“Mr. Sessoms,” she replied.
“How’s Harlan this morning? Now, now. No more arguing. I know he’s up at your place.”
Before she could make her umpteenth denial, Adam spoke up. “If you’ll move your car, Mr. Sessoms, we’ll—” He stopped, and Beth heard his sharp intake of air. “Oh, hell.”
She started to speak, then saw the long-barreled gun Jimmy Sessoms was leveling at her older brother’s head. “You can stay here,” Sessoms told Adam, “and I’ll take your sister on back to her place. She and I’ll talk to Harlan together.”
“Why the devil won’t you listen?” Adam demanded. “Harlan isn’t there.”
Gathering her wits, Beth cautiously curled her fingers around the handle of the passenger door. She had no idea what Sessoms would do next. She only knew that she wouldn’t abandon her brother. Or, if it came to that, Harlan.
“Mrs. Rockwood and I,” Sessoms said, “we know better, don’t we, ma’am?”
Despite his charming drawl, Sessoms’ eyes were hard. Then, in a swift motion, he flipped the gun around. Guessing what was coming, Adam jerked the truck back into Drive and stepped on the gas pedal, but couldn’t move fast enough; the gun came down on the side of his head, hard. Beth yelled, but could see her brother was out cold. The truck slid forward, toward the ditch at the base of the driveway.
Sessoms backed off, giving Beth the few seconds she needed to push open the passenger door and leap out of the moving truck. She landed on her feet. Unable to sustain her balance on the steep side of the ditch, she fell to her knees. She couldn’t run up to the house. Char might be there, and Abby, David, Emily. Three children and her best friend. There was no way she would lead a man with a gun to them.
Not that she would have had a chance.
As she stumbled to her feet, she saw Jimmy Sessoms standing on the edge of the small culvert at the base of Adam’s driveway, his gun pointed at her. She had no idea how good a shot he was, and had no intention of finding out.
She swore.
‘‘Not very ladylike,” he said.
“My brother...”
“I didn’t kill him. If you light out of here and make me chase you, though, I might.”
She nodded and followed him to his rented car. He nudged her in and pushed her into the driver’s seat. The keys were in the ignition. “You take the wheel. I’m not out to hurt anyone, but one false move and I’ll shoot.”
“Great.” she said under her breath. “Where are we going?”
“Your place, of course.”
She acquiesced, unsure whether or not she should be glad that Harlan wouldn’t be there.
“WHAT’S YOUR NEXT move ?” Harlan asked as he walked Saul to his car, an ancient sports car that looked right at home parked next to Beth’s Chevy.
“Go over this stuff—” he held up the envelope “—and attach myself to my computer until I finish writing this story. Convince my editor to give it a big play. Don’t worry, Rockwood. It’ll get done. Penmountain’s out of business.”
“You can use my name.”
“Love you honorable southern types. Yeah, I will if I need to. Ever think of giving up the good life and becoming a reporter?”
Harlan smiled. “Never.”
“Well, you didn’t just open a can of worms with this one, pal. You opened a barrel of snakes.” Saul smiled. “I smell a Pulitzer. Stay in touch, okay?”
“You, too.”
They shook hands, and Harlan stayed put as Saul climbed into his battered car.
Put on the alert by the sound of an approaching car, Harlan spotted the car Jimmy Sessoms had rented barreling toward them.
“Move it, Saul.” Harlan didn’t bother darting for the woods, not this time. All his senses told him something was wrong. “We’ve got company. Head straight down Maple. It’ll lead somewhere.”
“Got it. You’ll be okay here?”
“If I’m not, nail Penmountain to the wall.”
“Oh, I’ll do that, anyway.”
He sped off in a cloud of exhaust fumes. Harlan stood steady on the dirt driveway, resisting the temptation to go for Beth’s ax. An escalation of violence wasn’t what he wanted. It was tough to plead innocence with an ax in your hand.
All the same, when he saw Beth, white-faced, behind the wheel, he would have gone after Jimmy Sessoms with a paring knife, and almost did with his bare hands. He checked the impulse. He would have to wait for his opening. Make one.
