Chapter 9
9
Friday, 9:20 a.m.
“ Y eah, I can swing by and pull the infrared goggles out of storage,” Stoney said, his voice cracking and distant on Rick’s office phone. “What the hell’s an EMF detector?”
“It detects electromagnetics,” Samantha returned, resting her elbows on whatever business deal Rick had left on top of his desk. “Power lines, ghosts, stuff like that.”
“Uh, huh. So now you’re a ghostbuster.”
“Yep.”
“I was being sarcastic. What’s up? Really?”
She smiled at the phone. “A bit of a mystery. Maybe even a ghost. You have the whole list? Four stationary night-vision cameras with infrared, four portable ones, a monitor and cables, four digital recorders, my infrared goggles, and say six walkie-talkies with at least a two-mile range.” If they couldn’t use cell phones, maybe walkies would solve the big house problem.
“And a partridge in a pear tree,” he finished. “I’ve got it. Not my first rodeo, kiddo.”
“It is your first ghost hunt.” Samantha leaned out into the hallway, then ducked back into the deepest corner of the office. “I have no internet or cell service here,” she continued, lowering her voice. “Look up anything on Scottish highwaymen or known serial robbers in the area around Balmoral and before the 1900’s, will you?”
Silence crackled back at her. “You catch a whiff of something?” Stoney finally asked.
“I don’t know. I’m just looking for some info. Not a score.”
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. In the meantime, I’ll express ship your ‘ghost hunting’ equipment.” The way he said the words, she could practically hear the air quotes.
“There could be treasure and ghosts,” she retorted, keeping her voice as quiet as she could manage and still be heard over the bad connection. “But I’m mostly curious about the treasure. The equipment might help me look for it. Info to me only, dude. Okay?”
“Yep. Oh, and Aubrey wants to know if you like the name Max Zellicon, or if it’s too on the nose.”
“Too on the nose for what?”
“For you. I think he’s writing a book about you.”
She held the phone away from her ear to scowl at it. “One, I am not a Max or a Maxine. Two, no effing way is he writing a book about me. If he does, he’s fired. You tell him I said that.”
“He said I could be Wallace Granite. But okay, I’ll tell him.”
“If that was your name, I’d be calling you Granny instead of Stoney. Think about that.”
“You’re an evil woman,” Walter Barstone returned. “I’ll let you know your stuff’s ETA as soon as I get it shipped. Up to you to figure out what to tell his lordiness.”
“Thanks, Granny.”
She heard him snort as the call cut off, and leaned against the wall once she’d set the phone’s receiver back into its cradle. Aubrey couldn’t have been serious about writing a book based on her. Aside from the fact that he knew almost nothing about her before the past year or so, The Adventures of Max Zellicon would send a lot more suspicious glances in her direction. She couldn’t afford that either for herself or for Rick.
If Stoney couldn’t give her some assurance that Aubrey had stopped his semi-biography or whatever the hell he thought he was writing, she would have to give the former professional lady’s escort a serious talking to. Just the idea of a story about a thief and a rich guy, however much he altered the details, gave her the shakes.
Two sets of footsteps left the stairs to turn in the direction of Rick’s office. Her first instinct was to sink beneath the desk, but for crying out loud, she hadn’t done anything wrong. Not even slightly shady, really. She was legit here.
The footsteps stopped before the half open door. “Rick?” Reggie asked, rapping his knuckles against the doorframe. He leaned in. “Samantha. I don’t suppose you have any idea where Ricky is, do you?”
“Last time I saw him he was out on the drive with two utility guys. They want to drill holes for the internet router and the satellite, and he doesn’t like that idea very much.”
Eerika stepped in around Reggie. “Thank goodness you’re here, Samantha.”
“Was I missing?” she asked, before she could rein in the sarcasm. Oh, well. She was supposed to be a touch upper-crusty, after all.
“What? Oh, ha ha. No. I’ve heard the village is very quaint, and I want go. But Reginald won’t take me. We must go find a bakery and a kilt shop, and of course some shoes. Say you’ll come.”
