Harlequin Romance March 2021 Box Set Cara Colter (the mitten read aloud TXT) 📖

And now she’d taken that away from him. She should leave…stay somewhere else. ‘I guess it’s too much to hope that there’s a vacant apartment in the building?’

‘They’re all tenanted.’

Of course they were.

‘What?’ he demanded, when she continued to stare at him.

‘I just don’t get you. You obviously cared about Frances and yet you…’

‘I what?’ he bit out.

‘Took her for a ride—took advantage of her. Or is all of this resentment and hostility…’ she waved a hand at him ‘…because your meal ticket has run out?’

* * *

Owen’s head rocked back. What the hell…? Meal ticket? He didn’t need a meal ticket. He was a giver of meal tickets.

But Callie obviously didn’t know that. She had no idea who he was—that he was the name and the brains behind Perry Apps. He was more than happy for it to stay that way too. Avarice was this woman’s middle name. He didn’t need the hassle of yet another gold-digging woman trying to infiltrate his life and his heart. Callie was pretty, but she wasn’t that pretty.

Are you sure?

He rolled his shoulders, angry with himself. He might have a weakness for her particular brand of fresh-faced wholesomeness, but he was neither a fool nor a masochist.

‘You’re accusing me of financially profiting from your grandmother, when it’s you who has inherited twenty million dollars?’

‘The fact that I’ve inherited part of Frances’s estate has seriously irked you—’

You bet it had!

‘Despite the fact I couldn’t possibly have taken advantage of someone I’d never met and had no contact with…’

Sing another song, sunshine.

Her hands clenched, as if she could read the scorn in his heart. ‘You told me you’d fleeced her.’

What?

‘When?’

‘When you said, “Frances gave me everything I needed while she was alive”!’ she shouted at him.

He stilled at the fury in her eyes. He tried telling himself her anger was because she thought he’d stolen what was hers, but instinct told him otherwise.

Instinct? Ha! What use were instincts? They’d proved so monumentally fallible where Fiona was concerned that they couldn’t be trusted or listened to or taken into account. He’d honestly thought Fiona had loved him for himself. Not his money.

A vice tightened about his chest until he could barely breathe. If she’d succeeded in her plan he’d have been bound for the rest of his life to a ruthless, rapacious woman he couldn’t respect. He’d had a narrow escape. And it had been dumb luck, not reasoned deduction, that had revealed Fiona for the woman she was rather than the woman she’d wanted him to believe her to be.

Instincts had no place in his world view any more, or in his decision-making, or in any course of action he embarked upon. He wasn’t making the same mistake twice. The only thing he’d rely on now was evidence and cold hard facts.

And what were the facts? From the sparks flying from Callie’s eyes and the way her hands had clenched in white-knuckled violence… Callie was furious. Fact.

‘It seems like you preyed on a lonely old woman, which is a truly despicable thing to do.’

It would be if it were true.

Callie slammed her hands to her hips. She wasn’t some tiny, fragile-boned pixie girl—she had curves. Curves that had his groin tightening and a thirst rising through him. She had muscles too, as if she worked out or played sport. She didn’t have a large build, but he had a feeling that if she threw a punch there’d be enough force behind it to wind a guy.

And she looked as if she’d like nothing better than to punch him. The realisation lightened some of the weight that engulfed him.

Then her shoulders lost some of their tightness. ‘And yet you were with her when she died. You didn’t let her die alone.’ She cocked her head to one side and surveyed him. ‘Which I guess makes you a wolf with a conscience.’

He was tempted to let her continue believing the worst. He neither needed nor wanted her good opinion. At that precise moment, though, Frances’s face rose in his mind, with that knowing eyebrow raised as if to ask, Really? and he found himself huffing out a breath.

‘You managed to put the worst possible interpretation on those words, didn’t you?’

Her chin lowered a notch. ‘What did you mean, then?’

He drained the rest of his coffee and then strode across to the sofa and sat. In Frances’s seat. Because he couldn’t bear the thought of seeing anyone else in it—especially if that someone was her undutiful granddaughter. She hesitated and then took a seat too, at the other end of the sofa, curled up against its arm in a spot where he couldn’t remember anyone ever sitting.

‘My mother was Frances’s cleaning woman. I was four when Mom starting cleaning for her—not at school yet—so my mother often had to bring me to work with her. The first time I came here, Frances taught me to play checkers.’

Callie smoothed her hands across her skirt and for a moment all he could see were her knees—really pretty knees. He shook himself. Pretty knees? Was he losing the plot?

‘I thought you said she didn’t like small children?’

‘For some reason she made an exception for me.’ For which he’d always considered himself blessed. ‘My father was an alcoholic, and sometimes violent.’

Callie’s gaze speared his and he found himself shrugging.

‘He never hit my mother or me, but he punched holes in walls, broke dinner plates, threw things. We knew it was only a matter of time.’

As a little kid, he’d lived in fear of his father. It wasn’t something he liked to dwell on.

‘Frances helped my mother leave him—gave her cheap accommodation here in this apartment block. She took an interest in us—in me.’ Loss hollowed out his stomach. ‘She was the grandmother I never had.’

Callie sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. When she released it, it was plump and red from where she’d worried at it…and disturbingly fascinating.

‘Where’s your father now?’ she asked.

‘As soon as he realised he