Page 32 of The Rainbow Recipe
“I went right after Lucia dumped them. Her business was just starting up, and she didn’t have secretaries then. Vincent claimed Lucia was on a business trip to the Netherlands. Katherine refused to talk with me. I left my card on every desk I encountered with a plea for her to call when she returned. She never did. I was too furious to linger. I found one of her business cards on a desk and tried calling the number on it but only got voice mail. Katherine returned my call, said Lucia didn’t want to speak with me again.”
“I understand Katherine had no children. I wonder if she left a will? May Lucia have inherited her share of the company?” Pris usually left sleuthing to Evie and her weirdo friends, but this was her neck on the line this time. She had to start considering all angles.
Money was the root of all evil, right?
Dante rubbed the back of his neck. “I know nothing about Katherine, but I imagine Lucia has a will. Her father’s lawyers would have made her sign something when she inherited all that land. But of course, at the time, she didn’t have the twins and didn’t like her half-sister very much, so Leo is probably the beneficiary. That might change if Lucia inherits the company. I didn’t know Katherine, but a sensible businesswoman should have some plan for incapacitation or death. Someone in the company should have insisted on it.”
“You and Leo have good reason to hire a lawyer. Lucia might be a rich woman now. She has a responsibility to the land and to her children. Your lawyer can talk to her lawyers. That’s what lawyers are good for.”
He grimaced. “I don’t want a dime of her money. She relinquished her rights when she abandoned them. I don’t needanythingfrom her.”
The twins raced in carrying armloads of books. Pris raised her eyebrows again.
He wasn’t so dumb after all. Pris could tell when he got the message—thetwinsmight need the land someday.
She left him to ponder that while she washed up the breakfast dishes.
Dante settledthe twins at the library table. Drawing the first letters of the alphabet for them to copy, he flipped pages on the rest of their book stack while mulling over the conversation with Devil Woman.
He’d been warned Priscilla was a manipulator. One of her cousins had even mentioned that Pris had a habit ofrearrangingthings to her satisfaction. She had as much as said herself that she could read minds. Somehow. Sometimes. Maybe. He was starting to suspect that what she did was manipulate thoughts.
She’d certainly twisted his into pretzels.
Lawyers, she wanted him to hirelawyersto chase down Lucia. Probably because Priscilla wanted to sic her nosy family on her, but that was understandable if people were being accused of poisoning Katherine. She was also right that he needed to think of someone besides himself.
If anything happened to him...It would drop an enormous burden on his mother and the twins. And his fractured leg proved he wasn’t invulnerable. He finished off his coffee, couldn’t easily stand up to fetch another, and had no one to do it for him.
And now he could see what she was saying when she called himconte—he’d been treated like a prince all his damned life. The ancient title meant nothing, but he had land, the villa, and a position that granted him respect. As the only son and heir, he’d never had to ask anyone for anything. It had always been provided. He’d come to expect his life to fall in place—because everyone around him made it so.
No wonder Lucia had left him. She wasn’t the type to fall in line easily.
Now, he had to provide his children with what he’d been granted.Hischildren. Not just squalling nuisances he had half a mind to give back one day. It wasn’t that he disliked infants. He knew nothing about them. He’d been raised an only child in this hill fortress with only adults around him until he was old enough to leave for school. Babies were foreign objects.
But they weren’t babies anymore. Holy terrors, maybe, but not babies.
Apparently having scoured the nursery, Pris returned with a box full of alphabet letters: magnetic ones, building blocks, learning toys of every sort.
Dante sorted out the first letters of the alphabet and set them out for the twins to touch. They shoved them off the table and returned to scribbling on the paper he’d provided. Their letters looked less and less like A’s and more like boomerangs and bats.
“Your mother has booked a flight at noon,” his guest reported. “I’m taking her to the airport. If your children have passports, you’d better hide them. She’s likely to panic and take them with her.”
He hurriedly checked the table drawer. The passports were still there. He wasn’t entirely certain he was relieved. Apparently sensing that, Devil Woman dropped his notebook computer in front of him with a look of disgust and walked out.
He could shout at her about taxis and hired cars, but she was making a point—she wasn’t his to order about. He was a fast learner. The twins were his, and he had some catching up to do.
With a sigh, he lifted his aching leg under the table to rest it on the opposite chair, and gestured for the twins to take the chairs on either side of him. “Let’s look for all the A words first.” He opened their book and let them dive in. It was going to be a long morning.
Only at noon did he understand how damned long a morning could be. Dragging his aching leg to the kitchen, he carried the ingredients for peanut butter sandwiches to the table, along with a carton of milk. The children climbed up to fetch their own plastic cups from the drain board. Sitting down, he realized he’d forgotten a knife. Rather than drag himself back up again, he ordered Nan to fetch one.
Peanut butter was tough to spread on soft bread. By the time he had the twins fed, he realized he was starving and he hated peanut butter.
The twins picked that moment to run out the backdoor without explanation. At that low moment, it hit him—Devil Woman had the car and could go anywhere.
Like back to Leo’s storage cave and whatever in hell had happened in there.
That did it. It was noon. People should be up and stirring in Afterthought pretty soon. He texted Jax for all the information he had on Katherine’s death. Then he texted Priscilla to tell her the news was bad, and she’d better get back here fast, or he’d call the police.
As far as he was concerned, Pris on the loose was bad news.
