"Roberts, Nora - Mind Over Matter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Nora)

quiet, peaceful. If they had been alone Willa could have turned,
rested her head on his shoulder, and found comfort.

"Yes, he did. And now it's done."

Adam glanced over at the two women, Jack Mercy's daughters, and thought
something else was just beginning. "You have to speak with them,
Willa."

"They're sleeping in my house, eating my food." Deliberately she
looked back at her father's grave. "That's enough."

"They're your blood."

"No, Adam, you're my blood. They're nothing to me." She turned away
from him and braced herself to receive the condolences.

NEIGHBORS BROUGHT FOOD FOR DEATH. THERE WAS NO STOPPING THE BONE deep
tradition, any more than Willa could have stopped Bess from cooking for
three days straight to provide for what the housekeeper called the
bereavement supper. And that was a double pile of horseshit in Willa's
mind. There was no bereavement here. Curiosity, certainly. Many of
the people who packed into the main house had been invited before.

More, many more, had not. His death provided them entry, and they
enjoyed it.

The main house was a showplace, Jack Mercy style. Once a cabin of log
and mud had stood there, but that had been more than a hundred years
before. Now there was a sprawling, rambling structure of stone and
wood, of glistening glass. Rugs from all over the world spread over
floors of gleaming pine or polished tile. Jack Mercy had liked to
collect. When he'd become master of Mercy Ranch he had spent five
years turning what had been a lovely home into his personal palace.

Rich lived rich, he liked to say.

So he had. Collecting paintings and sculpture, adding rooms where the
art could be displayed. The entrance was a towering atrium, floored
with tiles in jewel tones of sapphire and ruby in a repeating pattern
of the Mercy Ranch brand. The staircase that swept to the second floor
was polished oak, shiny as glass, with a newel post carved in the shape
of a howling wolf.

People gathered there now, many of them goggling over it as they
balanced their plates. Others crowded into the living room with its
acre of slick floor and wide curve of sofa in cream-colored leather.

On the smooth river rock of the wall-spanning fireplace hung a
life-size painting of Jack Mercy astride a black stallion. His head