Dynamiting Daddy's Dream House Page 12

  He'd forced himself to spend some time with adults partly because he knew he needed a break from Annie but more because he realized she needed some time alone, away from him. Finding Cherry, the high-school-age daughter of the hotel manager, had been a lucky break for both of them. Annie liked the older girl well enough, although she never passed up an opportunity to mention Jill.

  Troy's errant thoughts never passed up an opportunity to think of Jill either.

  "Looks like Jill'll be out of business by the end of next week," Renaldo observed as Troy fastened his work boots. Talk about keying into his thoughts. "Too bad," he concluded. "She was fun to work with. Easy on the eyes too."

  "You like her so much, why did you quit?" The man's choices were his own business, but he had brought it up.

  "You think I'm going to take money from her when she doesn't have the work to carry me?" Renaldo looked like Troy had stuck a knife in his back.

  Troy shook his head. He needed to stay out of this. Jill had washed him out of her life precisely because he'd tried to interfere in her business. So what was he thinking of now?

  "Don't give up on her, Renaldo," he urged. "See you around, and I mean that." He returned the ball to the rack and headed for the exit.

  "I was getting a little bored too." The redhead stood a little too close, her sweater had mysteriously lost another button and now exposed black lace that struggled to hold in what the redhead pushed out.

  "Why don't you tell my friend," Troy suggested. "I'm heading home to spend some time with my daughter."

  "I like kids a lot."

  "Me too." He couldn't understand his lack of response. The woman was attractive and obviously willing. Why did she leave him cold?

  She scribbled something on a bowling scoresheet, folded it, and pressed it into his back pocket, her hands lingering just a little longer than they needed to. "If you change your mind, you'll know where to find me." She breathed the words into his ear.

  "Yeah, sure. In the meantime, I think Renaldo likes you."

  "Maybe. But I like you."

  On the drive home, he worked on coming up with a new strategy. As if he were in a war zone, he mentally reviewed every resource at his disposal. Jill's business was the sticking point. Okay, how could he fix things so marrying him was no longer a threat to the security her business represented?

  Slowly a smile came to his lips. He had an idea, or at least a person to call.

  ***

  The next day, Troy immersed himself in his new project. He made phone calls. He requested documents. He marshaled his resources. He leaned on people, when necessary. When he came home that afternoon, he was as tired as if he'd been on a three-day forced march. But he'd made progress. Now, the last phase of his plan went into effect.

  Annie was waiting eagerly for him. "Did you talk to Jill?" she asked. That was usually her first question whenever he'd been out of her sight. He paid Cherry and sent her home, then sat down in one of the hotel suite's easy chairs.

  "Not today. I'm afraid she's in trouble," he said.

  Annie crawled into his lap without any of the awkwardness she's shown with him a couple of weeks ago. "Can we help her?"

  "Maybe. But I'll need your help."

  "My help?" Annie leaned forward, her breath a little quick. "Just tell me what to do, Daddy."

  Troy's breath caught in his throat and his heart swelled. Annie had called him "Daddy" for the very first time. He believed she'd done it unconsciously, which meant she was starting to think of him as a real father.

  "Okay, here's the plan ..."

  ***

  Jill stared at the stack of bills left on her dining room table. She'd exhausted her checkbook but the pile she'd paid was far smaller than those still waiting.

  She put her head into her hands and sobbed. Everything had been going so well until that disaster with Troy's house.

  After watching Troy drive away with Renaldo, Jill hadn't slept the previous night. She didn't think she'd be able to sleep tonight either.

  Slowly she started putting together a list of the equipment she actually owned rather than leased. If she managed to pay off her creditors now, at least she'd have a reasonable chance to start a new business someday.

  "Hurry, we've got to get out of here." Annie burst through Jill's trailer door like a pint-sized dynamite charge.

  Jill looked up from her calculator. "Annie, what are you doing here? Does your father know you're here?"

  "We've got to leave. What if my grandparents find me here?"

  A cold fist seemed to grasp Jill's heart. "What do you mean?"

