Free Sandra Hill - [Jinx] by Pink Jinx Page B

them what they really think.
“Yes, Ronnie is here. Right now she’s on the other side of the room flirting with two deep-sea diving studs.”
    Frank choked with laughter at his side. It must have been obvious that Jake was covering his ass.
    He ignored Frank and told Trish, “You’re right. We need to talk this thing out.”
    “I love you, Jake.”
    He hesitated, which he knew instantly was a mistake, and said, “I love you, too.” It was a millisecond too late. “I’ll see you in an hour or so.” Taking a last swig of his beer, he told Frank, “I’ve gotta go.”
    “Where?” Frank snapped, clearly not pleased.
    “Home.”
    That raised Frank’s eyebrows, but he didn’t ask where home was or who he shared it with, thank God.
    “Tell Ronnie I had to go . . . home.”
    Frank guffawed. “Tell her yourself.”
    Not in a million years am I going near her.
    “How you gonna get out of here? You left your car back at my house.”
    “I’ll hitch a ride by boat.” Frank’s Long Beach Island house was just a short jaunt across Barnegat Bay.
    Ever persistent, Frank asked, “Will you be coming back to help with the project?”
    “Hell, no!” he said, immediately followed by, “Hell if I know!” as he slapped some bills on the bar. And that was the God’s honest truth.
    Ronnie glanced up then, noting his handshake with Frank and apparent leave-taking. Their eyes held for a long while.
    He broke the stare first and told Frank, who was watching closely, “I can’t come back. I mean, I shouldn’t come back. Son of a bitch! I just don’t know. It would be pure hundred proof insanity to . . .” His hand moved through the air with uncertainty.
    Frank chuckled, then muttered under his breath as Jake walked away, “You’ll be back.”

    Sometimes blood is not thicker than water. . . .
    “If you leave now, the door will not be open for you when you come back,” Lillian Satler said in her corner office at Boston’s Satler, Satler, and Dilroy, Esq. “And you will come back. You always do.”
    Veronica stared at her grandmother, who was sitting ramrod stiff behind her pristine mahogany desk, like the queen of bloody England. Wearing the same tailored gray suit she wore every day—she must have a dozen in her closet—the Boston Lawyer of the Year, four times over, could have passed for sixty, not the seventy-five she was. Her figure was as trim as when she’d been a teenager. Her perfectly dyed, short brown hair was the same as it had been when Veronica was a toddler, not a strand out of place or one single hint of gray. Her face was smooth, thanks to plastic surgeries and collagen injections. She wore pearls at her neck and pearl studs in her ears.
    With dismay, Veronica realized she was wearing identical pearls, both family heirlooms.
    Despite her fine outward appearance, Lillian was as hard as nails inside. Many an unsuspecting company lawyer had learned that fact over the years when they met her in court. Veronica had personally learned the lesson at a young age. She was sent off to boarding school when she was eight, never knew physical affection, was told what to do about everything right down to her brand of toothpaste.
No wonder I’m a mess!
    She’d told her grandmother that she wanted to take off for a month to get her head straight, to decide if she wanted to continue practicing corporate law or some other related field. She had not mentioned—yet—why her grandfather had put all his property in her name.
    “Why is this coming up now? Why, every time you see your grandfather, do you come back distressed? What did he say? Why do you give him so much power?”
    “One, I hadn’t seen him in three years, so your use of the words
every time
is a misrepresentation. Distressed? I’m not distressed. Tired is more like it. As for power, hah! If he had power over me, I would have jumped at his offer to run his treasure-hunting company.”
    Uh-oh! She hadn’t intended to give her grandmother all that