Trust Me (3 page)

But Richard’s surgical strength was also his weakness. He had no patience for weepy pet owners and the hand-holding and explanations
they required. He knew what had to be done, and he wanted to do it, not to stand around explaining himself to nonprofessionals.
Carly had been sure that she was just what he needed. She could be the nurturer and the comforter, the link between his high-tech
skills and their anxious clients, and becoming a partner in his established practice would immediately give her the kind of
security that would otherwise take years to build.

They had signed an agreement to take reduced salaries for a five-year period, reinvesting their profits in the business during
that time. Richard kept a controlling interest, which was fine with Carly, who could not have afforded to buy an equal share
anyway. She was flattered and grateful that he had chosen her as a partner despite her inexperience. It was a risk for him,
but she saw it as a testament to his belief in her.

The first few months had been the bliss that she had imagined. But as she gradually settled in, and her momentum began to
fade, she began to see that Richard’s practice, and Richard himself, were actually very different than she had believed.

At first, Carly made excuses for the things that felt wrong. If Rich always seemed to be pushing the newest and most dramatic
procedures, even when she thought that a noninvasive approach would be better, she told herself that it was his confidence
that made him so aggressive. And if he dismissed her when she questioned his judgment, she reminded herself that he was the
expert, and it would be better for her quietly to watch, and learn.

So she did. And by the end of their first year together, she had learned that she was no longer in love with Richard Wexler,
and that she did not even particularly like him. They had nothing in common, including their opinions on how to run a veterinary
practice. He was the most gifted surgeon that Carly had ever known, but he was also egocentric and had no tolerance for any
ideas but his own. His clients were wealthy professionals who could afford the whopping charges that he ran up and seemed
to consider the size of the bill a measure of the quality of care. At first, Carly had tried to meet with some of Richard’s
clients to explain her views on their options, but she usually found that they did not want to listen. They wanted the instant
results that he could deliver, and even when they arrived undecided, they quickly fell into the thrall of his brash self-assurance.

“Just like I did,” Carly muttered, parking her car in the top semicircle of driveway in front of Henry’s house. Rich had somehow
mesmerized her, and the spell hadn’t begun to dissolve until she started to see him every day. By then, of course, it was
too late.

She hadn’t been surprised when he flatly refused to release her from their contract, though she didn’t know whether his motive
was malice or money. Whatever the case, he had her legally hooked. If she broke the agreement and left, she would forfeit
every cent she had invested, and that was much more than she could afford to lose.

So the business relationship, at least, had endured. Carly had gritted her teeth through months of postbreakup unpleasantness
when Richard refused to speak to her except in icy monosyllables. They had eventually come to an uneasy truce, but even with
almost three years to go before she could pull out her 30 percent of the equity, Carly had no illusion that she and Richard
would ever be friends. The clinic was doing well, though, and it was some comfort to know that the partnership had at least
been a good financial move. By the time that she was free to leave, she would have enough money—with a little help from the
bank—to open her own practice, and there would be nothing that Richard could do but scowl as she waved good-bye.

Three years to go. It wasn’t really so long, although there were days when it felt like an eternity. But she had no other
option—or, rather, she hadn’t had one until that afternoon, when Max Giordano delivered his incredible news.

Carly stepped out of her car and turned to look at the gigantic stone mansion. There were knots in her stomach. After Max
had left the clinic, she had spent the remainder of the day trying to focus on her work, but she felt as if she had been hit
by a hurricane, and conflicting emotions still battered at her like ocean waves. If what Max had said was true—she couldn’t
quite believe that there hadn’t been some mistake—then Henry Tremayne had given her a gift that was incredibly, overwhelmingly
generous. It was impossible not to want such a gift, but at the same time, it was also impossible to want something that would
only come about through Henry’s death. It was a strange, sad frame for such a magical picture, and thinking about it made
Carly feel queasy. She hoped she would be allowed to see Henry at the hospital. Even if he couldn’t hear her, she wanted to
hold his hand and tell him aloud that she loved him.

She heard the purr of a car engine and turned to see a gleaming black Jaguar sedan cruising up the driveway. It was exactly
six. The Jag slowed to a stop beside her battered VW, looking somewhat like a spaceship landing next to an oxcart. Carly squinted
curiously, trying to see through the tinted windows. It seemed out of character for Henry, with his dislike of nouveau-riche
flashiness, to have employed a hotshot Jag-driving attorney.

The car door opened, and a familiar gray-suited figure stepped out. Carly instinctively crossed her arms against her chest.
“You told me that a lawyer would be meeting me,” she said.

Max Giordano slipped off his mirrored sunglasses. “I reconsidered.”

Apparently, he’d meant it when he said that he would be watching her, Carly thought. If she had been less tired, or less upset
about Henry, she might have been amused by all of the melodrama, but as it was, she simply found him offensive. “Why, are
you afraid that I might try to steal the family silver without you here to keep an eagle eye on me?”

“No. The lawyers and the insurance company have detailed records of everything valuable in the house. If anything disappeared,
it would be easy to trace.”

“Oh, for…” Carly began hotly. “You can’t actually think that I would try to—”

“Steal the silver? I doubt it. You have the house, after all. And enough money to buy much more modern furnishings.”

That does it,
Carly thought. She pointed at him. “You’re on the verge of becoming the new owner of thirty-five pets, Mr. Giordano. And
since I don’t think you would enjoy getting dog hair all over that nice suit, you’d better give me the key before I really
get mad.”

Silently, he handed her a single brass key on a cheap metal ring, an incongruous match to the ornate front door. Carly’s hands
were shaking as she fumbled at the lock. She had always prided herself on her ability to deal calmly with rude and unreasonable
people, but this man was testing her limits.

