The Bravo Billionaire Part 2

J onas dropped back to his chair as soon as the blonde in the orange suit bolted from the room. There was nothing to be gained by following her right then, nothing left, at that moment, to use on her save physical force. And contrary to what a lot of people believed, Jonas Bravo never used physical force. He only let them think that he might.

A few days , she had said. She would get back to him in a few days.

What the h.e.l.l, Jonas wondered, was a few days? Two? Three? Four?

He felt caged. Caught. Bested.

Made to wait.

He sat alone in the conference room for several minutes, giving his frustration a chance to abate, at least minimally. Eventually it occurred to him that Ambrose would be ducking back in shortly, just to check and make sure he hadn't torn the little dog groomer limb from limb.

Since Jonas felt zero inclination to deal with Ambrose again right then, he left the lawyer's offices and went to Bravo, Incorporated, which was housed in the Bravo Building, a towering forty-story structure of pale granite and dark gla.s.s in downtown L.A.

He had a meeting at three with the project manager of a certain upscale shopping center that was due to open in six weeks. It was a project in which he'd made a significant investment of Bravo, Incorporated funds.

The meeting lasted two hours. When it was over, Jonas hardly remembered a thing that had been said. He kept thinking about the kennel keeper, about that word, few, about what she had really meant when she said it.

About how d.a.m.n long she intended to make him wait. After the meeting, there were calls to make and papers to sign. He spent an hour and a half closeted with one of his a.s.sistants, going over correspondence and contracts he needed prepared.

By seven, he had had enough.

He was supposed to meet the CEO of a certain Internet startup group for dinner at L'Orangerie. But he knew it would be pointless. Right then, he couldn't have cared less if every decent tech stocks opportunity out there pa.s.sed him right by. He had his secretary call and reschedule the appointment for Thursday night.

After all, Thursday was three days away. He'd have his answer from the dog groomer by then wouldn't he? Weren't three days a few? He flexed his thick, powerful fingers, thinking how pleasant it would be to wrap them around Emma Lynn Hewitt's neck and begin to squeeze.

Before he left his office, he downloaded the file on the Hewitt woman into his laptop. There might be something in it he had missed, something he could use to get her to start seeing things his way and to do so as quickly as possible.

Jonas kept files on all of his mother's various causes and charities, as well as on her friends and acquaintances. In spite of what had happened thirty years ago, when she'd lost a son and a husband within months of each other and spent four years in psychiatric care as a result, Blythe Bravo had ended up a trusting soul. She was also a person who felt a responsibility to leave the world a better place than she'd found it. Jonas felt no such responsibility. And he made it a point not to trust anyone until they had proven they were worthy of trust.

He'd had the Hewitt woman investigated five years ago, when she'd first popped up in his mother's life. Once he'd read the report provided by his investigators, he'd come to the conclusion that, while she rubbed him the wrong way personally, Emma Lynn Hewitt was probably harmless.

Harmless . He scowled as he thought the word.

And he felt bested again.

By a blonde with big b.r.e.a.s.t.s and inappropriate shoes.

On the way home, in the quiet back seat of the limo, he studied the file. He was still going over it when he reached Angel's Crest, the hilltop Mediterranean-style house in Bel Air where Bravos had lived for three generations. Jonas owned a number of houses and apartments, among them a hunting lodge in Idaho , a small villa in the south of France and a penthouse on Fifth Avenue . But he considered Angel's Crest his home.

Palmer, who ran the house, greeted him at the door. "Good evening, sir."

Jonas nodded. "Palmer." He handed the butler his briefcase and the laptop. "Put these in the study, will you?"

"Certainly."

He told Palmer that he'd have a light meal in the small dining room in one hour and then he climbed the curving iron staircase to the second floor.

He visited his sister in the nursery. As usual lately, she babbled nonstop. It was all two-year-old talk, that phase of language development consisting in the main of instructions and demands.

"Jonah" she always called him Jonah, he a.s.sumed because the "s" at the end of his name was as yet beyond her "come here," and "Jonah, sit there," and "I like this story. Read it to me."

He felt better. Soothed. Just to see her round, smiling face, her mop of dark curls and those big brown eyes. To know that she was safe. Always, he would keep her safe. He employed round-the-clock security at Angel's Crest. What had happened to his brother would never happen to the sprite.

