Winning Amelia

by Ingrid Weaver

  Amelia rubbed his back. “Jenny will pull through this. She’s a strong woman.”

  “Sure. She’s had to be tough to put up with me and the boys. She’s the best. One in a million.”

  “She feels the same way about you.”

  He started back toward Jenny’s room. “She’d have my hide for keeping the boys out so long past their bedtime, but I can’t leave until I know she’s okay.”

  “Absolutely,” Amelia said. “You stay as long as you need to. We’ll take the munchkins home.”

  “I don’t have a car seat for the little guy, or a booster for Eric,” Hank said. He pulled his key ring from his pocket, detached the one for his car and extended it to Will. “Would you mind if I take your van and leave my car with you?”

  Will turned to look at him. It was the first time he’d regarded Hank directly since they’d arrived. There was no trace of the animosity he’d carried for fifteen years. There was merely gratitude. He nodded once, then adjusted his grasp on his son so he could free one hand. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said, fishing his own keys from his jeans. He exchanged them for Hank’s. “That’s decent of you.”

  “No problem.” Hank peeled off his tuxedo jacket and reached for Timmy.

  Amelia had believed Hank looked fantastic in his tux at their prom. A few hours ago, she’d thought the fully grown version was even more handsome. But there was nothing that could compare to the rush of warmth in her heart as she watched him wrap his jacket around the sleeping child.

  * * *

  OTHER THAN THE faint aroma of fresh paint that hung in the air, and the patches of white that the black mop dog now sported, the Goodfellows’ house seemed the same as it had on that Tuesday evening almost three weeks ago when Hank had interviewed their neighbors. That had been the only other time he’d been invited inside. Since then, he hadn’t gone past the front door when he’d come to pick up Amelia or drop her off. They had met in his office when they’d had business to discuss. He’d believed it would help him maintain his distance, and limit him from getting any further involved in her life. Yeah, right.

  He stepped into the hallway to listen. Judging by the total silence upstairs, Timmy was finally asleep for the night. He had woken up as soon as Hank had stopped the family’s van in the driveway, and it had taken two stories and a lullaby for Amelia to settle him again. In contrast, the older boys had roused instantly from their nap on the hospital bed and had been wide awake throughout the drive, yet had gone straight to their bedroom within minutes of arriving home. There hadn’t been a sound from the basement since then.

  “Lemon Soother or Sleepy Time Chamomile?” Amelia asked.

  Hank moved to the kitchen. “Care to elaborate?”

  “Herbal tea.” She took two mugs out of the drying rack beside the sink and set them on the counter. “I’m too wired for anything with caffeine, but I can make you some coffee if you want.”

  He leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. She was still wearing the misty-waterfall dress, but most of her hair had escaped her braid and she’d gotten rid of her shoes. He’d left his own shoes at the door, too. He’d also ditched his tie and opened the top few buttons of his shirt. It was the kind of thing a real couple would do when they came home. Kick off their shoes and loosen buttons and belts, put the kids to bed and share some private time together while they talked about the evening.

  Yet they weren’t a real couple. And this evening had been anything but normal. If he were smart, he would just go home. Now that her nephews were safely tucked in for the night, there was no practical reason for him to stay. He could leave her brother’s van with her and walk to his house. It would likely take him less than an hour. The exercise would help him unwind.

  But his lack of smarts with Amelia was a well-established fact. Why change it now? “Herbal tea sounds great.”

  “So, lemon or chamomile?”

  “Since I don’t know what chamomile is, I’ll choose lemon.”

  “Wise decision.” She took two bags from a small, colorful box and dropped one into each mug. “I don’t know what chamomile is, either, but it tastes like hay. Or what I imagine hay would taste like. Do you want some cookies?” she asked, opening another cupboard.

  “No, thanks.”

  “That’s good,” she said, closing the cupboard. “It looks as if the boys finished them, anyway. Will and I are the ones who smuggle the bags into the house. Jenny’s always trying to make them eat healthy snacks like apples or raisins. There are plenty of those. Want some raisins?”

  “I’m fine.”

  The kettle whistled. She snatched it off the stove quickly, then held her breath and tilted her head toward the doorway, as if listening for one of the boys.

  “I suspect it would take more than that to wake them up,” Hank said.

  “I hope they don’t get nightmares.”

  “You and your brother did a good job downplaying the situation.”

  Her hand shook as she poured water into the mugs. She set the kettle down and used a towel to sop up the spilled water. “I hope we didn’t downplay it. I hope it really will turn out to be nothing serious and Jenny will be back to her old self before we know it.”

  He hoped so, too. He’d been seven, only a year older than Eric, when he’d lost his own mother. He wouldn’t want any child to go through that kind of pain. He pulled out his phone and handed it to her, even though there was a phone on the wall beside the doorway. “I programmed the extension of the maternity floor before we left,” he said. “The nurses said you can call anytime for an update, so you don’t need to worry about waking your brother if he dozes off again.”

  She smiled. It was the first one in hours, and it had more effect on his heart rate than a pot of coffee could have. He waited as she made the call. Though there was no improvement, Jenny’s vital signs were stable, so at least she was no worse. That alone was a relief.

