“Go again!” she yelled over the bass guitar pounding from the speakers. “Spin it, baby!”
Years of watching from atop the crest of a sand dune while Dane and Quirt perfected the craft of sand circle art— not to be confused with crop circles— and she finally had her seat on the inside. Adrenaline shot through her veins, and she was more awake now than she’d been in days.
Dane made three more passes, and then the Dodge had had enough. He hauled up to a stop in the shade of a tall dune.
“You surprise me, Brooke.”
“Me? How? Did you think I’d hate that, or something?”
He half-laughed and shook his head. “I guess so. But you soaked it up, sport.”
“Sport?” She jutted her chin at the term. “I’ll show you good sport.” She grabbed his chin and swung it toward her, pressing her mouth to his. It took him no time to respond, and today’s kiss really did feel like a sport, considering the aerobic effect it had on her heart. It was as athletic as last night’s was tender.
Dane’s kisses had a lot of facets. Brooke intended to discover all of them.
Her heart pumped against her ribcage. How was it that her lifelong fantasy of spinning round and round on the sand at Dane Rockwell’s side, and then having him decorate her with his passion was finally coming true in this moment? A little moan of pleasure erupted from her when he moved his mouth to the side of her neck, and she shivered with desire.
He was dangerous— like a flame— and she begged the heavens that this meant as much to him as it did to her.
“Is this why you came today?” she said, slowing things down to avoid the third-degree burns that might ensue if she sat too long like this in his truck. She was weak, and not fireproof. “To spin me like a vinyl record?”
Dane leaned back and scratched the back of his neck, pausing for a second as if to gather his wits. After a hefty breath he said, “I wish, believe me, but—”He reached onto the dash and pulled out a paper with a date on it. “— here. You have until Tuesday the sixteenth.”
“What?” Tuning back into the struggles of reality, Brooke took the sheet of paper and stared hard. She’d caught a glimpse of this document last night. Now, beneath the date of the trial, Dane had written a list in his blocky handwriting— a to-do list to prep for the hearing, apparently.
Gather official records. Question Jarman’s neighbors. Handwriting expert— local?
But it was the fourth one that jarred Brooke to her core: Prove Brooke’s innocence in the changing of the will.
“My innocence?”
“You heard LaBarge’s threat.”
She had. He was going to come after her.
“He’s going to say you forged the addendum, or somehow tricked Jarman into leaving the ball to you.”
If that were actually true, the shame at what her father and mother would think of her would crush Brooke to smithereens. “You know I didn’t.”
“I know you didn’t. But the judge is going to have to go on evidence.”
“What evidence do I have?”
Dane frowned. “I don’t know yet.”
Brooke bit her lip. This seemed like a situation similar to Dane’s— guilty until proven innocent. Sickness roiled in her stomach.
“So besides proving I had nothing to do with changing Harvey Jarman’s will, we have to prove the will’s addendum is valid, and to do that, we have to…what?”
“I’m not sure exactly.”
It wasn’t fair to expect him to know everything about how to proceed. But— ?
“Okay, then. Where do we start?”
He reached for another paper and handed it to her, one with an address on it. “Harvey Jarman’s.”
Brooke looked up at him. “Let’s go.”
__________
Jarman’s house was on the near side of town. Nothing ostentatious. Just a two-story brick Colonial with grass that needed to be cut. Dane looked around for a mower, but nothing was around.
Of course, Jarman was long past being able to do any yard work now other than push daisies.
“And what do we look for here?” Brooke asked, her hand lacing into his as they rolled up to the curb.
“Something— anything— with his handwriting on it.” Dane put the truck in park and let Brooke out. “The will with the portion leaving the Called Shot Ball to you is holographic, and Sarge LaBarge is out to prove it’s forged. To win, you’ll have to have some proven handwriting of Jarman’s for comparison.”
“But the place looks abandoned.” Brooke went up on tiptoes to peek through the curtainless windows. “There’s nothing inside. It’s been emptied.”