A bakery, a kilt shop, and shoes. What came next in the way of quaint Scottish village shops – a bagpipe boutique? But this was what girlfriends of guys with money and good bloodlines did, right? Go to out-of-the-way places and buy expensive shit? She could use the practice, she supposed. Plus, Eerika knew more about Reggie than she did, and that could be useful. “Sure. I’ll grab my jacket and meet you downstairs.”
The Viking flashed her a pearly white smile. “Splendid.” She put her well-manicured hand on Reggie’s shoulder and gave him a peck on the cheek. “You boys go have your fun. Samantha and I will be back after lunch.”
Huh. Now a peek in the windows of three shops had turned into a four-hour excursion. Well, she’d gotten more accustomed to Rick’s lifestyle over the past year. It couldn’t hurt to learn a few things about how to be a girl blueblood from a girl blueblood.
While Eerika went to find her clutch and shopping shoes, whatever the hell they were, Samantha snagged her light jacket off the bed post in the master bedchamber and trotted downstairs. In the foyer Yule was actually using a ruler to center a vase of thistles on the side table, and she paused on the bottom step to watch that for a second. Thank crap her dad hadn’t been a vase measurer, because she wouldn’t have been able to follow his footsteps and still keep her sanity. She did get the whole thing about running a small army of household staff and taking pride in good work, but that world was way too small for her.
“Miss Nyland and I are going into the village, Yule,” she said, resisting the urge to hop down the last step into the foyer because she supposedly had a bum ankle. “I think we’re having lunch there.”
The butler nodded as he folded up his ruler and stuck it into an inside pocket of his black dress jacket. “The forecast is for sun, so ye’ve chosen a fine day for an outing.”
“Thanks. Let her know I’m getting the car, if you don’t mind.”
“I dunnae mind at all, Miss Sam.”
Rick was still on the front drive, now looking at some skinny brown PVC pipes that she figured the cables would be run through. “Eerika and I are going into the village,” she told him, interrupting a pretty impressive scowl.
“There has to be a way to run cable without either drilling a hole through the stone or having pipes crawling up the outsides of the walls,” he grumbled. “We managed it at Rawley Park.”
“Rawley Park’s walls aren’t solid stone,” Samantha noted.
“Not helpful.”
“Well, do you have a dungeon here?” she asked, only half joking.
“I have a wine cellar which may or may not have been a dungeon at one time.”
“Ooh, that means it totally was. Why haven’t I seen it, then? Anyway, if you want to bother digging trenches through heavy dirt and permafrost, you—”
He planted a kiss on her mouth. “I’m there. Be patient with Miss Nyland.” Brushing his fingers against hers, he faced the two utility guys. “Make some calls, lads. We’re going in through the cellar.”
The keys for the four cars – well, one car, MacGyver the jeep, an old SUV that they used for bringing up supplies, and a three-wheeled…thing – hung on nails on an inside post in the stable. She snagged Mac’s keys and hopped into the red jeep.
With the sun out, she was tempted to unsnap the plastic roof, but Norway had probably spent five hundred bucks on her hair, and Rick had just reminded her not to rile the near in-laws, so she left the top on the jeep. Instead she turned the key and fed the beast some gas, grinning as it roared to life.
Eerika came out the front door as Samantha pulled up. Apparently shopping shoes had two-inch heels and were bright blue, and were worn with a matching over-the-shoulder handbag and a pretty, patterned cardigan. The whole outfit screamed, “look at me, I’m rich and sophisticated,” even with slim-fit jeans and a pink heart T-shirt. To Samantha’s eyes the ensemble also said “steal my purse because I’m rich and I’ll never be able to catch you in these shoes,” but this wasn’t New York or Paris, or even London.
“Ready?” she asked, leaning left to shove open the passenger door.
“Oh, brilliant,” the Viking said with a bright smile, and clambered into the seat. “It’s so rugged here!”
