The Trouble with Andrew Read online

  “Bastard!” Katie hissed beneath her breath, watching him go.

  Then she was alone, and the air-conditioning seemed too cold.

  She stepped out on the patio and sat down by the pool, trailing her feet in the water.

  She believed in him, she knew. And she was in love with him. And if there was any way to let him know that she really did believe in him…

  That way might be to find out who was behind the skimming of the profits at Hunnicunn Corporation.

  Eliminate the impossible, her dad always told her, and what’s left, whether improbable or not, has to be the truth.

  All she had to do was find out what was impossible.

  Maybe she had to find out more about Hunnicunn Corporation.

  She was good at finding out about the past—it had always helped her with her photography. She’d always loved to pore through the microfilm at the library.

  The day passed quietly. She drew charts with names of those involved, linking them all together. She’d have to find out a little something about them all. Andrea Hunnington. Her pencil kept circling that particular name. She reminded herself that she wanted to think of Andrea as evil, and maybe the woman was—Drew had said he didn’t like her.

  When she was hungry, she made herself a tuna sandwich and waited for her father, her son—and Drew’s mother—to come home.

  Her father’s note had said that they’d be late—and he hadn’t lied. Katie was convinced that her father had purposely left her alone with Drew as long as possible.

  Even assuming Drew might have stayed for awhile, Katie thought with a certain warm amusement, they would never have needed this much time! But it was summer, and for the rest of untouched world, it was still vacation time, and the parks were open late.

  Ron, Jordan and Tina came in just after midnight. Katie was sitting on the couch in the living room, still playing with her solve-the-mystery graphs when they trailed in. Jordan was yawning and her father and Tina Cunningham were smiling like a pair of kids themselves—and not appearing in the least bit tired.

  “Katie!” her dad greeted her, leaning over to kiss her forehead. “Have a nice day? A good rest? Did you wake up before Drew had to leave?” he asked innocently.

  “Yes, I did. But very briefly.” She smiled at Drew’s mother and told her father, “He was really in a big hurry. I’m not sure he stayed more than fifteen minutes.”

  “Oh,” Ron Wheeler said. He sounded disappointed and puzzled.

  Tina Cunningham seemed just as downcast.

  “So—how was your day?” Katie asked.

  “Jordan took us on Space Mountain. We were both nearly candidates for pacemakers,” her father told her.

  Katie laughed.

  “Tina is great!” Jordan said, coming to life to extol the woman’s virtues. “She went on it with me a second time!”

  “Brave woman,” Katie teased Tina.

  “I’ve been dragged on worse before,” Tina assured her. Katie smiled again and wished she didn’t like Drew’s mother so much.

  It would be nice not to like something about her.

  But Tina was warm and fun and seemed as open and above board as the daylight sun. Katie couldn’t help but like her.

  And it was obvious that her father more than liked her.

  “Want coffee or tea or anything?” Katie asked. “Tina, can I get you anything you might be missing? Toothpaste, toothbrush—I’m not sure what kind of accommodations Dad arranged for you…” She let her voice trail off. The older crowd here seemed to like to put her in awkward positions. It seemed only fair play that she taunt them a bit in return.

  But neither of them blushed or fell for the bait. “I’m quite fine, dear,” Tina said.

  Katie stood. “Well,” she said sternly, “you two senior delinquents are going to be on your own as of tomorrow. I’m going to take Jordan and fly home. The week has been great, Dad, but there’s just too much I need to take care of in Miami.”

  “Oh, you’re going home?” her father said. He tried to sound disappointed, but there was that old light of mischief in his eyes. He wasn’t sorry in the least. In fact, he seemed just as smug as the Cheshire cat.

  “Yes, I’m going home. That okay with you, Jordan?” she asked her son.

  “Hey. Sounds cool to me,” Jordan said with a shrug.