Dane peered in and then looked away quickly, after he was hit with a flashback of his house after his parents were convicted. Except Jarman’s was a lot cleaner.
Brooke stood with her hands on her hips on the old concrete porch. “No wife, kids? How sad.” She turned toward Dane, looking genuinely sorrowful for Harvey Jarman’s lonely life. “Or maybe there were kids who just don’t live there. Grown, flown, on their own.”
Dane didn’t know. Internet searches hadn’t done much good, and the obituary didn’t list anything except the name of a wife; it wasn’t clear whether she’d preceded him in death.
Brooke went up to the door and lifted the brass ring attached to a lion’s mouth as a door-knocker. She let it fall. From inside came a hollow echo. She looked up at him again with pathos in her face. It touched him. This girl cared— deeply— for a man she’d never met.
“I wonder whether he died alone.” She peeked into the empty iron box for mail with its clothespin still attached. “At least my parents were together, with me, at the accident. They had each other as ushers into the hereafter.”
He’d never heard her talk about the accident. He wasn’t good at asking about it before, when they’d just played catch, but legal training had taught him a tiny bit about helping people talk.
“What happened that day? Do you even remember it?”
Brooke went over and sat down on the porch swing hanging nearby. “Not a lot.” The swing’s chains made a horrendous creaking when she sat and pushed off, but she kept it moving back and forth with her tiptoes anyway. “Just the yell Dad gave before the impact with the sideways semi-truck.”
Leaning on the porch rail, Dane shuddered. He could almost hear Matthew Chadwick’s deep holler of agony in that moment just before the other side took him and Mallory Chadwick, two of the best people who ever lived.
“I still hear it in my sleep every so often. Less these days. It’s tapering off.” She looked out across the expanse of yard, but it didn’t seem like she focused on anything in the here or now of the landscaping. “It gets easier.”
Dane sat down close beside her. Now the swing made a lower-pitched creak. He reached an arm around the back of the swing, letting it rest on her shoulders. She nestled in closer to him, and they floated back and forth on the swing for a minute, saying nothing. Dane’s soul relaxed when he touched her. It was the only time he felt whole.
“It’s still an unexplained miracle,” she said after a while. “You know, that I survived.”
“You were asleep on the back seat. Your body was relaxed.”
“Yeah, only my femurs broke.” She rested a hand on her upper thigh. Femur breaks were notoriously painful. “I must be here for some important reason I haven’t discovered yet.”
Dane rested a hand on hers. “Probably more than one important reason.”
She looked up at him like this was a novel thought. “Like what?” She blinked a few times, too quickly, and her eyelashes invited him to lean in, to let his lips graze hers. It was just a brush, the lightest touch of silk. A satisfied sigh drifted from Brooke’s mouth, and he wanted to elicit that satisfaction from her again and again, forevermore.
“Dane,” she whispered. “Is this safe?”
“Safe as playing with fire in a room full of gasoline-soaked cotton.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.�
�� Brooke drew back, taking the softness of her breath away from where it had graced his cheek too briefly. “I don’t think we should be,” she whispered, “close like this.”
“I can get closer, if you’d prefer.” Much closer. He could close all the space between them, the second she gave the word. Dane leaned in and nuzzled her hair, her neck, the place where her jaw met the base of her ear. It tasted sweet there, and she relaxed into him a moment, sighing in that way that made every atom in his body rev to life. “How’s this?”
“Dangerous.”
“Right?”
“No, I mean— for your career.”
Ice buckets hit him. “Oh.” He drew back. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, that if I’m a female client, which I know I’m not, but it could be misconstrued, and you’re also kissing me— I mean.” Her brow knit together. “I think you know what I’m saying.”
“That kissing you will complicate things for my case if I’m also advising you. Or if they think I am.”
“When is your hearing?” A little tendril of pain accompanied her question. “How long will it last?”
Dane didn’t want it to be even thirty seconds.
“I don’t have a date for it yet.”
“Oh.” She looked up at him with so much longing, and yet so much wisdom. He couldn’t deny that what she was suggesting was the wiser course.
