Overnight Heiress. Modean Moon
if you wanted to eat, you’d have to fix it yourself,” he said.
His moods never lasted long. Maybe if she just ignored this one it would go away. Meg doubted that, but it was worth at least one more try. “So you did, oh fearless prognosticator. Did you happen to foresee what I would be preparing?”
“Corn dogs, French fries and double-chocolate ice cream?”
“Hah!” Meg grabbed lettuce and a platter of baked chicken from the refrigerator. “Swami sees with a broken crystal ball.”
Danny grinned at her, her mischievous and loving son again for at least this moment. “It was worth a try.”
The rich were different, or at least lived differently, Meg thought moments later as she and Danny lunched on sandwiches made of thinly sliced chicken on a rich homemade dark rye bread with tangy mayonnaise that had never seen a processing plant and tomatoes that had ripened naturally somewhere in a warm climate.
“still want corn dogs?” Meg asked as her son with the hollow leg built his second monster sandwich.
“Mmmph.”
She interpreted that as a “no,” or maybe a “later, Mom,” and grmned. Danny’s appetite, at least, had not changed.
“So,” she asked, already knowing the answer, “have you had a chance to check out this place?”
Danny nodded. “Big,” he said. “Big house. Big yard. Big fence.” He set his sandwich on its plate and looked at her. “Did somebody really steal you when you were just a little kid?”
Not only had he been checking out the place, he’d obviously been spying on conversations, as well, because neither she nor Lucas had told him just exactly how Meg had gotten separated from her family. “That’s what they tell me,” she said.
“Gee. You must have been scared.”
Meg nodded. “I expect I was.”
“You don’t know?”
She shook her head. “No, Danny, I don’t remember,.”
“Then maybe it’s a mistake, and you’re; not who they think?”
She reached across the table and took his wildly gesturing hand in hers. “Aside from the fact that my fingerprints match, remember that funny little birthmark I have behind my left ear?”
He nodded.
“Meg Carlton had one just like it. And Jennie was right. You do look like your Uncle Edward. A lot. Especially when he was your age.”
“So we do belong here?”
She smiled at him. “Yes, Danny. I think at long last we have found a place where we really belong.”
Lucas returned minutes after she had taken Danny to the only other downstairs room where she felt comfortable, the small sitting room, and had begun showing her son the photo albums Edward had left for her. Danny tensed when he saw the man standing in the doorway; Meg tensed when she saw the hummingbird of a woman who accompanied him.
“They’re on their way?” Meg asked.
Lucas nodded.
“Yes,” the woman said, just that, yes, as she stepped into the room. “This will be a pleasure. Oh, yes, Megan, you will be stunning.”
“Excuse me?”
Lucas shook his head, and what might have been a smile passed over his features. Yes. Definitely a smile. But gone so quickly she almost missed it. “Let me introduce you. Meg Wilson, this is Marianna Richards. Marianna, this is Meg and her son Danny.”
The woman smiled at Danny and advanced on her, a tiny, delicate firestorm of color and self-assurance. “Jewel tones,” she said. “Definitely. And drama. Lots of drama. Scarves and hats and—oh, yes—more height. Two-inch heels. Maybe three.”
“I beg your pardon,” Meg said, looking from the woman to Lucas in confusion.
“Oh. Oh, I am sorry,” Marianna said. “Edward has asked me to oversee your makeover.”
Makeover. Meg felt every defensive hackle she possessed rise up in indignation. “Makeover,” she said tightly. “I don’t think so. If I’m not accepta—I’m perfectly happy with who I am.”
“Oh, yes. Of course you are. And you should be. But when the reporters come, and they will, snapping around like a pack of ill-mannered little terriers, you are going to want to look down your lovely aristocratic nose at them and silence them. I’m just here as a friend of the family—for no other reason, I assure you—to help you be able to do that.”
And to make sure I look like a Carlton, Meg thought. But of course she couldn’t say that. And why shouldn’t she look like someone who belonged to this wealth, she realized; she was a Carlton. Even though she didn’t feel like one. Maybe she did need this woman’s help. She looked up and caught Lucas studying her quietly from across the room, not condemning, just offering a steady, nonjudgmental acceptance of whatever she decided to do.
“And me? Are you going to try to make me over, too?” Danny asked with the same belligerence Meg had heard in his voice earlier that morning.
Marianna turned slowly toward him and raked an appraising glance from hair he had managed somehow to spike, over disreputable T-shirt and jeans, to athletic shoes that looked as though he had found a mud puddle to scrape them through.
“That’s quite a fashion statement,” she said. “How old are you? Twelve?” She glanced back at Lucas. “How old was Jamie when she discovered this very same style?”
For a moment, Lucas didn’t answer, almost as though he understood the turmoil behind Danny’s revolt, and then he smiled, falling in with Marianna’s teasing diversion. “Jamie’s my daughter,” he said to Danny. “She’s fourteen, a little older than you are, but she went through some pretty hard times after her mom died. I thought that in spite of the age difference, you two might find a few common interests and that she should be the one to introduce you around. Instead of me, I mean,” he added when he saw Danny’s pending and instinctive refusal.
Danny subsided, silent but once again sullen. Meg wanted to shake him, and she wanted to hug him. Instead, she looked at Lucas who seemed to be waiting for some sort of answer. Daughter, huh? Well, that answered a question she hadn’t even let herself ask. That was at least one reason why it was Lucas Lambert, the sheriff, she would be seeing in the future. Lucas Lambert., the man, obviously had enough to fill his life, if he was raising a child alone. God knew she understood how draining that could be.
And it answered or at least hinted at answers to some of the questions she hadn’t allowed herself to ask—about his secrets, about his pain.
Meg found her smile, the cocky one the patrons at Patrick’s had known and expected, and turned it on Marianna. “Did you say aristocratic?” she asked the woman, peering down at her from an advantage of several inches.
Mananna nodded, acknowledging the role everyone in the room understood Meg was playing.
“Well, then,” Meg said, “I suspect we’d better get busy.”
He came back. Later that afternoon when he was sure Marianna would have finished the first phase of her new assignment and when he hoped that Danny had taken himself off to explore the rambling grounds of the estate.
There was no reason to return. Lucas told himself that as he parked the Land Rover and strode across the lawn. Anything he had to say to Meg could be said by telephone, or even relayed by a third party. There was no reason to think she would even want to see him again, except for the memories of the way her eyes sought his whenever her new life threw another obstacle in her path.
He found her in the garden, sitting on the sun-warmed lawn beside the marble pool and fountain that so fascinated his daughter. She had drawn up her knees to rest her chin on