Chapter 5: ....
Julia was on the treadmill when the doorbell rang. She'd been on the machine she kept in
the spare bedroom, running at six miles per hour at a two-degree incline, and her face was
red with exertion and damp with sweat. Her hair had started out in a relatively tidy
ponytail, but motion and effort had combined to leave it tousled, with strands of hair that
had escaped from the ponytail sticking haphazardly to her forehead.
When she heard the chime of the bell over the whirring of the treadmill and the slapslap-
slap of her sneakers on the belt, she considered not answering it. If some salesperson
was foolish enough to brave the snowy roads just to try to sell her carpet cleaning or a
security system or meat from the back of a truck, then they deserved to be ignored.
If it was her mother, then that was even more of an argument in favor of pretending
she'd never heard the bell.
But what if it's Mike?
She could imagine a scenario in which he needed to be talked down after another
disastrous conversation with Emma. If she didn't come to the door, he might do
something stupid, like tell his ex-wife he still loved her and wanted her back.
She turned off the treadmill, waited for it to come to a slow halt, and then went to the
front door on rubbery legs.
Julia had imagined salespeople. She'd imagined her mother. She'd imagined Mike.
But she hadn't imagined a mouthwateringly handsome man in his late twenties with
wavy dark hair and piercing blue eyes. Nor had she imagined that the man in question
would be carrying Mrs. Newmeyer's dog.
A blast of cold air from the open door chilled Julia's sweaty, lightly clad body, and
she grabbed a coat from the rack next to the door and pulled it on.
She'd meant to say Yes? or May I help you? or possibly, I don't accept sales
solicitations. There was always, Would you marry me? But instead, she said, "Why do
you have Mrs. Newmeyer's dog?"
The man, whose expensive overcoat was now lightly frosted with dog hair, looked
down at the animal as though he'd almost forgotten he was holding it.
"Oh. So, you know where he belongs? Good. He ran up to me when I got out of the
car. I thought maybe he was yours. I was worried about him because he seemed lost, and
it's cold outside."
"Here, I'll take him." Julia reached out for the dog, and the guy transferred the fuzzy,
warm body into her arms. "You know you're not supposed to be outside," she scolded the
dog. "Your mom's going to be mad." She rubbed the dog's head affectionately.
She turned to the guy on her front porch, figuring now that he'd done his duty as a
good Samaritan, he'd want to get on his way spreading the word of the Lord or selling
vacuum cleaners, or whatever it was that he was doing out here. Still, she couldn't
exactly imagine someone this sexy selling solar panels. What did he want? She felt a little
butterfly thing going on in her stomach and cursed the fact that she was losing her
composure over a particularly handsome face. And those incredible blue eyes.
"I'll take him home. Thanks for bringing him," she said. That was her cue to close
the door, but she didn't seem to be doing it. She just seemed to be standing there looking
at him.
"I was actually coming to speak to you. I'm looking for Drew McCray. Does he live
here?"
That certainly threw some cold water on her attraction to the stranger at her door.
She hadn't pegged this guy as a debt collector, but apparently she'd called that one
wrong.
She scowled at him. "No one by that name lives here." It was her standard line, the
one she'd urged her mother to use. True but evasive. She began to close the door.
"But you know him," the guy said. "I can tell by the way you're glaring at me. I
really need to talk to him. It's urgent."
Julia sighed, the dog growing heavy in her arms, and looked at him pleadingly.
"Can't you guys just leave him alone? His ex is the one you should be going after. He
can't pay you what he doesn't have." Her eyes grew hot, but she wasn't going to cry in
front of this guy she didn't even know. Even if he was a lowlife collections thug.
"Hold on," he said. " 'You guys' who? I'm not sure what you're talking about."
"You're not a debt collector?"
"Uh … no. I'm an attorney. I'm here from San Diego. There's a legal matter that
requires his attention."
