“What’s it to you?” she asked, twirling long, dark strands of hair around her finger, green eyes rounded.
“He’s owed some money,” Owen said. The promise of money got them every time.
“How much?”
“I can only discuss it with him.”
“He’s staying with me.”
“Why did he quit his job?”
“He didn’t get along with the manager. But he’s got another job already.”
“How can I reach him?”
She gave Owen her home address and Kendall’s new place of employment.
“Thanks. He’ll thank you for this. Good day.” Owen was certain she’d call Kendall right away with the good news, but Owen was already feeding the information to the local police department to pick Kendall up for failure to pay child support. The mom was struggling with two jobs to make ends meet for her and her two kids, living at her mom’s house while Grandmom took care of the kids. If Kendall had the money, he needed to do what was right.
Owen wanted to call Candice right away with the good news, but he quashed the inclination until he was certain the police had arrested Kendall.
Once that was done, Owen called her right away as he headed home.
“Oh, that’s great, Owen. Don’t kill yourself trying to rush home or anything.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re craving those Fudge Crinkles as much as I am.”
He chuckled. “You bet.” And a hell of a lot more. Even just sitting on the couch, his arms wrapped around her while they watched a show, totally appealed right now. They talked for about an hour, and then they ended the call and all he could think of was how he couldn’t wait to be with her soon.
* * *
Candice hoped she’d sounded low key about being eager to have Owen home right away. She’d meant what she’d said about him not rushing home, not with the winter weather conditions the way they were. She wanted him home in one piece.
She could hardly wait to see him. She cleaned house, did their laundry, and sat out on the deck, watching the lake and imagining another couple of canoe trips before it was too late to go boating. And she was already thinking of other ways to occupy themselves. Like building a snowman as soon as they had another good snowfall, for one thing.
Then she saw two moose near the lake some distance off and ran inside to grab her camera. She took some shots of them, perfect for describing them in her book. Owen wouldn’t be home until tomorrow at the soonest.
He called her every once in a while with progress reports, and she told him she’d captured pictures of the moose.
“You didn’t get close to them, did you?”
“Only with a zoom lens. They were a long way off. And I was on the deck, an easy dash to the back door if they’d miraculously flown through the air like Santa’s reindeer to come and get me.” She appreciated his concern and loved even having anyone to talk to like this about what she was doing. And she loved hearing about his experiences.
“All right.”
“Believe me, I’m not getting near moose unless you’re here to protect me.”
“Under the dock.”
“That might be a little too cold.”
He chuckled. She loved that he had a sense of humor.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
“You’ve been so busy chasing down the deadbeat father. How could you have?”
“I miss hearing your voice, smelling your scent, sharing meals and other pursuits.”
“We’ll have to run as wolves when you arrive home.”
“Are…you having trouble with shifting?”
“Some. I mean, not any trouble with shifting as long as I don’t plan to go anywhere, which I don’t. Staying at home is no problem. What about you?”
“I’m okay for now.”
Still, she worried. If he’d said he never lost control of his shifting, she would have felt better.
Then they signed off, and the next evening, she couldn’t sit still. He’d called several times on the drive home, but when he was near the lake, he gave her another call. “Did you fix us anything to eat?”
“I’d tease you and tell you that you need to bring home takeout, but knowing you, you’d do it. Yeah, I fixed you something. See you in a few minutes.”
She’d baked him a small welcome-home chocolate fudge cake and made his favorite spareribs, grilled asparagus, and sweet potatoes for dinner. She greeted him on the porch, unable to hide how she was feeling. Not only was she glad he was home, but she appreciated everything he’d done for her.
Instead of waiting for him to join her, she hurried to stand beside the SUV while he cut off the engine. As soon as he left the vehicle, she threw her arms around him, kissing and hugging him with enthusiasm.
He kissed her back, his arms wrapped snuggly around her. “Wow, you can’t imagine how I’ve envisioned coming home to see you. I thought you would be sitting on the couch, lost in your manuscript, a mug of cold tea at hand, or sitting on the back deck taking pictures of moose or writing in your book. But you couldn’t have made my coming home any more welcome than this.”
“No way would I have my nose in my book when the hero of said book needs a hero’s welcome.”
“Just so you can write the scene correctly?”
She smiled. “You got it.” She dragged him in the house before he could grab his bag. She was starving, and she didn’t want the food to grow cold.
“You really know how to make a hero feel like a king.”
“Right, to ensure the story is told just right.”
He laughed.
When they had nearly finished supper, Owen’s phone rang. He wiped his greasy fingers on his paper napkin and looked at the caller ID. “Your uncle. I need to take this. Hello, sir, this is Owen Nottingham.” Owen’s jaw dropped slightly. He covered the mouthpiece and said to Candice, “You’ll want to hear this. Putting it on speaker.”
Candice knew at once something wasn’t right. She was afraid her uncle had somehow learned her book-signing tour hadn’t happened at all.
