Within Reason: Mill Brook Trilogy, Book 2

by Carla Neggers

  Partially recovered, Adam took out a bushel of apples, set it on the ground, then leaned back against his truck. Char was licking her lips and obviously waiting for him to say something. Too bad, he thought. It’s your move, sweetheart.

  “Had my phone disconnected,” she said, brushing her hands on the sides of her thighs. “Otherwise I’d have called and let you know I was coming.”

  “Could have called collect.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  She hopped onto the tailgate and snatched up a stray apple, biting into it with that mix of energy and calm— that one-track-mind intensity—that had been uniquely hers since childhood.

  Adam didn’t move. “You want to tell me what you’re up to?”

  She motioned with her apple. “I bought a new car.”

  “So I see. Char, if you’re going to send me on some kind of wild-goose chase—”

  “Me?”

  She seemed so surprised, so appalled at the idea, that anyone who hadn’t been sent to Belle Meade, Cheekwood and the Rockwood estate would have immediately backed off.

  “We have a history,” Adam said dryly.

  ‘That sounds ominous.” Her tone suggested it didn’t sound ominous at all. She took another bite of apple, swinging her legs. “I looked for you at the mill.”

  “Came home early.”

  “Yeah, Beth told me about the cider bash tomorrow. She also told me you busted out of there like a man on fire. Something up?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her, refusing to rise to her so-tempting bait. “You tell me.”

  She shrugged. “Thought you might have heard a rumor.”

  “I don’t listen to gossip.”

  “Sometimes you have no choice. You hear I was in town?”

  “No.”

  “Then you must have heard my shingle was back up on the States building. True?”

  He sighed. “True?”

  “When did you hear?”

  “Char—"

  “No, I’m curious. My name went up at two o’clock this afternoon. I’m just wondering how long it takes for word to travel in this town.”

  “I heard at three.”

  “An hour. Amazing.”

  She took another bite of apple, then laid back and heaved the core off into the woods.

  “Start talking, Char,” Adam said, “or next I’ll toss you into the woods.”

  ‘It’s chilly. Want to finish unloading the truck and go inside where it’s warm?”

  “And give you time to rewrite whatever tale you’re going to tell me? No way. We’ll talk right here.”

  She made a face. “The brain functions best at fifty-eight degrees, anyway.”

  The woman, Adam thought, had the look of victory about her—as if the weight of the world had finally been lifted from her shoulders. Clearly something was up. But he refused to prompt her. This, he thought, was her show.

  “Harlan Rockwood and I came to an agreement,” she said. Before she continued, she angled her eyes at Adam. “Did you know he suspected me of swindling him?”

  “I’ll take the Fifth.”

  “I bet you will. Anyway, finding that out made me take a look at this thing from a new angle. If I didn’t swindle Harlan and Harlan didn’t swindle me, what did happen? I launched a little investigation of my own. Harlan got wind of it, and we decided to put our heads together, which you will not tell Beth. We discovered that one of his trainers—a guy who’d been with him maybe three years—switched our horse with a ringer and sold our star to an outfit in Europe and passed the dud off. The switch might have been discovered sooner if Harlan had continued to race the dud, but he got disgusted and put him out to pasture.”

  “And you were each looking to the other for blame while the trainer went about his business.”

  “That’s pretty much the long and short of it.”

  “So what about your money?”

  She got a distant look in her beautiful brown eyes. “Oh, Harlan and I worked that out.”

  “Are you going to try again at raising Thoroughbreds?”

  “Nope.”

  It seemed so easy, as if she were saying, “No, she didn’t want green beans for supper.”

  “I have no regrets,” she went on. “But my dream of raising Thoroughbreds has to do with the kid I used to be, not the woman I’ve become. When Aunt Mil died I felt so empty. I’m not sure I would have admitted this a year ago, but my leaving Mill Brook had everything to do with her death—and not just because she left me the means to go. I thought I was just seizing the moment to make a dream come true. To some degree, I was, but it was more complicated than that. I wasn’t just running to something, but away from something.”

