“Bess?” Alastair said. “What do you think of Jack Wyatt?”
She rolled her eyes. “Just as scrumptious as his father.”
“But without the prison stripes,” a woman at the next table said and they laughed.
“Come on, ladies, help me out here. I’m marketing him as ugly and dumb.” That comment only increased their laughter.
Alastair turned back to Kate and lowered his voice. “Seriously, I’ll help in any way I can. I work with money, so if you have any questions or suspicions, let me know. I’ll gladly go over Sara’s accounts to see if anything, shall we say, unusual is going on.”
Kate nodded. “I’m not so bad with numbers, either. I’ll see what I can find out.”
“I like you more with every word you speak.”
She smiled at him. “You don’t have to worry about this guy Jack and me. I’ve never been attracted to the leather-jacket, motorcycle-riding type of guy.”
“Then I do have a chance?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll take that. Could we have dinner on Saturday night?”
“That would be nice.”
He paid the check and she noticed that he left a generous tip. Just as he said about her, she was liking him more with every minute.
They went to the counter, Bessie handed the flowers and the basket to Alastair, and they left.
“Where’s your car?” he asked. “I’ll carry these to it.”
They walked together the half a block to Kate’s car and put everything in the back.
“Where to now?” he asked.
“It’s time to meet my aunt. I’m not sure how to get there, since the GPS in my car told me Stewart Lane doesn’t exist.”
“The house and lane are right where my grandfather built them.”
“Oh.” Kate was embarrassed that she hadn’t connected the names. “I’ve heard the house is beautiful. It must have broken your heart to sell it.”
“Not at all. Seventy-five hundred square feet to maintain is not my idea of paradise. Carved moldings, marble floors, fifty-pound solid doors and—Are you all right?”
She was smiling in a dreamy way. “The house sounds wonderful!”
“My mother thought so. I had a hard time persuading her to sell it and move into a condo near the ocean. She says she hates it but it’s very nice. Clean.”
“I bet I’ve sold twenty just like it.”
There was so much contempt in her voice that Alastair laughed. “Just some advice—don’t mention the Stewart house to your new boss.”
“Tayla?”
“Yes. My mother promised to let Tayla sell the house. But when she got there with the paperwork, Mother had already sold it to your aunt. The entire purchase price—which, by the way, was a healthy seven figures—had been wired into my mother’s bank account. And all the papers had been signed.”
“And your mother got out of paying Realtor fees,” Kate said.
“She did. It seems that when your aunt wants something, she goes after it.”
“Or her manager does.”
