“Wait!” Mrs. Bickerstaff stated aloud what Rand’s heart was shouting. “I have a favor to ask, Brynn, although I really shouldn’t, considering how much you do for me already.”
Brynn’s smile for the woman was filled with affection and made Rand wish she’d look at him that way. “Anything you need, Mrs. Bickerstaff. I’m happy to help.”
“It involves your young man here.”
Brynn smile vanished. “He’s not my young man.”
Mrs. Bickerstaff flicked an age-spotted hand, dismissing Brynn’s objection. “I want you to bring him out to my house next week.”
“What?” Brynn’s mouth dropped open.
Rand blinked in surprise. This was his lucky day. The two things he wanted most, being with Brynn and checking out Blackberry Farm, had dropped into his lap like a present from the blue.
Mrs. Bickerstaff turned to him. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“I’d be happy to visit you.”
“But—” Brynn sputtered.
“It’s not a social call,” the old woman said. “It’s business.”
“Business?” Rand’s mind whirled. Had the shrewd old woman gotten wind of his purpose? Was she willing to sell? Was she actually going to make his job that easy? Her next words took the wind from his sails.
“I need you to draw up my will.”
“Your will?” Brynn had finally found her voice. “You don’t have a will, Mrs. Bickerstaff?”
“Of course I do. Anyone my age would be a fool not to. But I want mine changed. And the sooner the better.”
“You’re not ill?” Brynn’s concerned gaze raked the woman’s face.
“Fit as a fiddle,” Mrs. Bickerstaff said, “but at ninety-six, I don’t have time to dally. And I don’t want to travel all the way to that attorney in Walhalla for a new will. If you’d take care of it, Rand, I’d be most grateful.”
“He’s from New York,” Brynn said. “He can’t practice law in South Carolina.”
“Ah, but he can,” Mrs. Bickerstaff said with a smile. “I’ve done my homework. Mr. Benedict’s firm has an office in Charleston, as well as Denver and Miami. He’s licensed to practice here, as well as in New York, Colorado and Florida.”
“But you don’t need me,” Brynn protested.
“Oh, but I do,” she replied earnestly. “If you come on Monday, Caroline Tuttle will be there. That’s the day she helps with the housecleaning. You two can be witnesses.”
“So it’s a simple will?” Rand asked.
Mrs. Bickerstaff shook her head. “Actually, it’s quite complicated. That’s why I need a good lawyer. And why I’ve looked up your credentials, young man. You’ll do.”
He knotted his eyebrows in question, wondering how she’d checked him out.
The old woman must have noted his puzzlement. “I may live in an isolated part of the valley,” she said, “but I can surf with the best of ’em. Ever looked yourself up on the Web?”
“No,” Rand said.
“Ought to try it sometime.”
“I’d be honored to help with your will.” Rand would have agreed to mucking out her barn if it meant spending time with Brynn, who was watching the conversation like a spectator at a tennis match, but making no comment. His only reservation was that he’d have to come clean with Mrs. Bickerstaff about his firm’s client wanting to buy her land before Rand helped with her will, so there would be no question of a conflict of interest.
“Good, it’s settled then.” Mrs. Bickerstaff rubbed her arthritic hands together. “If you come in the afternoon, you and Brynn can stay for supper.”
Rand noted that a variety of emotions scudded across Brynn’s face like storm clouds before resignation settled in.
“I’ll pick you up at two o’clock Monday afternoon,” Brynn said to him. “Now, if you’ll both excuse me, I have a job to do.”
She turned on her heel and waded through the crowd. Rand watched her go.
“Brynn’s a lovely girl,” Mrs. Bickerstaff said.
“Yes, she is.”
“And she likes you.”
Rand felt as if he’d been handed another gift. “You think so? Seemed like she couldn’t get away from me fast enough.”
Mrs. Bickerstaff laughed, exposing perfect white teeth. “That’s one of the ways I know she likes you.”
Rand shook his head. “You could be wrong…”
“I’ve known Brynn since she was a baby, and I can read her like a book. She likes you, but she’s trying her darnedest not to let it show.”
“Well, she’s doing a good job.”
