Echo Lake
Echo Lake
Carla Neggers
In snowy Swift River Valley, unexpected romance is just around the corner… Heather Sloan has landed her dream job–the renovation of Vic Scarlatti's stately 1912 country home overlooking the icy waters of Echo Lake in Knights Bridge, Massachusetts. It's the perfect project for the family business, but for once, Heather is in charge.Diplomatic Security Service agent Brody Hancock left Knights Bridge at eighteen, a few steps ahead of arrest and the wrath of Heather's older brothers. Though Brody had never planned to return, Vic, a retired diplomat and friend, needs his help.Staying at Vic's guest house makes it impossible to avoid running into a Sloan at every turn–especially Heather. Seeing her again has affected Brody more than he wants to admit. But Heather is wary of Brody's sudden interest in her, and she suspects there's more to his homecoming than he's letting on….Set against the scenic backdrop of a New England winter, Echo Lake is a captivating tale of family, friends and the possibility of new love
In snowy Swift River Valley, unexpected romance is just around the corner… (#u40b12404-e729-55a4-9593-03f9cb3865c3)
Heather Sloan has landed her dream job—the renovation of Vic Scarlatti’s stately 1912 country home overlooking the icy waters of Echo Lake in Knights Bridge, Massachusetts. It’s the perfect project for the family business, but for once, Heather is in charge.
Diplomatic Security Service agent Brody Hancock left Knights Bridge at eighteen, a few steps ahead of arrest and the wrath of Heather’s older brothers. Though Brody had never planned to return, Vic, a retired diplomat and friend, needs his help.
Staying at Vic’s guest house makes it impossible to avoid running into a Sloan at every turn—especially Heather. Seeing her again has affected Brody more than he wants to admit. But Heather is wary of Brody’s sudden interest in her, and she suspects there’s more to his homecoming than he’s letting on….
Set against the scenic backdrop of a New England winter, Echo Lake is a captivating tale of family, friends and the possibility of new love
Praise for Carla Neggers and her novels (#u40b12404-e729-55a4-9593-03f9cb3865c3)
“Neggers captures readers’ attention with her usual flair and brilliance and gives us a romance, a mystery and a lesson in history.”
—RT Book Reviews on Secrets of the Lost Summer, Top Pick
“Only a writer as gifted as Carla Neggers could use so few words to convey so much action and emotional depth.”
—Sandra Brown
“With a great plot and excellent character development, Neggers’ thriller, Saint’s Gate, the first in a new series, is a fast-paced, action-packed tale of romantic suspense that will appeal to fans of Lisa Jackson and Lisa Gardner.”
—Library Journal
“Saint’s Gate is the best book yet from a writer at the absolute top of her craft.”
—Providence Journal
“Cold Pursuit is the perfect name for this riveting read. Neggers’s passages are so descriptive that one almost finds one’s teeth chattering from fear and anticipation.”
—Bookreporter.com
“[Neggers] forces her characters to confront issues of humanity, integrity and the multifaceted aspects of love without slowing the ever-quickening pace.”
—Publishers Weekly
Also by Carla Neggers (#u40b12404-e729-55a4-9593-03f9cb3865c3)
Swift River Valley Series
CHRISTMAS AT CARRIAGE HILL (enovella)
CIDER BROOK
THAT NIGHT ON THISTLE LANE
SECRETS OF THE LOST SUMMER
Sharpe & Donovan Series
HARBOR ISLAND
DECLAN’S CROSS
ROCK POINT (novella)
HERON’S COVE
SAINT’S GATE
BPD/FBI Series
THE WHISPER
THE MIST
THE ANGEL
THE WIDOW
Black Falls Series
COLD DAWN
COLD RIVER
COLD PURSUIT
Cold Ridge/US Marshals Series
ABANDON
BREAKWATER
DARK SKY
THE RAPIDS
NIGHT’S LANDING
COLD RIDGE
Carriage House Series
THE HARBOR
STONEBROOK COTTAGE
THE CABIN
THE CARRIAGE HOUSE
Stand-Alone Novels
THE WATERFALL
ON FIRE
KISS THE MOON
TEMPTING FATE
CUT AND RUN
BETRAYALS
CLAIM THE CROWN
Look for Carla Neggers’s next novel
in the Sharpe & Donovan series
KEEPER’S REACH
available soon from MIRA Books
Echo Lake
Carla Neggers
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
For my friend Sally Fairchild Schoeneweiss
Contents
Cover (#uc78d6afa-f41e-56f8-843e-fdaea8a25c63)
Back Cover Text
Praise
Booklist
Title Page (#u6286bb3f-efe2-518e-bb89-0a25102c5bfd)
Dedication (#u7ac9acdd-ff7d-5e7f-b3c0-d95f60ab6265)
One (#ulink_3b58f77a-be5b-50fb-930d-32890bd93e89)
Two (#ulink_f88a4ee4-adfd-5cfc-bc37-19430da7b493)
Three (#ulink_4672ed50-ec44-5644-bd74-f96272886a67)
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Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Author Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
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Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
One (#ulink_af2bf6eb-b404-5b91-a7ef-2e1284e06aed)
As much as Heather Sloan loved a bright New England winter day, chasing a puppy through knee-deep snow in seventeen degrees wasn’t her idea of fun. Rohan—the runaway puppy, a twelve-week-old golden retriever—wasn’t quickly tiring of his romp or sticking to the plowed driveway and shoveled walks, either. Not a chance. She spotted his tracks, leading through the woods straight for quiet, frozen Echo Lake.
She wasn’t following a rabbit or deer by mistake. They definitely were puppy tracks. She paused, noting that the trail veered to the right, parallel to the lake. Something must have caught Rohan’s attention. A bird, a breeze, a noise.
Great.
Heather followed the tracks through a deeper drift, but they disappeared under the low-hanging, snow-laden branches of two gnarly hemlocks. Rohan could easily fit under them. She couldn’t. The trees grew so close together that trying to squeeze between them meant getting snow down her back. Going around them would risk a delay in finding the tracks again.
She was already cold. She wasn’t dressed for a puppy rescue. Ankle boots, leather gloves, a wool scarf and her three-quarter-length chocolate-brown wool coat. Why? Of all days, why hadn’t she worn her Carhartt jacket and L.L. Bean boots? It wasn’t as if her attire would impress Vic Scarlatti, the newly retired diplomat whose renovations she was overseeing. His 1912 lake house was out of sight now, up through the trees past a small guesthouse. He was searching the garage, shed and porches. Adrienne Portale, the wine-expert daughter of one of Vic’s Foreign Service friends, was searching the house, in case Rohan hadn’t slipped outside, after all.
But he had, and he would be in serious trouble in this cold if Heather didn’t get to him soon. What was a little snow down her back? With five older brothers, it wasn’t anything she wasn’t used to. They’d had an epic snowball fight on New Year’s Day.
She plunged between the hemlocks, moving as fast as she could, but there was no way to avoid disturbing the snow clinging to the evergreen branches. She got a spray in her face and a clump down her back and almost lost a boot, but when she emerged on the other side of the hemlocks, she was practically standing in Rohan’s tracks.
She went still, quieting her breathing as she listened. Her cheeks were numb, and her fingertips and toes ached with the cold. She’d pulled her scarf over her head as best she could in lieu of a hat, but it was loose now, one end dangling down her front. The late-January afternoon sky was cloudless, the air as crisp and clear and cold as it had been since the latest storm earlier in the week. She glanced to her left toward the snow-covered lake. Echo Lake wasn’t big, but it was one of the largest lakes in out-of-the-way Knights Bridge, Massachusetts.
There.
Heather spun around at a sound up ahead and forced herself not to move. She listened, positive she heard something besides her own breathing.
Yips.
A high-pitched, mournful cry.
It had to be Rohan.
With a mix of worry and relief, she surged in the direction of the distressed yips and cries, following the tracks through bare-limbed maples and oaks and past white pines. The ground was uneven, the snow sometimes drifting up past her knees. Snowshoes or backcountry skis would have helped, but she had left hers in her truck and Vic wasn’t much on winter sports. “I like looking at the snow,” he’d told her. “I don’t necessarily like going out in it for fun.”
She came to a shallow, rocky brook that emptied into the lake but now was mostly frozen. Water trickled and swirled in a few spots among the snow and ice where the current was stronger.
“Rohan,” Heather called softly, not wanting to startle him by yelling. “Where are you, buddy?”
She heard panting then a whimper. She eased closer to the edge of the brook and peered upstream. Her heart jumped when she saw a golden ball of fur—little Rohan, struggling to climb out from the midst of the water, snow, ice and rocks.
“Oh, Rohan. You are in a mess, aren’t you?”
Trees crowded the bank, and it was steeper up where Rohan was stuck. Getting to him wasn’t going to be easy. Staying close to the brook, she grabbed hold of saplings and branches, using them to help her keep her balance in the difficult conditions.
Once she was parallel to Rohan, he let out an eager, full-fledged bark.
He must have frolicked his way out here, got stuck in the ice and snow and had run out of steam. He was, after all, only a puppy. Heather could see there was no way he could get out of his predicament with just a bit of encouragement from her. She would have to grab him—preferably without ending up trapped in the cold brook herself.
“Easy, Rohan,” she said, holding on to a thin tree and reaching with her free hand to the shivering puppy. “Let’s get you warm and safe, okay?”
She stretched, her fingertips within inches of him, but she slipped in the snow. She couldn’t regain her footing and went down on one knee, planting her free hand in the snow to keep herself from falling in the brook. She felt cold water flowing into her left boot and up her lower leg but bit back a yell lest she panic Rohan. She finally righted herself, losing her glove in the snow.
She didn’t hesitate. She scooped up the puppy and moved quickly, launching past the tree she was using for balance then sinking against another one. She anchored her feet in the snow to prevent her and Rohan from skidding back into the brook.
She cuddled the furry dog against her. She could feel his little heart racing. “I’ve got you,” she whispered, her own heart thumping madly. “I’ve got you.”
She wanted to sit in the snow and catch her breath, but she knew that wasn’t wise. Her shivering was a warning she was in danger of hypothermia. It would be a cold, wet trek back to Vic’s house, so she had to get on with it and keep moving.
As she stood straight, she thought she smelled wood smoke—from a fireplace or a woodstove, perhaps. How was that possible? She was too far from the main house. It had to be her imagination or her natural optimism at work.
She heard the snap of a twig and looked up through the trees behind her, away from the brook. A man she didn’t recognize stepped comfortably down to her and Rohan. He wore a black suede jacket and solid boots but no hat or gloves.
He scanned her from head to toe before he spoke. “Nice job with the puppy rescue.”
“You watched?”
“Yes, ma’am. I didn’t want to startle you.”
Heather felt Rohan stir in her arms, but he didn’t bark. Probably too tired. “Ready to come to my rescue if I fell in, were you?”
“You did fall in,” he said, pointing to her wet lower left leg.
“Not all the way in.”
“You’d be a popsicle if you fell all the way in. I was on my way to rescue the little guy myself. I’m staying at Vic’s guesthouse. I got in late last night. My name’s Brody, by the way.”
“Heather Sloan,” she said. “Good to meet you.”
Except she felt as if she should know him. Did know him.
He narrowed his eyes—dark, flecked with gold—on her. He had short-cropped dark hair, a square jaw, a cleft chin. She shook off the idea that he was familiar somehow. She didn’t know anyone who would be a guest of Vic Scarlatti.
He stepped past her and picked up her fallen glove out of the snow. She took in his broad shoulders and his dark canvas pants covering muscular thighs. He looked strong and incredibly fit. Another diplomat? Somehow Heather didn’t think so.
He stood straight and tucked her glove into her jacket pocket. “It’s filled with snow. It’s not going to keep you warm. I can take the pup if you’d like. Give you a chance to pull yourself together.”
“I’m fine, thanks, and I can handle Rohan.”
“Rohan?” Brody stroked the soft fur behind the puppy’s ear. “He doesn’t look much like a rider of Rohan at the moment, does he?”
Heather had to admit the Tolkien-inspired name was incongruently regal for such a rambunctious, cute-as-the-devil puppy. He was getting heavy in her arms, but she noticed his heart rate had settled down.
“He’s not my puppy,” she said. “I just helped look for him.”
“Vic Scarlatti has a puppy?” Brody grinned as if the prospect both amused and surprised him. “I guess retirement will do that even to a guy like Vic.”
“He’s a stray. Rohan, I mean. Vic found him wandering around alone out here a few days ago and took him in.”
“Well, good for Vic.”
“Another guest named him Rohan. Adrienne Portale. Are you two friends?”
“Nope. Don’t know her.”
Rohan snuggled deeper into Heather’s arms. “I should get back. It’s cold even for January.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
She sucked in a breath. When it came right down to it, she had no idea who this man was. “Thanks, but I can manage.”
“Mind if I walk with you as far as the guesthouse?”
“How do you know Vic?”
“We go back a ways.”
A vague answer. “You’re a lot younger than he is.”
“Yes, I am.”
Heather hesitated. “I should let Vic know that Rohan is safe.”
“I already texted him that a dark-haired woman in a brown coat had just rescued a puppy from the brook.”
“That was efficient.”
“He hasn’t responded. I also told him you could use some dry clothes.” Brody nodded up through the woods toward the main house. “Shall we?”
Heather could feel Rohan settling into her arms. He wasn’t a light puppy. She needed to get moving if she was going to carry him all the way back to the house.
She took a step up the hill. “I guess if you’re one of Vic’s friends, it’s safe to go off with you. You’re not going to bonk me on the head and dump me in the guesthouse cellar. It doesn’t have a cellar, for one thing.”
“That’s a dramatic imagination you have there.”
“It’s not drama. It’s being practical. I’m very practical.”
“Do you say everything you think?”
“No. Do you?”
His gaze slid over her. He smiled. “No.”
Despite the frigid temperature, she felt heat in her cheeks. Maybe she should think before she spoke. She adjusted Rohan in her arms again as she took another step up the hill. “I’m also good at taking care of myself.”
“Come on. You pushed hard through the snow, and you’re frozen. Let me take Rohan.”
Heather didn’t protest when Brody scooped up the half-asleep puppy. She tried not to shiver or let her teeth chatter, but with the cold weather and her partial dip in the icy brook, she had to admit she was frozen. “I didn’t expect Rohan to end up down here by the lake.”
“He bolted past the guesthouse. I saw him out the window but couldn’t get out fast enough to grab him before he hit the brook. You’re okay to walk, aren’t you?”
“Yep. No problem.”
“Didn’t think it would be. Tough as nails, right?”
“Just used to New England winters.”
“Sure thing.”
There was something in his tone Heather couldn’t quite place. Familiarity? Sarcasm? Amusement? A mix of all three? She couldn’t deny she was madly curious about him, but maybe he just had funny ideas about Knights Bridge and the people who lived there.
She resisted asking him the four thousand questions she had. She needed to get Rohan back to Vic’s. With her wet pants and case of the shivers, she ought to get dry and warm herself
She was happy to let Brody lead the way back to Vic’s house, thus allowing her to step in his footprints instead of in virgin snow. It was much less tiring, and the snow didn’t seem to faze him.
“How do you like Knights Bridge so far?”
He glanced back at her. “Do you really want to ask me that right now?”
“Seventeen degrees, snow, ice, a golden retriever puppy on the loose?” Heather grinned at him. “What’s not to like?”
“Oh, yeah, Heather Sloan.” Just the faintest of smiles. “What’s not to like?”
* * *
Vic Scarlatti bought his house on Echo Lake twenty years ago, when he was a rising star in the US diplomatic corps, and had done virtually nothing to it since. That suited Heather. The previous owner, the granddaughter of the Boston financier who’d built the house, had updated the plumbing, wiring and heat about ten years before the property went on the market upon her death. It was classic Arts and Crafts, oriented to take in the best views of its long-neglected garden and the lake.
Brody showed no sign of appreciating the house’s charms and potential as he set Rohan on his puppy bed in the small, cluttered mudroom off the kitchen. The little golden retriever immediately gave a deep sigh and rolled onto his side, dozing.
“The bed looks new,” Brody said.
“It is,” Heather said, walking past him through the open doorway into the kitchen. “I bought it at the country store in town. I figured Rohan needed a bed.”
“Does Vic plan to keep him?”
“He says absolutely not.”
She sank onto a chair at the kitchen table. She was stiffer than she wanted to admit after her adventure, but at least she was warming up fast. She pulled off her ankle boots. Both socks were wet, but her left one was sopping. Another of her out-into-the-cold sins was her choice of thin cotton socks. She peeled them off and stuffed them in her boots. She’d figure out what to do about them later, when she didn’t have Brody for an audience.
He grabbed Rohan’s water bowl and filled it at the deep porcelain kitchen sink, one of the granddaughter’s additions. He brought the bowl to Rohan and set it close to his bed. The puppy stirred. At first he was too lethargic to care about anything except yawning, but he managed to get onto all fours and lap at the water.
“You should have some water, too,” Brody said as he rejoined Heather in the kitchen. “It’s easy to get dehydrated in this dry cold and not realize it.”
“Water would be nice.”
Before she could stand, he had a cupboard open and a glass in hand. He filled it with water and set it on the table in front of her. “Drink up.”
“You remind me of my brothers. They never look cold, either. You don’t even have a red nose. I do, don’t I?”
“You were out in the cold longer than I was.”
“A diplomatic answer. My brothers won’t go easy on me for almost freezing to death while chasing a puppy.”
“What would they have had you do?”
“Not take chances. Wear wool socks, at least.” She smiled suddenly. “But all’s well that ends well, right?”
“And you don’t have to tell your brothers.”
“True, but it’s too good a story not to tell. I wish I’d spotted your footprints instead of Rohan’s, though. I’d have let you do the rescuing.”
Brody unbuttoned his jacket but didn’t take it off. He had on a dark sweater over his taut abdomen. Heather was accustomed to fit guys, and he was obviously and decidedly fit. She averted her gaze and drank her water. She was noticing too much about this man. Maybe dehydration and adrenaline had put her senses on overdrive.
“Do you have dry clothes here?” he asked.
“Why would I?” She snapped up straight, almost knocking her water glass off the table. “Wait. You don’t think—” She gulped in a breath. “I’m almost forty years younger than Vic. No. Absolutely not.”
Brody grinned, his dark eyes sparking with humor. “That’s not what I was thinking. I was just wondering if you kept a change of clothes here given your work. You and Vic Scarlatti? Damn, that’s funny. Seriously funny.”
“What do you mean, seriously funny? You say that as if I’m not...” She stopped herself, abandoning that train of thought in the nick of time. “Never mind.”
“As if you’re not attractive, you mean? That’s not what I’m saying.” He paused, warmth replacing the humor in his eyes now. “Trust me.”
Heather jumped to her feet, baffled by why she was blurting out things she had no business blurting out. She’d never been good at policing what she said, but she didn’t know this man—never mind that he seemed familiar. A trick of her imagination, no doubt.
“Right. Well.” She took a quick breath. “Main point is, I’ll be fine in these clothes. Obviously, I didn’t show up here dressed for a puppy rescue. I’m from Knights Bridge— I live in the village a few miles from here.”
“Have you always lived in town?”
“Except for college, but I went to UMass Amherst. That’s not far.”
“No wanderlust?”
“Lots of wanderlust. I have all sorts of places I want to go and things I want to do, but Knights Bridge is home.” Heather didn’t understand why he was asking her such questions. Brody didn’t seem the type to make idle conversation. “Where’s home for you?”
“Wherever I take a shower in the morning.” He looked out the window above the sink at the snowy driveway and backyard. “Vic always said he planned to retire in cute little Knights Bridge.”
“Have you known him for a long time?”
“As you pointed out, Vic’s a lot older than I am.”
It wasn’t a direct answer. Few of his answers were, Heather realized. “Vic’s owned this place for twenty years, but I don’t know him that well. I don’t think anyone in town does. He’s spent most of his career abroad. I guess you already know that, though.”
Brody turned from the window but made no comment. She noticed he wasn’t winded from their hike up from the brook. Definitely a man in great shape. Vic would have been gasping for air if he’d traipsed through the snow.
“Any plans while you’re in town?” she asked, finally shrugging off her coat and draping it over the back of a chair.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, bonfires, hot cocoa.”
“Sleeping late.”
Not a picture she needed in her head right now. “I hope you enjoy your stay. There’s also ice-skating on the town common, if you’re interested. Do you skate?”
“Badly,” he said.
“Me, too. I was out skating with a couple of my brothers last weekend. I’m hopeless. I have the bruises on my butt to prove it.”
Brody’s expression was unreadable. “No proof required.”
“I can’t believe I just said that. It’s having five brothers. I never think...” Just stop right there, she told herself, then smiled. “I’ll start today. Thinking. I have a few things to do before I head home. Thank you for your help with Rohan.”
“Anytime.”
“Brody!” Vic Scarlatti clapped his hands together as he entered the kitchen from the hall. “Good to see you, my friend. Sorry I didn’t stay up to greet you last night, but I’m to bed with the chickens these days. Everything was in order in the guesthouse?”
“Perfect order. Good to see you.”
Vic was sixty-two, his hair thick and gray, his angular face tanned and lined. He was wiry and quick-witted, his mix of hardheadedness and can-do optimism no doubt suited to his decades as a career diplomat. “Did you rescue Rohan?”
“Heather did.”
Vic turned to her. “Good for you. Thank you. I’m glad you and Brody met. I didn’t think to tell you about him. Can you believe he’s a DSS agent?”
Heather drew a blank. “I don’t know what that is.”
“Diplomatic Security Service. Short answer, he protects idiots like me.” Vic smiled. “Our Brody. Can you believe it?”
She tried not to look dumbfounded. Our Brody?
Brody said nothing, but she thought she saw a distinct hardening of his jaw, as if he were steeling himself against some inevitable revelation.
Vic was still smiling, obviously unaware of his guest’s tension. “I’ve been trying to get Brody back here for years. His feud with the Sloan boys didn’t help.”
“There’s no feud.” Brody’s tone was even, without any hint of emotion. “There was a fight, but it was a long time ago.”
A fight? A long time ago? Heather’s head was spinning. She could feel her brow furrowing with her confusion, and her heartbeat quickened with what could only be called dread. What were Vic and Brody talking about? What was she missing?
“The fight involved pumpkins, as I recall,” Vic said lightly, addressing Heather. “Brody wasn’t arrested. He got out of town before the situation escalated further.”
“Always a good thing,” Brody said, still with that even, unemotional tone.
Vic sighed. “Honestly, though. Pumpkins. I swear, only in Knights Bridge. But look at our Brody now. He’s one hell of a kick-ass federal agent.”
“Vic,” Brody said, a note of exasperation creeping into his voice.
“What? It’s the truth.”
“Wait. Our Brody? A fight with my brothers?” Heather turned to Brody, feeling some of the warmth drain out of her. “Exactly who are you?”
“There you go, Brody,” Vic said, clearly amused. “Heather doesn’t remember you. Maybe her brothers won’t remember you, either.”
“I’m not that lucky.” He took a half step toward her, the faintest glint of humor in his dark eyes. “It’s okay, Heather. I remember you. Wild hair, braces, cute little dimples and a serious crush on me.” He winked. “Guess the crush didn’t last, huh?”
“Wait.” Heather realized she wasn’t breathing. “You’re that Brody? Brody Hancock?”
“The same.”
He grinned as he nodded a farewell to Vic and left through the back door.
Vic let out a long breath. “Brody is one intense man. He always has been. You really don’t remember him?”
Heather grimaced. “I do now.”
Vic eyed her a moment then peered into the mudroom at Rohan, sound asleep in his bed. “He looks as if he’s had his adventure for the day. I searched high and low for him in the garage and on the porches. I hate to think what could have happened to the little miscreant if you hadn’t found him. Not that it’s his fault he scooted off.”
“Do you have any idea how he got out?”
He didn’t answer at once, his gaze still on the sleeping puppy. Finally, he shook his head. “No idea. I turned my back and off he went. Not used to puppies, I guess.” He smiled at Heather, his infectious warmth again in place. “Thank you, Heather. Rescuing puppies is above and beyond the call of duty.”
“Glad to do it, Vic.”
“And Brody?”
She wondered if Vic could tell being around his house guest—finding out he was Brody Hancock from Knights Bridge—was doing things to her insides. “I managed without him, but I’m sure he’d have been helpful if he’d been needed.”
“He’s a good man to have on your side.”
“No doubt.”
“Heather...” Vic inhaled, clearly ill at ease. He picked a stray thread off his sweater and flicked it into the sink. “Brody hasn’t stepped foot in Knights Bridge since the summer after he graduated high school. He was an angry, troubled teenager then.”
Sexy, too, Heather thought. But she’d been in middle school, and if anything, he was even sexier now.
She noticed that her scarf had fallen onto the floor and scooped it up. It, too, was wet. She slung it over her coat. “How long has Brody been a DSS agent?”
“At least ten years. He was recruited his senior year in college.”
“You had something to do with that?”
“Only to answer his questions. He got in on his own merits. He’s good, too. Damn good. It’s a tough job.”
“I’m sure,” Heather said, no doubt in her mind.
“Did you fall in the brook before or after he came to your rescue?”
“I didn’t fall in the brook, and he didn’t rescue me.”
Vic laughed. “That’s what I figured you’d say.” He motioned toward the front of the house. “Why don’t you go and warm up by the fire? You’re done in, Heather. Relax before you head home. Get your bearings.”
“Thank you,” she said, realizing she still was barefoot, with wet boots, wet socks and wet pants. She smiled at Vic. “Warming up by the fire sounds nice.”