Chapter 10
“I’m extremely disappointed in what you’ve pulled. I hired a new PI to look into this matter. Mr. Felix Underwood has proven the woman you say is my niece is really a fraud. In the meantime, he found Clara Hart for me,” Strom Hart told Owen. “When I learned you had found Clara under an assumed name—”
“Pen name, sir. Candice Mayfair is an established author.” Owen reached over and took hold of Candice’s cold hand and squeezed.
“And when she wouldn’t return home to collect a billion and a half in assets, I was certain it was some kind of scam.”
Owen couldn’t have been any more surprised to hear that. Candice was worth over a billion dollars?
“Mr. Underwood has investigated you and discovered you and your associates closed your practice after abandoning it in Seattle under suspicious circumstances. And you haven’t had a legitimate office for seven years, just a fly-by-night online PI service. Then you finally opened up an office after all these years. He wasn’t sure if any of the work you’re doing was legitimate.”
“If he says he found the right woman, he’s lying, or the woman is. Or they’re both in on the scam to collect the money.”
“Figured you would say that. He said the same thing about you and your Candice Mayfair. Isn’t she selling enough books? Wants a little extra money to help her pay her living expenses? I’ll take her down too. Don’t think I can’t. I’ll go straight to her publisher and tell them what kind of a fraud she’s perpetuating, and that she’ll be brought up on charges. I’ll be back in the country in five days, which is when I’m meeting with Clara and the judge and will settle this matter. For your information, she’s eager to see me and finish this, like anyone who has nothing to hide.”
/> “Candice, your real niece, doesn’t have anything to hide. The woman who claims to be her would be eager to finish this before you learn the truth and put a stop to it.” Owen was angry, but he was trying to stay professional, even if the man was threatening to ruin him and Candice and their friends.
“Oh, and by the way, I had halfway believed you until I was in Edinburgh. I saw no sign of a Candice Mayfair autographing books anywhere, nor had she signed any books in the city. Nice try. My investigator has checked all the locations where Candice is supposed to have been and is supposed to go to. No autographed books anywhere. No signings listed for the places she’s supposed to be staying. I’m working to have your PI licenses revoked and your office shut down. If you hadn’t told me she had delayed seeing me for so long, I would have believed she was Clara. Which was why I hired the other investigator, and he found her right away. You can talk to my lawyer if you have anything further to say.” Then Strom hung up on him.
“Hell.” Owen paced across the floor, furious that Strom probably had the means to shut them down and ruin Candice’s career if they couldn’t convince him that she was his real niece.
“Why didn’t he just call me?”
“Because I’m the one in charge of the fraudulent plan, he thinks. If he hadn’t come to me first, I wouldn’t have found a fake Clara Hart.”
“I have to go there before that impostor signs for the money. You know, the money never mattered to me. I never believed I’d see any of it, and I accepted that. But I’d rather Uncle Strom receive it—not that he needs the money—rather than some woman, and probably the investigator, who are trying to scam my parents’ estate. Maybe if I’m a wolf part of the day or night and then shift and go over to the judge’s office, I can manage.”
“Do you have that much control during the full moon?”
“No. But maybe I will this time. We have to risk it.”
“If you shift in front of lawyers and a judge, and your uncle, it could be a real disaster,” Owen said.
“I’m going. My mind’s made up. I’ll do this and return home, stopping the fraudster from getting her hands on the money. The investigator probably has a big stake in this too. How else would he have found a replacement Clara so easily?”
“I agree. I’m going with you. We’ll need to learn everything we can about this PI. Anything dirty we can find on him,” Owen said. “I wonder if he’s been really looking into us. Digging deep.”
“You mean like learning about your wolf halves?” Candice asked, wide-eyed.
“I would hope not, but I don’t want to take any chances. Everyone will need to be on their guard more than usual. And we need to let Cameron and his family know what’s going on. Also, how can you prove you’re the Harts’ adopted daughter?” Owen asked Candice, not believing the bizarre turn of events.
“I am her. Don’t tell me you don’t believe me now.”
“It’s not that. I’m not the one you have to convince.”
“I’m sorry for all of the trouble this is causing you and wish you weren’t involved. I don’t want you to lose your licenses.”
“Or have your contract with your publisher thrown out either. We need to ensure Strom knows you are his niece and the other woman is a fraud. You said you published before the change. Your parents must have known that you were writing under a pen name…but then Strom would also have known.”
“Are you kidding? My parents would have died if they’d known I was writing hot romantic suspense. And then werewolf romance? Just the same, I didn’t change my name on anything until after they died. I thought they had disowned me. They were gone. I decided to just be Candice Mayfair.”
“But documents must show when you changed your name from Clara Hart to Candice Mayfair.”
“I haven’t lied about who I am. You really don’t believe me, do you? How did you find me? I wasn’t looking for a meal ticket. As far as I knew, my parents hadn’t left me anything. I sure wasn’t looking for an inheritance.”
