By Hook or By Crook Page 2

  “Daisy, wait. Don’t hang—” The line went dead before she could complete her sentence.

  Damn her irresponsible sister. She’d simply had to get in one more zinger before she let go. Ivy set the phone down on the table with a thunk, chewing her lower lip pensively. Why was it impossible for them to have a calm, adult conversation? She dialed Daisy, but got no answer. She’d try again in a minute.

  Trying to shake off her hurt and get back to work, she used her cell phone camera to take photos of the engraving, but the incident with Daisy had broken the magical spell she always fell under while viewing one of Dürer’s originals. While she methodically took photos and turned pages, her mind incessantly replayed their conversation.

  Her sister’s words had painted a pretty clear picture of how she perceived Ivy, and it wasn’t flattering. Daisy saw her as bitter, controlling, and unhappy.

  But that wasn’t true! She had simply learned from her hard experience with Daniel, and she would not repeat the same mistakes, or let her sister repeat them, either. She cared about her sister and only wanted to help. Unable to forget their confrontation, she redialed her sister, but Daisy still didn’t pick up. Obviously, she hadn’t gotten over her fury yet.

  She left her phone out on the work table where she could answer it quickly if Daisy called again, but she needed to get back to the Bible. The Dobbins Library, devoted to the preservation and study of rare books, allowed scholars only a two-hour time frame to study their most precious works. Distracted by Daisy, she’d wasted too much time already. She’d better get busy.

  She tried her best to focus on her work, stopping periodically to place unanswered calls to Daisy, but by the time she checked the Bible back in, she’d started to truly worry.

  “I hope you found everything to your satisfaction, Ms. Smithson,” the curator said with a nod. “You can always let me know if there is anything I can do to assist.” She knew the woman meant well, but Ivy found the deferential treatment slightly irritating. Would the woman be so solicitous if her father wasn’t a deep-pocket donor to the Dobbins Library? She doubted it.

  “Yes, Beverly, everything was perfect. Thank you. Goodbye.”

  She didn’t realize the curator had followed her halfway down the hall until she felt a hand on her arm. She halted, turning to see Beverly hovering. She didn’t try to halt the flight of her brows upward—she wasn’t the type of person other people put their hands on casually.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said, hastily withdrawing her hand. “I couldn’t get your attention. I called your name, but you didn’t answer.”

  “It’s okay, Beverly,” she said, although it wasn’t. “I’m preoccupied with other things. What did you need?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about the Dürer rhino sketch.”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you given any more thought to the discussion we had a few months ago?”

  “Discussion?” Ivy repeated, her thoughts drifting back to her sister. She checked her watch, a diamond-studded Ebel her father had gotten her for Christmas last year. Five p.m. The drive to Chicago took three hours. Surely by the time she arrived home, she could get Daisy to pick up the phone.

  “Yes, about the collector.” Beverly’s peered at her expectantly from behind rimless glasses, and Ivy blinked.

  “Oh, of course. You know a collector who wants to purchase the rhino sketch. I remember now. Well, I’m sorry. My thoughts haven’t changed. It’s not for sale.”

  “This particular collector, who wishes to remain anonymous, has informed me that cost is no object. He’s willing to pay whatever it takes to get that sketch.”

  “And you can tell the collector that money is no object to me, either,” Ivy said, trying to keep her voice friendly. Did Beverly really think money mattered to a Smithson? “That sketch was a gift from my father for my sixteenth birthday. I treasure it.”

  “Of course, this collector is well aware of its special nature,” the curator hastened to add. “If you’re worried about the integrity of the sketch, let me assure you that I would never speak on behalf of anyone who wouldn’t treat it with utmost care.”

  Was this woman not listening? “Beverly, that’s not the point. That sketch was a special gift from my father. It means a lot to me. I would never offend my father by selling it.”

