Brianna continued with what she had been saying to him. “Well, I haven’t finished going through everything—sometimes my filing system gets away from me,” she confessed, embarrassed. “There might be a couple more names that she wanted me to look into, but I did find most of them,” she told Connor.
Brianna placed a bunch of folders on the desk in front of him.
Picking them up, Connor quickly reviewed the names that were written on the side of each of the folders. Some were familiar, many weren’t. “You found these people for her?” This would make finding these people easier for him.
The smile on her face was a bit rueful. “Again, I did manage to track down most of them.” She paused, deciding to be more specific in her answer. “Eleven of these people, to be exact. I told her I’d get back to her when I found where the others were.” She shrugged, hating that the situation had gotten away from her. She was accustomed to being more in control than this. “But since she didn’t get back to me with at least another partial payment, I was forced to just let the matter drop.”
“But you did manage to locate eleven of these people?” he asked, wanting to be clear.
“I recall a twelfth person,” she said now, remembering another name. “But that last one isn’t in these files. I checked,” she told him. “It has to be somewhere in the rest of the folders.”
Connor looked down at the folders she had handed him, then raised his eyes to hers. “And these aren’t in your computer?” he questioned incredulously.
She’d been on the receiving end of that look more than once. She admitted that in this day and age, it was hard for people to understand why she’d choose to keep handwritten notes instead of storing everything on a laptop or a tablet.
“I prefer to hold paper in my hand,” she said. Then, not giving him an opportunity to comment, she quickly said, “I know, I know, you probably think I’m incredibly old-fashioned. Well, you’re right,” she confessed. There was no point in pretending otherwise. “I am.”
“Actually, I wasn’t thinking that at all,” Connor replied. “What I was thinking was that I kind of thought that was charming.”
Charming. The word replayed itself in her head. She hadn’t seen that coming.
“Well, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard it referred to as that,” Brianna admitted. She rather liked hearing him say that. “Most people think it means that I’m computer illiterate, which I’m not,” she assured him quickly. “I just prefer to work this way.”
“And you’re perfectly entitled to your choices,” he re
sponded. “They obviously work for you.”
Brianna wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of compliments and she had absolutely no practice in how to respond. At a loss, she cleared her throat again.
“Yes, well, why don’t you read what I came up with,” she suggested, nodding at the folders he was still holding, “and I’ll try to see if I can find the missing file—or files.”
She really couldn’t remember at this point just how many more names there were.
“Okay.” Connor looked around the exceptionally small room. His parents’ house had closets that were larger than this room she was apparently using as her office. “Where can I sit?” he wanted to know. From what he could see—and everything was out in plain sight—she just had the one desk, a pressed wood affair that looked as if she had put it together herself. There was a chair up against it that didn’t match the desk.
“You can take the desk,” Brianna told him. “I don’t need to use it to go through the papers in my filing cabinet.”
Connor looked around again, but he still didn’t see anything that fit that description.
A monk’s cell probably had more furnishings than this room, he thought.
“I don’t see a file cabinet,” he told her. “Is it in another room?”
“Not file cabinet,” Brianna corrected. “Filing cabinet. It’s what I call these,” she said, gesturing toward the plastic drawers that she had piled on top of each other.
There were three see-through drawers all told, the type made to hold anything from toys to towels. But apparently in this particular case, they held the various notes and files that comprised her research projects.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her looking at him. He proceeded delicately. “You have a unique filing system,” he finally commented.
At least he wasn’t being critical, Brianna thought, relieved. “It works for me.”
He didn’t care how she had gone about doing it; he just cared about the results she had come up with. “That’s all that counts, isn’t it?”
Brianna studied the man in her office. Was he just trying to make her feel good, or was there a reason he was saying all these nice things to her, she wondered.
Was he trying to get her to lower her guard? Did that mean that there was some sort of an ulterior motive behind what he was saying?
What kind of an ulterior motive?
What happened to you? You used to trust people, Brianna upbraided herself.
But that had been a lifetime ago, before Jonny had walked out of her life. She’d always had a penchant for picking up strays, Jonny included. And for trying to fix things, from animals to people. But when Jonny had abruptly left, something had broken inside of her and she’d found herself second-guessing everything that happened, everything that she felt, from there on in.
Connor picked up on her mood shift. She’d grown quiet.
“Is something wrong?” he asked her, wondering if he’d said anything to set her down this path.
Brianna blinked, banishing the fog that had temporarily descended on her brain.
“What? No, no,” she said with feeling, as if to deny anything he might be thinking, whatever it might be. “I was just trying to remember where I filed that missing folder or folders.”
It was a lie, but it was better than going into a long explanation about her gnawing uncertainty. Besides, the man wouldn’t want to hear about that. He just wanted to review her findings and glean whatever it was he was trying to find out. She knew he wasn’t telling her everything. But as long as it didn’t interfere with her work, that was his right.
She cleared her throat again, not realizing that he was beginning to think of that as her “tell.”
“Did you mean what you said yesterday?” she asked Connor.
He had sat down at the desk and had just begun to look through the first folder. Looking her way, he said, “Refresh my memory. What did I say?”
