Page 34 of Legal Desire
She glared at him. “You’re not going to let any of that go, are you?”
Not when it could be her motive for turning against them. He shook his head.
She reached for the glass of wine he’d poured her while she’d changed. But her hand trembled slightly, and the wine sloshed around in her glass. After taking a deep sip, she said, “You’re right. I did change my name.”
“You took your mother’s name,” he said.
She shook her head. “I took my grandfather’s name.”
And he heard the fierce loyalty in her voice. “I take it he wasn’t a lawyer or politician?”
She shook her head. “Just a hard worker who eventually started his own business and provided manufacturing jobs to other hard workers.”
“What did he manufacture?”
“What didn’t he,” she murmured with a proud smile.
Her grandfather must have been an incredible man. But what about her father?
“What was wrong with the name you were born with?” he asked.
She sighed. “It changed too many times.”
“What? Have you been married?” And he felt that annoying surge of jealousy again at the thought of her loving a man enough to become his wife.
“Not me,” she said with a shudder as if she found the very thought of marriage repulsive. “My mother has had many husbands and she would convince every one of them to adopt me and give me their name.”
His stomach lurched again but it was with sympathy for the life she must have lived. “What about your real father? He was okay with that?”
She shrugged. “Must have been. He never fought it. Guess he was just glad to be rid of her.”
But he hadn’t just been rid of his wife; he’d been rid of his daughter, too. Trev felt a sudden affinity with Allison. She had also been abandoned. And not just by one parent, it seemed.
“Was your father a lawyer?” he asked.
She nodded.
“And a politician?”
She shook her head. “That was my first stepfather. My mother married him because my father wasn’t able to cross over into politics. He represents the Goliath companies you’ve taken on—the ones with special interests voters don’t trust. They didn’t trust my father.”
And apparently, neither did she.
“And your stepfather?”
She sighed. “He might have won if not for my mother.”
He was even more intrigued now. “Why’s that?”
“You would have to meet my mother to truly understand why,” she said. “But it was a good thing he and her other husbands never made her the first lady like she wanted to be. She probably would have been beheaded for something bitchy she said.”
“Marie-Antoinette?”
She nodded. “That’s my mother. Grandpa always regretted spoiling her like he had. That was why he cut her out of his will.” She took a long swallow of her wine. “Which is why she no longer speaks to me.”
Because Allison had inherited and she hadn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Trevor said.
