Free Sweet Liar by Jude Deveraux Page B

care of you and I mean to be worthy of his trust.”
    Samantha blinked at him several times before she was able to speak. “ ‘Gave you the care of me?’ You mean to be ‘worthy of his trust’?” She didn’t know whether to laugh or run away. “You sound like something from the past, something from the Middle Ages. I am an adult woman and I—”
    Abruptly, Mike’s face changed. “Oh the hell with it. You’re right. Who am I to take any of this seriously? I told Dave this was a dumb idea. I told him he should give you your inheritance with no strings attached, but he insisted that this was the only way. He wanted you to find out the truth.”
    Mike threw up his hands, palms up in surrender. “I give up. I’m not a good jailer. First I let you stay alone in a room until, as far as I can tell, you’re on the point of suicide, then I play the heavy and try to make you do what you don’t want to do. You are an adult and you can make your own decisions. You’re not interested in any of this, so go on back to bed. Put a chair in front of your door if you want—that should keep out even a dedicated pervert like me. In the morning I’ll call a real estate agency and help you find somewhere else to live and I’ll give you back your rent money. Why don’t you take that computer equipment with you because I don’t know what the hell to do with it. Good night, Miss Elliot,” he said, then walked down the stairs, turned, and went into the living room.
    Shaking from her wrestle with him, shaking from all of it, Samantha slowly went back up the stairs.

5
    A s Samantha entered her father’s apartment, her first instinct was to pack a suitcase, but she didn’t. She felt so very tired. Closing the door, she wedged a chair under the knob, removed the chair, then climbed back into bed.
    She couldn’t sleep. She did her best not to think about her father and his will, but it was no good. It was the old “don’t think of elephants” dilemma.
    At three in the morning, she got out of bed and began to search for her father’s will. She had purposely not read it, for she hadn’t wanted to know the details of his after-death rules, hadn’t wanted to know what he had planned for her to do.
    She found the will among some other papers, then sat down to read it. Her father’s lawyer had told her everything that was in the will except for the single sentence that said she was to report all her findings to one Michael Taggert, and on Taggert’s approval of her research, she was to receive her money—money that should have been hers unencumbered.
    Samantha’s first instinct was to tear the document into a thousand pieces, but controlling herself, she smoothed it and replaced it with the other papers. Her father was dead; she had never been angry with him when he was alive, and she was not going to get angry at him now that he was gone. That he wanted someone to take care of her after he was dead was a sign that he loved her. It made no difference that Samantha didn’t know this man, because her father had and he had approved of Michael Taggert—just as he’d approved of Richard Sims as her husband.
    Getting up, Samantha went to the bathroom where she took a long, hot shower and washed her hair. When she emerged, she felt better. She dressed in gray cotton slacks and a long, loose pink sweater, combed her hair, tied it back from her face, and even put on makeup. It was still dark outside, but there was the feeling of dawn approaching, so she opened the doors leading onto the balcony and breathed the fragrance of the roses in the garden below.
    Hearing something that she couldn’t place, for a moment she stood still, listening. It was the sound of a typewriter being punched with heavy fingers. The sound made Samantha smile, for she hadn’t heard a typewriter in years.
    She knew she should