Lucy's Liberation [Elk Creek 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read Online Free Page A

He had bedded the girl, after all. Mother, on the other hand, called Mirabella’s bluff, producing information that the girl’s indiscretions with an impoverished Argentine compatriot and not her affair with Ki had resulted in her delicate condition. How his mother had acquired such information, Ki had no idea, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if she had had a few Pinkerton men at her beck and call to do her bidding.
    Ki had later learned of the encounter between his mother and his paramour when Mirabella had sent him a farewell letter of explanation before her father had shipped her back home to avoid any more scandal.
    He and his mother had argued about her interference to no avail. Both had staunchly thought the other acted unbecomingly and neither had brought up the Mirabella incident again…until now.
    “When did you become so jaded, Mother?” Ki murmured and the distant look that clouded his mother’s eyes immediately made him regret asking.
    Ever since the incident with Uncle Rance, she acted ferocious and protective like a mother bear whose cub had been threatened. He appreciated her concern, but sometimes Ki thought that she must have forgotten he was a grown man who could make decisions for and take care of himself. He knew that trying to remind her would be a waste of time, because in her eyes he would always be a child, one in need of her constant guidance and safeguarding.
    “You call it jaded and I call it prudence.”
    Ki listened to his mother, but he had already made up his mind that she was not going to win this battle, not this time. He needed a new adventure, something to do other than reading legal briefs and arguing cases inside the sacred, sterile, and stifling halls of justice. He was slowly losing his spirit, vanishing into nothingness in the family business.
    Not that this trip out west was anything close to what he would consider an adventure, at least not the equivalent of any of his past escapades, far from them. On the face of it, the venture to settle his uncle’s estate wasn’t any more exciting than working with his stepfather at the firm. Of course the firm didn’t have Lucy Peyton as an enticement.
    Ki tapped the infamous letter against his temple, contemplating.
    Why would Uncle Rance mention him in his will and not his own sister, Ki’s mother?
    Ki had had nothing to do with the man since he’d been ten years old and his mother and stepfather had banished Uncle Rance to parts unknown and as far away from Ki as possible. Before the first letter from the lawyer in Elk Creek had reached their house at Gramercy Park, it had been close to twenty-two years since Ki had thought about Uncle Rance.
    “Hezekiah Benjamin, are you listening to me or are you trying to discern that envelope’s contents through osmosis?”
    Ki immediately stopped his tapping. “I’m sorry, Mother. You said something?”
    She sighed and shook her head. “What is it exactly this woman said in her…petition to make you want to make a trip to that godforsaken town when none of the lawyer’s correspondence demanded your consideration, much less a personal visit?”
    That was a very good question, and one Ki didn’t have an answer to.
    He had reread Mrs. Peyton’s letter several times, well-nigh knew its content from beginning to end, word for word. In fact if he had been memorizing lines for a starring role in a Broadway play, he couldn’t have been anymore prepared to give an award-winning performance.
    My Dear Mr. Benjamin, I am writing to appeal to what I hope is your sense of fairness…
    She had thrown down the gauntlet and put him on the defensive from the first line of her missive. She’d challenged him to prove her wrong about his presumed neglect.
    Ki grinned. He loved a challenge, had never been a man to turn his back on one. Despite not even having met her yet, Lucy Peyton presented a challenge. With several swipes of her pen against paper, she had called his ethics and dedication into