"TXT - Nora Roberts - Dream 02 - Holding The Dream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Nora)

she had little to spare during those last weeks before the April 15 tax
deadline, to chat with him.

And he just sat there, in the chair on the other side of the desk,
reminiscing. He'd bounced her on his knee when she was little, he said,
had worked in the same ad firm as her father.

Which was why, he told her, since he'd relocated to California and now
had his own firm, he wanted her as his accountant. She thanked him and
mixed her questions about his business and his financial requirements
with queries about her parents.

Then, when he spoke so casually of the accusations, the charges, and the
sorrow he felt that her father had died before he could make
restitution, she had said nothing, could say nothing.

"He never intended to steal, just borrow. Oh, it was wrong, God knows. I
always felt partially responsible because I was the one who told him
about the real estate deal, encouraged him to invest. I didn't know he'd
already lost most of his capital in a couple of deals that went sour. He
would have put the money back. Linc would have found a way, always did.
He was always a little resentful that his cousin rode so high while he
barely scraped by."

And the man--God, she couldn't remember his name, couldn't remember
anything but the words--smiled at her.

The whole time he was speaking, making excuses, adding his own
explanations to the facts, she simply sat, nodding. This stranger who'd
known her father was destroying her very foundations.

"He had a sore spot where Tommy Templeton was concerned. Funny, when you
think it turned out that he was the one to raise you after it all. But
Linc never meant any harm, Katie. He was just reckless. Never had a
chance to prove himself, and that's the real crime, if you ask me."

The real crime, Kate thought, as her stomach churned and knotted. He had
stolen, because he was desperate for money and took the easy way out.
Because he was a thief, she thought now. A cheat. And he had cheated the
justice system by hitting an icy patch of road and crashing his car,
killing himself and his wife and leaving his daughter an orphan.

So fate had given her as a father the very man her own father had been
so envious of. Through his death, she had, in essence, become a
Templeton.

Had it been deliberate? she wondered. Had he been so desperate, so
reckless, so angry that he'd chosen death? She could barely remember
him, a thin, pale, nervous man with a quick temper.