She did say, "Jonah, I want Mama," looking up at him solemnly, with absolute trust and a sadness that tore at his heart.

He took her on his lap and explained for what was it? The tenth time? The eleventh?

that Mama had been very sick and had to go away and would not be coming back.

Claudia, the nanny, reappeared at eight-thirty with a shy smile and a questioning look.

"Bath time," he told Mandy. "Be good for Claudia." With a minimum of fuss, Mandy allowed him to say good-night.

He stopped in his private suite of rooms for a quick shower and a change of clothes, then he went on down to the smaller of the house's two dining rooms, where Palmer served him his meal. He ate, reminding himself not to dwell on how d.a.m.n huge and quiet even the small dining room seemed without Blythe's easy laughter and teasing chatter to liven things up a little.

The food, as always, was excellent. He told Palmer to be sure to give the cook his compliments.

It was after ten when Jonas retreated to his study, a comfortable room of tall, well-filled walnut bookcases, arching leaded-gla.s.s windows, intricate crown moldings and big, inviting chairs upholstered in green and blood-red velvet. He sat at his inlaid mahogany desk, opened the laptop and dug into the file on Emma Hewitt again.

What he read didn't tell him any more than he already knew. She was an orphan from Texas with two years in a nowhere college under her belt. At the time he'd had her followed she had been twenty-one, working the morning s.h.i.+ft at the restaurant where she'd met his mother and keeping a stray cat and an iguana in her studio apartment, unbeknownst to the landlord. There had been no boyfriend at the time, though Jonas thought he remembered Blythe telling him there had been someone last year or was it the year before?

And if there had been someone, was that someone still around? Jonas shrugged. Since he didn't have a clue what the woman planned to do about Blythe's will, he supposed, at this point, that the possibility of a boyfriend was pretty much a non-issue.

The file or, technically, the series of files contained a number of pictures snapped on the sly by one of the detectives he'd hired. There she was in her little white blouse and short black skirt, grinning at a customer, her order pad poised, pen ready to roll. And there she was at some Hollywood nightspot, with what looked like a strawberry daiquiri in front of her and a wide, happy smile on her face. And at Venice Beach , wearing cutoff shorts, a skimpy little nothing of a top and inline skates, being pulled along by a high stepping, beautifully groomed pair of Afghan hounds. In that picture, he couldn't help but notice, her legs looked especially long, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s particularly high and full.

Jonas sat back for a minute and rubbed at his eyes. Full b.r.e.a.s.t.s and long legs, he reminded himself, were not the issue here.

He looked at the screen again, began bringing up the pictures one by one, noting as he did so that the love of animals came through good and clear. The cat and the iguana. The Afghan hounds. A shot taken in a pet store, with a parakeet on her head and a mynah bird on her shoulder, one at what looked like Griffith Park with someone's tiny Chihuahua balanced on her outstretched hand.

Jonas stared off in the direction of the limestone mantel, thinking of Bob and Ted, the pair of miniature Yorks.h.i.+re terriers his mother had owned. Though as a general rule, Jonas had no liking for small dogs, Bob and Ted had surprised him. They were smart and obedient and not particularly p.r.o.ne to yipping. And they'd been fiercely dedicated to their mistress.

Not too long ago, Bob and Ted had moved in with Emma Hewitt. Blythe, in the hospital then for what would be her final stay, had told Jonas she wanted the woman to have the dogs. He hadn't objected. He'd figured that the kennel keeper was an appropriate choice to inherit the Yorkies. At that point he hadn't known that the Yorkies weren't everything his mother intended for Emma Lynn Hewitt to inherit.

Jonas scrolled through the personal information file. The phone numbers had not been updated. There was the number of the deli where she'd worked five years ago, and the number of that studio apartment in East Hollywood where she'd lived when she first came to Los Angeles .

He had the current numbers somewhere, didn't he? The business number, at least, should be easy enough to find in the phone book or online.

But he knew where he would be certain to find them both.

He got his palm planner from his briefcase, left the study and went upstairs again, this time to his mother's suite. In her white, pink and gold sitting room, which Blythe had recently redone in grand Louis XVI style, he picked up the phone. As he'd expected, she had the kennel keeper on autodial. There were three numbers: home, mobile and business.

