A Perfect Forever (Leap of Love Series, Book 1) (6 page)

Ben nodded as she spoke. She had yet to mention Amelia Smith. He had to be patient enough to hear her out.

"Oh yes, and there is Amelia Smith. She is a wealthy woman who moved from back east. Can't remember where from. But she owns the new finishing school for girls."

Just what he wanted to know.

He flashed that winning smile again, and this time he took her hand in his and stroked it gently.

"Thank you so much, Angelica. Hopefully I will see you around again."

"I hope so, Cowboy."

She sauntered away with a flirtatious smile.

Ben was just happy that he got the lead on the information that he needed. So far, things were going well and he would soon be hot on the trail of Ms. Amelia Smith.

*

After learning how to navigate around town, Ben began to blend in. The last thing that he wanted to do was stick out like a sore thumb. And if people knew right away that he was a Pinkerton, he would most likely not get what it was he needed to accomplish his task.

Fortunately for Ben, Amelia had a fairly organized and predictable schedule. She went for a walk every morning around seven at the port. Then she would take her carriage back home and after what Ben assumed was enough time to eat breakfast, she would leave and walk the three blocks to her school.

She would spend the morning there until lunch, and then she would take coffee and a small meal at the nearby café. Back to work at the school for another few hours, and then she would go home. Occasionally, she would have a visitor call on her, which looked to be a good female friend of hers.

What he could not figure out was whether or not the male who came by to call on her was really a suitor. When they walked together, they did not look to be in love. They did not carry themselves as a couple smitten with one another. The man usually looked quite awkward and more attentive when the older woman was talking to him.

Over the past few days, Ben had gotten to know a bit about Amelia. She seemed to have a true love affair with the ships and the water. She would sit and stare for hours at the ships at the dock. There was something calming about being near the ocean, and Ben did not realize it until he had sat all of those mornings on his trail following Amelia.

She was a beautiful woman. Her brunette hair was always piled high on top of her head, with stray tendrils that framed her heart-shaped face. Her cheeks were rosy, her lips full, and she had a penchant for wearing the most stylish of dresses.

Ben had never done this type of work before, and he was not sure if he should be trailing Amelia every day. But he felt as if he had gotten to know her a bit, and she seemed unlike the other rich women he had encountered in his life.

She was kind as she walked through the streets, smiling and bidding good day to others. And as far as Ben was concerned, any woman who chose to work with children had to be patient and kindhearted.

He finally got a good idea of what she did every day and the places she frequented. It did not seem that she would be uprooting herself any time soon. Ben knew that he should contact his client, Jonathan Montgomery Smith, and let him know that he should come to San Francisco.

He made his way to the telegram office to send word. His message was simple.

Found her. Come west to San Francisco.

*

Ben knew that he had to wait the time out for Jonathan to arrive in San Francisco. His client was a bit like dynamite, ready to explode at any time. When Jonathan Smith burst into the Pinkerton office, he was wide-eyed and disheveled. Ben and his boss held their hands on their guns in fear that a madman had just entered the room.

Jonathan recounted a story about finding out that his father was a wealthy man, but not being able to go after the man due to an unfortunate fatal carriage accident that killed both the man he claimed was his father and the man's wife. Jonathan had the idea that the man had a daughter who  had moved west to California, and he needed to track her down in order to discuss what he thought was his impending fortune.

Ben had not been living in Boston for long, so he was not aware of all of the city folk that his boss, who was born and raised in Boston, knew. Just being in Boston was a new experience for the farm boy from South Carolina. He had only been there for a few weeks before he got the Smith job.

And now here he was in San Francisco, waiting for his client to arrive in town. The only thing Ben wanted was for Jonathan not to mess everything up. The man seemed like he had a penchant for being a wild card, and that was certainly not what was needed in this case. There would be no way that they could find out all of the information needed to close the case if his client was to arrive and throw away weeks of surveillance based on his emotions.

The day that Ben agreed to take the case, he thought that he should have Jonathan sign an additional provision in the contract that Jonathan would not make any moves until Ben gave the say so. But he did not do it, because Jonathan had promised that once he found the woman he thought to be his sister, he would not cause any harm to her. That he just wanted to meet the woman who was family and that he wanted to talk one on one with her about the inheritance that he felt was rightfully his.

Ben's boss had done a background check on Jonathan Smith. He found that he came from humble beginnings, and that the only family he had to speak of was his mother, who was never too far away. Most people in the community considered Jonathan Montgomery Smith and his mother, Ella Smith to be good, quiet people. Ms. Smith was a seamstress, and Jonathan had been an errand boy since the age of twelve.

Since finding out that Mr. William Smith, a man from an extremely wealthy family, was possibly his father, Jonathan had been wandering about town, in and out of pubs. He was found in a mud puddle a few days the week before, so completely intoxicated that it was embarrassing.

When Ben was assigned Jonathan's case, he was not expecting to get much more out of it but a trip across the country and a bit of sightseeing that he would not have otherwise been able to do.

Instead, he was here in San Francisco, swooning over one Amelia Smith. The very woman who was the subject of the case.

Ben did not want to rock any boats or make any incorrect assumptions, but he just knew that if he had the chance to meet Miss Amelia Smith, it would change their lives forever.

With every passing state, Jonathan's anger fueled more. The train passed through Colorado and Utah and finally crossed over into California. The only thing he had to do to pass the time was read the newspaper and play a game of cards here and there. An occasional conversation with a fellow traveler broke the monotony of the ride.

