The Carriage House Read Online Free PDF Page B

mush now that she was forty.
    Ike had teased her about turning forty. “You’re on the doorstep, kid, and look at you—you haven’t lived!”
    She had a failed first marriage, a daughter away at boarding school, all the responsibilities of managing Grantham family affairs on her shoulders. Even the project, which he’d so loved early on, was largely her doing. She saw to the details, showed up when he didn’t. She made his lifestyle possible.
    He knew it. He would tell her how much he appreciated what she did, even as he teased her for doing nothing riskier than go frostbite sailing with friends, laugh too loud at a cocktail party.
    â€œIke,” she whispered. “Oh, God.”
    He’s dead. You know he’s dead. But she didn’t, not for sure. Tess Haviland wouldn’t keep the carriage house. She hadn’t even been up to see it in the year she’d owned it. Giving Tess the carriage house had been a stupid, impulsive thing for Ike to have done—but so like him.
    When Tess put the carriage house on the market, Lauren would snap it up. Maybe they could work out an arrangement on their own, without Realtors. She had to keep her focus on that singular, positive thought and will it to happen.
    Her three miniature white poodles wandered in, rubbing against her legs and making her laugh. “You lazy little rats, you’ve been sleeping on my bed all day, and now you want my attention? Where were you when I wanted to play, hmm?”
    Ike had warned her against poodles. “You’re playing to stereotype, Lauren. Get yourself a rottweiler or a Jack Russell terrier.”
    She’d threatened to knit them little vests. Suddenly unable to breathe, she ran out into her spacious bedroom. The windows were open, and she inhaled the smell of spring, stemming her panic. She didn’t want to think about her brother. Wouldn’t. He’d dominated her life for too long. He was selfish, insulting, reckless. He didn’t like Richard because he was doing something important with his life and Ike wasn’t. That was the truth of it. The poodles followed her into the bedroom, and she scooped them up and sank onto a white chair in front of the windows. The sun was fading, but her gardens were still bright with color. This was the house where she and Ike had grown up, built by their grandfather in 1923, high on a bluff above the ocean. She preferred her view of the gardens.
    She would die here, she thought as she stroked the backs of her poodles. Fifty years from now, she would be sitting right here in her chair, perhaps with descendants of these very poodles, but otherwise alone. Ike would be gone, and so would Richard. That was her destiny, and there was no escaping it.
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    Richard Montague knew his wife was annoyed with him. She had poured herself another glass of wine and retreated to the back porch, knowing she couldn’t do anything that might embarrass him. He had company. Unexpected company. Dinner was canceled at the last minute. He didn’t understand her irritation. She hadn’t wanted to go in the first place.
    â€œCare for a glass of scotch?” Richard offered his guest.
    The chief of staff of the senior senator from Massachusetts declined politely. Jeremy Carver was a very careful man. Richard had noticed that about him straight off, when they’d first met at Carver’s office on Capitol Hill. He was careful, discreet, naturally suspicious, and he would destroy Richard Montague, Ph.D., if Richard gave him the slightest cause. There would be no mercy.
    â€œI’m sorry I didn’t call ahead,” Carver said.
    â€œNo problem. Lauren and I both had long days. It was an easy dinner to cancel. Won’t you sit down?”
    They were in Richard’s study on the first floor of the sprawling Grantham house. It had once been his father-in-law’s study, his father’s before that. Richard liked feeling a part of a