Rockwells almost never took the wiser course.
“Tweed did suggest it would be soon.”
Brooke nodded. “We need to think long term, Dane. We have to look at what you want later, and not let you trade it for what we want now.”
No question, he wanted her now. The wanting had dialed up to ten on the want-o-meter.
“Tell me exactly what you mean here.” He silently begged her not to say what he thought she was going to say.
“We shouldn’t kiss or be affectionate until after your hearing or else my trial, whichever comes first.” There. She said exactly what he’d dreaded ever since the conversation bent this direction. “We can’t jeopardize your career.”
Before he could respond, a woman’s yodel floated across the yard at them and interrupted all his protests, even though Dane knew Brooke was right.
Painfully right.
__________
“Yoo-hoo. Halloo.” Over the long grass chugged a woman in a floppy hat and an old t-shirt and jeans, carrying a bucket and a set of garden pruners.
Brooke stared at her, willing herself back into reality. Dane’s closeness, his earnest eyes and the depth of that blasted dimple, had swept her away into proverbial la-la land. It took some real doing to bring herself back.
Especially now that she’d dropped that truth bomb on him that they shouldn’t be making out in his Dodge on the sand where anyone could see anytime.
He probably wouldn’t want to help her now. After all, this new closeness had triggered his willingness to help her in the first place, hadn’t it? Maybe not, but the little self-doubt demon inside her said so.
Kisses changed things. But on the other hand, no kissing might change everything, too. Oh, she’d be dying for him and his touch in the interim, but it was right, no matter how much she would writhe. She couldn’t have him get into worse trouble— especially not be disbarred over her.
Fear snaked its way through her when she thought of facing all this LaBarge stuff alone, without Dane.
Brooke was walking on thin ice.
The floppy-hat woman tromped up the concrete walk and spoke again.
“Looking to buy the house? It’s not listed yet, but it will be soon, I hear.” She stopped at the base of the porch where they had stood up from the swing. “Twyla Tyler, neighbor of the former owner of the house.” She extended a gloved hand to shake, but yanked it back and pulled off the glove before taking Dane’s hand.
“You knew Mr. Jarman?” Brooke asked.
Brooke didn’t give her name. If this neighbor had any kind of knowledge of Jarman or his will, she had to find that out first. Thin ice, she reminded herself. Be cautious. This woman could be in LaBarge’s camp, too, no matter how nice she appeared to be.
Looks could be deceiving.
“I’ve been looking for someone who knew him or his family.” Brooke extended a hand over the porch rail to shake. The woman’s hand was rough, like she’d done lots of gardening.
Twyla Tyler gave a long, deep nod. “Oh, sure. After Mrs. Jarman died fifteen years ago, I came to make Harvey lunch every day— after I made lunch for my husband, Barlow, at home. We became pretty close friends. Of course, we neighbors weren’t the only interests he had. The Naughton City Bowling League, and of course his collection, which kept him going after Mitzi passed on.”
So. That meant Jarman had been a widower. When Brooke had looked at the obituary, she couldn’t tell.
Dane took up the info-pumping task next. “What about children?”
“Poor Harvey and Mitzi.” Mrs. Tyler sighed. “They didn’t have any of their own. Of course Harvey treated my grandson, Little O,” her voice caught, “like he belonged to them, God rest his soul.”
Suddenly Mrs. Tyler’s eyes were wet, and she was sniffling.
“Was it recent?” Brooke hurried to descend the steps and put an arm around the weeping woman.
Mrs. Tyler nodded. “Last Christmas. Is that recent? I don’t know anymore. And everyone who tries to comfort me says God must have needed him more than we did here. I just can’t stand to hear that.”
“Losing a family member— time goes by, but the healing feels like it’s taking forever.” Brooke turned to press the woman to her heart. She knew this hurt. She’d felt its exquisiteness. “Maybe God needed you and me to learn to live without them, and to trust Him anyway.”
Brooke just held her for a while. “I lost someone dear, too,” she finally said. “I’m sure your Little O was precious.”
