“I have, obviously, seen a totally different version of the man than you have.”
“He’s a pretty cool guy, Keely,” Carrick protested. Points to Carrick for defending his friend, Sadie thought.
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that subject,” Keely retorted. Sadie met Joa’s eyes and caught her small smile. Yep, she knew what Joa was thinking because Sadie was thinking it, too...something along the lines of the lady and protesting too much.
“Moving on from annoying lawyers...” Keely waved away the subject of Dare Seymour.
Sadie sympathized. It was exceedingly annoying to be attracted to a man you didn’t want to be, or couldn’t afford to be, attracted to.
Joa pulled them back to the subject at hand. “Just to be clear, we are talking about the painting of the African American woman with her two children in the fields, right?”
Sadie nodded. “Let me explain...”
Sadie pulled her iPad toward her and flipped open the cover. Powering up the device, she waited until it connected with the big screen behind Carrick. When the painting appeared on the screen, Carrick moved to sit next to her so his bulk didn’t block their view. He immediately pressed his knee against hers and Sadie lost her train of thought.
Sadie knew they were waiting for her to speak, to tell them how she spent her very expensive time—time they were paying for—but nope...
Her brain had ceased to function. Ground to a halt. No blood flowing.
Mostly because she was remembering the way Carrick spread her knees open, the way he looked at the most intimate parts of her, his expression as he dipped his head...
Complete shutdown...
Sadie jumped when Carrick filled the increasingly awkward silence. “So Sadie is going to take you through what she’s found and you’ll both have a better idea of what we are facing.”
Sadie gave herself a mental slap, told herself to get with the program and do her job. But just to minimize distractions, she stood up and moved away from Murphy and his addictive touch.
“So, you’ll contact me as soon as you have some news?”
“Because I’m contracted to Murphy’s, I report to them, but if Carrick is happy for me to liaise with you directly, I’m happy to do that.”
“I have no problem with Sadie doing that, Keely.”
Carrick Murphy’s deep voice drifted over to Joa, who stood in the hallway outside the conference room. She mentally urged Keely to hurry up. Joa loved her best friend and non-blood sister but damn, she never stopped talking. Joa had come directly from the airport to this meeting and she was jetlagged, tired and hungry. Keely had promised to whisk her back to Mounton House as soon as possible.
Joa swallowed down a huge yawn, thinking that she instinctively liked Sadie and appreciated her professional, shoot-from-the-hip approach. She wouldn’t make them any false promises or raise their hopes unnecessarily. Joa, who was above everything else a wide-eyed realist, appreciated that.
Joa rocked on her feet, feeling, like she often did, that this, her life, was all a dream. She was still unable, so many months after Isabel’s death, to believe that she was a beneficiary of Isabel’s great fortune.
The fortune comprised of a historic house in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood, a stupendously healthy stock portfolio, various bank accounts and one of the best art collections in the world.
Windfalls—a tame word for such an enormous inheritance—didn’t happen to people like her.
It was right for Keely to inherit; she was a blood relation of Isabel’s. But Joa had no such connections to the Mounton-Matthews family. She’d only met Isabel at fourteen when the Boston doyenne visited a shelter that had been a stopgap after Joa ran away from her latest foster home.
The very next day Joa had found herself living at Mounton House with the eccentric Isabel and her great-niece Keely. For the first time since she was shoved into the system at ten, Joa had felt loved. But better than loved, she’d felt secure.
Safety. So many people took the concept for granted, but to Joa, there wasn’t any better feeling in the world. And she’d always be eternally grateful to Isabel for making her feel that way.
Man, she missed the old lady with an intensity that threatened to drop her to her knees.
“Are you sure Isabel didn’t say anything to you about where she acquired the paintings?” Sadie asked Keely.
Right, Joa would have to wait a little longer for her bed.
“Not that I recall,” Keely answered. “Maybe she didn’t buy them. Maybe they were given to her. Iz was exceptionally popular and had many...friends.”
Why didn’t Keely just come straight out and say that Iz had numerous lovers over the years? Joa doubted Sadie would fall over in a heap upon hearing that Iz liked men. And sex.