Miss Charlotte Surrenders

He shook his head in disagreement. “You’re taking an awful lot for granted. I certainly wouldn’t want to know a little old lady was really writing adventure books.”

“Writing gossip is my business. And I know what I’m talking about,” Charlotte continued stubbornly, even as she wondered why she was allowing this man to get under her skin. She faced him hotly. “I know people will be interested in finding out the truth about Sterling, whatever it is.”

He shrugged his broad shoulders in dissent. “If you say so, but I still think you ought to think twice about destroying someone else’s career.”

This was ridiculous! He was making her feel guilty about doing her job! “I want that story on Sterling.” Even more importantly, she had been promised a big bonus if she landed it. She regarded him with annoyance. He looked equally exasperated and unhappy with her.

Finally he nodded, understanding her decision, though not approving. He turned back toward the cottage. “Well, as nice as this chat has been, Miss Charlotte,” he said with a certain weary reluctance, “I better get back to my research.”

She watched as he ambled slowly away from her, his steps long and lazy and undeniably male. Even his walk was sexy!

Charlotte frowned. She just couldn’t see a flirtatious rogue like this man contentedly leading the life of a bookish scholar. And that made her wonder what he was really doing there. Was it simple coincidence that had landed this man at Camellia Lane? Or did his past bear looking into, too?

He turned to look at her when he reached the front door, as if wondering what she was doing still standing there, watching him. She paused, her heart pounding as their eyes clashed once again. Belatedly, she realized that although he knew plenty about her, she still knew nothing about him. But that, she promised herself resolutely, would soon change. “By the way, what did you say your name was?” she asked with deceptive casualness.

“Brett.” His teeth flashed white against the suntanned skin of his face in another wicked, bad-boy grin. “Brett Forrest.”

Chapter Two

Brett crept soundlessly up to the open kitchen windows and took cover in the bushes that rimmed the veranda. A glance inside the wide bay windows showed the three Langston sisters making dinner. His timing was perfect.

“What do you really know about Brett Forrest?” Charlotte asked Isabella as she took the makings for a salad out of the refrigerator and carried them to the long chef’s table in the center of the room.

“He’s working on a Ph.D. And he’s very nice.” Isabella slid breaded chicken into the frying pan, wiped her hands on the apron around her waist and then turned to Charlotte. “What else is there to know? Why are you so suspicious?”

’Atta girl, Isabella, Brett thought. Defend me to that snoopy older sister of yours. Throw her off the scent.

“I am suspicious,” Charlotte answered as she began to slice carrots with a vengeance, “because Brett Forrest is no nerd. Yet he wants us to think he’s one.”

“I don’t know about that,” Paige interrupted. “Anyone who would seriously devote his life to studying what kind of crops can be grown in the dirt sounds like a nerd to me.”

“Exactly!” Charlotte crowed triumphantly. “But aside from the books cluttering the cottage, have either of you seen any hard evidence that he is interested in farming? There was no dirt under his fingernails, no calluses on his palms. The guy had muscles, but they weren’t the kind you get from toting bags of fertilizer around on your shoulder. They were the fluid kind you get from jogging six miles a day or playing tennis.”

Paige whistled. “Sounds like you noticed quite a bit about our new caretaker, Charlotte,” she teased.

Brett had noticed quite a bit about Charlotte, too. He had never seen a more fiery Southern beauty, with her dark curly hair, sassy mouth and flashing green eyes. All the Langston women were beautiful. But it was Charlotte who caught his eye. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, and that, unfortunately, had nothing to do with the mission he’d been sent here to do.

“These days a man doesn’t have to dress in overalls and a straw hat to farm,” Isabella chided, adding more chicken to the sizzling skillet on the stove. “Maybe Brett wants to be a gentleman farmer.”

Actually, Brett thought, all the reading he’d been doing so he could be conversant on farming was leading him in that very direction, to his great surprise.

“Ha! There’s nothing gentlemanly about him!” Charlotte claimed.

