She didn’t do idle well.
She had everything down pat in her mind by the time Whit brought them to her town house.
Because of the time of day and the fact that most people were at work, Whit had no difficulty finding parking. He eased his sports car into a space directly in front of her town house. Familiar with the way Elizabeth operated, he felt confident that they would be in and out of her home in a very short amount of time.
“You can wait in the car if you like,” she told him as she got out. “I won’t be long.”
He had no intention of remaining outside. Protecting her meant just that to him—protecting her. And in order to do that, he had to be around her.
“If it’s all the same to you,” he told her, locking his car, “I’ll just come inside.”
“Don’t trust me?” she asked, thinking that was why he wanted to come with her. Humor curved her mouth. “I promise not to try to escape.”
He looked at her as he waited for her to unlock her front door. He noticed the absence of a security system. He was going to have to look into that for her.
“Why would you want to escape? I’m not taking you to Siberia,” he quipped.
Elizabeth closed the door behind him. “I just thought you might think—never mind,” she said, waving away her explanation. As she replayed it in her head, it sounded too involved and too much like an excuse. She didn’t want to get into it.
She wasn’t happy about having to go into hiding—because, after all, that’s what it really was—but if she had to, then she had to. Whit was the new boss now that his father was dead and as such, she knew that she now had to take her orders from him. This, apparently, was just another order.
“I just thought I could help you pack,” he told her. “I’m really quite good at it,” he added.
“I’m sure you are,” she answered. “But there’s no need,” she told him crisply. “I’m already packed.” She saw the quizzical look he gave her. “I keep a go bag in my closet, packed and ready in case your father wants—wanted,” she amended with a frown, “to send me on a trip.
“I am still having the worst time thinking of your father in the past tense,” she confessed. Reginald Adair had been so dynamic, so full of life, that thinking of him as deceased—even though she had attended the funeral—was a very difficult adjustment for her.
“Me, too,” Whit admitted after a beat.
He paused now to look around the lower level of her town house. Her furnishings appeared to be sparse, as if she didn’t spend all that much time here. What there was appeared to be incredibly neat.
It looked more like a model home than a place where someone actually lived.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, noting the look on his face.
“Nothing,” he answered, then, because she didn’t appear satisfied, he amended, “It’s just that I kind of expected that you were secretly a messy person—you know, to balance out all that super efficiency that you’re always demonstrating at work.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” she told him, walking into her bedroom. She raised her voice so he could hear her where he was standing. “I’m just as boring in private as I am on the job.”
“I wouldn’t call it boring,” he told her.
He meant that as a general compliment, but his words managed to arouse a flash of a memory from their one night together at the hotel. Boring was the last word he would have ever used to describe Elizabeth. She was anything but that.
“Your organizational abilities are a rare gift, Elizabeth,” he told her. “My father would have been lost without you.”
“Your father,” she said, emerging from her bedroom pulling a small suitcase on wheels behind her, “would have managed just fine without me. He was that kind of a person.”
“He might have managed—here, let me,” Whit offered, putting his hand right next to hers on the suitcase’s handle, “but it definitely wouldn’t have been easy,” he assured her.
He knew she was being modest, but it almost sounded like a put-down to him. He sincerely doubted that she was actually aware of her true worth in the scheme of things.
But he was.
“I can handle this,” Elizabeth told him, her hand still holding on to the suitcase.
“I’m sure you can,” Whit agreed, keeping his hand exactly where it was, “but I need to feel chivalrous right now, so I’d consider it a favor if you’d allow me to take your suitcase to my car.”
After a second, Elizabeth laughed softly. She pulled back her hand, raising it as if surrendering to his request.
“If you put it that way,” she told him, “I really can’t say no.”
Whit smiled. “I know.”
His sports car had only a miniscule trunk, so Whit was forced to place her suitcase in the very limited space available behind his front seat.
Elizabeth got back into the car and buckled up. She waited until Whit started the car again before asking him the question that had been weighing rather heavily on her mind.
“Who else is going to be there at the ranch?”
“Landry and Carson. Landry still lives there, but my brother is staying at the ranch only until he can find a place of his own,” Whit explained. “For the last few years, he’s been in the Marines, so adjusting to civilian life is a little tricky for him after having been deployed to the Middle East. He wants to make the adjustment before he decides where he’s going to live and more or less what he wants to do with the rest of his life.”
Elizabeth could only imagine how his brother had to feel. Here he was, newly discharged from the Marines, only to come home and have his father murdered. Violence could slip into the most seemingly tranquil areas of people’s lives, she thought. The AdAir Corp building was the last place she would have expected a murder to take place.
“Is that everyone?” she wanted to know. She had a feeling that it wasn’t.