Mrs. Bickerstaff winked with a sly nod. “Don’t let her scare you off.”
“I’m more worried about the other way around,” Rand admitted. “She thinks we have nothing in common.”
“Hmmmpht. Brynn’s a smart girl, but she doesn’t know everything. You keep after her, you hear?”
Rand laughed. “What are you, Pleasant Valley’s shadchen?”
Her white eyebrows drew together in a frown. “I don’t know that word.”
“It’s Yiddish for matchmaker.”
Mrs. Bickerstaff’s smile returned. “I’ve been called worse,” she said with another wink.
“I’ll see you Monday,” Rand said and walked away.
He spent the rest of the morning wandering through the streets, admiring the arts and crafts, examining some amazing antiques and sampling alien delicacies such as sourwood honey on fresh-baked biscuits and peanut-butter candy, an unlikely confection of powdered sugar, peanut butter and mashed potatoes.
That afternoon, he returned with Jared, who squealed with joy on the merry-go-round and sat stoically while Amy Lou Baker painted a daffodil on his cheek. Jared also consumed the peanut butter candy as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. Rand caught sight of Brynn often in the crowd, but she was always at a distance, so he didn’t have a chance to speak with her again.
MONDAY AFTERNOON, Brynn sat in Eileen Bicker-staff’s kitchen and watched Caroline Tuttle scrub the ancient stove where Eileen cooked her blackberry delicacies. She could hear the murmur of voices up the hall behind the closed doors of the parlor, but she couldn’t discern what Rand and Mrs. Bickerstaff were saying. Whatever they were discussing was taking a long time.
Brynn wasn’t interested in the woman’s last will and testament, but she’d caught the matchmaking gleam in the old woman’s eyes when Eileen had first met Rand. Bad enough that Aunt Marion was trying to drag Brynn to the altar. Her aunt didn’t need help from Mrs. Bickerstaff.
A teakettle on the back burner whistled. Caroline, who was only a couple years older than Brynn, turned off the stove and poured the boiling water into a teapot. “Want a cup?” she asked Brynn.
“Sure,” Brynn said. “Looks like you could use a break. Don’t you get enough housekeeping at your place?”
Agnes Tuttle, Caroline’s hypochondriac mother, might own a bed-and-breakfast, the only lodgings in town, but Caroline did all the work.
Caroline shrugged and took cups and saucers of fine bone china from a cabinet by the sink. “I enjoy getting away from home, even if it’s only twice a month. And Mrs. Bickerstaff is a pleasure to work for.”
Unlike Caroline’s mother.
The unspoken words hung in the air between them. Everyone in town knew Agnes used her myriad ailments as an excuse to keep Caroline under her thumb. The devoted daughter seemed doomed to a life of fetching and carrying, because the B and B kept her too busy to meet new people, except for the inn’s guests, who were merely passing through. Rumor had it that Caroline had been sweet on Grant Nathan, the vet, but he’d married Merrilee Stratton last year. If Caroline was nursing a broken heart, it didn’t show. Women in town had always envied Caroline’s Princess Diana good looks and had shaken their heads over the fact that some lucky man hadn’t stolen her from Agnes’s clutches.
Looking elegant, even in jeans and a sweatshirt with a blue bandanna holding back her ash-blond hair, Caroline poured the tea, set a cup in
front of Brynn, then sat opposite her at the round farm table of well-scrubbed oak.
“You doing okay?” Brynn asked.
Caroline looked over her teacup in surprise. “I’m good. Why shouldn’t I be?”
Brynn shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought, what with Grant marrying Merrilee—”
“Pshaw,” Caroline said. “I was never interested in Grant.”
“You weren’t?” Brynn raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“Not for years, since I dated Grant in high school. But my mother thought I should be. She started the rumors, hoping something would come of them.” Caroline rolled her eyes. “Mother relished the idea of a veterinary doctor for a son-in-law.”
Brynn shook her head and grinned. “She probably told Amy Lou, who spread the word like jungle drums.”
“Speaking of rumors—” Caroline cocked her head toward the parlor “—plenty are circling about you and the Yankee lawyer. After meeting him, I hope, for your sake, they’re true.”
