Heaven in My Arms by Colleen French

Author:Colleen French [French, Colleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Evan Marshall Agency
Published: 2019-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

"It's all right, really." She walked up the steps and slipped her key into the lock. "It only makes sense to have your money safely invested. I'm not so sure I would trust banks either." She pushed open the door, and Silver bounded out onto the porch and down the steps.

Fox groaned. "Celeste, you're not listening to me." He closed the door behind them. "I have no money. None. Anywhere. About a dollar and a half in my pocket."

As she lifted her fanchon bonnet from her head, she turned to face him, taken completely by surprise. What did he mean he had no money? Did he mean he really had no money? "I don't understand."

He stared at the polished hardwood floor of the foyer. "Hell, I feel so bad about this." He took a deep breath as if struggling for air, and started again. "I mean I'm a poor man. I lied to you, or at least allowed you to believe what wasn't so. I have no cash, no investments, no property, but what you and I share."

She lowered the bonnet to her side, trying to comprehend what Fox was saying. "No money?" she murmured. Fox wasn't the rich San Francisco businessman that John had said he was? "But what about all those successful business ventures John told me about? What about the homes in New York and San Francisco? What about the investment in the China shipping company?"

"It was all true." He swept his hair off his forehead, sounding defeated. "Once."

"What happened?"

"My partner stole from me, left me with bad debts." He scuffed his boot. "James Monroe was my partner . . . and Amber's brother. I was a fool." He raised his palms lamely. "I trusted him completely, and he was a liar and cheat. Her, too."

"Oh, Fox." Celeste held her hat with both hands, the tulle ribbons dangling to the floor. She wanted to touch him, but she didn't want him to misconstrue her sorrow for him as pity. "Did John know?"

He shook his head, studying a pattern of the wallpaper somewhere beyond her. "No. I didn't tell him. It only happened last year. James took off right after . . . after Amber died."

She hung her hat on an oak hook. "So that's why you didn't come to Carrington before."

"It was a mess. I was trying to keep creditors at bay until I could liquidate what little I had left and pay what James owed them. Because we were partners, his debts became my debts." Fox spoke faster than before, as if he needed to get the confession out while he had the nerve. "And John never said he was dying. He . . . he told me not to come, Celeste." His gaze met hers, his stormy eyes filled with tears. "In the last letter I received before he died, he said he was feeling under the weather but that an angel had come from heaven to care for him. I thought it was just more of his drunken, babbling nonsense.

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