Unwrapping the Playboy / The Playboy's Gift. Marie Ferrarella
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“‘Bye. I’ve really gotta go.”
And with that, he began to make his retreat. But her voice stopped him.
“Kullen—”
Something in his mother’s voice caught his attention. He turned around and waited. “Yes?”
Because she was an honest woman, Theresa felt compelled to be up-front with her son. In this case, that would entail telling him that last weekend she had catered a rather large charity luncheon for Anne McCall, Lilli McCall’s mother. The conversation got around to their children. When Anne had told her that her daughter was back in Bedford and, coincidentally, was in dire need of a good family lawyer, Theresa’s heart had begun to race.
More than anything, Theresa wanted to tell her son that she’d been quick to mention he had become a lawyer and that she’d given his number to a greatly relieved Anne. She very much wanted to tell him that this afternoon he would be seeing Lilli, a woman, she’d discovered quite by accident, that he’d dated briefly in law school.
But because Theresa knew that he would see this as a setup on her part and thus would most likely palm the whole case off on Kate, Theresa forced a smile and merely told him, “Have a nice afternoon, dear.”
Returning her smile, he said, “Thanks, I will.” And then, her six-foot-two, dark-haired, handsome son went off, utterly unsuspecting, to start his afternoon.
And just possibly, Theresa fervently hoped, to begin the rest of his life.
Lilli McCall wasn’t sure that this was such a good idea.
Before leaving the house, she’d picked up the phone three times to call Kullen’s office to cancel her appointment. But each time she began to press the numbers she stopped. If she broke this appointment, she would have to find another lawyer. And find one in a hurry.
Time was running out on her. She couldn’t just close her eyes and pretend that everything was all right—because it so wasn’t. It hadn’t been all right since she’d opened Elizabeth Dalton’s registered letter several weeks ago, completely out of the blue. The letter that had made her move back to Bedford in hopes of eluding the woman. She should have known better. The woman had tentacles that reached everywhere.
A second letter had found her here.
The letter, written on fine linen, dripped with condescension and sarcasm. Worse, it had contained a threat that even a seven-year-old couldn’t miss.
A threat that she wouldn’t allow to happen. She intended to fight Elizabeth Dalton with her dying breath, if it came to that.
But that meant going to court—or at least getting a damn good lawyer who would not just fight the good fight for her, but win.
Win by any means possible.
If she could fight a clean fight, she would, but she wasn’t so naive she believed for one moment that Elizabeth Dalton intended to fight fairly. The widow of a man who had been heir to a pharmaceutical empire, she detested people who opposed her and loved getting her way.
Loved winning.
Lilli had no doubt that the rich socialite would instruct her lawyer to use every dirty trick in the book to get what she wanted.
And what the woman wanted was her son.
Elizabeth’s grandson.
The problem was that she didn’t know any lawyers, good or bad. Why should she? Despite three quarters of a year of law school behind her, she’d never needed one before, never knew anyone who’d needed one before, which now left her at a terrible disadvantage.
But she knew Kullen. Knew that he was good and kind and caring, so that was a start. Because he had turned out to be a lawyer and was still right here in Bedford, maybe fate was finally being kind to her.
Still, arriving ten minutes early for her appointment, Lilli sat in her small, tidy blue car in Rothchild, McDowell and Simmons’s parking lot, debating one last time the wisdom of what she was about to do. Debating, again, canceling her appointment.
She’d even pushed his office number on her keypad, her finger hovering over the send button, before she flipped her phone closed, shoved it into her purse and then got out of the car. She all but marched into the six-story building. But when she stepped into the elevator, Lilli felt not unlike a doomed soul walking the last mile. Or riding up to it, as it were.
Jonathan, think of Jonathan, she told herself. Jonathan is all that matters. You have to keep him out of that woman’s clutches. Or she’ll turn him into a carbon copy of his father.
And that, Lilli knew, would be a fate worse than death.
The elevator door opened all too quickly and she got out.
As she walked the short distance to the impressive offices of Rothchild, McDowell and Simmons, Lilli fervently prayed she was doing the right thing.
Because she was putting her son’s future—and his fate—into the hands of a man she’d walked out on all those years ago.
Chapter Two
There were days, Kullen thought, when life seemed like a reenactment of the Indianapolis 500. But instead of cars, the minutes and hours madly whizzed by him. It was all he could do to keep things remotely straight.
If he were honest, he doubted he could keep his sanity if it wasn’t for the woman his father had hired as his chief secretary so many years ago.
Selma Walker was no longer a secretary. These days, she was an administrative assistant, a title that seemed to annoy her at times, or “vex” her, as she was wont to say. She liked “calling a rose a rose,” and she was a secretary. A damn good secretary. And proud of it.
Selma was only slightly less old than the proverbial hills. A small, thin bit of a woman with unnaturally black hair, she was, despite her steamroller attitude and undisclosed age, sharp as a tack. It was Selma who kept Kullen’s—as well as everyone else’s—schedule straight. She personally filled in appointments on his desk calendar as well as, reluctantly, his computer. She really distrusted anything electronic and this included the elevator. Every morning and evening, she took the stairs.
The woman had told him more than once that she liked the feel of pen and paper and that, come a power failure—or a sunspot—everything electronic would be rendered useless. At that point, all the old-fashioned methods, heavily relying on brain power, would be called into service because the traditional methods, she maintained, were the best.
If Selma had an actual failing, other than her less than sunny disposition, it was her handwriting. Surprisingly for one of her generation, it was far worse than chicken scratch. When this was pointed out, she took umbrage, tersely saying that she could read every word. This placed her in a very small group that numbered exactly one.
Which was why, although he’d glanced at his desk calendar, Kullen wound up caught completely off guard when he heard the knock on his door and instructed the person on the other side, his new client, to come in.
Up until that point, all he’d known about the new client was that she was female and single. He’d learned to recognize what in Selma’s handwriting passed for either “Mrs.” or “Mr.” The former had one scribbled letter more. The third title, Ms., Selma refused to acknowledge or insert. To her, unmarried women were Miss, not Ms. She insisted that Ms. was an abbreviation for manuscript and wouldn’t attach it to a human being. Thus, the name he’d fleetingly looked at had no title before it.
While the client’s actual name was a mystery to him, Kullen saw no reason for concern. The name of this single female would inevitably come out during the introductions. He’d long since given up verbally dueling with Selma over her handwriting, preferring to have his wits challenged by his new client rather than his stubborn administrative assistant.
Knowing his new client’s gender and general marital status left Kullen entirely unprepared for the actual sight of