But nothing actually took Jonathan's mind off of the task at hand. From the moment he received word from Ben that Amelia Smith had been located, Jonathan had been so full of emotion. From relief that she had been found, to extreme exasperation that his mother had not bothered to tell him that the man who had been involved in his conception only lived a few miles away.

The one thing that he could not figure out was why his mother felt the need to let them live so modestly when they could have had a much more comfortable life. Even if they were hidden away somewhere, if William Smith had been claimed as his father, Jonathan was convinced that his life would be completely different.

The other thing he did not understand was why William Smith did not recognize the timeline. A woman that you claimed you loved is sent away and comes back years later with a young child that she says was fathered by someone else while she was away. It did not make any sense that he would not calculate what happened and put it all together. Jonathan wondered if maybe the man did know, and he wondered if William came back to his mother and asked her if the child she had borne was his.

It was possible that something like that had happened. And maybe his mother had rejected William for rejecting her. Or maybe Jonathan's grandmother made sure to keep William Smith at arm's length from his mother.

Or it was just quite possible that William Smith had no regard for his mother at all. Maybe his decision to move on and marry someone else said everything that needed to be said. There was no reason that William Smith could not have married Jonathan's mother. The woman he married was not of a higher social status and her family background did not offer anything that William needed to cement his status. So Jonathan had no clue why William chose Lulu over his mother.

None of that mattered anymore though. William Smith was gone now and his mother was not into courting or marrying at this point. The only thing that really bothered Jonathan was that his mother had never married. She was such a wonderful woman. She was the one who nurtured him and soothed him as a child. She had been there every step of the way. There was no way that she deserved to be treated the way she had been treated.

So that was all the more reason why Jonathan had to avenge the situation. William Smith had practically robbed his mother of the opportunity to marry and be truly happy. She had always said that Jonathan was the reason she was happy, but to Jonathan, there always seemed to be something missing. So now he knew what it was. It was the fact that his mother had not only loved a man who did not truly love her, but she had loved a man that left her to care for and raise a young child on her own and had not even offered any financial support.

He needed to make this right. For himself and for his mother's sake.

*

Jonathan stood on the platform. He had finally arrived in San Francisco, and he wanted to immediately descend upon the city and get to the task at hand. But he needed to first check into a hotel and clean up. It would be nice to get something to eat as well. He asked for the closest hotel, and was directed to one that was about two blocks away on Seville Avenue.

The walk there did him some good because it gave him a moment to stretch his legs and move about. San Francisco was very welcoming. The people were polite and they seemed to move at a much slower rate than in Boston. It was strange to be in a new city. Jonathan had never been too far outside of Boston and he wished that he could truly enjoy the adventure of the trip.

He wanted to ask around about Amelia, the woman who was his sister. But the last thing that he wanted to do was come to a new city and start bringing attention to himself. Especially before he got a chance to meet Amelia first.

Jonathan decided that he would not ask around, and instead he would meet up with Ben Abbott, the Pinkerton detective he had hired. He really did not have the money to hire a Pinkerton, but this was the kind of thing that he had to invest in. There would be no way that he could have found his sister on his own, and here Ben came to San Francisco and found her within a week. That made the money he had to use out of his mother's secret savings stash well worth it.

Besides, once he tapped into his inheritance, he would be able to pay his mother back plus some extra.

For some reason, the meal that he ate on the train was the best that he had ever had. The anxiety mixed with anger that he had felt on the train was no longer filling him from the pit of his stomach. Jonathan was ready to do the thing that would change his life. He wanted nothing more than to look Amelia in the face and blow her mind with the fact that she had a brother. A brother who was willing to come forward and tell her about the negligence of the very father that raised her and had not bothered with him.

He wondered how she would take it. He wondered what she looked like. And most importantly, he wondered what his father looked like. Did he have the same color eyes and the same color hair? What kind of man was he? He could not base his entire idea of the man on how he had treated his mother. Jonathan wanted to know more about the man who had come from a wealthy family but had still been a businessman.

Jonathan could not decide whether or not he wanted a relationship with his sister, Amelia. He certainly did not want to be seen as their father's bastard child, although that is what he was. He wanted Amelia to take him seriously, and to consider him family. There was a slim chance that things would happen that way. He shook his head. There was no way that this woman, this rich woman, would just welcome him into her family with open arms.

The chances of that happening were almost nonexistent.

And there was an even slimmer chance that she would willingly hand over any portion of the Smith fortune. 

*

When Jonathan walked into the pub, he saw Ben Abbott sitting down to a meal. He was starving himself, and thought that dinner would be a good time to go over what Ben had found out while on surveillance.

"Ben Abbott." Jonathan stood before Ben, who looked up from his meal, seemingly aggravated.

A look of recognition came across his face, and he shoved the fork full of food in his mouth. Wiping his lips with a napkin, he stood up and threw his hand out to meet Jonathan's.

"Jonathan Smith. Good to see you have arrived in one piece. Have a seat here and join me."

Ben beckoned the barmaid over to them.

"He'll have what I had," Ben commanded.

"All right, coming right up," the girl replied, with a wink and a shift of her hips.

"So tell me everything that you know so far, Abbott."

Ben began recounting everything that he had learned about Amelia. The fact that she owned the finishing school, and the fact that she was courting a man named Alfred Sharp who was an accountant for a local grocery store chain. Jonathan was waiting to hear more.

"That's it?"

Ben shrugged. "Yes. What else did you expect?"

"I don't know. Maybe she frequents evening social gatherings with other rich women. Or she spends her day shopping at all of the stores and boutiques. I was not expecting some do-gooder who does nothing out of the ordinary with her day."

The barmaid brought Jonathan's food, slid it onto the table in front of him, and walked away.