He took a sip of his tea, which had to be tepid. Stalling, then, getting his arguments lined up.
“Not my balls, but my best whisky, even better than the Highlander you just sampled. I’ll share the details if you’ll explain to me why you all but stole the cash reserves from your own business.”
“Somebody messed with your whisky?” Even Nathan hadn’t been that bold.
“With my best year, saved back in anticipation of celebrating the distillery’s two hundredth birthday. I trusted the wrong people, and I will not let them win.”
In a kilt, Magnus would look scrumptious, and his guile was impressive. The ruthlessness, though… Bridget liked his brand of ruthlessness best of all.
“I trusted the wrong person too,” she said, “and I will never, ever make that mistake again.”
Chapter 8
Bridget likened fine whisky to remembered lovemaking. That analogy worked for Magnus, provided the memory was of intimacies he’d shared with her.
At the vet clinic, she’d been silent and tense, until the small animal surgeon had declared the kitten a low-risk candidate for a routine procedure most cats recovered from easily. Lena’s three-legged pet would be the most pampered, treasured feline in Montana.
That mattered. Magnus didn’t examine why.
“You said you’d make Patrick repay you for the vet bill. How?” Bridget asked.
“I’m not sure, but it occurs to me that he needs to feel useful.”
“Hard for a guy to be useful when he’s dead drunk.”
The comment wasn’t meant to carry a sexual innuendo, but Magnus manufactured one. Down, boy.
“I’m not sure he was drunk. Your machine shop sits directly across from the sliding glass doors in my bedroom, and somebody kept a light on all night out there.” In the falling snow, that light had been pretty.
Bridget left off rearranging the cheese toast triangles on the tray. She’d eaten nothing and downed not even a sip of tea. Aunt Helga would have fussed her into taking sustenance, when all Magnus had to offer was damned whisky.
“Patrick used to draw all night,” Bridget said. “His daddy kicked up one hellacious ruckus over it, until Mama stepped in. Said the boy had a gift, and who was Dan Logan to interfere with a God-given talent? I had just realized that Patrick was probably missing my mama as much as I did, and then Judith had to go and die.”
Magnus let her have a moment to mull over that cheering insight while he took the uneaten food back to the counter and wrapped it in cellophane. He put away the tea things, set the kettle back on the burner, and put a teabag into a clean mug.
“You could just zap the tea in the microwave,” Bridget said.
“I’m making you a cup of peppermint tea. If you’re tired, you need a nap, not caffeine.”
He expected her to fire off one of her prairie metaphors, but she instead got up and stuffed another log in the woodstove.
“My business partner embezzled from the law office,” she said as casually as Magnus might have recited a football score. “But he was slick about it. Nathan has a whole oil spill worth of slick up his sleeve.”
“Nathan?”
“Nathan Sturbridge the Third, better known as good old Nate Sturbridge, counselor at law. Good-looking Montana pioneer stock. He’ll probably make judge before he’s forty.”
“And you hate him.” Magnus certainly did.
“I can’t afford to hate him. I just want him to go away.”
That was the exhausted version of hate, the kind too focused on survival to bother about justice, much less revenge.
“What happened?”
Bridget rose and propped a hip against the windowsill. “I trusted him, that’s what happened.”
“Hard to embezzle if nobody trusts you.”
The woodstove was crackling and popping, the fire finding new life.
“I don’t like the courtroom,” Bridget said. “I don’t like all that posturing and drama. I get plenty enough of it here at the Logan Bar. Most cases settle, especially most domestics, but invariably, I got the cases that didn’t settle. My clients got the crap plea bargains from the prosecutors, even the first offenders. I hated to go to work, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stay away from the office.”
Magnus wanted to hit somebody. “And you had law school loans.”
