Heartwishes by Jude Deveraux Page B

car, then, stooped over, he made his way up the sidewalk. He supported himself against the jamb as he unlocked his front door. When it was open, he turned to again wave at his neighbor. As he knew she would be, she was watching to make sure he got inside safely.
    As soon as he was in the house, Dr. Burgess closed the door and leaned against it for a moment. He let out a sigh. “Nosy old bitch,” he muttered as he tossed his cane toward the tall urn by the door. It went in with a resounding thunk.
    Bending, he pulled up his pants leg and unbuckled the brace around his knee and tossed it at the cane. That done, he stood up, put his shoulders back, and flexed his neck. As he walked toward the cabinet against the wall, he unbuttoned his shirt, took off the belly pad that encircled his waist, and let it drop to the floor.
    He took a couple of refreshing breaths, rubbed the skin over his hard, flat stomach, and opened the cabinet to pour himself a drink. He wasn’t surprised to see that his ice bucket was full. He put a couple of cubes in a glass, poured it half full of thirty-year-old Scotch, then turned around and waited.
    The hideous lounge chair that was part of the rented house’s furniture was facing the wall—not the way he’d left it.
    “Are you hiding?” he asked after he’d taken a sip.
    The chair turned around, and his beautiful niece looked up at him. “What do you want so much that it’s made you come to little Edilean?”
    “Jean, darling,” he said, “is that any way to greet your uncle?”
    She tapped her upper lip. “Is that yours?”
    He pulled off the thick gray mustache and set it on a shelf in the cabinet. “Have you eaten? I could make us some—”
    “I know what you can cook. You taught me, remember? Why are you here?”
    “I came to see you,” he said. “How’s your mother?”
    “Doing as well as can be expected after all that you did to her.”
    “Jean, Jean, Jean,” he said. “Why are you so hostile to me?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe it has to do with how you hacked Mom’s bank codes and cleaned her out. Twice. Or maybe it was how my father went out with you one night and never returned. Take your pick.”
    He shrugged. “We’ve been over all this before and I thought it was in the past. As for your father, he had the reflexes of a tortoise. Inever could figure out how he came to be my brother. I should have had a DNA test done.”
    Jean came out of the chair, angry. “I’m very good friends with the local sheriff. All I have to do is tell him about you and he’ll run you out of town.”
    “Friends, maybe, but that’s all there is,” he said as she stalked toward the front door. “I just heard that for days now he’s been inseparable from a pretty young woman who’s living with his parents. In fact, an hour ago someone showed me the two of them on that . . . What’s it called? YouTube. Disgusting invasion, that thing is. But I must say that I enjoyed the sight of her truly incredible body. And she appeared to be so very young .”
    Jean looked back at him, her jaw in a hard line. “Colin and I are in love.”
    “Really?” he asked, with a fake smile. Even with his dark hair dyed gray, he was a handsome man, and he’d kept his lean figure even as he neared fifty. He was her father’s younger brother, adored and spoiled by their mother as he grew up, and always bailed out of trouble when he was an adult and learning the art of thievery.
    Jean strode across the room to the door.
    “Is it that trust fund he lives off of that you care about?” He put his hand over hers on the doorknob and his face softened. “Can’t an uncle be jealous?” he asked. “I used to be the number one man in your life, but now I hear that my beloved niece is with a . . .” He smiled. “A sheriff. Of course I want to disparage him as much as I can.”
    Jean looked away for a moment. When he wanted to be, he was quite charming—and they had so much history together. She truly wanted