“It does have that backwoodsy feel,” Samantha agreed, putting MacGyver into gear and resisting the urge to stomp on the accelerator. Not everyone was an adrenaline junkie, and Eerika seemed to be trying very hard to look…perfect.
“I half expect to see William Wallace emerging from the trees. But there haven’t been as many kilts as I expected.”
“Well, it’s autumn. Nippy and way fewer tourists.”
“Oh, yes. London’s crushed with tourists in the summer, all of them asking where the nearest MacDonald’s is.” She put a hand to her mouth. “I don’t mean you, of course. You’re not one of those.”
One of those what? Normal Americans? No, she wasn’t. Until six months ago she hadn’t even had a real driver’s license. As for her passport… Well, that beauty was worth every one of the ten thousand bucks it had cost her. Getting a legit one of those after she married Rick was going to be tricky. “Thanks,” she said aloud, because it seemed like she should say something. “Do you come to Scotland often?”
“This is my first time. It’s so odd, isn’t it? I’ve lived in London for my entire life, I’ve been to Paris and Milan and New York, and I’ve never been to a place just north of me, on the same island.”
Samantha hoped they weren’t going to start listing all the places they’d ever visited. MacGyver skidded a little on the muddy track, and she downshifted to take the next curve. “There are a couple of states I’ve never been to,” she returned, though Idaho and Alabama were on her to-do list. “There are only so many hours in a day.”
“And only so many days in a year,” Eerika added. “Precisely. One must hit the highlights first.”
So, Scotland wasn’t a highlight for Miss Nyland and her shopping shoes. Samantha liked figuring people out, but this was already exhausting. Maybe she needed to try edging a little closer to upper class. “Rick said Reggie has a flat just off Cadogan Place. That must be lovely. Do you share it with him, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Eerika chuckled. “You Americans are so direct. I’ll just say I have a toothbrush there.”
“Fair enough.”
“But what about you? How in the world did you manage to catch Richard Addison’s eye – much less get him to ask you to marry him? I think half the single women in the world wept that day.”
That was a total exaggeration, though she did get vilified a lot on the Rick’s Chicks Facebook page. She knew that because she liked to check in on them. They liked to appear outside the Solano Dorado gates on odd days, trying for a glimpse of Rick. She liked having a heads-up for things like stalkers. “He hired me to find some stolen artwork, and we just hit it off. It helps that we’re both into art and antiques.” She’d told that version so many times she could almost believe it herself, if not for the bomb shrapnel scar on the back of one thigh.
“I know what you mean. I learned so much about cars when I met Reginald. Men love women who share their interests.” She abruptly went digging into her purse and produced a pen and paper. “I’m writing that down. My producer will love it.”
“Your producer?”
“Oh, yes. We’re working on a show for me. Something that follows me through my day, while I dispense advice and have fabulous adventures.”
Wow. Somebody liked herself a whole lot. “Oh,” she said aloud. “Cool.”
Aside from the self-absorption, the way Eerika viewed Reggie’s interests sounded a lot like the way Samantha viewed a mark she meant to rob. If she needed to get close, she found out what he or she liked and did some research. From the beginning she and Rick had shared an interest in the art world – and while her plan to steal something he owned had brought them together, she’d never faked a damned thing where he was concerned.
She hadn’t realized how long the silence had stretched out until Eerika put a fake-sounding laugh into the middle of it. “I just realized how very mercenary I must sound. Everyone wants to do their own show, after all. But I already have contacts, and an absolutely unique hook. I can’t tell you, of course, but it will be fabulous. A guaranteed smash hit.”
“Is Reggie going to be involved?” Samantha asked, smothering a shudder. Norway might be excited by the idea of being on camera, but that kind of thing gave her former thief self the shivers.
“Reginald’s all for it. He says he keeps me grounded, but I give him wings. And those Addison boys are very driven, aren’t they?”
