“I doubt he’ll bother me.”
“With the dog door, he can come as he likes. I should probably tell you, he thinks he owns the house. He’s used to going up the stairs to visit either Sage when she lived here or Julia and the twins. If he whines outside your door, just send him back downstairs.”
“He won’t bother me. If he whines, I’ll invite him inside. He’s welcome to hang out upstairs. I don’t mind the company.”
He petted the dog with an unfeigned affection that warmed her, though she knew it shouldn’t. Most people liked Conan, though Grayson Fletcher never had. That in itself should have been all the red flags she needed that the man was trouble.
“Well, don’t feel obligated to entertain him. I would just ask that you close the gate behind you if you leave so he can’t leave the yard. He tends to take off if there’s a stray cat in the neighborhood.”
“I’ll do that.” He paused. “Would you have any objection if I take Conan along if I go anywhere? He kind of reminds me of a…dog I once knew.”
At the sound of his name, the dog barked eagerly, his tail wagging a mile a minute.
Conan would adore any outing, she knew, but she couldn’t contain a few misgivings.
“Conan can be a little energetic when he wants to be. Are you certain you can restrain him on the leash if he decides to take off after a squirrel or something?”
“Because of this, you mean?” he asked stiffly, gesturing to the sling. “My other arm still works fine.”
She nodded, feeling foolish. “Of course. In that case, I’m sure Conan would love to go along with you anywhere. He loves riding in the car and he’s crazy about any excuse to get some exercise. I’m afraid my schedule doesn’t allow me to give him as much as he would like. Here, let me grab his leash for you just in case.”
She headed for the hook by the door but Conan had heard the magic word—leash—and he bounded in front of her, nearly dancing out of his fur with excitement.
Caught off balance by seventy-five pounds of dog suddenly in her way, she stumbled a little and would have fallen into an ignominious heap if Lieutenant Maxwell hadn’t reached out with his uninjured arm to help steady her.
Instant heat leaped through her, wild and shocking. She was painfully cognizant of the hard male strength of him, of his mouth just inches away, of those hazel eyes watching her with a glittery expression.
She didn’t think she had ever, in her entire existence, been so physically aware of a man. Of his scent, fresh-washed and clean, of the muscles that held her so securely, of the strong curve of his jawline.
She might have stayed there half the morning, caught in the odd lassitude seeping through her, except she suddenly was quite certain she smelled freesia as she had earlier during breakfast.
The scent eddied around them, subtle and sweet, but it was enough to break the spell.
She jerked away from him before she could do something abysmally stupid like kiss the man.
“I’m sorry,” she exclaimed. “I’m so clumsy sometimes. Are you all right? Did I hurt you?”
A muscle worked in his jaw, though that strange light lingered in his eyes. “I’m not breakable, Anna. Don’t worry about it.”
Despite his words, she was quite certain she saw lines of pain bracketing his mouth. With three older brothers, though, she had learned enough about the male psyche to sense he wouldn’t appreciate her concern.
She let out a long breath. This had to be the strangest morning of her life.
“Here’s the leash,” she said. “If you decide to take Conan with you, just call his name and rattle this outside my door and he should come running in an instant.”
He nodded. For a moment, she thought he might say something about the surge of heat between them just now, but then he seemed to change his mind.
“Thanks again for breakfast,” he said. “I would offer to return the favor but I’m afraid you’d end up with cold cereal.”
She managed a smile, though she was certain it wasn’t much of one. He gazed at her for a long moment, his features unreadable, then he headed for the door.
Conan danced around behind him, his attention glued to the leash, but she managed to close the door before the dog could escape to follow him up the stairs.
He whined and slumped against the door and she leaned against it, absently rubbing the dog’s ears as that freesia scent drifted through the apartment again.
“Cut it out, Abigail,” she spoke aloud. Lieutenant Maxwell would surely think she was crazy if he heard her talking to a woman who had been dead nearly a year.
Still, there had been that strange moment at breakfast when she had been almost positive he sensed something in the kitchen. His eyes had widened and he had seemed almost disconcerted.
Ridiculous. There had been nothing there for him to sense. Abigail was gone, as much as she might wish otherwise. She was just too prosaic to believe Sage and Julia’s theory that their friend still lingered here at Brambleberry House.
And even if she did buy the theory, why would Abigail possibly make herself known to Harry Maxwell? It made no sense.
Sage believed Abigail had played a hand in her relationship with Eben, that she had carefully orchestrated events so they would both finally be forced to admit they belonged together.
Though Julia didn’t take things quite that far, she also seemed to believe Abigail had helped her and Will find their happily-ever-after.
But Abigail had never even met Harry Maxwell. Why on earth would she want to hook him up with Anna?
She heard the ludicrous direction of her thoughts and shook her head. She had far too much to do today to spend any more time speculating on the motives of an imaginary matchmaking ghost.
She wasn’t about to let herself fall prey to any beyond-the-grave romantic maneuvering between her and a certain wounded soldier with tired, suspicious eyes.