Jonas wasn't about to talk to the Hewitt woman on his mother's phone in his mother's rooms with his mother's things around him, reminding him all too poignantly of what he'd told his little sister earlier that evening: that Blythe was not coming back.

He found a white leather address book in a drawer beneath the phone and got the numbers from it, entering all three in the palm planner. Then he returned to his study.

He sat down at his desk again, picked up the phone and glanced at the serpentine clock on the mantel. It was nearing eleven. He called the home number.

She answered on the third ring. "h.e.l.lo?" He heard fuzziness in her voice, a slight slurring, as if he'd wakened her. An image flashed through his mind: the kennel keeper in bed, wearing something skimpy and eye-flayingly bright, the Yorkies snuggled in close, one on either side of her.

He blinked to clear the image. "How long is 'a few days'?" he asked in a gentle and reasonable tone.

Evidently, the sound of his voice was enough to banish sleep, because she said his name his given name flatly, all traces of fuzziness gone. "Jonas."

"How long is 'a few days'?"

He heard her take in a breath and sigh as she let it out.

He began again. "I asked how-"

"I heard you." She heaved another sigh. "I'm sorry. I just don't know yet. I have to think this over. I have to ... consider what all this will mean."

"What's to consider?"

"Plenty. I know you don't believe me, but this was a pretty big shock to me, too."

He tapped his palm planner lightly on the desktop. And then he set it down and stared at it, not really seeing it, reluctantly coming to grips with the fact that he did believe her. He'd seen the look of sick astonishment on her face when he'd entered that conference room and she looked up from the new will. He'd wanted to think she was in on his mother's scheme. But now he'd had some time to mull it over, he supposed he had to admit that that angle just didn't add up.

If she'd been in on it, why would she be giving him the runaround now?

She wouldn't unless she was hoping he'd make her an offer.

Fine. An offer, then. "How much do you want?"

She didn't say anything.

So he went ahead and started laying it out for her. "Sign an agreement giving up all claim to my sister and I'll pay you-"

"Don't even tell me."

"Why not?"

"Because I can't take any money from you."

"Of course you can take money from me."

"No, I cannot."

"Why?"

"Blythe was my friend. I can't take money to betray my friend."

"This is no betrayal."

"To me it would be. I'm sorry. I won't take your money."

"It seems to me, Ms. Hewitt, that if there has been any betrayal in this situation, it's already occurred."

"Pardon me?"

"The way I see it, my mother betrayed all of us. You. Me. And Mandy, too."

"Your mama did not betray anybody." There was indignation in her voice now.

Indignation with a Texas tw.a.n.g.

Jonas rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was getting a headache between his eyes. "All right. Perhaps I've used the wrong word. How about tricked? Is that better? Or maybe just plain old screwed."

"Blythe Bravo did not-"

"She screwed us, Ms. Hewitt. Or at least, she screwed me. And my sister."

"That is not true. Your mama absolutely without a doubt wanted only the best for you.

And for your sister."

"The best. That would be you?"

There was silence on the line again. Finally, the dog groomer said softly, "Well, I guess your mama thought so, now didn't she?"

Jonas picked up his palm planner and then set it down. He looked at the spines of the books on a shelf about ten feet from where he sat all gold-tooled leather, beautifully bound. A number of harsh remarks were pa.s.sing through his brain, things to the effect that he did not consider a woman who'd been raised in a trailer in some place called Alta Lobo, Texas , to be the best thing for him.

He wisely did not let those remarks get out of his mouth.

"So what do we do now, Ms. Hewitt?"

"Well, I don't know yet."

"Ms. Hewitt, you are trying my patience."

"You know, I got that. I got that loud and clear."

"I could make you a very rich woman."

"Well, that is real nice. But no thanks. I mean it. I truly do. I will call you, as soon as I can make up my mind what to do."

Right then, he heard one short, sharp bark. "Oh, sweetie," she said. For a minute, he thought she was talking to him. But then she did talk to him, and he realized the difference. "That was Ted. He says hi."

d.a.m.n her. She had the dogs. She wasn't getting him or his sister.

"You have yourself a nice night now," she said.

"Ms. Hewitt-"

"'Bye..." The line went dead.

Jonas pulled the phone from his ear and stared at the thing. She had hung up on him.

n.o.body hung up on him.