Within Reason: Mill Brook Trilogy, Book 2

by Carla Neggers

  “He won’t get away with it forever.”

  Adam stopped laughing and chose his next words more carefully. “Maybe not. But, Char, what else would you expect Harlan Rockwood to do to his ex-wife’s best friend? He probably couldn’t help himself.”

  Too late, he realized he had said the wrong thing. She slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road. “Out,” she commanded.

  “Char—”

  She wouldn’t look at him. “Get out of my car, Adam. I won’t have you judging me.”

  “I wasn’t judging you.”

  “No? Would you have bought a horse from Harlan Rockwood?”

  “Speculative.”

  “You as much as called me a fool.”

  Adam sighed. “You’re not a fool.”

  “Only a fool would go into a deal with Harlan.”

  “You misunderstood me,” he said in a neutral tone, but his own blood was beginning to boil. Why the hell was he on the hot seat?

  She glare at him. “Oh?”

  “We can discuss this back at the house.”

  “Put it in a letter,’ she said nastily. “Go call a cab, Adam. You’re spending the night in a hotel.”

  He just looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed, she was breathing hard, her hands still had their death grip on the steering wheel. The woman was fighting mad. He figured it was a good sign: she hadn’t given herself up to defeat.

  Finally he asked, “What about all our food?”

  “I’ll take it back to the grocery and send you a check.”

  “I was counting on Tennessee sausage for breakfast.”

  “Ask at your hotel,” she said, stubborn as ever.

  “Char, I’m not getting out of this car.”

  “I’ll kick you out.”

  He leaned in closer to her; he could see the drops of perspiration on her upper lip. “Try.”

  Her breath caught. He could hear it. She looked at him, their eyes barely twelve inches apart, her mouth slightly open. He watched her tongue slide over her lower lip, dampening it, and for a moment he thought he could taste the salty sweetness of her mouth on his.

  Maybe a hotel wasn’t such a bad idea.

  “We both need to cool off,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She cleared her throat and popped the car back into gear, tearing her eyes from him as she checked her side mirror for traffic. “I guess we do.”

  In more ways than one, Adam thought, determined to keep his mouth shut for the rest of the trip back to her house.

  Chapter Six

  THEIR TRUCE LASTED long enough to get the groceries into the kitchen. Char still smarted over Adam’s obvious belief that he never would have bought a share in any horse owned by Harlan Rockwood, as if he knew anything about men and horses. He did know Harlan, however, and pointed that out in no uncertain terms when Char continued to grumble.

  “Beth may be finished with Harlan,” Adam said as he loaded up the kitchen shelves with boxes, bags, jars and cans, “but he’s not finished with her.”

  Char scoffed. “He is, too. They’ve been divorced for years. They haven’t even seen each other since I don’t know when.”

  “Has Harlan remarried?”

  “No—”

  “Has Beth remarried?”

  “You know she hasn’t.”

  With his precious pound of sausage tucked under his left arm, he opened up the refrigerator. “I rest my case.”

  Char went after six cans of tomato paste in the bottom of a bag. Six cans. They’d never use that much in one weekend. Where was her pride? She lined them up on a shelf, almost giddy at the sight of so much food in one place.

  “What is your case?” she asked irritably.

  Adam said with equanimity, “You should never have gone into business with Harlan Rockwood.”

  “No kidding.”

  “I’m not trying to criticize you,” he said, carefully lifting the Vermont maple syrup from a bag, “and I doubt I’d have done any better raising horses than you have.”

  “But if I’d asked, you’d have told me to steer clear of Beth’s ex-husband.”

  He set the maple syrup on the shelf next to her cans of tomato paste. “Yes.”

  “I didn’t ask. And, anyway, your reasoning’s all wrong on why I should have avoided Harlan. He doesn’t even know Beth’s my partner.”

  “He knows Beth’s your best friend.”

  “So?”

  “So it’d be a logical assumption on his part that he could get to her through you.”