Max returned to his third-floor aerie to be greeted by his cell phone belting out his mother’s ringtone.
He winced and made a mental note to change it before she caught wind of the song one of his bunkmates at Walter Reed had programmed as a joke after Meredith’s single visit to see him in the six months after the crash.
His mother wouldn’t be thrilled to know he heard Heart singing “Barracuda” every time she called.
When he was on painkillers, he had found it mildly amusing—mostly because it was right on the money. Now he just found it rather sad. For much the same reason.
He thought about ignoring her but he knew Meredith well enough to be sure she would simply keep calling him until he grew tired of putting her off, so he finally picked it up.
With a sigh, he opened his phone. “Hi, Mom,” he greeted, feeling slightly childish in the knowledge that he only used the word because he knew it annoyed her.
She had been insisting since several years before he hit adolescence that he must call her Meredith but he still stubbornly refused.
“Where were you, Maxwell? I’ve been calling you for an hour.” Her voice had that prim, tight tone he hated.
“I was at breakfast. I must have left my phone here.”
He decided to keep to himself the information that he was downstairs eating Abigail’s French toast with Anna Galvez.
“You said you would call me when you arrived.”
“You’re right. That’s what I said.”
He left his sentence hanging between them, yet another strategy he had learned early in his dealings with her mother. She wouldn’t listen to explanations anyway so he might as well save them both the time and energy of offering.
The silence dragged on but he held his ground. Finally she heaved a long-suffering sigh and surrendered.
“What have you found?” she asked. “Have those women gutted the house and sold everything in it?”
He gazed around at the apartment with its new coat of paint and kitchen cabinets and he thought of the downstairs apartment, with its spacious new floor plan.
�
��I wouldn’t exactly say that.”
“Brambleberry House was filled with priceless antiques. Some of them were family heirlooms that should have gone to you. I can’t believe Abigail didn’t do a better job of preserving them for you. You’re her only living relative and those family items should be yours.”
Since she had backed down first, he let her ramble on about the injustice of it all—as if Meredith cared about anyone’s history beyond her own.
“I was apparently mistaken to let you visit her all those summers. When I think of the expense and time involved in sending you there, I just get furious all over again.”
He happened to know Abigail had paid for every plane ticket and Meredith had looked on those two weeks as her vacation from the ordeal of motherhood but he decided to let that one slide, too.
“She must have been crazy at the end,” Meredith finally wound down to say. “That’s the only explanation that makes sense. Why else would she leave the house to a couple of strangers when she could have left it to her favorite—and only—nephew?”
“We’ve had this conversation before,” he said slowly. “I can’t answer that, Mom.”
“What do you intend to do, then? Have you spoken with an attorney yet about contesting the will?”
“It’s been nearly a year since Abigail died. I can’t just show up out of nowhere and start fighting over the house.”
He didn’t need Brambleberry House. What did he care about some decaying old house on the coast? He certainly didn’t need any inheritance from Abigail. His father had been a wealthy, successful land developer.
Though he died suddenly, he had been conscientious—or perhaps grimly aware of his wife’s expensive habits. He had left his young son an inviolable trust fund that Meredith couldn’t touch.
Through wise investments over the years, Max had parlayed that inheritance into more money than one man—or ten—could spend in a lifetime.
The money didn’t matter to him. Abigail did. She had been his rock through childhood and he owed her at least some token effort to make sure she had been competent in her last wishes.
“You most certainly can fight over it! That house should belong to you, Maxwell. You’re entitled to it.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not entitled to anything.”
“That’s nonsense,” Meredith snapped. “You have far more claim on Brambleberry House than a couple of grubby little gold diggers. Did you contact Abigail’s attorney yet?”
He sighed, ready to pull the old bad-connection bit so he could end the call. “I’ve been in town less than twenty-four hours, Mom. I haven’t had a chance yet.”
“You have to swear you’ll contact me the moment you know anything. The very moment.”
He had a fleeting, futile wish that his mother had been as concerned when her son was shot down by enemy fire as she apparently was about two strangers inheriting a house she had despised.
The moment the thought registered, he pushed it quickly away. He had made peace a long time ago with the reality that his mother had a toxic, self-absorbed personality.
He couldn’t change that at thirty-five any more than he had been able to when he was eight.
For the most part, both of them rubbed together tolerably well as long as they were able to stay out of the other’s way.
“I’ll do that. Goodbye, Mom.”
He hung up a second later and gazed at the phone for a long moment, aware she hadn’t once asked about his arm. Just like Meredith. She preferred to pretend anything inconvenient or unpleasant just didn’t exist in her perfect little world.
If Brambleberry House had been some worthless shack somewhere, she wouldn’t have given a damn about it. She certainly wouldn’t have bothered to push him so hard to check into the situation.
And he likely would have ignored her diatribes about the house if not for his own sense of, well, hurt that Abigail hadn’t bothered to leave him so much as a teacup in her will.