  “Oh. Oh! Of course, we would never want to do anything that would offend Mr. Smithson.” The curator blinked several times, finally realizing the dangerous ground onto which she’d trod. “Or you, either.” The last bit, added as an afterthought, let Ivy know where she stood. “But if you change your mind—”

  “I won’t,” Ivy said politely. “Good day, Beverly.”

  She left the woman sputtering and loaded her gear into her car. On the highway, she dialed Daisy’s number again and again, to no avail.

  By the time she arrived in the Chicago suburbs, worry had made her queasy. After all, she couldn’t talk sense into her sister if she couldn’t talk to her at all. Knowing she had to drive by her father’s building to get to her own Lakeshore Drive high-rise condo, she pondered the situation. On one hand, Daisy was legally an adult. If she wanted to elope, she had every right to do so.

  On the other hand, marriage to Pock would be a disaster, one that would infuriate their father and, more importantly, wreck Daisy’s future.

  Richard Smithson wouldn’t take this lying down. He would do everything in his power to stop the marriage if he had advance notice. Her hands tightened on the wheel. She didn’t even want to imagine his reaction if the marriage actually took place. If Daisy thought he’d eventually calm down and give them his blessing, she was crazy. He would pry them apart, and cutting her off entirely without an allowance wasn’t out of the question.

  Resolute, she pushed thoughts of her father’s anger out of her mind. This marriage would be a huge mistake for her sister, but Ivy couldn’t stop it alone. To thwart this mad disaster, she’d have to tell their father.

  For all the suffering Daniel had put her through, at least Ivy had been spared the humiliation of actually marrying him. She had found out about his true motives before she was legally bound to him. She had to open Daisy’s eyes, too.

  Ivy turned onto Division Street, where her father’s building was located. In the underground parking garage, she showed her security pass to the guard, who waved her through with a tip of his cap. She parked in her reserved spot and made her way into the white marble lobby, walking under the modernist chandelier her mother used to tease her father about, back when the building had been just his corporate office and not his home too.

  “That chandelier looks like a stack of ice cubes dangling from the ceiling,” her mother had scolded. Her father had only laughed. Since Mom died, he rarely laughed.

  Her father had bought this building years ago. Eighty-six floors of commercial, residential, and retail space, located blocks from Lake Michigan. He leased much of it out, but he reserved the top twenty floors for the headquarters of his commercial real estate empire. He kept the penthouse floor for his personal residence.

  For a man who lived to work, the building, which contained a grocery store, mall, movie theater, post office, swimming pool, and private gym, was a very convenient arrangement. Richard Smithson never had to leave the office if he didn’t want to, and he rarely did, except for the occasional business trip. Most of the time, however, his business associates came to him.

  She took the elevator to the penthouse suite, where a guard, stone-faced with boredom, sat full-time behind a desk in the security foyer.

  “Hello, Marshall,” she greeted the guard. “Can you tell Father I’m here? I know it’s late, but it’s important.”

  “Of course.” Marshall flashed her a smile and announced her via the intercom. Moments later, the door to her father’s living quarters unlocked with a buzz and a click.

  “Thanks.” She unwound the layers she’d donned to protect herself from the Chicago winter. She stowed them all neatly in an entryway
closet. Her father’s penthouse wasn’t the kind of place where you tossed your coat and scarf over the back of the sofa.

  When their mother was still alive, they had all lived in Winnetka, in a lovely Tudor-style house decorated with loving attention to detail. For her mother, with her flair for style, making a comfortable home for her family was a passion. Her father had commuted to work then. His job had been a driving force in his life, but it hadn’t been his life.

  But when Ivy was twelve, Elizabeth had succumbed to breast cancer. Their father had sold the comfortable old Tudor and moved to the Gold Coast high-rise, where he could throw himself into his work more than ever. His daughters had come with him as something of an afterthought.

  While Ivy still lived here with her father and sister, she’d made an effort to humanize the place, but he always rebuffed her. “A house is a house,” he grumbled. Instead, he hired the corporate decorator who had designed the interiors of his offices to do the home, as well. As a result, the penthouse had the same gray-and-beige color scheme and bland abstract art as the corporate side of Smithson Commercial Real Estate. Sometimes Ivy wondered if her father had done that on purpose, to give him the feeling that he never left work.