  “But he hasn’t.”

  Adam turned around and leaned against the counter. “Who has Beth’s twenty grand?”

  “I do.”

  “You mean you didn’t invest her money?”

  “No, I did.”

  “Then Harlan has it.”

  “Technically, yes. But I can repay Beth.”

  “With your own money?”

  Char nodded, already wishing she had beaten Adam Stiles out of her car and retreated when she’d had the chance. This conversation wasn’t getting her anywhere she wanted to go.

  “You mean,” Adam said in a deadly tone, “that you have twenty thousand dollars in the bank? And you’ve been living in a damn tent? You’ve been eating beans and sleeping in a sleeping bag?” He groaned. “Char, have you lost your mind?”

  “I guaranteed Beth’s money,” she said simply.

  Adam swore.

  “Look, my financial affairs aren’t your concern. And I doubt Harlan Rockwood swindled me because he wanted to get back at Beth or get back into her life or whatever. He swindled me because he’s a sleazeball and dishonesty comes naturally to him.”

  “You’ve been listening to Beth,” Adam remarked, snatching up an empty paper bag and folding it. With his deft movements, no one would even notice he was missing a hand. “Harlan has never struck me as dishonest. He and Beth were too young when they got married, arid Beth made a mistake when she thought she had to out-Rockwood the Rockwoods. But I can’t say that makes him a sleazeball.”

  “Swindling me does.”

  “Did you approach him about a deal or did he approach you?”

  “Seeing how I was a Vermont lawyer up until last year and never owned a horse in my life, what do you think?”

  Adam smiled, amused. “Char, am I getting under your skin?”

  She replayed her last comment in her mind and heard how defensive and irritable she had sounded. “I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it. “This isn’t easy to discuss. I went to Harlan. I... trusted him.”

  “Go on.”

  She didn’t want to go on. She’d made so many mistakes. Why would she want to admit everything to Adam Stiles? He would never, never understand. Betting everything he had on a dream just would never occur to him.

  She had begun to wonder why it had never occurred to her. Why in God’s name hadn’t she been smarter?

  “He sold me a share in a top colt he owns,” she said, adopting her lawyer’s demeanor. “I thought he was being generous. The horse supposedly had Triple Crown potential, and he didn’t need to sell me even my relatively small share. If you want to know the truth, at worst I thought he might be carrying a torch for Beth and using me to get back into her life—one reason I was so careful to keep her name out of it. I had no idea he would be so scurrilous as to try to ruin me.”

  “What happened?” Adam asked quietly.

  “In a nutshell, the horse is a dud. Harlan stopped racing him— I have no control over what he does with him. So that’s that. My investment’s sitting in a stall while his owner laughs up his sleeve over all the money I’ve lost.”

  “Sounds like Harlan lost out, too.”

  “Ha! As you pointed out a few minutes ago, who has my money? He does. The only reason he allowed me to buy into that horse was because he knew it was a dud. He misrepresented it to me. His actions were malicious and premeditated, and if I can prove it, I’ll take him to court.” Char realized she was shouting and lowered her voic
e. “Bad enough the bastard swindled me, but he also evicted me.”

  Adam’s brow furrowed, but he kept quiet.

  Char sighed, figuring she might as well come clean on the whole mess now that she’d started. “He owned the farmhouse I was renting. Writing out that rent check to Harlan Rockwood every month galled me. Not only was I depleting what savings I had left, but it was hell on my pride. I wanted to send him stink bombs, not money. Then he evicted me.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Any he could make up. I was going to fight, but frankly, I just didn’t want to bother.”

  Adam shifted awkwardly, obviously taking care this time with what he said. ‘That’s when you and Emily moved into the tent.”

  “On Harlan’s property,” Char said with some relish.

  “He never knew?”

  “He’d have called the cops if he had.”

  “No doubt,” Adam said. “Have you talked to him about why the horse didn’t perform up to expectations?”

