“We haven’t tried the truth.”
Turning, Eli looked at her. “What truth?”
“My parents were nearly dying for my sister to get married. My mother said my sister was losing her chances because she was getting old. She was nearly thirty. So if this Mr. Taggert is forty, maybe his family is dying to get him married too.”
Eli gave her a completely puzzled look.
“Let’s make an appointment with one of his brothers and tell him we have a wife for Mr. Taggert and see if he will help us.”
When Eli didn’t respond, Chelsea frowned. “It’s worth a try, isn’t it? Come on, stop moping and tell me the name of one of his brothers here in Denver.”
“Michael,” Eli said. “Michael Taggert.”
“Okay, let’s make an appointment with him and tell him what’s going on.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Eli turned to his keyboard. “Yes, let’s try.”
Michael Taggert looked up from his desk to see his secretary, Kathy, at the door wearing a mischievous grin.
“Remember the letter you received from Mr. Elijah J. Harcourt requesting a meeting today?”
Frowning, Mike gave a curt nod. In thirty minutes, he was to meet his wife for lunch, and from the look on Kathy’s face there might be some complications that would hold him up. “Yes?”
“He brought his secretary with him,” Kathy said, breaking into a wide smile.
Mike couldn’t see why a man and his secretary would cause such merriment, but then Kathy stepped aside and Mike saw two kids, both about twelve years old, enter the room behind her. The boy was tall, thin, with huge glasses and eyes so intense he reminded Mike of a hawk. The girl, even taller, had the easy confidence of what promised to be beauty and, unless he missed his guess, money.
I don’t have time for this, Mike thought, and wondered who’d put these kids up to this visit. Silently, he motioned for them to take a seat.
“You’re busy and so are we, so I’ll get right to the point,” Eli said.
Mike had to repress a smile. The boy’s manner was surprisingly adult, and he reminded him of someone but Mike couldn’t think who.
“I want my mother to marry your brother.”
“Ah, I see,” Mike said, leaning back in his chair. “And which one of my brothers would that be?”
“The oldest one, Frank.”
Mike nearly fell out of his chair. “Frank?” he gasped. His eldest brother was a terror, as precise as a measuring device, and about as warm as Maine in February. “Frank? You want your mother to marry Frank?” He leaned forward. “Tell me, kid, you got it in for your mother or what?”
At that Eli came out of his seat, his face red. “Mr. Taggert is a very nice man, and you can’t say anything against him or my mother!”
The girl put her hand on Eli’s arm and he instantly sat down, but he turned his head away and wouldn’t look at Mike.
“Perhaps I might explain,” the girl said, and she introduced herself.
Mike was impressed with the girl as she succinctly told their story, of Eli’s offer to go to Princeton but his refusal to leave his mother alone. As she spoke, Mike kept looking at Eli, trying to piece everything together. So the kid wanted a billionaire to take care of his mother. Ambitious brat, wasn’t he?
But Mike began to have a change of heart when Eli turned to Chelsea and said, “Don’t tell him that. He doesn’t like his brother.”
“Tell me what?” Mike encouraged. “And I love my brother. It’s just that he’s sometimes hard to take. Are you sure you have the right Frank Taggert?”
At that Eli removed a worn, raggedy envelope from the folder he was carrying. Mike recognized it as Frank’s private stationery, something he reserved for the family only. It was a way the family had of distinguishing private from business mail. His family frequently joked that Frank never used family stationery for anyone who did not bear the same last name as he did. There was even a rumor that on the rare times he’d sent a note to whichever date was waiting for him at the moment, he’d used business letterhead.
Yet Frank had written this boy a letter on his private stationery.
“May I see that?” Mike asked, extending his hand.