Two (#ulink_e31d9554-58d7-53a8-8bfb-a1b47301168b)
Heather splayed her fingers, still a bit red from her Rohan rescue, in front of the orange flames roaring behind a black screen in the massive stone fireplace, one of the many distinct original features of the century-old house. She wriggled her toes as she stood on the hearth. Her brother Adam, a stonemason, would be taking a look at the chimneys and fireplaces, as well as the outside stonework, all part of the renovations.
That was where her mind should be, she told herself. Not on a DSS agent who’d left Knights Bridge under a cloud more than a decade ago.
“You should dry your socks in front of the fire,” Adrienne Portale said as she entered the living room, carrying two bottles of wine. She set them on a side table. “Vic wouldn’t mind. He’d think he was roughing it out here. It would appeal to his romantic idea of being a gentleman farmer.”
Heather laughed. “There’s nothing romantic about my wet socks.”
Adrienne sank onto an overstuffed chair. She had thick, dark curls that hung past her shoulders and a pretty, heart-shaped face that complemented her hourglass figure and preference for dressing in black. She wore faded black jeans and a black-beaded tunic she’d found, to her delight, in a wardrobe in the first-floor guest suite where she was staying.
She tucked her feet up under her. “I invested in wool socks my first week here. They have a decent selection at the country store in town. I grew up in San Francisco. It can get chilly there but not like this. I never knew there were so many different kinds of wool socks. Why don’t I grab a pair for you before you go? In fact, you can have them. I was terrified I’d run out and bought far more than I need.” She grinned, settling back in the big chair. “That’s a better idea than drying your socks by the fire, don’t you think?”
“I do, yes, thank you.” Not, Heather thought, that she had any plans of drying her socks by the fire.
Adrienne fingered the label on one of the wine bottles. “Wine, wool and a hot fire. The perfect Knights Bridge winter evening. Add a wandering puppy and a rugged federal agent, and I have no complaints.” She sat forward. “He is rugged, isn’t he? Vic’s DSS agent guest? I haven’t met him yet.”
Heather balled up her hands, warmer now, but kept them in front of the fire. “I was focused on rescuing Rohan.”
“Mmm, and it would take a whole lot of ruggedness for you to notice with those brothers of yours. I can’t imagine life with one brother, never mind five brothers.” Adrienne gave an exaggerated shudder. “And to be the youngest. Yikes.”
“It’s normal to me.”
“Of course it is. Thank heaven that little devil Rohan survived his ordeal. I hoped I’d find him asleep under a bed. It was decent of Vic to take him in, but he doesn’t know much about puppies. Neither do I. They say crate training is the way to go, but maybe Rohan’s past that.”
“No one’s put up notices in town about a missing puppy that I know of,” Heather said, sitting on a chair on the other side of the hearth from Adrienne. “My guess is someone from out of town drove out here and dumped him like a bag of garbage.”
“It’s disgusting.” Adrienne waved a hand. “But we won’t think about that now. He’s safe here, even if we’re having a bit of a learning curve on how to take care of him. Three days, though, and he’s already got Vic rolled.”
“How long will you be staying this time?”
“I don’t know. I guess it depends on Vic. He won’t need me to house-sit if he’s going to be here full-time. He says I can stay whether or not he’s here, but I don’t want to get in his way.” She stood, grabbing a poker from a rack and pulling back the screen. “I thought I’d get nervous being out here by myself, but it’s been great. I’m getting a lot of work done.”
Heather smiled, warm again, less achy. “And now you’ve got Vic interested in installing a wine cellar.”
Adrienne stirred the fire. “He’ll love it.”
“I’m sure I will,” Vic said, joining them. “I can picture myself up here at ninety, opening a good Bordeaux and watching the snow.”
“Will you be alone?” Adrienne asked.
“More important, will I be alive?”
He chuckled, taking a log from a small stack on the hearth. Adrienne pulled back the screen a bit farther, allowing him to place the log on the fire. She adjusted its position with her poker. “That’s not funny, Vic,” she said.
“Gallows humor. When you’re my age, you’ll understand.”
“You won’t be ninety for another thirty years,” Heather said.
“Gad, that long?” He stepped back from the fire. “What kind of wine are we having tonight?”
Adrienne returned the poker to the rack. “I thought we could try something from Noah Kendrick’s winery.”
“Kendrick,” Vic said. “Rich guy. High-tech entertainment company in Southern California. He’s engaged to the Knights Bridge librarian.”
“Former librarian,” Heather amended. “She resigned a couple of months ago.”
“Phoebe O’Dunn. Her mother lives up the road. Elly. Raises goats. I asked her if she knows who Rohan belongs to, but she said she doesn’t. She was on her way to San Diego to visit Phoebe and Noah.” Vic settled onto a sofa facing the fire. “See? I’m not that out of touch with the locals.”
“I’ve met Elly,” Adrienne said. “She’s a widow. Did you buy this place before her husband died?”
Vic nodded. “Patrick. He was a great guy. Sad he left behind a wife and four daughters. Life isn’t fair sometimes. I’ve survived a number of close calls during my time in the Foreign Service, and here I am, alone and unscathed.”
“I’ll fetch wineglasses.” Adrienne started for the adjoining dining room. “I don’t think I’ve met any of Elly’s daughters. I suppose I could have run into them in the village and not realized it. Elly says they all have red hair.”
“They do,” Heather said with a laugh. “Maggie O’Dunn is my sister-in-law. She’s married to my brother Brandon. She’s the second eldest of the four O’Dunn sisters, after Phoebe. She’s a caterer, and she’s making artisan soaps using milk from her mother’s goats. She and Brandon have two little boys.”
“I thought they lived in Boston,” Vic said.
“They did for a while.” Heather didn’t want to get into the details of Maggie and Brandon’s near-divorce last year. Not that she knew many of the details. “Now they’re back in town.”
“Brandon’s a skilled carpenter as I recall.”
“He’ll be working on your renovations.”
Heather watched through the double open doorway as Adrienne got wineglasses from a built-in cabinet with stained-glass panels, original to the house. She brought the glasses into the living room and set them on the coffee table. “You’re a mysterious character around here, I think, Vic. Elly told me you’ve always seemed exotic and fascinating, kind of a diplomatic James Bond.”
“A diplomatic James Bond,” Vic said. “I like that.”
What did that make Brody? The real deal? Heather stood, her hands and feet warm and her pant leg almost dry but her mood suddenly off. She felt restless, confused—faintly irritated. Why hadn’t Brody told her who he was right from the start? She obviously hadn’t recognized him while she’d been in the midst of rescuing Rohan and keeping herself from falling in the icy brook.
Adrienne opened one of the wine bottles. Heather noticed the elegant, distinctive Kendrick Winery label. She’d met Noah a few times but didn’t know him well. His best friend and business partner, Dylan McCaffrey, had beat him to Knights Bridge, arriving last spring to check on property he had discovered he owned there. Dylan, too, had fallen in love with a woman from Knights Bridge.
The short version of that story, Heather thought with a smile.
“What’s on your mind, Heather?” Vic asked quietly.
“Nothing. Just warming up.”
He studied her a moment then got to his feet. “You two chat and start on the first bottle. I’ll check on Rohan and invite Brody to join us. Last night I waited too long, and he peed on the floor. Rohan, I mean. Not our Agent Hancock.”
After Vic left, Adrienne poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Heather. “I think we’re going to enjoy this,” she said, raising her glass. “Cheers.”
Heather smiled. “Cheers.” She sipped the wine, enjoying the smooth flavor. “It is good, but you’re the expert.”
“I think of myself as a wine enthusiast more than a wine expert.”
“But you enjoy what you do,” Heather said.
Adrienne nodded, returning to her chair. “I love it, even when it doesn’t pay the bills. I’ve always had a keen sense of taste, and it felt natural to put it to use with wine. I know what I like, I know what’s good and I know how to describe wine in a way that’s entertaining and makes sense to other people.”
“You’re also not a wine snob.”
“I couldn’t be a wine snob and do what I do, or love it as much as I do.”
“When you think about it, snobbery doesn’t get anyone very far,” Heather said.
“It wouldn’t in Knights Bridge, that’s for sure. You all would run me out of town if I had my nose up in the air about wine—or anything else.”
Heather laughed. “Now, now. Live and let live, right? We have a soft spot for our snobs.”
“Every place has them, I guess. Vic’s more down-to-earth than I expected. I only met him a few times before I worked out this house-sitting arrangement. It’s been good getting to know him.”
“Any closer to deciding where you want to be after this?” Heather asked.
Adrienne shook her head. “I’ve been on the road constantly for more than a year. Maintaining an apartment made no sense, but now I feel rootless. Well, more rootless than usual. I haven’t lived anywhere for more than six months since I got out of college.” She smiled. “That must be hard for you to imagine.”
“I’m definitely not rootless, but I do want to travel.”
“Would you ever consider living somewhere besides Knights Bridge?”
“I have considered it.”
“But it’s home.” A touch of melancholy had crept into Adrienne’s voice. She raised her wineglass and seemed to make an effort to cheer up. “I’m enjoying hanging out here and teaching Vic about wine. No one thinks I’m taking advantage of him, I hope.”
“Who do you mean by no one?” Heather asked.
“People in town.”
“Ah. You’re not the subject of local gossip that I know of, but I wouldn’t necessarily know since I don’t pay attention to local gossip unless forced. Elly O’Dunn knows everything that goes on in town. She’d be the one to ask when she’s back from San Diego. Anyway, what difference does it make if people gossip about you?”
“Good point. No one takes advantage of Vic Scarlatti, that’s for sure. He’s good-natured and mild-mannered, but he also has a spine of steel.” Adrienne drew herself up straight. “My parents say he almost got to the altar a couple of times. I wonder if there’s a woman out there he regrets letting get away.”
“Any candidates?”
“None that I’m aware of. Maybe there’s a woman out there who gave him up for her career, or couldn’t take the rigors of his life as a career diplomat.”
“Or who gave him up for his career,” Heather added.
“Oh, now that’s a fun one to think about. Vic Scarlatti besotted with the wrong woman. The woman recognizing it and walking away from their relationship so he could go save the world.” Adrienne drank more of her wine. “I doubt it ever happened, but I don’t doubt our Vic has secrets. I, however, will concentrate on designing him a proper wine cellar and stocking it with proper wine.”
“Do you think you’d ever relocate out here?”
Adrienne’s eyes opened wide in obvious surprise. “Here? In Knights Bridge? What would I do?”
“What you’re doing now, I guess. You don’t go into an office.”
“True, but I need more asphalt and concrete around me than you have here. Total city girl. I can’t see myself enjoying an expensive red wine while watching a bald eagle sail above Echo Lake. Are there bald eagles here?”
“A few, thanks to the reservoir and its protected watershed.”
“Quabbin. What a beautiful place. I can’t help but think about the towns that were wiped off the map to create it. Can you imagine Knights Bridge under thirty feet of water, everything you know gone? The Swift River Valley was a very different place in 1912 when this house was built.”
“There was talk even then about damming the valley to provide drinking water for metropolitan Boston.” Heather set her wineglass on the coffee table. She didn’t want to drink too much before she got on the road, especially on an empty stomach. “I love to snowshoe on some of the old Quabbin roads. Why don’t you join me one day, if it’s something that appeals to you?”
“That would be great.” Adrienne seemed genuinely interested. “I don’t know how to cross-country ski, but I can manage snowshoes.”
“I wish I’d had mine while I was chasing Rohan. I should head home. Thanks for the wine.”
“I’ll fetch your dry socks while you pack up.”
Heather thanked her and headed through the dining room and a small hall into the kitchen. Rohan was asleep on his bed in the mudroom. The back door was shut tight, preventing any further mischief on his part.
Vic was at the counter with a cutting board and paring knife. “I’m about to start hors d’oeuvres,” he said. “Adrienne made a list of ingredients, and I found everything on it at the country store in town. They won’t take long to prepare. Brody’s on his way back up. Why don’t you join us?”
Wine and hors d’oeuvres with Vic Scarlatti, Adrienne Portale and Brody Hancock. The idea was at once tempting and impossible. “Thanks, but I have to get back.” Heather grabbed her laptop and measuring tape off the table. “Enjoy.”
“Another time, maybe.”
Adrienne arrived with the fresh wool socks and echoed Vic’s invitation, but Heather didn’t budge. It wasn’t them, she knew. It wasn’t even Brody Hancock as a Diplomatic Security Service agent, back in Knights Bridge. It was herself. She couldn’t pin down what she was feeling, just that she was off—and such uncertainty wasn’t her norm and made her decidedly uncomfortable.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, slipping on the dry socks and her boots.
Vic had the refrigerator door open and was pulling out vegetables and different varieties of local cheese. Adrienne grabbed a knife and a cutting board and smiled. “We’ll save you some for lunch tomorrow.”
“Thanks. Your hors d’oeuvres will be better than anything I bring.”
“What was that you had today?” Vic asked her.
“Leftover lasagna.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That was lasagna?”
Heather laughed. “Now you sound like my brothers. I’ve never been much of a cook.”
“But you’ll build me a great new kitchen,” Vic said.
“In the meantime, we will definitely save you leftovers,” Adrienne added.
Heather thanked them again and headed out, careful not to disturb Rohan as she shut the door softly behind her. With any luck, she’d be on her way before Agent Hancock arrived for wine and hors d’oeuvres.
* * *
Naturally, her truck wouldn’t start.
Heather banged the steering wheel with one hand. Frustration wouldn’t get her anywhere, and she wasn’t wearing gloves. It was dark and her truck—which she’d bought at a deep discount from Eric, her eldest brother—wasn’t in the mood for the late-January cold.
That kind of day was turning into that kind of night.
She climbed out as she debated her options. Before she could decide what to do, she heard the crunch of footsteps on the sanded driveway behind her.
“Of course you drive a truck,” Brody said as he approached her from the guesthouse.
Heather realized right away that her intense reaction to him at the brook hadn’t been a fluke. It wasn’t going anywhere, not tonight, at least. She tried to ignore it.
“I’m in the construction business,” she said. “A truck is practical.”
“And you’re a practical sort.”
“Do I hear skepticism in your voice, Agent Hancock?”
“You went after Rohan with no hat, lousy gloves, lousy boots—”
“Not lousy. They’re actually quite nice gloves and boots. I admit they weren’t the best choice for what I ended up having to do.”
“You’d have been in a mess if you’d fallen out there.”
“I left a trail. Vic or Adrienne would have found me, and, as it turns out, you were on the case, anyway.”
“As tough as any Sloan, aren’t you? Are you ever a girly-girl?”
“I met you three hours ago, and you’re asking me a question like that?”
He grinned. “I didn’t say I expected an answer, and we didn’t meet three hours ago. We met when you were a wild-haired kid in braces.”
“Everyone remembers me as a wild-haired kid in braces. It doesn’t faze me that you’re another one. Now I’m all grown up, and my truck won’t start. I could get one of my brothers out here to help jump-start it.”
“I was hoping to avoid your brothers.”
“A tough guy like you afraid of a few local guys? I don’t believe it.”
“I didn’t say I was afraid.”
His quiet, self-assured tone sent another surge of heat through her. She had to get a grip. Truck, she told herself. Work the problem. She peered down the driveway toward the back road that led into the village. “I could walk,” she said. “It’s not that far, but it’s very cold tonight.”
Brody shook his head. “You’ve already had one go at freezing today. What are the odds Vic has jumper cables?”
“Slim to none.”
“That’s what I think, too. Come on. I have a car. I’ll give you a ride home. You can leave your truck here tonight and figure out what to do in the morning.”
“You haven’t had too much wine?”
He seemed amused. “No, ma’am. I haven’t had a drop of wine yet.”
“Sorry. It was rude of me to ask.” Why couldn’t she control her mouth around him? “I only had a few sips because I knew I had to drive. If you’re a federal agent on duty day and night, you have to watch yourself, right? You can’t be getting drunk.”
“Again this habit of saying whatever is on your mind. You can walk with me to get my car or wait here.”
“I’ll go with you. I don’t want to stand still in this cold.” She shut her truck door. “Thank you.”
“Not a problem.”
He set off down the driveway toward the guesthouse, setting a brisk pace as Heather caught up with him.
“I wouldn’t have guessed you’d be working for Sloan & Sons,” he said. “It got its name before you were born, didn’t it?”
Heather nodded. “My parents had given up on having a girl and figured one or more of the boys would end up working in the family business. No harm done if they didn’t.”
“Do all your brothers work there?”
“Three of them. Justin, Brandon and Adam. Eric’s a police officer, and Christopher’s a firefighter. Justin’s a volunteer firefighter, too.” Heather shoved her hands into her coat pockets. She was already cold from her failed attempts to start her truck. “Do you remember the order? Eric, Justin, Brandon, Adam, Christopher, me.”
“Big family,” Brody said, his tone neutral. “No guy in your life?”
“You know, you have no room to talk when it comes to saying whatever’s on one’s mind.”
“So that means no guy. Having five older brothers—particularly your five older brothers—must make having a relationship a challenge.”
“You mean do my brothers vet potential guys in my life? It doesn’t work like that, but I can hold my own with them. I’m good at taking care of myself—as you saw earlier today, I might remind you.”
“Here we go again. You did great except for falling in the brook and getting hypothermia.”
“I accomplished my mission while minimizing the risks. I did fine without you.”
“You did better with me.”
Heather rolled her eyes. “Not funny, Agent Hancock.”
He shrugged. “True, though.”
They came to his car, which she hadn’t noticed earlier. It wasn’t a rental. It was an old BMW two-door with New York plates. “You’re from New York?”
“It’s where the car’s registered.”
“That’s not what I asked, is it?”
He didn’t respond. He wasn’t pretending he hadn’t heard her, she decided. He was flat-out ignoring her. She wondered if it was a polite way of getting across that he was a federal agent who had no intention of telling her much about himself. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe his background was secret.
It wasn’t a thought she liked having running around in her mind as she got into the BMW next to him.
“Are you armed?”
“Armed?”
“You know. With a gun.”
He started the car. “Heather, I’m just a guy visiting an old friend. Where in town do you live?”
“Thistle Lane. Do you remember it?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“It’s in the village, off the common. The town library is on the corner.”
“Quaint little Knights Bridge.”
“Phoebe O’Dunn owns the house. You remember her, don’t you?”
“The eldest of the O’Dunn sisters. They were our closest neighbors when we lived out on the lake.”
“Everyone in town expects Phoebe and Noah will be announcing their engagement soon. I think they’ll keep the house even after they’re married. It’s in good shape. I’m drawing up plans for a new kitchen and bathroom.” Heather wasn’t sure why she was telling Brody all this, but he didn’t seem uninterested. “It’s fun. I’ve discovered I have a passion for interior design.”
“Often helps to know your passions,” he said.
She wasn’t sure what he meant but decided not to pursue the subject since it involved the word passion. She’d blundered on that score enough for one day.
As they reached the end of Vic’s driveway and turned onto the winding road into the village, she noticed that the winter conditions and the absence of streetlights didn’t seem to bother Brody in the least. He drove with a confidence that Heather realized she should have expected.
“Phoebe’s house is the last one on the right,” she said when she pointed out Thistle Lane. “It was also built in 1912. It must have been a good year in Knights Bridge, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t know Knights Bridge had any good years.”
“That, Agent Hancock, is a negative attitude.”
He smiled at her. “Practical.” He pulled in front of the little house. “If you need a ride up to Vic’s in the morning, give me a buzz, and I’ll come fetch you.”
“I don’t have your number.”
“Yes, you do. I got yours from Vic and texted you.”
“Efficient.”
He sat back. “Don’t forget to bring jumper cables.”
“I won’t.” She started to open her door but angled him a look. “What did you do to annoy my brothers?”
“There’s what I did and there’s what they thought I did.”
“Bet the two overlap.”
“It’s all in the past.”
“Bigger fish to fry now, huh? Nothing’s wrong, is there?”
“Wrong as in what? An abandoned golden retriever running off into the woods?”
“Wrong as in a federal agent turning up in Knights Bridge.”
“Good night, Heather.”
“Wrong as in Brody Hancock turning up in Knights Bridge after all this time.”
“Do you ever quit?”
“Can you arrest me for asking questions?”
“Thinking about that.”
“You’d tell me if I was in any danger, wouldn’t you?”
“I told you today, and you told me to go to hell.” He leaned closer to her. “Go, Heather. Have a nice dinner and relax.”
“You didn’t answer my question, you know.”
“Good night, Heather.”
That was two good-nights. Time to be on her way. She got out of the car and made her way up the walk, which she’d shoveled herself after the last storm. Her brother Adam had plowed the driveway. She’d thrown fresh sand on the walk and the driveway before leaving that morning, never imagining she would rescue a puppy, slip into a brook and run into Brody Hancock, formerly of Knights Bridge, Massachusetts.
He waited until she was on the small porch and had the front door open before he turned around and headed back down Thistle Lane. Heather didn’t know why the prospect of him watching her made her feel so self-conscious, but it did.
Probably shouldn’t have mentioned the ice-skating bruises on her butt.
She ran inside and turned up the thermostat in the short hall between the front room and kitchen. No point keeping the place toasty warm when she wasn’t there. Not that she kept it toasty warm when she was there. Most evenings she watched television under a quilt and then went to bed.
Alone.
She’d hoped moving into town from the apartment above the Sloan & Sons offices in her parents’ converted barn would help her social life. Specifically, her romantic life. It wasn’t just being on top of her parents and her brothers all the time that discouraged “suitors,” as her grandmother called them. It was also that with such a big family, she had a built-in social network. They all lived in Knights Bridge. One of them was bound to be available to hang out. She had friends, too, but she decided to stay in for the evening.
She heated up a can of black bean soup and took it into the front room with her. It was a quiet, dark night, and very cold. Even indoors, she was aware of the dropping temperature. She glanced around the attractive room, feeling oddly out of place. Phoebe and Noah had met at a costume ball in Boston, a charity fund-raiser. Phoebe had been dressed as an Edwardian princess, Noah as a swashbuckler. He’d had no idea she was a small-town librarian. She’d had no idea he was a billionaire.
So romantic.
Heather wasn’t sure she’d know a swashbuckler if she saw one. Sometimes she wondered if she had a romantic bone in her body.
She reached for her laptop. What would happen if she did an internet search for Diplomatic Security Service agent Brody Hancock?
Would she learn anything interesting?
Would he find out?
She smiled but felt a quiver of uneasiness, too. She put aside her laptop and investigated the shelves of books. She chose a worn copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel and took it to bed with her, but abandoned it after seven pages and went back downstairs for her laptop. She brought it upstairs with her and, with a deep breath, did an internet search to see what she could find out about the Diplomatic Security Service.
She eyed the list of results, suspecting it would be best if she returned to her swashbuckler tale and put aside her questions about Brody Hancock and his return to their little hometown.
Three (#ulink_3820e616-e2c4-586b-b427-32768cb4b0a2)
Brody opened a beer and sat at Vic’s kitchen table. Rohan was racing back and forth between the refrigerator and the back door with a chew toy that Heather had brought for him, at least according to Vic. Brody wasn’t confident his old friend was paying close attention to the puppy goings-on in his Knights Bridge home.
He had helped himself to a plate of hors d’oeuvres, but he’d never been a big wine drinker. He’d only taken a few sips of Adrienne Portale’s selections for the evening. She hadn’t seemed to mind. Brody couldn’t remember Vic ever mentioning Adrienne or her parents, Sophia Portale, a marketing whiz with her own firm based in San Francisco, and her ex-husband, Richard Portale, a corporate lawyer also in San Francisco. Adrienne’s house-sitting arrangement with Vic didn’t strike Brody as anything out of the ordinary.
Just as well nothing was jumping out at him to cause alarm since he doubted Heather Sloan would give up on trying to find out why he was in her little town. She was a Sloan. Every last one of them was stubborn. He doubted that had changed in his absence.
Heather wasn’t what he’d expected. Pretty, sexy, curvy...
He didn’t need that kind of distraction right now. An attractive woman—one from the hometown he’d sworn he would never step foot in again.
Also one with five older brothers. Bad enough if he stopped right there, but he couldn’t. He’d left Knights Bridge while Heather’s brothers were heating up the tar and gathering the feathers.
His negative history with the Sloans aside, Brody didn’t need them or anyone else in town meddling in whatever was going on with Vic. If Vic was being paranoid, no one else needed to know. Knights Bridge was his home now. That kind of gossip wouldn’t help him.
“What a day,” Vic said, yawning as he entered the kitchen. He put his full wineglass on the table, pulled out a chair and flopped down. “Adrienne’s reading by the fire. I think she’s disappointed we didn’t drink all the wine, but one more sip and I’ll pass out on the floor.”
“The leftover wine will keep. She’s got some gadget that helps.” Brody took a swallow of his beer. “You weren’t close to passing out, though.”
“I was. I don’t hold my alcohol like I used to.”
“Another of the myths you live by these days.”
Vic quirked an eyebrow. “Another?”
“You’re an optimist and a romantic at heart, Vic. Maybe that’s why you lasted as a career diplomat for as long as you did.”
“Forty years. Damn, that makes me feel old.”
Brody grinned. “You are old.”
“Hell, no. Sixty is the new forty.” Vic watched Rohan tear across the kitchen. “The little fella’s no worse for the wear, anyway. Heather didn’t recognize you right away. That surprise you?”
“Not really. She wasn’t pretending. She’s not one to hold back what’s on her mind. I didn’t ring a bell at all.” Brody set his bottle on the table. He’d spent far too much time thinking about Heather Sloan ice-skating. “Why didn’t you tell me a Sloan was working on this place?”
Vic shrugged. “I didn’t think of it. Nobody remembers your fallout with the Sloans. You haven’t been back here since then, so it’s on your mind. That’s understandable. Anyway, they didn’t run you out. You left of your own accord. You’re a federal law-enforcement officer now. A respected agent with the Diplomatic Security Service. You’re as big a hard-ass as any Sloan.”
