Within Reason: Mill Brook Trilogy, Book 2

by Carla Neggers

Later, she told herself. Right now just enjoy the food, the company, the memories.

  Any regrets she might have had about dinner with Adam faded as she saw how much fun her daughter was having, how animated she was and thoroughly at ease with their hard-nosed Yankee friend from Vermont. True to the promise she’d made her mother that afternoon, Emily didn’t bring up any forbidden subjects, namely anything, beyond the weather, related to their life in Tennessee.

  To Char’s surprise Adam went along with the lack of specifics. She assumed he either believed her claim of living in the Belle Meade mansion was a joke or he was just biding his time before he nailed her. Or maybe she was being silly and she should just tell him everything?

  It was during dessert that he nailed her.

  Char was treating her taste buds to a piece of warm pecan pie and watching Emily dive into a monstrous hot fudge sundae when Adam, calmly and without a word, slid a scrap of paper and a pencil across the table to her.

  “Your address,” he said.

  There was nothing casual in his tone; he was steady, serious and wholly dubious. So, she thought, he does think I’m hiding something! It didn’t matter that he was outsmarting her. Now who was being smug? She grabbed the pencil and without hesitation jotted down an address, even a map, and pushed it across to him.

  “Lunch tomorrow,” she said. “Noon’s all right?”

  “It’s fine.”

  He was still suspicious. Char gave him her best cool smile. “Terrific.”

  He tucked the scrap of paper into a pocket. Char hid her victorious smile by taking a quick sip of coffee, but by the time Adam had dropped her back off at Belle Meade, she wasn’t sure just what she’d won. She thanked him and agreed she’d see him tomorrow. Of course, she wouldn’t. Not if he followed the directions she’d just given him.

  “Tonight was nice,” Adam said simply. He had gotten out of his car to open the passenger door for Emily, then, after giving her a quick good-night kiss, had come around to Char.

  She couldn’t bring herself to smile. “Yes,” she said, her throat tight. “It was.”

  The way he was looking at her, she thought he might kiss her on the cheek or give her a hug or maybe just shake her hand. She even considered initiating something of the sort herself, but in the end they simply said good-night, got into their respective cars and left.

  With Emily falling asleep on the seat beside her, Char drove back out toward the Cumberland River and thought of Adam and his soft laugh and his offer of friendship and wondered if she could be accused of cutting off her nose to spite her face. But, no, it wasn’t friendship he had offered. She couldn’t allow herself to be lured into that kind of thinking. She had a more important agenda to consider, anyway, like getting her life back in order. Beth was worried about her friend in Tennessee, and Adam Stiles was nothing if not the most conscientious of big brothers. He had wormed his way into Char’s life out of duty to his sister, not out of concern for Char or anything so innocuous as friendship.

  You’re just unusually vulnerable, she told herself. So you’re more susceptible to friendly overtures. You don’t really like Adam, remember?

  She remembered.

  But what she didn’t remember as she headed back to her so-called home was ever having felt so damn alone. The evening felt incomplete, and for the first time in her life, so did Char.

  Char’s eyes and her voice hadn’t matched.

  The contradiction they had presented throughout a decidedly tantalizing dinner haunted Adam as he headed back to his hotel. Her eyes were deep and dark and filled with loneliness and determination and pain. They challenged him with unanswered questions and mysteries; they lured him with their pride and warmth—with the particular spirit that had always been a part of Charity Bradford.

  Her voice, however, was all wiseacre Char, the smart, independent, cut-through-the-nonsense attorney who had given the citizens of Mill Brook, Vermont, confidence that their legal interests were well represented. She had had her share of cases that had gone sour, particularly in the months before she’d absconded to Tennessee, but Char was tough. She could handle anything. That was what her voice had said tonight.

  Adam couldn’t reconcile the two, the eyes and the voice. He had to wonder if Beth weren’t right on target this time: something was going on with Char that she wasn’t looking to admit to anyone.