  “I’ve tried. He’s not around much, and when he is, I have to go through a million people to get to him—all of whom I’ve offended at some point or another in the past year.”

  Adam grinned. “Sweet Charity Bradford offending someone? I can’t imagine.”

  “Okay,” she conceded, “so we all know why I’m a lawyer and not a diplomat. But I hate being had. Anyway, Harlan has managed not to return any of my calls, messages, letters, threats—he won’t talk.”

  “So what’re you going to do?”

  She crossed her arms on her chest, suddenly feeling chilly. “I know things don’t look too wonderful, but I’m not a total basket case. I’ve put money away for Emily’s education, and I have almost all of what Beth entrusted with me. What I intend to do now is get my money back from that snake Rockwood and get myself back on my feet. In the meantime...” She smiled, a self-deprecatory, strangely confident smile, just to show Adam Stiles that if Charity Winnifred Bradford was down, she sure as hell wasn’t out. “I’ll eat a lot of legumes.”

  “Not tonight.”

  His voice was husky, his eyes lost in the shadows of the approaching night, and Char suddenly couldn’t ignore the physical reactions she was having to the man. She longed to feel his arms around her. He would be so warm, she thought. So damn solid. For all his lack of imagination, she could trust Adam Stiles.

  But all she said was, “No, not tonight.”

  “My only question now is,” Adam said halfway through dinner, “why do you want to raise horses?”

  They had decided to forgo the kitchen table and made themselves comfortable on the sea of jumbo pillows Char called living room furniture. Her pared-down existence did have a certain appeal: dusting wasn’t a big concern. Not since Adam had taken her and Emily out to the restaurant had Char had so much to choose from for dinner. After changing her mind a half-dozen times, she had settled on boneless chicken breasts sautéed in a ginger-and-mandarin-orange sauce, wild rice, steamed fresh spinach and sliced fresh pineapple. Delectable.

  Adam’s curiosity seemed genuine, and there wasn’t even a hint of condemnation in his tone. Char had been listening for it. She recalled his reaction when she had announced over a year ago she was leaving Mill Brook and why. “Horses?” he’d sneered. “You’ve got as much business raising horses as I do.” He hadn’t believed horses had been a dream for as long as she could remember, a part of the vision she had for herself…a part of the woman she had always intended to become. Adam hadn’t swallowed any of that. He had looked at the practical side of her “plan,” as she’d called it, and had found it woefully wanting in common sense, a quality of which Char had never been accused of being in short supply.

  “And even if you were determined to raise horses,” he went on now, “I don’t understand why you couldn’t have done it in Vermont.”

  Char set her plate on the floor beside her and leaned back against one of her big, inexpensive pillows. Adam had a sofa, chairs, a television, bookshelves. He had a life. So, she thought miserably, did his children.

  “I don’t know why horses, why Tennessee, why now—any of it,” she said. “I only know coming here was something I needed to do. I couldn’t wait any longer. I couldn’t keep putting my life on hold.”

  “That’s what Mill Brook was to you? Your life on hold?”

  “That’s what it’s always felt like to me, even when I was a kid. I always felt the world was passing me by.”

  Following her lead, Adam set his plate on the floor beside him. “Your Aunt Millicent’s death didn’t have anything to do with your decision?”

  “It was a factor. I couldn’t have done this without the inheritance she left me. And she told me she didn’t want me to spend it on anything boring.”

  Char smiled wistfully, picturing her great-aunt lecturing her from her sickbed on not turning into an old prune. Millicent Bradford had never married, never had any children of her own. She had lived her entire life in Mill Brook. A retired elementary teacher, she had practically raised Char. Aunt Mil had been a friend, a sister, a parent—just a damn good woman. More than anyone else, Aunt Mil, independent and frank to a fault, could see past her grandniece’s professional demeanor to her warm heart. Her death at eighty-four hadn’t been a shock, but it had definitely been a loss.

  And also, Char supposed, a catalyst for her move to Tennessee and her disastrous deal with Harlan Rockwood.