No doubt she was thinking of the way he had pinned her to the sofa now, Brett thought. Okay, so that had been uncalled for. He admitted it. But she had deserved it for storming his cottage without invitation while he was trying to nap.

“Exactly what happened between the two of you during your first meeting, Charlotte?” Paige persisted with an impish grin as she emptied a package of frozen corn into a saucepan.

Brett peeked around the bushes and saw Charlotte’s slender shoulders stiffen. “Nothing I would care to recount,” she told Paige tersely.

Brett knew he shouldn’t recount it, either. But memories like that were hard to resist. The feel of Charlotte beneath him, her silky hair spread out on the sofa cushion. The fire in her eyes as she gazed hotly up at him. The passion in her low, throaty voice as she talked about her work as an investigative reporter.

“Furthermore, I really think you should fire him, Isabella!” Charlotte continued stubbornly.

Brett frowned and stepped a little farther back into the bushes.

“I can’t do that, Charlotte!” Isabella replied hotly.

“Why the devil not?” she demanded as she finished with the carrots and began tearing lettuce into bite-size pieces.

“Because—” Isabella used a long-handled fork to turn the sizzling pieces of chicken in the skillet on the stove “—I promised Brett he could stay at Camellia Lane until he had finished his dissertation. And we need someone out here during the day to keep an eye on the place.”

To Brett’s disappointment, Charlotte wasn’t the least bit mollified by sweet Isabella’s logic.

“We also need a decent caretaker. Look at the grounds, you two.” Charlotte lifted both slender arms. “They’re a wreck!”

“Well, that’s as much your fault as ours,” Paige interjected calmly, sloshing fizzy diet soda over the ice in her glass. She paused to take a dainty drink. “With all of us working, Isabella and me locally, and you out-of-state, Charlotte, none of us has time to cut grass. Frankly, I think we should just sell the plantation and be done with it.”

“Over my dead body!” Charlotte said, and Brett frowned. From what he could tell, if the sisters would just agree to sell their money-absorbing ancestral home, then all of his and Stephen Sterling’s problems would be solved.

“Father would never have wanted us to sell Camellia Lane,” Isabella concurred solemnly, to Brett’s disappointment. “Not if we could possibly avoid it.”

“Oh, we’ll avoid it all right, because there is no way I’m going to allow Camellia Lane to be sold,” Charlotte told her sisters flatly.

“Then how, pray tell, are we going to come up with the fifty thousand dollars we owe the bank?” Paige retorted.

Fifty thousand! Brett thought. What kind of trouble were these ladies in?

“We don’t have that kind of money,” Paige continued. “Nor are we liable to get it from Isabella’s work as a librarian, mine as a cosmetics sales rep, or your work as a magazine writer, Charlotte.”

“Face it,” Isabella said, looking sadder than Brett had yet seen her, “we all love our work and adore this place, but we can’t afford to keep up Camellia Lane on our salaries, even with two of us living here full-time.”

“Look, I feel bad that my work is in New York,” Charlotte said, looking at her sisters apologetically. “I know I haven’t been doing my share, in the physical sense, the last ten years. But I plan to make that up to you both by getting the fifty thousand we need.”

“Oh, really?” Paige pulled a package of rolls out of the freezer and set them on the counter to defrost. “And how are you going to do that? By selling off one or both of us to white slavers?” Paige shot back.

Catfight! Brett thought.

Charlotte glared at Paige. “I am going to do an exposé on Stephen Sterling,” Charlotte announced, moving closer to the blue, beige and white floral priscilla curtains. “And when I do, the magazine has agreed to pay me a bonus of fifty thousand dollars. Voilèa! All our problems will be solved.”

No wonder she wanted to go all out to find Sterling, Brett thought. The money from the article would allow her to save her beloved Camellia Lane.

“Now back to our situation with that worthless caretaker you hired,” Charlotte continued autocratically.

Brett decided this was his cue. He bounded up the back steps, rapped on the kitchen door and stepped inside, before Charlotte had the chance to talk the other two into kicking him off the property.

“Hi,” he said cheerfully, stepping inside.

