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  Neither of them heard the attic door open.

  Chapter Seventeen

  LORRIE POURED A SCOTCH AND YET AGAIN CONGRATULATED himself on his magnificence in handling Holly. He had spent four long weeks wining and dining her and introducing her to the right people.

  It was a shame about her background, he thought. Her father’s family was good, no property, no money, but good quality. However, her mother’s family was little better than…than that gardener Taylor lusted after, he thought, smiling. But then he’d done some lusting after that man, too. What was it about the lower classes in tight T-shirts with their great, roaring motorcycles?

  He sipped his scotch and looked through the mail. Nothing but bills, all of which he threw in the trash. Soon he’d have a docile little wife to pay all the bills for him.

  He ran his hand along a wall, felt the bulges in the plaster, and smiled. He’d renovate everything. From top to bottom he’d restore and renovate until Belle Chere was what it had once been. Soon the Beaumont name would be what it had once been, before men like his father had ruined it.

  Smiling to himself, he walked into the living room and imagined silk curtains, brocade-covered sofas, an eighteenth-century armoire on the far wall. He imagined a white-coated servant serving him his icy scotch on a silver tray. A sterling silver tray. Monogrammed.

  Yes, he thought, it was going to happen just as he and Taylor had planned it so long ago. That summer when he’d been just sixteen and hiding out from the world in embarrassment over his father’s latest fraudulent land deal, Taylor had been twenty and as obsessed with her rich little stepsister then as now.

  Taylor’d been so full of herself that summer; her beauty had been at its peak. She’d decided that she’d had enough of being second to Holly. “It’s always the little heiress they want to meet,” Taylor told Lorrie that summer. She’d hidden in the bushes and spied on Holly—something she’d done since her mother had married Holly’s father—and seen them together.

  From the first moment, Lorrie and Taylor had recognized each other as kindred souls. “So what do you want with her?” Taylor’d asked him. No introduction, just a blurting of those words.

  Lorrie shrugged. “Free labor.”

  Taylor had nodded sagely and sat down by him. She told him that she was planning to marry Charles Maitland. At sixteen, Lorrie had been shocked. “He’s old and he’s already married.”

  “He’s rich and he has a pedigree, both of which I need.”

  Lorrie had laughed. He felt the same way. When there was something you needed, you went after it.

  The summer had ended badly for Taylor because Charles had refused to divorce his ailing wife and marry the young, beautiful Taylor. “I’ll get him,” she’d told Lorrie. “If it takes the rest of my life, I’ll get him back for the way he’s treated me.”

  Lorrie hadn’t heard any more from Taylor until many years later. By then his plan to get his hands on his wife’s millions had failed. He’d managed to procure about two million from her without the ferocious men her first husband had left in charge of the money finding out, and Lorrie had invested it. His plan was to later go to her in triumph and show her what he’d done. If he stole and tripled the money it would be all right—and she’d give him more.

  But Lorrie found out that he’d inherited his father’s touch with investments. If he invested, the stock failed.

  His wife’s “overseers,” as he called them, found out about the money and showed her. She divorced him in an instant. He’d begged and pleaded and made lots of promises, but to no avail. Years of Lorrie’s drunken, all-night parties, plus the string of beautiful young men in the guest bedrooms, had made her deaf to his pleas.

  During the divorce, Lorrie’s law firm gave him notice. After all, his wife owned the firm, and she was the one who’d made sure her young husband was given credit for winning cases he’d never even worked on. It had been a matter of pride to her. To marry a young, beautiful man because he’d filled the empty place her husband’s passing had created made her an object of ridicule. To marry a brilliant young lawyer was another matter.

  In the midst of all this, Taylor had gone to Lorrie and made him a proposition. It seemed that Taylor regularly snooped in her stepsister’s computer files, and she’d found out that Miss Hollander Tools had been carrying a torch for Lorrie for years.

  In those same years, Taylor had been nurturing her hatred of Charles Maitland. She believed her life would have been different, better, if Charles had done what she wanted and married her. Over the years she’d blamed all her many failures on Charles and Holly.

  “People expect me to do something,” Taylor said. “They expect me to get a job.” She shuddered delicately. “My mother says, ‘Look at Holly. She’s worth millions yet she works twenty-four/seven for state and national preservationist societies.’ ”

  Taylor believed that if she’d been able to get her hands on Charles’s money no one would have suggested she have a career. And if she’d been able to claim Charles’s old-world name, she would finally outdo her stepsister. “Holly has money, but her mother was the lowest of the low. With Charles’s money and his old name, I’d at last be able to win over her.”

  On that day when Taylor had reentered his life, she’d told Lorrie that Charles’s wife had finally died so she, Taylor, meant to marry the man. “And make him regret turning me down the first time,” she said, her knuckles white against her drink glass.

  Together they came up with a plan that would solve all their problems. Taylor would marry Charles, and Lorrie would marry Hollander Tools—at least that’s the way he saw it. As for Holly herself, he thought little. All he really cared about was Belle Chere, and Holly was eminently qualified to put glory back into his home.

  “And then what?” Lorrie had asked idly. “Whatever do I do with a wife after the work is finished?”

  “Kill her,” Taylor said, making Lorrie pause, drink at his lips. “I’m her only heir now, but I’m sure her diligent firm of attorneys will immediately change her will once she marries you. You and I will jointly inherit.”

  “Murder?” he’d whispered. “I’m not sure…”

  “If she died we’d split about two hundred million dollars.”

  After that statement, Lorrie had never looked back. He and Taylor had met in secret four times and worked on their plans. They’d thought of ways to kill Charles and Holly together, but Taylor said she wanted Charles to live so she could make his life as miserable as he’d made hers.

  They connived and manipulated, with Taylor constantly dropping hints about Lorrie to Holly. “She thinks everything is her own idea.”

  “Does your mother?” Lorrie asked, curious.

  Taylor’s eyes slid to one side. “She…knows some of my true feelings for Holly, but I’m her daughter, so what can she do?”

  During this time of planning, Lorrie had borrowed and begged money from every source he could. He had three mortgages on Belle Chere. He needed money to set up a fake law office in Edenton to impress Holly. He had to buy an expensive car and designer clothes. He had to look prosperous if he planned to court her. He couldn’t look as though he needed her money!

  While he was buying these things, he’d had to let Belle Chere rot. It hurt him to his heart to see the deterioration as he loved every inch of every blade of grass. But he needed to make Holly feel the urgent need for restoration. Urgency would make her marry him sooner.

  Lorrie smiled. Last night he’d popped the question and even showed her a ring (not a real diamond, but she probably knew more about crescent wrenches than jewels), and she’d blushed rather prettily. She hadn’t said yes yet, but he was sure she would. Afterward, he’d called Taylor in triumph. He assured her that there’d be a double wedding. It was a done deal. He’d invested everything and this time, he’d won! He was going to marry Belle Chere to Hollander Tools. Laughing at his own witticism, he stopped when he heard a noise upstairs. The gardener! That gorgeous hunk who worked for Jam