  For Ivy, the saving grace of the penthouse was its view. Windows wrapped around the building, revealing Lincoln Park on one side, darkly gleaming Lake Michigan and the Gold Coast on the other. She sat in one of her father’s uncomfortable contemporary chairs in front of the windows, taking in the beauty of the night lights of Chicago’s legendary skyline reflecting on the midnight-black waters of the lake. A blinking red light moved across the water far off—a shipping vessel, probably.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of this late-evening visit?”

  Her father’s voice behind her made her jump. She rose and turned to face him, her throat tight. She might be an adult, but confronting her father at difficult moments made her feel like a child.

  She had interrupted his workout. He blotted his damp face with a towel and draped it around his neck. Few would guess that her father was nearly sixty. He worked out in his building’s gym and swimming pool daily, keeping himself fit. Only his silver hair and receding hairline hinted at his true age. His unlined skin and lean physique seemed to belong to a man closer to forty.

  “Sorry for interrupting,” she began, wondering how on earth she could broach this news gently.

  “I don’t mind. I expect it’s something important or you wouldn’t be here at this time of night without notice. None of my children ever visit spontaneously, since everyone moved out.” She’d half-expected the jab. Her father excelled at dispensing guilt.

  “You make it sound like we all abandoned you, Dad. My condo is only a few blocks away.” She tried to keep anxiety out of her voice. Arguing with her dad, even mildly, always made her tense.

  “It’s not the same,” he said. “I liked it when we were all living under the same roof. I could make sure you were safe.”

  “My building has excellent security, Dad.”

  Her father hadn’t been pleased two years ago when Ivy moved to another building several blocks away. She had never liked being only an elevator’s ride away from her father at all times. For his part, he hated when his daughters made decisions without his input. It struck him too much as a bid for independence, Ivy thought ruefully, which of course it had been, in a tiny way.

  In fact, she sometimes wondered how much she’d accomplished by moving to a building much like the one her father owned. A maid still came to clean every day, the laundry service picked up her dirty clothes and dropped off clean ones twice a week, and a personal shopper kept the pantry stocked. Ivy did the cooking, though. Before her mother died, they’d cooked together, and Ivy still felt close to her when she cooked.

  He retrieved a bottle of water from the refrigerator and sat at the breakfast bar. As if he read her mind, he asked, “What has Daisy been up to now?”

  “What makes you think Daisy has been up to something?” she hedged, sitting again.

  “You rarely cause trouble, and your sister does. Call it an educated guess.”

  Either her father had developed psychic ability, or she was totally predictable. Unfortunately, Ivy suspected the latter. Pushing aside her irritation, she launched into her story. She’d done nothing wrong, but she still had to fight the urge to squirm under her father’s unyielding stare. His tenacity and presence intimidated even his own family. It explained why Richard Smithson had been able to rise from a modest upbringing to become one of America’s wealthiest real estate moguls.

  He listened in silence, betraying no reaction. His impassive face concerned her more than an eruption would have. She would have understood an eruption, but his blank expression made him impossible to read. When she finished, he said nothing. Only his thinning lips betrayed his anger.

  He retrieved his cell phone and punched in a series of numbers.

  “I called her again before I left the car,” Ivy offered. She shifted on her seat, intensely ill at ease, and then stopped herself. You’re an adult, she reminded herself. Time to start acting like one.

  “She’ll pick up for me,” her father said, offhand. Her brows rose at his self-assurance, but she said nothing. As the phone rang repeatedly, her father scowled. “She must be away from it. She always picks up for me.”

  “Unless she’s up to something she’s not supposed to be, and doesn’t want you to stop her,” Ivy pointed out.