  She had always been stiff-necked, he reminded himself on his way to his room. He didn’t recall her ever getting into anything she couldn’t get herself out of or ever really needing his help or anyone else’s. Being of an independent nature himself, he could understand her reluctance to bother anyone with needs she felt she ought to be able to meet on her own. Self-reliance ran hard and deep in both their souls.

  He stuck his key into his hotel door. “She’s a pain in the ass is what she is,” he muttered, “and you’re better off leaving her to her own devices.”

  She was a grown woman with a good education and the drive to succeed. She’d be fine without him sticking his nose in her life. After all, he had no right.

  But as he undressed for bed, Adam kept seeing her eyes. Char was a family friend, and if she was too stubborn to admit she needed a hand...

  With a sigh he got out his street map of the Nashville area and the scrap of paper with Char’s directions to her real place. So where did she live? In something a bit smaller than the Belle Meade mansion, he was quite sure.

  Then again, maybe not.

  What erupted from his throat was a growl of pure frustration.

  “That sneak!”

  Her directions were easy to spot on the map because they pinpointed a place that had a red asterisk beside it, marking it as a tourist destination. It was called Cheekwood, a 1920s estate now an arts center and botanical garden, located at the edge of Percy Warner Park, not far from the Belle Meade mansion. There was a brochure in the desk in Adam’s room. It looked like a nice place to visit.

  He sighed and crumpled up the scrap. Char did have her ways. Then he recalled the sparkle that had suddenly appeared in her eyes after she’d jotted down her directions. He could see her looking out at him over the rim of her coffee cup, her dark eyes so filled with life and energy he’d had to catch his breath. Why hadn’t he noticed until now what a vibrant, sexy woman she was? He’d thought, stupidly he now realized, that maybe she was more pleased to have him coming to lunch than he’d anticipated, that maybe—just maybe— Beth was overreacting to her friend’s mysterious behavior.

  Naturally he’d been wrong. He usually was where Char was concerned.

  The sparkle in her eyes had been nothing but a smart-assed woman relishing her victory.

  Cheekwood.

  He’d been had again.

  “One round to you, Char,” he said. He’d be ready for the next one.

  The next morning Char awoke in a state of confusion and anxiety, with a mood to match. Her daughter didn’t help by being inordinately cheerful. She pranced and chattered and giggled her way into the car, not letting up even as they approached her elementary school. School started earlier in Tennessee than in Vermont, something Emily didn’t necessarily appreciate. She had commented that Abby and David Stiles were still enjoying their summer vacation while she was sitting behind a desk. Char had pointed out that an early start meant an early release and Em had been on summer vacation in May while her friends in Vermont were still in school.

  “Do you think Uncle Adam will bring Abby and David to Tennessee sometime?” she asked.

  “He might,” Char replied judiciously. She hoped to hell not. She would like to show Adam’s kids around Nashville, but not anytime soon. Later, when she had straightened out her life.

  Emily wasn’t easily distracted from something she wanted. “I’ll ask him when he comes to lunch. He’ll still be there when I get out of school, right?”

  “Em.. .”

  “I can show him the river. You going to make dessert, Mom? That sundae was sooooo good last night.”

&n
bsp; “Em, Adam won’t be coming for lunch.”

  Her face fell. “He won’t? How come?”

  “Because.”

  “Mom.”

  Char sighed. “Because I don’t want him to see where we live. He’ll get the wrong impression. You know and I know it’s just temporary, but he might not think so. Then he’ll go back to Mill Brook and tell everybody, and I hate gossip. So he’s not coming to lunch. Even if he did, he’d have to leave before you got home. He’s flying back to Vermont today.”

  “Can I send him a postcard?”

  “Of course you can.”

  Emily had developed a zest for sending everyone she knew postcards; they kept her in touch with friends and relatives up north. Satisfied, she kissed her mother goodbye and trotted into school, her life, as far as she was concerned, nothing less than delightful. There were moments when that was Char’s only consolation.

  She headed toward Belle Meade and the part-time job that had kept her sane and relatively on her feet in the past weeks. She was looking into taking the Tennessee bar—even into decent-paying legal jobs she could do while waiting to pass the bar. It wasn’t what she had in mind when she’d left Vermont a year ago, but better than starving. And the adventure had gone out of camping out in a tent.

