“Not quite yet,” he said. “Sit with me.”
“Everything all right?” I took my spot beside him.
He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m really hoping so.”
“What’s going on?”
He nodded. “It’s quarter til midnight. In fifteen minutes, it’ll be our one-year anniversary.”
“Technically, that won’t be until after six pm tomorrow evening—”
“No, no…our anniversary starts in fif—in fourteen minutes.”
“Okay.” I laughed, shook my head at him. “What is going on with you?”
“If I ask you to let me tell you in fourteen minutes, will you do that for me? Can we just sit quietly for—less than fourteen minutes? If I wasn’t so nervous, I could’ve thought up something to talk to you about for fourteen minutes, which would’ve been so much better. But I’m a nervous man.”
“What in this world, Nate?”
“Slugger, please, I’m begging you…fourteen minutes.”
“Okay. Sure.” I cuddled up to him and we sat quietly on the sofa. My mind whirred, searching for and discarding possibilities. He seemed healthy. He didn’t seem like a man with leaving on his mind. Why on earth would there be anything he was nervous to share with me? What was the deal with the time?
At precisely midnight, he turned to me and took both my hands. “I’ve never talked much about my grandfather. My dad’s dad.”
“No, I don’t guess you have.” Where was this headed?
“His name was Alistair Carson Markley.”
“Alistair Carson Markley? But he—”
Nate nodded. “He started a textile machinery company in Greenville. He made a great deal of money.”
“I don’t understand—”
“My dad changed his name. They had a falling out. It’s a long story and not really important. You remember all those trusts we were talking about the other night—the conditional ones?”
“Sure.”
“As it turns out, aside from what my grandfather left to his foundation, which makes gifts every year to a long list of charities, he established trusts for Scott and me.”
“Wh-wh—”
“There are conditions. My grandfather wasn’t lucky in love. A couple different women married him for his money and then treated him badly. So, the biggest condition of our trusts is that if we marry, we can’t tell our wives about the money until we’ve been married for one year.”
I couldn’t get my breath.
“You with me so far?” Nate squeezed my hands.
I nodded. “But Scott—”
“Right. As has been well established, my brother is not a good guy. He chose never to tell you about the money. And he was able to hide it easily during the divorce because you weren’t looking for it.”
“Ooooh. That complete—”
“Easy there, Slugger. Big picture. Another thing that happened to my grandfather is that he lost touch with his family—his parents, his brother, his sister, and his son, my dad.
“Granddad worked all the time. And he missed his family, but maybe not until it was too late to fix things. So another condition of the trusts is that Scott and I have dinner together at least once a year. My grandfather’s birthday was September 21. He wanted us to have dinner together on his birthday. But of course, Scott has missed the last few years because of those outstanding warrants. He was in violation of the conditions of his trust. In our case, the trustee has some discretion, but he’d given Scott all the leeway he was going to. Back in September, the trustee gave him ninety days to correct the situation, or he would forfeit everything.
“Scott was in a pickle, because the other condition of the trust is similar to the one in C. C. Bounetheau’s trusts—if either of us is convicted of a crime, the trust is dissolved and the assets transferred to the other brother.”
I couldn’t speak. I tried to say something. Anything. I had so many questions. Finally, this was all I came up with. “So, you’re not really a saver?”
“Oh, yes indeed I am. My grandfather—and later, after he’d grown up a bit, my dad too—instilled in me the importance of managing money. Granddad saw firsthand that money can do as much harm as good, if it isn’t used wisely.”
“So…I don’t need to worry about things like paint and taxes…”
“No, ma’am, you do not.”
“Just exactly how…” I stumbled over the question. It sounded wrong on my tongue. “No, never mind…I…don’t know what to say.”
“We have more money than we could ever spend,” said Nate.
Realization dawned. “You…it wasn’t Darius. You donated the money for…for Blake, for the houses…for the town.”
“Yes, I did. And I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you that. You have no idea how much I wanted to tell you, then and other times when you’ve been so worried about money. But in order to take care of you the way I want to for the rest of your life, I needed to honor my grandfather’s wishes.”
I grabbed him and hugged him tight. “Thank you for doing that for my brother.”
“He’s my brother too, right?”
“Of course he is…I just, that was so generous. I don’t even know…I’m still wrapping my brain around all of this.”
“It’s a lot to take in,” said Nate.
“I’m happy for…so many things, and—this is all so new. Still, I have to say, I don’t want our lives to change. I love the life we’ve built together. I love what we do.”
“So do I,” said Nate. “And nothing has to change that we don’t want to change. There’s no reason we can’t simply carry on the way we always have, working cases. We don’t have to tell a living soul about the money. This can be our secret, if that’s what you want.”
“There’s a lot to think about,” I said.
“There is. But right now, if you’re ready, we need to leave for the airport. You see, I wanted to leave town as soon as I could tell you, to hopefully avoid Scott. I wasn’t obliged to be here since he didn’t tell me he was coming. And I planned for us to be elsewhere when he showed up. Not because I want his money, but because I had no idea Colleen would be here to help out and I was scared to death something would go wrong while Blake was trying to arrest him and you’d get hurt.”
“What time’s our flight?”
“It leaves whenever we’re on the plane.”
I absorbed that. “Mamma, Daddy…everyone else?”
“I let them know we were leaving early and a car would be by for them around midnight. That’s all I told them, but everyone seemed up for it. I made it all part of the adventure.”
