A Will and a Way Read Free Page A

period, the estate, in its entirety will be given over to all my surviving heirs and the Institute for the Study of Carnivorous Plants in joint shares.
    “You have my blessing, children. Don’t let an old, dead man down.”
    For a full thirty seconds there was silence. Taking advantage of it, Fitzhugh began straightening his papers.
    “The old bastard,” Michael murmured. Pandora would’ve taken offense if she hadn’t agreed so completely. Because he judged the temperature in the room to be on the rise, Michael pulled Pandora out, down the hall and into one of the funny little parlors that could be found throughout the house. Just before he closed the door, the first explosion in the library erupted.
    Pandora drew out a fresh tissue, sneezed into it, then plopped down on the arm of a chair. She was too flabbergasted and worn-out to be amused. “Well, what now?”
    Michael reached for a cigarette before he remembered he’d quit. “Now we have to make a couple of decisions.”
    Pandora gave him one of the long lingering stares she’d learned made most men stutter. Michael merely sat across from her and stared back. “I meant what I said. I don’t want his money. By the time it’s divided up and the taxes dealt with, it’s close to fifty million apiece. Fifty million,” she repeated, rolling her eyes. “It’s ridiculous.”
    “Jolley always thought so,” Michael said, and watched the grief come and go in her eyes.
    “He only had it to play with. The trouble was, every time he played, he made more.” Unable to sit, Pandora paced to the window. “Michael, I’d suffocate with that much money.”
    “Cash isn’t as heavy as you think.”
    With something close to a sneer, she turned and sat on the window ledge. “You don’t object to fifty million or so after taxes I take it.”
    He’d have loved to have wiped that look off her face. “I haven’t your fine disregard for money, Pandora, probably because I was raised with the illusion of it rather than the reality.”
    She shrugged, knowing his parents existed, and always had, mainly on credit and connections. “So, take it all then.”
    Michael picked up a little blue glass egg and tossed it from palm to palm. It was cool and smooth and worth several thousand. “That’s not what Jolley wanted.”
    With a sniff, she snatched the egg from his hand. “He wanted us to get married and live happily ever after. I’d like to humor him….” She tossed the egg back again. “But I’m not that much of a martyr. Besides, aren’t you engaged to some little blond dancer?”
    He set the egg down before he could heave it at her. “For someone who turns their pampered nose up at television, you don’t have the same intellectual snobbery about gossip rags.”
    “I adore gossip,” Pandora said with such magnificent exaggeration Michael laughed.
    “All right, Pandora, let’s put down the swords a minute.” He tucked his thumbs in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. Maybe they could, if they concentrated, talk civilly with each other for a few minutes. “I’m not engaged to anyone, but marriage wasn’t a term of the will in any case. All we have to do is live together for six months under the same roof.”
    As she studied him a sense of disappointment ran through her. Perhaps they’d never gotten along, but she’d respected him if for nothing more than what she’d seen as his pure affection for Uncle Jolley. “So, you really want the money?”
    He took two furious steps forward before he caught himself. Pandora never flinched. “Think whatever you like.” He said it softly, as though it didn’t matter. Oddly enough, it made her shudder. “You don’t want the money, fine. Put that aside a moment. Are you going to stand by and watch this house go to the clan out there or a bunch of scientists studying Venus’s flytraps? Jolley loved this place and everything in it. I always thought you did, too.”
    “I do.” The others would sell it, she