Firstly, at least one Addison wasn’t a boy . Considering where she came from, Samantha wasn’t about to start an argument over who was good for whom, though. Instead she pasted on a grin. “You’re preaching to the choir, sister.”
Eerika’s chuckle sounded a little more real this time. “Of course I am. And we are sisters, of a sort, aren’t we?”
Sure, they were. “The very definition of,” she said aloud, as she turned MacGyver onto the cobblestone main street of the village. “Bakery, or search for the kilt shop? Or shoes?”
“Kilt shop. Oh, and perhaps we could find where they make the bagpipes.”
Huh. So this was the hell she was signing up for. Still, learning the layout of the entire village couldn’t be a bad thing. If they had a museum or a historical society, she would slip back into Orrisey with a few questions – and without her brand new, man-eating, fame-hunting sister.
By the time the local utility workers had made arrangements for a bulldozer and a trencher to come up in the next couple of days, Richard felt ready for a jaunt into the village, himself. Simply because it was a small matter to drill a hole beneath the eave of most houses didn’t make it acceptable to do so with a castle that predated America by over five hundred years.
As for handing Canniebrae to the National Trust, over his dead body. He had a plentitude of respect for the Trust, but this was his place, his property. His headache. Stomping mud off his hiking boots as he went, he headed for the front door.
Yule opened it before he could reach for the handle. “M’laird, Master Reginald says his father would like a word with ye,” he intoned. “Ye’ll find Laird Rowland and Lady Mercia in the garden.”
So much for catching up to Sam. “Thank you, Yule.”
“It’s good to have the family back at Canniebrae, m’laird, if I may say so.”
Richard slowed his exit down the hallway. “I stayed away for too long.”
“I can see from the improvements ye’re chasing that ye mean to be here more often, now. Would that be accurate?”
“Depending on our success with internet and electricity, yes. I think so. I hope so.”
“Fingers crossed then, m’laird,” the butler answered.
Halfway down the long portrait-lined gallery that bisected the central part of the house, the lights went out again. The hallway had been dim and windowless before, designed that way to protect the artwork, but now pitch blackness settled around him. Richard stopped; too many antique chairs and side tables lurked against the walls for him to risk maneuvering. Instead he dug into his pocket for his phone.
Something distinctly thumped a few feet behind him. Sliding the phone’s control panel up with his thumb, he tapped the torchlight icon and whipped around. Nothing. He panned left to right, half-expecting Samantha to leap out of the shadows at him. She’d done it before. Still, oil-painted faces, edges of chairs, dimming to black beyond the reach of the tiny light, loomed around him.
Satisfied he wasn’t about to be assaulted and ignoring the pricking of the hairs at the back of his neck, he resumed his trek toward the rear of the house by weak phone light. He was thirty-four years old, and he was not going to succumb to Samantha’s fantastical imaginings of ghouls and ghost hounds, and he was not going to hurry his steps.
The far door came into view, and he reached for the handle. As he touched it, another thump sounded, just as close behind him as the previous one. Richard snapped around, his free hand clenched into a fist. Again, nothing. “For fuck’s sake,” he muttered, and reached behind him to push open the door. Keeping his front to the black hall and feeling like an idiot the entire time, he backed out into the adjoining hallway.
Samantha was not going to hear that he’d been spooked. Not ever.
From the hallway he headed through the sun-filled conservatory and outside down the wide, shallow granite steps that opened into the immense garden. His aunt and uncle sat on the edge of the central fountain, the two of them dwarfed by a godawful Poseidon with water spewing from the conch shell in his hands. Richard had decided long ago that an in-law had gifted the fountain to his Victorian-era relations, because he preferred to think that his own bloodline on both sides had a better eye for true artistry – and certainly a better grasp of good taste.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked.
“We’d like you to tell us a bit more about Miss Jellicoe,” his aunt said. “We’re to welcome her into the family, but all we know of her is what we’ve seen in the tabloids or on the telly. Of course no one can believe those things. Or wants to be seen reading or watching them.”