“Well, there’s the cook and the housekeeper...” Whit paused before added, “And there’s my mother.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Elizabeth visibly stiffen. He was quick to try to assuage her reaction. “Mother lives in her own quarters at the ranch. They’re totally separate from the rest of the house,” he assured her. “She wanted it that way. When Landry was away at school and Carson was in the Marines, at times, besides the servants, there were just my parents in that big house and they could go for days without their paths crossing if they were having one of their epic disagreements.”
Listening, Elizabeth found that profoundly sad. Why bother staying married if they wanted to spend all their time apart?
But she kept her thoughts on the matter to herself. It wasn’t any of her business and she was certain that Whit wouldn’t have welcomed any questions or comments on his parents’ rather isolated lifestyle. She had no doubt that it probably bothered him a great deal when he thought about it.
Still, despite her separate quarters, the fact that Whit’s mother lived on the ranch presented her with an immediate dilemma. The ranch might have belonged to the family, but Elizabeth was certain that Patsy Adair considered the house to be hers.
Staying there for any amount of time—even a short amount of time—placed her in a very awkward position, Elizabeth thought.
“Your mother’s definitely not going to be happy about my staying at the ranch—unless you plan to stash me in some of the closets, slipping my meals under the door,” she added wryly, coming up with the only scenario that she felt would appeal somewhat to Mrs. Adair.
“No closet,” Whit assured her with a laugh. “And my mother will be just fine with your staying at the ranch. First of all, the place is huge and you could both go for days without accidentally running into one another—”
“I’d really rather not stay there under those kinds of circumstances,” she told Whit, bracing
herself for an argument.
She didn’t believe in being difficult, but the circumstances as they were outlined were not acceptable to her. She didn’t do well in that sort of a scenario—one in which she was regarded with disdain. The reason for that disdain was transparent. Patsy Adair felt that her husband and his executive assistant had been lovers. And Elizabeth knew that the more she might try to deny the very thought of that kind of a relationship between her and the now deceased president of AdAir Corp, the guiltier she would undoubtedly look.
So her best recourse was silence—as frustrating as that might be.
“Luckily for you, you won’t have to,” Whit told her. “Because as it happens, my mother loves company above all else.” The right kind of company, he added silently. In his mother’s case, that meant celebrities and captains of industry, as well as a few high-ranking political officials. But he saw no point in dwelling on that right now. “She might have had a few sharp words to say at the reading of the will, but don’t forget, she was still trying to deal with all these unexpected twists and turns—the biggest of which was my father’s murder.”
Despite her dramatics, Patsy Adair did not strike Elizabeth as a genuinely grieving widow, only a woman playacting the part of a supposedly grieving widow, she thought.
She didn’t find the woman all that convincing.
“I understand all that,” Elizabeth told him quietly. “But to be very blunt about it—” something she was admittedly less than happy to be, especially in this case “—I don’t think your mother really likes me. Having me staying indefinitely—” she emphasized the word “—at her house—”
“The family house,” he corrected.
“You and your siblings might think of it that way,” Elizabeth granted, “but I’m willing to bet that your mother views the ranch as her own personal domain. Especially now that your father is gone.”
He couldn’t bring himself to argue the point with Elizabeth. With everything as charged as it was right now, he sincerely doubted that he could change her mind at the moment.
In truth, he had never regarded the woman who was his mother as the warm, motherly type, not even when he’d been a little boy.
For the most part, Patsy Adair was the beautiful stranger who made sporadic guest appearances in his life and the lives of his brother and sister. They had never had a warm, loving relationship—or any sort of real relationship to speak of—with the woman. Her DNA ran through his blood, but she was a mother in name only and only when it suited her to be, such as when a photo op presented itself.
But be that as it may, that didn’t change the fact that the house belonged to all of them according to the terms of the will, which meant, bottom line, that he could bring anyone he wanted to the ranch.
And he wanted to bring Elizabeth.
That was all there was to it. End of argument, he thought.
Out loud he told Elizabeth, “It’ll be all right,” and left it at that, because they both knew that he had always been as good as his word.
But there was always a first time for everything, Elizabeth couldn’t help thinking. And this time around just might be that time.
Chapter 9
When he and Elizabeth arrived at Adair Acres a little while later, Whit drove his car up the long driveway right to the front door of the twelve-thousand-square-foot Spanish-style house.
Getting out on his side, he noticed that Elizabeth remained where she was, making no effort to get out. He thought it was rather odd, but decided that perhaps she was waiting for him to open her door. It struck him as being completely out of character for the Elizabeth he knew, but he played along and came around to her side to hold the door open for her.
Elizabeth still didn’t move. Instead, she continued sitting in her seat, buckled up and looking at the sprawling hacienda.
Rather than question her about her behavior, Whit decided to inject a little humor into the situation. It was a weapon that he seldom used but felt she might respond to.
“I could have your meals brought out here if you like, but I don’t think you’re going to enjoy sleeping in the car, especially since I’d be forced to sleep in it, too. Not much space for both of us to spend a prolonged amount of time in.”