“You know how people talk,” Brynn said hastily, “but it’s only talk.”
“Too bad,” Caroline said. “He’s the best-looking thing to hit town since Jeff Davidson and his Marines landed.”
“But he won’t be here long,” Brynn insisted, as much to herself as to Caroline. “He bought River Walk as a vacation home, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t keep it. He’s not the type to take vacations.”
“Like you?” Caroline said with a smile.
“And you,” Brynn said.
“Touché. But I can’t leave Mother alone with her health the way it is.”
Brynn bit her tongue. Agnes Tuttle, she thought with a burst of anger at Caroline’s plight, would outlive them all. She was too damned mean to die. How such a woman and her long-dead henpecked husband had produced a daughter as sweet and lovely as Caroline was one of God’s great mysteries.
The pocket doors of the parlor rattled open, and Rand and Eileen came down the hall into the kitchen. Brynn grabbed her teacup with both hands and gazed into its depths to avoid staring at Rand. She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, how much she liked the sight of him.
When she’d left her house earlier in the afternoon to pick him up at River Walk, she’d found herself giddy with the prospect of seeing him again, like a teenage girl waiting for her first prom date. When she’d parked in front of the house and climbed out of her car, it had been Jared, not Rand, who’d greeted her.
The front door had flown open, and the toddler had rushed down the steps and flung his arms around her knees, almost knocking her off balance in his enthusiasm.
“Bwynn! Where you been? I missed you.”
She leaned down and swooped him into her arms. “I missed you, too, sweetie.”
Jared planted a wet kiss on her cheek, and Brynn buried her face in his hair. His arms tightened around her neck. “Ossifer Fwienly missed you, too.”
Brynn drew back to see his face. “Have you met any little boys or girls to play with?”
Jared shook his head. “Just Lillian.”
Brynn glanced up. Rand stood in the doorway, watching them with a peculiar look on his face. In spite of her determination to remain aloof from his charms, her pulse raced at the sight of him.
“You ready?” she asked.
He nodded. “Jared, you have to stay with Lillian.”
The boy’s lower lip trembled. “Wanna go wif Bwynn.”
“Not this time, sweetie. Your Uncle Rand has work to do.”
“Play wif me?” Jared begged, his tone more pitiful than petulant.
Over his head, her gaze met Rand’s with dismay. She hated disappointing the lonely little boy.
“Brynn will play with you when we come back,” Rand promised.
“We’re staying for supper at Blackberry Farm,” Brynn reminded him. “It’ll be late.”
“Staying up this once won’t hurt him,” Rand said.
Brynn, torn between her pull toward Jared and her intentions to distance herself from Rand, hesitated. The little boy was lonely and needed a friend. But being alone in the house with Rand, even with Lillian close by…If Rand tried to kiss her again, Brynn wasn’t sure she could resist.
Jared reached up and placed his hands on her cheeks. “Pwease?”
Always a sucker for kids and animals, Brynn gave in. “Okay, sweetie, I’ll see you after supper.”
Lillian came out and took the boy. Rand, carrying his laptop in a case slung over his shoulder, hopped into the passenger seat, and Brynn slid behind the wheel.
Although the drive had taken less than ten minutes, Brynn’s superawareness of Rand beside her had made it seem like forever. Why did he have to look and smell so good?
“Jared needs friends his own age,” she said, hoping a neutral subject would break the tension that hung between them.
Rand chuckled. “Back to blunt again?”
She kept her eyes on the road, but she could feel his smile. “The Community Church has a Mother’s Morning Out twice a week. Playing with the children there would be good for Jared.”
“That’s a thought.”
His answer made her frown. “Of course, if you won’t be here much longer…”
She waited, wondering what he’d say, half of her hoping he’d announce an imminent departure to end her exquisite torture, the other half longing for him to stay.
“I’ll discuss it with Lillian,” he said.
“Fine.” So much for her interrogation skills. Maybe she could weasel more information from him after supper.
After arriving at Blackberry Farm, Rand had joined Eileen in the front parlor, and Brynn had gone into the kitchen to wait.
Drawing up the will had taken longer than Brynn had expected, even though Rand had his computer and Eileen had hers and her printer set up in the parlor.