Strictly speaking, Samantha was none of their business. He was the head of the family, he controlled the title, he owned by far the greatest portion of the wealth. Yet he had asked them here specifically to meet her. He was also keenly aware that aside from Walter Barstone – and perhaps Aubrey Pendleton, who was only a recent addition – she had only him in her life to care about her. They were quite literally her only family, and neither of them were blood relations. She needed more family in her life. Even his, he supposed.
Blowing out his breath, he took a seat on the bench opposite the two of them. “Her family tree is a bit shady,” he said, measuring his words very carefully despite the fact that he’d gone over this conversation in his head at least a dozen times. Whatever else happened, Samantha was to be protected. “Her father, especially, flirted with the dark side, as she says. She’s a wonder at what she does, and knows more about some of the pieces of my collection than I do.”
“You’re certain she’s not out to hook a rich husband?” his uncle asked, sitting forward with his elbows on his knees. “We adored Patricia after all, and she—”
“I recall what Patricia did,” Richard interrupted, unwilling to rehash a marriage that had been a disaster from its beginning to its end three years later. “Samantha has her own money, and she would much rather I wasn’t the Marquis of Rawley. She dislikes the spotlight.” Dislike would suffice, though he’d put it closer to the fascinated horror a vampire had for the sun.
“She seems charming,” Aunt Mercia put in a little hurriedly. “And genuinely interested in Canniebrae. I didn’t recall much of the highwayman legends, but I did direct her to The Bonny Lass. I know they tell stories of it there from time to time, or at least they used to.”
Richard sat so still for a second, he wasn’t certain he was breathing. She’d found the mystery, damn it all, and she hadn’t mentioned a thing about it to him. And unlike Reg, she had a good chance of figuring it all out.
“Should I not have sent her into Orrisey, Richard?” his aunt asked, her smile tight.
“No, that’s fine,” he returned, forcing his teeth to unclench. “She’s fascinated by history, which is why I decided to introduce her to Canniebrae in the first place.”
“I’ll just come straight out and say it, shall I?” his uncle Rowland fisted his hands, straightening. “I had a solicitor friend do some checking. Miss Jellicoe’s father was a thief, Richard. A fairly notorious one who died in prison. He specialized in art and jewelry, and there was some question about whether he had an accomplice.”
“I’m aware,” Richard returned, digging in to hold onto his temper. It made sense they would look into Samantha’s past; unless he produced an heir, the Rawley title and all the wealth tied into it would go to Uncle Rowland and his offspring – meaning Reg. So would the remainder of his empire not already allocated to Samantha and to various charities and foundations.
“Richard, your fiancé’s father was a convicted felon,” Rowland repeated. “They think he had a partner.”
“I’m aware,” he repeated. He was also aware that the deceased Martin Jellicoe was anything but, and that the father had many fewer scruples than did the daughter.
“And you still think she isn’t gold-digging? Don’t be na?ve, lad. Patricia turned out badly enough. This could be so much worse.”
The Richard of a year ago would have taken that moment to tell his nearest relations to mind their own fucking business and get out of his house. They knew that, too; he could see it in his uncle’s tight shoulders and his aunt’s desperately sympathetic expression. Luckily for them the Richard of today had seen what a truly dysfunctional family looked like in the Jellicoes, and he had a much better grasp of what true disaster and peril were, in contrast to a bit of awkwardness and discomfort.
“If you can’t see how much I adore her and how happy she makes me,” he said aloud, “then I can only pity you. She’s mine, and I’m hers. I cannot explain it better than that. So, you can either embrace her, or stay clear of us. You have the next two weeks to decide which it will be.”
“You have a very long line of titled ancestors on both sides who would not approve.”
Standing, Richard nodded at his uncle. “Yes, but they’re dead. I’m not. And I love Samantha.”