“Not Heather. She could kick my butt.”
“Ha. I have no doubt.” Vic lowered a hand at his side and snapped his fingers to get Rohan’s attention. The puppy bounded to him. “His fur’s so soft. He wore himself out on his romp in the woods, but he’s got his energy back now. What would have happened if Heather hadn’t found him when she did?”
“I’d have found him,” Brody said.
“You’re just saying that so I don’t feel like an incompetent fool for having lost him in the first place. I’d have had to sell the house if I’d let the poor little fellow freeze to death in that brook. More to the point,” he said, sitting up straight as Rohan ran off again, “I’d have felt terrible.”
“You’re new to puppy care.”
“Trial by fire.”
The puppy careened into the mudroom and climbed into his bed with his chew toy. Watching him helped Brody anchor his thinking. Too many memories in this town. There were some good ones, but the bad ones were clawing at him now. Heather Sloan wasn’t a kid anymore. That didn’t help. He hadn’t considered her—that she would be overseeing Vic’s house renovations—when he’d agreed to return. He’d expected to have a chat with Vic, talk some sense into him and leave after a couple of nights.
Brody took his beer bottle, still half-full, to the sink. It was pitch-dark outside, and dead quiet. Vic’s was the only house on this part of the lake. “You’re not used to the quiet and isolation out here, Vic. It’s worse now with the cold weather.”
Vic pushed his wineglass aside. “It’s been a while since either of us has been in a cold climate during winter.”
“Yes, it has.” Brody hadn’t expected to appreciate the bracing temperature and stark-white landscape—the quiet. Only the puppy’s playful growling disturbed the silence. He turned to Vic. “How are the renovations? Are you decisive, or do you dither?”
“We’re still pulling everything together and making decisions, but I wouldn’t say dither. I deliberate.”
Brody grinned. “Sounds like dithering to me.”
“I haven’t driven Heather crazy yet. I think the architect is about to bail on the project. Heather says not to worry, that’s just how he is. Mark Flanagan. You know him?”
“I did. He used to sleep in the back of class. Now he’s an architect?”
“A damn good one, too. He left town and came back again. He married a local woman in September. Jessica Frost.”
“I remember her. She’s younger—more like Heather’s age, as I recall. I didn’t have much to do with either one of them.”
Vic stretched, looking stiff and tired. “The Frosts still have their sawmill. They’re doing the custom woodwork on this place. Jessica’s sister, Olivia, married Noah Kendrick’s business partner on Christmas Eve.”
“Dylan McCaffrey.”
“I see you’re up to speed on the newcomers.” Vic didn’t sound surprised. “Dylan and Noah are exceptionally wealthy. What if their presence in Knights Bridge has attracted whoever is harassing me?”
“Harassing is a strong word, Vic.”
“Yeah, okay. Maybe the goings-on haven’t escalated to that level. Not yet, anyway.”
Brody leaned back against the sink. He had no concrete reason to suspect Vic was in real trouble. He was only weeks into retirement, but there were no lingering threats against him. “Sure you’re not just having trouble transitioning to retirement? Turning a draft into a suspicious incident.”
“I’ve never been a worrywart.”
“You worked nonstop in a high-pressure, high-profile environment, and now you’re chasing puppies and renovating your country house and stocking a wine cellar.”
“I was thinking about taking up bird-watching, too,” Vic added dryly.
“It’s not the life you’re used to.”
“It’s one I’ve been dreaming about for years.” He watched Rohan wander back into the kitchen. “Elly O’Dunn told me not to let him run wild.”
“Puppies need structure and a steady, firm hand. You need to be the alpha dog, Vic.”
“This is why I never was a father. I’d have had nothing but spoiled brats. I need to find him a good home. Winter’s a deterrent. People tend to get puppies in warmer weather. It’s no fun to train a puppy in January, but I can’t imagine someone abandoning the little guy out here.”
“Think that’s related to what’s been going on with you?”
“I hope not. We’re dealing with a real sick SOB, then. It’s been long enough that you’d think if he were lost an owner would have come forward by now.” Vic pulled his gaze from the puppy. “Why don’t you adopt Rohan, Brody? You can have a dog in the Diplomatic Security Service.”
“Not the places I’ve worked the past few years.” Brody stood straight. “Rohan seems to be at home here. Why not adopt him yourself? You could use the company now that you’re retired. You could take a puppy-training class so you know what you’re doing. It’s not too late. It would give you something to do.”
“Besides fretting about odd occurrences that don’t sound odd to you, you mean?” Vic put up a hand. “Don’t answer. Did you ever have a dog when you were growing up? I don’t remember.”
“Two before we moved to the lake and one after. No golden retrievers, though. Whatever’s up with you, Vic, doesn’t have to do with puppies.”
“No. Rohan’s a handful, but he’s not our culprit.” Vic grabbed his wineglass but didn’t take a sip. “Things not in the same place I left them. Anonymous hang ups. They aren’t a puppy’s doing.”
“Were the hang ups on your landline or cell phone?” Brody asked.
“Both. I think someone’s been pawing through my files, too. My physical files in the library. I haven’t given up my apartment in New York yet, but I’ve been moving things here bit by bit. It’s like...” He paused, his eyes distant then focused again on Brody. “I don’t know. It’s like I’m being watched. Studied.”
“Only here? Nothing in New York?”
“Only here.”
“When you’re here alone, or when Adrienne and Heather are here?”
Vic shrugged. “Mostly when I’m here on my own. I had a hang up at least once when Adrienne was here. It was shortly after she started house-sitting for me in early December. She’s not here all the time. She went out to San Francisco for a week after New Year’s, and she pops down to New York every now and then.” He shook his head, as if he were reading Brody’s mind. “It’s not Adrienne.”
“What about Heather Sloan?”
“Heather? Why would she want to spook me?”
“I’m not concerned with whys right now,” Brody said. “How often is she here?”
“As necessary. She’s in charge of renovations. There’s a hell of a lot to do. We’re down to it now, so she’s been here every day since I arrived last week. There will be people in and out of the house once renovations start, but there aren’t now. I’m telling you, Brody, something weird is going on around here.”
As Vic spoke, Rohan yawned and headed for the his bed in the mudroom. Brody was ready to do the same with his spot in the guesthouse. He didn’t want to delve deep into Vic’s mind, but he knew he had to, at least to a degree. “Could you have moved things and not remember?” he asked.
He half expected Vic to spring up out of the chair, offended, but instead he tapped a finger on the rim of his wineglass, thoughtful. Finally, he shook his head. “I don’t think so, no. I admit that I’ve wondered if I’m losing it. I asked myself that repeatedly before I contacted you. I decided no. If I had decided yes, I would have called a doctor instead of you. I’m retired, but I’m in good mental and physical health.”
“I had to ask,” Brody said.
“I know you did.” Vic sucked in a breath and smacked a hand down on the table, an unusual display of frustration for the career diplomat. He exhaled. “I’ve nothing concrete to give you, Brody. No evidence. It’s possible someone toyed with me for a while and figured out I’m not that interesting, and that’s that.”
“Do you have any reason to suspect you’re in danger, Vic?”
“I have enemies. There’s no question about that.”
There wasn’t, but it wasn’t Brody’s point. “Is one of them in Knights Bridge?”
“That’s why I asked you to come here, Brody.” Vic’s voice was quiet but intense, his frustration with his situation unabated if under control. “I need your objectivity and professionalism to help me figure out what’s going on.”
Brody crossed his arms on his chest. How many times had he stood in this same spot as a kid, getting Vic’s advice? How many times through college, training and his years with the DSS had he counted on Vic Scarlatti to be a phone call or an email away?
“All right,” Brody said. “We’ll figure this out. Anything else you can think of?”
“I was followed,” Vic said. “I didn’t mention that. The other day this black car followed me from Amherst right to my driveway, then kept on going out toward the upper lake. You tell me that was a coincidence, Brody. You tell me.”
“Did you get the plate number?”
“Did I—” He stared at Brody, looking baffled. “No, I didn’t get the plate number. I had my hand on my cell phone in case I had to call the cops.”
Brody lowered his arms to his sides. Vic wasn’t paranoid by nature, and even now Brody didn’t sense that his mentor and friend was afraid. Curious, annoyed, uncertain. Not fearful.
At this point, Brody couldn’t tell his old friend anything except that he was here now, and he’d have a look around.
He felt a cold draft coming through the kitchen window. The place needed work. It had for a long time, and Sloan & Sons was the outfit to do the job.
He didn’t need to go there right now.
He shifted back to Vic. “You could have called the police and asked them to look into these incidents instead of calling me.”
“I don’t want to sound like a crazy old man. I call the cops, it’s a thing.”
“It’s a thing when you call me, Vic.”
“I asked you here as a friend with experience in these matters. I know you’re a law-enforcement officer. That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the local cops. Heather’s brother is a police officer. Knights Bridge is a small town. I’m an unknown. People are curious. They gossip.”
“I’ll need to bring in the police if it looks as if there’s more going on here than a bored retired diplomat with an overactive imagination.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Once I decided to contact you, I knew there was no good outcome. Either I’m overreacting, or something’s going on.” Vic pushed back his chair, the legs scraping on the worn floor. “You’re not here just because of me, anyway, are you, Brody?”
He glanced at the window above the sink but could only see the darkness and the reflection of the lights in the kitchen. “I dreamed about Echo Lake right before you got in touch with me.”
“A sign, you think?”
“A sign it’s time I saw about the land I own here.”
“Think you’ll put it on the market?”
He shrugged without answering Vic’s question.
A gust of wind rattled the kitchen windows. The age and condition of the house could be responsible for some of what had Vic unnerved, or at least for triggering him into ratcheting up normal occurrences.
“I’ll need to ask Adrienne and Heather if they’ve noticed anything,” Brody said.
Vic clearly didn’t like that idea. “Be tactful.”
“Sure, Vic. No problem. Tact is my middle name.”
“Tact is an unknown concept to you,” Vic muttered.
Brody grinned and started for the mudroom. “I’ve got some work to do.”
“I thought you were on home leave.”
“I am. You relax and let me know if you remember anything else. Write every incident down. You can email it to me or hand me a sheet of paper.”
Vic shook his head. “I’m not writing a damn thing. I don’t want you or anyone else using it against me if this turns out to be nothing.” He raised his wineglass. “It’s called plausible deniability. If I’m losing it, we’ll all know soon enough.”
“I doubt you’re losing it, Vic.”
“But you also doubt I’m in danger.”
“Correct.”
Vic didn’t seem offended. “How was it seeing a Sloan again?”
“I told you I never had much to do with Heather.”
“But she is a Sloan. She didn’t stir up old wounds?”
“No.”
“Then your feud with the Sloans is in the past. No hard feelings.”
It wasn’t a feud, and it had never been a feud, but Brody wasn’t indulging Vic, especially if he was in a mood to stir up trouble as an outlet for his own problems. “Call if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning.”
Brody headed into the mudroom where Rohan reigned. It was immediately evident that the fur ball had relieved himself in the corner. Brody grabbed some newspaper to clean up the mess but felt his phone vibrate in his jacket.
He saw he had a text from Greg Rawlings, a DSS colleague and friend recovering from a bullet to the shoulder incurred two months ago during a difficult mission.
How’s Knights Bridge?
Brody decided to answer.
I’m cleaning up puppy poop.
Auto-correct problem?
No.
Oh man. At least it’s not Vic’s poop. Later.
Brody didn’t know whether to laugh or grit his teeth, but tackling the mess on the floor wasn’t optional. It had to be done, and he might as well be the one to do it.
He noticed Vic standing in the doorway. “Thank you,” Vic said, his relief palpable. “Cleaning up after Rohan isn’t my favorite activity, and I hate to ask Adrienne to do it. I never had a dog. A cat, either. I had a goldfish once, but it disappeared. My parents told me it died and they got rid of the body before I could see it. Suspiciously, we were about to leave for a month in France.”
“Think they flushed it?”
“It wasn’t well...” Vic sighed. “I suppose I should take them at their word. Think our pup here misses his siblings and that’s why he’s been tearing up the place?”
“Alpha dog, Vic.”
Vic scowled and headed back into the kitchen. Rohan sat on Brody’s foot, looking irresistible. Brody pointed the newspaper at him. “No more messing on the floor, you hear?”
Whether Rohan was worn-out or heard something authoritative in Brody’s voice, the puppy sat politely, as if he were the best-minding golden retriever in the world.
“Good dog,” Brody said.
Rohan responded by diving face-first into his water bowl and then licking Brody’s hand as he squatted down to clean up the mess. When he finished, Rohan had curled up in his bed, all innocence.
Brody took a picture and sent it to Greg.
Meet Rohan.
Greg texted him back immediately.
All hope is lost.
Brody was surprised to find Adrienne standing in the driveway, looking at the stars. She must have gone out through the front. “I can’t resist the night sky here,” she said, crossing her arms on her chest. She had on a coat and hat but no gloves. “There isn’t much ambient light to spoil the stars. It’s freezing, though. I think this is the coldest it’s been since I’ve been here.”
“It’s supposed to drop below zero tonight.”
“I can’t remember the last time I was in below-zero temperatures.”
“You sound excited.”
She laughed. “I guess I am. Vic’s never stayed here through an entire winter. He says he likes winter, but I wonder if he’ll end up buying a condo in Florida.”
“How well do you know him?”
“Not well at all. He goes way back with my parents. I looked him up one day when we were both in New York, and we hit it off. Next thing, I’m house-sitting.”
“When was this meeting in New York?”
“November.” She shot him a quick look. “Easy, there. It was just lunch. Vic didn’t pass me any state secrets.”
Brody smiled. “That’s good.”
“We got to talking about wine, and he mentioned he’d like to know more about wine now that he was retiring to his country house in Knights Bridge. I’d never heard of Knights Bridge.” She stuffed her bare hands under her arms, presumably to keep them warm. “Vic says you’re like a son to him. He’s relaxed since you got here, even with Rohan’s escape this afternoon. He’s been keyed up. He won’t tell me why.”
Brody buttoned his jacket, trying to appear casual. He wanted to get a read on Adrienne without alarming her. “Vic’s had an intense job for a lot of years.”
“You’d know more about that than I would. He doesn’t talk about his past with me, or with Heather, that I’ve been able to see.” There was no trace of criticism in her tone. “He’s been great to me, though. I’m not broke or desperate or anything, but I’m between apartments.”
“Your work doesn’t tie you to an office,” Brody said.
“Exactly. I have a freedom of lifestyle that I’m taking advantage of in a variety of ways. Fortunately, I have friends all over the place who let me stay with them. I help with things like wine tastings and stocking wine cellars.” She gave an easy smile. “I always bring a few bottles of my favorite wines.”
Brody looked up at the spray of stars in the black sky. “It’s quiet here. Do you like the quiet?”
“Right now I do. Vic’s excited about renovations, but I think retirement has taken him by surprise. It’s one thing to have it figured out intellectually. It’s another to experience it. He’s used to a fair amount of drama. There’s not much drama around here.”
“Small towns often seem sleepier than they are.”
“Well, there might be local dramas. People are people, after all. I doubt international diplomacy is ever at stake.”
Brody shrugged without answering. He pointed to the dark sky. “Nightfall comes early this time of year. Plans for the evening?”
“Vic and I were going to make dinner together, but the hors d’oeuvres filled us up. An early night with a book sounds good to me. The comforter on my bed is to die for. Fluffy goose down. I snuggle under it and read until my eyes can’t stay open. It’s a luxury, that kind of night.” She shivered. “It’s almost always colder than I expect when I come outside. You’re welcome to help yourself to any food you want, of course. I stocked the pantry.”
“Thanks. I’m not hungry, either.”
“Do you cook?”
“Not well, but I can chop, slice and clean.”
Adrienne turned to him, the light from the back door catching her dark eyes. “I will keep that in mind.”
“I can set a table, too. I even know my wineglasses.”
“Vic makes it easy. He only has one kind.”
“You’ll be correcting that?”
She laughed. “Absolutely.” She hunched her shoulders. “I’ll say good-night. I’m freezing.”
Brody waited as she dashed up the back steps and went inside. It was damn cold, but it felt good to him. He didn’t have a good sense of Adrienne Portale and her reasons for house-sitting in Knights Bridge, but he hadn’t found anything suspicious, never mind alarming, in their conversation about Vic, wine and dinner.
He took the shoveled walk to the guesthouse but didn’t go inside, instead heading through the snow down to the lake. The stars were out in full force now, penetrating the darkness and creating shadows in the woods and on the lake. He could see Heather’s footprints from her Rohan rescue. He pictured her climbing up from the brook with the puppy in her arms, her pant leg soaked, her scarf dangling, one glove. She’d been focused and determined, and she hadn’t needed his help.
He ducked past white pines to the lakeshore. A breeze whistled in the clear night air. He remembered standing in this spot as a boy, waiting for the stars to come out, imagining being on a different planet—in a different place. He hadn’t hated Knights Bridge then. He’d wanted to go places, see things, do things, get out in the world.
He’d done that in spades, and now here he was again, on the shore of Echo Lake. He hadn’t lied. He had dreamed about Echo Lake in the days before Vic’s call. He’d just returned to the US to begin an extended home leave, and it had struck him that he had no real home, except for his land in Knights Bridge—and it wasn’t home. He’d picked up his car and considered dividing his time between visits with his mother in Orlando and his father in Key West.
He felt the cold sting his face and ears. He gritted his teeth. Damn. He was a tough federal agent. He’d endured all sorts of extreme conditions. He could handle a southern New England January evening.
He turned away from the lake and walked up to the guesthouse. He’d had a rough few months on the job, and being back in Knights Bridge—running into Heather, even if she wasn’t one of the Sloan brothers—was messing with his head. He didn’t like digging into his emotions. Didn’t want to go there. Thinking about the past wouldn’t help him size up what was going on with Vic. So far, it seemed as though he was in the throes of adjusting to retirement and making mountains out of molehills. Brody wasn’t even sure there were any molehills, never mind mountains.
He went into the guesthouse through the side door. The two-bedroom cottage was solid and only about forty years old, a late addition to the original 1912 estate. It needed work, but not as desperately as the main house. He didn’t care one way or the other. It suited his purposes. He liked keeping some distance between him and Vic, and time alone, even here, with the past so near, worked for him right now. He hadn’t been back in the US in months, and his mind was still thousands of miles away in North Africa and his unfinished business there.
He filled the wood box and started a fire in the woodstove. Its crackling was the only sound in the place. He stood at the windows and looked out at the night sky. His mother loved stars and had pointed out various constellations to him when he was a kid. It wasn’t until he was in middle school that he’d realized her names were all of her own creation and not the actual names. Eric Sloan had told him. “Dude, that’s not Camel Head. That’s Orion. There is no Camel Head constellation.”
Brody had felt like a dumbass. At first he’d blamed his mother for lying to him, but she hadn’t lied. She’d made up her own names because she didn’t know the real ones—couldn’t sort herself out enough to go to the library and find out—and needed something to grab on to for herself, and maybe for her only son, too. She’d been restless and depressed, hating her life, hating Knights Bridge, and by his fourteenth birthday, Mary Hancock had left him and his father.
Brody hadn’t told Eric he’d gotten Camel Head from his mother. He’d covered for her.
That was what he was good at—watching people’s backs.
She’d loved Echo Lake itself, though. “It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived, Brody. I can’t imagine any place prettier than right here, even if it’s not for me.”
She was happy as a clam these days in Orlando, where she’d moved his senior year in high school. His father had been right behind her, beelining to South Florida twenty-four hours after Brody had turned eighteen, two weeks after his graduation.
He smiled, thinking of his parents. A couple of flakes. He wondered if they’d have stayed together if they’d moved to Florida instead of to Knights Bridge. He needed to go see them while he was on home leave.
He felt the heat of the woodstove. He was surprised at how tight his throat was, but he knew it wasn’t just being here. Being back “home.” That was an aggravating factor, but it was also the weight of the past few months, the tension and the uncertainties of what came next for him.
The fire popped and hissed, the sounds launching him back to a mission in November to secure a small consulate that had been shut down the year before. He remembered the heat, the dust, the eerie stillness. He and Greg Rawlings had looked at each other, sensing—knowing—something was off. They hadn’t exchanged a word. They’d had a split second to react before gunfire erupted, but it was that split second that had saved their lives.
Brody had emerged uninjured. Greg hadn’t been so lucky. He had taken a bullet to his shoulder that he and Brody both had believed would end Greg’s seventeen-year career as a DSS agent. Blood seeping through his fingers as he applied pressure to his own wound, Greg had looked at Brody with pain-racked eyes. “Now what, Brody? Hell. I don’t have a life to go back to.”
“You do, Greg,” Brody had said. “Think of those kids of yours.”
“I’ve never been there for them. What, start now?”
Before Brody could respond, Greg had drifted into semiconsciousness. Two months later, he was making a full recovery. He could go back to work if he wanted to. His call. He didn’t have to take on another dangerous assignment. He had married young and had a couple of teenagers, if also a wife who didn’t want to “indulge” him anymore. Laura Rawlings didn’t care if he was good at his job, if it made him happy—she was done. Even before he was shot, Greg had expressed his doubts that a nonhazardous post where she could join him wouldn’t make any difference.
But as in need of TLC as Greg’s home life was, at least he had one to come back to. Brody didn’t. He didn’t have a family, a pet or even an apartment.
The wind howled out in the dark January night then settled down again. It had been a long time since he’d experienced such quiet. He turned from the stove and sat on the sectional sofa. He’d slept here last night. He’d grabbed a pillow and a blanket from one of the bedrooms. The front room was warmer with the woodstove, and it had a view of the lake. He’d wanted to wake up to the sunrise over Echo Lake. He didn’t know why.
Maybe he didn’t want to know why.
He leaned back and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the crackle of the fire and trying not to think, not to remember and especially not to feel now that he was back in Knights Bridge.
Four (#ulink_29e6dfbd-f137-53b6-a06d-d6f54dae3e1d)
Heather woke up to no truck and no food in the house—not so much as a slice of bread for toast or a drop of milk for coffee. Fortunately, Smith’s, the only restaurant in the village center, was open and within easy walking distance, one of the perks of living on Thistle Lane. Smith’s was popular with loads of people she knew, including her brothers. Someone would be willing to loan her a set of jumper cables and give her a ride up to Vic’s.
Phoebe’s sole bathroom had its original claw-foot tub, with a brand-new shower curtain she’d added when Heather moved in. She’d found a kids’ one decorated with little hammers, saws and wrenches. “I thought that would be fun for you,” she’d told Heather. “Make you smile when you jump in the shower. I was tempted by the one with puppies, but I went with the tools.”
It probably hadn’t occurred to Phoebe that Heather could have a guy over and the shower curtain might not convey the sexiest image of her.
Then again, it was just a shower curtain, and it was clean and did the job. Heather was nothing if not practical.
And it did make her smile.
She took the time—for a change—to blow-dry her hair since she didn’t want to go out into the cold morning with it partially wet. It’d turn into icicles. She dressed in warm layers and added a hat, proper gloves and her L.L. Bean boots. If Rohan escaped today, she’d be ready to chase him across Echo Lake if need be.
The sting of the early-morning cold chased away any lingering fuzziness from her late-night delving into the United States Foreign Service and its elite corps of security personnel, the Diplomatic Security Service. She hadn’t been overstating yesterday when she’d concluded Brody was extremely fit. He had to be, given the work he did. Ten to one he took on the most dangerous posts.
He wasn’t the Brody Hancock she had known as a teenager.
Heather walked the short distance up Thistle Lane to South Main Street. The town library was on the east corner, a quirky nineteenth-century brick-and-stone building that occupied a large lot dotted with old shade trees and evergreens.
Had Brody ever so much as stepped foot in his town library?
Heather shook off the question. Why even think about such things?
She crossed South Main to the town common. The air was still and very cold as the gray early morning gave way to a lavender sunrise, glowing on the snow and the classic houses that surrounded the large, oval-shaped common. The seasonal skating rink on the eastern end of the common was quiet now, but it was a favorite gathering place during these short winter days.
Staying on a shoveled, sanded walk, Heather walked past the Civil War and World War monuments, bare-limbed oaks and sugar maples and empty benches. She scooted across Main Street and ducked down the side street where Smith’s was located in a converted house with white clapboards and black shutters. In warm-weather months, the porch would be decorated with hanging flower baskets and white-painted wicker furniture. Now the furniture was in storage, replaced by a stack of wood, a bucket of sand and a shovel. A grapevine wreath decorated for Valentine’s Day—still a couple weeks off—was hung on the glossy green-painted door.
When she went inside, Heather wasn’t surprised to see her brothers Eric and Justin at a square table near the front. Both were dressed for work, Eric in his police uniform, Justin in canvas pants and a dark, heavy sweatshirt and down vest similar to hers. They had fresh coffee, their breakfast orders obviously on the way.
Justin tapped the table next to him. “Have a seat,” he said.
He was a skilled carpenter who specialized in older buildings, and, more and more, he was taking over the day-to-day operations of Sloan & Sons. He’d been reluctant to let Heather oversee the renovations on Vic Scarlatti’s house, but he’d acquiesced in the end—with reservations. “Just do your job,” he’d told her. “Stay out of Vic’s dramas.”
Good advice, Heather thought as she unzipped her vest and sat down, aware of her brothers eyeing her. It was as if they knew all wasn’t normal in her world. She wondered if they’d heard about her puppy rescue yesterday and if it that qualified as one of Vic’s dramas. What about Brody Hancock’s return to Knights Bridge? Vic had invited him. He was a DSS agent. Would that raise her brothers’ eyebrows?