  “You’ve really made a mess of things, haven’t you?” she asked her reflection in the rearview mirror.

  Her reflection didn’t answer. It didn’t need to. In her eyes she could see that the dream that had brought her to central Tennessee had turned into a nightmare. But it was a nightmare of her own making, and she would see herself through it, alone.

  Adam had changed rented cars and parked the new one, even more nondescript than the previous one, just below the Belle Meade exit. There was no way Char could leave without his seeing her. Until then he’d just wait, private eye style.

  She left at noon. Adam was sweating and hungry and impatient as hell, but he forced himself not to drive up on her bumper. With the engine on, at least he could turn up the air-conditioning to high. He felt the cool air as he dropped in a couple of cars behind her, smooth and easy.

  Cheekwood, he thought.

  He hadn’t bothered to call Beth and tell her. He’d get to the bottom of this one himself.

  Not going anywhere near Percy Warner Park or Cheekwood, Char’s battered vehicle hit 1-40, the east-west interstate, heading east. Adam stayed as far back as he dared. He wasn’t going to lose her. His gas tank was full. He could follow her to Chattanooga if that was where she was going. It didn’t make any difference to him. She’d tried to lead him on another wild-goose chase, and joke or not, he wasn’t amused.

  This is crazy, man. You and Charity Bradford have never gotten along, will never get along, and she’s made it damn clear she wants you to get the hell out of Tennessee and leave her alone.

  But he thought of her eyes, warm and troubled, and inhaled deeply, undeterred.

  He put his rented car into cruise control and decided he might as well relax. Crazy or not, he was determined to find out what was going on with Ms. Charity Winnifred. And, if need be, he’d catch a different flight home. His kids were safe with Julian and Holly and the mill would do just fine without him. He would have to get back, of course, but for now he wasn’t in any hurry.

  Chapter Three

  WHEN SHE PULLED into the parking lot of a squat brick building on an overbuilt highway west of Nashville, Char tried to keep her spirits from sinking. She told herself appearances could be deceiving. The large, overflowing trash bin didn’t have to mean anything. Neither did the potholed asphalt or strip of dead, un-mown grass that served as a border between the parking lot and the highway. She tried not to let the building’s dingy trim or the tacky Venetian blinds in its dusty picture windows dishearten her. People had to get their start somewhere. Not everyone could go straight from law school into a prestigious law firm in a historic building, with tasteful furnishings and private parking. Just because she had didn’t mean she didn’t believe in roadside lawyers.

  But as she climbed out of her car, taking care to lock it up tight, she had to acknowledge a slight sagging of her shoulders, a pronounced wrenching of her insides.. .and a certain relief that Adam was on his way to Cheekwood for lunch instead of here with her now. How could she expect him to understand the predicament she’d gotten herself into? Even she didn’t understand it.

  Bracing herself, she made her way to the office of Mr. Howard Marston, attorney-at-law.

  The office consisted of two small rooms, both smoke-filled, both cheaply furnished, neither what Char would call spotless. Again she reminded herself that people had to start somewhere. There was no one seated at the gray metal desk in the outer office, but Char could see through the opened door to the inner office, where a man, probably around her age, was twisting a rubber band around a pencil while he listened on the phone. He was a tall, fair man dressed in the low-priced version of what he obviously considered a high-priced attorney ought to wear, right down to the horn-rimmed glasses.

  He motioned for Char to come in. She did so.

  “Got that?” he said to the party on the other end of the phone. “Great. Be there in twenty minutes.” He hung up and gave a long-suffering shake of the head. “Can’t even order a barbecue sandwich without listening to somebody’s sob story. Everyone wants free legal advice, you know?”

  Char decided she ought to smile. After several weeks of pounding the pavement, she’d discovered her offhand remarks had an unfortunate tendency to irritate her interviewers. Best to keep her mouth shut. Adam would say that went against her nature, but—

  She cut herself off at once. Why did she keep thinking about Adam Stiles?