  “Away from Mill Brook,” Adam said.

  “Away from what Mill Brook had become for me without Aunt Mil.” Char brought her feet up onto the tailgate and tucked her knees under her chin. “There’s a difference. I felt so damn alone, Adam. And I didn’t think I could tell anyone, just as I couldn’t tell anyone about my disastrous deal with Harlan. I was wrong. I still have friends—a life—here in Mill Brook.”

  “Is it the life you want?”

  She looked at him with an expression that just dared him to argue. “Yes.”

  He argued, anyway. “Char, you’ve been itching to get out of Mill Brook since you were a kid.”

  “And I got out. You’ll also recall I came back after my divorce.”

  “You had to.”

  “I did not have to. I could easily have stayed in New York, but I chose to come back here.”

  “You said—”

  She waved a hand in dismissal. “I was an idiot.”

  Adam crossed his arms on his chest. “You’re not coming back on my account?”

  “Not just on your account. Adam, when I left last week a part of me wanted you to jump to my side and solve all my problems for me—to make demands. Then I’d be off the hook. But I’m glad you kept your distance and let me come to terms with what I wanted on my own. Yeah, it helps that I don’t have to come home with my tail tucked all the way between my legs. Finding out a knowledgeable horse breeder like Harlan Rockwood was swindled just the same as me was a boost to my ego, never mind to my pocketbook.”

  She dropped her legs down and let them swing, her hands gripping the end of the tailgate. “And it helps that you’re here. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t. But I didn’t come back to Mill Brook just for you. I came back for me, too.”

  Adam felt the tension in his arms and legs, in his entire body. “You’re sure?”

  “It’s practically all I’ve thought about since I left here last Saturday, and believe me, I had to think or go crazy listening to Em sing That Chubby Little Snowman’ between Hagerstown and Roanoke.” She smiled. “So, yes, I’m sure.”

  “We’d have worked something out no matter what you decided,” Adam said, encircling her waist with his arms.

  She nodded. “I know we would have.”

  “I’d have bought a sawmill in Tennessee if it’d come to that.”

  “It never would have. I wouldn’t want the burden of forcing you to do something against your nature—to become someone else—anymore than you do.”

  He smiled, easing her into his arms and down off the truck. “Your nose is red. We’d better go inside and warm up.”

  ‘There is one more thing. I’ve heard from an ex-client who’s thinking about suing Mill Brook Post and Beam.’’

  “Who?”

  “I can’t give you any details—client confidentiality and all that.” She slid her hands up his back and locked those dark eyes on him. “I’d like to tell him I can’t handle the case due to conflict of interest. What do you think?”

  “I’m not a lawyer.”

  She gave him a long suffering sigh. “Adam Stiles, you can be such a thickheaded Yankee. If I’m sleeping with the president of Mill Brook Post and Beam, don’t you think I have a conflict of interest?”

  He drew her tightly against him and
lowered his mouth to hers. “I’d say you have a hell of a conflict of interest.”

  The following spring, Char chose the day of the running of the Kentucky Derby to announce the wedding date for her marriage to Adam Stiles. They hosted a party at his house and invited most of the town. There were kids and adults everywhere. The actual wedding ceremony, she and Adam had decided by mutual agreement, would be quiet and private, with just family in attendance. On her own initiative Abby had asked the Eberharts if they could hold the ceremony among Aunt Mil’s peonies and irises. The Eberharts were delighted to comply.

  Aunt Mil, Char thought, would have approved.

  Most of the party-goers went home to watch the race in peace. Everyone else—except for the kids, who couldn’t get excited about a bunch of horses they didn’t know running around a circle—gathered around the television set in Adam’s family room.

  Adam slipped an arm around his fiancée. “Feel a twinge of regret you’re not there?”

  “Just a twinge,” Char admitted. It was a bald-faced lie: only the scheme she’d cooked up in the past few weeks had made not being in Lexington today the least bit palatable. Now if everything fell into place... Well, she couldn’t think about consequences right now. The truth was, if Beth didn’t strangle her, Adam would.