  “Well, then, good night, you all,” Katie said, kissing Jordan’s head and starting toward the hallway. “Jordan, we’ll try to get a plane in the early afternoon, so you might want to get in bed soon. And Dad … well, you two behave.”

  Katie was halfway down the hallway when she heard Drew’s mother say to Ron Wheeler, “Think we ought to tell her that I’ve got a hotel room?”

  “Heck, no! Let her wonder!” Ron said.

  Grinning, Katie went into her bedroom. But she didn’t fall asleep right away, and later she heard a soft tapping at her door.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Her father peeked in. “You up?”

  She nodded and patted the side of her bed. He came in and sat beside her. “You really ready to go home?” he asked her. “Drew said most of the traffic lights are still out, though a lot of the roads have been cleared now. Things are getting better, but it will still be a while before they’re good.”

  Katie nodded. “I think I need to be home, Dad.”

  “Drew have anything to do with that?”

  “Maybe,” Katie admitted. “But I think you’re the one with the hot and heavy romance.”

  Ron chuckled. “Well, if so, I have you to thank for it.”

  “You don’t need to thank me just because you met at Drew’s office.”

  Ron shook his head. “I need to thank you for being stubborn and willful. See, Drew told Tina a little bit about you—enough for her to know something above the ordinary was going on. So I really got to know Tina when she very bluntly asked me if I’d persuade you to stay for lunch, but then that didn’t work out so well. So I called her and suggested that maybe she could convince him that she was dying to come and see me, and then he might be willing to drive her up here. Then he’d have to see you.”

  Katie gasped. Ron shrugged.

  “Dad! What a meddling old matchmaker!” she accused him.

  “Well, now, I didn’t make the match.”

  “Andrew made the match.”

  “The man? Or the storm?”

  “A little bit of both,” Katie said. And she frowned. “Dad, he didn’t tell me right away that he was the architect and builder for my house. So when I found out…”

  “You jumped straight to conclusions.”

  “Maybe,” Katie admitted. “But, Dad, I’m going to try to find out what did happen. Maybe that can straighten everything out a little bit.”

  Ron shook his head, then his finger, at her. “Leave it to Drew, Katie. Stay out of it. If someone has been skimming big profits, he or she isn’t going to want anyone finding out about it.”

  “Dad, I can be careful—”

  “I won’t let you go, Katie, if that’s what you’ve got up your sleeve.”

  “Dad! I’m over thirty, remember?”

  “Katie, promise me—”

  “Dad, don’t worry about me. I’m just planning on reading some newspaper files, nothing else. I’ll give anything I can find to Drew, I promise.”

  “Be careful, Katie.”

  “I will be,” she said.

  “In every way,” he warned her. “You know, you’re like a babe in the woods now—”

  “Mmm, and that’s why you were throwing me to the wolf, you sly fox!” Katie said.

  “I was just giving you a nudge. You’ve got to be careful.”

  “I will be, Dad.”

  “I’ll keep in touch, and I’ll be here whenever you need me.”

  “I know you will, and that’s great.” She hesitated, but he took her into his arms.

  “Love you, baby,” he told her.

  “I love you, too, Dad. I love you, too. Maybe that’s
why it took me so long to think I needed anyone else again. I had a wonderful marriage, and I had you.”

  “Well, I’m trying to get a new woman in my life,” he teased lightly, “so you go and see if you can get your man. He’s a darned good one, too, I think.”

  “Why was I the only one without any faith?” Katie asked him.

  “You were the one with the most to lose,” he said. He stood. “Night, Katie,” he told her.

  She smiled. He left her room.

  She slept amazingly well that night.

  By one o’clock the following afternoon she and Jordan were boarding a plane that would take them to Miami International Airport.

  The flight was smooth. Jordan seemed exceptionally lively and very anxious to get back.

  “Aren’t you going to miss Mickey Mouse?” she teased him.

  “Sure, Disney is great. But so is home.”

  “We’re not really going home,” she reminded him. “We don’t actually have a home anymore.”

