Sea Glass Sunrise (25 page)

“No political career for Ted, no family legacy there either,” Owen said, slowly catching on.

Hannah’s eyes lit up as the rest of the pieces fell into place.

“You’re amazing!” She grabbed Owen’s face and kissed him square on the mouth, then grinned. “You figured it all out!” She pressed her coffee mug into his hands, then took off in a sprint toward the house.

Leaving a crimson-faced Owen standing there, clutching her mug, saying, “I did?” He smiled, looking a little dazed. “Happy I could be of some help,” he called out.

Chapter Seventeen

“Mr. Winstock will be with you shortly. He asked that you please enjoy your breakfast. What can I bring you to start?”

Calder wasn’t used to having a crew of people attending him inside someone’s private home.
Must be nice,
he thought, then decided, nah, he’d hate having people hovering around him all the time. Sort of creepy, really. “Thank you,” he said. “Just coffee is fine. Black.”

The young man, dressed in a crisp white linen button-down shirt and tailored black slacks, looked somewhat concerned at that. “Are you certain, sir? We have a world-class chef. Perhaps an omelet to start? Or maybe you’d prefer the quiche? Fresh lobster this morning. It’s topnotch.”

We spared no expense,
Calder thought, and the line from
Jurassic Park
did nothing to dispel the heebie-jeebies this whole charade was giving him. “Fine,” he told the obviously relieved young man. “That sounds good.” He only hoped the guy didn’t stand behind him and watch him eat.

A cup of steaming black coffee was placed in front of him with alarming speed. Did they have eyes in the wall? He straightened his shoulder against the prickle of awareness that lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. He felt ridiculous for letting his surroundings get to him, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was the hapless extra in a bad horror movie.

A different door opened, one of the double doors leading to the main hallway. He looked up, pasting a polite, businesslike smile on his face, expecting to greet his host, but a woman walked in instead.

She was average height, maybe a little shorter. It was hard to tell in the tottering spike heels she was wearing. She was a blonde, with a figure that could only be described as bombshell, wearing a tight-fitting, perfectly tailored suit the color of the bright blue waters of the bay that sparkled in the huge picture window just behind her. That she not only could compete with such a spectacular view, but quite easily trump it, seemed to be something she took as her due.

Calder had the rather uncharitable thought that if Tenley had had access to the kind of fortune Winstock wielded, she would have aspired to be someone almost exactly like the woman he was looking at. Unkind, perhaps, but no less true.

“My, my, I wasn’t aware I’d have such handsome company at breakfast this morning,” she said, her perfectly modulated voice only a fraction above a purr. “You must be Calder Blue. Daddy said something about your dropping by. Quite early,” she added. “You must be eager.” Her dark eyes sparkled. “I like eager.”

Calder had stood when she’d entered the room, partly out of ingrained politeness, and partly because she had a rather regal way about her that seemed to demand that sort of thing. But before he could step around the table to assist her, the young man who’d been attending Calder earlier rushed in from the side door and whisked her chair out for her instead.

They do have eyes in the wall
, he thought, amused.
Good to know.
He absently wondered if they could monitor something as small as his text message screen, because he’d said some rather naughty things to Hannah the night before. He smiled, thinking about it.

“Bring me some hot tea, Thomas,” she instructed the young man as he pushed her chair in once she was seated. “Not that abominable brew from yesterday morning. In fact, have Chef make a tray for me please, and bring an assortment.” Her gaze lifted to Calder. “A woman likes to have choices.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Thomas said. “Right away.” He scurried off as if the hounds of hell were at his heels.

Calder took his seat again, thinking despite her perfectly put-together outfit, artfully tousled hairstyle, and ruthlessly applied makeup, he probably wasn’t far wrong in his assessment this time. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage,” he said. “You seem to know my name, but—”

She laughed, and it was as perfectly modulated as the rest of her, a delightful little waterfall of sound that made every hair on his arms stand straight up. The theme from
Jaws
echoed through his mind. “My apologies.” She was sitting catty-corner to him, at the end of the long table nearest the picture window. She lifted a hand to him. “Camille Winstock Weathersby. My close acquaintances know me as Cami.”

