More Than a Hero by Marilyn Pappano

Author:Marilyn Pappano
Format: mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2007-09-12T04:00:00+00:00

They dressed, checked the refrigerator, then ordered pizza and hot wings delivered. Kylie hadn’t seen anything wrong with a salad or a frozen dinner, but Jake had overruled her. He wanted real food. Food with lots of calories and fat and sticky, gooey goodness.

After cleanup—consisting of refrigerating the last two pieces of pizza and throwing everything else in the trash—she dangled her keys from her finger. “Still want that tour?”

Something passed through his eyes, something…distancing. But it disappeared when he grinned and said, “Sure. Who doesn’t want to see how the better half lives?”

“Hardly better,” she corrected him as she took a hooded trench coat from the closet. “Just different.”

“Honey, I’ve been poor. Being rich has to be better. It certainly makes a lot of people think they are.”

Like her parents. Both Phyllis and the senator had nurtured a sense of entitlement, and they’d tried to instill it in her. How many times had her mother told her You’re a Colby or You’re a Riordan as if that truly mattered? Dozens. Hundreds.

She belted the coat around her waist as Jake thrust his arms into his slicker. With the hoods pulled up for protection from the rain, they left the coziness of the cottage for the stone path that wound through gardens to the mansion’s rear entrance. “Ordinarily I’d take you in the front door for the full effect,” she said as they removed their coats, followed by their soaking shoes, in the utility room. “It’s impressive.”

She wasn’t sure Jake would agree. She wanted him to. It was her family home. Colbys had bought the property, earned the fortune, built the house and lived in it for generations. It was a part of who she was, and she wanted him to…to not be turned off by it.

From the utility room they cut through the kitchen to the hallway that ran front to back, dividing the house in half. Along its length hung photographs not of early Colbys but of the oil wells that had made them rich, each bearing a brass plate with well name, location and date drilled. The furniture beneath the photos—two uncomfortable chairs and three demilune tables—were antiques. Most of the furnishings in the house were old and valuable, too much so for a young child to play on or near.

Ordinarily when she gave a tour to a friend she did a spiel about the history, the family and the more unusual treasures. Not with Jake. He was smart enough to recognize the rooms for what they were and curious enough to ask any questions that came to mind.

The front entry was impressive: a huge foyer, the ceiling reaching three stories high, painted with a gold-leaf mural of sky, clouds and angels. The double doors were unusually wide, stained glass in both doors, the sidelights and the arch overhead. The house faced south, and when the sunlight streamed through those windows it was breathtaking.

They walked quietly through the ladies’ parlor, the gentlemen’s parlor, the library, the music room and a nursery filled with plants, where six of the eight walls were floor-to-ceiling glass.

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