Page 5 of Timeless Pages
“You don’t even have the checkbook, numbnuts,” Nate chuckled and rolled his eyes as he pulled the checks from his jacket pocket. “This doesn’t mean we’re keeping it a bookstore, though.”
“I’m confident I can still change your mind before that decision has to be made,” Evan laughed as he took the checkbook and pen from us and then turned back to Morris. “Well, what do you say? You’ll never get more for this place than I’m offering now.”
Morris fidgeted as he thought about his decision. He looked toward the backroom, where Isabella probably still was, for several seconds before nodding to himself. “It’s a deal,” he replied, shaking Evan’s hand with a beaming smile. “I’ve waited this long. What’s a couple more weeks?”
His statement puzzled me, and I saw my ordinarily calm friend’s jaw clench as he wrote out the ten-thousand-dollar check. Whatever this was, it wasn’t about him wanting the bookstore. It had to do with the beauty in the back.
He handed Morris the check, and we shook hands with him again, promising to meet soon with our people to get the ball rolling. Then, we left.
Nate and I turned to Evan when our limo pulled away from the curb. “Care to explain what just happened?” I asked.
“You were right to be suspicious,” Evan replied, looking at Nate. “Something is definitely going on there. She lives in the store. That’s her home, and according to what she said, Jason left the shop, if not his entire estate, to his niece.”
“If she owns the shop, how can her father sell it?” I asked skeptically. Ownership was ownership. And if he didn’t legally own the shop, he couldn’t sell it.
“Apparently, he has conservator papers for her,” Evan replied.
“Why?” Nate asked.
“I don’t know,” Evan replied. “But I know she plans to fight it.” His eyes turned to me. “You should have seen the look on her face when you were looking for me, and she heard her father’s voice—stark terror. I’ve never seen someone in so much fear before. She shoved me in the closet so that he wouldn’t see me there.”
“Why would he care if you were in there talking to her?” I asked.
“Why would she flinch when he touches her?” Nate countered.
“Ok, I’ll look into the conservatorship. See what I can dig up. I know it’s already too late, but could you try not to get too attached to the pretty bookshop owner? For all we know, he has an excellent reason to be her conservator. This could all be on the up and up,” I cautioned them.
I found her attractive as well, but contrary to my many publicized exploits, I was far more selective in my partners. I let them sell the Playboy image because it kept people at a distance. If they were chasing the gossip about my sex life, then they weren’t looking too closely at everything else, and that’s how I preferred it. For a society that accepts relationships with multiple partners and pairings, you’d not expect them to care so much about it.
We arrived at our office building, which also doubled as our home, and I went straight to my office to make some calls. Finding the information I was looking for was almost too easy, and I almost wished that my reasons to caution them had been correct.
“Jason Garner left all of his assets to Isabella Wilcox, age twenty-two, his niece and sole beneficiary,” I announced as I entered our penthouse suite. Evan was sitting at the large marble island while Nate cooked. They both turned toward me as I continued to recite the background information I had found. “Her late mother was his twin sister. She died during childbirth. When she turned fifteen, Jason’s jet-setting lifestyle abruptly stopped, and she moved in with him.”
“What happened to cause that?” Evan asked.
“No idea. Morris let it happen. There isn’t a speck of proof I could find at the surface level of any contact between Isabella and Morris after that.”
“So then, why is he there now?” Nate asked. “The conservatorship? Legal?”
“Not in the slightest,” I replied as I poured myself a glass of wine and sat beside Evan. “I mean, technically, it is legal as far as the court is concerned, but how he obtained it is far from legal. There wasn’t even a paper trail for it. Just boom, the court order is signed and sealed.”
“So she had no idea it was even coming. No way to try and fight it,” Nate growled, taking his anger out on the ground beef he was browning.
“None,” I confirmed.
“And now he’s trying to sell her home as fast as possible,” Evan said softly. “That’s the rush. Now that her Uncle isn’t here to protect her, he wants her back. Back under his roof, where he can control her and do, God only knows what else, to her. ”
My mind drifted back to the odd comment Morris had made about waiting. His comment made much more sense now that I knew what I knew. He had waited this long to get her back; what was a couple more weeks? She wasn’t going anywhere. How could she? He controlled all of her money.
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
“We help her,” Evan replied.
“How?” I asked.
“Well, for starters, I know which lawyers she planned on calling to fight the conservatorship,” Evan replied as he pulled a picture up on his phone and laid it down on the island for us to see. “She gave me her list when she shoved me in the closet, I assume, so Morris didn’t find it. I recognized some of the names and took a picture of them just in case it would be useful.”
“These lawyers are all shit,” Nate scoffed as he looked over the list. “She’d be better off using ours.”