  “I’m Charity Bradford,” she said, trying not to sound arrogant, timid, coy or overconfident, just matter-of-fact.

  “Right, right.” He rose and reached across his cluttered desk to shake her hand. “Have a seat, have a seat.”

  Char wondered if he was going to say everything twice as she eased down onto an orange plastic chair. Her eyes drifted to the framed degrees on the mud-colored wall behind Howard Marston. He’d graduated from a two-bit law school in Ohio. Fine, she thought.

  Some of the most practical, down-to-earth lawyers she knew had attended less-than-prestigious law schools. She was glad, however, she had left off her own Columbia law degree from her resume, not to mentioned Wellesley College and her Park Avenue law firm experience. So far they hadn’t gotten her anywhere with the kind of jobs she could get, not having taken the Tennessee bar.

  “So you’re a newcomer to Nashville?’’

  “Yes. It’s a lovely area.”

  “Too darn hot in the summer for my taste. I’d love to get back to Ohio myself, but I got a pretty good business percolating here.” He tapped out a cigarette, peering at a copy of her doctored resume. “So you’ve worked for a lawyer before?”

  “Yes, sir. I was a paralegal for Elizabeth Stiles in Mill Brook, Vermont, for five years.”

  Char marveled at the steadiness of her voice, but she’d always been a better liar than Beth, who wouldn’t have taken to being fictionalized as a lawyer. She had an altogether too-typical view of lawyers as leeches with legs and tassel loafers. After ten years, during which she’d never owned a pair of tassel loafers, Char had quit trying to disabuse her best friend of her unflattering stereotype and settled for Beth’s grudging admission that Char was the exception to the rule.

  Howard Marston pushed his cheap horn-rimmed glasses higher on his nose. “I don’t guess you did much corporate work up in Mill Brook, Vermont.”

  And I don’t guess you do much down here, Char thought, not liking his smug tone. She had, of course, done a great deal of corporate work in New York City. She said judiciously, “A number of Ms. Stiles’ clients are small businesses.”

  He lit his cigarette, exhaled a cloud of smoke and smiled condescendingly. “I’m sure.”

  Char bristled at his implicit put-down of Mill Brook. But why should she wa
nt to defend a town she had spent most of her life wanting to leave? Mill Brook was probably just the kind of place Howard Marston thought it was. Still, she knew what Mill Brook was. He was just assuming.

  “You’ve come south for greater opportunities?” Marston asked.

  Yeah, Char thought, like living in a tent and trying to get a job with a man who doesn’t even have the courtesy to ask me if I mind if he smokes. She gritted her teeth, “You could say that, yes.”

  “All right, then, let’s go over your skills.”

  They did so in painstaking detail. Char vowed she would never again take paralegals or any kind of office help for granted. She had never thought she had acted superior and knew she had never felt superior, but after weeks on the other side of the lawyer’s desk, she had begun to squirm at memories of the rare occasions when pressure and a packed schedule had gotten to her and she’d bitten off the nearest head. Never again.

  As Marston rattled on, Char began to gather he expected her to work for pittance, with no compensation for overtime, and serve as a combination secretary, receptionist, gofer and paralegal.

  Finally he settled back in his leather-look chair. “I assume you’re still interested?”

  Char had launched herself to the edge of her chair and was about to nail him with a pointed lecture, but she remembered her daughter. The job was for Emily. They couldn’t go on living in a tent. They had to have a place to live, clothes, food. After their night out on the town with Adam, Emily had taken less kindly than usual to pulling slugs out of her sneakers that morning. As the saying went, the thrill of outdoor living was gone. Mama had to get herself back on her feet, and fast.

  She said of course she was still interested.

  And Howard Marston said he wanted her to take a typing test.

  “A what?”

  “We have a personal computer and a memory typewriter.” He handed her what looked to be the nastiest legal document he could lay his hands on; a good legal secretary could dash it off in a few minutes. Char would need half a day. Marston gestured to the outer office. “Take your pick.”