Nothing could happen to Beth.
Nothing.
He loved her more than he’d ever thought he could love anyone.
The car scrunched to a stop. Holding the gun on Beth, Sessoms dragged her with him out through the passenger door.
She looked fit to be tied. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “I thought you were going up to the academy! Dammit, Rockwood, you told me...”
“I lied,” he said.
There was no fury like that of a stubborn, gorgeous Yankee who’d been lied to one time too many. She called him enough unkind names to prove that she worked around burly mountain men sawyers, and her pale face turned red.
Jimmy Sessoms warned her to shut up.
“Shoot him,” Beth said, gesturing madly toward her ex-husband. “Go on and shoot him. He deserves to be shot. Here I am, trying to save his miserable hide, and he has the gall to be here.”
“Mrs. Rockwood, if you don’t keep quiet...”
“Dammit, then I’ll shoot him!”
She went for Sessoms’ gun, transforming herself from a maniac into a coolheaded opponent with such speed and electricity that he was caught off guard. The gun went flying. Harlan, who’d hoped she was putting on an act when she started to talk about having him shot, snatched up the gun.
Sessoms had Beth’s arm twisted around her back and, no doubt, was ready to break it or strangle her. Harlan leveled the heavy gun at him.
Red-faced and perspiring, Jimmy Sessoms hesitated. Harlan understood why. Sessoms had to know he wouldn’t kill him, and breaking the arm of one exasperating Yankee might be worth a bullet in the arm or leg.
He dropped her wrist, and she darted out of his reach. Harlan bristled. “You could have gotten us both killed.”
“Well, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black.”
“You meet Rabinowitz?” Sessoms asked.
“You were five minutes too late.”
Beth fastened her most vicious gaze on Sessoms. “Good. Now you can pray my brother’s all right.”
Harlan felt his heart pounding, harder even than when he and Beth had been in danger. Okay, so he’d dragged her into this mess with him. They were a team. Partners, lovers. He’d given her countless opportunities to pull back. But Adam?
“Beth?”
She didn’t have to answer. They both turned at the sounds of sirens and speeding vehicles. Probably for the first time in the last century or two, Maple Street was crowded with vehicles. Police cars, trucks, a brand-new Jeep Cherokee. The entire Mill Brook police department—two officers—had apparently been called out. And there was Julian, looking fierce, Adam, blood dripping down the side of his head, and Char, leading the pack with her tire iron.
“People around here look after each other,” Harlan observed.
Beth smiled at him. “Yeah, they do.”
“TOWN’LL BE FEEDING off this one for years,” Julian grumbled.
Beth sniffed. “At least you’ll be around to hear the gossip.”
He merely glowered at her.
“Marry her,” Adam ordered Harlan, as if his sister had no say in the matter. “Mill Brook can’t take much more of this.”
Beth started to protest that “this” had nothing whatever to do with her and Marian’s relationship, but with her ex-husband’s propensity for trouble and his closemouthed ways. She was thoroughly ignored. Adam, Julian and Char—who’d provided her unrequested legal advice for free—headed to a local tavern for drinks. Beth and Harlan were pointedly not invited, she not
ed.
There was nothing for her to do but drive her ex-husband back to her place. “I suppose,” she said, “Saul would be upset if the Mill Brook Bulletin scooped his story.”
Harlan laughed. “Upset isn’t the word. I have a feeling Lord Penmountain wouldn’t hold a candle to Saul on a tear.”
“Saul doesn’t have anything to worry about, does he? You told the police the bare essentials. It’s unlikely Jimmy Sessoms is going to blab.”
His laughter faded. “It’s a question of priorities.”
They drove along in silence. Beth turned down Maple Street and bit her lower lip hard, so she wouldn’t ask. She hadn’t yet and she wouldn’t. If Harlan wanted to tell her what he knew about Sessoms and why he’d lied, he would.
