The Perfect Distraction

Allowing her to run away and keep running, which was her first instinct when it came to conflict.

So it was good that this issue with her trust had come up. Sometimes you needed to be forced to slay your dragons.

And she wasn’t really going in without back up, even if she was alone in the car. She had a great new lawyer, one she had absolute faith in. Mick Rhodes had been all business when she’d met him at his firm’s office. He’d reviewed the trust documents she’d brought with her, told her exactly how he was going to proceed, and warned her about what Richard was likely to do in response.

Which apparently wasn’t anything Rhodes was too worried about.

If she had any hesitation about her attorney at all, it was because clearly the only reason he was taking her on was that Sean had asked him to. Rhodes was a heavy hitter corporate litigator, not a private client T&E guy. And she knew this because while sitting in the man’s waiting room, she’d read all about him in the newest issue of Business Week. He’d been on the cover.

Anyway, with Rhodes in her hip pocket, she felt like she was going into battle with a Sherman tank. And didn’t that make her feel better about her odds.

Except…well, the trust was only part of it. She really did need to learn how to relate to Richard. They were tied together through her father, and though that man was dead, the web he’d spun remained in the business he’d started. As well as in the bad blood he’d left behind among his children.

Forty-five minutes later, she spotted the Greenwich exit on the highway. As she got off, she tried to remember when she’d last been to the family house. It hadn’t been since her father had died. So that was four years? Five?

Richard was the one who’d inherited the place and she was willing to bet everything was exactly the same now that he was living there. Say what you would about her half brother, he’d always been a loyal child. Loyal to the point of obsession. The son had not so much admired the father as he had aspired to be the father.

So yes, everything was going to be as it had been.

Mad drove through the town proper, smiling at the shops she recognized, assessing the new ones that had cropped up. She had memories of visits to the ice cream shop and the stationery store and the fruit market. The trips had always been chaperoned by different people. The nanny. The housekeeper. The cook. And she’d love the excursions not just for the excitement of it all but because she’d been with kind people whose company she’d felt comfortable in.

Beyond the town center, she came up to a pair of stone pillars that were marked with brass plaques engraved with the name Maguire in Old English text. As she eased into the driveway and proceeded down the alley of trees, her hands tightened on the Viper’s gearshift and steering wheel.

Relax, she told herself. Just relax…This is going to be fine.

Because you’re going to make it fine.

She forced herself to breathe and took refuge in the summer splendor that surrounded her. The canopy of maples overhead formed a verdant tunnel and the grass that flowed over the grounds was a smooth, liquid green. Waning sunlight trickled through the leaves and dotted the drive…until it seemed that gold coins had been tossed from the heavens and were still bouncing as they landed.

What a beautiful color, she thought. So yellow, so bright.

She pictured Spike’s eyes and wanted to curse.

Thoughts of that man were always popping into her mind, usually when she least appreciated the shocking jolt. Like now. Or when she was trying to fall asleep.

Boy, she and Spike had really gotten off on the wrong foot, hadn’t they? Their few interactions had had the rhythm of a skipped record, mostly jarring, bad interruptions of what two people should be like when they met up. If only they’d had a little more time.

Yeah, but then what? He was all about blondes like the Doublemint twins and she didn’t have a lot of chewing gum in her.

And yet…even though it was crazy, she hoped she’d see him again. Maybe at Alex and Cass’s wedding? Assuming she could get to the ceremony given her sailing schedule?

Or maybe…not at all. Maybe she would never run into him again.

Somehow that made her feel hollow.

Enough, she thought, taking the last bend in the drive. She had plenty to deal with considering she was about to take Richard by the horns. For her to waste time pining after some man was not only pathetic, but draining.

Mad eased up on the accelerator.

Up ahead, the house she’d spent her childhood in appeared before her like a mountain, all red bricks and white columns and black shutters. The place was a real show-stopper: twenty-one rooms on five acres smack dab in the middle of Greenwich.

The estate had been bought by their father when Value Shop Supermarkets had gone public in the seventies and it was just the kind of mansion you’d expect a business magnate to live in: big money even in a wealthy zip code.

Personally, she’d always liked the lawn best. It was great for catching fireflies and doing cartwheels. As for the rest of it—the pristine facade and the formal rooms and the decorator style and the antiques—that kind of stuff she could cheerfully leave at the side of the road. There was something about engineered beauty that made her nervous.

Probably because it was just such a cover-up in their case. Subterfuge for the ugly dysfunction within the family.