  "You know they want to take me away from Troy."

  "Troy's lawyers will make sure that doesn't happen."

  Annie stepped closer to her and whispered in her ear. "I don't think they'll wait."

  "That's ridiculous. You're being as paranoid as your father."

  "Troy isn't para ... whatever you said. He's an American."

  Jill felt herself carried away by Annie's obvious emotion. "I'll tell you what, why don't I take you back to your hotel."

  "Troy isn't there."

  Annie's words felt like a dirge. Jill knew she had no right to feel possessive about Troy. She'd been the one who turned down his proposal, after all. Still, Annie shouldn't be running around loose after nine in the evening.

  "Isn't someone supposed to be watching you?"

  "You mean Cherry? She just wants to talk about being a model. Boring."

  Jill gritted her teeth. Troy's new squeeze was a model?

  She knew her jealousy was running amok, but she couldn't control that. What she could do was to help an obviously panicked Annie. If that just happened to spoil whatever hot date Troy might be enjoying, well, those were the breaks.

  Chapter 10

  "Come on, Annie. Tell me what's going on." Jill was having second thoughts about her plans to interrupt Troy's evening. For the last hour, Annie had led Jill on a wild goose chase.

  After making Jill drive her barely repaired truck the wrong way down a one-way street and into two dead-end alleys, Annie abruptly asked for the time. She appeared to calculate, then decided she remembered Troy had gone to La Maison to eat.

  As far as Jill could calculate, there was only one reason a guy would go to a place like that. Troy was trying to get lucky.

  Jill let Annie drag her into the posh French restaurant and fought down her sense of doom. She didn't want to see Troy with another woman. She wanted--well, she wasn't sure what she wanted, but she knew that wasn't it.

  Annie's gaze swept left, then right. "I'm sure Troy is around here somewhere."

  "Maybe we should try somewhere else," Jill suggested hopelessly.

  "No, I see him now."

  Jill looked, then wished she hadn't. Troy's date was a little older than Jill would have guessed, but she looked tough enough to eat nails--despite a cocktail dress that took full advantage of a toned and hard body. She had dark curly hair and not much make-up, though she was pleasant enough looking.

  She didn't look much like a model, though, Jill caught herself thinking.

  Jill grabbed Annie's arm. "Let's get out of here, now."

  "Troy!" Annie waved with her free hand actually trying to get her father's attention.

  Troy looked up and waved then turned and whispered something to his date. The other woman smiled.

  "Let me go." Annie yanked hard enough to pull Jill off balance.

  Jill slipped, then felt those familiar arms supporting her.

  "Calm down, pumpkin. Hi, Jill."

  "I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to break in on your date. Annie told me--"

  "Come on and sit down," Troy offered.

  "I hardly think your date is interested in meeting women from your past," Jill whispered. "Let's just say I'm the baby sitter and I needed to ask you about something."

  Troy's smile was so darling Jill fought the urge to wipe it from his face. How dare he grin at her when she was trying to figure out a way to sink
into the marble floor?

  "You guys been having fun?" He turned his attention to his daughter.

  Annie laughed. "We went to the hotel, then over to the pizza place. I tried to get her to go to the drive-in movie but she wouldn't do that so I got lost and we went the wrong way down some street and everyone honked at us. Then finally we came here."

  "Good job, kiddo. Why don't you go sit down with Ms. Lennon while I talk to Jill?"

  "Okay." Annie almost skipped over to the table.

  "What is going on here? You're talking like you knew about this wild goose chase." Troy should be hollering about what Annie was doing here away from her babysitter. Instead, he acted as if he had--planned it?

  Jill squeezed her hands into tight fists. She really would kill him if he was playing games with her head.

  "I've been doing a little research over the past week," Troy said.

  "It looks like it. Women's physiology?"

  Troy flashed a smile so quick she almost missed it, then sobered. "You're absolutely right, Ms. Lennon was a key part of it."

  "And Cherry was another, right?"

