with her, but it hardly seemed possible that Lydia would take her side against the family.
“Brothers and sisters often argue, I guess. I don’t have any siblings, so I can’t say for sure.”
“Ainsley and Deidre fight with each other because they don’t want to hurt their mother’s soft heart. They’re afraid to take their quarrel to the real source of their unhappiness. Baxter Manning.”
Here was blunt speaking with a vengeance. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” she said cautiously.
“Baxter has to rule the roost, surely you’ve figured that out about him. Ainsley must have a job with the company, because that’s what Baxter expects, even though the boy would rather dabble with his drawings.” She dismissed Ainsley with a glance. “Meanwhile Deidre, who actually might accomplish something in the business, is left clerking in a genteel shop, waiting to make the proper marriage.”
Corrie blinked. “Do you mean they listen to him? That sounds like something out of the last century.”
“Baxter is something out of the last century. And since he controls the purse strings, everyone has to do what he wishes or risk losing his support. There are periodic rebellions, but so far no one has actually broken away.”
Corrie’s gaze sought out Lucas. He’d propped his tall figure against a cherry armoire and frowned across the room at her.
“That doesn’t include Lucas.”
“Even Lucas.” Lydia’s eyes were bright with what might have been either interest or malice. “In theory Lucas runs Baxter’s companies, but in actual practice he can’t make a single decision without being second-guessed.”
Lucas didn’t impress her as a man who’d allow himself to be dictated to, but she didn’t really know him, did she? And if he had his way, she never would.
“And then there’s you.” Lydia’s smile held an edge.
“What about me?”
“Didn’t you realize, my dear? Baxter doesn’t care a snap if you’re his long-lost granddaughter or not. He’s sent you here as a threat, to show the others what might happen to all that lovely money if they don’t do what he says.”
THREE
Corrie took a deep breath as she reached the bottom of the stairs, leaving Eulalie’s dinner party behind. All she wanted now was out, away from all those people with their inimical faces and their crosscurrents of emotion. Then the steps behind her creaked, and she realized that Lucas had followed her down.
“Haven’t you baited me enough for one night?” She was too annoyed to try to be polite.
He lifted his hands in surrender. “I’m just on my way home myself. Did you like getting the lowdown on all of us from Lydia?”
She still hadn’t decided what she thought about the woman’s comments and wouldn’t tell Lucas in any event. “Lydia was kind enough to ask me to drop in on her. She realized I might want to see where my mother lived when she was here.”
“Did she now? I wonder what’s going on in that shrewd brain of hers.”
She glanced at his face in the low light from the fixture at the bottom of the stairs, but it didn’t give anything away. Beyond him, the family room was dark with shadows. “Is she shrewd?”
“Definitely.” He leaned against the door frame, apparently ready to talk. “She runs half the cultural boards in Savannah practically single-handed, and she took the demise of the symphony like a death in the family.”
“You said she was an old family friend. Is that why Mr. Manning was willing to rent Trey’s house to her? I’d think he probably wouldn’t want a stranger living in such close quarters.”
Lucas shrugged, glancing through the glass pane in the door toward the dark garden. Lights shone along the walks that divided the houses. “I suppose. Are you picturing it as yours?”
Exasperation swept through her like a wind off the mountains. “I’m telling you for approximately the hundredth time, I don’t want anything. I’m just trying to understand why you all live so close together.”
“I don’t know why Lydia decided to rent the house. The families were always close, so maybe she felt at home here. Eulalie lives here because Baxter took her in when she married someone with more charm than money. We all preserve the fiction that she keeps house for him.”
Lucas was being surprisingly open. Because his family had annoyed him with their constant bickering? Or was this yet another trap he was setting for her?
“And why do you live here?”
He frowned absently. “Baxter offered us the house when Julia and I married. She wanted to be close to her mother, and I was working twelve-hour days at the business. It seemed like a good idea. Why do you care? Are you storing up tales to spill to Baxter?”
“No. Why are you telling me? Are you trying to trip me up?”
He gave a reluctant laugh. “You’re something, Corrie Grant. If that’s who you really are.”
“That’s what my birth certificate says.”
He was very close, the garden level very quiet. The faint sound of voices drifted down from the floor above. “Birth certificates can be faked.”
“And fakes can be found out. Mine isn’t. Why can’t you see…”
She looked up and met his eyes. Whatever else she’d intended to say seemed to get lost, and her breath caught.
Lucas—she didn’t even like him. So why should her heart be pounding and her breath ragged just because he stood so close, looked so intently?
He felt it, too. She could see it in the sudden darkening of his eyes.
She shook off the sensation. She was tired. Jet-lagged. She hadn’t felt a thing. “I am exactly who I say I am,” she said shortly. “Go ahead, investigate. You won’t find anything else.”
“Maybe not.” If he’d felt anything, it was gone now. “You can be sure I’ll try.” He went quickly out into the garden, the door banging behind him.
She waited a moment or two, giving him time to get clear of the path. Then she stepped outside and took a deep breath of scented garden air. It was still muggy, but it felt good after the welter of emotions she’d been through today.
A wrought-iron bench curved beneath a magnolia tree as if it had grown there. She sank down on it, not ready to go in yet.
That sudden little spark of attraction had been a shock—one that neither of them expected or welcomed. Well, it was gone now, drifting away as if it had never been.
She sat for a while, barely thinking, just letting the peace of the garden seep into her. She’d questioned why they all lived here, but this garden in itself was a reason.
Finally, realizing how late it must be getting, she made her way slowly toward Baxter’s house. Her feet made little sound on the brick path, and a dense growth of shrubbery enclosed her. Maybe that was why, when the voice came, it startled her so much.
“…she’s my problem, not yours.”
It took a moment to realize the voice belonged to Ainsley, another moment to understand that he was talking on a cell phone. He didn’t sound stammering or diffident now.
“I know that.” His voice was sharp. “Just stay out of it. This is my problem, and I’ll take care of it.”
He might mean anything, she assured herself, but his “she’s my problem,” seemed to ring in her ears. She was probably the only problem facing Ainsley right now, and the threat he thought she represented to his inheritance.
She felt chilled in spite of the warm, humid