Overnight Heiress

Four

Meg sighed with pleasure as the soft wool crepe settled over her body. Oh, yes. She could get to like this. She soothed the softly draping emerald green skirt in place and glanced in the full-length mirror in her dressing room.

She’d done easier things than that which she would be called upon to do in just minutes, but she’d done harder ones, too. It helped, a lot, that thanks to Marianna Richards and the experts she had called in, Meg now looked the part she was being called upon to play.

She touched her hair, not yet daring to disturb the new style. It was shorter than she had ever worn it, but feathered so that it looked longer and fuller. And it accented her eyes and cheekbones in a way that made her wonder if some fairy magic hadn’t been at work on those, too, while she slept.

At a discreet knock on her door, Meg slipped her feet into the two-inch heels Marianna had insisted upon and which brought her height to an even six feet. Old tapes played hard and loud. She found herself wanting to kick off the shoes and slump to hide her height. Instead, she threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin.

Edward’s housekeeper waited patiently in the hall. She wasn’t an unkind woman, or a suspicious one, just aloof. Even though Jennie had affectionately referred to her as Tommy, Meg hadn’t yet figured out how to chip away any of the woman’s layer of strict professional decorum. “Okay, Mrs. Tompkins,” Meg said. “Lead me to the wolves.”

The wolves waited in Edward’s study, a wonderful room, full of leather and dark polished walnut. There were three of them, Fallon Teague and two men who accompanied him. She studied them from the open doorway before entering the room and easily identified Teague. She recognized the type from the late-lunch crowd at Patrick’s. Strictly Type A, power lunch, constantly accessible either by cellular phone or pager—except she didn’t think that Fallon Teague would stoop to carrying his own phone. No, one of the other two would do that, as well as carry any necessary papers.

She searched for Lucas and, yes, found him standing in the back of the room against one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Her heart gave that funny little rush it had the day before, when he had touched her cheek, and suddenly the men in the room didn’t seem nearly so intimidating. She stared at Lucas until he shifted and turned slightly and saw her in the doorway. His eyes acknowledged her presence as a small smile—of approval?—softened the frown that had darkened his face.

She took the one step that placed her in the room, and Fallon and the two men looked up from the cluster of chairs in front of Edward’s massive desk.

Type A and suspicious.

She returned their steady appraisal.

First Fallon and then his associates stood. All remained silent, as she did, waiting.... Waiting for what?

Finally a shadow of a smile rewarded her patience. “Miss Carlton,” Fallon said, “welcome home.”

Meg sank into the deep leather chair beside the fireplace in Edward’s study after the men left. For a first meeting, it hadn’t been too bad, a few affidavits, a little uncomfortable conversation and, until Lucas had put a stop to it, a gentle probing by the attorneys about those events of twenty-five years ago that remained shrouded by the mists of time.

There would be more, much more, the next day and in the days afterward, as Meg resumed a life she had never dreamed of. As she did what she knew now she must do—protect Danny from the claims his father and even the grandparents who had turned their backs on him quite probably would make on him and his interest in the Carlton wealth if anything should happen to her.

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