by Tracy Wolff
“Well, that was what he told me, anyway,” she quickly amended. “That he made his living in New York as a TV repairman. Obviously, that part wasn’t true. But the rest of it was. When I packed up his things after his death, I found photos and some old diaries that belonged to his mother. I’ll be sure everything is sent to you and Vivian once I get back to Seattle.”
Harrison eyed her thoughtfully. A little too thoughtfully for Gracie’s comfort. He was doing that thing again where he seemed to be trying to peer into her soul. And was succeeding. All he said, though, was “What else did my father tell you about his childhood?”
“He said that after his father died, he took what little money he’d saved and went to New York. TV was just starting to become popular, and he got a job in a little appliance shop and taught himself everything he could. After a while, he opened his own repair business in Queens and lived and worked there until he retired.”
“He never mentioned getting married?” Harrison asked. “Three times, at that? Never mentioned having kids? Seven of us?”
She shook her head. “Never. I mean, I always wondered. He never said he didn’t marry or have a family. But I didn’t want to pry. He just told me that after he retired, he started missing Cincinnati, so he moved back to his old neighborhood.”
Harrison said nothing in response to that, but he continued to look at Gracie in that way that made something hot and gooey eddy in her belly, melting bit by bit until it warmed her all over. How could he make her feel like that? He’d made no secret of the fact that he didn’t trust her. He didn’t even like her. Except for their initial meeting, the time the two of them had shared together had been combative at worst and uncomfortable at best. There should be no hot gooeyness in a situation like that.
But maybe that was the problem. Not the unpleasant times since the two of them met. But the handful of moments when the two of them had first encountered each other in the library. Something had definitely blossomed between them in those moments, and it had been anything but unpleasant. Those moments had been some of the sweetest Gracie had ever known. She’d never had a reaction to a man like she’d had to Harrison. Why couldn’t the two of them hit Rewind and start over? Go back to that first second when her eyes met his, and she felt as if the pieces of her life that had been ripped apart in the days since meeting Mr. Tarrant had suddenly fallen back into place?
When Harrison still didn’t respond to anything she’d told him, she asked softly, “You didn’t know any of that stuff about his parents or brother, did you?”
He shook his head.
“What did your father tell you about his childhood?”
“Not much. That he grew up in Cincinnati. That his mother was a teacher and his father worked in a factory. That he used money he saved from a paper route to come to New York after high school.”
His expression suddenly changed, moving from quietly preoccupied to fiercely keen. “After his arrival in New York, though, I heard all about that. Over and over again.”
“Guess it didn’t have anything to do with a TV repair shop, huh?”
He chuckled, but there was nothing happy in the sound. “No. It was all about how he found work as a runner for a brokerage in Manhattan and worked his way up, investing what he could where he could whenever he had a spare nickel. How he made his first million when he was twenty-five. How he bought his first business at twenty-seven. How, at thirty, he was worth tens of millions of dollars. At forty, hundreds of millions. Easy as pie. He had things fall into his lap and then was smart enough to exploit them for all they were worth. Hell, he berated me for not earning my keep when I was a kid. He may have gone into his office every day to keep an eye on things, but as far as actual work? He never worked a day in his life as an adult.”
Gracie couldn’t help the sound of disbelief that escaped her. “Oh, please. I never met anyone who worked harder than Harry Sagalowsky.”
Harrison threw her another one of those dubious looks. “You said he was retired when you met him.”
“Yeah, but he was active in his church, he volunteered at the veterans hospital, he served meals at a homeless shelter most weekends and he coached Little League.”
She could tell Harrison stopped believing her with the first sentence—he even started shaking his head before she finished speaking. “My father never went to church, he was never in the military, he thought poverty was a scam and he hated kids.”
“Your father sang in the choir,” Gracie countered. “And he felt a debt to people in uniform because he grew up during a time when a lot of them never made it home from war. I’d think by now you’d realize how he feels about poverty, since he wants me to give away all his money to worthy causes. And I never saw him happier than he was when he was with his team. I bet you didn’t even realize what a huge Reds fan he was, did you?”
Now Harrison was the one to utter an incredulous sound. “This just proves I can’t trust anything you say. Nothing you’ve said about my father rings true. Nothing.”
“And nothing you’ve said about him rings true for me, either.”
She still couldn’t understand how the Harry she’d known could have been a big-shot corporate mogul or abandoned a wife and son. There must have been a reason for it. He’d said in his video that his home life had become unhappy, but that should have made him determined to stay and fix whatever was wrong. Harry really was the finest man Gracie had ever met. So how could he have done things that weren’t fine at all?