  “It’s still home,” Jordan said determinedly.

  He sat back, and they both enjoyed the flight. The weather was beautiful; the sky was an almost uncanny blue.

  Katie got a cab from the airport. She had it take her and Jordan to Drew’s house.

  He didn’t answer when she knocked. She tried the door and found it open.

  “Think we should just go in?” Jordan said doubtfully.

  Katie hesitated. “Yes,” she said firmly. She brought in their luggage and set it in the hallway.

  “Mom!” Jordan said suddenly. “There’s electricity in here now!” And he was right. The air-conditioner was humming. A light was burning in the kitchen.

  “I guess things are starting to get back to normal,” Katie said. “Umm—bring your things up to the room you were using—”

  “And I can use the Nintendo?”

  “I guess. Just—”

  “Keep things picked up, I know, it isn’t our house, it’s Drew’s.”

  “Right. I’m going to get my bag out of the hallway, too, smarty pants,” she told him.

  They started up the stairs, Jordan to his room and she to hers.

  When she went in, the room seemed cast in shadows. She didn’t know what she had been expecting. Yes, she did. She had thought he might be waiting for her. She was certain he had come home. She hoped fervently that she hadn’t misread his message in Orlando…

  No. He wanted her back. Things had to be said between them. She hadn’t misunderstood him.

  How could she have misread such a message?

  She set her luggage on the bed, and it was only then that she noticed a note on the pillow.

  She picked it up, read it and smiled.

  “Welcome home, Katie,” was all that it said.

  It was enough.

  Maybe she was home, after all.

  She tried to wait up; it was easier with the electricity on and the house dark. But he hadn’t come home by midnight, and she gave up trying to watch the late show.

  She went up to her room to lie down, and despite her best efforts, she dozed.

  She didn’t know what awakened her, but she opened her eyes, blinking. He was there, in the doorway, a dark, still silhouette.

  “Katie?” he said softly.

  She ran across the room and was quickly wrapped in his arms.

  “You came back,” he said softly. “And—quickly.”

  “I had some really great memories of the place,” she told him.

  He laughed softly and swept her up.

  And it was just like coming home.

  Chapter 10

  “Listen, it’s my company, and I’ll deal with it!” Drew said emphatically, slipping a knot into his tie.

  Katie, her fingers curled around a mug at the breakfast table, clenched her teeth.

  She should have kept quiet. She should have kept her mouth shut about what she wanted to do. Except that it would have been so much easier, and better, if he had been willing to help her. But he was so damned exasperating. He could be so charming one moment …

  And so pigheaded the next.

  “I was merely suggesting that I could help,” she began.

  “I don’t want you to help.”

  “Drew—”

  “Katie, I don’t want your help!”

  “But don’t you think it’s important to know exactly what happened?”

  “Why? Do you have to prove it to yourself that I wasn’t really to blame?”

  “Drew!”

  “Katie, I want you out of it, do you understand?” he demanded, his hands on the table as he leaned close to her.

  “You have no right to tell me what to do,” she said firmly.

  “I have every right to tell you to get the hell out of my life and problems!”

  That stung. She sat back, feeling almost as if he had struck her.

  “Katie, I mean it.”

  She sat very stiffly, making her eyes stay level with his.

  “Didn’t you say that my house was nearly in a habitable condition?”

  “Damn it, Katie, I didn’t mean—”

  “Maybe you could be so kind as to rush things along to the best of your abilities.”

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “Maybe I can. But you don’t need to worry. If you have any reservations about me at all, you can stay here and we can pass right by in the halls, lady, just like ships at sea. But you do what you want. Believe me, or don’t believe me. I am at fault. Again, I’m telling you—sue me. You can even give your lawyer this address. The only thing you can’t do is stick your nose into it!”