  “You’re awfully tense,” her future husband observed.

  “I always get tense for horse races.”

  “Yeah, but... Char, are you up to something again?”

  “Shh! There’s the gun.”

  Char jumped up and down and yelled so loud that everyone else missed the name of the winning horse. So, choking back her glee, she calmed herself and told them. “Stubborn Yankee.”

  Beth went pale. “What did you say?”

  Char repeated it for her, just as the television reporter stuck a microphone toward the ecstatic owner.

  Harlan Rockwood smiled his charmer’s smile for all of North America to see.

  Beth was on her feet. ‘‘That snake!”

  “Now, Beth,” Char said, “don’t judge him too fast. Remember our deal last fall?”

  Beth was biting her nails. “Yeah, yeah,” she said impatiently. “I let you invest my twenty grand in another horse scheme and agreed not to tell the Stiles men about

  it. That’s got nothing to do with having to watch my ex-husband on television. Lord, doesn’t he look so smug?”

  Adam cleared his throat, but Char ignored him. ‘‘Beth, there’s something I neglected to tell you. I would have, of course, but you’re so unreasonable when it comes to Harlan and, anyway, God forbid I should learn from one mistake.”

  “Uh-oh,” Adam said, just as his sister flew around at her best friend.

  “Char, don’t tell me. Please don’t tell me.”

  But Char was too pleased with herself not to tell her. “I used what money 1 needed to get back on my feet and invested the rest of what I had in another horse Harlan had high hopes for. That horse that just won the Kentucky Derby? Beth, we own part of that horse. Our share amounts to maybe a hoof, but it’s ours.”

  “Well, Stubborn Yankee,” Adam said to his sister, laughing, “what do you think of that?”

  This time it was Char who looked confused. “Stubborn Yankee is the name of the horse that just won.”

  “It was also,” Beth said in disgust, “my ex-husband’s nickname for me when we first met in college.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  From Beth’s look, Char could see she wasn’t kidding.

  “Oh, dear,” Char said.

  Adam, however, wasn’t taking his sister’s mortification seriously at all. “Why don’t you go down to Tennessee and pick up your winnings in person, Beth? You’re due time off at the mill.”

  She scowled at her older brother. “That snake in the grass would slither off the second he saw me coming.”

  “I don’t know,” Adam said, amused, “seems to me you and Mr. Rockwood have unfinished business, even after all this time.”

  “I’ll say we have unfinished business,” Beth said ominously.

  “And Char can’t go.”

  “What do you mean, I can’t go?” Char jumped in. “I don’t have anything pressing on my calendar, and I’ll speak for myself, thank you.”

  “Don’t go getting all hot under the collar. I just thought you might want to be around to help me put up our barn.”

  Char went still, thoroughly confused now. “Our barn? Adam Stiles, what are you talking about?”

  “An old-fashioned post-and-beam barn. I’ve ordered a kit for us. It’s sort of an engagement present.”

  “A barn,” Char said unenthusiastically, but her heart was filled with warmth for this sturdy, practical man she adored. “How typical of you, Adam. Honestly. Most men give their fiancé diamonds. Me, I get a barn.”

  “I didn’t say the barn was a present for you.”

  “It’s for you?”

  “And the kids. What goes in the barn’s for you.”

  “I’m not even going to guess,” she said.

  He slid his arms around her and held her close. “A friend of mine raises Morgans up near Montpelier. We’ve worked out a deal, and he has a colt for you to look at, if you’re interested.”

  “Interested?” Char threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, Adam, I love you.”

  “I’ve got a team coming in the morning to start clearing some land out back,” he said. “Speechless for a change, darling? If you can keep a secret from me, I can keep one from you.”

  “Adam...” But she couldn’t go on. She was speechless.

  “You can still have your dreams, love,” he said softly.

  “You’re my best dream.”

  “I hope so. I’d hate to be beaten out by a horse, even a Derby winner.”

  “I would have told you.”

  “And spoil all your fun? Not a chance. Char, my love, I do know you.”

