His Brother's Bride - Page 48
Laurel nodded, though she wished Scott had pushed a little harder. They really needed a break soon or she feared their chances of finding the women alive were going to be slim.
“So.” She frowned, turning sideways in her seat so she could watch him. “If that’s the case, and William got his money, why were they visiting Leslie? And what happened to them?”
“Maybe only Cecilia came here.”
“Then where’s William? Why wouldn’t he have returned to Twin Oaks for his stuff?”
Scott was silent for a moment. Laurel loved the intensity she read on his features as he worked over the facts. “He’s probably still with Cecilia,” he finally said. “And Leslie. And beyond that, I haven’t got any ideas, except that something in somebody’s plan went horribly wrong.”
“Or horribly right.”
At the next exit he slowed, took the ramp, and then rejoined the highway heading in the opposite direction.
“So where are we going now?”
“Cecilia’s office.”
“In Boston?”
His look was direct. “You have any better idea?”
“None.”
“We might not make it back to Twin Oaks tonight.”
“I’m okay with that.”
She needed to find Byrd as badly as he did. To know that the old man, blackmailer or not, was really okay. To know that her trip to Cooper’s Corner was not a failure. To get her story.
To be able to get back to the life she lived in New York. A life where she was successful. Content. Verging on happy. And alone.
* * *
HAMILTON LENDING OF New England had impressive offices housed in a smoke-windowed high-rise in the middle of downtown Boston. A glass-encased directory inside the marbled lobby told them that Hamilton’s executive offices were on the eighteenth floor.
“Nothing like living on the top,” Laurel said dryly as she followed Scott into the elevator.
He just hoped they made it to the top with few stops. Being alone with Laurel in that enclosed space had him thinking things he couldn’t afford to think. The emergency button was only a couple of inches away. He could stop the elevator, stop time and pretend that the world consisted of only the two of them.
Of course, then the elevator would start again.
Cecilia’s administrative assistant was in her office. Bettina Warren was in her early forties, with short dark hair and stern features. Dressed in no-nonsense business attire, the woman could have been a sergeant in the army.
And she guarded her army—Cecilia—very zealously.
“Do you have a warrant to be here?”
Her first question didn’t bode well for the remainder of the visit. Or for the hope that they would gain a thing from being there. Scott glanced at Laurel, and with a lowering of his lids, he turned the next few minutes over to her.
“The thing is,” she said, sitting on the edge of one of the hard wooden chairs in front of Ms. Warren’s desk, “this is not an official investigation at all. We started out doing a favor for a friend and have grown increasingly concerned about the welfare of two other people we’ve never met. One of them is Cecilia Hamilton. At this point we’d like only for you to hear us out. If, after that, you want us to leave, we’ll do so immediately without speaking to another person in the company.”
If Scott hadn’t been so besotted with Laurel, he’d have had to interrupt her already. He couldn’t make that promise.
But she had. And he was damn well going to have to abide by it. Melting into the back of the room, he comforted himself with the sure knowledge that Laurel was going to win Ms. Warren’s trust—which would make keeping that promise a moot point.
She went on to give Cecilia’s assistant more information than Scott would have. She didn’t, of course, mention anything that was, at that moment, only theory, like William’s possible blackmail scheme or the fact that Cecilia might very well be Leslie Renwick’s birth mother.
She looked so beautiful sitting there, her features animated with the empathy and apprehension she was feeling. She literally took his breath away—and for a second, rational thought, as well, as he tried to imagine an entire lifetime without her.
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