  "Ah, no. Annie's babysitter didn't have anything to do with it. She's just a nice kid."

  "I'm sure she's a real nice kid. Give me a break, Troy. If you want to sleep with half the women in Los Angeles, that's your business. I brought your daughter here because she gave me some crazy story about her grandparents trying to kidnap her. Now it looks to me like I got a runaround. What are you trying to prove? That you can get another woman? Believe me, I don't find that a big surprise."

  "Did Annie actually say she was going to get kidnaped?"

  "She didn't use those words, but her meaning was completely ... tricky."

  "So she didn't lie. Exactly. Do you know the expression, 'all's fair'?"

  "In love and war?"

  "Right."

  "So where's the war?"

  Troy shrugged. "I'm trying to explain."

  "Maybe you should go back to your Ms. Lennon and explain me away. If you want to play games with your own daughter, that's your business."

  "My daughter is a volunteer. And so's Master Sergeant Lennon."

  No wonder the woman had looked tough. She was probably one of Troy's girlfriends from his mercenary days. "I don't care if she's Chairman of the Communist Party. I've had enough and I'm out of here."

  "Will you listen for thirty seconds? Please."

  Jill consulted her watch. "Thirty and counting. Twenty-nine--"

  Troy took her at her word and started talking quickly. "I underestimated you. I thought you were an incompetent manager just because you blew up my house."

  "It would have been a natural mistake." Jill didn't want to offer him even this much but she forced herself to be fair.

  "Perhaps so. I've trained myself to gather all the facts before I leap to a conclusion. I didn't follow true to form with you, though. I can only claim that I let emotion get in the way of reason."

  "Hormones, you mean. I've read that men have that problem a lot."

  Troy stared at her. "It's a problem I'd never experienced before I met you."

  Jill tried not to blush. She couldn't let his flattery go to her head. "Once you got the idea, you seem to have run with it."

  "Is that jealousy I hear?"

  "Don't you just wish?" Except he was right. She couldn't help it. She didn't even want to think about him with another woman.

  Troy grinned. He was eating this up. "Yeah, you're jealous all right."

  "I'm glad you're so cocky about it. You're running out of time," she said, looking pointedly at her watch.

  "Would you please join us? Master Sergeant Lennon, or in this case I should say Private Detective Lennon, has a couple of things she'd like to show you." Troy grasped her lightly by the arm but Jill couldn't have broken that grip if it was as light as cobwebs. His touch seemed to drain her of her ability to resist.

  They had almost reached the table where Annie and Sergeant Lennon waited. Annie jiggled in her seat like a jack-in-the-box. "Did you tell her?"

  "I'm working on it, pumpkin."

  “Working on what?” Jill demanded.

  ***

  Troy hadn't expected Jill to leap into his arms, but he had thought she'd at least listen to what he had to say. It had taken him a couple of minutes to even realize she thought Lennon was his date. He'd straightened that out, but she was still looking at him like she expected fish to jump out of his ears or something.

  Still, his thirty seconds were over, and she hadn't fled the restaurant. "Would you please sit down and listen to Master Sergeant Lennon?"

  Jill opened her mouth but nothing came out.

  "Please," Troy repeated.

  "All right."

  He guided her to the table, then ordered a bottle of wine when the steward showed up.

  "I was explaining that I decided to look into your business," Troy explained.

  "You're not very good at minding your own affairs, are you?"

  "Actually, no. In the military, that's called ‘intelligence’."

  "In the civilian world, it's called ‘butt-in-ski’."

  He laughed. "Maybe so. I asked Master Sergeant Lennon to see what she could find about our little problem."

  "What--"

  "The problem of my house being at the bottom of the ocean."

  "Oh. That problem" Jill glared at him for a moment, then subsided a little.

  Troy had spent enough time with Jill to realize that this was only a temporary respite. He pushed ahead before she led him into another detour. "Apparently there was a severe El Nino a few of years ago."

  "Yeah."

  "With all of the rain, a lot of houses shifted on their foundations and some even toppled into the ocean."