“Not as much as many people, but some. I was smart, though. I’d found a law partner who did like to litigate. All the misery and injustice rolled right off of him. Nate is good on his feet, the judges like him, the clients trust him. I did the trial preparation, got the witnesses lined up, met with the clients, found all the cases to cite, laid cross-examination out question by question. Nate did just enough to make one hell of an impression on all concerned. Even though I still handled some cases personally, I congratulated myself on having made lemonade out of lemons.”
The counters were clean, the food put away, and Magnus still wanted to hit somebody. The kettle began to whistle, so he filled the mug with hot water and handed it to Bridget.
For the sake of his own dignity, he took a seat on the couch three yards away. “You managed the books for the legal business?”
Bridget rose from the windowsill, set her tea on the coffee table, and disappeared down the hallway. Magnus at first thought she’d heeded the call of nature, but she returned carrying the quilt that had been on his bed. This one was blue and white and had a combination of circles that could also be four-petaled flowers, depending on perspective. It smelled of cedar, and despite the shop light shining in his window, he’d slept well and warmly beneath that quilt.
“I handled the books for the business,” Bridget said. “How hard could that be for a two-lawyer operation? Shamus has enough number-crunching to do for the ranch, and I didn’t want to impose. We had a tiny payroll—one admin, one paralegal—monthly partner draws, rent, office supplies, and client retainers. The retainers went into a trust fund until we earned our fees, and doing the bookkeeping took me less than one day a month.”
She wrapped herself in the quilt and settled in the corner of the couch, not touching Magnus, her feet drawn up on the cushions.
“You kept the books as an afterthought,” he said.
“We made good money, I had time for the distillery, and the clients were happy. I told Nate I wanted to cut back, take a smaller draw.”
“Because you were not happy.” Magnus tucked the quilt around her feet when he wanted to scoop her into his lap. That wouldn’t help her get through what she needed to say, though it might help Magnus listen to her.
She took a sip of her tea. “I was content, Magnus. For most of us, life isn’t a matter of spending down the trust fund.”
Elias, who moved in much more glamorous circles than Magnus ever would, often said something similar.
“What about for Nathan Sturbridge?”
“Nate has expensive tastes, but his family’s ranch is on the small side, and they don’t have the best land. They do okay with oil and gas leases, but not all of those leases are being renewed.”
“So he helped himself to the law firm’s cash reserves?”
Bridget wrapped herself more tightly in the quilt. “He helped himself to a client’s money. One type of law I do like is personal injury law, because again, it generally results in a commonsense outcome, once all the experts have chimed in. Our client got lucky, after a fashion, because the defendant was willing to pay up immediately and generously.”
Dread formed a knot in Magnus’s belly. “Mishandling client funds is dealt with severely in Scotland.”
“Here too. There’s a protocol observed with some of the larger settlements. The defendant pays out not to the plaintiff, but to plaintiff’s counsel. Then all the necessary releases and nondisclosure agreements are signed, notarized, and disseminated while the check clears. When the paperwork has been completed, and the time for appeals has gone by, the plaintiff’s lawyer cuts a check to the plaintiff and one for counsel’s fees.”
; All of which made sense, provided the attorneys involved were conscientious and honest. “What went wrong?”
“I trusted Nathan. I got in the habit of working over the lunch hour, so I could leave early and spend a few hours at the distillery each day. Nathan would drop by the bank on his way to grab a sandwich. If we had a deposit to make or funds due from the client account, he’d handle the transaction, though I filled out all the paperwork.”
Despite the roaring woodstove, Magnus’s end of the couch was chilly. He rose and took the place immediately beside Bridget. “I’ve often done likewise, relied on my admin to make a deposit or put a check in the post.”
“Well, don’t hire Nathan to be your admin. I endorsed the settlement check and signed it for deposit only.”
“He put it in his own account?”
“Nothing so obvious. He put the funds in our operating account rather than in the client security account. I always kept a few signed blank checks from the operating account under my blotter, just in case something happened while I was out of the office. Nathan used one of those signed emergency checks to move the money out of the operating account once the defendant’s check had cleared. My signature was on every step of the transaction, and the money was gone before I got around to doing my monthly bookkeeping.”