Heather ordered coffee, eggs, sausage and toast and decided not to speculate—or at least try not to. On his sporadic visits to Knights Bridge, Vic had managed to gain a reputation, at least with her brothers, for things happening when he was in town. He managed his property himself but was clueless about minor issues that could wait versus major ones that couldn’t wait. Every leak was about to cause catastrophic damage. Every branch lost in a storm meant the tree was about to fall on his house. In working with him, Heather had discovered it wasn’t that he was dramatic, and certainly not that he was demanding, so much as he simply didn’t know. He lacked experience and erred on the side of caution.
When the waitress, one of Heather’s classmates from high school, withdrew, Justin picked up his coffee mug and leaned back in his chair. “How’s work at Vic’s place going?”
“Great.” An honest answer, she thought, grateful when her own coffee arrived. “He wants to see loads of lumber and guys with saws and hammers, but we’re not there yet. He’s decided to add a wine cellar. I’ve been working on that. Adrienne Portale is advising me. She’s toured some of the best wine cellars in the world. Have you met her?”
“Not yet,” Justin said.
Eric shook his head. “Me, either. You’ve been spending a lot of time up there, haven’t you?”
Heather shrugged. “I guess. It’s a complicated job.”
“We have nothing against Vic, but I wouldn’t describe us as fans, either,” Justin said. “He might have been a stellar diplomat, but he’s also an old womanizer with no family to speak of.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” She dumped cream into her coffee. “Trust me, Vic has no designs on me. He’s lived in a different world from us but not that different.”
“I was thinking more on the lines he could have regrets,” Eric said.
Her brothers’ breakfasts arrived. Justin picked up a triangle of buttered whole-grain toast. “Vic won’t take to retirement easily. He’s not the type. He’s used to a lot of adventure, adrenaline and attention. When he was working, Knights Bridge was a break from that.”
“Maybe it’s all he wants now,” Heather said.
“Peace and quiet and a nice house in the country?” Eric shook his head. “I doubt it.”
Justin added fresh-ground pepper to his eggs. “People often take some time when they retire to look back at their lives. Vic’s never married. He’s never had kids. He’s never cultivated friendships in Knights Bridge, which he now wants to call home after living all over the world. Is he keeping his apartment in New York?”
“I don’t think he’s decided yet,” Heather said.
“He’s in transition.” Justin handed her the pepper grinder, but there was nothing casual about him this morning. “Your work up there puts you in the middle of that transition.”
“He says he’s committed to the renovations. I’ve no reason to doubt him.” Heather’s own breakfast arrived, and she grabbed her fork and stabbed a bit of onion in the home fries. “Vic doesn’t strike me as a man with many regrets.”
“You never know,” Eric said. “You get older and start thinking about what you missed, what you gave up for reasons good and bad—what you screwed up. He’s had an all-consuming career, and he’s calling it quits on the young side for a diplomat. What’s he going to do with himself?”
“I don’t know. Read books and drink wine. He’ll figure it out.” Heather drank some of her coffee, aware of her brothers’ scrutiny. Nothing new, but best to resist any hint of defensiveness. “Anyway, I’m overseeing renovations. I’m not his retirement consultant.”
Eric studied her in that big-brother way she sometimes found reassuring and other times found annoying. He wasn’t a police officer for no reason. “Heather,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”
“I’m hungry. I woke up forgetting I don’t have any food in the house.”
Eric shook his head. “That’s not it.”
“Come on,” Justin said. “Out with it.”
She reached for the little dish of homemade strawberry jam. “I had to walk over here. My truck wouldn’t start last night, and I ended up leaving it at Vic’s. Dead battery.”
“How did you get home?” Justin asked.
“I got a ride.”
“Vic? This house sitter, Adrienne Portale?”
“No.” Heather set the dish in front of her. “Not Vic or Adrienne.”
Justin sighed. “Then who?”
She spread jam on a triangle of her toast.
Eric snatched up his coffee. “Hell, Heather, why are you stonewalling? If you’ve got some secret boyfriend, just tell us to mind our own damn business—”
“Brody Hancock gave me a ride home.”
“Brody Hancock? Are you serious?” Justin groaned, looking as if he were about to jump up out of his chair. “Damn, Heather. You could have called me for a ride. You didn’t have to rely on Brody. What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know. He says Vic invited him. I had no idea until I ran into him yesterday. He got in late the night before. He’s a Diplomatic Security Service agent now.”
She deliberately left out finding Rohan in the brook and her reaction to Brody. She didn’t need to get into those particular details. There were some things her brothers didn’t need to know, and she had a good feel for what they were. In any case, she’d chalked up her intense, immediate physical attraction to him to the adrenaline of her puppy rescue. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to being around buff guys.
Eric held on to his coffee mug without picking it up. “Brody’s a DSS agent now? You’re sure nothing is going on out there?”
“Vic took in a golden retriever puppy who’s causing him fits. Other than that, no, nothing.” Heather ignored both brothers’ scrutiny and tried her toast. “Strawberry jam reminds me of summer. Look, if you guys have any questions about what’s going on, ask Vic. Ask Brody.”
“You’re just minding your own business,” Justin said.
“Do I hear a trace of sarcasm, Justin? Yes, as a matter of fact, I am minding my own business. I didn’t even recognize Brody at first.”
Eric pushed his mug away from him. “He drove you home last night.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “He didn’t interrogate me about anything, if that’s what you’re wondering. It’s not like there are any secrets in Knights Bridge, anyway.”
“There are a million secrets in Knights Bridge,” Eric said.
“And not one of them is mine. My life is under constant scrutiny.”
Justin rolled his eyes. “Relax. We haven’t searched Phoebe’s house yet now that you’re staying there.”
“I know. I can tell. I leave a thread in a door to detect intruders.”
It wasn’t true, and she was only half-serious, but bringing up her position in their family had become her refrain whenever she was feeling the heat. Sometimes it even worked. But she didn’t know why Eric and Justin’s questions about Brody were getting to her.
Eric rubbed the back of his neck. He’d always been more patient than Justin, if only marginally so. “Look, Heather, we know you can handle yourself. That’s not the issue. Brody didn’t leave town on good terms and vowed never to return.”
“Things change,” she said.
“So they do. I’m surprised he’s a federal agent now. Good for him.”
Heather picked up her coffee mug. “But?”
Eric’s gaze leveled on her. He had the Sloan deep blue eyes. “But my one piece of unsolicited advice is to spend as little extra time there as possible.”
“I agree,” Justin said. “Do what you need to do. Go home. Stay out of any dramas out there.”
“The puppy is the biggest drama I’ve noticed. Do you know of anyone who’s missing a twelve-week-old golden retriever? He doesn’t have any tags. We figure he was abandoned out at the lake.”
Justin made a face. “We?”
“I did have an opinion, yes. Come on. Ease up.” When neither brother responded, Heather stared at them. “You two are worried about me? Seriously?”
Eric held up a hand. “Hold on. Don’t get wound up. Vic’s never let anyone from town into his life. He’s kept his distance because that’s who he is and what he wants.”
“You don’t want me getting ahead of myself, thinking he’s—what? A friend?”
“Let’s just say Vic isn’t looking for us to invite him over for potluck night,” Justin said.
“Maybe he will now that he’s retired, but that’s up to him.”
Heather tackled her eggs, wishing now she’d waited for the country store to open and grabbed something there. She was bound to have run into someone she knew who would have driven her up to Vic’s. Justin smiled suddenly—not, she realized, because of her or her situation. Samantha Bennett, his fiancée, had just entered the restaurant. She wasn’t wearing a hat over her short golden-brown curls, but she had her winter coat buttoned up to her chin.
Heather grinned at her second-born brother. “You just got giddy.”
“Giddy, Heather?”
“Happy? Excited? Pleased? I admit I didn’t think you and Samantha would last past Thanksgiving, but here you are, a couple of lovebirds.”
Justin looked past her to Eric. “Can I throw our little sister off the front porch? Would you arrest me?”
“No point arresting you,” Eric said. “There isn’t a jury that would convict you.”
“Funny, you two,” Heather said. “Very funny.”
Justin grinned. “Eric and I need to mark the calendar. You just admitted you were wrong.”
Heather grinned back at him. “I’m seldom wrong only because I have the guidance of my five wise older brothers.”
Eric and Justin laughed in disbelief as Samantha breezed over to their table. She sat across from Justin and rubbed her hands together. She was very fit, energetic and new to Knights Bridge. She’d arrived in October looking for eighteenth-century pirate treasure and instead had found Justin, a carpenter and volunteer firefighter.
“Cold, Sam?” he asked.
“It’s nine degrees out there. I don’t know how you people can be laughing.”
“Laughter warms you up,” Eric said with a wink.
“So does coffee.” Samantha unbuttoned her coat but left it on as she reached for Justin’s mug. “I could be in South Florida with my parents. They’re working on salvage plans for their sunken World War II submarines. They’ll go back to Scotland in April. The forecast high today in Key West is eighty. The forecast high here is twenty.”
“And it’ll last for five minutes at two o’clock,” Heather added.
The widespread skepticism in town about Justin Sloan and Samantha Bennett as a couple was giving way to optimism. They were just so different. Justin was the second of six siblings and had lived in Knights Bridge his entire life. Samantha was an only child, an adventurer from a family of prominent adventurers, and a woman who’d never lived in one place for long. She was staying at the Sloan family cabin, supposedly doing research on Captain Benjamin Farraday, her mysterious eighteenth-century pirate. Heather suspected Samantha was at least as interested in being close to Justin.
Samantha put her hands around the mug with a sigh. “Warmth. It feels so good. I keep forgetting to wear gloves. Does the cold ever get to you, Heather?”
“Sometimes, especially when I’m not prepared.”
As was the case yesterday, she thought. She didn’t so much as glance at her two brothers at the table in case her expression gave her away and they realized she hadn’t told them everything about her first encounter with Brody.
“We want Vic’s renovations to go well for you,” Justin said. “Leave whatever Vic Scarlatti and Brody Hancock have going on to them.”
“Who’s Brody Hancock?” Samantha asked.
Heather waited a half beat but she already knew Eric and Justin weren’t going to respond. They would let her explain Brody and watch her reaction. She decided to keep it simple. “He’s a Diplomatic Security Service agent who used to live in town.”
Samantha set the mug on the table. She already looked warmer. “There’s a lot of fine print in that answer, isn’t there? You all knew him growing up?”
“We did.” Justin handed her a triangle of his toast. “The Brody Hancock we knew didn’t like to be bored. I doubt that’s changed.”
“Not if he’s a DSS agent,” Eric said, pushing back his chair. “That can be a hellishly dangerous job. I don’t know where he’s been posted, but I would bet real money that he’s taken on the toughest assignments.”
“An adrenaline junkie?” Samantha asked.
The Bennetts could be described as adrenaline junkies, Heather thought, but she said nothing as her eldest brother shrugged. “Maybe. I haven’t seen Brody since he was eighteen.” He got to his feet. “If you’re ready, Heather, I can give you a ride out there.”
Heather would have liked to stay and chat with Samantha, who was endlessly interesting but also interested in others. “If you and Justin are thinking about getting a dog, Rohan is cute as anything and has a great personality. He just needs some training.”
Samantha smiled. “A way of saying he’s rambunctious, isn’t it?”
“He’ll learn well once he’s settled into a permanent home,” Heather said.
“You mean once he’s away from Vic,” Eric said with a grunt. “Let’s go, Heather. I’ve got jumper cables in the car.”
Samantha looked confused. “Jumper cables?”
Heather let Justin explain about her truck. She grabbed her gloves and hat, said goodbye to him and Samantha and headed out with Eric. It was entirely possible that Brody had decided not to stick around in Knights Bridge and had gone off to wherever DSS agents went off to when they were on home leave.
Just as well, maybe, if he wasn’t at Vic’s when she got there with Eric.
Five (#ulink_355b7f4d-0ffc-5be4-9df8-db0405cd2dcd)
Not only was Brody still at Vic’s when Heather arrived with Eric, he was also standing at the end of the driveway. She wasn’t sure what he was up to. Checking for icy spots? Looking out at the lake? Then Rohan burst over a snowbank and leaped down to Brody in a ball of golden, snow-encrusted fur.
Her brother glanced at Heather without a word. She shrugged. “Meet Rohan. And that’s Brody. Do you recognize him? I didn’t.”
“I recognize him,” Eric said, tight-lipped.
Heather pointed back toward the trunk. “I can grab the jumper cables and return them to you later.”
Eric shook his head. “I’ve got a few minutes. I’ll help get your truck started and make sure that’s what’s wrong with it. I did tell you it needed a new battery when I sold it to you.”
No argument from her. “Yes, you did.”
She got out of the car. She was grateful for his help, but at the same time was uncertain about having him and Brody meet in front of her—uncertain of her own reaction to Brody.
Not like her.
Rohan was rolling on his back in the snow. Heather grinned casually at Brody, who had on his suede jacket, unbuttoned over a dark sweater. “A playful puppy isn’t what you’re used to, is it?”
“Not lately.”
“Puppies need protecting, I suppose.”
“Don’t tell Rohan. He thinks he’s doing the protecting.”
“Maybe you two have something in common.”
Eric joined them and nodded at his onetime friend. “Long time, Brody. I don’t know if you remember me. Eric Sloan.”
“I remember you, Eric,” Brody said, his tone neutral.
“What brings you to Knights Bridge?”
“I’m visiting Vic.”
Eric didn’t look convinced. “I understand you own your family’s old place on the lake.”
“The cabin is gone but I’ll check on the land while I’m here.”
“It’s the dead of winter,” Eric said. “Not the best time for a visit.”
Brody smiled. “I won’t be kayaking, that’s for sure.”
“You’re on vacation?”
“Close enough.”
“Well, then. Welcome back.” Before Brody could respond, Eric turned to Heather. “Let’s get your truck started.”
Brody scooped up Rohan and headed inside. Heather tried not to watch him mount the steps to the small porch and then go in through the back door. Her overnight conclusion chalking up her reaction to him to adrenaline wasn’t holding up, and it had nothing to do with Eric’s presence. If she’d come up here on her own, she would have had the same reaction to Brody. She decided she would be smart to remain calm and in control around this man. Even without the bad blood between him and her brothers, she had no business messing with Brody Hancock in any way, shape or form. They had nothing in common beyond a Knights Bridge upbringing.
“You aren’t twelve anymore, Heather,” Eric muttered, then headed to her truck.
The jumper cables did the trick, and her cop brother took off back down the long driveway without further comment on Vic Scarlatti’s new guest.
Heather left her truck to run for a few minutes and went inside, trying to focus on her to-do list for the day. She found Brody at the kitchen counter with a mug of coffee. “Where’s Rohan?” she asked.
“Wandering.”
“I can’t imagine you expected to be on puppy duty when you got here. Bored yet?”
“I’m never bored in Knights Bridge.”
She noticed the slightest smile as he drank some of his coffee. She pulled off her hat and gloves and set them on the table. Rohan galloped into the kitchen from the adjoining dining room, his furry softness and endless cuteness in sharp contrast to Brody’s broad shoulders, muscles and general seriousness.
Heather unzipped her vest. “It’s hard to believe you’d come back here in the dead of winter just to see Vic’s renovations. Is Vic in some kind of trouble?”
“Maybe I’m the one in trouble, and I want to talk to Vic.”
“That’s not an answer.” She shrugged off her vest and hung it on the back of a chair at the table. “You’re the one who’s supposed to prevent trouble. This is your first visit back home, isn’t it?”
“My first visit back to Knights Bridge. It was never home. It’s where I lived until I turned eighteen.” There was no trace of bitterness in his tone. “Vic’s a friend.”
“Your only friend in town?”
Brody didn’t hesitate. “That’s right. My mother and father went their separate ways when I was fourteen, but they both managed to end up in Florida. Different parts of the state.” He set his mug on the counter. “We were never like the Sloans.”
“And the Sloans would be—what?”
“Tight-knit, stubborn, fixtures in a little town that time forgot a hundred years ago.”
Heather grinned. “That sounds about right.”
She untucked stray hair from inside her sweatshirt, which she decided to leave on. She noticed Brody watching her but warned herself not to read anything into it. In his work, he probably watched people as a matter of course.
“Might as well take a look at my land while I’m here.” Brody set his mug on the counter. He seemed casual, at ease with himself and his surroundings. “I figure I’ll walk over there later on.”
“Today? In this cold?”
“I thought a tough Sloan like you would relish the cold weather. You did look a little frozen yesterday when you rescued Rohan, but I assumed it was because you weren’t in your kick-ass carpenter clothes.” He nodded to her. “I see you are today.”
Now she felt sexy. “The road’s plowed out to your old place. That’ll help. You know, Justin and Adam will be out here soon to look over some of the renovation plans.”
“Warning me?” He seemed amused by the idea.
“What happened between you and my brothers?”
“Ask them.” He started for the mudroom. “I’ll shut off your truck and leave your key on the seat.”
“Thank you.”
He paused and smiled at her. A deliberate, sexy smile. “Anytime.”
He was outside before Heather could get a decent breath.
Definitely couldn’t chalk up yesterday’s reaction to adrenaline. The man had her senses on overdrive. Other people, she thought, might be intimidated by him, but she wasn’t. She was even more determined to find out what he was up to in Knights Bridge.
She reminded herself she was here to work and continued on to the front room, where Vic was settled into a big chair by the fire, playing a game of Scrabble on his iPad. “The bastard cheats,” he said without looking up. “I know it does.”
“How badly are you losing?”
“A hundred points. Could be worse, since the SOB has access to the Scrabble Dictionary, and I only have access to my poor brain.” Finally, he looked up, squinting at her. “Did you get your truck started?”
Heather nodded. “Eric gave me a jump start. Brody was outside with Rohan when we arrived.”
“Ah. Brody and a Sloan brother meet again. They behaved?”
“They were civil. Vic...” Heather debated but decided she couldn’t resist. “What happened between them?”
He waved a hand. “I told you. Some feud involving pumpkins.”
“You know more than that.”
He raised his gray eyes to her, studied her in a way that reminded her of his long career as a diplomat. “You don’t remember?”
“I don’t know. Maybe vaguely. I tried to stay out of my brothers’ fights. I don’t remember anything about pumpkins, but there was a vandalized job site, as I recall. Was that Brody?”
“Talk to him. Talk to your brothers. I wasn’t involved.”
“Were you here at the time it happened?”
Vic shook his head without hesitation. “No.”
“I guess in your world a fight between a bunch of Knights Bridge teenagers wasn’t a big deal.”
He winked at her. “Especially when it involved pumpkins.”
Heather smiled. Whatever had happened between Brody and her brothers, Vic’s reaction suggested he wasn’t troubled by it, and probably hadn’t been at the time. “I should get busy. Do you know where Adrienne is? I have a few more questions about what she has in mind for your wine cellar if she’s around.”
“I haven’t seen her yet this morning, but I’ll send her to you when she surfaces.”
“I’ll be in the cellar. If I need to find you for anything?”
“I’ll be here by the fire. I won’t be playing Scrabble the entire morning, though, I assure you. I’ll bring Rohan in here with me. He’ll need another walk before lunch. That can be my adventure for the morning. When I decided to look after him, I wasn’t thinking he needed to go out. I hope he wasn’t abandoned because some idiot didn’t want to walk him on a cold night.”
“I can’t imagine such a thing,” Heather said.
“That’s good, Heather. I’m glad you can’t. Adrienne says she’ll see what the town library has for puppy training books.”
“Then you think you’ll keep him?”
“I didn’t say that. DSS agents can often have dogs. Maybe I can convince Brody to take him.”
Heather doubted Vic was serious. He resumed his Scrabble game, and she returned to the kitchen. She ducked into the mudroom and opened the door to the cellar. Heather Sloan on the job, she thought with a smile. She tried to picture Brody in the field as a DSS agent but got nowhere, and she knew it wasn’t something that would take her anywhere she needed to be.
She flipped on a light on the steep, dusty cellar stairs.
Where she needed to be, she thought, was right here, venturing into the cellar of the classic 1912 house she was renovating. She couldn’t wait to dig into the nitty-gritty of Vic’s wine cellar. She’d never been involved in building a wine cellar and wasn’t sure her family had, either.
She started down the steep stairs. She was leading the life she wanted to lead. One day it would include the right man, but that man wouldn’t be Brody Hancock. Some things in life just weren’t possible, and that, she knew, was one of them.
* * *
Heather had been at work in a dark corner of the cellar for an hour when Adrienne joined her, dressed in slim black jeans, a thigh-length black sweater and black ankle boots. “I feel like the city mouse,” she said with a smile.
“The cellar stairs aren’t kind to heels.”
“Or to black. I thought it wouldn’t show the dust and cobwebs, but I’m already covered. Honestly, I need to make a trip to the country store and get some sensible shoes if I’m going to stay here much longer.” She glanced up at the low beams and network of pipes. “Doesn’t it give you the creeps down here?”
Heather shook her head. “Not really, no.”
“You don’t ever get spooked in your work?”
“What do you mean? Do I worry about ghosts and skeletons and that sort of thing?”
Adrienne laughed. “From your reaction, I guess not. You’re very practical, Heather. You must have to be in your work. A rusty nail is a far more realistic concern than a ghost.” She shifted her gaze to a wall where old tools, obviously long unused, hung on nails and pegs. “It doesn’t look as if anyone’s been down here in decades, does it?”
“That’s because Vic’s owned the house for decades,” Heather said lightly.
“Mmm. I doubt he’s ever been down here. I haven’t, either, during the time I’ve been house-sitting. What are you up to?”
“Just looking at whatever might be relevant to the renovations.”
“‘Measure twice, cut once’?”
“Something like that. We try to head off as many problems as we can with careful planning, but there are always surprises.” Heather stepped out of the dark corner, into the slightly better light from a bulb screwed into a socket. “Not that I’m a great planner in my personal life.”
“Ack,” Adrienne said cheerfully. “Who is?”
Heather smiled. “Good point.”
“Look at Vic. Do you think he meant to be alone at sixty-two?” She held up a hand. “Never mind. It’s none of my business. He’s been great to let me stay here in exchange for very little work.” She ran her fingertips over the worn wood of a workbench, scarred from long-ago projects. “Vic’s getting rid of this, isn’t he? I’ve gathered he’s not the handy type.”
“He’s keeping it around in case there’s a need for it,” Heather said. “There’s plenty of room down here.”
“Sure is.” Adrienne stood straight, clearly reluctant to continue. She took a deep breath. “What about this Brody character, Heather? I know he grew up on the lake, but he’s a federal agent now. Doesn’t that freak you out a little?”
It freaked her out more that he’d grown up in Knights Bridge and had a past with her brothers, but Heather didn’t know why any of it should matter. He was one sexy guy, and she’d noticed. Better if she hadn’t.
“Heather?”
“Sorry. Mind wandering. I looked him up on the internet last night.”
“I did, too!” Adrienne covered her mouth with one hand, as if she were afraid she’d been too loud and Brody would hear her. “I wonder if he knows, being a DSS agent and all.”
That had occurred to Heather during her late-night internet wandering. “I can’t imagine he would care if he did know.”
“More likely he’d find out about me since I’m on Vic’s Wi-Fi. Brody would tell us if there was any danger, though, wouldn’t he?”
“Is there any reason to think he could be here because of a threat?” Heather asked. “Have you noticed anything suspicious?”
“Not at all. Well, just Vic’s taste in wine.” Adrienne winced. “Sorry. That was a lame attempt to calm my nerves. I don’t know why I’m on edge. I’ve stayed here by myself on and off since early December and haven’t once had a problem.”
“It’s easy to read into why Brody is here when we don’t actually know.”
“That’s true. There’s no reason to believe he’s here in any sort of security capacity. We could just be picking up on Vic’s ambivalence about retiring. He’s still relatively young, and he’s used to a more nomadic lifestyle.”
“Brody and my brothers have a history. You could be picking up on that, too. You’re more intuitive than I am.” Heather grinned. “Sometimes I need a rock to the head to tune in.”
“A defense mechanism given your five older brothers, maybe. Vic’s never said so in as many words, but I gather they’re a tough lot.”
“Depends on your point of view, I guess. Justin and Adam will be up to look at the place. You can meet them and see for yourself. You’re staying on for a while, right?”
Adrienne nodded, looking more relaxed. “I’m trying to get ahead on my wine blog. It’s always a struggle to balance planning and spontaneity. I just like to sample wines and talk about them.”
“You also know what you’re talking about,” Heather pointed out.
“I suppose. I try to be honest and accurate. I never refer to myself as a wine expert. There are real experts out there. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep up my blog. I’ve been doing more and more consulting, helping to create wine lists for restaurants and personal wine cellars. I can do a lot of that by email.” Adrienne paused, glancing around the dusty corner. “Vic said you wanted to talk to me. Is this where you want to install his wine cellar?”
“I think so, yes. I have just a few more questions for you.”
“Great. There are so many options for wine cellars these days. More fun to talk about wine than to ponder Vic and his DSS agent friend, don’t you think?”
Heather smiled but didn’t answer. She launched into her questions about what would constitute a proper wine cellar for Vic, given his lifestyle and budget. For once, she would heed her brothers’ advice and keep her distance from Brody Hancock and whatever he was up to in Knights Bridge.
