Finders Keepers (Mill Brook Book 1)

by Carla Neggers

  Quit kidding yourself!

  But she said, “Should I lock up when I leave?”

  “You don’t have to.” He cleared his throat. “Pen and Ink would take care of any strangers, so it’s only you I’d have to worry about. And since I’m leaving you here alone, I guess I’m not worried about you swiping the crystal—not that I have any.”

  “I can’t imagine you’d need any,” she replied tonelessly.

  “No silver, either—except for the goblets.”

  “ They’d be easy to trace, though.”

  “They would indeed.”

  Indeed, Holly thought. Indeed, indeed.

  There was something.

  Something in his eyes, in his half smile. In his tone, too controlled, too deliberate. In the way he looked at her that extra second or two. In his stance, confident, challenging.

  The bastard knows you’re going to take back the goblets, she thought. He knows!

  How?

  He’s leaving you here alone so he can double back and catch you red-handed stealing the goblets.

  Just as sure as she herself knew her name was Holly Wingate Paynter, she was sure Julian Stiles knew it, too. She was trained to observe, analyze and imitate the smallest expression, the tiniest movement. As good as Julian was, she had him figured out now.

  He had his hook baited and all she had to do was bite.

  His departure—leaving her there alone—was the fat, juicy worm on the end of his sharp hook. She wasn’t supposed to be able to resist.

  She rose in a regal sweep. “On second thought.” she said, with a disarming smile, “I think I’ll just head back to town now. There’s not much to do up here alone, and I’d feel a little awkward staying without you. Thanks for lunch.”

  His expression didn’t change. No disappointment, no pride—nothing. Oh, he was good. He said as if he meant it, “Anytime.”

  On her way out, Holly resisted one last glance at the iron box holding the silver goblets. She didn’t care what Julian Stiles knew or didn’t know. She didn’t even care about righting a hundred-year-old wrong against the Wingate family. Now her own pride was at stake. Had the kiss been part of the lure? She hated to think so, but who was she to figure how far a Danvers-Stiles would go? If Grandpa Wingate had still been around, he’d have told her.

  She didn’t like being baited.

  She’d be back.

  Julian almost landed in the swamp himself. Preoccupied with one strawberry-haired, blue-eyed, glib-tongued, determined Texan, he got going too fast. His left front tire hit the ice, and he spun out, whipping around a full one-hundred-eighty degrees. Only luck and the snowbank kept him on the road. He could imagine what Holly Paynter would have done if she’d come upon him sinking into the icy swamp. He’d never hear the end of it.

  After a series of maneuvers, he inched his way back around and continued, paying better attention. Holly had decided to follow him in her van, but he’d lost her. Either he was going too fast for her or she had doubled back to swipe the goblets.

  He wouldn’t bet on either scenario.

  When he came to the end of his notorious driveway, he pulled out of sight.

  In a few minutes, Holly’s dark green van puttered cautiously past him. She was hanging on to the steering wheel with both hands and watching the road. Once she reached the main road, she speeded up. He could almost hear her sigh of relief.

  Julian kept his eyes on her bumper until it disappeared around a bend. She couldn’t have been that far behind him. Had she had time to sneak back to the house?

  “You’re carrying this thing too damned far,” he muttered.

  But he could still feel her warmth and softness, could still taste her. She’d wanted him as much as he’d wanted her. There was no question of that. The nonsense about the goblets was just a game, he thought. An excuse to act like a couple of adolescents while they sorted out what else was crackling between them.

  He backed out into the road, swerved around and headed back up his driveway, taking it as fast as he dared. What the hell, he thought, he had to be sure.

  Leaving his truck running, he dashed inside.

  The goblets were still there, gleaming inside the iron box.

  He frowned. What was Holly Paynter up to?

  If he’d been interested in prevention, he’d have tucked the goblets under his arm and kept them there. But he wasn’t. He was interested in...

  “Her,” he said under his breath.