“How much?”
She named a figure that exceeded even the loan to shareholder on the distillery’s books.
“You cleaned out your personal savings, your business reserves, everything you had rather than try to hold him accountable. Why?”
“Because I’m a coward.”
Magnus put his arm around her shoulders. “You are not a coward.”
For a moment, she remained in her corner, neither accepting nor rejecting him. Then she rested her head on his shoulder.
“Judith died in a riding accident. The barley crop got hit with a late storm, Patrick went to hell, Lena wasn’t doing well. I might have gone to the bar association confidentially, except Nate is engaged to the bank president’s daughter. The bank holds the note on the ranch, and if Nate intimated that the Logans don’t keep clean books, that note might have been called. We have good and bad years—every ranch does—and our line of credit keeps us afloat in the bad years.”
“But that money went someplace, Bridget. You don’t have it, and Nathan does.”
She closed her eyes. “How do I prove I don’t have a huge wad of cash, Magnus? How do I prove Nate does? I’m not the FBI, able to get a bunch of snoopy warrants, and Nate’s not dumb enough to keep the money under his mattress.”
“So a man willing to commit multiple felonies continues to practice law?”
“I’m not in a position to take him down, Magnus. Nothing has really changed. We’re still reeling from Judith’s death, hanging on until the crops are in and the fall markets hit. I salvaged my distillery from the whole mess, and I don’t intend to relinquish it to the first handsome Scotsman to come along. Now more than ever, I need the whisky to keep me going.”
He knew exactly what she meant. When Celeste had left him, he’d been furious, and the only safe channel for his betrayal and humiliation had been to turn a conscientious interest in his business into an obsession.
Magnus rested his cheek against Bridget’s hair. “It doesn’t work, you know.”
She took another taste of her tea, yawned, and cuddled against him. “What doesn’t work?”
“You can’t change the world by selling more whisky. I’d like to pay a call on Mr. Sturbridge in some dark, deserted alley. He betrayed your trust and took advantage of you. Worse, he profited handsomely from doing so.”
Bridget was quiet, her breathing regular. Holding her warmed Magnus, though what comfort was an embrace when a woman had been dealt such a betrayal?
“I don’t want to change the world, Magnus,” she said after a time. “But if I can take water, barley, and yeast and make a beautiful single malt out of it, maybe I can take hard work, time, and perspective and make a life I can be proud of.”
The analogy rang true, but the recipe wasn’t right. Nathan Sturbridge had contaminated Bridget’s dreams, and until he’d been held to account, all the beautiful, golden whisky in all the markets in the world wouldn’t yield the result she craved.
“If it’s any consolation, I would have given my ex-wife signature authority at my distillery but for my cousin Elias threatening to leave the board if I did. I was willing to hand her my checkbook, Bridget. She’d intimated that we could start a family when the distillery was as much hers as mine, though we’d been married less than a year.”
“Conniving bitch,” Bridget muttered. “We shouldn’t be cuddling like this, Magnus.”
“Probably not.” Definitely not. But the desire to snuggle on the couch was mutual. That was something.
“Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.”
“I’m not your enemy, Bridget, and we’ve been much closer than this.”
She kissed him. “You’re a good sort of enemy. You’re a good sort of lover too.”
Where was Elias when a sound arse-kicking might have stopped Magnus from turning a difficult situation into an impossible muddle?
“Bridget, this isn’t wise.”
“Nope,” she said, shifting to straddle his lap. “It’s all messy, foolish, and backward, but you just heard the worst I could have told you about me, and you’re ready to pound Nathan to flinders. I like that about you.”
Magnus’s self-discipline was taking a beating as Bridget arranged her blanket around them both. “Anybody with an ounce of decency would want to pound him to dust. I’m after your distillery.”
“You’re not getting it.”
