Page 325 of A Merry Mountain Christmas

“And as I told you, good things come to those who wait,” Dottie said cheerfully.

“So something good will come from this?” he asked. “What couldyoupossibly giveme?”

“Peace of mind,” Dottie said in her soothing voice. “The knowledge that your eldest daughter will be marrying a good man. A man who loves her to the moon and back.”

“A man who just happens to be your great-nephew,” he sneered. “You’re both after my money.”

It sounded like Dottie blew a raspberry. “I don’t want your money, and River certainly doesn’t either. He wants to make a life with the woman he loves. Love makes a person rich, Prescott, not money, but you never have understood that.”

“You’re a fine one to talk. You stuck to my father for decades, hoping he’d cave and finally marry you. You were afterhismoney. My father had many faults, but he was sharp as a tack. He saw you as a gold digger and strung you along, hoping to appease you without marriage.”

Dottie let out a hearty laugh. “Oh, Prescott,” she said while trying to catch her breath. “That was quite a story for such a droll, unimaginative man.”

“You think this isfunny?” he asked in a tone that probably made his subordinates quiver in their overpriced Italian shoes, but Dottie only laughed again.

“Some parts are humorous, and others are tragic. I still don’t understand how the Buchanan good humor passed you by and went straight to your children. Your father was always such fun.”

“My daughters might be flighty like their mother, but Lee is exactly like me.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain of that,” she said, her amusement fading. “Lee just needs a chance to breathe.” She paused, then said, “And Jack…he’s a good man too. Your father tried to push you to have a relationship with your son, but I told Beau it would never work. Especially not with the strings he attached. You’re not the kind of man who likes being forced to do anything, even visit your own child.”

Beau was the one who’d made Prescott come visit him? That meant Beau had been aware of his existence for far longer than he’d realized.

“I told Beau you had to want it,” Dottie continued. “That all you’d do was hurt the poor boy, but he was so insistent. It was one of the few things we disagreed over.”

“There were only a few?” he asked in a snide tone.

“Believe it or not, Prescott, your father asked me to marry him many times. I was the one who always turned him down. I needed my independence.”

“That, and his money was gone.”

“Funny, he asked me while he still had it,” she said. “He couldn’t bear to ask me again after he gave you money the last time. That was most of what he had left.”

Maisie’s eyes widened and her gaze pinned Jack. He was just as stunned. Beau had given Prescott most of his money?

“You like to call yourself a self-made man,” she said with a hint of judgment, which was more than Jack had ever heard her use, “but I know where you got the money to kick your commercial real estate venture off the ground. You broke your father’s heart when you stole your mother’s heirloom jewelry.”

“She wanted me to have it,” he countered.

“To hand it down to your children,” she said in a stern tone. “Not to hawk at a pawn shop.”

“I didn’t take it to a pawn shop. I sold it to an antiquities house that deals with fine jewelry.”

“Same difference. Whether they lay in a smudged glass case or on a bed of fine velvet, you sold the things your mother held dear. The pieces she hoped you’d give to your future daughters one day.”

“Ididgive it to Georgie and Adalia in a way,” he said in a pompous tone. “I invested it into a successful business.”

“A business you purposely kept your daughters out of, although you actually did them a favor with that decision,” Dottie said. “And if your business is so successful, why did you go to your father on several occasions, asking for money?”

He hesitated. “There were extenuating circumstances.”

“Like fraud and misappropriation of funds?” she asked in a direct tone.

Maisie’s mouth dropped open, and Jack’s heart started hammering in his chest. His father had committed fraud?

Prescott was quiet for several seconds, then said in a tight voice, “Mistakes were made.”

“Yes,” she said. “That we can agree upon. Mistakes were made all the way around. I told Beau not to give you money the first time, when you and your partner were at risk of being indicted, but he couldn’t bear the thought of your children living without you.” Her voice broke. “Even then, he hoped you’d be a better father to your children than he had been to you when you were young, but you turned out to be much worse.”

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