He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to shake her hand, or kiss the ring on it, but he took her fingertips in his, and bowed his head slightly, in some awkward combination of the two. “Brooks’s daughter,” he said, rather than address the issue of what he would be calling her. “A pleasure to meet you. You’re married to Ted Weathersby, is that right?” His smile grew as hers dimmed. “Just trying to keep all the names and connections straight,” he said, sounding perhaps a bit more aw shucks than necessary.

“Indeed,” she said, her smile turning to something a shade harder, the gleam in her eyes a bit more brittle. “Keeping connections lined up, especially when you’re new in town, is rather important.”

Calder wasn’t sure if that was another come-on, or a thinly veiled warning of some kind. If so, he wasn’t particularly interested in obeying either one.

“I’m so sorry to hear of Ted’s recent loss in the mayoral race.” He paused to sip his coffee, and watched the remnants of her polite smile fade altogether. “I’m sure he’s had many offers, though. Man with his background.” Of course, Calder knew absolutely nothing about Ted Weathersby’s background other than the part he’d just stated, but she was clearly annoyed at the turn of the conversation, which made it an obvious line to pursue. “Or is he working for your father now?” Calder smiled. “I work in a family business myself, though I don’t think my brothers would want their spouses working alongside them. Perhaps it’s different with your family.”

“You’re not married then?” she asked, a spark of interest flashing back to life in the dark chocolate depths of her eyes. “Seems rather a shame,” she said, making it sound like she personally thought it was anything but. She ran her gaze over him, casually, carelessly, then let it drift back to his face. “I don’t think the women in this town would let an eligible man such as yourself go to waste.”

“I’m not married, no,” he said, then surprised himself when he added, “though I’m not exactly eligible, either.” His thoughts went to Hannah, and he smiled to himself, thinking she probably wouldn’t appreciate him slotting her in the spoken-for category alongside himself.

Cami’s gaze narrowed as she took in his smile. “Fortunate woman,” she murmured, then glanced up as her tea service tray was delivered. “Don’t dither, set it down,” she instructed the young man with snappish impatience.

Calder felt he should apologize to the young steward, given her animosity was likely directed at him and not the hired help, but he was too busy trying to interpret why Winstock’s married daughter was hitting on him in the first place. Right under her father’s roof.

“Do you often have breakfast with your father?” he asked, as his quiche was quickly set in front of him, along with the assorted appropriate flatware. “I’m sure he must enjoy that. You’re the only child, right?” He flashed her a grin. “I can’t tell you how many times I wished I was an only.”

“How many brothers did you say you have?” she asked, steeping her tea strainer in a dainty china cup with a pattern matching that of the single-serving-size teapot that had been delivered with it.

“I have three. All younger.”

Her perfectly penciled eyebrows lifted. “And all of them married? However did you escape the noose?”

“Two of them. The youngest is still in college. And I didn’t,” he said. “Escape the noose, I mean.”

Interest sparked right back to life in those soulless depths, but was quickly hidden behind a moue of sympathy. She had quite a mouth on her, he’d already noted, the kind of full, bowed lips a man would go to great lengths to get pressed to various parts of his anatomy. A man other than himself. He thought of the banged-up and bruised set of lips that had consumed his every waking thought for the past four days. Well, the woman they belonged to had, anyway.

“Divorced then,” she said. “That can be such a difficult thing.”

Some shred of another emotion in her voice had him looking up from his quiche. “It was,” he said, curious now. Then added, “Very,” to see if that encouraged her to open up.

“How long ago?”

“Two years,” he said. “Longer, I guess, if you add in the separation.”

She nodded, still looking at him, though her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. She mindlessly added sugar to her tea, and though he didn’t know her, he thought it wasn’t in character for her to not be paying attention to every tiny detail, even how much sugar she added to her tea.

So he pressed on. “She was close to my father. My ex,” he clarified. “He very much approved of our relationship, so that didn’t help matters any.”

She looked at him now. “So I take it you were the one to end it? Does your father blame you?”

“It was more a . . . mutual decision,” he said, intentionally making it sound anything but. “But yes, my father absolutely holds it against me. He’s always expected a lot from me, not the least of which was a long successful marriage and at least a few grandkids.” He smiled ruefully. “Seems my brothers are going to be far more adept at that than I am.”