He kissed her, a wee nip of a kiss redolent of peppermint. Making love again would be exactly as Bridget had said: messy and foolish. But making whisky involved a lot of bubbling wort, odd fumes, used barrels, and dark warehouses.
From messiness and foolishness might come something precious. Magnus had no idea how, and the situation with Sturbridge made the whole business more complicated.
Embezzlement, cash-flow problems, a family in disarray, and a board of crotchety elders resistant to change… all of that would have to wait, until Bridget was done kissing him.
“Where are you going?” Shamus’s question came out more sharply than he’d intended, but Patrick merely shrugged off his hand.
“Out to the shop. Maybe do some sketching.”
After Bridget and Magnus had left for the vet clinic, Patrick had gone up to his bedroom, shut the door, and not been seen for three hours. Now he was preparing to waltz out the front door and very likely embark on a dedicated drinking binge.
“You haven’t apologized to Lena for squashing her kitten, Patrick. How can hiding in the shop be more important than that?” Though if Patrick was drawing anything, that was a good sign.
“For your information, baby brother, Lena is busily drawing three-legged kittens, along with a few unicorns. They look like horses to me, but she says they’re unicorns who had to have their horns removed at the vet clinic. They still have their magic powers, as it turns out.”
Patrick jammed his hat onto his head. Shamus knocked it off before Patrick could get a hand on the doorknob. “You didn’t apologize to that kid when you nearly stomped her kitten to death.”
Patrick was sober, Shamus would have bet his favorite pair of ski boots on that, but Patrick was also different. Shamus was terrified that difference was a bad thing, an even worse thing than Patrick’s growing affection for the bottle.
Patrick looked at the cowboy hat sitting upside down on the great-room carpet. “All righty, Shamus. Let’s do this. We’re overdue, after all.”
In the next instant, Shamus was on his ass on the carpet, six-feet-plus of older brother trying to wrestle him onto his back. The great room was the best place to roughhouse, because there was space enough and the furniture was sturdy.
A bolt of sheer, animal glee punctured Shamus’s ire, becaus
e Patrick was right: They were way, way overdue for a wrestling match.
Patrick had had the advantage of surprise, but Shamus called on months of pent-up rage, bewilderment, and worry to even the match. Years ago, Bridget had demanded a rule of them—never hit your brother with a closed fist—and no brother had ever violated that rule.
Shamus was grateful for old restraint, because he wanted to pound the crap—pound the grief—out of Patrick, along with the despair and the growing indifference to everything that mattered.
Patrick apparently had a few agenda items of his own. He’d grown bony since he and Shamus had last wrestled, but he was still quicker than a summer trout going after a fly.
“You apologize to Lena,” Shamus panted, gaining a momentary upper hand.
Patrick feinted, seeming to capitulate and then catching Shamus unaware as he escaped an almost-half-nelson. “I did, goshdangit. Told her I was sorry, and that only made her cry again. You’re the one who didn’t want to pay a few vet bills.”
True, and not something Shamus was proud of. “Maybe if you put your dad-blamed backside in the saddle from time to time, did something to earn your draw, those vet bills wouldn’t have been a problem.”
That provoked another round of scuffling, scraping, and knocking lights over.
Patrick trapped Shamus’s head against the carpet. “All you do is sit on your prissy butt in Dad’s office and stare at the same numbers month after month. You know that resort better than you know your own ugly face. Why haven’t you been helping Bridget sell her whisky up there?”
“She won’t let me help, dadgum you.”
The pressure on Shamus’s body eased. “Figured as much, but you haven’t offered either. When is Luke going to propose to Willy?”
“What in the blazing, stinking hell has gotten into you?”
Patrick rose and offered Shamus a hand up. “A dose of fresh mountain air. I was up drawing for most of the night because I have a few ideas that might turn into something. Saw Luke and Willy out in the mare’s barn around midnight, and it’s a wonder the whole place didn’t burn down.”
Big Sky Ever After: a Montana Romance Duet Page 34
