Ever After (Nantucket Brides 3)

Hallie’s anger was rising to the surface. She held out the paper toward him. “You’re Jared Montgomery, the architect, aren’t you? I can assure you that if you plan to put a skyscraper in here, the neighborhood association will fight you to the very limit of the law.”

Her statement seemed to amuse him. “I will do my best to repress my tendency to build skyscrapers wherever I go. Are you Hallie’s stepsister?”

“No. I am Hallie.”

The smile left the man’s handsome face and for a second he looked from one young woman to the other. Without speaking, he pulled a paper from inside his briefcase and handed it to her.

Taking it, Hallie was shocked to see that it was a photocopy of her passport—only in place of her photo was one of Shelly. When she looked closely, she could see where her stepsister had carefully cut around the edges of the picture to make it fit. If you were looking at the actual passport, what she’d done would be obvious, but the photocopy hid what Hallie knew was criminal fraud.

“I had to do this,” Shelly said, her voice frantic. “You wouldn’t listen to me, so I did what I had to. If you would only listen, I wouldn’t have been forced to—”

Her look made Shelly stop talking. Silently, Hallie went to her bedroom, opened the top drawer of her bureau, and took out her passport. She went back to the living room and handed it to Mr. Montgomery.

He studied the two documents, then looked at Hallie, who was still standing. “This is my fault,” he said. “I didn’t examine this carefully enough. Now I see what’s been done.” He looked at Shelly, his dark eyes narrowed and angry. “I don’t like being part of something illegal. My lawyers will contact you.”

“I didn’t mean anything bad,” Shelly said, tears welling in her pretty eyes. “I was only trying to be fair, that’s all. Why should Hallie get so much while I get nothing? Dad would have wanted me to have—”

“Quiet!” Jared said. “Sit there and don’t say another word.” He looked back at Hallie. “I’m beginning to see the enormity of this and I can’t apologize enough. I take it I haven’t been emailing you for the past two weeks?”

“No.” Hallie was glaring at Shelly, who had her head down, tears dropping onto her hands clasped in her lap. “I only know who you are because I attended one of your lectures at Harvard.”

Jared ran his hand across his face. “What a mess this is!” He looked back at Hallie. “Since I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t”—he glared at Shelly—“I’d better start at the beginning. You are a physical therapist and you just got your Mass license?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a relief! What do you know of your father’s relatives?”

“Very little,” Hallie said. “He was orphaned young and raised in foster homes. He had no living relatives that he knew of.”

“Right,” Jared said. “That’s what I was told. It seems that—” He glanced at Shelly. Her tears were now accompanied by sobs growing increasingly loud.

Shelly raised her head and looked at her stepsister. Her eyes were pleading. Pleading for what, Hallie didn’t know. Forgiveness? Or to prove her “fairness” by doing what Shelly wanted?

“Shelly,” she said quietly but very firmly. “I want you to deliver the envelope of papers on the kitchen table to Dr. Curtis’s office. I know you have no idea where I work, but the address is on the envelope. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Hallie, of course you do, but when I get back, you and I must talk. And this time you have to listen to me so you’ll understand—”

“No!” Hallie said firmly. “Shelly, this time I am not going to forgive you. Now get the extra keys, take my car, and leave.”

Shelly had the self-righteous look of someone who had been falsely accused of a crime, but she did what Hallie told her to.

When she was out of the house, Jared said, “If you want to prosecute, I’ll bear all the financial responsibility. I feel really stupid about this.”

“It’s not your fault, Mr. Montgomery,” Hallie said in dismissal, and he told her to call him Jared. She glanced down at the forged signature on the paper on her lap. With this as evidence, she knew she could prosecute. But she also knew it wasn’t in her nature to do so.

“Hallie,” he said as he looked at her, “I have a lot to tell you, explain to you—and even more to make up to you. Hallie—I mean Shelly—was going to leave with me today.”

“I see,” Hallie said, and for the first time she noticed her own luggage piled in a corner. Her tone told what she thought of that liaison.

“It’s not like that,” Jared said. “My wife and I live on Nantucket, and in about an hour I have to leave to board a friend’s plane and return home. Shelly was to go back with me, but I can assure you that it was purely business.”

Hallie wasn’t understanding anything. “But what about the house? Why are you trying to buy it?”

“This house?” He glanced around at it. “No offense, but—” He broke off when he realized how badly he was explaining things. “Your stepsister wasn’t trying to steal this house from you. I’m the executor of the will of the late Henry Bell and he left his house on Nantucket to you.”

This news so shocked Hallie that she was barely able to reply. “I don’t know any Henry Bell.”

“I know.” He tapped his briefcase. “It’