  “I’m sure this is nothing,” her father insisted. He clicked the phone off and stared out at Lake Michigan. After a minute or two, he dialed again, but still got no answer. After another moment, he clicked a different series of numbers. “I’m going to need you to come over,” he said to the person on the other end of the line. “Yeah, right now. I’ll explain when you get here. Thanks.”

  His eyes met Ivy’s.

  “Who did you call?” she asked in the wake of his silence.

  His expression, not a grimace, but not quite a smile, made her uneasy. “A man I know. A consultant. He’s a very useful man to have around. I call him when I need to know something.”

  Ivy’s brows rose. “And what do you need to know now?”

  “How to stop your damned foolish sister before she does something she’ll regret forever.”

  ****

  “Honey, hon! I’ve gotta get that. I’m sorry.”

  Joe Dunham pulled back from the woman entwined around him to reach for his cell phone. She rolled her eyes, taking the moment to dab at her smeared lipstick. In the bar parking lot, he had leaned into her for a passionate kiss—to establish the mood before the drive back to his place—and now this. Richard Smithson, his biggest client. Being an ex-cop turned security consultant meant you couldn’t ignore a call from a regular paycheck like Smithson, no matter how tempted you were.

  The girl, Cherry—or was it Carrie?—pouted but leaned against his Dodge Charger. He thought about telling her to watch the paint job, but decided he shouldn’t press his luck. They’d met forty-five minutes ago in Buster’s, a bar where Joe often came to grab a beer and a burger, shoot some pool, and maybe meet a girl. Tonight, he’d done all three. She had made it clear she was his for the price of two margaritas. He usually preferred brunettes to redheads, a little more on the voluptuous side, but she was friendly and eager and would suit him fine for one night.

  “Dunham here.” The conversation was short, and a minute later, Joe shut his phone with a snap.

  Damn.

  He didn’t need to explain anything to Cherry/Carrie. She could tell by the look on his face that the evening was over. “I’m sorry, it’s a work thing. I’ve got to go. Can I give you a ride home?”

  She leaned closer to him, her bottle-red hair swirling about her shoulders as she went up on tiptoe to press her lips to his. “Maybe I can change your mind?” she whispered, reaching down to stroke his fly.

  Stifling a groan, he pushed her hand away. Subtle she wasn’t, but he had never cared much for subtle.
Damn, if it were anyone but Smithson...

  “I can’t. It’s an emergency. I really have to go. Can I get your number for some other time, maybe?” He held up his phone, ready to enter her number. He had dozens of others in his phone from girls like her: Hook-ups and one-night stands he meant to call again sometime but never got around to. She didn’t have to know that, however. Besides, who knew? Maybe he’d actually call her someday. Stranger things had happened.

  Cherry/Carrie apparently had a pretty good idea he’d never call. “Nah. I’m not giving up on tonight.” She nodded toward the neon sign over Buster’s. “I’ll go back in there. The fireman was pretty cute, too.”

  Joe grinned. Maybe he should mind that she saw him as a one-night hookup who could be easily replaced, but he didn’t. That’s what he was, and that’s what Cherry/Carrie was to him as well. That’s all any woman had ever been to him, and that suited him fine. He kissed her goodbye and got behind the wheel without looking back.

  At the Smithson Towers, Joe swiped his card to gain access to the secure parking garage and then took the elevator up to the penthouse suite. He didn’t understand wanting to live over the shop, the way Smithson did, but he supposed that was one more thing that separated him from the billionaire. One of many things, he thought with a wry smile. His tendency to screw up anything he touched was another, but hey, who was keeping track?

  The guard nodded and buzzed him in. “Mr. Smithson is expecting you,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  He entered the suite and followed the low hum of voices coming from the galley kitchen. Apparently Smithson wasn’t alone. As he drew closer, he realized that the other voice—soft, modulated, and lovely—belonged to a woman. He didn’t come across soft and lovely very often. The women he took to bed were pretty enough, but definitely not soft. He preferred women who wouldn’t expect much from him—women who wouldn’t fall apart when he decided to stop calling. He always stopped calling, sooner or later.