  He carried the mugs to the table that had been built into the corner of the kitchen. The benches that were fastened to the walls on two sides would easily accommodate at least four kids. That, and the high quality of the furniture made him suspect it was Will’s handiwork. He pulled out one of the chairs for Amelia.

  “I need to thank you,” she said. She put his phone on the table as she sat. “You’ve been terrific.”

  He slid aside a high chair that was built of the same maple as the rest of the set, then sat in the remaining adult chair. “All I did was drive.”

  “No, you did more than that. Our partnership agreement didn’t extend to rescuing stranded kids.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “It is to me. And thank you for covering for me with Will.”

  “Covering?”

  “When you said you had phone trouble. That’s kinder than saying I was too selfish and too absorbed in my own problems to think there could be an emergency.”

  “You’re being too harsh.”

  “Hardly. You once believed I needed an intervention. You might have been right.” She tapped her nails against the handle of her mug. Her gaze was still on the phone. “Aren’t you going to call the cops?”

  “What?”

  “The auction’s over. You wanted to tell the police about Whitcombe.”

  “I’ll call them on Saturday.”

  “It already is Saturday.”

  “I mean later in the morning. Everyone would have left the hotel by now. The paintings would have been taken away, too.”

  She made a noise halfway between a laugh and a hiccup. “At least we know where my painting went. We won’t need to hunt it down this time.”

  This time? Did she truly believe there was any hope left of recovering her ticket?

  “Not that knowing who has it does much good,” she went on. “I don’t think we could afford to buy it back.”

  “We wouldn’t be able to match Hennerfind’s bid, that’s for sure.” Not unless Hank sold his house. He’d already cashed in his savings bonds to make up the
ten thousand for the auction.

  “I studied his rise to success in one of my economics classes. He was ruthless when it came to acquiring mining claims and gold refining operations, and he seldom let anything go once he had it. He’s not what anyone would call a soft touch, so I doubt if he’d be moved into giving my painting back to me if I told him a sob story about how I lost it at a yard sale.”

  Hank grunted. Her sob story about losing her painting had done the trick when she’d tried it on him, but Hennerfind was no fool. “I doubt if you’d be allowed past his security to talk to him in the first place.”

  “And speaking of security,” she began.

  “I hope you’re not suggesting anything illegal.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not crazy enough to try breaking into his house to steal it back.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that. My personal scruples aside, I definitely don’t have the necessary skill set to burglarize a billionaire’s place.”

  She braced her elbows on the table and dropped her head in her hands. “You know what the worst of it is? Hennerfind doesn’t even know what he has. He’s probably gloating over buying a stolen masterpiece. He has no idea the dummy painting is worth at least ten times more.”

  “I wonder what he really paid.”

  “A hundred thousand...”

  “That was the cash bid, the amount on record. I’m talking about the extra funds he had to transfer to Whitcombe for the Jackson.”

  “I’ll bet you were right about the bid representing only a fraction of the actual price. Multiply a hundred thousand by ten and you get a million, which still would be a bargain for a painting of that class.” She lifted her head so she could look at him through her fingers. “Here’s a thought. If you hold off phoning the police for a while, we could tell Hennerfind we’ll inform the cops about his stolen Jackson unless he gives us the Mathers.”

  “I hope you’re not serious, Amelia. Attempting to blackmail a man that rich and powerful would be extremely dangerous. You’d have to worry about Whitcombe and his goons, too. Plus whoever stole those paintings in the first place. They wouldn’t tolerate threats to their scheme.”

  “Then why were you so eager to go to the police in the first place?”

  “That’s different. They can protect the identity of an informer. I don’t even have to give them my identity. I can call in a tip anonymously.” He stretched his arms across the table to grasp her wrists and tug her hands away from her face. “You said yourself that Hennerfind was ruthless. I won’t allow you—”

  “Hold on there. You won’t allow me?”

  “Poor choice of words.”

  She tugged against his grip. “You bet it was.”

  “Okay, then how’s this?” Rather than releasing her, he enclosed both of her hands in his. “I don’t want you to get hurt over something as meaningless as money.”

  “If money is so meaningless, why did you insist I had to give you twenty percent of my ticket?”

  “Because I was angry and wanted to make a point.”

  “Ten million dollars is certainly an effective way of making a point.”

  “And because I didn’t want to quit on you this time.”

  His honesty appeared to startle her. It surprised him, too. But now that there was no longer any prospect of retrieving the ticket, he couldn’t keep up the pretense—to her or to himself—that the reason for their partnership had been solely business. “I didn’t want to quit,” he repeated. “That’s what you accused me of doing before, right?”

  “I was angry, too. We’d been arguing about the past.”

  “Sure, because there was a lot that needed saying. I didn’t want to do something else that would make me wonder years from now what might have happened if only I’d chosen differently.”

  “I’ve had a few of those ‘might-have-beens’ and ‘if-onlys’ myself.”

  “Do you remember what I told you at the coffee shop? It was just before you told me the truth about the ticket.”

  “I remember everything we said that day, Hank.”

  “I told you I wanted the chance to get to know you again. I think I have, in spite of all the baggage from our past that we keep tripping over.”