Mrs. Tyler hiccupped and nodded. “I miss the kid. He was such a feisty little guy. He got excellent medical care over at Maddox General, but…oh, he was only ten, you know.” The sniffling started. “First Little O, then the postman Mr. Yslas, then my dog Gallagher, now Mr. Jarman. It’s been a heart-wrenching year and a half.”
Brooke glanced at Dane. She could stay here all day with Mrs. Tyler, but she knew they had something they needed to accomplish here, too. She gave him the go-ahead nod and pulled away a second to let Mrs. Tyler meet his eyes.
“Since you knew Mr. Jarman well, ” he said, “maybe you could help us. We need something in his handwriting. You wouldn’t have something like that, would you?”
Mrs. Tyler came out of her personal fog. “I’d have to really look. He wasn’t much of a note-writer. But then, who is these days?” She gave a little half-laugh amidst the sniffles. “But you’ve been so nice,” she was looking at Brooke, “I’ll give a good search and let you know.”
“Let’s be in touch,” Brooke said, squeezing her hand. “Can I call you?” Brooke still didn’t give Mrs. Tyler her name. Not just yet. As nice as Mrs. Tyler seemed, and as much as they’d bonded in this moment, she still had some misgivings about being too transparent.
After all, what if LaBarge came next? It would be much better for Mrs. Tyler if she didn’t have Brooke’s name.
Not yet.
“Thanks. My number’s in the book. I look forward to it.” Mrs. Tyler adjusted her big floppy hat and left.
__________
Dead end. Probably. Dane frowned. He’d been awkward at comforting Brooke when she lost her parents, and he was certainly useless at helping a stranger.
Good thing Brooke was with him today. She’d been so amazing at breaking down emotional barriers with others. Dane marveled at this girl who kept getting better and better. The two of them might not be Golden Thunder Monkeys, but as a team, they weren’t bad.
More than anything, he wanted to take her in his arms, and—
Oh. Right.
They walked back to the truck, and Dane reluctantly put hi
s hormones in neutral as he put the truck in gear and drove them back into Maddox.
“So here’s what we know,” Brooke said through a bite of fast food after they hit a drive-through. “Harvey Jarman didn’t have any close family members alive. He had a good neighbor. He liked to bowl. He wasn’t much of a note writer.”
“I doubt Mrs. Tyler is going to have anything with his handwriting.” Dane took a swig of his Coke. “Might be useless.”
Brooke took some fries from Dane’s stash. Surprisingly he didn’t mind. “Yeah, maybe. But…I don’t know. I have a feeling Mrs. Tyler is going to be key. Somehow.”
“Woman’s intuition, huh?”
“I know, I know. It’s probably not one of those things they pound into you at law school.”
Dane laughed. “I took a whole course on it. There was a second course, but it was full, and I couldn’t get in.”
Brooke punched his arm and bobbled his cup. “Whatever. I just think we need to keep her in mind.”
“What I think we need to keep in mind,” he said, “is the fact you haven’t been bowling lately. You should take a page from Harvey’s book.”
“Bowling.” Brooke set down her cup. “You’re not serious.”
“Oh, but I am.” He released a wicked grin. “I’ll just sit back, wearing my special bowling shoes, and watch you from behind as you bowl set after set …” He could picture the sway now.
“Dane.” Her warning fell on deaf ears. He’d already watched a whole mental movie.
“Fine,” he relented. “Don’t think for a minute I’ve forgotten our new normal of no physical displays of affection.” How could he, when it felt like an amputation? “But, no, actually, I’m being serious.”
“Oh, clearly.”
“No. We need to go check out the Naughton City Bowling League.”
Brooke started to roll her eyes at him, but then she clearly caught on. “Oh, I get it. To find some of Harvey’s handwriting.”
“Why would a bowling alley have his handwriting?” Dane frowned. She made a good point, though. On his phone he searched for a local bowling alley— hoping it was an old-fashioned kind that still used scoring cards and not an automated system.
Wills & Trust (Legally in Love Collection Book 3) Page 14