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Carla Neggers
In snowy Swift River Valley, unexpected romance is just around the corner… Heather Sloan has landed her dream job–the renovation of Vic Scarlatti's stately 1912 country home overlooking the icy waters of Echo Lake in Knights Bridge, Massachusetts. It's the perfect project for the family business, but for once, Heather is in charge.Diplomatic Security Service agent Brody Hancock left Knights Bridge at eighteen, a few steps ahead of arrest and the wrath of Heather's older brothers. Though Brody had never planned to return, Vic, a retired diplomat and friend, needs his help.Staying at Vic's guest house makes it impossible to avoid running into a Sloan at every turn–especially Heather. Seeing her again has affected Brody more than he wants to admit. But Heather is wary of Brody's sudden interest in her, and she suspects there's more to his homecoming than he's letting on….Set against the scenic backdrop of a New England winter, Echo Lake is a captivating tale of family, friends and the possibility of new love
In snowy Swift River Valley, unexpected romance is just around the corner… (#u40b12404-e729-55a4-9593-03f9cb3865c3)
Heather Sloan has landed her dream job—the renovation of Vic Scarlatti’s stately 1912 country home overlooking the icy waters of Echo Lake in Knights Bridge, Massachusetts. It’s the perfect project for the family business, but for once, Heather is in charge.
Diplomatic Security Service agent Brody Hancock left Knights Bridge at eighteen, a few steps ahead of arrest and the wrath of Heather’s older brothers. Though Brody had never planned to return, Vic, a retired diplomat and friend, needs his help.
Staying at Vic’s guest house makes it impossible to avoid running into a Sloan at every turn—especially Heather. Seeing her again has affected Brody more than he wants to admit. But Heather is wary of Brody’s sudden interest in her, and she suspects there’s more to his homecoming than he’s letting on….
Set against the scenic backdrop of a New England winter, Echo Lake is a captivating tale of family, friends and the possibility of new love
Praise for Carla Neggers and her novels (#u40b12404-e729-55a4-9593-03f9cb3865c3)
“Neggers captures readers’ attention with her usual flair and brilliance and gives us a romance, a mystery and a lesson in history.”
—RT Book Reviews on Secrets of the Lost Summer, Top Pick
“Only a writer as gifted as Carla Neggers could use so few words to convey so much action and emotional depth.”
—Sandra Brown
“With a great plot and excellent character development, Neggers’ thriller, Saint’s Gate, the first in a new series, is a fast-paced, action-packed tale of romantic suspense that will appeal to fans of Lisa Jackson and Lisa Gardner.”
—Library Journal
“Saint’s Gate is the best book yet from a writer at the absolute top of her craft.”
—Providence Journal
“Cold Pursuit is the perfect name for this riveting read. Neggers’s passages are so descriptive that one almost finds one’s teeth chattering from fear and anticipation.”
—Bookreporter.com
“[Neggers] forces her characters to confront issues of humanity, integrity and the multifaceted aspects of love without slowing the ever-quickening pace.”
—Publishers Weekly
Also by Carla Neggers (#u40b12404-e729-55a4-9593-03f9cb3865c3)
Swift River Valley Series
CHRISTMAS AT CARRIAGE HILL (enovella)
CIDER BROOK
THAT NIGHT ON THISTLE LANE
SECRETS OF THE LOST SUMMER
Sharpe & Donovan Series
HARBOR ISLAND
DECLAN’S CROSS
ROCK POINT (novella)
HERON’S COVE
SAINT’S GATE
BPD/FBI Series
THE WHISPER
THE MIST
THE ANGEL
THE WIDOW
Black Falls Series
COLD DAWN
COLD RIVER
COLD PURSUIT
Cold Ridge/US Marshals Series
ABANDON
BREAKWATER
DARK SKY
THE RAPIDS
NIGHT’S LANDING
COLD RIDGE
Carriage House Series
THE HARBOR
STONEBROOK COTTAGE
THE CABIN
THE CARRIAGE HOUSE
Stand-Alone Novels
THE WATERFALL
ON FIRE
KISS THE MOON
TEMPTING FATE
CUT AND RUN
BETRAYALS
CLAIM THE CROWN
Look for Carla Neggers’s next novel
in the Sharpe & Donovan series
KEEPER’S REACH
available soon from MIRA Books
Echo Lake
Carla Neggers
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
For my friend Sally Fairchild Schoeneweiss
Contents
Cover (#uc78d6afa-f41e-56f8-843e-fdaea8a25c63)
Back Cover Text
Praise
Booklist
Title Page (#u6286bb3f-efe2-518e-bb89-0a25102c5bfd)
Dedication (#u7ac9acdd-ff7d-5e7f-b3c0-d95f60ab6265)
One (#ulink_3b58f77a-be5b-50fb-930d-32890bd93e89)
Two (#ulink_f88a4ee4-adfd-5cfc-bc37-19430da7b493)
Three (#ulink_4672ed50-ec44-5644-bd74-f96272886a67)
Four (#ulink_26a02d4f-9f90-5180-b4cf-da55ce5b0440)
Five (#ulink_2bc2ca2e-86d8-5bec-a3f8-cee8581b2c3b)
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Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Author Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Endpage (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
One (#ulink_af2bf6eb-b404-5b91-a7ef-2e1284e06aed)
As much as Heather Sloan loved a bright New England winter day, chasing a puppy through knee-deep snow in seventeen degrees wasn’t her idea of fun. Rohan—the runaway puppy, a twelve-week-old golden retriever—wasn’t quickly tiring of his romp or sticking to the plowed driveway and shoveled walks, either. Not a chance. She spotted his tracks, leading through the woods straight for quiet, frozen Echo Lake.
She wasn’t following a rabbit or deer by mistake. They definitely were puppy tracks. She paused, noting that the trail veered to the right, parallel to the lake. Something must have caught Rohan’s attention. A bird, a breeze, a noise.
Great.
Heather followed the tracks through a deeper drift, but they disappeared under the low-hanging, snow-laden branches of two gnarly hemlocks. Rohan could easily fit under them. She couldn’t. The trees grew so close together that trying to squeeze between them meant getting snow down her back. Going around them would risk a delay in finding the tracks again.
She was already cold. She wasn’t dressed for a puppy rescue. Ankle boots, leather gloves, a wool scarf and her three-quarter-length chocolate-brown wool coat. Why? Of all days, why hadn’t she worn her Carhartt jacket and L.L. Bean boots? It wasn’t as if her attire would impress Vic Scarlatti, the newly retired diplomat whose renovations she was overseeing. His 1912 lake house was out of sight now, up through the trees past a small guesthouse. He was searching the garage, shed and porches. Adrienne Portale, the wine-expert daughter of one of Vic’s Foreign Service friends, was searching the house, in case Rohan hadn’t slipped outside, after all.
But he had, and he would be in serious trouble in this cold if Heather didn’t get to him soon. What was a little snow down her back? With five older brothers, it wasn’t anything she wasn’t used to. They’d had an epic snowball fight on New Year’s Day.
She plunged between the hemlocks, moving as fast as she could, but there was no way to avoid disturbing the snow clinging to the evergreen branches. She got a spray in her face and a clump down her back and almost lost a boot, but when she emerged on the other side of the hemlocks, she was practically standing in Rohan’s tracks.
She went still, quieting her breathing as she listened. Her cheeks were numb, and her fingertips and toes ached with the cold. She’d pulled her scarf over her head as best she could in lieu of a hat, but it was loose now, one end dangling down her front. The late-January afternoon sky was cloudless, the air as crisp and clear and cold as it had been since the latest storm earlier in the week. She glanced to her left toward the snow-covered lake. Echo Lake wasn’t big, but it was one of the largest lakes in out-of-the-way Knights Bridge, Massachusetts.
There.
Heather spun around at a sound up ahead and forced herself not to move. She listened, positive she heard something besides her own breathing.
Yips.
A high-pitched, mournful cry.
It had to be Rohan.
With a mix of worry and relief, she surged in the direction of the distressed yips and cries, following the tracks through bare-limbed maples and oaks and past white pines. The ground was uneven, the snow sometimes drifting up past her knees. Snowshoes or backcountry skis would have helped, but she had left hers in her truck and Vic wasn’t much on winter sports. “I like looking at the snow,” he’d told her. “I don’t necessarily like going out in it for fun.”
She came to a shallow, rocky brook that emptied into the lake but now was mostly frozen. Water trickled and swirled in a few spots among the snow and ice where the current was stronger.
“Rohan,” Heather called softly, not wanting to startle him by yelling. “Where are you, buddy?”
She heard panting then a whimper. She eased closer to the edge of the brook and peered upstream. Her heart jumped when she saw a golden ball of fur—little Rohan, struggling to climb out from the midst of the water, snow, ice and rocks.
“Oh, Rohan. You are in a mess, aren’t you?”
Trees crowded the bank, and it was steeper up where Rohan was stuck. Getting to him wasn’t going to be easy. Staying close to the brook, she grabbed hold of saplings and branches, using them to help her keep her balance in the difficult conditions.
Once she was parallel to Rohan, he let out an eager, full-fledged bark.
He must have frolicked his way out here, got stuck in the ice and snow and had run out of steam. He was, after all, only a puppy. Heather could see there was no way he could get out of his predicament with just a bit of encouragement from her. She would have to grab him—preferably without ending up trapped in the cold brook herself.
“Easy, Rohan,” she said, holding on to a thin tree and reaching with her free hand to the shivering puppy. “Let’s get you warm and safe, okay?”
She stretched, her fingertips within inches of him, but she slipped in the snow. She couldn’t regain her footing and went down on one knee, planting her free hand in the snow to keep herself from falling in the brook. She felt cold water flowing into her left boot and up her lower leg but bit back a yell lest she panic Rohan. She finally righted herself, losing her glove in the snow.
She didn’t hesitate. She scooped up the puppy and moved quickly, launching past the tree she was using for balance then sinking against another one. She anchored her feet in the snow to prevent her and Rohan from skidding back into the brook.
She cuddled the furry dog against her. She could feel his little heart racing. “I’ve got you,” she whispered, her own heart thumping madly. “I’ve got you.”
She wanted to sit in the snow and catch her breath, but she knew that wasn’t wise. Her shivering was a warning she was in danger of hypothermia. It would be a cold, wet trek back to Vic’s house, so she had to get on with it and keep moving.
As she stood straight, she thought she smelled wood smoke—from a fireplace or a woodstove, perhaps. How was that possible? She was too far from the main house. It had to be her imagination or her natural optimism at work.
She heard the snap of a twig and looked up through the trees behind her, away from the brook. A man she didn’t recognize stepped comfortably down to her and Rohan. He wore a black suede jacket and solid boots but no hat or gloves.
He scanned her from head to toe before he spoke. “Nice job with the puppy rescue.”
“You watched?”
“Yes, ma’am. I didn’t want to startle you.”
Heather felt Rohan stir in her arms, but he didn’t bark. Probably too tired. “Ready to come to my rescue if I fell in, were you?”
“You did fall in,” he said, pointing to her wet lower left leg.
“Not all the way in.”
“You’d be a popsicle if you fell all the way in. I was on my way to rescue the little guy myself. I’m staying at Vic’s guesthouse. I got in late last night. My name’s Brody, by the way.”
“Heather Sloan,” she said. “Good to meet you.”
Except she felt as if she should know him. Did know him.
He narrowed his eyes—dark, flecked with gold—on her. He had short-cropped dark hair, a square jaw, a cleft chin. She shook off the idea that he was familiar somehow. She didn’t know anyone who would be a guest of Vic Scarlatti.
He stepped past her and picked up her fallen glove out of the snow. She took in his broad shoulders and his dark canvas pants covering muscular thighs. He looked strong and incredibly fit. Another diplomat? Somehow Heather didn’t think so.
He stood straight and tucked her glove into her jacket pocket. “It’s filled with snow. It’s not going to keep you warm. I can take the pup if you’d like. Give you a chance to pull yourself together.”
“I’m fine, thanks, and I can handle Rohan.”
“Rohan?” Brody stroked the soft fur behind the puppy’s ear. “He doesn’t look much like a rider of Rohan at the moment, does he?”
Heather had to admit the Tolkien-inspired name was incongruently regal for such a rambunctious, cute-as-the-devil puppy. He was getting heavy in her arms, but she noticed his heart rate had settled down.
“He’s not my puppy,” she said. “I just helped look for him.”
“Vic Scarlatti has a puppy?” Brody grinned as if the prospect both amused and surprised him. “I guess retirement will do that even to a guy like Vic.”
“He’s a stray. Rohan, I mean. Vic found him wandering around alone out here a few days ago and took him in.”
“Well, good for Vic.”
“Another guest named him Rohan. Adrienne Portale. Are you two friends?”
“Nope. Don’t know her.”
Rohan snuggled deeper into Heather’s arms. “I should get back. It’s cold even for January.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
She sucked in a breath. When it came right down to it, she had no idea who this man was. “Thanks, but I can manage.”
“Mind if I walk with you as far as the guesthouse?”
“How do you know Vic?”
“We go back a ways.”
A vague answer. “You’re a lot younger than he is.”
“Yes, I am.”
Heather hesitated. “I should let Vic know that Rohan is safe.”
“I already texted him that a dark-haired woman in a brown coat had just rescued a puppy from the brook.”
“That was efficient.”
“He hasn’t responded. I also told him you could use some dry clothes.” Brody nodded up through the woods toward the main house. “Shall we?”
Heather could feel Rohan settling into her arms. He wasn’t a light puppy. She needed to get moving if she was going to carry him all the way back to the house.
She took a step up the hill. “I guess if you’re one of Vic’s friends, it’s safe to go off with you. You’re not going to bonk me on the head and dump me in the guesthouse cellar. It doesn’t have a cellar, for one thing.”
“That’s a dramatic imagination you have there.”
“It’s not drama. It’s being practical. I’m very practical.”
“Do you say everything you think?”
“No. Do you?”
His gaze slid over her. He smiled. “No.”
Despite the frigid temperature, she felt heat in her cheeks. Maybe she should think before she spoke. She adjusted Rohan in her arms again as she took another step up the hill. “I’m also good at taking care of myself.”
“Come on. You pushed hard through the snow, and you’re frozen. Let me take Rohan.”
Heather didn’t protest when Brody scooped up the half-asleep puppy. She tried not to shiver or let her teeth chatter, but with the cold weather and her partial dip in the icy brook, she had to admit she was frozen. “I didn’t expect Rohan to end up down here by the lake.”
“He bolted past the guesthouse. I saw him out the window but couldn’t get out fast enough to grab him before he hit the brook. You’re okay to walk, aren’t you?”
“Yep. No problem.”
“Didn’t think it would be. Tough as nails, right?”
“Just used to New England winters.”
“Sure thing.”
There was something in his tone Heather couldn’t quite place. Familiarity? Sarcasm? Amusement? A mix of all three? She couldn’t deny she was madly curious about him, but maybe he just had funny ideas about Knights Bridge and the people who lived there.
She resisted asking him the four thousand questions she had. She needed to get Rohan back to Vic’s. With her wet pants and case of the shivers, she ought to get dry and warm herself
She was happy to let Brody lead the way back to Vic’s house, thus allowing her to step in his footprints instead of in virgin snow. It was much less tiring, and the snow didn’t seem to faze him.
“How do you like Knights Bridge so far?”
He glanced back at her. “Do you really want to ask me that right now?”
“Seventeen degrees, snow, ice, a golden retriever puppy on the loose?” Heather grinned at him. “What’s not to like?”
“Oh, yeah, Heather Sloan.” Just the faintest of smiles. “What’s not to like?”
* * *
Vic Scarlatti bought his house on Echo Lake twenty years ago, when he was a rising star in the US diplomatic corps, and had done virtually nothing to it since. That suited Heather. The previous owner, the granddaughter of the Boston financier who’d built the house, had updated the plumbing, wiring and heat about ten years before the property went on the market upon her death. It was classic Arts and Crafts, oriented to take in the best views of its long-neglected garden and the lake.
Brody showed no sign of appreciating the house’s charms and potential as he set Rohan on his puppy bed in the small, cluttered mudroom off the kitchen. The little golden retriever immediately gave a deep sigh and rolled onto his side, dozing.
“The bed looks new,” Brody said.
“It is,” Heather said, walking past him through the open doorway into the kitchen. “I bought it at the country store in town. I figured Rohan needed a bed.”
“Does Vic plan to keep him?”
“He says absolutely not.”
She sank onto a chair at the kitchen table. She was stiffer than she wanted to admit after her adventure, but at least she was warming up fast. She pulled off her ankle boots. Both socks were wet, but her left one was sopping. Another of her out-into-the-cold sins was her choice of thin cotton socks. She peeled them off and stuffed them in her boots. She’d figure out what to do about them later, when she didn’t have Brody for an audience.
He grabbed Rohan’s water bowl and filled it at the deep porcelain kitchen sink, one of the granddaughter’s additions. He brought the bowl to Rohan and set it close to his bed. The puppy stirred. At first he was too lethargic to care about anything except yawning, but he managed to get onto all fours and lap at the water.
“You should have some water, too,” Brody said as he rejoined Heather in the kitchen. “It’s easy to get dehydrated in this dry cold and not realize it.”
“Water would be nice.”
Before she could stand, he had a cupboard open and a glass in hand. He filled it with water and set it on the table in front of her. “Drink up.”
“You remind me of my brothers. They never look cold, either. You don’t even have a red nose. I do, don’t I?”
“You were out in the cold longer than I was.”
“A diplomatic answer. My brothers won’t go easy on me for almost freezing to death while chasing a puppy.”
“What would they have had you do?”
“Not take chances. Wear wool socks, at least.” She smiled suddenly. “But all’s well that ends well, right?”
“And you don’t have to tell your brothers.”
“True, but it’s too good a story not to tell. I wish I’d spotted your footprints instead of Rohan’s, though. I’d have let you do the rescuing.”
Brody unbuttoned his jacket but didn’t take it off. He had on a dark sweater over his taut abdomen. Heather was accustomed to fit guys, and he was obviously and decidedly fit. She averted her gaze and drank her water. She was noticing too much about this man. Maybe dehydration and adrenaline had put her senses on overdrive.
“Do you have dry clothes here?” he asked.
“Why would I?” She snapped up straight, almost knocking her water glass off the table. “Wait. You don’t think—” She gulped in a breath. “I’m almost forty years younger than Vic. No. Absolutely not.”
Brody grinned, his dark eyes sparking with humor. “That’s not what I was thinking. I was just wondering if you kept a change of clothes here given your work. You and Vic Scarlatti? Damn, that’s funny. Seriously funny.”
“What do you mean, seriously funny? You say that as if I’m not...” She stopped herself, abandoning that train of thought in the nick of time. “Never mind.”
“As if you’re not attractive, you mean? That’s not what I’m saying.” He paused, warmth replacing the humor in his eyes now. “Trust me.”
Heather jumped to her feet, baffled by why she was blurting out things she had no business blurting out. She’d never been good at policing what she said, but she didn’t know this man—never mind that he seemed familiar. A trick of her imagination, no doubt.
“Right. Well.” She took a quick breath. “Main point is, I’ll be fine in these clothes. Obviously, I didn’t show up here dressed for a puppy rescue. I’m from Knights Bridge— I live in the village a few miles from here.”
“Have you always lived in town?”
“Except for college, but I went to UMass Amherst. That’s not far.”
“No wanderlust?”
“Lots of wanderlust. I have all sorts of places I want to go and things I want to do, but Knights Bridge is home.” Heather didn’t understand why he was asking her such questions. Brody didn’t seem the type to make idle conversation. “Where’s home for you?”
“Wherever I take a shower in the morning.” He looked out the window above the sink at the snowy driveway and backyard. “Vic always said he planned to retire in cute little Knights Bridge.”
“Have you known him for a long time?”
“As you pointed out, Vic’s a lot older than I am.”
It wasn’t a direct answer. Few of his answers were, Heather realized. “Vic’s owned this place for twenty years, but I don’t know him that well. I don’t think anyone in town does. He’s spent most of his career abroad. I guess you already know that, though.”
Brody turned from the window but made no comment. She noticed he wasn’t winded from their hike up from the brook. Definitely a man in great shape. Vic would have been gasping for air if he’d traipsed through the snow.
“Any plans while you’re in town?” she asked, finally shrugging off her coat and draping it over the back of a chair.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, bonfires, hot cocoa.”
“Sleeping late.”
Not a picture she needed in her head right now. “I hope you enjoy your stay. There’s also ice-skating on the town common, if you’re interested. Do you skate?”
“Badly,” he said.
“Me, too. I was out skating with a couple of my brothers last weekend. I’m hopeless. I have the bruises on my butt to prove it.”
Brody’s expression was unreadable. “No proof required.”
“I can’t believe I just said that. It’s having five brothers. I never think...” Just stop right there, she told herself, then smiled. “I’ll start today. Thinking. I have a few things to do before I head home. Thank you for your help with Rohan.”
“Anytime.”
“Brody!” Vic Scarlatti clapped his hands together as he entered the kitchen from the hall. “Good to see you, my friend. Sorry I didn’t stay up to greet you last night, but I’m to bed with the chickens these days. Everything was in order in the guesthouse?”
“Perfect order. Good to see you.”
Vic was sixty-two, his hair thick and gray, his angular face tanned and lined. He was wiry and quick-witted, his mix of hardheadedness and can-do optimism no doubt suited to his decades as a career diplomat. “Did you rescue Rohan?”
“Heather did.”
Vic turned to her. “Good for you. Thank you. I’m glad you and Brody met. I didn’t think to tell you about him. Can you believe he’s a DSS agent?”
Heather drew a blank. “I don’t know what that is.”
“Diplomatic Security Service. Short answer, he protects idiots like me.” Vic smiled. “Our Brody. Can you believe it?”
She tried not to look dumbfounded. Our Brody?
Brody said nothing, but she thought she saw a distinct hardening of his jaw, as if he were steeling himself against some inevitable revelation.
Vic was still smiling, obviously unaware of his guest’s tension. “I’ve been trying to get Brody back here for years. His feud with the Sloan boys didn’t help.”
“There’s no feud.” Brody’s tone was even, without any hint of emotion. “There was a fight, but it was a long time ago.”
A fight? A long time ago? Heather’s head was spinning. She could feel her brow furrowing with her confusion, and her heartbeat quickened with what could only be called dread. What were Vic and Brody talking about? What was she missing?
“The fight involved pumpkins, as I recall,” Vic said lightly, addressing Heather. “Brody wasn’t arrested. He got out of town before the situation escalated further.”
“Always a good thing,” Brody said, still with that even, unemotional tone.
Vic sighed. “Honestly, though. Pumpkins. I swear, only in Knights Bridge. But look at our Brody now. He’s one hell of a kick-ass federal agent.”
“Vic,” Brody said, a note of exasperation creeping into his voice.
“What? It’s the truth.”
“Wait. Our Brody? A fight with my brothers?” Heather turned to Brody, feeling some of the warmth drain out of her. “Exactly who are you?”
“There you go, Brody,” Vic said, clearly amused. “Heather doesn’t remember you. Maybe her brothers won’t remember you, either.”
“I’m not that lucky.” He took a half step toward her, the faintest glint of humor in his dark eyes. “It’s okay, Heather. I remember you. Wild hair, braces, cute little dimples and a serious crush on me.” He winked. “Guess the crush didn’t last, huh?”
“Wait.” Heather realized she wasn’t breathing. “You’re that Brody? Brody Hancock?”
“The same.”
He grinned as he nodded a farewell to Vic and left through the back door.
Vic let out a long breath. “Brody is one intense man. He always has been. You really don’t remember him?”
Heather grimaced. “I do now.”
Vic eyed her a moment then peered into the mudroom at Rohan, sound asleep in his bed. “He looks as if he’s had his adventure for the day. I searched high and low for him in the garage and on the porches. I hate to think what could have happened to the little miscreant if you hadn’t found him. Not that it’s his fault he scooted off.”
“Do you have any idea how he got out?”
He didn’t answer at once, his gaze still on the sleeping puppy. Finally, he shook his head. “No idea. I turned my back and off he went. Not used to puppies, I guess.” He smiled at Heather, his infectious warmth again in place. “Thank you, Heather. Rescuing puppies is above and beyond the call of duty.”
“Glad to do it, Vic.”
“And Brody?”
She wondered if Vic could tell being around his house guest—finding out he was Brody Hancock from Knights Bridge—was doing things to her insides. “I managed without him, but I’m sure he’d have been helpful if he’d been needed.”
“He’s a good man to have on your side.”
“No doubt.”
“Heather...” Vic inhaled, clearly ill at ease. He picked a stray thread off his sweater and flicked it into the sink. “Brody hasn’t stepped foot in Knights Bridge since the summer after he graduated high school. He was an angry, troubled teenager then.”
Sexy, too, Heather thought. But she’d been in middle school, and if anything, he was even sexier now.
She noticed that her scarf had fallen onto the floor and scooped it up. It, too, was wet. She slung it over her coat. “How long has Brody been a DSS agent?”
“At least ten years. He was recruited his senior year in college.”
“You had something to do with that?”
“Only to answer his questions. He got in on his own merits. He’s good, too. Damn good. It’s a tough job.”
“I’m sure,” Heather said, no doubt in her mind.
“Did you fall in the brook before or after he came to your rescue?”
“I didn’t fall in the brook, and he didn’t rescue me.”
Vic laughed. “That’s what I figured you’d say.” He motioned toward the front of the house. “Why don’t you go and warm up by the fire? You’re done in, Heather. Relax before you head home. Get your bearings.”
“Thank you,” she said, realizing she still was barefoot, with wet boots, wet socks and wet pants. She smiled at Vic. “Warming up by the fire sounds nice.”
Two (#ulink_e31d9554-58d7-53a8-8bfb-a1b47301168b)
Heather splayed her fingers, still a bit red from her Rohan rescue, in front of the orange flames roaring behind a black screen in the massive stone fireplace, one of the many distinct original features of the century-old house. She wriggled her toes as she stood on the hearth. Her brother Adam, a stonemason, would be taking a look at the chimneys and fireplaces, as well as the outside stonework, all part of the renovations.
That was where her mind should be, she told herself. Not on a DSS agent who’d left Knights Bridge under a cloud more than a decade ago.
