Page 33 of Love Bomb

He was on her bed, propped up against the headboard, legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankle. He was sipping a big mug of steaming hot chocolate. And Tom, the bloody traitor, was curled in his lap, purring away.

She glared at the cat. He yawned in return.

No loyalty. None.

“Smart not to wash your hair. You’d have had pneumonia by the time we got it dry.” Bain patted the bed beside him. “C’mere. I’ll hand you your chocolate.” He gestured to the other mug sitting on the bedside table next to him.

Rona eyed the only chair in the room. A wooden desk chair. Cozy. The bed won. She climbed onto the bed and, keeping her distance, sat cross-legged facing him.

He handed her a mug. “How are you feeling?”

The hot chocolate was ambrosia, sent straight from the gods.

“Annoyed,” she answered honestly. “Frustrated. A little bit angry. And somewhat disgusted that my first attempt at a break-in wasn’t more successful.”

His lip twitched. “I meant, have you thawed out now? Are you warm?”

“Oh, okay. Well, mostly. My bum’s still a bit cold,” she said without thinking.

Two days in his presence and she was back to being a kid and telling him everything on her mind. How was she supposed to get Bain to treat her like an adult when she kept behaving like a child? Honestly, she wanted to smack herself silly.

He was amused at her confession. “Want me to find you a hot water bottle?”

She scowled at him. “What I want you to do, is blow up the folly for me. How about you do that instead?”

“Rona, it’s against the law,” he said, sounding very self-righteous.

“That never stopped you before. You blew up loads of things that got you into trouble when you were a kid.”

“The key phrase here is: when I was a kid. I was lucky I didn’t end up in jail. If I’d grown up anywhere but Invertary, I probably would have. But seeing as we have a higher tolerance for crazy in this town than in most places, I made it to adulthood without getting a record. I’m not a kid anymore. I don’t just go around blowing things up for no reason.”

“I have a reason,” she pointed out. “A good reason.”

“Yeah.” He rested his head back on the padded headboard. “Kade tells me you have twenty-seven million reasons.”

Rona sucked in a breath. “You don’t think I’m doing this for the money, do you?”

His startling blue eyes met hers. “No, I actually don’t.”

Rona relaxed as relief washed through her. If Bain had thought her motivation was money, then he didn’t know her at all.

“But Kade said if the folly is destroyed, whoever owns it gets the twenty-seven million,” he said before emptying his mug and placing it on the side table. “If you plan on giving it away, you’d have to do it fast before your parents blocked you from touching it.”

Her heart warmed at his words. “Kade got his facts wrong. The conditions of the trust are that if the folly is destroyed, the money will go to Mack Dalgleish’s favorite charities. The family can’t touch a penny of it.”

“Figured it was something like that, but…” He was thinking hard, she could practically see his big brain working. “I’m guessing if the folly stays intact, and the fund is there for the care of it, with a stipend for the trustee, then there’s a way your parents could drain the account. Am I right?”

She knew Bain would get it. “Mack Dalgliesh never considered that the trust might grow as big as it has. Nor did he foresee that inflation would mean the stipend would have to increase too. Ten thousand was a fortune back in the Victorian era. Whoever takes care of the folly now would get about a million a year. Plus, they could claim for things like historical reports, or publicity, or any other rubbish they invented. There would be no way to check if the money had been spent on what they’d claimed it for. And a trusts lawyer I know had a look at the original paperwork, and he says they could have the trust rewritten to either empty the fund entirely, or up their yearly income by millions.”

“And you think your parents are arguing over the money?” he said.

“I know they are.”

“Don’t they have their own money?” Bain asked.

Rona snorted. “Sure, they had trust funds, but they ran through those years ago. Dad had a job with Grandfather for a while, but spent more time playing golf than in the office. In the end, Grandfather made the title honorary and just gave him an allowance. Same with mum, because there’s no money left in her side of the family to support her either. Grandfather paid them in the hopes they wouldn’t annoy or embarrass him. When he died, the money dried up.”

“Does that mean this is the only family money left?”