  Holly Paynter was what he was interested in. He wanted to know if she’d go as far as stealing the goblets, what she’d do with them, why she wanted them.

  He wanted to know her.

  More simply, he wanted her.

  “Hell.”

  He shut the iron box and dropped it back on the couch, where she’d left it. Then he climbed back into his truck and took the ride out to the main road nice and slow. Holly was on to him. What he needed now, he thought, was another plan.

  Or to confront her honestly with this obsession he had with her. What he felt about her. Somehow, though, he didn’t think she was ready for that. And perhaps neither was he. Honesty would entail soul-searching, long talks, deepening ties and commitment. Holly Paynter by her own admission was a wanderer, and he knew himself well enough by now to know he wasn’t. He liked his life in Mill Brook. It was here he belonged. Start bringing this stuff up now instead of goblets, and he didn’t know what would happen.

  Simply put, he didn’t want to risk losing her. Not yet. So he’d go on figuring out exactly what she was doing in town. Figuring about the goblets, her status as a Wingate, teasing, luring...and perhaps, finally, having her.

  “No.” Adam Stiles had to yell to be heard above the saws in the new building. He’d never been one to mince words. Without even glancing at his younger brother, he headed back outside. Julian followed. He was accustomed to Adam’s recalcitrance.

  “I’m not asking you to commit perjury.” Julian said as they headed down the short, sanded path back to the main building. “It’s not as if you’d be lying to Congress or the Internal Revenue Service.”

  “I’d still be lying.”

  “To a thief.”

  “What’s she stolen?”

  “Nothing yet, but—”

  “Then how do you know she’s a thief.”

  “Trust me.”

  “If I were you, I’d just put the goblets in a bank vault and forget about them.” Adam stopped at the lower-level door to the old sawmill and, his eyes even paler in the bright sun, looked at Julian. “But that wouldn’t be as much fun would it?”

  Julian grinned; his brother did know him. “I guess not.”

  “Entrapment is illegal.”

  “For a law enforcement officer.”

  “Then it’s unfair.”

  “True.”

  “But you’ve given her enough chances?”

  “Too many.”

  Adam sighed. “I don’t like playing games. I called you with that fake emergency like we agreed. Even that was going too far if you ask me. What’re you going to do if she does steal the goblets?”

  “Catch her.”

  “And then what? No.” He winced. “Forget I asked, I’m not sure I want to know.”

  With that, Adam went inside, chuckling as he headed over to the water-powered saw with the extra-long carriage, his favorite. Julian wondered what the hell his brother thought was so funny. The man could be damned irritating. Here he was trying to nab a thief and—

  And, of course, he was having the time of his life.

  “You’ll cover for me?” he called to his brother.

  Adam waved his hand in assent, as if to say, Don’t I always? And it was true; he did. Julian gave a mock-salute and trotted upstairs, trying to keep the spring out of his step and telling himself that all he was doing was protecting his property and going after a blue-eyed, lying Texan.

  Yeah, bud, but to what end?

  He left the question hanging, and got to work.

&
nbsp; Chapter Five

  Holly stripped down to her underwear and collapsed onto the big brass bed of her room at the Windham House, sinking into the soft, billowing down comforter. It was almost teatime, but she’d never make it. Her stomach hurt and her heart was pounding.

  It had been just too easy.

  She stared at the ceiling in an effort to regain her increasingly elusive calm. If she shut her eyes, she’d imagine things she didn’t want to imagine. Julian Stiles, for one. He’d begun to dominate her thinking.

  Several additional guests had arrived at the Windham House, coming up from New York City and Boston for weekend skiing. Holly had fancied herself mingling with them over tea, laughing, observing her first group of urban skiers.

  Instead she was upstairs... alone... feeling unsettled and faintly apprehensive.

  But she did have the goblets.

  “Whoopee,” she said, dispirited.