“No children then?” she queried. “And your father disapproved?” She didn’t wait for him to answer, but sighed as she took the strainer from her teacup and let it clatter to the silver service tray. “I know a little something about that myself,” she said, sounding frustrated and annoyed. She took a sip of her tea, and regarded him over the rim of the fragile cup as she lowered it again. “What is it about men and their legacies? Their inherent, obsessive need to create offspring—male offspring, mind you—as if it’s the be all and end all of achieving success?”

He smiled. “I’m probably not the one to ask.”

“And yet you decided not to follow that path.” Her gaze narrowed and he thought he’d really hate to be on the receiving end of her temper. “Or is that why the marriage ended? She couldn’t pop out a litter of pups for you?”

His eyes widened at the sudden impolite turn of conversation. He wondered what she’d say if he told her that Owen Hartley had used that exact same expression—litter—only regarding her own motivations, not his. He thought it best for Owen’s longevity not to go there. “No, our marriage ended for other reasons, but we did have a difference of opinion on having a family of our own.”

Her annoyance shifted to interest once more, and again, the hairs on his arms lifted. “You don’t want children? How . . . refreshing.”

As it happened, it was the reverse of that, but his feelings about children had nothing to do with creating heirs or leaving legacies. Telling her would also end any chance he had of uncovering more of the situation between her and her husband. With Winstock in the crosshairs of the arson investigation, the more he learned about the inner workings of the man’s family, the better. “I’m more concerned with living my life as I want to live it rather than worrying about what I’ll be leaving behind when I’m gone, or that there will be someone to leave it to.”

Her eyes sparkled as a smile curved her perfectly plumped lips. “Exactly! Why is it that people have such a hard time understanding that? I wasn’t put here to be a broodmare; I was put here to have a life, same as any man. I have my own goals, and it just so happens, marshaling a herd of rug rats isn’t one of them. Is that so wrong of me?”

He shook his head. He honestly felt no one should be forced by family or society to marry, procreate, or, for that matter, take over a family business, if it wasn’t what they wanted to do. “Not at all. Seems to me that only brings suffering to more folks.” He laid his fork down, his lobster quiche still untouched. “Do you have an interest in taking over your father’s business concerns? Is he not . . . receptive to that idea? Because you’re not a son?”

“Daddy has somewhat antiquated ideas about such things, it’s true. But I’m nothing if not resourceful.”

He lifted an eyebrow, and let a grin lift the corners of his mouth, making it seem as though his interest—which was sincere—was perhaps inspired by something less than polite. “I’m beginning to see that,” he said.

She glowed at the praise. “I married a man with political aspirations, who had much the same mind-set as myself.” She leaned forward, tapping her uniformly tapered and painted nails on the pale yellow linen tablecloth. “Teddy and I have always had an understanding.”

He let his suggestively raised eyebrows ask the question for him.

The speculative gleam that entered her eyes made him shift slightly in his seat, but not because the fit of his pants had suddenly grown uncomfortable. If anything, his pants had just become distinctly looser-fitting. But she didn’t have to know that.

“Teddy’s family is well off enough, but they aren’t otherwise connected. He had a good enough pedigree though, and good schools, but he needs my background, my connections here in the Cove, to reach his own goals.”

“And you needed him for . . . ?”

“For his Y chromosome. Not to have children, though my father was quite hopeful about that. But he could help me groom Teddy for political greatness, and that would allow me to add to Daddy’s legacy and be seen as an asset to him.”

Wow, Calder thought. Her father would only see her as an asset if she either produced more Winstocks, or added to the family legacy with a mayoral spouse, perhaps a senator, or greater? How sad. And yet, wasn’t he in much the same place with his own family? “Did you ever consider running for office yourself? I mean, you’re bright, sharp, attractive. You could have achieved that without—”

“Kind of you to say,” she said, all but preening at his words of praise and not the least bit humble about accepting them. “But, as I said, my father has rather antiquated ideas about a woman’s role in society. We are the icing, the cake topper, the arm candy. We throw perfect parties, keep an immaculate, well-appointed home, have the perfect progeny, connect with the masses via our charitable work.” She looked him dead in the eye, and the fury he saw behind the bright gleam actually alarmed him. “We do not become our own successes, or further our own causes. Certainly not at the expense of our spouse, or our father. Just ask my mother.”