The tentative moment of...whatever it was she and Harrison had begun to share was gone. And really, did it matter how they felt about each other? Two judges had awarded Gracie Harry’s fortune, and she was duty-bound to disburse it in a way that would honor his wishes. It didn’t matter if Harrison Sage believed her. It didn’t matter if he trusted her. It didn’t matter if he liked her. And it didn’t matter how he felt about his father, either, since it was too late for any attempts to make amends there. Harry’s death had ensured that his son would never have a chance to understand the man beneath the high-powered pinstripes who had walked out on his family fifteen years before. There would be no resolution for that relationship. Ever.
Or would there?
Gracie studied Harrison again, remembering the way he’d been in the library, before their formal introductions. He had reminded her of Harry, she recalled. He had smiled like his father. He’d been as charming. As easy to talk to. He had the same blue eyes and, now that she paid more attention, the same straight nose and blunt jaw. Had circumstances been different, had Harry not been a titan of industry, had he spent more time with his family and given more freely of himself to them, things might have turned out differently for father and son. They might have recognized they had a lot in common. They might have even been friends.
“You didn’t really know him, either, did you?” Gracie said softly.
Harrison deflated a little at the question. “The man I knew was nothing like you describe.”
“Maybe while he was your father, he wasn’t,” she conceded. “And that’s a shame.”
Now Harrison stiffened. “Why is that a shame? My father was one of the most successful men of his time. How can there be anything shameful in that?”
“Because he could have been a successful father, too,” Gracie said. “I wish you’d known the man I did. The Harry I knew was a good guy, Harrison.”
It was the first time she had called him by his first name, and it surprised her how easily it rolled off her tongue, and how good it felt to say it. Harrison seemed surprised, too. He opened his mouth to say something, then evidently changed his mind and glanced away. When he did, something—some odd trick of the light—shadowed his eyes, turning the anger to melancholy.
She tried again. “You know, there’s a lot of your father in you. I recognized it right away, when you and I were talking in the library the othe
r day.”
He turned to look at her again, more thoughtfully this time. “That was who you meant when you told me I reminded you of someone.”
She nodded.
“But he and I had nothing in common.”
“You look like him.”
“Not surprising, since we come from the same gene pool.”
“You told me a joke, right off the bat. That was just like something Harry would do.”
“That was just like something a lot of men would do if they were trying to impress a—” He halted abruptly, then said quickly, “That was just like something a lot of men would do.”
“It still reminded me of Harry.”
Harrison returned his attention to the trading floor. “He brought me here when I was a kid,” he said quietly. “Once. I was six or seven. He wanted to show me how fortunes were made and lost. He said this—” he gestured down at the chaos below “—was what made the whole world work. He told me money was more important than anything, because it could buy anything. Not just material possessions, but anything. Adventure. Culture. Intelligence. It could buy friends. Allies. Even governments. Not to mention things like respect and dignity and love.”
Gracie wanted to deny that Harry could have ever been that cynical or said anything that cold. Especially to a child. Especially to his own son. The man she’d known had thought money was what caused all the world’s problems, not solved them. And he’d known it was a person’s actions, not their income, that garnered respect and dignity and love.
“You can’t buy love,” she said softly.
Harrison looked at her. “No?”
She shook her head.
He glanced back down at the floor. “Maybe not. But you can buy something that feels like it.”
“No, you can’t,” Gracie countered. “Maybe you can lie to yourself until you believe that, but...”
When he looked at her this time, she was the one to glance away.
“But what?” he asked.
She shook her head again. “Nothing.”
He studied her so long without speaking that it began to feel as if he were trying to insert a little piece of himself inside her. What was weird was that a piece of him should feel like a pebble in her shoe. Instead, it felt more like more a ray of sunshine on her face.
“You must be hungry,” he finally said.
There was a huskiness in his voice when he spoke that made something in her stomach catch fire. She didn’t dare look at him for fear that those blue eyes would be burning, too. How did he do that? How did he make any given situation feel almost...sexual? He’d done it in the library that first morning, and again at breakfast yesterday. The man was just strangely potent.
“A little,” she said, hoping her stomach didn’t decide to punctuate the statement with the kind of growl that normally preceded a lunge to the jugular.
“My mother suggested I take you to my father’s club for lunch,” he said. “By the time we get there, they should be ready to serve.”
“Lunch sounds great,” she told him.
Even if lunch actually sounded like another opportunity for the two of them to find something to be at odds about. At least food would quiet the wild animal that seemed to have taken up residence in her belly.
Now if she could just figure out how to quiet the wild thoughts suddenly tumbling through her brain.