“You should dry your socks in front of the fire,” Adrienne Portale said as she entered the living room, carrying two bottles of wine. She set them on a side table. “Vic wouldn’t mind. He’d think he was roughing it out here. It would appeal to his romantic idea of being a gentleman farmer.”
Heather laughed. “There’s nothing romantic about my wet socks.”
Adrienne sank onto an overstuffed chair. She had thick, dark curls that hung past her shoulders and a pretty, heart-shaped face that complemented her hourglass figure and preference for dressing in black. She wore faded black jeans and a black-beaded tunic she’d found, to her delight, in a wardrobe in the first-floor guest suite where she was staying.
She tucked her feet up under her. “I invested in wool socks my first week here. They have a decent selection at the country store in town. I grew up in San Francisco. It can get chilly there but not like this. I never knew there were so many different kinds of wool socks. Why don’t I grab a pair for you before you go? In fact, you can have them. I was terrified I’d run out and bought far more than I need.” She grinned, settling back in the big chair. “That’s a better idea than drying your socks by the fire, don’t you think?”
“I do, yes, thank you.” Not, Heather thought, that she had any plans of drying her socks by the fire.
Adrienne fingered the label on one of the wine bottles. “Wine, wool and a hot fire. The perfect Knights Bridge winter evening. Add a wandering puppy and a rugged federal agent, and I have no complaints.” She sat forward. “He is rugged, isn’t he? Vic’s DSS agent guest? I haven’t met him yet.”
Heather balled up her hands, warmer now, but kept them in front of the fire. “I was focused on rescuing Rohan.”
“Mmm, and it would take a whole lot of ruggedness for you to notice with those brothers of yours. I can’t imagine life with one brother, never mind five brothers.” Adrienne gave an exaggerated shudder. “And to be the youngest. Yikes.”
“It’s normal to me.”
“Of course it is. Thank heaven that little devil Rohan survived his ordeal. I hoped I’d find him asleep under a bed. It was decent of Vic to take him in, but he doesn’t know much about puppies. Neither do I. They say crate training is the way to go, but maybe Rohan’s past that.”
“No one’s put up notices in town about a missing puppy that I know of,” Heather said, sitting on a chair on the other side of the hearth from Adrienne. “My guess is someone from out of town drove out here and dumped him like a bag of garbage.”
“It’s disgusting.” Adrienne waved a hand. “But we won’t think about that now. He’s safe here, even if we’re having a bit of a learning curve on how to take care of him. Three days, though, and he’s already got Vic rolled.”
“How long will you be staying this time?”
“I don’t know. I guess it depends on Vic. He won’t need me to house-sit if he’s going to be here full-time. He says I can stay whether or not he’s here, but I don’t want to get in his way.” She stood, grabbing a poker from a rack and pulling back the screen. “I thought I’d get nervous being out here by myself, but it’s been great. I’m getting a lot of work done.”
Heather smiled, warm again, less achy. “And now you’ve got Vic interested in installing a wine cellar.”
Adrienne stirred the fire. “He’ll love it.”
“I’m sure I will,” Vic said, joining them. “I can picture myself up here at ninety, opening a good Bordeaux and watching the snow.”
“Will you be alone?” Adrienne asked.
“More important, will I be alive?”
He chuckled, taking a log from a small stack on the hearth. Adrienne pulled back the screen a bit farther, allowing him to place the log on the fire. She adjusted its position with her poker. “That’s not funny, Vic,” she said.
“Gallows humor. When you’re my age, you’ll understand.”
“You won’t be ninety for another thirty years,” Heather said.
“Gad, that long?” He stepped back from the fire. “What kind of wine are we having tonight?”
Adrienne returned the poker to the rack. “I thought we could try something from Noah Kendrick’s winery.”
“Kendrick,” Vic said. “Rich guy. High-tech entertainment company in Southern California. He’s engaged to the Knights Bridge librarian.”
“Former librarian,” Heather amended. “She resigned a couple of months ago.”
“Phoebe O’Dunn. Her mother lives up the road. Elly. Raises goats. I asked her if she knows who Rohan belongs to, but she said she doesn’t. She was on her way to San Diego to visit Phoebe and Noah.” Vic settled onto a sofa facing the fire. “See? I’m not that out of touch with the locals.”
“I’ve met Elly,” Adrienne said. “She’s a widow. Did you buy this place before her husband died?”
Vic nodded. “Patrick. He was a great guy. Sad he left behind a wife and four daughters. Life isn’t fair sometimes. I’ve survived a number of close calls during my time in the Foreign Service, and here I am, alone and unscathed.”
“I’ll fetch wineglasses.” Adrienne started for the adjoining dining room. “I don’t think I’ve met any of Elly’s daughters. I suppose I could have run into them in the village and not realized it. Elly says they all have red hair.”
“They do,” Heather said with a laugh. “Maggie O’Dunn is my sister-in-law. She’s married to my brother Brandon. She’s the second eldest of the four O’Dunn sisters, after Phoebe. She’s a caterer, and she’s making artisan soaps using milk from her mother’s goats. She and Brandon have two little boys.”
“I thought they lived in Boston,” Vic said.
“They did for a while.” Heather didn’t want to get into the details of Maggie and Brandon’s near-divorce last year. Not that she knew many of the details. “Now they’re back in town.”
“Brandon’s a skilled carpenter as I recall.”
“He’ll be working on your renovations.”
Heather watched through the double open doorway as Adrienne got wineglasses from a built-in cabinet with stained-glass panels, original to the house. She brought the glasses into the living room and set them on the coffee table. “You’re a mysterious character around here, I think, Vic. Elly told me you’ve always seemed exotic and fascinating, kind of a diplomatic James Bond.”
“A diplomatic James Bond,” Vic said. “I like that.”
What did that make Brody? The real deal? Heather stood, her hands and feet warm and her pant leg almost dry but her mood suddenly off. She felt restless, confused—faintly irritated. Why hadn’t Brody told her who he was right from the start? She obviously hadn’t recognized him while she’d been in the midst of rescuing Rohan and keeping herself from falling in the icy brook.
Adrienne opened one of the wine bottles. Heather noticed the elegant, distinctive Kendrick Winery label. She’d met Noah a few times but didn’t know him well. His best friend and business partner, Dylan McCaffrey, had beat him to Knights Bridge, arriving last spring to check on property he had discovered he owned there. Dylan, too, had fallen in love with a woman from Knights Bridge.
The short version of that story, Heather thought with a smile.
“What’s on your mind, Heather?” Vic asked quietly.
“Nothing. Just warming up.”
He studied her a moment then got to his feet. “You two chat and start on the first bottle. I’ll check on Rohan and invite Brody to join us. Last night I waited too long, and he peed on the floor. Rohan, I mean. Not our Agent Hancock.”
After Vic left, Adrienne poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Heather. “I think we’re going to enjoy this,” she said, raising her glass. “Cheers.”
Heather smiled. “Cheers.” She sipped the wine, enjoying the smooth flavor. “It is good, but you’re the expert.”
“I think of myself as a wine enthusiast more than a wine expert.”
“But you enjoy what you do,” Heather said.
Adrienne nodded, returning to her chair. “I love it, even when it doesn’t pay the bills. I’ve always had a keen sense of taste, and it felt natural to put it to use with wine. I know what I like, I know what’s good and I know how to describe wine in a way that’s entertaining and makes sense to other people.”
“You’re also not a wine snob.”
“I couldn’t be a wine snob and do what I do, or love it as much as I do.”
“When you think about it, snobbery doesn’t get anyone very far,” Heather said.
“It wouldn’t in Knights Bridge, that’s for sure. You all would run me out of town if I had my nose up in the air about wine—or anything else.”
Heather laughed. “Now, now. Live and let live, right? We have a soft spot for our snobs.”
“Every place has them, I guess. Vic’s more down-to-earth than I expected. I only met him a few times before I worked out this house-sitting arrangement. It’s been good getting to know him.”
“Any closer to deciding where you want to be after this?” Heather asked.
Adrienne shook her head. “I’ve been on the road constantly for more than a year. Maintaining an apartment made no sense, but now I feel rootless. Well, more rootless than usual. I haven’t lived anywhere for more than six months since I got out of college.” She smiled. “That must be hard for you to imagine.”
“I’m definitely not rootless, but I do want to travel.”
“Would you ever consider living somewhere besides Knights Bridge?”
“I have considered it.”
“But it’s home.” A touch of melancholy had crept into Adrienne’s voice. She raised her wineglass and seemed to make an effort to cheer up. “I’m enjoying hanging out here and teaching Vic about wine. No one thinks I’m taking advantage of him, I hope.”
“Who do you mean by no one?” Heather asked.
“People in town.”
“Ah. You’re not the subject of local gossip that I know of, but I wouldn’t necessarily know since I don’t pay attention to local gossip unless forced. Elly O’Dunn knows everything that goes on in town. She’d be the one to ask when she’s back from San Diego. Anyway, what difference does it make if people gossip about you?”
“Good point. No one takes advantage of Vic Scarlatti, that’s for sure. He’s good-natured and mild-mannered, but he also has a spine of steel.” Adrienne drew herself up straight. “My parents say he almost got to the altar a couple of times. I wonder if there’s a woman out there he regrets letting get away.”
“Any candidates?”
“None that I’m aware of. Maybe there’s a woman out there who gave him up for her career, or couldn’t take the rigors of his life as a career diplomat.”
“Or who gave him up for his career,” Heather added.
“Oh, now that’s a fun one to think about. Vic Scarlatti besotted with the wrong woman. The woman recognizing it and walking away from their relationship so he could go save the world.” Adrienne drank more of her wine. “I doubt it ever happened, but I don’t doubt our Vic has secrets. I, however, will concentrate on designing him a proper wine cellar and stocking it with proper wine.”
“Do you think you’d ever relocate out here?”
Adrienne’s eyes opened wide in obvious surprise. “Here? In Knights Bridge? What would I do?”
“What you’re doing now, I guess. You don’t go into an office.”
“True, but I need more asphalt and concrete around me than you have here. Total city girl. I can’t see myself enjoying an expensive red wine while watching a bald eagle sail above Echo Lake. Are there bald eagles here?”
“A few, thanks to the reservoir and its protected watershed.”
“Quabbin. What a beautiful place. I can’t help but think about the towns that were wiped off the map to create it. Can you imagine Knights Bridge under thirty feet of water, everything you know gone? The Swift River Valley was a very different place in 1912 when this house was built.”
“There was talk even then about damming the valley to provide drinking water for metropolitan Boston.” Heather set her wineglass on the coffee table. She didn’t want to drink too much before she got on the road, especially on an empty stomach. “I love to snowshoe on some of the old Quabbin roads. Why don’t you join me one day, if it’s something that appeals to you?”
“That would be great.” Adrienne seemed genuinely interested. “I don’t know how to cross-country ski, but I can manage snowshoes.”
“I wish I’d had mine while I was chasing Rohan. I should head home. Thanks for the wine.”
“I’ll fetch your dry socks while you pack up.”
Heather thanked her and headed through the dining room and a small hall into the kitchen. Rohan was asleep on his bed in the mudroom. The back door was shut tight, preventing any further mischief on his part.
Vic was at the counter with a cutting board and paring knife. “I’m about to start hors d’oeuvres,” he said. “Adrienne made a list of ingredients, and I found everything on it at the country store in town. They won’t take long to prepare. Brody’s on his way back up. Why don’t you join us?”
Wine and hors d’oeuvres with Vic Scarlatti, Adrienne Portale and Brody Hancock. The idea was at once tempting and impossible. “Thanks, but I have to get back.” Heather grabbed her laptop and measuring tape off the table. “Enjoy.”
“Another time, maybe.”
Adrienne arrived with the fresh wool socks and echoed Vic’s invitation, but Heather didn’t budge. It wasn’t them, she knew. It wasn’t even Brody Hancock as a Diplomatic Security Service agent, back in Knights Bridge. It was herself. She couldn’t pin down what she was feeling, just that she was off—and such uncertainty wasn’t her norm and made her decidedly uncomfortable.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, slipping on the dry socks and her boots.
Vic had the refrigerator door open and was pulling out vegetables and different varieties of local cheese. Adrienne grabbed a knife and a cutting board and smiled. “We’ll save you some for lunch tomorrow.”
“Thanks. Your hors d’oeuvres will be better than anything I bring.”
“What was that you had today?” Vic asked her.
“Leftover lasagna.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That was lasagna?”
Heather laughed. “Now you sound like my brothers. I’ve never been much of a cook.”
“But you’ll build me a great new kitchen,” Vic said.
“In the meantime, we will definitely save you leftovers,” Adrienne added.
Heather thanked them again and headed out, careful not to disturb Rohan as she shut the door softly behind her. With any luck, she’d be on her way before Agent Hancock arrived for wine and hors d’oeuvres.
* * *
Naturally, her truck wouldn’t start.
Heather banged the steering wheel with one hand. Frustration wouldn’t get her anywhere, and she wasn’t wearing gloves. It was dark and her truck—which she’d bought at a deep discount from Eric, her eldest brother—wasn’t in the mood for the late-January cold.
That kind of day was turning into that kind of night.
She climbed out as she debated her options. Before she could decide what to do, she heard the crunch of footsteps on the sanded driveway behind her.
“Of course you drive a truck,” Brody said as he approached her from the guesthouse.
Heather realized right away that her intense reaction to him at the brook hadn’t been a fluke. It wasn’t going anywhere, not tonight, at least. She tried to ignore it.
“I’m in the construction business,” she said. “A truck is practical.”
“And you’re a practical sort.”
“Do I hear skepticism in your voice, Agent Hancock?”
“You went after Rohan with no hat, lousy gloves, lousy boots—”
“Not lousy. They’re actually quite nice gloves and boots. I admit they weren’t the best choice for what I ended up having to do.”
“You’d have been in a mess if you’d fallen out there.”
“I left a trail. Vic or Adrienne would have found me, and, as it turns out, you were on the case, anyway.”
“As tough as any Sloan, aren’t you? Are you ever a girly-girl?”
“I met you three hours ago, and you’re asking me a question like that?”
He grinned. “I didn’t say I expected an answer, and we didn’t meet three hours ago. We met when you were a wild-haired kid in braces.”
“Everyone remembers me as a wild-haired kid in braces. It doesn’t faze me that you’re another one. Now I’m all grown up, and my truck won’t start. I could get one of my brothers out here to help jump-start it.”
“I was hoping to avoid your brothers.”
“A tough guy like you afraid of a few local guys? I don’t believe it.”
“I didn’t say I was afraid.”
His quiet, self-assured tone sent another surge of heat through her. She had to get a grip. Truck, she told herself. Work the problem. She peered down the driveway toward the back road that led into the village. “I could walk,” she said. “It’s not that far, but it’s very cold tonight.”
Brody shook his head. “You’ve already had one go at freezing today. What are the odds Vic has jumper cables?”
“Slim to none.”
“That’s what I think, too. Come on. I have a car. I’ll give you a ride home. You can leave your truck here tonight and figure out what to do in the morning.”
“You haven’t had too much wine?”
He seemed amused. “No, ma’am. I haven’t had a drop of wine yet.”
“Sorry. It was rude of me to ask.” Why couldn’t she control her mouth around him? “I only had a few sips because I knew I had to drive. If you’re a federal agent on duty day and night, you have to watch yourself, right? You can’t be getting drunk.”
“Again this habit of saying whatever is on your mind. You can walk with me to get my car or wait here.”
“I’ll go with you. I don’t want to stand still in this cold.” She shut her truck door. “Thank you.”
“Not a problem.”
He set off down the driveway toward the guesthouse, setting a brisk pace as Heather caught up with him.
“I wouldn’t have guessed you’d be working for Sloan & Sons,” he said. “It got its name before you were born, didn’t it?”
Heather nodded. “My parents had given up on having a girl and figured one or more of the boys would end up working in the family business. No harm done if they didn’t.”
“Do all your brothers work there?”
“Three of them. Justin, Brandon and Adam. Eric’s a police officer, and Christopher’s a firefighter. Justin’s a volunteer firefighter, too.” Heather shoved her hands into her coat pockets. She was already cold from her failed attempts to start her truck. “Do you remember the order? Eric, Justin, Brandon, Adam, Christopher, me.”
“Big family,” Brody said, his tone neutral. “No guy in your life?”
“You know, you have no room to talk when it comes to saying whatever’s on one’s mind.”
“So that means no guy. Having five older brothers—particularly your five older brothers—must make having a relationship a challenge.”
“You mean do my brothers vet potential guys in my life? It doesn’t work like that, but I can hold my own with them. I’m good at taking care of myself—as you saw earlier today, I might remind you.”
“Here we go again. You did great except for falling in the brook and getting hypothermia.”
“I accomplished my mission while minimizing the risks. I did fine without you.”
“You did better with me.”
Heather rolled her eyes. “Not funny, Agent Hancock.”
He shrugged. “True, though.”
They came to his car, which she hadn’t noticed earlier. It wasn’t a rental. It was an old BMW two-door with New York plates. “You’re from New York?”
“It’s where the car’s registered.”
“That’s not what I asked, is it?”
He didn’t respond. He wasn’t pretending he hadn’t heard her, she decided. He was flat-out ignoring her. She wondered if it was a polite way of getting across that he was a federal agent who had no intention of telling her much about himself. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe his background was secret.
It wasn’t a thought she liked having running around in her mind as she got into the BMW next to him.
“Are you armed?”
“Armed?”
“You know. With a gun.”
He started the car. “Heather, I’m just a guy visiting an old friend. Where in town do you live?”
“Thistle Lane. Do you remember it?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“It’s in the village, off the common. The town library is on the corner.”
“Quaint little Knights Bridge.”
“Phoebe O’Dunn owns the house. You remember her, don’t you?”
“The eldest of the O’Dunn sisters. They were our closest neighbors when we lived out on the lake.”
“Everyone in town expects Phoebe and Noah will be announcing their engagement soon. I think they’ll keep the house even after they’re married. It’s in good shape. I’m drawing up plans for a new kitchen and bathroom.” Heather wasn’t sure why she was telling Brody all this, but he didn’t seem uninterested. “It’s fun. I’ve discovered I have a passion for interior design.”
“Often helps to know your passions,” he said.
She wasn’t sure what he meant but decided not to pursue the subject since it involved the word passion. She’d blundered on that score enough for one day.
As they reached the end of Vic’s driveway and turned onto the winding road into the village, she noticed that the winter conditions and the absence of streetlights didn’t seem to bother Brody in the least. He drove with a confidence that Heather realized she should have expected.
“Phoebe’s house is the last one on the right,” she said when she pointed out Thistle Lane. “It was also built in 1912. It must have been a good year in Knights Bridge, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t know Knights Bridge had any good years.”
“That, Agent Hancock, is a negative attitude.”
He smiled at her. “Practical.” He pulled in front of the little house. “If you need a ride up to Vic’s in the morning, give me a buzz, and I’ll come fetch you.”
“I don’t have your number.”
“Yes, you do. I got yours from Vic and texted you.”
“Efficient.”
He sat back. “Don’t forget to bring jumper cables.”
“I won’t.” She started to open her door but angled him a look. “What did you do to annoy my brothers?”
“There’s what I did and there’s what they thought I did.”
“Bet the two overlap.”
“It’s all in the past.”
“Bigger fish to fry now, huh? Nothing’s wrong, is there?”
“Wrong as in what? An abandoned golden retriever running off into the woods?”
“Wrong as in a federal agent turning up in Knights Bridge.”
“Good night, Heather.”
“Wrong as in Brody Hancock turning up in Knights Bridge after all this time.”
“Do you ever quit?”
“Can you arrest me for asking questions?”
“Thinking about that.”
“You’d tell me if I was in any danger, wouldn’t you?”
“I told you today, and you told me to go to hell.” He leaned closer to her. “Go, Heather. Have a nice dinner and relax.”
“You didn’t answer my question, you know.”
“Good night, Heather.”
That was two good-nights. Time to be on her way. She got out of the car and made her way up the walk, which she’d shoveled herself after the last storm. Her brother Adam had plowed the driveway. She’d thrown fresh sand on the walk and the driveway before leaving that morning, never imagining she would rescue a puppy, slip into a brook and run into Brody Hancock, formerly of Knights Bridge, Massachusetts.
He waited until she was on the small porch and had the front door open before he turned around and headed back down Thistle Lane. Heather didn’t know why the prospect of him watching her made her feel so self-conscious, but it did.
Probably shouldn’t have mentioned the ice-skating bruises on her butt.
She ran inside and turned up the thermostat in the short hall between the front room and kitchen. No point keeping the place toasty warm when she wasn’t there. Not that she kept it toasty warm when she was there. Most evenings she watched television under a quilt and then went to bed.
Alone.
She’d hoped moving into town from the apartment above the Sloan & Sons offices in her parents’ converted barn would help her social life. Specifically, her romantic life. It wasn’t just being on top of her parents and her brothers all the time that discouraged “suitors,” as her grandmother called them. It was also that with such a big family, she had a built-in social network. They all lived in Knights Bridge. One of them was bound to be available to hang out. She had friends, too, but she decided to stay in for the evening.
She heated up a can of black bean soup and took it into the front room with her. It was a quiet, dark night, and very cold. Even indoors, she was aware of the dropping temperature. She glanced around the attractive room, feeling oddly out of place. Phoebe and Noah had met at a costume ball in Boston, a charity fund-raiser. Phoebe had been dressed as an Edwardian princess, Noah as a swashbuckler. He’d had no idea she was a small-town librarian. She’d had no idea he was a billionaire.
So romantic.
Heather wasn’t sure she’d know a swashbuckler if she saw one. Sometimes she wondered if she had a romantic bone in her body.
She reached for her laptop. What would happen if she did an internet search for Diplomatic Security Service agent Brody Hancock?
Would she learn anything interesting?
Would he find out?
She smiled but felt a quiver of uneasiness, too. She put aside her laptop and investigated the shelves of books. She chose a worn copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel and took it to bed with her, but abandoned it after seven pages and went back downstairs for her laptop. She brought it upstairs with her and, with a deep breath, did an internet search to see what she could find out about the Diplomatic Security Service.
She eyed the list of results, suspecting it would be best if she returned to her swashbuckler tale and put aside her questions about Brody Hancock and his return to their little hometown.
Three (#ulink_3820e616-e2c4-586b-b427-32768cb4b0a2)
Brody opened a beer and sat at Vic’s kitchen table. Rohan was racing back and forth between the refrigerator and the back door with a chew toy that Heather had brought for him, at least according to Vic. Brody wasn’t confident his old friend was paying close attention to the puppy goings-on in his Knights Bridge home.
He had helped himself to a plate of hors d’oeuvres, but he’d never been a big wine drinker. He’d only taken a few sips of Adrienne Portale’s selections for the evening. She hadn’t seemed to mind. Brody couldn’t remember Vic ever mentioning Adrienne or her parents, Sophia Portale, a marketing whiz with her own firm based in San Francisco, and her ex-husband, Richard Portale, a corporate lawyer also in San Francisco. Adrienne’s house-sitting arrangement with Vic didn’t strike Brody as anything out of the ordinary.
Just as well nothing was jumping out at him to cause alarm since he doubted Heather Sloan would give up on trying to find out why he was in her little town. She was a Sloan. Every last one of them was stubborn. He doubted that had changed in his absence.
Heather wasn’t what he’d expected. Pretty, sexy, curvy...
He didn’t need that kind of distraction right now. An attractive woman—one from the hometown he’d sworn he would never step foot in again.
Also one with five older brothers. Bad enough if he stopped right there, but he couldn’t. He’d left Knights Bridge while Heather’s brothers were heating up the tar and gathering the feathers.
His negative history with the Sloans aside, Brody didn’t need them or anyone else in town meddling in whatever was going on with Vic. If Vic was being paranoid, no one else needed to know. Knights Bridge was his home now. That kind of gossip wouldn’t help him.
“What a day,” Vic said, yawning as he entered the kitchen. He put his full wineglass on the table, pulled out a chair and flopped down. “Adrienne’s reading by the fire. I think she’s disappointed we didn’t drink all the wine, but one more sip and I’ll pass out on the floor.”
“The leftover wine will keep. She’s got some gadget that helps.” Brody took a swallow of his beer. “You weren’t close to passing out, though.”
“I was. I don’t hold my alcohol like I used to.”
“Another of the myths you live by these days.”
Vic quirked an eyebrow. “Another?”
“You’re an optimist and a romantic at heart, Vic. Maybe that’s why you lasted as a career diplomat for as long as you did.”
“Forty years. Damn, that makes me feel old.”
Brody grinned. “You are old.”
“Hell, no. Sixty is the new forty.” Vic watched Rohan tear across the kitchen. “The little fella’s no worse for the wear, anyway. Heather didn’t recognize you right away. That surprise you?”
“Not really. She wasn’t pretending. She’s not one to hold back what’s on her mind. I didn’t ring a bell at all.” Brody set his bottle on the table. He’d spent far too much time thinking about Heather Sloan ice-skating. “Why didn’t you tell me a Sloan was working on this place?”
Vic shrugged. “I didn’t think of it. Nobody remembers your fallout with the Sloans. You haven’t been back here since then, so it’s on your mind. That’s understandable. Anyway, they didn’t run you out. You left of your own accord. You’re a federal law-enforcement officer now. A respected agent with the Diplomatic Security Service. You’re as big a hard-ass as any Sloan.”
“Not Heather. She could kick my butt.”
“Ha. I have no doubt.” Vic lowered a hand at his side and snapped his fingers to get Rohan’s attention. The puppy bounded to him. “His fur’s so soft. He wore himself out on his romp in the woods, but he’s got his energy back now. What would have happened if Heather hadn’t found him when she did?”