The door clicked, and swung open into an arched entrance hall. A crystal chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling, over the
wide mahogany staircase that rose grandly to the second floor. Carly paused on the threshold.

“Just like that?” Max said, from behind her. “That’s it?”

“What’s it?”

He looked incredulously at the door. “No security system? Just a single dead-bolt lock?”

“That’s Henry for you,” Carly said. “He doesn’t believe in newfangled technology.”

“An old man, living alone in a forty-room mansion, and he doesn’t even have an alarm?” Max looked upset. “That’s crazy. No
neighborhood is that safe. What if someone had tried to break in here?”

“I never said that he doesn’t have an alarm.”

Distant barking had begun with the creak of the opening door, and it was quickly getting louder, echoing through the dark
house. Moments later, Henry’s “alarm” erupted into the hall in a wriggling, welcoming mass.

Dogs of every shape and color surrounded them, jumbled together like a crazy wolf pack. Two retrievers butted happily against
Carly’s legs, a beagle paused by the foot of the stairs and howled, and a border collie, a corgi, and a Yorkshire terrier
ran in circles, barking furiously.

“My God,” Max exclaimed, as the rest of the pack pushed through the doorway toward him. “This has to be more than—”

His sentence ended in a sudden, strangled sound. Carly turned and saw that Lola, the Great Dane, had pinned him against the
outer wall of the house, her huge paws on his shoulders. On her hind legs, she was almost as tall as he was, and she gazed
soulfully into his eyes, wagging her tail.

“Meet your grandfather’s security system, Mr. Giordano,” Carly said, grinning. “They seem to like you. I can’t imagine why.”

Lola licked Max’s nose, and he choked, turning his head from side to side, trying to avoid the large pink tongue. “Get this
dog off me!”

Carly was suddenly enjoying herself very much. “So,” she said. “Tell me. Would you try to rob this house?”

Max ignored her. “That does it,” he growled, raising his hands against Lola’s furry chest. “Down, dog. Down! I mean it.”

Lola dropped down onto all fours and leaned comfortably against Max’s legs as he wiped off his face, scowling. “Some watchdogs,”
he said. “What do they do, lick burglars to death?”

“You never know,” Carly said. “Lola doesn’t usually take to people like this. Henry rescued her from an abusive home, and
she’s actually very shy.”

“ ‘Shy’ would not have been my first choice of adjectives,” Max said, brushing short brown hairs off of his jacket. He slanted
a sideways look at Lola.

“Maybe she likes the way you smell. Do you have a dog?”

“
Me?
No.”

Carly hadn’t thought so, but it would have been one explanation for Lola’s unusual behavior. Some abused dogs became aggressive,
but the Great Dane tended toward the other extreme. She was skittish, frightened of almost everyone, and had a way of seeming
to shrink into herself that was oddly touching in an animal her size. Her reaction to Max was a good sign, Carly thought.
She was starting to relax around strangers. Henry would be delighted.

Max Giordano’s behavior was another surprise. When people really disliked animals, they tended to make awkward, abrupt motions
around them, and to use more force than was necessary. But in spite of Max’s obvious distaste for the dog, his hands had been
gentle as he pushed her away.

Interesting
, Carly thought, mentally filing away the observation. She walked into the entry hall. “I’m going to go feed this pack,” she
said over her shoulder. “Are you coming in to supervise? Or are you just planning to search me before I leave?”

Max didn’t answer. She turned to glance at him and saw that he wasn’t even looking at her. He was staring into the house,
and the remote expression on his face made her wonder if he had heard her.

“Hello?” she said. “Are you coming inside?”

He blinked and focused on her. “In a minute,” he said. “You go ahead.”

Carly shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

The pack of dogs followed her down the hallway, milling happily around her legs as they sensed the possibility of kibble.
The kitchen was at the back of the house, connected to a series of large pantries that had once been the domain of numerous
proper butlers and well-starched maids. Ceiling-high glass cabinets still displayed the Tremayne china, complete with hand-painted
gold monogram. It was a service for fifty, but it had been a long time, Carly thought, since the old house had seen such a
crowd. Of people, that was. Now all the staff rooms—in addition to the formal dining hall and the solarium—were occupied mostly
by four-footed creatures. Cats were everywhere: reclining on the kitchen shelves, curled up on the brocade seats of the ornately
carved dining chairs, draped over the padded wicker solarium furniture. A caged parrot greeted Carly with a screech, and a
white cocker spaniel, too old to bother with greeting visitors at the door, snored under Henry’s favorite chair.

Despite the crowd of pets, the house seemed oddly dark and empty, and Carly wondered what had happened to Pauline, Henry’s
live-in housekeeper and general aide-de-camp. The short, efficient woman had been running Henry’s life for years, and it wasn’t
at all like her to disappear in the face of a crisis. Had Max sent her away? Not if he knew what was good for him, Carly thought
ominously, making a mental note to find out. If Max Giordano was under the impression that he could just march in and start
taking over, he was wrong. Dead wrong, and she intended to tell him so. It was the least she could do for Henry.

T
aking over was foremost in Max’s mind as he stared down the hallway after Charlotte and the dogs. Taking over was his natural
response when faced with a situation that begged for someone to step in and make order out of chaos, and in his opinion, thirty-five
pets in a crumbling mansion that had just been willed out of the Tremayne family forever was chaos at its worst.

It seemed to Max that the first thing he could do for his grandfather was to save the old man from the consequences of his
folly. Ms. Martin had played him beautifully with her idea about turning the house into an animal shelter; but if Henry had
been lonely enough to fall prey to a clever young woman, then the current disaster was as much Max’s own fault as anyone’s.