With a sigh, he reached for his phone and dialed his attorney. Freckles be damned, Lucy Campbell and her charms would be no match for Oliver and his team of bloodthirsty lawyers.
CHAPTER TWO
Lucy awoke the next morning with the same odd sense of pressure on her chest. It had been like that since the day she’d discovered Alice had died in her sleep and her world had turned upside down. Discovering she could potentially be a millionaire and Alice’s entire family hated her had done little to ease that pressure. It may actually be worse since they met with Phillip.
Someone would undoubtedly contest the will, which would put Alice’s estate in limbo until it was resolved. When she asked Phillip how long that would take, he said it could be weeks to months. The family’s attorneys would search for any way they could to nullify the latest will. That meant dragging their “dear aunt’s” reputation through the mud along with Lucy’s. Either Alice wasn’t in her right mind—and many would argue she never had been—or Lucy had manipulated her.
It made Lucy wonder if she could decline the inheritance. Was that an option? While the idea of all that money and stuff seemed nice, she didn’t want to be ripped to shreds to get it. She hadn’t manipulated Alice, and Alice hadn’t been crazy. She’d obviously just decided that her family either didn’t deserve or need the money. Since she never discussed it with anyone but Phillip and hadn’t been forthcoming about her reasoning even to him, they would never know.
Alice had been quirky that way. She never left her apartment, but she had plenty of stories from her youth about how she enjoyed going against the flow, especially where her family was involved. If it was possible for her to listen in on her will reading from heaven, Lucy was pretty sure she was cracking up. Alice would’ve found the look on Wanda’s face in particular to be priceless.
While the decision was being made, Lucy found herself at a loss. What, exactly, was she supposed to be doing with her time? Her client was dead, but she was still receiving her salary, room and board. After the funeral, Lucy had started putting together plans to pick up her life where she’d been forced to drop it. She had a year left in her art history program at Yale. Her scholarship hadn’t covered all four years and without it, there was no way she had been able to continue.
Working and living with Alice had allowed her to save almost all of her salary and she had a tidy little nest egg now that she could use to move back to Connecticut and finish school. Then, hopefully, she could use the connections she’d established the last few years in the art world to land a job at a prestigious museum.
Alice and Lucy had bonded over art. Honestly, Lucy’d had no experience as a home health nurse or caregiver of any kind, but that wasn’t really what Alice needed. She needed a companion, a helper around the apartment. She also needed someone who would go out into the world for her. Part of that had included attending gallery openings and art auctions in Alice’s place. Lucy had met quite a few people there and with Alice Drake’s reputation behind her, hopefully those connections would carry forward once she entered the art community herself.
Today, Lucy found herself sitting in the library staring at the computer screen and her readmission forms for Yale, but she couldn’t focus on them. Her gaze kept drifting around the apartment to all the things she’d never imagined would be hers. Certainly not the apartment itself, with its prewar moldings, handcrafted built-ins and polished, inlaid hardwood floors. Not the gallery of art pieces that looked like a wing of the Met or MoMA. It was all lovely, but nothing she would ever need to worry about personally.
Except now, she had to worry about it all, including the college forms. It was September. If this court hearing dragged through the fall, it would mess with her returning to school for the spring semester. Phillip had recommended she not move out, even if she didn’t want to keep the apartment. He was worried members of the family would squat in it and make it difficult for her to take ownership or sell it even if the judge ruled in her favor. That meant the pile of boxes in the corner she’d started to fill up would stay put for now and Yale in January might not happen.
All because Alice decided Lucy should be a millionaire and everyone else disagreed.
The sound of the doorbell echoed through the apartment, distracting Lucy from her worries. She saved her work and shut the laptop before heading out to the front door. Whoever was here must be on the visitor list or the doorman wouldn’t have let them up. She hoped it was Harper, but one glance out the peephole dashed those hopes.
It was Oliver Drake.