The Tycoon's Seductive Revenge by Kristi Avalon Read Free Book Online

excitement .
    He peered at her. “Haven’t you realized by now that things usually aren’t what they seem?”
    Ellie had never dealt with that kind of reality until her father had passed, when she was left to pick up the pieces of his shattered life. “I’m learning,” she admitted.
    “Sometimes you need to look harder to figure it out. But there are moments when that insight comes right to you, as if you’ve known it all along.”
    Feeling the weight of his stare, she sensed a deeper significance in his words. Still, she couldn’t puzzle out his meaning. “I trust you,” was all she could think to say.
    A smile crept onto his face. “It’s about time.”
    He dropped the plans and went straight for the bookshelf. Before they hit the floor, Ellie caught and cradled the precious documents, the entire history of every renovation of The Montgomery Hotel. “What’s the matter with you?” she hissed.
    “The plans aren’t important. It’s what they aren’t telling us that matters.”
    Ellie rolled the layer of blueprints and set them on a table beside an old globe of the earth mapping out Marco Polo’s routes, then went to his side. “Can you stop talking in Sherlock Holmes speak?”
    “Watch.” With certainty, he felt along the bookshelves. “It should be obvious. Like there. See the empty space? In this entire shelf, there’s only one book missing.”
    “Oh.” She’d never noticed that.
    Carter reached into the space, felt around. But nothing happened.
    Retracting his hand, he stood perplexed for a moment. His fingers drifted along book linings that smelled like pipe smoke and aged leather.
    Suddenly he turned to her. “Of course! They wouldn’t make it that easy.”
    Ellie stared, at a loss. Carter spent the next few minutes observing every nuance of the library. She took a moment to scan the space as well. She’d always loved this room, with its rich royal hues, high ceilings, crown molding, and air of splendor. She remembered finding her father here most evenings, smoking sweet-smelling tobacco in his pipe, staring into the fire. He usually sat in one of the stately leather chairs that flanked the stone fireplace.
    When she was younger, she’d find The Great Gatsby splayed open, face-down on the elegant the side table that some French artist had carved. The book had been abandoned for a moment of private thought, but never forgotten. After her mother died when Ellie was twelve, she’d find volumes of Poe’s works stacked on the gleaming tabletop beside him, along with a crystal dram of whisky. Those were the nights she’d knelt at his feet in her nightgown when she couldn’t sleep, and rested her head against his knee. He would pat her hair, tell her how he would always take care of her, how smart and lovely she was, just like her mother. The shared silence that followed expressed more than words could communicate. They’d both missed her. There was nothing more to say.
    After her father went to bed, Ellie picked up where he left off. She read the mournful epithets by the glow of red embers dying in the grate. She didn’t understand it then, but as time passed and she lost more people precious to her, Poe’s dark melodrama evoked a Gothic rendering of emotion that touched a chord and resonated within her.
    “Ellie, I found it.”
    Startled back to the present, she nearly dropped the weight in her hands. Staring at the book in her grasp, she was surprised to find a volume of Edgar Allen Poe opened to the poem, “Nevermore.”
    Quickly she shoved the book onto the nearest shelf and ventured over to Carter. “What is it?”
    “Check out this old bell-pull.”
    “So?”
    “Mansions like this had bell-pulls for servants in the eighteen-hundreds. I found it dangling next to this bookshelf. Listen.” He gave the leather cord a tug. A bell rang distantly.
    Something clicked. Like a handle unlatching.
    “What was that?”
    “If it’s what I think...” He pushed against the edge of the