Read Online Claimed by Cammie Eicher - Free Book Online Page B

in surprise as the occupant greeted them.
    “Creed! It’s been far too long.”
    The words were delivered with a crisp, flat accent from a woman who looked like a cross between the stereotypical kindly grandmother and an absent-minded professor. Short and chunky, the woman had salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a haphazard knot on top of her head and glasses suspended from a chain around her neck. She was dressed in a faded flannel nightgown and a cranberry cardigan sweater whose pockets bulged.
    After greeting Creed, she peered around him to offer Chiana a smile.
    “Hello, young lady,” she said. “You must be in trouble because this boy never stops by to see me when things are going well. Come on in, and let’s see what’s going on.”
    “I hope we didn’t wake you,” Chiana said.
    “Heavens, no. Usually the sun’s halfway up before I go to bed. I’m a real night owl.”
    Grabbing Chiana’s hand, she pulled her around Creed and through the doorway, leaving him to follow. Their host led the way through a foyer filled with glass-fronted bookcases with as much piled on top as protected inside on the shelves. The foyer opened into a sitting room that contained a small television, a huge globe on its own stand and a mishmash of furniture covering several eras in design.
    Chiana took a high-backed chair next to a blond end table that she suspected came from the 1960s. Creed sat on a Victorian-style settee, while the woman settled herself in a forest green recliner, the only obviously new piece of furniture.
    “Let me apologize for Creed’s manners,” the woman said, casting a rebuking glance his way. “I’m Lillian Lansing, and you are?”
    “Chiana McFain.”
    “What a pretty name.” Lillian leaned forward. “Are you hungry? I woke this morning with an urge to make cookies, and I need someone to keep me from devouring the whole two dozen.”
    “We’re fine,” Creed answered before Chiana could speak.
    Lillian shook a finger at him and sighed.
    “If we were all like that boy, civility would already be dead,” she said. “You sit right here, and I’ll be back. It will take just a minute.”
    The quiet after she bustled from the room was like the silence in the eye of a hurricane, the momentary lull until the fury starts up again.
    “She’s brilliant, you know,” Creed said.
    “Let me guess. She’s a poet. Or maybe an artist.”
    “Not even close.” He shook his head. “She is one of the world’s top anthropologists and also holds doctorates in physics and mathematics.”
    “Wow.” Chiana was impressed. The agency had some pretty smart people, but nobody with that kind of credentials. She was about to ask why Lillian wasn’t holding court on a college campus when the woman of the moment returned with a wooden tray.
    Lillian placed it on a wide table in front of the settee with mini-wagon wheels for supports and began to pour tea from a chipped ceramic teapot into three mismatched cups. The fragrance of mint filled the air.
    “Here you are, my dear.” She gave the first cup to Chiana before passing one to Creed. She handed each of them a small plate of soft sugar cookies before taking her refreshments back to the recliner with her.
    Much to Chiana’s surprise, Creed actually ate his cookies and drank his tea. Granted, his large finger barely fit into the handle of the cup, and he demolished the cookies in record time, but he at least attempted to meet the niceties of a formal tea. Still, she wasn’t surprised when he tapped his booted foot in impatience as Lillian refilled Chiana’s cup and then her own.
    “A few minutes won’t kill you,” she scolded, “no matter what you think.”
    Creed’s only response was a heavier tap on the carpeted floor, which Lillian ignored.
    Only after she’d cleared away their dishes and returned to the sitting room was she ready to discuss whatever Creed had come for. Chiana was ready to hear it, too; she couldn’t imagine how taking tea with a