* * *
Harrison watched Grace from the other side of the table at the Cosmopolitan Club, doing his best to not notice how, in this place, surrounded by all its Art Deco splendor, she looked like some seductive film-noir siren. Her form-hugging suit, the color of forbidden fruit, was buttoned high enough to be acceptable in professional circles, but low enough to make a man—to make Harrison—want to reach across the table and start unbuttoning it. She’d worn her hair down today, parted on one side to swoop over her forehead, something that only added to her Veronica Lake, femme fatale appearance. All she needed to complete it was some raging red lipstick. As usual, though, she didn’t seem to be wearing makeup at all. Meaning she was once again that combination of sexpot and girl next door that made him want to—
Okay, so it probably wasn’t a good idea to think further about what her appearance made him want to do. Probably, it was better to look at the menu and figure out what he wanted. Besides Grace, he meant.
How could he want someone who had almost certainly taken advantage of his father and pocketed the family fortune? On the other hand, what did ethics and morality have to do with sex? It wasn’t as if Harrison hadn’t slept with other women who were ethically and morally challenged.
Wait a minute. Hang on. He replayed that last sentence in his brain. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t slept with other women like that? Meaning that somewhere in his subconscious, he was thinking about sleeping with Grace? When did that happen? Then again, why shouldn’t he sleep with Grace? He might as well get something out of this arrangement.
“What’s good here?” she asked, bringing his attention back to the matter at hand.
“If you like light, go with the brie salad. If you like sandwiches, try the club. It you want something more exotic, the curried shrimp.”
“Oh, that does sound good,” she said. She scanned the menu until she found a description, then uttered a flat “Oh.”
“What?” Harrison asked.
“There aren’t any prices listed on this menu.”
He still couldn’t decide whether or not she was pretending to be something she wasn’t. If this was all an act, then she really did deserve an award. If it wasn’t, then she was a pod person from outer space. No one could be this naive.
“You don’t know what it means when prices aren’t listed on a menu?” he asked skeptically.
“Of course I know what that means,” she said. “No one’s that naive.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I can’t afford a place where the prices aren’t listed. The money your father left me isn’t mine.”
“It is until you give it to someone else.” And he still wasn’t convinced she would do it.
“But—”
“Look, it’s my treat,” he interrupted. “I’m a member here, too.”
“Oh,” she said again. Only this time it wasn’t a flat oh. This time it was a surprised oh. As in “Oh, you have your own money?”
“I do have a job, you know,” he replied before she could ask.
“I didn’t mean—”
“You thought I was just some lazy, entitled player who never worked a day in his life, didn’t you?”
“No, I—”
“I actually have my own business,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound as smug about that as he felt, but figuring by her expression that he probably did. Oh, well. “Sage Assets,” he continued. “We’re consultants in financial risk management.”
She clearly had no idea what he was talking about, a realization that nagged again at his conviction that she was driven only by money. “Which means what?” she asked.
“We advise businesses and investors on how not to lose their shirts in times of financial crisis. Or any other time, for that matter. I started the company right after I graduated from Columbia, and it took off right away,” he added modestly. Well, sort of modestly. Okay, not modestly at all. “That being a time of financial crisis. And my father wasn’t the only one in the family with a gift for trading.” Then, because he couldn’t quite keep himself from saying it, he added, “I made my first million when I was twenty-three. I was worth tens of millions by the time I was twenty-seven.”
Beating his father’s timetable on those achievements by years. At the rate he was going, he’d be beating that hundreds-of-millions thing, too, by a good five years. Not that his father had ever realized—or would ever realize—any of those thing
s. Not that that was the point. Not that Harrison cared. He didn’t.
Grace didn’t seem as impressed by his achievements as Harrison was. Then again, she had fourteen billion dollars. He was a lightweight compared to her.
“Well, for what it’s worth,” she said, “I didn’t think you were a lazy, entitled player who never worked a day in your life.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “I figured you had a job.”
Only when she punctuated the statement with a smile did he realize she was making a joke. He refused to be charmed.
“Then you did think I was an entitled player.”
Instead of answering, she glanced back down at her menu and said, “You know, I do like a good club sandwich...”
Their server came and took their orders, returning with their drinks. Grace reached for the sugar caddy and used the tongs to pluck out four cubes for her tea. After stirring, she took a sip, and then tonged in two more. As if Grace Sumner needed any more sweetness.
It didn’t help that she kept glancing around the room as if she’d just fallen off the turnip truck. Of course, the place was pretty impressive. The Cosmopolitan had been built in the Roaring Twenties by a group of rich industrialists so they and all their equally wealthy friends would have a sumptuous sanctuary to escape the wretched refuse of New York. The furnishings were as rich, extravagant and bombastic as they’d been, all mahogany and velvet and crystal, and the current owners spared no expense to maintain that aura of a bygone era. He and Grace might as well have been lunching with Calvin Coolidge.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a place like this before,” she said. She grinned again before adding, “Unless you count the Haunted Mansion at Disney World.”
Harrison smiled back, surprised to discover it felt genuine. Not sure why, he played along. “I wouldn’t count that. They let in all kinds of riffraff at the Haunted Mansion, and the dress code is way too relaxed.”