“I’d have found him,” Brody said.
“You’re just saying that so I don’t feel like an incompetent fool for having lost him in the first place. I’d have had to sell the house if I’d let the poor little fellow freeze to death in that brook. More to the point,” he said, sitting up straight as Rohan ran off again, “I’d have felt terrible.”
“You’re new to puppy care.”
“Trial by fire.”
The puppy careened into the mudroom and climbed into his bed with his chew toy. Watching him helped Brody anchor his thinking. Too many memories in this town. There were some good ones, but the bad ones were clawing at him now. Heather Sloan wasn’t a kid anymore. That didn’t help. He hadn’t considered her—that she would be overseeing Vic’s house renovations—when he’d agreed to return. He’d expected to have a chat with Vic, talk some sense into him and leave after a couple of nights.
Brody took his beer bottle, still half-full, to the sink. It was pitch-dark outside, and dead quiet. Vic’s was the only house on this part of the lake. “You’re not used to the quiet and isolation out here, Vic. It’s worse now with the cold weather.”
Vic pushed his wineglass aside. “It’s been a while since either of us has been in a cold climate during winter.”
“Yes, it has.” Brody hadn’t expected to appreciate the bracing temperature and stark-white landscape—the quiet. Only the puppy’s playful growling disturbed the silence. He turned to Vic. “How are the renovations? Are you decisive, or do you dither?”
“We’re still pulling everything together and making decisions, but I wouldn’t say dither. I deliberate.”
Brody grinned. “Sounds like dithering to me.”
“I haven’t driven Heather crazy yet. I think the architect is about to bail on the project. Heather says not to worry, that’s just how he is. Mark Flanagan. You know him?”
“I did. He used to sleep in the back of class. Now he’s an architect?”
“A damn good one, too. He left town and came back again. He married a local woman in September. Jessica Frost.”
“I remember her. She’s younger—more like Heather’s age, as I recall. I didn’t have much to do with either one of them.”
Vic stretched, looking stiff and tired. “The Frosts still have their sawmill. They’re doing the custom woodwork on this place. Jessica’s sister, Olivia, married Noah Kendrick’s business partner on Christmas Eve.”
“Dylan McCaffrey.”
“I see you’re up to speed on the newcomers.” Vic didn’t sound surprised. “Dylan and Noah are exceptionally wealthy. What if their presence in Knights Bridge has attracted whoever is harassing me?”
“Harassing is a strong word, Vic.”
“Yeah, okay. Maybe the goings-on haven’t escalated to that level. Not yet, anyway.”
Brody leaned back against the sink. He had no concrete reason to suspect Vic was in real trouble. He was only weeks into retirement, but there were no lingering threats against him. “Sure you’re not just having trouble transitioning to retirement? Turning a draft into a suspicious incident.”
“I’ve never been a worrywart.”
“You worked nonstop in a high-pressure, high-profile environment, and now you’re chasing puppies and renovating your country house and stocking a wine cellar.”
“I was thinking about taking up bird-watching, too,” Vic added dryly.
“It’s not the life you’re used to.”
“It’s one I’ve been dreaming about for years.” He watched Rohan wander back into the kitchen. “Elly O’Dunn told me not to let him run wild.”
“Puppies need structure and a steady, firm hand. You need to be the alpha dog, Vic.”
“This is why I never was a father. I’d have had nothing but spoiled brats. I need to find him a good home. Winter’s a deterrent. People tend to get puppies in warmer weather. It’s no fun to train a puppy in January, but I can’t imagine someone abandoning the little guy out here.”
“Think that’s related to what’s been going on with you?”
“I hope not. We’re dealing with a real sick SOB, then. It’s been long enough that you’d think if he were lost an owner would have come forward by now.” Vic pulled his gaze from the puppy. “Why don’t you adopt Rohan, Brody? You can have a dog in the Diplomatic Security Service.”
“Not the places I’ve worked the past few years.” Brody stood straight. “Rohan seems to be at home here. Why not adopt him yourself? You could use the company now that you’re retired. You could take a puppy-training class so you know what you’re doing. It’s not too late. It would give you something to do.”
“Besides fretting about odd occurrences that don’t sound odd to you, you mean?” Vic put up a hand. “Don’t answer. Did you ever have a dog when you were growing up? I don’t remember.”
“Two before we moved to the lake and one after. No golden retrievers, though. Whatever’s up with you, Vic, doesn’t have to do with puppies.”
“No. Rohan’s a handful, but he’s not our culprit.” Vic grabbed his wineglass but didn’t take a sip. “Things not in the same place I left them. Anonymous hang ups. They aren’t a puppy’s doing.”
“Were the hang ups on your landline or cell phone?” Brody asked.
“Both. I think someone’s been pawing through my files, too. My physical files in the library. I haven’t given up my apartment in New York yet, but I’ve been moving things here bit by bit. It’s like...” He paused, his eyes distant then focused again on Brody. “I don’t know. It’s like I’m being watched. Studied.”
“Only here? Nothing in New York?”
“Only here.”
“When you’re here alone, or when Adrienne and Heather are here?”
Vic shrugged. “Mostly when I’m here on my own. I had a hang up at least once when Adrienne was here. It was shortly after she started house-sitting for me in early December. She’s not here all the time. She went out to San Francisco for a week after New Year’s, and she pops down to New York every now and then.” He shook his head, as if he were reading Brody’s mind. “It’s not Adrienne.”
“What about Heather Sloan?”
“Heather? Why would she want to spook me?”
“I’m not concerned with whys right now,” Brody said. “How often is she here?”
“As necessary. She’s in charge of renovations. There’s a hell of a lot to do. We’re down to it now, so she’s been here every day since I arrived last week. There will be people in and out of the house once renovations start, but there aren’t now. I’m telling you, Brody, something weird is going on around here.”
As Vic spoke, Rohan yawned and headed for the his bed in the mudroom. Brody was ready to do the same with his spot in the guesthouse. He didn’t want to delve deep into Vic’s mind, but he knew he had to, at least to a degree. “Could you have moved things and not remember?” he asked.
He half expected Vic to spring up out of the chair, offended, but instead he tapped a finger on the rim of his wineglass, thoughtful. Finally, he shook his head. “I don’t think so, no. I admit that I’ve wondered if I’m losing it. I asked myself that repeatedly before I contacted you. I decided no. If I had decided yes, I would have called a doctor instead of you. I’m retired, but I’m in good mental and physical health.”
“I had to ask,” Brody said.
“I know you did.” Vic sucked in a breath and smacked a hand down on the table, an unusual display of frustration for the career diplomat. He exhaled. “I’ve nothing concrete to give you, Brody. No evidence. It’s possible someone toyed with me for a while and figured out I’m not that interesting, and that’s that.”
“Do you have any reason to suspect you’re in danger, Vic?”
“I have enemies. There’s no question about that.”
There wasn’t, but it wasn’t Brody’s point. “Is one of them in Knights Bridge?”
“That’s why I asked you to come here, Brody.” Vic’s voice was quiet but intense, his frustration with his situation unabated if under control. “I need your objectivity and professionalism to help me figure out what’s going on.”
Brody crossed his arms on his chest. How many times had he stood in this same spot as a kid, getting Vic’s advice? How many times through college, training and his years with the DSS had he counted on Vic Scarlatti to be a phone call or an email away?
“All right,” Brody said. “We’ll figure this out. Anything else you can think of?”
“I was followed,” Vic said. “I didn’t mention that. The other day this black car followed me from Amherst right to my driveway, then kept on going out toward the upper lake. You tell me that was a coincidence, Brody. You tell me.”
“Did you get the plate number?”
“Did I—” He stared at Brody, looking baffled. “No, I didn’t get the plate number. I had my hand on my cell phone in case I had to call the cops.”
Brody lowered his arms to his sides. Vic wasn’t paranoid by nature, and even now Brody didn’t sense that his mentor and friend was afraid. Curious, annoyed, uncertain. Not fearful.
At this point, Brody couldn’t tell his old friend anything except that he was here now, and he’d have a look around.
He felt a cold draft coming through the kitchen window. The place needed work. It had for a long time, and Sloan & Sons was the outfit to do the job.
He didn’t need to go there right now.
He shifted back to Vic. “You could have called the police and asked them to look into these incidents instead of calling me.”
“I don’t want to sound like a crazy old man. I call the cops, it’s a thing.”
“It’s a thing when you call me, Vic.”
“I asked you here as a friend with experience in these matters. I know you’re a law-enforcement officer. That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the local cops. Heather’s brother is a police officer. Knights Bridge is a small town. I’m an unknown. People are curious. They gossip.”
“I’ll need to bring in the police if it looks as if there’s more going on here than a bored retired diplomat with an overactive imagination.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Once I decided to contact you, I knew there was no good outcome. Either I’m overreacting, or something’s going on.” Vic pushed back his chair, the legs scraping on the worn floor. “You’re not here just because of me, anyway, are you, Brody?”
He glanced at the window above the sink but could only see the darkness and the reflection of the lights in the kitchen. “I dreamed about Echo Lake right before you got in touch with me.”
“A sign, you think?”
“A sign it’s time I saw about the land I own here.”
“Think you’ll put it on the market?”
He shrugged without answering Vic’s question.
A gust of wind rattled the kitchen windows. The age and condition of the house could be responsible for some of what had Vic unnerved, or at least for triggering him into ratcheting up normal occurrences.
“I’ll need to ask Adrienne and Heather if they’ve noticed anything,” Brody said.
Vic clearly didn’t like that idea. “Be tactful.”
“Sure, Vic. No problem. Tact is my middle name.”
“Tact is an unknown concept to you,” Vic muttered.
Brody grinned and started for the mudroom. “I’ve got some work to do.”
“I thought you were on home leave.”
“I am. You relax and let me know if you remember anything else. Write every incident down. You can email it to me or hand me a sheet of paper.”
Vic shook his head. “I’m not writing a damn thing. I don’t want you or anyone else using it against me if this turns out to be nothing.” He raised his wineglass. “It’s called plausible deniability. If I’m losing it, we’ll all know soon enough.”
“I doubt you’re losing it, Vic.”
“But you also doubt I’m in danger.”
“Correct.”
Vic didn’t seem offended. “How was it seeing a Sloan again?”
“I told you I never had much to do with Heather.”
“But she is a Sloan. She didn’t stir up old wounds?”
“No.”
“Then your feud with the Sloans is in the past. No hard feelings.”
It wasn’t a feud, and it had never been a feud, but Brody wasn’t indulging Vic, especially if he was in a mood to stir up trouble as an outlet for his own problems. “Call if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning.”
Brody headed into the mudroom where Rohan reigned. It was immediately evident that the fur ball had relieved himself in the corner. Brody grabbed some newspaper to clean up the mess but felt his phone vibrate in his jacket.
He saw he had a text from Greg Rawlings, a DSS colleague and friend recovering from a bullet to the shoulder incurred two months ago during a difficult mission.
How’s Knights Bridge?
Brody decided to answer.
I’m cleaning up puppy poop.
Auto-correct problem?
No.
Oh man. At least it’s not Vic’s poop. Later.
Brody didn’t know whether to laugh or grit his teeth, but tackling the mess on the floor wasn’t optional. It had to be done, and he might as well be the one to do it.
He noticed Vic standing in the doorway. “Thank you,” Vic said, his relief palpable. “Cleaning up after Rohan isn’t my favorite activity, and I hate to ask Adrienne to do it. I never had a dog. A cat, either. I had a goldfish once, but it disappeared. My parents told me it died and they got rid of the body before I could see it. Suspiciously, we were about to leave for a month in France.”
“Think they flushed it?”
“It wasn’t well...” Vic sighed. “I suppose I should take them at their word. Think our pup here misses his siblings and that’s why he’s been tearing up the place?”
“Alpha dog, Vic.”
Vic scowled and headed back into the kitchen. Rohan sat on Brody’s foot, looking irresistible. Brody pointed the newspaper at him. “No more messing on the floor, you hear?”
Whether Rohan was worn-out or heard something authoritative in Brody’s voice, the puppy sat politely, as if he were the best-minding golden retriever in the world.
“Good dog,” Brody said.
Rohan responded by diving face-first into his water bowl and then licking Brody’s hand as he squatted down to clean up the mess. When he finished, Rohan had curled up in his bed, all innocence.
Brody took a picture and sent it to Greg.
Meet Rohan.
Greg texted him back immediately.
All hope is lost.
Brody was surprised to find Adrienne standing in the driveway, looking at the stars. She must have gone out through the front. “I can’t resist the night sky here,” she said, crossing her arms on her chest. She had on a coat and hat but no gloves. “There isn’t much ambient light to spoil the stars. It’s freezing, though. I think this is the coldest it’s been since I’ve been here.”
“It’s supposed to drop below zero tonight.”
“I can’t remember the last time I was in below-zero temperatures.”
“You sound excited.”
She laughed. “I guess I am. Vic’s never stayed here through an entire winter. He says he likes winter, but I wonder if he’ll end up buying a condo in Florida.”
“How well do you know him?”
“Not well at all. He goes way back with my parents. I looked him up one day when we were both in New York, and we hit it off. Next thing, I’m house-sitting.”
“When was this meeting in New York?”
“November.” She shot him a quick look. “Easy, there. It was just lunch. Vic didn’t pass me any state secrets.”
Brody smiled. “That’s good.”
“We got to talking about wine, and he mentioned he’d like to know more about wine now that he was retiring to his country house in Knights Bridge. I’d never heard of Knights Bridge.” She stuffed her bare hands under her arms, presumably to keep them warm. “Vic says you’re like a son to him. He’s relaxed since you got here, even with Rohan’s escape this afternoon. He’s been keyed up. He won’t tell me why.”
Brody buttoned his jacket, trying to appear casual. He wanted to get a read on Adrienne without alarming her. “Vic’s had an intense job for a lot of years.”
“You’d know more about that than I would. He doesn’t talk about his past with me, or with Heather, that I’ve been able to see.” There was no trace of criticism in her tone. “He’s been great to me, though. I’m not broke or desperate or anything, but I’m between apartments.”
“Your work doesn’t tie you to an office,” Brody said.
“Exactly. I have a freedom of lifestyle that I’m taking advantage of in a variety of ways. Fortunately, I have friends all over the place who let me stay with them. I help with things like wine tastings and stocking wine cellars.” She gave an easy smile. “I always bring a few bottles of my favorite wines.”
Brody looked up at the spray of stars in the black sky. “It’s quiet here. Do you like the quiet?”
“Right now I do. Vic’s excited about renovations, but I think retirement has taken him by surprise. It’s one thing to have it figured out intellectually. It’s another to experience it. He’s used to a fair amount of drama. There’s not much drama around here.”
“Small towns often seem sleepier than they are.”
“Well, there might be local dramas. People are people, after all. I doubt international diplomacy is ever at stake.”
Brody shrugged without answering. He pointed to the dark sky. “Nightfall comes early this time of year. Plans for the evening?”
“Vic and I were going to make dinner together, but the hors d’oeuvres filled us up. An early night with a book sounds good to me. The comforter on my bed is to die for. Fluffy goose down. I snuggle under it and read until my eyes can’t stay open. It’s a luxury, that kind of night.” She shivered. “It’s almost always colder than I expect when I come outside. You’re welcome to help yourself to any food you want, of course. I stocked the pantry.”
“Thanks. I’m not hungry, either.”
“Do you cook?”
“Not well, but I can chop, slice and clean.”
Adrienne turned to him, the light from the back door catching her dark eyes. “I will keep that in mind.”
“I can set a table, too. I even know my wineglasses.”
“Vic makes it easy. He only has one kind.”
“You’ll be correcting that?”
She laughed. “Absolutely.” She hunched her shoulders. “I’ll say good-night. I’m freezing.”
Brody waited as she dashed up the back steps and went inside. It was damn cold, but it felt good to him. He didn’t have a good sense of Adrienne Portale and her reasons for house-sitting in Knights Bridge, but he hadn’t found anything suspicious, never mind alarming, in their conversation about Vic, wine and dinner.
He took the shoveled walk to the guesthouse but didn’t go inside, instead heading through the snow down to the lake. The stars were out in full force now, penetrating the darkness and creating shadows in the woods and on the lake. He could see Heather’s footprints from her Rohan rescue. He pictured her climbing up from the brook with the puppy in her arms, her pant leg soaked, her scarf dangling, one glove. She’d been focused and determined, and she hadn’t needed his help.
He ducked past white pines to the lakeshore. A breeze whistled in the clear night air. He remembered standing in this spot as a boy, waiting for the stars to come out, imagining being on a different planet—in a different place. He hadn’t hated Knights Bridge then. He’d wanted to go places, see things, do things, get out in the world.
He’d done that in spades, and now here he was again, on the shore of Echo Lake. He hadn’t lied. He had dreamed about Echo Lake in the days before Vic’s call. He’d just returned to the US to begin an extended home leave, and it had struck him that he had no real home, except for his land in Knights Bridge—and it wasn’t home. He’d picked up his car and considered dividing his time between visits with his mother in Orlando and his father in Key West.
He felt the cold sting his face and ears. He gritted his teeth. Damn. He was a tough federal agent. He’d endured all sorts of extreme conditions. He could handle a southern New England January evening.
He turned away from the lake and walked up to the guesthouse. He’d had a rough few months on the job, and being back in Knights Bridge—running into Heather, even if she wasn’t one of the Sloan brothers—was messing with his head. He didn’t like digging into his emotions. Didn’t want to go there. Thinking about the past wouldn’t help him size up what was going on with Vic. So far, it seemed as though he was in the throes of adjusting to retirement and making mountains out of molehills. Brody wasn’t even sure there were any molehills, never mind mountains.
He went into the guesthouse through the side door. The two-bedroom cottage was solid and only about forty years old, a late addition to the original 1912 estate. It needed work, but not as desperately as the main house. He didn’t care one way or the other. It suited his purposes. He liked keeping some distance between him and Vic, and time alone, even here, with the past so near, worked for him right now. He hadn’t been back in the US in months, and his mind was still thousands of miles away in North Africa and his unfinished business there.
He filled the wood box and started a fire in the woodstove. Its crackling was the only sound in the place. He stood at the windows and looked out at the night sky. His mother loved stars and had pointed out various constellations to him when he was a kid. It wasn’t until he was in middle school that he’d realized her names were all of her own creation and not the actual names. Eric Sloan had told him. “Dude, that’s not Camel Head. That’s Orion. There is no Camel Head constellation.”
Brody had felt like a dumbass. At first he’d blamed his mother for lying to him, but she hadn’t lied. She’d made up her own names because she didn’t know the real ones—couldn’t sort herself out enough to go to the library and find out—and needed something to grab on to for herself, and maybe for her only son, too. She’d been restless and depressed, hating her life, hating Knights Bridge, and by his fourteenth birthday, Mary Hancock had left him and his father.
Brody hadn’t told Eric he’d gotten Camel Head from his mother. He’d covered for her.
That was what he was good at—watching people’s backs.
She’d loved Echo Lake itself, though. “It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived, Brody. I can’t imagine any place prettier than right here, even if it’s not for me.”
She was happy as a clam these days in Orlando, where she’d moved his senior year in high school. His father had been right behind her, beelining to South Florida twenty-four hours after Brody had turned eighteen, two weeks after his graduation.
He smiled, thinking of his parents. A couple of flakes. He wondered if they’d have stayed together if they’d moved to Florida instead of to Knights Bridge. He needed to go see them while he was on home leave.
He felt the heat of the woodstove. He was surprised at how tight his throat was, but he knew it wasn’t just being here. Being back “home.” That was an aggravating factor, but it was also the weight of the past few months, the tension and the uncertainties of what came next for him.
The fire popped and hissed, the sounds launching him back to a mission in November to secure a small consulate that had been shut down the year before. He remembered the heat, the dust, the eerie stillness. He and Greg Rawlings had looked at each other, sensing—knowing—something was off. They hadn’t exchanged a word. They’d had a split second to react before gunfire erupted, but it was that split second that had saved their lives.
Brody had emerged uninjured. Greg hadn’t been so lucky. He had taken a bullet to his shoulder that he and Brody both had believed would end Greg’s seventeen-year career as a DSS agent. Blood seeping through his fingers as he applied pressure to his own wound, Greg had looked at Brody with pain-racked eyes. “Now what, Brody? Hell. I don’t have a life to go back to.”
“You do, Greg,” Brody had said. “Think of those kids of yours.”
“I’ve never been there for them. What, start now?”
Before Brody could respond, Greg had drifted into semiconsciousness. Two months later, he was making a full recovery. He could go back to work if he wanted to. His call. He didn’t have to take on another dangerous assignment. He had married young and had a couple of teenagers, if also a wife who didn’t want to “indulge” him anymore. Laura Rawlings didn’t care if he was good at his job, if it made him happy—she was done. Even before he was shot, Greg had expressed his doubts that a nonhazardous post where she could join him wouldn’t make any difference.
But as in need of TLC as Greg’s home life was, at least he had one to come back to. Brody didn’t. He didn’t have a family, a pet or even an apartment.
The wind howled out in the dark January night then settled down again. It had been a long time since he’d experienced such quiet. He turned from the stove and sat on the sectional sofa. He’d slept here last night. He’d grabbed a pillow and a blanket from one of the bedrooms. The front room was warmer with the woodstove, and it had a view of the lake. He’d wanted to wake up to the sunrise over Echo Lake. He didn’t know why.
Maybe he didn’t want to know why.
He leaned back and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the crackle of the fire and trying not to think, not to remember and especially not to feel now that he was back in Knights Bridge.
Four (#ulink_29e6dfbd-f137-53b6-a06d-d6f54dae3e1d)
Heather woke up to no truck and no food in the house—not so much as a slice of bread for toast or a drop of milk for coffee. Fortunately, Smith’s, the only restaurant in the village center, was open and within easy walking distance, one of the perks of living on Thistle Lane. Smith’s was popular with loads of people she knew, including her brothers. Someone would be willing to loan her a set of jumper cables and give her a ride up to Vic’s.
Phoebe’s sole bathroom had its original claw-foot tub, with a brand-new shower curtain she’d added when Heather moved in. She’d found a kids’ one decorated with little hammers, saws and wrenches. “I thought that would be fun for you,” she’d told Heather. “Make you smile when you jump in the shower. I was tempted by the one with puppies, but I went with the tools.”
It probably hadn’t occurred to Phoebe that Heather could have a guy over and the shower curtain might not convey the sexiest image of her.
Then again, it was just a shower curtain, and it was clean and did the job. Heather was nothing if not practical.
And it did make her smile.
She took the time—for a change—to blow-dry her hair since she didn’t want to go out into the cold morning with it partially wet. It’d turn into icicles. She dressed in warm layers and added a hat, proper gloves and her L.L. Bean boots. If Rohan escaped today, she’d be ready to chase him across Echo Lake if need be.
The sting of the early-morning cold chased away any lingering fuzziness from her late-night delving into the United States Foreign Service and its elite corps of security personnel, the Diplomatic Security Service. She hadn’t been overstating yesterday when she’d concluded Brody was extremely fit. He had to be, given the work he did. Ten to one he took on the most dangerous posts.
He wasn’t the Brody Hancock she had known as a teenager.
Heather walked the short distance up Thistle Lane to South Main Street. The town library was on the east corner, a quirky nineteenth-century brick-and-stone building that occupied a large lot dotted with old shade trees and evergreens.
Had Brody ever so much as stepped foot in his town library?
Heather shook off the question. Why even think about such things?
She crossed South Main to the town common. The air was still and very cold as the gray early morning gave way to a lavender sunrise, glowing on the snow and the classic houses that surrounded the large, oval-shaped common. The seasonal skating rink on the eastern end of the common was quiet now, but it was a favorite gathering place during these short winter days.
Staying on a shoveled, sanded walk, Heather walked past the Civil War and World War monuments, bare-limbed oaks and sugar maples and empty benches. She scooted across Main Street and ducked down the side street where Smith’s was located in a converted house with white clapboards and black shutters. In warm-weather months, the porch would be decorated with hanging flower baskets and white-painted wicker furniture. Now the furniture was in storage, replaced by a stack of wood, a bucket of sand and a shovel. A grapevine wreath decorated for Valentine’s Day—still a couple weeks off—was hung on the glossy green-painted door.
When she went inside, Heather wasn’t surprised to see her brothers Eric and Justin at a square table near the front. Both were dressed for work, Eric in his police uniform, Justin in canvas pants and a dark, heavy sweatshirt and down vest similar to hers. They had fresh coffee, their breakfast orders obviously on the way.
Justin tapped the table next to him. “Have a seat,” he said.
He was a skilled carpenter who specialized in older buildings, and, more and more, he was taking over the day-to-day operations of Sloan & Sons. He’d been reluctant to let Heather oversee the renovations on Vic Scarlatti’s house, but he’d acquiesced in the end—with reservations. “Just do your job,” he’d told her. “Stay out of Vic’s dramas.”
Good advice, Heather thought as she unzipped her vest and sat down, aware of her brothers eyeing her. It was as if they knew all wasn’t normal in her world. She wondered if they’d heard about her puppy rescue yesterday and if it that qualified as one of Vic’s dramas. What about Brody Hancock’s return to Knights Bridge? Vic had invited him. He was a DSS agent. Would that raise her brothers’ eyebrows?
Heather ordered coffee, eggs, sausage and toast and decided not to speculate—or at least try not to. On his sporadic visits to Knights Bridge, Vic had managed to gain a reputation, at least with her brothers, for things happening when he was in town. He managed his property himself but was clueless about minor issues that could wait versus major ones that couldn’t wait. Every leak was about to cause catastrophic damage. Every branch lost in a storm meant the tree was about to fall on his house. In working with him, Heather had discovered it wasn’t that he was dramatic, and certainly not that he was demanding, so much as he simply didn’t know. He lacked experience and erred on the side of caution.