  She’d gotten them back just like she’d promised herself she would. Grandpa Wingate would have been proud, and Great-grandfather Zachariah could rest in peace. It wasn’t as if they were Stiles or Danvers family heirlooms. Julian, like everyone else in Mill Brook, had assumed up until he accidentally found them buried in the Danvers House cellar that the goblets were long gone—stolen by Zachariah. This just wasn’t a case of finders keepers. Morally the goblets didn’t belong to any member of the Danvers or Stiles clans. They belonged with the Wingates.

  A moot point now. Possession was nine-tenths of the law, it was said, and Holly had them.

  She should be celebrating!

  But it had been too easy. Nothing was ever easy for her. Luck, fortune, winning sweepstakes—all that was for other people. What she got in life, she had to earn.

  Even with her eyes wide open, she could vividly picture Julian standing on a stepladder in this room on a hot summer afternoon, his chest bare, stark-white ceiling paint splattered over his tanned arms and shoulders. It was an unwanted, troubling image. Mill Brook Academy alumnus though he was, he wasn’t afraid of a good day’s work. And he was the kind of man who helped a widowed aunt turn her house into a bed-and-breakfast; who was transforming an old house into a restaurant not just for investment purposes, but to help two friends.

  Holly couldn’t help wondering what might have happened if she’d just laid out the Wingate version of that night a hundred years ago. Had explained to Julian she’d come to Mill Brook to right that old, old wrong against her great-grandfather? Maybe he’d have agreed that Paul Revere had intended the goblets for the Wingates, that they belonged with her, as Zachariah’s only direct descendant, to pass along to her children and grandchildren.

  Holly snorted at her own weakness. She hadn’t stolen the goblets. Not exactly. She was merely in the process of restoring them to their rightful owner—herself. And only because she was Zachariah’s only direct descendant. She wasn’t acting out of avarice, just a compulsion to do what was right.

  She heard the faint sound of a car door banging shut outside. Another weekend skier arriving? Holly relished the interruption of her uncontrolled thoughts and attack of guilt—and no small measure of anxiety.

  Had she stolen the goblets just to have Julian after her again? Because he was getting too close—or not close enough? She wanted to scream with frustration! Her feelings were all a jumble and...

  “And, hell’s bells, you just know it was too damned easy.”

  She tried to think about the skiers downstairs. Holly had never been on skis in her life and couldn’t quite figure out why anyone would want to go screaming down the side of a mountain on two skinny waxed boards. You prefer to get your kicks out of stealing from perfect strangers.

  “You didn’t steal from anyone!” she chastised herself aloud.

  And certainly not from a stranger. She’d been hearing about Mill Brook and the Danvers and Stiles clans all her life. Somehow Julian didn’t feel like a stranger, nor even the arch enemy she’d anticipated. In a way, she felt as if she’d known him a good part of her life.

  She remembered the feel of his mouth on hers, the warmth and hardness of him, and shuddered with a longing so keen, so fierce, she wanted to cry out.

  Another door slammed. Even in the attic, Holly could hear fast, hard footsteps.

  She bolted upright. “It’s him!”

  A small voice told her she was being paranoid, but that was naïveté talking. She damned well knew who was coming up after her. And here she’d been feeling guilty! Julian Stiles could damn well take care of himself.

  She could hear him taking the stairs in leaps and bounds.

  Reenergized, she threw her feet down off the bed and looked around wildly for evidence of what she’d been up to the previous hour. There was nothing; she’d been extremely careful. She could plot and scheme with the best. Satisfied, she jumped up and grabbed her fine cotton kimono-style robe, wishing she had something more substantial she could throw on fast. Sure her door was closed, but would that stop Julian Stiles? In his place, would it stop her?

  She had just enough time to tie her robe before he barged in without so much as a knock or by-your-leave. He did, however, shut the door behind him. His eyes were blazing, his jaw set, his fists clenched. It wasn’t difficult to guess he’d been by his house and found his precious goblets gone—and had decided whom to blame.

  Of course, he’d have no proof. Holly had seen to that.

  She decided to feign innocence. “Julian, what on earth...”