  “I guess,” she continued, “whatever you could say about this past year, it hasn’t been boring.”

  “No,” Adam said, but his eyes were on her, studying her with the same intensity—and knowledge, it seemed—he would a prize tree. “You always have to be strong, don’t you? For Emily, for everyone. You’re not a lawyer just because you’re argumentative, which you are. You’re a lawyer because you’re willing to fight people’s battles for them. Showing weakness yourself isn’t your style.

  “Is that a compliment or an insult?”

  “It’s an observation. You lost your aunt right about the time you had a few important cases go sour on you, didn’t you?”

  She stiffened, not wanting to be reminded of those troubled weeks before she’d decided to head south.

  Adam didn’t wait for her to respond. “I remember thinking life was pretty rough for you at the time, but it seemed you’d bounce back from losing Millicent and those cases just like you bounced back from your divorce, other lost cases, every setback you’ve ever had in your life. I wished I’d been more sensitive.”

  Char’s eyes narrowed on him. “So I wouldn’t have gone off half-cocked and lost all my money?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I’m not in this predicament because of Aunt Millicent or a couple of rotten cases or anything you or anyone else did or didn’t say. I’m in it because of me. I grabbed for the brass ring and I missed. Okay? Let’s not make more out of it than there is.”

  “The timing—”

  “The timing was perfect.” She sprang to her feet, almost tripping on her plate in her rush to get away from Adam’s probing gaze. He had never gotten to her like this before. Never! She said abruptly, “You’re giving me indigestion. I’m going for a walk.”

  Adam’s voice was mild. “Want some company?”

  He looked so damn innocent, as if he hadn’t been giving her the third degree the past few minutes. “Will you quit hassling me?”

  “Ah, sweet Charity,” he said, climbing to his feet. “She can dish it out, but she can’t take it.”

  “I haven’t been hassling you!”

  He laughed, incredulous. “I suppose you wouldn’t call all those wild-goose chases you sent me on last weekend hassling?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then what were they?”

  “A dumb move on my part,” she said. “I should have known they’d only whet your appetite to find out what I was really up to.” She looked at him, ramrod straight and so damn tall. “But maybe,” she added quietly, “I did know.”
>
  He smiled. “Maybe you did.”

  ADAM made sure he walked on Char s right side so that he wouldn’t be tempted to grab her hand should the pleasant evening breeze get what was left of his senses. He seldom gave much thought anymore to his missing appendage. In his limited romantic entanglements since Mel’s death, he had encountered a wide range of reactions to his disability. There were those women who viewed it with pity and tried to do things for him, to take care of him. Not terribly amusing. Then there were those who were downright squeamish about the whole business and avoided getting near his stump. Understandable at first perhaps, but, again, not terribly amusing. His favorite, however, were those few who insisted a missing hand was downright sexy. That one was definitely amusing, if not altogether credible.

  For Char, his disability had always seemed to be one of those things that just was. He had appreciated her matter-of-fact attitude. “Everyone in Mill Brook knew one of you Stiles was going to come down out of the hills missing a body part one of these days,” she had told him once. “Guess you should be glad you didn’t saw off something besides your hand.”

  Good ol’ Char.

  She had had the rare good taste not to say better him than either his brother or sister. He had made their lives miserable enough during those guilt-ridden months after Mel’s death that if Julian or Beth had been injured, he would have gone straight over the edge. As it was he’d come damn close.

  The evening air in central Tennessee was refreshingly cool, a northern high pushing out the last of the clouds and humidity. Adam felt curiously at ease as he and Char walked under the huge oaks that lined the streets of her older neighborhood.

  “What do you want me to tell Beth?” he asked, noticing how the night made Char’s hair and eyes seem even darker, fathomless.

  “Nothing. She’ll only be needlessly upset if she finds out I’ve been had by her ex-husband.”

  “Upset isn’t the word. She’d be down here with her shotgun within twenty-four hours.”