Flirting With Pete: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

Paul Winnig,” he said. “I was Dr. Unger’s lawyer. I’m the executor of his estate. Could we talk for a minute?”
    She would have asked what the executor of Dr. Unger’s estate wanted with her, if the lawyer’s eyes hadn’t answered the question. Yes, he did know who she was.
    Surprised by that awareness and quickly unsettled, she managed, “Uh, of course. Whenever.”
    “Now would be good.”
    “Now?” She glanced at her watch and felt a trace of annoyance. She didn’t know whether her father kept clients waiting. She did not. “I have an appointment in thirty minutes.”
    “This will only take five,” the lawyer said. With a light hand at her elbow, he gently guided her down the steps and onto a narrow stone path that led around the side of the church.
    Casey’s heart was beating hard. Before she could even begin to wonder what he had to say, or what she felt about his saying anything at all, the path opened into a small courtyard out of sight of the street. Releasing her elbow, the lawyer gestured her to a wrought-iron bench. When they were both seated, he said, “Dr. Unger left instructions that you should be contacted as soon as the memorial service was done.”
    “I don’t know why,” Casey remarked, having recovered a bit of composure. “He had no interest in me at all.”
    “I believe you’re wrong,” the lawyer chided. He pulled an envelope from the pocket of his suit jacket. It was a small manila thing the size of an index card, with a clasp at the top.
    Casey stared at the envelope.
    The lawyer held it up to show her the front. “It has your name on it.”
    So it did—“Cassandra Ellis,” written in the same shaky scrawl she had seen dozens of times in margin notes on the graphs and charts that Connie Unger projected onto screens during lectures.
    Cassandra Ellis . Her name, written by her father. It was a first.
    Her heart began to rap against her ribs. Her eyes returned to the lawyer’s. Apprehensive, not quite knowing what she wanted to find in the envelope but fearing that whatever it was, it wouldn’t be there, she gingerly reached out. The envelope was lumpy.
    “There’s a key inside,” Paul Winnig explained. “Dr. Unger left you his townhouse.”
    Casey frowned, pulled in her chin, regarded the lawyer with doubt. When he nodded, she dropped her eyes to the envelope. Carefully, she unfolded the clasp, raised the small flap, and looked inside. She tipped out a key, then pulled out a piece of paper that had been folded over many times to fit. In the seconds it took to unfold it— several seconds longer than it might have taken had her hands been steadier— her fantasy flared. In those seconds, she imagined a warm little note. It didn’t have to be long. It could be as simple as, You are my daughter, Casey. I’ve watched you all these years. You’ve made me proud.
    There was in fact writing on the paper, but the message was succinct. She saw the address of the townhouse. She saw an alarm code. She saw a short list of names beside words like “plumber,” “painter,” and “electrician.” The names of the gardener and the maid had asterisks beside them.
    “Dr. Unger would like the gardener and maid retained,” the lawyer explained. “In the end it’s your choice, but he felt that both were good and that they loved the house as much as he did.”
    Casey was stunned. There was absolutely nothing of a personal nature on the paper. “He loved the house?” she echoed, hurt, and met the lawyer’s gaze. “A house is a thing. Did he ever love people? ”
    Paul Winnig smiled sadly. “In his way.”
    “What way was that?”
    “Silently. Distantly.”
    “Absently?” Casey charged, torn in that instant, of half a mind to ball up the paper and toss it away. She was angry that her father hadn’t said something to her in life, angry that the note contained nothing she longed to read. “What if I don’t want his townhouse?”
    “If you don’t want it, sell it.