He had been in the spacious plantation kitchen many times, but tonight the cozy square room seemed filled with life. Charlotte especially seemed right at home.

“Oh, hello, Brett! You’re just in time,” Isabella said, looking pleased to see him. She moved gracefully across the terra-cotta tile floor and sent him a welcoming smile. “Dinner is almost ready.”

“What do you mean dinner is almost ready?” Charlotte asked suspiciously. She glared at Brett, then her sisters.

“Brett eats dinner with us every evening,” Isabella said, using a sponge to wipe a splatter from the beige ceramic tile above the stove.

“Didn’t we tell you?” Paige asked innocently as she began to unload the dishwasher.

“No,” Charlotte said, still looking at both her sisters meaningfully. “You didn’t.”

“Want me to set the table as usual?” Brett asked. If he didn’t want to be kicked out by Miss Charlotte, he knew he’d better make himself useful.

“Please.” Isabella smiled.

“I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” Charlotte said slowly. She looked at both her sisters pointedly. “We have pressing financial matters to discuss. I was hoping we could do it over dinner.”

“Brett knows we’re having some problems on that score,” Isabella said delicately.

“What?” Charlotte did a double take.

“I had to tell him,” she explained with an airy wave of her hand. “So he’d understand why there was no salary with the job.”

Charlotte glanced at her watch and frowned. She appeared deep in thought. “How long before the chicken is done, Isabella?”

Isabella shrugged. “Another thirty minutes.”

“If you all will excuse me, I’ve got some work to do in the library,” Charlotte said. She pivoted on her heel and brushed past Brett without a word.

What was she up to now? he wondered, drinking in the lilac fragrance of her perfume. And did it have anything to do with Stephen Sterling?

Paige hurried after her sister. Brett heard them murmuring in apparent disagreement, and then Charlotte saying, “I don’t care if he is a funny and charming dinner companion or how big a help he is in the kitchen! I’m telling you, there’s something about that man that just isn’t right!”

Her instincts were right on target about that, Brett thought, as he continued to set the table while Isabella looked for something in the pantry. He wasn’t here to study farming or complete a dissertation. He was here for one reason and one reason only—to prevent Charlotte from following through on her mission to unmask Stephen Sterling.

* * *

HER DISCUSSION with Paige finished, Charlotte hurried toward the library. It was six o’clock. Dunn’s law office was closing down for the day. If she wanted to make a call, she’d have to do it now.

She went swiftly to her desk, sat down and picked up the phone. “Marcie Shackleford, please.”

Seconds later, a melodious voice came on the phone. “Marcie Shackleford.”

“Hi. This is Charlotte Langston—”

“The nosy reporter who tried to break into the firm’s computer?”

“I see you remember me,” Charlotte said carefully.

“I certainly do. And I have no intention of talking to you!” Marcie Shackleford retorted.

“Wait—” Charlotte said. But it was too late. Marcie had already hung up.

Scowling, Charlotte replaced the antique black-and-gold phone in its cradle and saw Brett Forrest hovering just inside the library door. She hated not getting what she wanted…especially when someone was there to see her fail. Although Brett was doing his best to pretend he hadn’t overheard anything of importance.

And again, it hit her like gangbusters. Something about him just wasn’t right. He was too handsome, too sexy, too stealthy and too nosy.

In fact, he reminded her of herself. Was it really possible that he was another reporter, tracking her because he wanted to steal her story? And if that was the case, how was she going to get him to back off? Charlotte sensed he was every inch as tenacious as she was.

Brett stayed where he was, looking impossibly at home among the polished black walnut doors. His boldly assessing glance covered the wide floor-to-ceiling bookcases that held thousands of her father’s books on the Civil War. It drifted across the plush emerald green sofa, matching side chairs and slightly darker green carpet, before moving lazily to the huge black walnut desk and matching typewriter stand. Behind that was a twelve-rung ladder used to gather books from the uppermost shelves. Charlotte was well aware there were cobwebs hanging from some of the rungs, as it hadn’t been used in ages.