Elizabeth looked at him, one eyebrow raised in a silent request for an explanation. “Why would you have to stay in the car with me?”
“I said I’d look out for you, and I can’t do that from the house if you’re out here. I’d have to stay out here, too,” Whit concluded. He pretended to regard the seat behind the steering wheel. “Really looks pretty uncomfortable from where I’m standing.”
He heard her sigh. The next moment, Elizabeth was shifting to one side and climbing out of the front passenger seat.
Her expression looked resigned as well as grim. Was it because she wasn’t in control of things or was there another reason for her less-than-thrilled look, he couldn’t help wondering.
“Relax,” he urged. “You’re acting as if you’re walking into the dentist’s office.”
“No, I’m not,” she replied matter-of-factly. “My dentist likes me.”
He didn’t get a chance to comment on her reply or to assure her that everyone here at the ranch liked her as well, because just then the front door flew open and Landry came hurrying out.
Her blue eyes bright with curiosity, Landry didn’t bother with acknowledgments but went straight to the question she’d been dying to ask for the past couple of hours.
“Is it true?” she asked eagerly, looking from her brother to the woman he’d brought with him.
“Say hello to the nice houseguest, Landry,” Whit prompted his sister, taking Elizabeth’s suitcase from the backseat. It took a little angling before he could finally get it out.
Rather than do as her brother said, Landry threw her arms around Elizabeth and hugged the other woman hard. “You’re all right!” she cried, delighted to verify that part of the information for herself.
Elizabeth automatically stiffened in response to the enthusiastic hug. With effort, she forced herself to do as Whit had counseled and relaxed. Displays of affection—both giving them and being on the receiving end—had always been difficult for her because it meant allowing her guard to go down, and that led to all sorts of complications she didn’t want to entertain. The only one she had ever let her guard down with was Whit—and look where that had gotten her: rebuffed, as well as pregnant.
But the young woman who had thrown her arms around her was obviously sweet and genuine. After a beat, Elizabeth allowed herself to hug Landry back.
Three years younger than her late father’s executive assistant, Landry was also three inches taller than Elizabeth, not to mention that she came on like gangbusters.
Whit shook his head. His little sister, he knew, could be rather overwhelming at times and she had no idea that she was.
“Let her breathe, Landry. You’ve got Elizabeth almost in a death grip and you’re damn near cutting off her air supply.”
Whit’s words suddenly penetrated her consciousness and Landry released her brother’s unexpected houseguest. “Oh, I’m sorry. So sorry,” she repeated, dropping her hands to her sides as she stepped back, creating a little space between herself and Elizabeth. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Elizabeth smiled at the other young woman. Landry made her think of a young colt, all legs and skittish enthusiasm, trying to run off in three directions at once. “You didn’t,” she told the youngest of Reginald’s offspring.
“No,” Whit deadpanned, “you always turn that shade of blue.”
Landry shot her brother an exasperated look. The next moment, looking away, she forgot all about the teasing remark. “Are you really staying here with us?” Landry sounded absolutely delighted at the prospect. The next moment, she confirmed it. “That’s wonder
ful!”
The younger woman went to hug Elizabeth again, then, remembering her brother’s admonishment, she raised her hands in mock surrender. Instead, she grabbed the older woman’s hand in both of hers and gave it a warm, heartfelt squeeze. “Having you here is going to be great!” she cried. “I was really beginning to feel outnumbered here, what with Whit and Carson practically forming a good ol’ boys’ club and ganging up on me.” Landry all but beamed at the other woman. “It’ll be nice to have you around to round out the odds a little.”
Elizabeth looked at her a little uncertainly. Maybe there was some hope to be gleaned here. “Isn’t your mother around?”
The slight frown on the younger woman’s lips told Elizabeth that Landry didn’t consider her mother an ally in any manner.
“Only when she wants to be and she’s not on any side except her own,” Landry confided. Just as she was leading Elizabeth toward the staircase, she stopped abruptly and turned around to face her. “I almost forgot—is it true?” she asked, getting back to the initial question she’d posed when she first saw Elizabeth.
That was the phrase she’d greeted them with, Whit thought. Her question wasn’t any clearer to him now than it was then. “Is what true?”
Rather than answer Whit, his sister looked at Elizabeth. “Did someone try to kill you?”
“No.” And she was going to cling to that, Elizabeth thought. To think anything else would begin to paralyze her and then she wouldn’t be able to get things accomplished. She needed to get things done. This wasn’t the time for self-indulgence. “They slashed my tires,” Elizabeth corrected.
“Isn’t that the same thing?” Landry asked, puzzled. She looked from their houseguest to her older brother.
“Only if she was driving on them when they were slashed,” Whit told her matter-of-factly. It wasn’t something he was prepared to dwell on. He noted the thoughtful look on his sister’s face. “Don’t strain your brain, Lan. It’s not exactly a recommended way to kill someone.”
Carrying His Secret Page 10