  She dropped her gaze to their joined hands. “I agree with you about the tripping-over-baggage part.”

  “We’re a good team, Amelia.”

  “When we’re not arguing.”

  “If you’re expecting me to argue about how much we argue, forget it. That would make my brain hurt.”

  “Mine, too. My head’s still swimming from what happened tonight.”

  “At the auction or the hospital?”

  “Both.” She chewed her lip for a while. “I’ve tried hard to concentrate on business and ignore everything else, but I can’t. Look what happened when I ignored Will’s phone call. I thought I could put my life on hold until I cashed that ticket, but life’s been going on anyway. You were right. Jenny was right. I need to deal with reality.”

  There was no need to respond to that, so he didn’t.

  She withdrew her hands from his grasp and glanced around the kitchen. “She’s got to be okay. I wish I’d been here for them, or at least answered the phone the first time Will called. I realize I couldn’t have changed what happened to her, but I could have made things easier on everyone else. The whole thing feels like a bad dream.”

  “Yeah. Doesn’t seem that long ago we danced at their wedding.”

  “They were so happy then.”

  “So were we.”

  She picked up her mug and blew on the tea. “Little did we know, huh?”

  “Amelia, why did you marry Spencer?”

  Her breath sputtered. She returned the mug to the table with a thump. “Where did that question come from?”

  “Will and Jenny’s wedding. Our past. One of the bigger pieces of baggage. Pick one.”

  “Marrying Spencer was a gigantic mistake. There’s not much more to tell you.”

  “I think there’s lots more. Did you marry him to prove I was wrong to turn you down? Or did you really love him?”

  She resumed flicking her nails against the mug.

  “For years I had assumed you married Spencer because he was rich,” Hank continued. “But I’m pretty sure now that I was wrong.”

  It was a while before she responded. When she did, her tone was quiet. Thoughtful. “You weren’t entirely wrong,” she said. “His wealth did dazzle me initially. All my friends were talking about how he arrived on campus in a Jaguar and wore a three-thousand-dollar suit to his guest lectures. He was a rock star in the financial world, a boy-wonder phenomenon. I was flattered by his attention when he approached me. Any woman would have been. He made me feel special and sexy and important. He’d claimed later he’d fallen in love at first sight. It wasn’t until years afterward that I found out he’d asked the professor which students were the most promising and had singled me out.”

  “He used you.”

  “Hoo boy, did he ever. All the time we were dating, I believed he really cared about me, but he was recruiting a business partner more than he was seeking a wife. And I admit I was seduced by the promise of running his company with him. Financial planning was exactly what I wanted to do when I graduated, and he already had an established client base and a thriving business. I could jump right in. I wouldn’t need to wait to build a business of my own.”

  Yes, that sounded like Amelia. “You told me you made him a lot of money.”

  “That’s for sure. I believed in him and in our ability to help people grow their wealth. I was young and impressionable. Because our clients recognized my sincerity, they trusted me with their life savings.”

  “They let you manage their money because you were good at it,” he put in. “Not only because you came across as sincere.”

  “Whatever the reason, I’m the one who brought in most of the clients during my time at the company, not Spencer.”

  “Is that why you wanted to pay
them back from the lottery winnings?”

  She gulped her tea. “Did I say that?”

  “Yes, you did. Tonight. You mentioned helping your family, too.”

  “Well, you can see for yourself that Will and Jenny need money. And even with forty-two million instead of fifty-two, there would still be enough to repair some of the damage Spencer did.”

  The millions would repair the financial damage, but it wouldn’t heal what Spencer had done to Amelia’s heart. “You wouldn’t have given him the time of day if I hadn’t broken up with you.”

  “I confess that played a part in it. I probably did go out with him initially to get back at you. It was the shock of losing my parents that really strengthened my feelings for him.”

  “Then you did love him.”

  “I thought I did. I wouldn’t have married him otherwise, no matter how big a company he owned or how much his suits cost or how many Jags he drove.” She shoved her fingers into her hair and dragged loose what was left of her braid. It sprang out in crooked chunks. “But I was in love with an illusion. I saw what I wanted to see and closed my eyes to the rest. I was an idiot.”

  “No more than I was for hurting you the way I did.”

  She sighed. “I can’t blame you for that anymore, Hank. Just look at what Will and Jenny have had to cope with. Marriage isn’t something for two kids to enter into on a whim. It takes maturity and wholehearted commitment to build a life together. I was wrong to rush you. It’s good that you thought everything through.”

  “But I hadn’t, Amelia.”

  “You realized we had no place to live or means to support ourselves. And you didn’t want me to blow my scholarship. You were thinking of me.”

  “Not entirely. It wasn’t only the practical aspects that scared me off—it was the commitment.”

  She jerked up her head. “But you said you’d wanted to marry me, only not right away.”

  “I know what I said. I’ve done a good job convincing myself it was true, too, but if I’d really wanted to get married, we could have worked through our problems together. Instead of breaking up with you, I should have told you that I wanted to wait. When I heard you were dating Spencer, I should have found a way to make you listen to me instead of running off to Alberta.”