Finally, his glance made it to the desk she sat behind. He grinned. “Okay to come in now?” he asked lazily.

Like he wasn’t already halfway in the room, anyway, Charlotte thought. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

He continued to lounge against the doorframe, hands stuck in the pockets of his jeans. “Isabella sent me to ask you if you wanted to open a bottle of wine with dinner since it’s your first night home.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’ll tell her to open one, then.” He paused, but didn’t say anything.

Charlotte knew he wanted to ask her something. Her irritation grew. She barely knew this man, and already it seemed he wouldn’t give her any peace. “Was there something else?” she snapped.

“Yes.” Looking like he was immensely glad she had asked, Brett came back into the room. He turned and shut the door quietly behind him. “There’s a rumor in town that you and your sisters are going to lose this place. Is it true?”

It was against Charlotte’s principles to discuss private family matters with outsiders. But in this case, it might help Brett cut her some slack, particularly if he were, as she half suspected, a reporter competing on the same story as she.

“Unfortunately, yes. Unless we can come up with fifty thousand dollars, we will lose this place.”

Brett glanced at the shelves that lined three sides of the large library. “It may be presumptuous of me to ask,” Brett said as he came around to take a seat in one of the armchairs on the other side of the desk, “but have you and your sisters ever considered growing cotton again? I understand your family did quite well once.”

Charlotte sighed. She only wished that farming were as easy or profitable as it looked. “That was years ago, when my mother was still alive. She had the green thumb and all the know-how in the family. Plus, at that time we had a much better cash flow and the money to hire a crew to do the actual farming.”

“What happened to change all that?” he asked.

His question was outrageously personal, considering it was coming from the hired help. But when Charlotte looked into Brett’s eyes, she saw a heartfelt sympathy that worked like a balm on her weary heart and soul. She had been carrying the weight of the family’s losses for so long, she needed to unburden herself to someone. He was an unlikely confidant, yet it might be easier to talk to a stranger. Besides, Charlotte reasoned pragmatically, this was a good chance for her to test his knowledge about farming. “You’re apparently an expert on the subject. Do you think we should grow G. herbaceum?”

Brett shook his head, his expression serious. He hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. “Too coarse. I’d recommend G. barbadense.”

Charlotte propped her chin on her hand and tried to give the impression she was genuinely interested in farming herself. “How far apart should the hills be planted?”

Half of his mouth crooked up in a faint smile. “Thirty centimeters.”

Swallowing around the growing knot of tension in her throat, Charlotte kept her eyes on his as she asked, “What should we do about weeds?”

He stared at her for a moment. “You can use a herbicide or the rows can be flamed. Either method will work.”

He knows I’m testing him. But determined to find out the truth about him, anyway, she plunged on. “What pests do we have to watch out for these days?”

He shrugged. Smiled again. Almost mischievously. “Same as always. The boll weevil and the pink bollworm.”

Damn. He did know his stuff, Charlotte thought, stifling a sigh. She tossed down the pen she’d been gripping. So much for her theory. Only the most devoted agriculturalist would know all that. Unless, of course, he had just memorized all this as part of his cover. Or had once lived on or near a cotton plantation himself.

“So, who took over the farming when your mother died?” Brett asked.

“My father.” Charlotte picked up her pen again. She sat back in her chair, wishing Brett would look at something else besides her face. “Unfortunately, he had no talent for it and we lost money on every crop.”

“And so he just quit?” Brett asked gently.

Charlotte closed her fingers around her pen. These memories were even more painful for her. “Actually, he became ill,” she said softly. “Cancer.”

Brett drew an audible breath. “I’m sorry. That must have been rough on you and your sisters.”

Charlotte nodded and once again met Brett’s eyes. His look was so compassionate and understanding she found herself telling him even more. “It was. Paige was still in high school at the time. Isabella and I were in college.” Charlotte stood and began to roam the length of the library restlessly. She touched the spines of the books that had once belonged to her father.