  “Then I gather you’re not going to strangle me?”

  He laughed. “That’s not exactly what I had in mind.”

  And he kissed her on the mouth, right there in front of everyone.

  Read all three books in the delightful

  Mill Brook Trilogy!

  * * *

  Finders Keepers (Book 1)

  Within Reason (Book 2)

  That Stubborn Yankee (Book 3)

  That Stubborn Yankee

  * * *

  He would be safe in Vermont.

  It was an odd thought. Laughable, even. Harlan probably would have laughed, but for the pain in his head, his eyes, his jaw, his mouth and his abdomen. Especially his abdomen. Bruised, broken and exhausted, he had gotten off the midnight milkrun to Montpelier in the next town over from Mill Brook, Vermont. Standing in a noxious cloud of black bus fumes, he had considered his idiocy: had no cash, and no ID. Thugs were out looking for him. A sensible man would have called the police, or at least seen a doctor.

  Instead he had pushed up the sleeves of his black polo shirt and trudged the five miles to the outskirts of Mill Brook, the picturesque, New England home town of the one-time woman of his dreams.

  Elizabeth Stiles.

  Mean as a snake, dangerously beautiful, and his first true love. They were married for three short years and hadn’t seen each other in nearly ten.

  If he had stopped at a phone booth and called, would she have come and picked him up?

  Beth had always been a woman to approach with caution. There were things she could have done if her ex-husband had called her at midnight—the least of which was just to hang up on him. Harlan’s newfound caution compelled him to avoid downtown Mill Brook, where, even in the dead of the night, local gossips might alert his ex-wife to his presence. He had tried hitchhiking, but his bruised face, hobbling gait and the overnight case he clutched to his chest seemed to put drivers off.

  He needed to consider the men who had bruised and beaten him and forced him to flee New York. There was an off chance that they’d posted someone in his ex-wife’s h
ometown, in case he showed up. He didn’t want to be found. Not yet. Not on their terms. He liked to think his motives weren’t merely self-serving; he didn’t want the hoods who’d given him the beating of his life anywhere near Beth.

  Not that she wouldn’t handle herself just fine. If she didn’t go after them with an ax, she would hand him over.

  “It’s my ex-husband you’re after?” he imagined her saying. “By all means, take him!”

  Still hobbling, he urged himself on with the knowledge that he hadn’t much farther to go. Char, Beth’s best friend and new sister-in-law, had written him several weeks ago to inform him that Beth had bought Louie Wheeler’s old place.

  Remember? He’s the old geezer who thinks the world went to hell when they invented flush toilets. He’s retired to Miami now and has his own hot tub, God forbid. Beth paid too much for the place. She’s into being a pioneer Yankee. Beth says we’re all too soft. Honest, Harlan, I think she reads the encyclopedia at night and takes cold baths in the morning. She’s turning into a curmudgeon.

  Harlan grumbled his agreement. Beth Stiles had been a curmudgeon at age twenty. A hellishly sexy one. Irresistible to a southern gentleman like himself.

  I know I’m sticking my neck out, Char had written in conclusion, but Beth believes there isn’t a man alive who can stand to live with her. Mind you, she doesn’t think there’s a thing wrong with her. It’s men who’re the problem. Prove her wrong, Harlan. Beth needs you.

  Marriage to Beth’s older brother Adam had addled Charity Bradford’s brain and turned her into a hopeless romantic, Harlan thought. Elizabeth Stiles had managed fine for nine years without him in her life, and she would be the first to tell him that. She didn’t need him. As for wanting him—that was the stuff of fantasy. Predawn limps through Vermont notwithstanding, he considered himself a practical man.

  He remembered exactly where old Louie’s place was located: it was on a back road west of town, where more than two hundred years ago, Yankee pioneers had carved out fields for their cows and vegetables. The maze of stone walls and the giant sugar maples flanking the narrow, dirt road testified to the strength of character and the capacity for hard work of the men and women who had settled that harsh land. Beth viewed their lives as role models for her own and glossed over the history of her own ancestors, who’d been well-off for generations.