It made no sense to him. She had loved him. Her Jamie, she called him, a nickname he had rolled his eyes at. James had been his father’s name and it was his middle name. Abigail seemed to get a kick out of being the only one to ever call him that.
They had carried on a lively e-mail correspondence no matter where he was stationed and he thought she might have mentioned sometime in all that some reason why she was cutting him out of her will.
He had allowed his mother to half convince him Sage Benedetto and Anna Galvez must have somehow finagled their way into Abigail’s world and conned her into leaving the house and its contents to them. It now seemed a silly notion. Abigail had been sharp as a tack. She would have seen through obvious gold-digging.
But she was also very softhearted. Perhaps the women had played on her sympathy somehow.
Or maybe she just had come to love two strangers more than she loved her own nephew.
He sighed, disgusted with the pathetic, self-pitying direction of his thoughts.
After spending the last hour with Anna Galvez, he wasn’t sure what to think. She seemed a woman of many contradictions. Tough, hard-as-nails businesswoman one moment, softly feminine chef with an edge of vulnerability the next.
It could all be an act, he reminded himself. Still, he couldn’t deny his attraction to her. She was a lovely woman and he was instinctively drawn to her.
Under other circumstances, he might have even liked her.
He heard a vehicle start up below and moved to the window overlooking the driveway. He saw her white, rather bland minivan carefully back out of the driveway then head south toward Lincoln City.
The woman was a mystery, one he was suddenly eager to solve.
Chapter Five
This was a stupid idea.
Just after noon, Max slipped into the condiment aisle of the small grocery store in town, cursing his bad luck—and whatever idiotic impulse had led him to ever think he could get away with assuming a false identity in this town.
He must have been suffering the lingering effects of the damn painkillers. That was the only explanation that made sense.
It had seemed like such a simple plan. Just slip into town incognito, then back out again without anybody paying him any mind.
The idea should have worked. Cannon Beach was a tourist town, after all, and he figured he would be considered just one more tourist.
He had forgotten his aunt had known every permanent resident in town. Scratch that. Abigail probably had known every single person along the entire northern coast.
He felt ridiculous, hovering among the ketchup and steak sauce and salad dressing bottles. He peeked around the corner again, trying to figure out how he could get out of the store without being caught by the woman with the short, steel-gray hair and trendy tortoiseshell glasses.
Betsy Wardle had been one of Abigail’s closest friends. He knew the two of them used to play Bunco on a regular basis. If Betsy recognized him, the entire jig would be up.
He had met her several times before, as recently as four years earlier, the last time he stayed with his aunt.
He couldn’t see any way to avoid having her recognize him now. The worst of it was, Betsy was an inveterate gossip. Word would be out all over town that Abigail’s nephew was back, and of course that word would be quick to travel in Anna’s direction.
He had two choices, as he saw it. He could either leave his half-full grocery cart right here and do his best to hightail it out of the store without being caught or he could just play duck-and-run and try to avoid her until she paid for her groceries and left.
He shoved on his sunglasses and averted his face just in time as she rounded the corner with her cart. He pushed past her, hoping like hell she was too busy picking out gourmet mustard to pay him any attention.
To be on the safe side, he turned in the direction she had just come and would have headed several aisles away but he suddenly heard an even more dreaded sound than Betsy Wardle’s soft southern drawl.
Anna Galvez was sud
denly greeting the older woman with warm friendliness.
He groaned and closed his eyes. Exactly the last person he needed to see right now when Betsy could expose him at any second. What was she doing here? Wasn’t she supposed to be in Lincoln City right now?
He definitely needed to figure out a way out of here fast. He started to head toward the door when Betsy’s words stopped him and he paused, pretending to compare the nutritional content of two different kinds of soy chips while he listened to their conversation one aisle over.
“How is your court case going against that awful man?” Betsy was asking.
“Who knows?” Anna answered with a discouraged-sounding sigh.
“The whole thing is terrible. Unconscionable. That’s what I say. I just can’t believe that man would work so hard to gain your trust and then take advantage of a darling girl like you. It’s just not fair.”
“Oh, Betsy. Thank you. I appreciate the support of you and Abigail’s other friends. It means the world to me.”
He wished he could see through the aisle to read her expression. She sounded sincere but he couldn’t tell just by hearing her voice.
“I know I’ve told you this before and you’ve turned me down but I mean it. If you need me to testify on your behalf or anything, you just say the word. Why, when I think of how much you did for Abigail in her last years, it just breaks my heart that you’re suffering so now. You were always at Brambleberry House helping with her taxes or paying bills for her or whatever she needed. You’re a darling girl and I wouldn’t hesitate a minute to tell that Lincoln City jury that very thing.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Wardle,” Anna answered. “While, again, I appreciate your offer, I don’t think it will come to that. I’m not the one on trial, Grayson Fletcher is.”
“I know that, honey, but from what I’ve read in the papers, it sounds like it’s mostly his word against yours. I’m just saying I’m happy to step up if you need it.”
“You’re a dear, Mrs. Wardle. Thank you. I’ll be sure to let the prosecutor know.”
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