  “You wretched bastard!” Katie hissed, rising. “You had me come back here—”

  “To be with me, not run my life! You don’t know Hunnicunn, you don’t know the past, and you don’t know what you might be up against. You don’t know anything!”

  “What might I be up against? Someone practicing fraud? I just want—”

  “I don’t give a damn what you want. I want you out of it! And if that means you’re walking out of my house, well, then, you know the way!” He turned rigidly and stalked out of the kitchen. She would have raced after him and assured him that she would be out of his house just as quickly as possible, but she started shaking, and her knees were too weak to rise. She felt so damned vulnerable again. Afraid. She’d begun to feel so comfortable, so much a part of his life…

  Cared for, if not cherished.

  But he was right. She didn’t know Hunnicunn. She didn’t know him—she didn’t know anything.

  The front door had slammed long moments ago when she managed to get to her feet.

  Jordan was at school. His first day. It seemed so strange. It had been wild getting there. The majority of the traffic lights remained down, and many of the roads were clogged with fallen trees. But the morning had also seemed filled with a certain charged tension—as if all of the community knew that the opening of the Dade County public school system meant that life was going on.

  Katie swore at Drew under her breath, then grabbed her purse and let herself out the front door, locking it with the key he had given her.

  Half the county was being looted, he had told her, and they couldn’t leave his house open for any thief to walk right in. They’d been playing with a certain amount of danger before.

  Well, she’d made sure his door was locked. And she would be out of it for good, just as soon as possible. If she and Jordan couldn’t stay in her own home in the next few days, she’d find a hotel room—even if she had to find a filled one and empty its occupants into Drew’s house!

  But, no matter how angry and hurt she was, she realized a few minutes later, he hadn’t changed her mind. He had no right to be so angry with her. It wasn’t as if anyone had been murdered. Someone was embezzling money—it was a white-collar crime. She’d love to find the thief he’d been harboring beneath his own nose and hand the man—or woman—over to him. Dust off her hands…

  Slap him a good one in the cheek…
>
  And walk away. Heart and pride intact. Only her heart wasn’t intact anymore.

  She drove to the library, the main one, without caring about the traffic she had to confront to get there.

  By eleven, she was ensconced before one of the microfilm machines.

  At one o’clock, she was still staring at the microfilm, leafing back and forth through the pages she’d been able to find with references to Hunnicunn, the people involved with it—and Drew himself.

  She stretched. She’d been at it a long time, her eyes and her back hurt and her head was beginning to ache.

  And she hadn’t found a thing.

  Well, she’d found articles, but not what she’d wanted.

  Fifteen years ago, Hunnicunn had been formed, and there had been an article on the corporation in the business section. There was a picture of a young Drew shaking hands with Henry Hunnington, a tall, slim man with thinning hair and an aging face. In the background were a number of people, a few Katie recognized, a few she didn’t. Tina Cunningham was there, as was Reva. Katie also recognized a very young Andrea Hunnington. The two men on either side of Drew and Hunnington had to be Sam Jaffe and Harry Easton, but she didn’t know which was which, and she didn’t know if it mattered, except that one of them seemed familiar, the younger of the two, the darker one, only…

  Only what, she didn’t know.

  She was going through a lot of years, she reminded herself. Looking for some kind of needle in a hay-stack.

  She tried looking for information about Andrea, and that was abundant enough—in the society pages. The blonde had been married several times, but had always legally kept the name Hunnington. Her father had been involved in many enterprises, and it seemed she enjoyed the recognition of the name.

  Each of her marriages had been chronicled. She was also present at all kinds of fund-raisers and the like.

  There was nothing that hinted she might be trying to skim money from Hunnicunn.

  Katie had decided to give up for the afternoon when she was startled to see the Cunningham name, front-page news. The story was almost twenty years old.

  It was about the accident that had killed Drew’s father.

  A. J. Cunningham had been killed at a building site. He had fallen from the fifth-floor scaffolding he’d been working on. The fall had crushed his skull, killing him instantly.