Her face shut down again. An attorney. That explained his expensive coat and
upscale haircut. With that face, he probably did well in court. "God, you people. Who's
suing him? I told you, it's his ex you should be going after. I also told you he's not here."
And she closed the door on him.
Well, that was interesting.
Colin stood on the front porch, thinking about all he'd just learned. Drew McCray
had apparently gone through an acrimonious breakup that had resulted in lawsuits and
debt problems. And the woman he'd just spoken to was trying to protect him. Was she
the new girlfriend? New wife? Whoever she was, it was clear he'd come to the right
place.He rang the doorbell again, but she didn't answer. He thought about what to do. Call
to her through the door? Slip a note through the mail slot? Leave and come back later?
As he considered the situation, he realized that she would have to come out to take
the dog home—or the neighbor would have to come over to get it. When that happened—
and it would likely be soon—he could try again.
He got into his car, pulled his coat a little tighter around him, and settled in to wait.
Julia ignored the doorbell when it rang again. She put the dog down on the floor, and
he sat on his butt and looked up at her.
"This sucks, Duke," she told him. "Don't ever marry the wrong woman. It'll only
lead to heartache."
Duke wagged his little stump of a tail encouragingly.
She waited until she heard the hottie lawyer's footsteps going down off of the porch,
and then peeked out the window to see if Mrs. Newmeyer was home. She saw her
neighbor's Toyota in her driveway, pulled her down parka around her, and scooped the
dog up into her arms.
"Come on, Duke. I'm going to take you back to your mom."
Duke licked the underside of her chin with his pink tongue, and Julia grimaced a
little at the thought of where that tongue might have been.
She opened the front door, stepped out on the porch—and realized, too late, that the
hottie lawyer had never really left. He got out of his rental car and started toward her
purposefully. Julia kept her eyes on Mrs. Newmeyer's house and strode forward toward
her destination, trying to ignore the guy in hot pursuit of her as she crunched her way
through the snow.
"He doesn't live here," Julia said.
"But you know where he is."
"I'm not going to help you. He's had enough trouble as it is."
"What kind of trouble?"
"I don't have to tell you that."
"I'm not here to cause problems," he said from somewhere close behind her. "I'm
here about his inheritance."
If he'd intended to shock her into stopping, it worked. Julia froze halfway between
her house and Mrs. Newmeyer's, and she slowly turned to face him. Duke whined softly
in her arms.
"His inheritance?"
The guy nodded, a grim look on his face. "It's substantial."
Julia stared at him for a moment, considering what he'd said.
Who in the world could be leaving Drew a substantial inheritance? Nobody in their
family was above middle class, and as far as she knew, no one had died recently. She
supposed it was possible there was some great aunt she didn't know about, but why
would the mystery aunt be leaving money to Drew?
She knew, also, that debt collectors routinely used deception to locate their marks.
That had to be it. This guy—heart-stoppingly delicious as he was—had to be lying.
"Nice try." She headed off toward Mrs. Newmeyer's house again. "I don't believe
you. Now, please get off my property."
"I'm not on your property. I'm on Mrs. Newmeyer's property," the guy said.
It was true, he was. Damn it.
She continued across the snowy yard, clomped up the front steps in her sneakers,
which she hadn't thought to change since her workout, and rang the front doorbell.
Nobody answered, but Mrs. Newmeyer had a bad habit of forgetting to lock her front
door. Julia tried it, found it unlocked, opened it just enough to put the dog inside, and
then closed it again and turned to go back home.
The problem was, the guy was standing at the bottom of Mrs. Newmeyer's porch
stairs, blocking her exit.
"Would you move, please?" Her arms were crossed protectively across her body as
she glared down at him.
"I need you to listen to me."
"Look, Mr. …"
"Delaney. Colin Delaney." He tried to hand her a business card, but she didn't take
it.
"Mr. Delaney, with all due respect, I don't actually care what you need me to do."