  He took her in with a sweeping look that might not have phased her had it been merely predatory, angry, know-it-all—and it was all of those things. But, disconcertingly, there was satisfaction there as well and something else she couldn’t quite pinpoint—respect, maybe? As if she’d done exactly what he’d expected her to do. And being a hard case himself, he would notice, and possibly admire, a degree of relentlessness in others. She had come to Mill Brook for the goblets and now . she had them. There was a certain uncompromising logic to that that he’d understand. She just didn’t know how far it would get her.

  “Don’t start.” His teeth were clenched so tightly together he had trouble getting the words out; his jumble of emotions was raging and he was fighting like mad to hang on. ‘‘You fell for the bait, Holly. Hook, line and sinker.”

  Stifling a wave of alarm, Holly faked a yawn and stretched her arms up over her as if just awakening from a long, peaceful nap. A deliberate calm was her best defense—possibly her only defense.

  “If you want to talk,” she said, “by all means, let’s talk. But I’ll tell you right now, I haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re getting at.”

  He laughed, unswayed by her manufactured innocence. “You can stop right there because you’re not going to talk your way out of this one.”

  It was difficult for Holly not to regard his words as a direct challenge. She could talk her way out of anything. Grandpa Wingate had told her so often enough. She gestured to the rocker. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me what happened?”

  “You’re good,” he admitted grudgingly. “You can make yourself look relaxed even when you’ve got to be shaking in your socks. I’ve got you this time and you damned well know it.”

  “Shaking in my socks? Me?” She scoffed, adding, “If there’s one thing that doesn’t scare me, it’s you.”

  “I’m not talking about fear, I’m talking about nervousness—anticipation.”

  “About what?”

  Again that near-humorless laugh. “Oh, so innocent.”

  “Mr. Stiles—”

  “Make it Julian. You can’t start pulling back now.”

  “Pulling back from what?”

  His eyes were too dark, fathomless pits. “From me.”

  She drew back abruptly, her concentration shattered, and stumbled on her own shoes. She had to put a hand down on the bed to steady herself because she knew he was right. Ever since she had crashed down on top of him at the Danvers House, they’d been egging each other on. They could claim the pur
est of motives: he was protecting his property, even Mill Brook, from an unscrupulous storyteller; she was trying to right a wrong committed against her family. But they could have accomplished their tasks in other, less directly confrontational ways—without the sexual electricity, the zest for contact on any level, at nearly any price.

  She’d been waiting for him, she realized. Restoring the goblets to the Wingate hands had a lot less to do with family pride now than it had a week ago. The goblets had become a way of intensifying what was going on between her and Julian—of bringing him closer to her, forcing him to show her what he was made of.

  To show her that what was going on between them was real.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, sounding stuffy and self-conscious.

  His gaze drifted over her. Oh, for a flannel robe! The lines of her body were etched plainly against the thin cotton of her kimono, which showed too much neck, too much bare leg. Her skin tingled. Her eyes locked with his, just for an instant, long enough for her to see the burning in his.

  Glancing around, she suddenly saw the lacy bra hanging on the bathroom doorknob... the full slip and sheer stockings neatly folded at the foot of the bed for tonight... the lipstick left open on the dresser. They were small, personal things. The kinds of things that had, in a few short days, made this cozy, pretty attic suite, guest room or not, her space. Julian had invaded it. It was as if he were inside her, looking around, checking her out, uncovering all her secrets.

  The image had such sensual overtones she could feel her cheeks flushing and her mouth going dry. Her attraction to him was fly in the ointment enough. She didn’t need him to notice—or respond in kind. A little late for that, she thought. And who did she think she was kidding? Certainly not herself. Her attraction to him, she was beginning to think, wasn’t the fly in the ointment; it was everything.

  “We’ve only known each other a few days,” she said.

  He moved another step toward her, so tantalizingly close. “Time’s got nothing to do with it. I think you know that. What’s going on between us—”