As she went around the circular drive, there were a number of cars parked in front of the house and not much room. She ended up easing the Viper in between a Mercedes the size of an elephant and a vintage, mouse-like MGB convertible. After turning off her car, she picked her duffel bag up from the passenger seat, got out, and realized she wasn’t breathing again.

Looking to the sky, she wondered whether there was a patron saint for flinchy younger half sisters? Probably not.

So instead of praying, she decided to lead with the false confidence routine, squaring her shoulders and marching up to the house as though she had a backbone thick as a red oak.

The butler who answered the front door was someone she’d never seen before, but she recognized the formal dress. Her father had always made the staff wear uniforms and evidently so too did Richard.

“Yes?” the man said. His voice was as precise as his tidy gray hair. Matter of fact, he kind of looked like a living doll, all perfectly arranged. Eyes were even a little beady, too, though not unkind.

“I’m Richard’s half sister, Madeline. Madeline Maguire.” She felt like flashing a picture ID.

“Oh—ah, you are expected.” Although clearly not what he had expected. “May I take your bag to your room?”

“Thanks. Are they already seated for dinner?”

“Yes.” He hesitated as he took her bag. “But…perhaps you’d like to change before going in?”

“No.” She was late enough already.

She thanked him again and went to face the lions. By the volume of talk coming out of the dining room, she figured there were probably twenty people tonight. Not a surprise. Her father had always said that was a good number. Intimate enough so there could be a single conversation over the table; public enough so that rivalries could be diffused.

The moment she came into the dining room’s archway, Richard looked up from the head of the table. Somehow, it was a shock to seen him, even though he hadn’t changed at all.

No, she thought, he was just the same. Still pale-haired, tanned, fit…with eyes like motion detectors. When Richard looked at you, you weren’t so much stared at as surveilled.

While the conversation at the table dimmed, his eyes flicked over her, reviewing the khakis and the polo she had on. His annoyance and disgust were evident without the benefit of words: his lowered eyebrows said it all.

To avoid the urge to run back to her car, Mad assessed his guests. As she took in the group, all she could think of were salt-and-pepper shakers: everyone was lined up, men alternating with women, the whole lot of them glowing with wealth. And their fancy exteriors honestly seemed to house dry goods. Not a belly laugh in any of them, she’d wager.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said to no one in particular.

“Traffic must have been awful,” Richard replied smoothly. He nodded to an empty seat on his right. “You will sit here.”

As several people murmured and all of them stared, Mad started on the walk of shame down the long, thin room, her loafers making a clicking sound on the inlaid floor. She smiled in a general way, feeling like an inept, ugly Miss America candidate. Who was about to get dinged by the judges.

When she sat down, Richard said under his breath, “You could have called.”

“I know. But I don’t have a cell phone.”

“Which makes you the only person in America without one.”

Richard turned away and promptly started to talk horses with the woman on his left, as if he were resuming a conversation that had been rudely interrupted.

Mad took a sip from her water glass and thought fondly of her new lawyer.

As a salad plate was put down in front of her, she snuck a peek at her half brother, and up this close, she realized he had in fact changed. Richard no longer resembled their father, he’d reached his life goal and had turned into the man: he was a carbon copy now, presiding over his fancy guests, eating with Christophe silver on Royal Crown Derby plates, sipping from Baccarat glasses. And yes, the Maguire family signet ring was on his right ring finger.

As their father had always worn it.

Looking at the stamp in the heavy gold, everything slid into place.

Richard was like a Brooks Brothers bobble head spitting back criticisms that had made her cringe when she was growing up: her father back from the dead. That was why she was so weak around her half brother. It wasn’t just because he’d been hard on her when they’d been younger.

Putting a label on the dynamic kind of helped and she wondered why she hadn’t figured it out sooner. Then again, she’d always done her best to avoid thinking about Richard.

Which was part of the problem, wasn’t it?

Mad blotted her lips, returned the damask napkin to her lap and realized that she’d crossed her feet together under her chair like a good little girl.

Oh, hell, no, she thought. If she was going to make it through this weekend in one piece, she needed to fight the urge to fall into place.

Feeling like a rebel, she eased up, cocked one foot under her butt, and sat back down with her leg on the chair.

“Isn’t that right, Madeline,” Richard drawled.

“Excuse me?” She deliberately played with the tassel on her loafer. Sure enough, Richard caught the movement and his eyes bugged out.

He opened his mouth as if he were going to scold her, but seemed to realize that would have been absurd.

As he cleared his throat, it seemed more curse than cough. “Penelope was commenting on the new Rubens exhibition at the Met. But I told her you wouldn’t have seen it because that kind of thing doesn’t interest you.”

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