At this moment he also wanted to lock her in a closet to keep her from digging into the legend of Will Dawkin and his treasure, and keep her in there until she told him how the hell she’d gotten hold of the tale. He hadn’t told her whose map Reg was after, and he didn’t think Reg would do so, mainly because his cousin wouldn’t want to have to share the treasure if the tales turned out to be true.
By the time he made his way back through the conservatory, the power had been restored. Even so, he decided to head up to the second floor via the plain rear stairs instead of trudging through the more direct route of the portrait gallery. If the dead relations disapproved of Samantha and were attempting to let him know that, he wasn’t going to make it any easier for them.
She’d caught a whiff of a story about highwayman treasure, then, and had neglected to mention that to him. Well, he wasn’t going to make digging into it any easier for her, either. He made for the library. Amid the old Shakespeare folios and early editions of Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Browning, and Arthur Conan Doyle he knew there were scattered books on local specters, highwaymen, and Jacobites. One by one he removed seven books that delved into the life of Will Dawkin.
Under normal circumstances he would have hidden them in the attic, but that space had become Samantha’s base of operations. The cellar was out, because workmen would be crawling all over it in the next couple of days. With the books in his arms he made his way up the hallway and tried to decide which spot in the old, rambling house would be most boring to a woman who lived to dig into trouble.
Ultimately, he decided on the old dressing room directly connected to the bedchamber they shared, in the bottom box of a stack of well-worn hat boxes. Hats didn’t preserve well, and didn’t carry much value as antiques, and these boxes looked…damp and distinctly uninviting – but not in an obvious way. They’d dumped their suitcases in here already, so hopefully she’d already declared the room boring. There. They’d come to Canniebrae to escape, and for her to meet his relations. Not for Samantha Elizabeth Jellicoe to go digging after some mythological treasure trove. Or for Reg to do it, either.
Richard paused as he left the dressing room. Where was Reg? He hadn’t gone with Sam and Eerika, he hadn’t been in the library, and he wasn’t in the conservatory or the garden with his parents. If he was back in the damned west wing, the gloves were coming off.
Striding to the front of the house, Richard leaned over the balcony railing. “Yule! Where’s my cousin?”
“I dunnae ken, m’laird,” came the answer. “Sorry to say I’ve been going over the shopping list with Mrs. Yule. I’ll get him tracked down for ye.”
“I’ll be in the west wing,” Richard snapped back.
They’d chained the door to the wing again for the sake of safety. Samantha could get in if she chose, but then she knew what she was doing. Before he reached the end of the hallway he could make out the chain hanging from one door handle, the lock open. Apparently Reg had some skills of which Richard hadn’t been previously aware.
Even as he shoved open the door, he couldn’t believe his cousin would resort to thievery to fund his lifestyle. Embezzlement, perhaps, but high-end cat burglary took planning, effort, finesse, and discipline. Reg lacked at least two of those. Since the key remained in his pocket and the lock wasn’t cut, though, someone had picked it.
“Reg!” he yelled, remembering to keep to one side of the damp hallway as he stomped deeper into the west wing. “If you’ve fallen through the floor I’m bloody well leaving you there!”
The sound of his voice echoed and flattened, unanswered. The owner of a multi-billion dollar empire, contracts on his desk awaiting his signature, house renovations he hadn’t intended already beginning, and there he was tramping over rotting floors because his idiot cousin wouldn’t give up a childhood dream of finding treasure.
“Reg!” he bellowed again. “Do not fucking make me track you down!”
A shadow crossed a doorway toward the end of the hallway, and he moved toward it. Bits of damp plaster thunked onto the ruined carpet around him as the ceiling gave up its life piecemeal, but he mostly ignored the mess as he drew closer.
After the oddness in the portrait gallery he half-expected the old bedchamber to be empty. Even so, when he turned into the doorway to see nothing but some wooden bed slats and a pile of ruined wallpaper, he stopped short. It hadn’t been a ghost, because there was no such thing. Cursing, he stepped into the room.
