Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (v1.2) (39 page)

“Don’t make yourself at home, you traitor,” Grady growled, slamming the door behind him.

“And don’t you think we’re bunking together, honey, not that I couldn’t get the hots for you and your pretty green eyes if I gave it half a try, which I won’t,” she said, standing up. “We’ve got connecting rooms. I just unpacked your stuff like agood little assistant.” She cocked her head to one side. “Tell me, honey, don’t those skimpy little underpants ride up?”

“I’ll thank you to stay out of my underpants, Maisie,” Grady said with a straight face, walking past his “assistant” and flinging the manila envelope on the bed before collapsing in a chair. “I owe you one, you know. You and Quinn both.”

“You owe me more than one, honey,” Maisie quipped, taking a long silver nail file out of her skirt pocket and running it over a nail as she leaned against one of the tall bedposts. “We can start with a raise in my salary once we’re finished here. Be a good boy, honey, and make sure that doesn’t take too long. I think I saw this dump in a horror movie once.”

“Why, Maisie, I thought you’d love it here,” Grady said, and she stuck out her tongue at him. He looked around the high-ceilinged room full of dark wood furniture and heavy draperies. “You know, this place would make a hell of a funeral home.”

“Not if you do your job right, honey.” Maisie laid down the nail file, picked up the envelope, and slid the photo of Annie Kendall onto the bed. She frowned, looked at Grady, picked up the photograph, then frowned again.

Maisie had a blatantly dyed, artificially curled mop of red curls around her full, round face—a face Charles Schultz might have drawn. Right now the fairly impressive brain under those rioting curls had her looking like a comic version of
perplexed.
She tossed the photo back onto the bed. “Who’s the girl? Pretty thing. Almost beautiful. Should I be jealous, honey?”

“She’s a last minute addition to our cast of characters,” Grady told her, unable to sit still. He got up, went over to the desk he’d seen in front of the large double windows, and opened the top file on the pile Maisie had laid out for him. “An illegitimate granddaughter, supposedly, who Archie may give all his millions to, or at least that’s what he hopes his relatives will think. Damn.”

“I don’t get it, honey. If he gives all his money to her, our job is over. You’re home again, home again, honey, and no more weeping and gnashing of teeth from all the eligible and ineligible ladies in Philadelphia. Why are you so upset?”

“Why am I so upset?” Grady raked his fingers through his shaggy sandy hair. “I’ll tell you why, Maisie. I don’t believe old Archie’s in any danger. According to his lawyer, there have been no attempts on his life, nothing. I believe we’re wasting our time. But if I’m
wrong
about that—and it’s a big if—and if Archie is right? Well, then don’t you see what he’s doing, why we’re here?”

“Not a clue, honey,” Maisie admitted. “But run your ideas by me and maybe I’ll catch on.”

“If someone is really trying to kill the toilet paper king, Maisie, then the smartest thing he could do is to give them someone else to kill. Another target, Maisie. Play it up big, say how this is his long-lost granddaughter, he’s sure of it, and he’s going to give her all his money just as soon as I can check her credentials—not that he mentioned that part of the job, but it figures.”

Maisie shook her head. “Nope, sorry. Still don’t get it, honey. But don’t stop trying.”

“I said, Maisie, he wanted a
new target,
if one of his relatives really is trying to kill him. Me, I guard Archie. Meanwhile,
bang, bang,
the granddaughter’s dead, the killer is locked up, everyone else is scared back into submission, and Archie goes on cackling and playing his game for another ten years—at which time he’ll be ten years older than dirt. His kind never die young, or so Grandfather Sullivan always said. Got it now?”

“Ah, now I understand. A sort of deep, twisted Machiavellian plot, or whatever that is, right, honey?” Maisie sat down on the bed and picked up the photograph of Annie Kendall once more. “She does have those same gray eyes I’ve seen on a lot of the other photos. Very distinctive shade of almost nothing. Is she really a Peevers?”

Grady shook his head. “No way. It’s too pat, too B-movie, too bad novel. He’s hired her—I’d bet on it. He hasn’t left the house in ten years, so she probably came to see him, trying to run a con, and he either called her on it and they’ve gone into business togedier, or he decided to pretend to go along with her. Either way, he’s using her. And he’s put
me
smack in the middle of the whole damn, twisted thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone took a potshot at me, just because I’m going to be the one who’s been hired to prove she’s legit.”

“Wow, and I thought I was going to get to work on my tan on company time. Honey, this isn’t the sort of assignment I had in mind when I volunteered.”

“So you’re leaving?” Grady asked.

Maisie grinned. “Leaving? What? And give up show biz? Honey, don’t be ridiculous. Now when does this Annie Kendall get here?”

Indeed, when does Annie Kendall show up? Who is she, really? And why is Grady so attracted to this exasperating woman he believes to be an unscrupulous con artist out for a fast buck? And what about the rest of the Peevers, all heir to the toilet paper king’s millions’? The sons; the downtrodden A.W. and the fun-loving funior. A.W.’s social climbing wife; funior’s hopeful fourth wife. The family doctor and the family lawyer. Dickens and the rest of the long suffering Peevers staff. Everyone has something to gain when Archie dies, more to gain if Annie Kendall is either discredited or permanently removed from the scene.

Nmv they’re all residing in Peevers Mansion, plotting, planning, scheming, and—for two of them, reluctantly falling in love.

Who wins, who loses? Will Archie still be laughing when it’s all, over?

Around and around and around we go, and where it all ends, nobody knows…

Kasey Michaels is a
New York Times
bestselling author of more than sixty books. In addition to writing for Zebra, she also writes historical romances for Warner Books and short contemporaries for Silhouette and Harlequin. Kasey lives with her family in Pennsylvania and is currently working on her next Zebra contemporary romance. Kasey loves to hear from readers, and you may write to her c/o Zebra Books. Please include a self-addressed stamped envelope if you wish a response.