Billionaire's Match novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: House Hunting

Brittany walks into a realtor's office, ignores Dalton's mother, and goes to the Strathern family house to claim her inheritance.

The next morning Dalton was already in the driveway, holding the car door open.

It was their routine. She rode with him to the office and he kissed her hand before she got out.

"Have your assistant drive you," Brittany said. "I have an appointment with a realtor."

He blinked. "Today? We have the board meeting."

"The flat I want will have three offers by noon. If I don't see it this morning, it's gone."

"A flat?"

"For the studio I want to open." She smiled up at him, bright and easy. "You always tell me to spend a little on myself."

A line formed between his eyebrows, and he hid it.

"Then I'll skip the board and come with you."

"No." She tapped one finger against his chest. "I want to choose it myself. You can look at it when it's finished."

He studied her face for a moment.

"Okay," he said at last. "But call me when you're done."

"Of course."

She watched his car go down the hill and did not wave.

The realtor was waiting in a glass lobby downtown.

The flat was on the twenty-second floor of a building by the river. It had a wide window, two bedrooms and a lock that opened with a code only she knew.

Brittany signed a six-month lease and paid the first month from the account she had opened at twenty, the one Dalton had never asked about.

She stood at the window for a minute, holding the keys.

It was the first place in six years that was hers alone.

Her phone rang. The screen said Dalton's mother.

She let it ring out. It rang again.

On the third try, she answered.

"Brittany, where are you? Alicia is coming home from the hospital with the baby on Saturday, and she needs a proper confinement meal. You'll be at the house at seven to cook."

No greeting. No asking.

Two years of that voice calling her broken, useless and a curse on the family.

"I'm busy on Saturday," Brittany said.

"Busy? With what? You don't even have a job."

"I'll have a caterer send something. Goodbye."

She hung up and stood very still, listening to her own pulse.

The phone buzzed again almost at once. This time it was the attorney.

"Miss Faulkner, I have a car downstairs. The Strathern family expects you at the house this morning. You don't have to go today. But if you don't, they will say you were afraid."

Brittany looked at the river for another second.

"I'm coming down."

The car was black and quiet. Its driver, an older man in a gray coat, called her Miss without being told to.

"Mr. Strathern's father is abroad for his health," he said on the drive. "His widow, Mrs. Strathern, runs the house and sits on the board of three companies. His brother and his nephews hold the rest of the family seats."

"And now I hold the shares."

"Yes, miss. Most of his."

The gates opened onto a long drive lined with white birches.

At the end stood a house of pale limestone with twenty windows facing the front, every one of them lit.

Brittany got out. The gravel crunched under her shoes.

The front door opened before she reached the steps.

A tall woman in a cream suit stood in it. Her ash-blonde hair was cut at the jaw and she wore pearls at both ears.

She did not come out. She did not say hello.

She looked at Brittany's plain blazer, at the stitches in her hairline, at the small bag over her shoulder.

"So you're the girl from the orphanage," said Marguerite Strathern.

"I'm Neil Strathern's daughter."

"You're a name on a lawyer's list." Marguerite smiled with only her mouth. "My husband was sentimental at the end. That's all this is."

"The DNA test says otherwise."

"Tests can be bought. Houses can't." She tilted her head. "This house is not yours, my dear. Neither is the name."

She stepped back into the doorway and began to close the door.

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