She walked down the steps, shoved her way past him, and then headed toward her house.
"Hey!" he called after her, still following her across the yard. "Whoever Drew
McCray is to you, it seems like you care about him. Do you really want to stand between
him and a really quite impressive inheritance?"
She stopped so suddenly that he almost ran into her back. She turned and shot her
best go screw yourself look at him.
"I don't believe there's an inheritance, and I don't believe you're a lawyer. Or, if you
are, then you're here because you're somebody else's lawyer—someone who wants to
hurt Drew. So I'm going to need you to get off my property"—she looked pointedly
around them to indicate that he was, in fact, back on her side of the boundary—"before I
call the police."
She marched up the steps of her own front porch and through the front door,
slamming it and locking it behind her. She moved the curtains on the front window aside
just enough to see him walking unsteadily through the snow and back toward his car.
Well, that went perfectly.
Colin sat in the driver's seat of his rental sedan, wondering what to do next. If he
went back up to the house and rang the doorbell again, it seemed likely that she really
would call the police. But it also seemed likely that if he could just persuade her that he
was who he said he was, then she might tell him what he needed to know.
He considered his options.
He could try to find Drew McCray without this woman's help. An initial search of
the Internet hadn't turned up anything useful, but he could always hire a detective to track
him down. He could start calling McCrays in Bozeman in the hopes that someone else in
the area might know the man's whereabouts.
Or, he could just go home and let the whole thing be. He could say he'd tried and
failed to find him. If Drew McCray ever presented himself, then he could collect his
inheritance. Until then, life would continue as usual for his family, without the shakeup
this new cousin would bring.
But, really, that last one was crap. He was too curious about Redmond's secret life to
let this go. He was too heartsick about Redmond's death to let his final wish go
unfulfilled.
And then there was Colin's sense of justice.
Here was this man, this Drew McCray, living in fear of debt collectors and lawsuits,
unaware that he was part of a family that had more money than any of them could spend
in ten lifetimes. He'd been denied his rightful place, denied his family. He'd been
unclaimed by his father, and God only knew what kind of damage that could do to a man.
Had he been lied to his entire life about his parentage? Did he even know the truth about
where he'd come from?
Redmond had done the wrong thing during his lifetime, in Colin's opinion, letting
his son live a lie, cut off from his blood. But through the will, he'd intended to set things
right.Colin couldn't do anything about the fact that he'd drifted away from his family over
the past few years, couldn't do anything about the distance that had formed between him
and his uncle, a distance that was now too late to bridge.
But he could do this. He could make sure his uncle's will was fulfilled. He could
bring Redmond's son into the family where he belonged. He could give him his
birthright.
He could take this one injustice, one in a world of many, and make it just a little bit
closer to right.
He sat inside the car, looking at the house.
This was the last known address for Redmond's son, the one Redmond had told
Drummond about. And the mailbox still said McCRAY.
The woman inside knew where Drew was, and she cared about him. If he could just
convince her that he was honest in his intentions, then she could help Colin to find him.
And there was another reason he wanted to try again with her.
He wanted her to think well of him. He didn't know why, but he did. The way she'd
looked at him, with anger and contempt, had stung with the pure unfairness of it. He
wanted her to look at him with something else in her eyes—earnestness, or interest, or
even compassion. He wasn't sure why that was important to him—why he cared about
the opinion of this woman with her tousled hair and her face red from the cold and the
exertion of the exercise routine he'd interrupted.
But he did care. When she had first opened the door and they'd locked eyes, he'd
thought he saw … something. Before it had all changed. He wanted to know what that
something was, and what it might mean.
He needed to take another shot with her.
But not today. Today, she was defensive and angry. Today, she wouldn't listen to
him, wasn't primed to open her ears and hear what he was saying.
He started the car, turned on the heater, and waited while the air began to warm.
Then he pulled the car out onto the snowy road and headed back toward his hotel....
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