“Are you going to tell me now where we’re going?” I asked.
“You remember the house in St. John where we stayed on our honeymoon?”
“Oh! I love that house. We’re going back there?” The views were stunning, overlooking the north shore beaches and the British Virgin Islands. It had five bedrooms, more than enough room for all of us.
“Yeah, that’s where we’re headed,” said Nate. “It turns out, that house is actually ours.”
“Wh—”
“But what I need an answer to right now…you see…when you took those wedding vows, you didn’t understand everything you were signing up for. Money can be a blessing, sure. It also creates its own problems. I think we’ve seen that meticulously illustrated.”
His eyes held mine. “And I wasn’t completely honest with you. You have to know how much I love you. But I kept a really big secret for a long time. I could understand if you took exception to that kind of thing. I need to know if you’re still willing to be my wife.”
I burst out laughing.
Fear wrestled with merriment on his face. “Not exactly what I was looking for.”
I grabbed him and hugged him tight. “Of course, you idiot. What? You d
idn’t hear the for richer part in our wedding vows?”
“I guess when you put it that way.”
I pulled back, took his face in my hands, and looked deeply into his smokey blue eyes. “I understand why you had to keep this from me. I love you to the moon and back, Nate Andrews. Even if you are ridiculously wealthy.”
“All right, then.” Happy did a little dance on my husband’s face. “That is most excellent news indeed. Hang on one sec.”
Nate picked up his phone and tapped a line. “Hey, it’s all right. We’re ready to leave. You can come in now.”
He put the phone down. “Where were we?” He pulled me into his arms and kissed me silly. He was mine and I was his, since time untold. Everything and everyone else faded to black.
“Um-umm.” An exaggerated throat-clearing sound pulled me back from wherever I’d floated off to.
We both turned towards the noise.
“You sure y’all are ready to go?” The huge black guy who’d tailed me to Edisto and back—who’d been there in Abigail Bounetheau’s morning room—stood in our foyer.
Nate said, “Liz, this is Bartholomew Smalls. He mostly goes by Bart. He’ll be giving us a ride to the airport. Bart, I think you’ve met my wife.”
About the Author
Susan M. Boyer is the author of the USA Today bestselling Liz Talbot mystery series. Her debut novel, Lowcountry Boil, won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel, the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense, and garnered several other award nominations, including the Macavity. The third in the series, Lowcountry Boneyard, was a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Okra Pick, a Daphne du Maurier Award finalist, and short-listed for the Pat Conroy Beach Music Mystery Prize. Susan loves beaches, Southern food, and small towns where everyone knows everyone, and everyone has crazy relatives. You’ll find all of the above in her novels. She lives in Greenville, SC, with her husband and an inordinate number of houseplants.
The Liz Talbot Mystery Series
by Susan M. Boyer
LOWCOUNTRY BOIL (#1)
LOWCOUNTRY BOMBSHELL (#2)
LOWCOUNTRY BONEYARD (#3)
LOWCOUNTRY BORDELLO (#4)
LOWCOUNTRY BOOK CLUB (#5)
LOWCOUNTRY BONFIRE (#6)
LOWCOUNTRY BOOKSHOP (#7)
LOWCOUNTRY BOOMERANG (#8)
LOWCOUNTRY BOONDOGGLE (#9)
LOWCOUNTRY BOUGHS OF HOLLY (#10)
Henery Press Mystery Books
And finally, before you go...
Here are a few other mysteries
you might enjoy:
PILLOW STALK
Diane Vallere
A Madison Night Mystery (#1)
Interior Decorator Madison Night might look like a throwback to the sixties, but as business owner and landlord, she proves that independent women can have it all. But when a killer targets women dressed in her signature style—estate sale vintage to play up her resemblance to fave actress Doris Day—what makes her unique might make her dead.
The local detective connects the new crime to a twenty-year old cold case, and Madison’s long-trusted contractor emerges as the leading suspect. As the body count piles up, Madison uncovers a Soviet spy, a campaign to destroy all Doris Day movies, and six minutes of film that will change her life forever.
Read all about it—plus all the books, authors, series, and sales you need to find your next favorite read!
CLICK FOR HENERY PRESS
LIVING THE VIDA LOLA
Melissa Bourbon
A Lola Cruz Mystery (#1)
Meet Lola Cruz, a fiery full-fledged PI at Camacho and Associates. Her first big case? A missing mother who may not want to be found. And to make her already busy life even more complicated, Lola’s helping plan her cousin’s quinceañera and battling her family and their old-fashioned views on women and careers. She’s also reunited with the gorgeous Jack Callaghan, her high school crush whom she shamelessly tailed years ago and photographed doing the horizontal salsa with some other lucky girl.
Lola takes it all in stride, but when the subject of her search ends up dead, she has a lot more to worry about. Soon she finds herself wrapped up in the possibly shady practices of a tattoo parlor, local politics, and someone with serious—maybe deadly—road rage. But Lola is well-equipped to handle these challenges. She’s a black-belt in kung fu, and her body isn’t her only weapon. She’s got smarts, sass, and more tenacity than her Mexican mafioso-wannabe grandfather. A few of her famous margaritas don’t hurt, either.
Read all about it—plus all the books, authors, series, and sales you need to find your next favorite read!
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LOWCOUNTRY BOUGHS OF HOLLY Page 22