She knew it. He was going to plead amnesia. “About paying me the three thousand dollars that Charlene Pickett was supposed to pay for the information I sent her.”
He remembered that quite well. “Yes, but I also said that payment was contingent on you helping me locate Charlotte.”
Brianna nodded, recalling the whole exchange. “Yes, you did say that,” she agreed. “I was just asking to see if you remembered.”
Connor was not in the habit of paying off any of Charlotte Robinson’s debts. Until it had come to light that Gerald Robinson was his father’s half brother, he hadn’t even given the woman so much as a second thought because he hadn’t known about her or her bizarre behavior, nor about her connection to his own family.
But it was clear that Charlotte had obviously stiffed Brianna and had no intention of making good on her promise to pay. Beyond the fact that it was the wrong thing to do, this mother of two was clearly in need of every dime that had been promised to her for services rendered. He felt somewhat responsible that she had trusted Charlotte even though he’d had nothing to do with that.
That fact notwithstanding, Connor still felt he should cover the outstanding debt.
“Tell you what,” Connor proposed. “Since you’re obviously an honorable woman of her word, why don’t I pay you the money for the work ahead of time?”
Pride reared its head and had her looking at him warily. “Why would you do that?”
Turning in the chair to face her, he spread his hands wide. “I’m just paying up front for services rendered—and to be rendered.”
That was all well and good, Brianna thought. However, there was something else to consider here.
“But what if I can’t find her?” she challenged.
She needed the money—she had yet to get ahead of all of her bills and possibly never would—but she had her pride. She wasn’t a charity case and didn’t want Fortunado to treat her as one.
“I have a feeling that you will,” he told her easily. “But even if it turns out that we can’t locate Charlotte because she’s hidden herself in some cave, that’s no reason why you shouldn’t be paid for your efforts. It’s only fair,” he stressed.
Still, the situation disturbed her. Temptation warred with her sense of integrity. “I don’t want to take advantage of you,” she protested.
This woman had to be one in a million, Connor thought with admiration. He knew of a lot of people who would have jumped at the chance to take him up on his offer. For that matter, he knew of people who would be more than willing to take advantage of the situation if they could find a way to get away with it.
And here she was, definitely hurting for money—the woman was working three jobs for heaven sakes—and she was definitely not jumping at the chance to take advantage of his offer. She was even trying to talk him out of it. Who did that?
“You’re not taking advantage of me if I’m the one trying to get you to accept the money,” he pointed out.
Making up his mind, Connor pushed aside the folder he was reading and took out his checkbook. The desk space was limited and he needed a flat space in order to be able to write out the check.
“Do I make this out to you, or do you have a company name you’d rather I use?” he asked her, looking at her over his shoulder.
He was really going to do it, Brianna thought, amazed. He was just going to hand her the three thousand dollars whether or not she found the woman he was looking for. She knew she should try to talk him out of it, to tell him that she would wait until her part in this was done. But the truth of it was she really didn’t have that luxury. She had children and bills and she could definitely use the three thousand dollars he was offering to pay her.
Suspicions were born in the wake of her amazement. There had to be something more, she thought. Didn’t there? “And all you want me to do for this money is to help you locate this woman?” she asked.
He di
dn’t answer her directly. “Trust me, there’s no ‘all’ about it. If there was, I would have already done it myself.” Charlotte had proven to be as slippery as the proverbial greased pig. “Like I said, you will definitely be earning your money.”
She tended to believe him despite her newly acquired suspicious nature. “How long have you been looking for her?” she wanted to know, curious.
“A few weeks.” Up until that point, he’d still been piecing things together. The link between the three attacks aimed at the family hadn’t come to light before then, nor had the link blatantly pointing toward Charlotte.
“Why are you looking for her?” Brianna asked him, pinning him with a look.
She had a very compelling way about her, not to mention eyes that could induce any man to suddenly feel as if he wanted to make a full confession of any secret he might be harboring from the world.
But the fewer people who knew what was going on—until he could safely prove it—the better.
So Connor told her, “For now that’s my business.”
He waited for her to attempt to coax the information out of him. All the women he’d ever known were as curious as cats. However, she surprised him.
“I can respect that,” she said quietly.
He waited for the other shoe to drop and for her to change her mind.
Neither happened.
“Okay, then,” he said, regrouping. “You didn’t answer my question. Shall I make this out to you, or to your company?”
“To the company,” she told him.
“The company it is,” Connor replied. With smooth, even strokes, he wrote out the check to the business he’d originally looked up, and then handed it to her.
Brianna glanced at the check out of habit, even though something told her it would be for the correct amount.
It was.
What she noticed more than the correct amount was the fluid letters that were on the check. “You have nice handwriting,” she commented.
“That was my mother’s doing,” he admitted, giving credit where it was due. “She’s not a strict woman, but there are certain things she always insisted on. One of those things was that we all had handwriting that was not just legible, but uniform. She maintained that people could tell a lot about a person by their handwriting and she wanted all of us to be held in high regard by everyone we dealt with.”
Texan Seeks Fortune Page 7