She pulled into her driveway and welcomed the peace, the chill in the breeze, the scurrying of her animals. Only someone as in love with him as she was could know how exasperating he could be.
Harlan grinned at her over the top of the Chevy. “All those nasty names you called me. You were putting on an act?”
“Not a chance, Rockwood.”
He was unperturbed. “You had some new ones in there.”
“I was just getting warmed up.”
“All bark and no bite, isn’t she?” he said to her cocker spaniel, patting his head. “We know how to handle Yankee crankpots.”
It was all the warning she got.
Catching her as she came around the front of the car, he scooped her up, one arm around her middle, and hauled her onto the porch. She was not a light woman. Still, he had no problem and wasn’t even breathing hard when he kicked open her front door and carried her inside.
He dropped her onto the couch. His face was slightly red. That could have been from pure aggravation. He looked as if he’d done nothing more strenuous than haul in a sack of potatoes.
“Time we talked,” he told her.
Sprawled on the couch, Beth tucked up her feet under her and sat sideways. “I’ve been talking right along. You’re the one who hasn’t been talking.”
“All right.” He raked one hand through his hair. “It’s time we talked.”
“Bravo.”
“Don’t give me that sanctimonious look.” He pointed a finger at her. “You, darlin’, are no saint. Taking on Sessoms like that... It was enough to turn a simple crook into a killer.”
She sighed. “You’re welcome.”
“I’m not thanking you.”
“Are you going to keep shouting at me?” she asked calmly.
Tightening his hands into fists, he sat down on the soft, cozy couch next to her feet. “No, I’m not.” He looked at her; his eyes had never been so green. “It’s fear, you know.”
She couldn’t speak. Filled with emotion, she realized how accustomed she’d grown to doing exactly as she pleased, with nothing to concern her except the occasional grumblings of Char and her brothers. Building a life with another person required compromise, caring and courtesy. They were things she would both expect and give.
“When Sessoms dragged you out of his car at gunpoint—” Harlan broke off, briefly shutting his eyes. ‘‘Here I’d come so close—we’d come so close. For a split second, when I questioned my assessment of Sessoms, I imagined having to go on again without you. It was a bleak picture, not one of the life I wanted.”
“Harlan...”
He held up a hand and cleared his throat, getting himself back under control. “Sessoms first. We’ll get to us. There’ll be time.”
She nodded. She knew there would be.
“I knew he was a greedy little bastard. After my mother hired him, he caught wind of what was happening. My guess is Penmountain’s men suggested it’d be more profitable if he turned me over to them instead of simply reporting my whereabouts back to my mother.”
“That’s how he knew you’d been beaten up. It wasn’t just a lucky guess.”
“Right. I’d hoped he’d buy the story about my having gone fishing, but he didn’t. He kept pushing. That confirmed my suspicions. I stopped in at his office to warn him off, but he’d already headed up to Vermont. So off I went.”
“Wait a minute.”’ Beth sat up straight. “You couldn’t have had time to drive the Rover up. Sessoms was here on Thursday. So were you.”
“I flew and took one expensive cab from Albany.”
She stared at him. “Another lie?”
“A white lie.” He smiled, leaning toward her. “If I’d told you I’d flown, you’d have known I had a bee in my bonnet about something, and there’d have been no peace until you knew what. As it was, there was precious little peace.”
“So where’s the Rover?”
“In Tennessee. I already spoke to Julian about it.”
Julian wouldn’t get mad at Harlan, though. He’d scream and yell at her for borrowing it in an emergency. “My brothers always had a soft spot for you. Did they know Sessoms was from the wrong side of the river?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t tell anyone, even Saul.”
“Then you didn’t come here to cool your heels and be with me. You came here to nail Sessoms.”
“I came here, you silly ass, out of deep concern for your safety. As much as you talk about me jumping on my white horse, you, lady, have damned little room to talk. You’ll jump on anything streaking past you at ninety miles an hour. You’ll think first—yeah, sure. Then you’ll jump anyway.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “We do make a pair, don’t we?”
“A hell of a pair.”
