Sleeping Arrangements (Silhouette Desire) Read Free

your day? Other than finding your true career path in mud wrestling, that is.”
    “Disturbing.” Her mother’s raised eyebrow encouraged her to continue. Addy bit her lip and tried to find the right words for her questions. In the end, the simplest way seemed best. “Mom, did you know that Great-Aunt Adeline died?”
    Susannah briefly closed her eyes and dropped her head beneath the light of the stained-glass lamp hanging above the table. When she looked back at Addy, her eyes, and her words, were calm. Measured. “Yes, I’d heard.”
    “Why didn’t you tell us? Tell me?” If she hadn’t known, Addy was sure her siblings were equally in the dark.
    Her mother paused before speaking.
    “You wouldn’t even remember meeting her. You were justa baby. But I used to send her pictures of you. Your brother and sisters, too, but I always hoped she’d feel some kind of bond with you at least. Since you were named for her.” She shrugged. “I honestly didn’t think you would even hear about it.”
    “Surprise, surprise,” Addy murmured, mostly to herself.
    “Who told you?”
    “Aunt Adeline’s attorney.”
    “What?” Confusion battled surprise on her mother’s face.
    “Apparently you were more successful than you thought. I’ve been named in her will.” Addy’s irritation blossomed anew at the mere thought. She knew her anger was a mixed-up tangle directed at both her great-aunt and Spencer Reed, but she resolutely shut thoughts of the disturbingly attractive man out of her head. “Maybe she thought she could buy her way back into your good graces on her deathbed.”
    Ceramic mug met wood tabletop with a forceful clatter.
    “Watch your mouth, Adeline Marie Tyler.” Her mother’s voice crackled with real anger. “You may not live under my roof anymore, but in this house we don’t disrespect the dead, or their last wishes.”
    Susannah jumped up and paced the tile floor, eventually stopping to yank plates and water glasses from a cabinet. She turned and thrust the stack of plates at her eldest daughter. “If Aunt Adeline changed her feelings at the end and then died before she found a way to tell us, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Go set the table.”
    Addy stood and took the dishes, but remained stubbornly in one spot.
    “I don’t want anything from her. She meant nothing to me.”
    Her mother cupped a hand against Addy’s cheek, brushed a tangle of curls behind one ear. Gentleness rested in her touch.
    The shrill peal of the telephone rang through the house.
    “Answer that. Set the table. You’ll figure the rest out later.” Her mom patted her cheek and turned back to the stove.
    She set the plates down in the dining room before heading to the tiny phone table in the hall. Answering the phone withher mind on other things, she was confused by the voice she heard. She moved the handset away from her ear, stared at it for a moment and then put it back.
    “Excuse me? Who is this?”
    “Spencer Reed, Ms. Tyler. I wanted to let you know—”
    “How did you get this number? It’s not even mine.”
    She could hear the impatience in his words and pictured his lips thinning as he pressed them together. “There are a lot of ways to get information if you’re willing to pay for it. But in the case of your mother’s home phone number, your aunt gave it to me years ago.”
    “Great-aunt,” she shot back, not willing to let him claim an ounce more family intimacy than absolutely necessary. “It would have been kinder of her to use the number herself and call my mother just once in the last twenty or thirty years. Speaking of which, why doesn’t this bequest go to my mother? She’s the nearest relation. Or why not my brother and sisters, too? Why just me?”
    He paused before speaking. She could picture him leaning back in an oversize leather chair, looking up at the ceiling. He would treat even her snippy questions with serious thought, she knew—and wondered why she was so certain