With the ordeal completed, Eileen sank into a chair beside Brynn and waved Rand into another. “I’ll have some of that tea, please, Caroline. All this legal mumbo-jumbo has taken the starch out of me.”
Caroline poured tea for both of them and returned to her seat. Rand shuffled an impressive stack of printed pages in front of him and drew a Mont Blanc pen from the pocket of his shirt.
“All I need now,” he said, “are signatures. Mrs. Bickerstaff, you sign first, and initial each page. Then Brynn and Caroline can witness.”
After the women had signed, Rand handed one copy to Eileen and slid the other into his computer case.
Caroline stood to leave. “Mother expects her supper on time. I’d better hurry.”
She kissed Mrs. Bickerstaff’s cheek and left through the back door. The sound of her car’s engine and its wheels on the gravel carried into the kitchen.
Mrs. Bickerstaff pulled a ceramic cookie jar from a cabinet over the refrigerator, stuffed her copy of the will inside, and returned the container to the shelf. “Your young man knows his stuff.”
Brynn bit back a correction. Eileen was apparently determined to think of Rand as Brynn’s young man, and protests were futile.
“Wills are fairly standard,” Rand said. “I just filled in the blanks. But I was happy to help.”
Eileen glanced at the clock. “Lordy me, look at the time. I promised y’all supper, so I’d better get these old bones moving.”
SINCE MEETING Brynn, a seed had taken root in Rand’s mind, and every new encounter with her and the people of Pleasant Valley nourished it. In Eileen Bickerstaff’s homey kitchen, dining on country ham, collard greens and pinto beans, Rand felt his idea blossom and flourish.
After completing Eileen’s will, Rand knew without doubt that she had no intention of selling Blackberry Farm to Farrington Properties or anyone else. Her plans for the future of her longtime home were definite and immutable. And fascinating. Rand hoped the woman had many more good years, but he also hoped to be around to see her incredible scheme implemented. For now, however, under the cloak of attorney-client privilege, her exceptional secret was safe with him.
&n
bsp; Mrs. Bickerstaff’s refusal to sell meant his quest for Farrington Properties had failed, which also meant his senior partnership at Steinman, Slagle and Crump was toast. But, amazingly, he really didn’t care. Finishing off his meal with a bowl of Eileen’s exceptional blackberry cobbler, Rand felt nothing but contentment, a state he’d experienced far too seldom in the past and looked forward to enjoying more.
The main reason for his happiness was Brynn, whom he intended to spend as much time with as he could. And a secondary but significant influence on his contentment was the community that had produced this remarkable woman. For the first time in his life, Rand had found a place where he felt he belonged, not just some stopping off point to somewhere else. Not that New York wasn’t a great city. It was the best. And filled with plenty of good people, too. The problem was the kind of life he’d chosen when he’d lived there. Now he’d changed. He was ready to put down roots.
Doing Eileen’s will had given him the final push toward his decision. Pleasant Valley didn’t have a law practice, and the space over Jodie’s café would make a perfect spot for him to set up shop. With the money he’d accumulated over the years, he didn’t have to worry about an income. Even if all he did was pro bono work, he had more than enough financial security for him and Jared.
And Brynn.
A slight crack appeared in his contentment. Would he be able to convince her to share a life with him here in the valley? He knew she was attracted to him. He’d felt her response when he’d kissed her. But he knew, too, that she was fighting her feelings. She’d avoided his eyes all through supper and had aimed most of her remarks at Mrs. Bickerstaff.
He’d have to tread carefully, win her over gradually. As much as he longed to tell her his plans, he’d wait until the moment was right. Even if it took weeks. Months. After all, now that he’d made his decision to remain in Pleasant Valley, he had all the time in the world.
Chapter Nine
The sun was setting when Rand and Brynn returned to River Walk. Explaining that she was accustomed to turning in at eight, Mrs. Bickerstaff had served an early supper. Jared would be waiting up for them, and Rand found the boy’s insistence that Brynn come back to play with him another reason in Rand’s long list of why he loved the child. If Rand was lucky, Lillian would retire to the guest house in time to watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, and he would have Brynn all to himself.
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