“Why did you lie about meeting Saul?’’
“Because I figured something would happen, and if you decided to spy on me or were forced to take Sessoms to me, you’d go to the wrong place. I had no idea you’d end up back here.” He shrugged off his mistake. “Can’t win ‘em all.”
She sighed. “I guess it worked out in the end.”
He looked at her, his eyes lost in the shadows of the afternoon. “Did it?”
“We’re both alive.”
“We’ve been alive the last nine years.”
“Yes. We needed those years, Harlan. We needed those years, so we can have now.”
“And tomorrow?”
“And tomorrow.”
“Forever,” he whispered, and his mouth descended to hers.
Epilogue
They were married three weeks later, with none of the fanfare of the first time, but with ail of the hope, the promise, and ten times the confidence. The ceremony took place in the front yard of old Louie’s place. Beth had even mowed for the occasion, except for the section over by the woodshed where wildflowers continued to bloom. She and Harlan had picked black-eyed Susans and daisies for the buffet table, which they’d covered with handmade quilts they’d found in the attic. Glowing from the attention of the national media he’d garnered with his expose on corruption in the thoroughbred-racing world, Saul Rabinowitz told them it was their good fortune he wasn’t a gossip columnist, because he’d have had a field day with this event. As he’d predicted, Lord Penmountain had called off the thugs and brought in the lawyers. Beth was delighted. She wouldn’t have to explain hired security guards to her wedding guests.
She’d forgotten about her animals, though, and a few moments before she and Harlan said, “I do,” she glanced back and saw the tabby swirling around
Eleanor Rockwood’s ankles. Eleanor, far more gracious than Beth, as a nineteen-year-old rebel, had been able to recognize, picked up the cat and held him, purring, until the ceremony was safely over. Then she discreetly went inside, no doubt to wash her hands. Beth didn’t think to tell her about the lack of hot water.
Eleanor caught up with her daughter-in-law at the reception. “What a charming place you have up here. The view is priceless. I know you and Harlan will make it into a lovely home. It reminds me somewhat of my childhood in Coffee County, before I met Taylor. Don’t you think washtub baths are romantic?”
Beth nearly choked. “Yes—yes, in a way they are.
But I think they’d lose some of their romance in the dead of winter.”
Not that winter needed to be a problem. She and Harlan would have two homes, his “farm” on the Cumberland River, her ramshackle house in Vermont. Each would give a little. He would downsize his stables to accommodate new interests, like gut rehabs of old New England homes. She would redefine her role at Mill Brook Post and Beam, recognizing that the roles of her brothers and herself had been ebbing and flowing since they’d first gone into business together. She would hire out the boring parts of her job, keep the interesting ones and go on from there.
Camped in the fields one night, they’d agreed that compromise was an act of strength and independence, not of weakness and dependence,
“Oh, Beth,” Eleanor Rock wood was saying, “I know you didn’t have a chance to meet my Aunt Tilly. You never met when you and Harlan were first married. She was away doing mission work in Africa, remember? Aunt Tilly, I’d like you to meet my daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Stiles. Beth, Tilly Duncan.”
Beth was almost speechless at her mother-in-law’s introduction. As she shook the tiny, elderly woman’s hand, for the first time she really felt as if she belonged among the Rockwoods, simply as herself.
After the reception, Harlan couldn’t wait to get away. They’d cleared their calendars for a week. No interviews, no lawyers, no horses, no dogs, no cats, no chickens, no mill. Beth’s one request was that wherever they went, there should be hot running water. Harlan’s one request was that they go in her Chevy. It’d be like the old days, he’d said. She didn’t believe him. She thought he simply wanted to run her car into the ground.
They went around to the driveway, and their wedding guests—family and friends—followed.
Harlan stared at the gaudily decorated honeymoon car. It had had all the traditional, idiotic things done to it, including tin cans tied to the rear bumper. Beth grinned. “My brothers occasionally turn into adolescents.”
“But that—that’s not the Chevy.”
That Stubborn Yankee Page 15