“Lyn Rose, your coworker, said you were the file clerk in their office. She said one of the incidents you wrote about was eerily like a situation that happened at her office. And she put two and two together and realized you were Clara, except you had a pen name. She remembered you writing on your lunch breaks. It all fit.”
“You know how people read a story and recognize some of it as something that happened to them, even though it’s not really about them? I mean, you could have been in a boating accident and I describe one, and you believe it’s about you because it’s so similar.”
“You’re saying you didn’t use the story that happened at the office?”
“I’m saying just because I write a scene in a book, that doesn’t mean I am writing about something I’ve really witnessed. Sometimes, yes. Forget it. I’m Clara, okay? Or was. I’m Candice now. But you know what? I had a different identity before that.”
Owen frowned at her.
“My real birth parents, all right? Another name? Jeesh.”
“I know. Okay, listen. You must have some recollection of things you did with your parents—”
“Lots of them. But Uncle Strom wasn’t part of our lives. He was off making billions on his own. I don’t know anything about his life except he was always off making money and too busy to see his brother and his family.”
“Did your dad or mother ever mention anything about him that only they would know?”
“No. If they talked to each other about him, they did so in private.”
“Your dad said nothing about his childhood with his brother? Their parents? Squabbles? Fun vacations? Anything?”
“No. Like I said, my parents were older when they brought me home. In their early fifties. Dad was still working for the oil industry and making a mint. Mom met him in college and helped further his career as the perfect social butterfly. But she felt she was missing something in her life and desperately wanted a baby. She couldn’t have one at her age, so I was it. They doted on me. I had a happy life. They were great parents. But Uncle Strom wouldn’t know about any of that. Not unless they talked to him about it. And I’m sure he wouldn’t have cared. He wouldn’t know I was sixteen when I wrecked my first car the first time I drove it on my own on the highway. Or that when I was ten I threw up on my dad’s slippers when I had the flu. Or that I dyed my hair green for Saint Patrick’s Day when I was twelve and got sent home from school. Or that I took in six stray cats until we learned Dad was deathly allergic to them. I doubt Uncle Strom would know about any of these things.”
“Did your parents have any birthmarks or mannerisms, habits that you know of? Particularly your dad. Something maybe his brother would know but that wouldn’t be common knowledge.”
Candice shook her head. “I do have a safe-deposit box at the bank in Houston. I probably have my old social security card with my original name on it, and pictures of me with my parents earlier on. First thing in the morning, we’ll go,” she said. “And thanks for helping me with this. I’m sorry if I’m all growly about it. Everything would have been perfect if I could have gone down there when I had planned. I never, ever expected someone to try to steal my inheritance or that I’d have to prove who I was to my uncle. I just figured it would be a given.”
“The truth is, I could have done what this Felix Underwood has managed to do, so without your uncle really knowing you better, you’d have to prove you’re his niece no matter what,” Owen said. “We just need to make sure we do that before Strom causes trouble for all of us. The things you have in your safe-deposit box could help.”
“Right. But the other PI has to have that information.”
“Okay, listen. We need to prove this other PI is corrupt and working on a scam. That the woman he found is the impostor.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“We still have the problem with the moon phases. The woman inte
nds to claim her—your—inheritance and not wait, which makes it appear she has a legitimate claim. If you did, why would you make up this story about the world book tour? Why not just go and say the inheritance is yours?”
“We all made that up.”
“I know. Which is why all of our careers are on the line. I’m just saying they’re going to have a hard time believing you because you haven’t just gone down there and claimed it. That’s one hell of a lot of money.”
She paced across the floor. “I told you I’m going. And if I shift, I’ll just bite everyone who sees me do it.”
“We all need to learn everything we can about this PI. Everything dirty. We need to go after the woman he’s claiming is Clara too. Learn who she really is. In the meantime, the two of us will go down early and stay somewhere out of the city so we can have some privacy. Since you are from there, you can obtain the documents to prove who you are. But we need to go now while you have more control over your shifting.”
* * *
Candice couldn’t believe anyone would claim to be her, but then again, the price was right. Why couldn’t all of this have happened during the new moon? Then she could have just run down there with no threat of turning and taken care of this once and for all.
Owen called his partners and let them know what was going on. They agreed to look into the PI’s and the woman’s backgrounds right away. Candice knew that despite what that PI had said about them, Owen and his friends would be good at exposing these people for the frauds they were.
All the pack members had been in the same bind as her, turned without a choice and having to deal with the fallout the best they could, so they knew how difficult and important this situation was for her.
“Are you okay?” Owen asked her.
“No. I’m so afraid I will turn at the wrong time. Then what will I do?”
“We’ll deal with it then. We can’t worry about what may or may not happen. When was the last time you tried and couldn’t control the full moon’s calls to you to shift?”