When the waitress, one of Heather’s classmates from high school, withdrew, Justin picked up his coffee mug and leaned back in his chair. “How’s work at Vic’s place going?”
“Great.” An honest answer, she thought, grateful when her own coffee arrived. “He wants to see loads of lumber and guys with saws and hammers, but we’re not there yet. He’s decided to add a wine cellar. I’ve been working on that. Adrienne Portale is advising me. She’s toured some of the best wine cellars in the world. Have you met her?”
“Not yet,” Justin said.
Eric shook his head. “Me, either. You’ve been spending a lot of time up there, haven’t you?”
Heather shrugged. “I guess. It’s a complicated job.”
“We have nothing against Vic, but I wouldn’t describe us as fans, either,” Justin said. “He might have been a stellar diplomat, but he’s also an old womanizer with no family to speak of.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” She dumped cream into her coffee. “Trust me, Vic has no designs on me. He’s lived in a different world from us but not that different.”
“I was thinking more on the lines he could have regrets,” Eric said.
Her brothers’ breakfasts arrived. Justin picked up a triangle of buttered whole-grain toast. “Vic won’t take to retirement easily. He’s not the type. He’s used to a lot of adventure, adrenaline and attention. When he was working, Knights Bridge was a break from that.”
“Maybe it’s all he wants now,” Heather said.
“Peace and quiet and a nice house in the country?” Eric shook his head. “I doubt it.”
Justin added fresh-ground pepper to his eggs. “People often take some time when they retire to look back at their lives. Vic’s never married. He’s never had kids. He’s never cultivated friendships in Knights Bridge, which he now wants to call home after living all over the world. Is he keeping his apartment in New York?”
“I don’t think he’s decided yet,” Heather said.
“He’s in transition.” Justin handed her the pepper grinder, but there was nothing casual about him this morning. “Your work up there puts you in the middle of that transition.”
“He says he’s committed to the renovations. I’ve no reason to doubt him.” Heather’s own breakfast arrived, and she grabbed her fork and stabbed a bit of onion in the home fries. “Vic doesn’t strike me as a man with many regrets.”
“You never know,” Eric said. “You get older and start thinking about what you missed, what you gave up for reasons good and bad—what you screwed up. He’s had an all-consuming career, and he’s calling it quits on the young side for a diplomat. What’s he going to do with himself?”
“I don’t know. Read books and drink wine. He’ll figure it out.” Heather drank some of her coffee, aware of her brothers’ scrutiny. Nothing new, but best to resist any hint of defensiveness. “Anyway, I’m overseeing renovations. I’m not his retirement consultant.”
Eric studied her in that big-brother way she sometimes found reassuring and other times found annoying. He wasn’t a police officer for no reason. “Heather,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”
“I’m hungry. I woke up forgetting I don’t have any food in the house.”
Eric shook his head. “That’s not it.”
“Come on,” Justin said. “Out with it.”
She reached for the little dish of homemade strawberry jam. “I had to walk over here. My truck wouldn’t start last night, and I ended up leaving it at Vic’s. Dead battery.”
“How did you get home?” Justin asked.
“I got a ride.”
“Vic? This house sitter, Adrienne Portale?”
“No.” Heather set the dish in front of her. “Not Vic or Adrienne.”
Justin sighed. “Then who?”
She spread jam on a triangle of her toast.
Eric snatched up his coffee. “Hell, Heather, why are you stonewalling? If you’ve got some secret boyfriend, just tell us to mind our own damn business—”
“Brody Hancock gave me a ride home.”
“Brody Hancock? Are you serious?” Justin groaned, looking as if he were about to jump up out of his chair. “Damn, Heather. You could have called me for a ride. You didn’t have to rely on Brody. What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know. He says Vic invited him. I had no idea until I ran into him yesterday. He got in late the night before. He’s a Diplomatic Security Service agent now.”
She deliberately left out finding Rohan in the brook and her reaction to Brody. She didn’t need to get into those particular details. There were some things her brothers didn’t need to know, and she had a good feel for what they were. In any case, she’d chalked up her intense, immediate physical attraction to him to the adrenaline of her puppy rescue. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to being around buff guys.
Eric held on to his coffee mug without picking it up. “Brody’s a DSS agent now? You’re sure nothing is going on out there?”
“Vic took in a golden retriever puppy who’s causing him fits. Other than that, no, nothing.” Heather ignored both brothers’ scrutiny and tried her toast. “Strawberry jam reminds me of summer. Look, if you guys have any questions about what’s going on, ask Vic. Ask Brody.”
“You’re just minding your own business,” Justin said.
“Do I hear a trace of sarcasm, Justin? Yes, as a matter of fact, I am minding my own business. I didn’t even recognize Brody at first.”
Eric pushed his mug away from him. “He drove you home last night.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “He didn’t interrogate me about anything, if that’s what you’re wondering. It’s not like there are any secrets in Knights Bridge, anyway.”
“There are a million secrets in Knights Bridge,” Eric said.
“And not one of them is mine. My life is under constant scrutiny.”
Justin rolled his eyes. “Relax. We haven’t searched Phoebe’s house yet now that you’re staying there.”
“I know. I can tell. I leave a thread in a door to detect intruders.”
It wasn’t true, and she was only half-serious, but bringing up her position in their family had become her refrain whenever she was feeling the heat. Sometimes it even worked. But she didn’t know why Eric and Justin’s questions about Brody were getting to her.
Eric rubbed the back of his neck. He’d always been more patient than Justin, if only marginally so. “Look, Heather, we know you can handle yourself. That’s not the issue. Brody didn’t leave town on good terms and vowed never to return.”
“Things change,” she said.
“So they do. I’m surprised he’s a federal agent now. Good for him.”
Heather picked up her coffee mug. “But?”
Eric’s gaze leveled on her. He had the Sloan deep blue eyes. “But my one piece of unsolicited advice is to spend as little extra time there as possible.”
“I agree,” Justin said. “Do what you need to do. Go home. Stay out of any dramas out there.”
“The puppy is the biggest drama I’ve noticed. Do you know of anyone who’s missing a twelve-week-old golden retriever? He doesn’t have any tags. We figure he was abandoned out at the lake.”
Justin made a face. “We?”
“I did have an opinion, yes. Come on. Ease up.” When neither brother responded, Heather stared at them. “You two are worried about me? Seriously?”
Eric held up a hand. “Hold on. Don’t get wound up. Vic’s never let anyone from town into his life. He’s kept his distance because that’s who he is and what he wants.”
“You don’t want me getting ahead of myself, thinking he’s—what? A friend?”
“Let’s just say Vic isn’t looking for us to invite him over for potluck night,” Justin said.
“Maybe he will now that he’s retired, but that’s up to him.”
Heather tackled her eggs, wishing now she’d waited for the country store to open and grabbed something there. She was bound to have run into someone she knew who would have driven her up to Vic’s. Justin smiled suddenly—not, she realized, because of her or her situation. Samantha Bennett, his fiancée, had just entered the restaurant. She wasn’t wearing a hat over her short golden-brown curls, but she had her winter coat buttoned up to her chin.
Heather grinned at her second-born brother. “You just got giddy.”
“Giddy, Heather?”
“Happy? Excited? Pleased? I admit I didn’t think you and Samantha would last past Thanksgiving, but here you are, a couple of lovebirds.”
Justin looked past her to Eric. “Can I throw our little sister off the front porch? Would you arrest me?”
“No point arresting you,” Eric said. “There isn’t a jury that would convict you.”
“Funny, you two,” Heather said. “Very funny.”
Justin grinned. “Eric and I need to mark the calendar. You just admitted you were wrong.”
Heather grinned back at him. “I’m seldom wrong only because I have the guidance of my five wise older brothers.”
Eric and Justin laughed in disbelief as Samantha breezed over to their table. She sat across from Justin and rubbed her hands together. She was very fit, energetic and new to Knights Bridge. She’d arrived in October looking for eighteenth-century pirate treasure and instead had found Justin, a carpenter and volunteer firefighter.
“Cold, Sam?” he asked.
“It’s nine degrees out there. I don’t know how you people can be laughing.”
“Laughter warms you up,” Eric said with a wink.
“So does coffee.” Samantha unbuttoned her coat but left it on as she reached for Justin’s mug. “I could be in South Florida with my parents. They’re working on salvage plans for their sunken World War II submarines. They’ll go back to Scotland in April. The forecast high today in Key West is eighty. The forecast high here is twenty.”
“And it’ll last for five minutes at two o’clock,” Heather added.
The widespread skepticism in town about Justin Sloan and Samantha Bennett as a couple was giving way to optimism. They were just so different. Justin was the second of six siblings and had lived in Knights Bridge his entire life. Samantha was an only child, an adventurer from a family of prominent adventurers, and a woman who’d never lived in one place for long. She was staying at the Sloan family cabin, supposedly doing research on Captain Benjamin Farraday, her mysterious eighteenth-century pirate. Heather suspected Samantha was at least as interested in being close to Justin.
Samantha put her hands around the mug with a sigh. “Warmth. It feels so good. I keep forgetting to wear gloves. Does the cold ever get to you, Heather?”
“Sometimes, especially when I’m not prepared.”
As was the case yesterday, she thought. She didn’t so much as glance at her two brothers at the table in case her expression gave her away and they realized she hadn’t told them everything about her first encounter with Brody.
“We want Vic’s renovations to go well for you,” Justin said. “Leave whatever Vic Scarlatti and Brody Hancock have going on to them.”
“Who’s Brody Hancock?” Samantha asked.
Heather waited a half beat but she already knew Eric and Justin weren’t going to respond. They would let her explain Brody and watch her reaction. She decided to keep it simple. “He’s a Diplomatic Security Service agent who used to live in town.”
Samantha set the mug on the table. She already looked warmer. “There’s a lot of fine print in that answer, isn’t there? You all knew him growing up?”
“We did.” Justin handed her a triangle of his toast. “The Brody Hancock we knew didn’t like to be bored. I doubt that’s changed.”
“Not if he’s a DSS agent,” Eric said, pushing back his chair. “That can be a hellishly dangerous job. I don’t know where he’s been posted, but I would bet real money that he’s taken on the toughest assignments.”
“An adrenaline junkie?” Samantha asked.
The Bennetts could be described as adrenaline junkies, Heather thought, but she said nothing as her eldest brother shrugged. “Maybe. I haven’t seen Brody since he was eighteen.” He got to his feet. “If you’re ready, Heather, I can give you a ride out there.”
Heather would have liked to stay and chat with Samantha, who was endlessly interesting but also interested in others. “If you and Justin are thinking about getting a dog, Rohan is cute as anything and has a great personality. He just needs some training.”
Samantha smiled. “A way of saying he’s rambunctious, isn’t it?”
“He’ll learn well once he’s settled into a permanent home,” Heather said.
“You mean once he’s away from Vic,” Eric said with a grunt. “Let’s go, Heather. I’ve got jumper cables in the car.”
Samantha looked confused. “Jumper cables?”
Heather let Justin explain about her truck. She grabbed her gloves and hat, said goodbye to him and Samantha and headed out with Eric. It was entirely possible that Brody had decided not to stick around in Knights Bridge and had gone off to wherever DSS agents went off to when they were on home leave.
Just as well, maybe, if he wasn’t at Vic’s when she got there with Eric.
Five (#ulink_355b7f4d-0ffc-5be4-9df8-db0405cd2dcd)
Not only was Brody still at Vic’s when Heather arrived with Eric, he was also standing at the end of the driveway. She wasn’t sure what he was up to. Checking for icy spots? Looking out at the lake? Then Rohan burst over a snowbank and leaped down to Brody in a ball of golden, snow-encrusted fur.
Her brother glanced at Heather without a word. She shrugged. “Meet Rohan. And that’s Brody. Do you recognize him? I didn’t.”
“I recognize him,” Eric said, tight-lipped.
Heather pointed back toward the trunk. “I can grab the jumper cables and return them to you later.”
Eric shook his head. “I’ve got a few minutes. I’ll help get your truck started and make sure that’s what’s wrong with it. I did tell you it needed a new battery when I sold it to you.”
No argument from her. “Yes, you did.”
She got out of the car. She was grateful for his help, but at the same time was uncertain about having him and Brody meet in front of her—uncertain of her own reaction to Brody.
Not like her.
Rohan was rolling on his back in the snow. Heather grinned casually at Brody, who had on his suede jacket, unbuttoned over a dark sweater. “A playful puppy isn’t what you’re used to, is it?”
“Not lately.”
“Puppies need protecting, I suppose.”
“Don’t tell Rohan. He thinks he’s doing the protecting.”
“Maybe you two have something in common.”
Eric joined them and nodded at his onetime friend. “Long time, Brody. I don’t know if you remember me. Eric Sloan.”
“I remember you, Eric,” Brody said, his tone neutral.
“What brings you to Knights Bridge?”
“I’m visiting Vic.”
Eric didn’t look convinced. “I understand you own your family’s old place on the lake.”
“The cabin is gone but I’ll check on the land while I’m here.”
“It’s the dead of winter,” Eric said. “Not the best time for a visit.”
Brody smiled. “I won’t be kayaking, that’s for sure.”
“You’re on vacation?”
“Close enough.”
“Well, then. Welcome back.” Before Brody could respond, Eric turned to Heather. “Let’s get your truck started.”
Brody scooped up Rohan and headed inside. Heather tried not to watch him mount the steps to the small porch and then go in through the back door. Her overnight conclusion chalking up her reaction to him to adrenaline wasn’t holding up, and it had nothing to do with Eric’s presence. If she’d come up here on her own, she would have had the same reaction to Brody. She decided she would be smart to remain calm and in control around this man. Even without the bad blood between him and her brothers, she had no business messing with Brody Hancock in any way, shape or form. They had nothing in common beyond a Knights Bridge upbringing.
“You aren’t twelve anymore, Heather,” Eric muttered, then headed to her truck.
The jumper cables did the trick, and her cop brother took off back down the long driveway without further comment on Vic Scarlatti’s new guest.
Heather left her truck to run for a few minutes and went inside, trying to focus on her to-do list for the day. She found Brody at the kitchen counter with a mug of coffee. “Where’s Rohan?” she asked.
“Wandering.”
“I can’t imagine you expected to be on puppy duty when you got here. Bored yet?”
“I’m never bored in Knights Bridge.”
She noticed the slightest smile as he drank some of his coffee. She pulled off her hat and gloves and set them on the table. Rohan galloped into the kitchen from the adjoining dining room, his furry softness and endless cuteness in sharp contrast to Brody’s broad shoulders, muscles and general seriousness.
Heather unzipped her vest. “It’s hard to believe you’d come back here in the dead of winter just to see Vic’s renovations. Is Vic in some kind of trouble?”
“Maybe I’m the one in trouble, and I want to talk to Vic.”
“That’s not an answer.” She shrugged off her vest and hung it on the back of a chair at the table. “You’re the one who’s supposed to prevent trouble. This is your first visit back home, isn’t it?”
“My first visit back to Knights Bridge. It was never home. It’s where I lived until I turned eighteen.” There was no trace of bitterness in his tone. “Vic’s a friend.”
“Your only friend in town?”
Brody didn’t hesitate. “That’s right. My mother and father went their separate ways when I was fourteen, but they both managed to end up in Florida. Different parts of the state.” He set his mug on the counter. “We were never like the Sloans.”
“And the Sloans would be—what?”
“Tight-knit, stubborn, fixtures in a little town that time forgot a hundred years ago.”
Heather grinned. “That sounds about right.”
She untucked stray hair from inside her sweatshirt, which she decided to leave on. She noticed Brody watching her but warned herself not to read anything into it. In his work, he probably watched people as a matter of course.
“Might as well take a look at my land while I’m here.” Brody set his mug on the counter. He seemed casual, at ease with himself and his surroundings. “I figure I’ll walk over there later on.”
“Today? In this cold?”
“I thought a tough Sloan like you would relish the cold weather. You did look a little frozen yesterday when you rescued Rohan, but I assumed it was because you weren’t in your kick-ass carpenter clothes.” He nodded to her. “I see you are today.”
Now she felt sexy. “The road’s plowed out to your old place. That’ll help. You know, Justin and Adam will be out here soon to look over some of the renovation plans.”
“Warning me?” He seemed amused by the idea.
“What happened between you and my brothers?”
“Ask them.” He started for the mudroom. “I’ll shut off your truck and leave your key on the seat.”
“Thank you.”
He paused and smiled at her. A deliberate, sexy smile. “Anytime.”
He was outside before Heather could get a decent breath.
Definitely couldn’t chalk up yesterday’s reaction to adrenaline. The man had her senses on overdrive. Other people, she thought, might be intimidated by him, but she wasn’t. She was even more determined to find out what he was up to in Knights Bridge.
She reminded herself she was here to work and continued on to the front room, where Vic was settled into a big chair by the fire, playing a game of Scrabble on his iPad. “The bastard cheats,” he said without looking up. “I know it does.”
“How badly are you losing?”
“A hundred points. Could be worse, since the SOB has access to the Scrabble Dictionary, and I only have access to my poor brain.” Finally, he looked up, squinting at her. “Did you get your truck started?”
Heather nodded. “Eric gave me a jump start. Brody was outside with Rohan when we arrived.”
“Ah. Brody and a Sloan brother meet again. They behaved?”
“They were civil. Vic...” Heather debated but decided she couldn’t resist. “What happened between them?”
He waved a hand. “I told you. Some feud involving pumpkins.”
“You know more than that.”
He raised his gray eyes to her, studied her in a way that reminded her of his long career as a diplomat. “You don’t remember?”
“I don’t know. Maybe vaguely. I tried to stay out of my brothers’ fights. I don’t remember anything about pumpkins, but there was a vandalized job site, as I recall. Was that Brody?”
“Talk to him. Talk to your brothers. I wasn’t involved.”
“Were you here at the time it happened?”
Vic shook his head without hesitation. “No.”
“I guess in your world a fight between a bunch of Knights Bridge teenagers wasn’t a big deal.”
He winked at her. “Especially when it involved pumpkins.”
Heather smiled. Whatever had happened between Brody and her brothers, Vic’s reaction suggested he wasn’t troubled by it, and probably hadn’t been at the time. “I should get busy. Do you know where Adrienne is? I have a few more questions about what she has in mind for your wine cellar if she’s around.”
“I haven’t seen her yet this morning, but I’ll send her to you when she surfaces.”
“I’ll be in the cellar. If I need to find you for anything?”
“I’ll be here by the fire. I won’t be playing Scrabble the entire morning, though, I assure you. I’ll bring Rohan in here with me. He’ll need another walk before lunch. That can be my adventure for the morning. When I decided to look after him, I wasn’t thinking he needed to go out. I hope he wasn’t abandoned because some idiot didn’t want to walk him on a cold night.”
“I can’t imagine such a thing,” Heather said.
“That’s good, Heather. I’m glad you can’t. Adrienne says she’ll see what the town library has for puppy training books.”
“Then you think you’ll keep him?”
“I didn’t say that. DSS agents can often have dogs. Maybe I can convince Brody to take him.”
Heather doubted Vic was serious. He resumed his Scrabble game, and she returned to the kitchen. She ducked into the mudroom and opened the door to the cellar. Heather Sloan on the job, she thought with a smile. She tried to picture Brody in the field as a DSS agent but got nowhere, and she knew it wasn’t something that would take her anywhere she needed to be.
She flipped on a light on the steep, dusty cellar stairs.
Where she needed to be, she thought, was right here, venturing into the cellar of the classic 1912 house she was renovating. She couldn’t wait to dig into the nitty-gritty of Vic’s wine cellar. She’d never been involved in building a wine cellar and wasn’t sure her family had, either.
She started down the steep stairs. She was leading the life she wanted to lead. One day it would include the right man, but that man wouldn’t be Brody Hancock. Some things in life just weren’t possible, and that, she knew, was one of them.
* * *
Heather had been at work in a dark corner of the cellar for an hour when Adrienne joined her, dressed in slim black jeans, a thigh-length black sweater and black ankle boots. “I feel like the city mouse,” she said with a smile.
“The cellar stairs aren’t kind to heels.”
“Or to black. I thought it wouldn’t show the dust and cobwebs, but I’m already covered. Honestly, I need to make a trip to the country store and get some sensible shoes if I’m going to stay here much longer.” She glanced up at the low beams and network of pipes. “Doesn’t it give you the creeps down here?”
Heather shook her head. “Not really, no.”
“You don’t ever get spooked in your work?”
“What do you mean? Do I worry about ghosts and skeletons and that sort of thing?”
Adrienne laughed. “From your reaction, I guess not. You’re very practical, Heather. You must have to be in your work. A rusty nail is a far more realistic concern than a ghost.” She shifted her gaze to a wall where old tools, obviously long unused, hung on nails and pegs. “It doesn’t look as if anyone’s been down here in decades, does it?”
“That’s because Vic’s owned the house for decades,” Heather said lightly.
“Mmm. I doubt he’s ever been down here. I haven’t, either, during the time I’ve been house-sitting. What are you up to?”
“Just looking at whatever might be relevant to the renovations.”
“‘Measure twice, cut once’?”
“Something like that. We try to head off as many problems as we can with careful planning, but there are always surprises.” Heather stepped out of the dark corner, into the slightly better light from a bulb screwed into a socket. “Not that I’m a great planner in my personal life.”
“Ack,” Adrienne said cheerfully. “Who is?”
Heather smiled. “Good point.”
“Look at Vic. Do you think he meant to be alone at sixty-two?” She held up a hand. “Never mind. It’s none of my business. He’s been great to let me stay here in exchange for very little work.” She ran her fingertips over the worn wood of a workbench, scarred from long-ago projects. “Vic’s getting rid of this, isn’t he? I’ve gathered he’s not the handy type.”
“He’s keeping it around in case there’s a need for it,” Heather said. “There’s plenty of room down here.”
“Sure is.” Adrienne stood straight, clearly reluctant to continue. She took a deep breath. “What about this Brody character, Heather? I know he grew up on the lake, but he’s a federal agent now. Doesn’t that freak you out a little?”
It freaked her out more that he’d grown up in Knights Bridge and had a past with her brothers, but Heather didn’t know why any of it should matter. He was one sexy guy, and she’d noticed. Better if she hadn’t.
“Heather?”
“Sorry. Mind wandering. I looked him up on the internet last night.”
“I did, too!” Adrienne covered her mouth with one hand, as if she were afraid she’d been too loud and Brody would hear her. “I wonder if he knows, being a DSS agent and all.”
That had occurred to Heather during her late-night internet wandering. “I can’t imagine he would care if he did know.”
“More likely he’d find out about me since I’m on Vic’s Wi-Fi. Brody would tell us if there was any danger, though, wouldn’t he?”
“Is there any reason to think he could be here because of a threat?” Heather asked. “Have you noticed anything suspicious?”
“Not at all. Well, just Vic’s taste in wine.” Adrienne winced. “Sorry. That was a lame attempt to calm my nerves. I don’t know why I’m on edge. I’ve stayed here by myself on and off since early December and haven’t once had a problem.”
“It’s easy to read into why Brody is here when we don’t actually know.”
“That’s true. There’s no reason to believe he’s here in any sort of security capacity. We could just be picking up on Vic’s ambivalence about retiring. He’s still relatively young, and he’s used to a more nomadic lifestyle.”
“Brody and my brothers have a history. You could be picking up on that, too. You’re more intuitive than I am.” Heather grinned. “Sometimes I need a rock to the head to tune in.”
“A defense mechanism given your five older brothers, maybe. Vic’s never said so in as many words, but I gather they’re a tough lot.”
“Depends on your point of view, I guess. Justin and Adam will be up to look at the place. You can meet them and see for yourself. You’re staying on for a while, right?”
Adrienne nodded, looking more relaxed. “I’m trying to get ahead on my wine blog. It’s always a struggle to balance planning and spontaneity. I just like to sample wines and talk about them.”
“You also know what you’re talking about,” Heather pointed out.
“I suppose. I try to be honest and accurate. I never refer to myself as a wine expert. There are real experts out there. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep up my blog. I’ve been doing more and more consulting, helping to create wine lists for restaurants and personal wine cellars. I can do a lot of that by email.” Adrienne paused, glancing around the dusty corner. “Vic said you wanted to talk to me. Is this where you want to install his wine cellar?”
“I think so, yes. I have just a few more questions for you.”
“Great. There are so many options for wine cellars these days. More fun to talk about wine than to ponder Vic and his DSS agent friend, don’t you think?”
Heather smiled but didn’t answer. She launched into her questions about what would constitute a proper wine cellar for Vic, given his lifestyle and budget. For once, she would heed her brothers’ advice and keep her distance from Brody Hancock and whatever he was up to in Knights Bridge.
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Carla Neggers
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: In snowy Swift River Valley, unexpected romance is just around the corner… Heather Sloan has landed her dream job–the renovation of Vic Scarlatti′s stately 1912 country home overlooking the icy waters of Echo Lake in Knights Bridge, Massachusetts. It′s the perfect project for the family business, but for once, Heather is in charge.Diplomatic Security Service agent Brody Hancock left Knights Bridge at eighteen, a few steps ahead of arrest and the wrath of Heather′s older brothers. Though Brody had never planned to return, Vic, a retired diplomat and friend, needs his help.Staying at Vic′s guest house makes it impossible to avoid running into a Sloan at every turn–especially Heather. Seeing her again has affected Brody more than he wants to admit. But Heather is wary of Brody′s sudden interest in her, and she suspects there′s more to his homecoming than he′s letting on….Set against the scenic backdrop of a New England winter, Echo Lake is a captivating tale of family, friends and the possibility of new love