Directly to his left in the far corner, a figure hunched against the floor, digging at the baseboard. For a quarter of a second, he thought perhaps Gollum had moved into the ruins, looking for his Precious. Richard blew out his breath, relieved and pissed off all at the same time. “So you couldn’t even muster a ‘bugger off’ to let me know you weren’t dead?”
Reg kept prying at the old wood with what looked like a screwdriver. “Bugger off,” he grunted.
“Too late for that now. You made me come after you. Get off the floor before you fall through it.”
“I know it’s here, Ricky. This house might be yours now, but it wasn’t when we found the map. It’s half mine, and I want my share.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. I told you, that map was a joke those blokes at the tavern played on the rich lads from the castle, and it’s long gone. Why are you so desperate for this nonsense?”
“It’s not nonsense, it wasn’t a joke, and you didn’t toss it away. I will find it. If you aren’t interested, I’ll happily claim the entire thing.”
Richard shut his eyes for a half-dozen heartbeats. “I threw the map in the fireplace the afternoon my mother told me about her cancer,” he stated, keeping his voice as flat as he could manage. “It seemed completely stupid and frivolous in comparison. So even if it had been real, which it wasn’t, it no longer exists. If you want me to apologize for thwarting some plan of yours to recover a few glass beads and call yourself a treasure hunter, then I suppose I’m sorry.”
His shoulders hunched, then Reg straightened and turned around. “I can’t figure it out,” he said, the screwdriver held low in one hand. “Did you find the gold and just add it to your bank account, or do you like knowing it’s nearby with no one else able to touch it?”
“Did you hear what I just said? The map has been ashes for nearly twenty years. Whether what it led to was highwayman’s gold or a pile of sticks, there is no way to find it. When the hell did you become so bloody obsessed with it?”
“When you invited us back here and I realized I have as much claim to it as you do. We found the map. We tracked down the stories. It’s half mine. That’s what annoys you, isn’t it? That you’d have to share. Because that isn’t how you operate these days.”
Richard looked at his cousin. As children they’d been close, with him less than a year older than Reg. They had adventured together during the summers. Even before the heart attack that had killed his father and left him a millionaire at nineteen, though, they’d drifted well apart. Reg had dipped his toes into racing, only to discover that sponsors were both necessary and required a certain level of decorum and acceptable behavior from those representing their brand. The younger Addison cousin had never liked being told what to do.
Car sales had come next, and he wasn’t shabby at it or anything, but until this second Richard had never wondered whether Reg was happy doing it. Before he’d met Samantha, words like “happiness” and “satisfaction” where business matters or other people’s personal lives were concerned, had never really occurred to him.
“Do you want money, Reg?” he asked, setting one hip against the doorjamb. “Are you in over your head or something? Do you want me to write you a check?”
“Yes, because more than anything else I want to be indebted to you. I want to wake up every morning and have my first thought be ‘thank God for cousin Ricky’. Without cousin Ricky who knows where we’d be?”
“Then what the fuck do you want?” Richard snapped back. “Because there’s nothing like offering a hand and watching it get bitten off.”
Reg’s tanning salon hue paled a little. “I want to be Reginald Addison. Not Rick Addison’s cousin, or a member of Rick Addison’s extended family. Highwayman treasure uncovered in the middle of the Scottish Highlands by entrepreneur Reginald Clarke Addison had a damned fine ring to it.” He jabbed the screwdriver hilt-deep into the wall and stomped past Richard, just missing a shoulder shove that he likely didn’t have the guts to risk. “And I don’t believe for a bloody second that you burned that map. You’ve never destroyed anything old or remotely useful. Go on with your tale, but peddle it to someone more gullible than I am.”
Richard stayed where he was in the doorway of his old bedchamber as Reg cautiously stormed down the rickety hallway. Bloody wonderful. Reg refused to give way despite all evidence to the contrary, and now Samantha had her fingers into a nice slice of mystery. Chaos, where he’d wanted a few weeks of peace.
One thing was damned certain; he was going to have to find a better hiding place for the map.