  "I take it this is going somewhere."

  "Would you explain what you found, Lennon?"

  Master Sergeant Lennon consulted her notes. "I met with the city tax-assessor and got the original environmental impact statements for your house's construction and for that of the house next door."

  "That would be the house where Jill was constructing a swimming pool?" Troy prompted.

  "Correct. Several environmental groups argued against both houses but the city engineer persuaded the council to go ahead with the construction. These are the drawings submitted by the engineer."

  Lennon handed Jill a thick sheaf of paper.

  Jill studied the documents. "I can't see how these will help. They look the same as the ones I was working with."

  "These are the exact drawings you were using," Lennon said, using Jill's interruption as an opportunity to dig into her portfolio and pull out another stack of paperwork.

  "But--hey, how did you get these?"

  "While you and Annie were exploring some of the scenic spots in Malibu, I took the liberty of, ah, borrowing your plans," Troy explained. "As you know, your lock is hardly a challenge. Annie lent me her bobby-pin again"

  He'd stuck his nose into her business despite himself and he knew he was in trouble. Still, he didn't want to win Jill by default. He wanted her to come to him because she wanted him, not because she couldn't make it on her own.

  "I see. So rather than ask for my help you simply broke into my house." Jill's calm voice confirmed Troy's every fear. She wasn't mad, she was furious.

  "You'll note that the drawings aren't merely similar, they're identical," Lennon concluded as if Jill had never interrupted.

  Jill snatched the two sets of drawings off the table, pressed them together, and held them up to the light. "You're right," she finally agreed. "As if that means anything."

  "On the other hand," Lennon continued, "the property survey Troy had done before he moved in showed something quite different." She handed Jill another document.

  "Half the land is missing."

  "You're quite right."

  "How could I have missed that?"

  It figured that Jill would want to take responsibility for the error. Troy admired that char
acteristic at the same time as he recognized that it was a stumbling block in getting to where he wanted to be--married to Jill. "Possibly because you weren't working on my house and you had no particular reason to compare that section of the drawing. Give yourself a break here, honey."

  She jerked at his use of that endearment. Not a good sign. "I should have looked."

  "The fact is, you were asked to do a particular job. Your employer contracted with an engineer to evaluate the safety of your job. That was their responsibility, not yours. You aren't responsible for the selection of the engineer or for their failure to perform their work properly. As a result of their failure, your explosives blew my house into the ocean."

  "I also uncovered some serious problems in the construction of Troy's house," Lennon said. "That house was going down in the next substantial earthquake or the next El Nino. Its builder counted on making some serious money and moving on before anyone knew any better. You probably saved Troy's life by setting it off before anyone had moved in."

  "My life too," Annie added.

  Lennon handed Jill the last set of documents, this one bound in a yellow plastic booklet. "So that's it."

  Jill struggled to take it all in. Obviously, she'd never in a million years expected he was up to something like this. "I appreciate your help, Sergeant Lennon. I owe you."

  Lennon looked smug. "What you'll really owe me for is taking Annie home to spend the night with me."

  Annie shook herself awake. "Huh? Can I really spend the night with Aunt Barbara?"

  "If you promise to mind," he said.

  Annie nodded solemnly. "I promise."

  "You're just going to let her take away your daughter?"

  "The Sergeant-Major raised four children of her own. I suspect she'll be all right with Annie," Troy said.

  "But--"

  "I knew the Sergeant-Major when I was a wet-behind-the-ears private. Annie is safer with her than she'd be with twelve of the President's bodyguards." I'm the one who's not safe. He almost said it aloud.

  Troy said good night to his daughter, thanked Lennon, and sent them on their way. He was left alone with Jill. She didn't look quite as angry as she had a few moments ago.

  Troy had faced enemy fire, treachery from his own troops, and secret civilian agencies that didn't mind dropping mercenaries behind enemy lines and then conveniently forgetting them. He'd been afraid plenty of times. He'd never felt the heart-pounding fear he experienced now.