Accidental Sire(107)

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Her friends weren't returning her calls or messages, either. And she couldn't turn to her adoptive father for help. Gerald hadn't spoken to her since her mother's funeral three years before. And she'd promised herself that she wouldn't take a dime after her parents made their last tuition payment. She still had the shreds of her pride.

The shreds were costing her. She was three days away from living in the storage unit where she'd moved her stuff, sitting at her breakfast bar-because it was the only table space she had left-actually filling in a JobLink profile, when a Skype notification popped up on her laptop. The message said it was from "hotsy-totsy45."

Margot frowned. She used this account for after-hours and long-distance consultations with clients. She definitely would have remembered a client nicknamed hotsy-totsy45. Leaning back from the screen, she clicked decline.

Blowing a long breath out through her nose, Margot continued to fill out the JobLink form. Another notification from hotsy-totsy popped up.

"Still a ‘no,' creep," she muttered, clicking decline again.

But hotsy-totsy would not be denied. And given the amount of chardonnay Margot had consumed just for the sake of not having to move it out of her apartment, it wasn't surprising that her hand slipped a bit and she clicked accept.

"Damn it!" she grunted, trying to close the chat window before it opened. She did not want to witness the latest in creative junk shots currently being embraced by the Internet's weirdos. But instead of the expected random nudity, Margot's screen was filled with the face of an adorable little granny lady with a cloud of snow-white hair and Dalmatian-print reading glasses balanced on the tip of her nose.

"Hello?"

A brilliant smile lit up the granny lady's face, showing teeth too white and too even to be original parts. "Well, hello there! It took me a little while to track you down, but here you are!" the lady crowed in a Southern drawl so pronounced that Margot had trouble processing what she was saying at first. "You look just like I thought you would. A lot like your mama, mind, but you got a bit of your daddy in there, too. Of course, I thought you'd be a little more polished up, but I'm guessing you haven't left your house in a while."

Margot caught sight of her appearance in the little preview window in the corner of the screen and winced. She looked like someone who was unemployed. She was wearing a grubby Northwestern sweatshirt. Her carefully highlighted blond hair was piled into a haphazard topknot. She was wearing her thick-rimmed black glasses, making her hazel eyes look owlish and too big for her face. She hadn't worn makeup in days, so her skin had taken on a cheesy appearance in the blue light of the computer screen. 

"I'm sorry, do you know my parents?" she asked. As friendly as this lady might be, she didn't exactly look to be Linda and Gerald's speed. Linda McCready, a nobody from nowhere with traces of a Low Country accent and a toddler daughter in tow, had managed to snag Gerald Cary, MD, while she was working as the records clerk in the hospital where the handsome British expat practiced surgery. She had spent considerable time and energy clawing her way into the upper middle circles of Chicago society. Linda Cary would have gone blind before she wore Dalmatian reading glasses.

"Well, your mama and I were never close, but your daddy is my nephew, so I guess you could say I know that sad-sack face of his pretty well," the woman said with a chuckle.

Margot's jaw dropped. Her stepfather had adopted her when she was four years old. But considering that he was from just outside London, it was unlikely he had relatives in Georgia. "You know Gerald?"

"No, honey, your daddy. What do you young people call it-your ‘biological father.' Stan McCready. I'm your great-aunt Tootie."

"Beg pardon?" Even Margot couldn't be sure which part she was questioning-the "biological" bit or the ridiculous nickname. Even in the South, people knew better than to name their children Tootie, right?

"I'm Stanley McCready's aunt, honey."

Stanley McCready. Margot slumped on her bar stool. She'd never met her father's family. Linda had made no secret of her "unfortunate" first marriage to a man named McCready, but she'd referred to it as a youthful mistake she'd corrected when Margot was barely three years old. Stanley was a heavy drinker, Linda insisted, a train wreck of a man who couldn't provide for them. After Linda left, he'd almost immediately given up his rights to his daughter without so much as a court motion.