Far Harbor Read Online Free PDF Page B

pestering a man, wanting to take pictures and have themselves a tour, never once thinking that a lighthouse isn’t some new attraction at Disneyland.”
    Acid sharpened a scornful tone that wavered ever so slightly with age. Or emotion? Savannah wondered. In either case, it was not a propitious beginning.
    “Now, Henry,” Lilith soothed as she gracefully settled into a chair across from him. “You know very well that Savannah’s not a tourist. Why, she spent practically her entire life growing up on the peninsula.”
    “Because her scatterbrained gadfly of a mother didn’t see fit to take care of her,” he snapped querulously.
    Savannah heard Lilith draw in a breath at the sharp accusation, but outwardly her mother appeared unscathed. “You’re right. I’ll always regret not having been a better mother, but we all make mistakes.” Lilith’s voice was as warm and throaty as ever, but Savannah noticed that her hands trembled ever so slightly as her fingers creased the broomstick pleats of her skirt. “Sometimes all we can do is move on.”
    “You’ve always been good at that,” he grumbled. “Moving on.”
    Savannah had humored him enough. Henry Hyatt may hold the keys to her future in his age-spotted hands, but that didn’t give him the right to intrude on her admittedly complex relationship with Lilith.
    “I came here today to discuss a business proposition with you, Mr. Hyatt, not to stand by and listen to you insult my mother.”
    An errant thought occurred to her. Could Henry possibly be comparing Lilith’s behavior to the way his own mother had abandoned him at such a tender age? Was it even possible to harbor a hurt or hold a grudge for so many years?
    He tilted his head and looked up at her. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you, when you were down in California”—he spat out the name of her former home as if it had a bad taste—“that sassin’ a man who has something you seem to want so damn bad is a piss-poor way of doin’ business?”
    “The Far Harbor lighthouse is not the only piece of property for sale on the peninsula, Mr. Hyatt.” She sat down in a wing chair beside her mother and crossed her legs. Proving that Lilith wasn’t the only actress in the family, she kept her smile cucumber cool and just the slightest bit condescending. “Merely the most run-down.”
    Before Henry could respond to that, the door opened and Dan walked in, bringing with him a distant scent of the sea. “Sorry I’m late.” His face was tanned from the sun, his hair windblown. “My meeting ran late.”
    “Meeting, hell.” Henry focused his ill humor on his attorney. “Anyone with two eyes and half a brain can see you’ve been out sailing.”
    “Got me there,” Dan replied equably. “As it happens, my meeting took place on a yacht.”
    “Ha! That’s a likely story.”
    “It’s true. My client’s a software mogul who, like so many of his breed, tends to be a bit paranoid. He prefers doing business where there’s less likelihood of conversations being overheard—such as out in the middle of the sound.”
    “You always were quick with the excuses,” Henry shot back. “Like that time you broke the window on my Olds.”
    “When I fouled off my cousin Caine’s curveball through your windshield.” Dan glanced over at Savannah and winked. “I spent the rest of the summer paying it off by painting the lighthouse.”
    “Wouldn’t have taken you so long if you hadn’t been so damn slow.”
    “If I was slow it was because I spent the first two weeks shaking like a leaf from my newly discovered fear of heights. I got more paint on me than I managed to get on the lighthouse.”
    “Mebbe I should have you paint it again.” Henry waved a faintly palsied hand toward Savannah. “Since this little gal thinks it’s a bit run-down.”
    “More than a bit,” Savannah corrected.
    The way she tossed up her chin and stood up to a man who’d elevated the knack of being irritating to an art form had Dan