“We came home to be with him, and over the course of the next two years he tried every treatment available and then some.” Charlotte swallowed. “A couple of times we thought he was going to go into remission, but he never did. When he died, our debts were substantial, so we did what the family had always done—talked to Hiram Henderson at the local bank. He gave us two alternatives—sell Camellia Lane, or take out a mortgage on the property, with a balloon payment at the end of ten years. We opted for the mortgage and used the money to pay off our debt, and to help us finish our studies. I graduated first and went to New York. I wasn’t making much money initially, but I paid a portion of the mortgage and set aside everything I could for the balloon payment. Isabella and Paige both did the same.”

“So how come you don’t have that money to make the payment, then?” Brett asked, his brow furrowing.

Charlotte returned to sit behind the desk. “Because this house—which happens to be nearly one hundred and fifty years old, by the way—is a money pit.”

“So why not sell it?”

“Because it’s our home.” Charlotte smiled, unable to help the sentimental note in her low voice. “We grew up here. And we love it. Besides,” she added, shrugging, “this property has been owned by the Langston family since 1842, and we promised our parents we would keep it in the family.”

“So back to cotton farming,” Brett said casually. “Why not try that again, if money is such a problem for you?”

Charlotte bit her lip. “My sisters and I looked into it,” she admitted.

“And?”

“Have you ever priced a piece of farm equipment? We don’t have the capital nor the know-how to get back into it.”

“If you did, would you?” Brett persisted.

Charlotte didn’t have to think very long about that. “Probably.”

“That being the case, would you mind if I took some soil samples of your fields and sent them off to be analyzed?”

“For what purpose?” Charlotte regarded Brett suspiciously. He suddenly seemed awfully eager to help her.

He shrugged his broad shoulders, as if it were no big deal. “I could tell you how much it would cost for you to get back into farming again. Maybe project some future earnings for you,” he suggested mildly.

Charlotte wasn’t sure she would trust any estimate he gave her, but she decided to play along with him. If nothing else, taking soil samples would keep him busy and out of her hair. “All right.”

“So what next, in the meantime?” Brett asked.

Charlotte sighed, looking down at her calendar. “I’ve got an appointment with Hiram Henderson tomorrow. I’m going to try and talk him into giving us an extension on that balloon payment.”

“Are your sisters going with you?”

Charlotte hedged. “They want me to try and talk to him alone.”

“How come?”

“They think I can be charming, in the way that he expects,” Charlotte said with a beleaguered sigh.

“Which is…?”

“You know, the typical old-fashioned Southern-lady thing. Soft and pretty and delicate on the outside, hard as driven steel on the inside.”

“Hmm,” Brett said.

Charlotte didn’t like the sound of that hmm. She glanced at the clock.

She had spent almost fifteen minutes talking to him. She had also told him far more than she had intended. Worse, he seemed to empathize with everything she and her sisters had been through.

“Hadn’t you better go back and tell Isabella to open that bottle of wine?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah.” Brett lazily unfolded himself from the chair and shoved a hand through the dark, rumpled waves of his hair. “I almost forgot why I came in here.”

I’ll bet, Charlotte thought as she scrutinized him silently. She waited until he had left, then picked up the phone and dialed one of her reporter friends. “Listen—ever heard of a reporter named Brett Forrest?”

* * *

CHARLOTTE WAS IN a bad mood as she got out of her car the next afternoon and headed for the bank. No one had heard of Brett at any of the magazines. Nor had he worked for any of the wire services. Nor, as far as she could discover, published anything at all. Therefore, if he was a reporter, he hadn’t made a name for himself yet. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be trying to do so at this very minute, Charlotte told herself firmly. After all, there had to be some reason he was so intent on nosing into her business. He had to be trying to scoop her out of her story on Sterling! Well, she would not allow him to steal the information she had uncovered so far. She might, however, send him on a wild-goose chase if he continued to prove meddlesome.

Hiram Henderson met her at the door and escorted Charlotte into his private office at the rear of the bank. “My, don’t you look lovely today,” he said.

“Thank you, Hiram,” Charlotte said. She hated playing the part of the sugary Southern belle. It seemed like such a waste of time and energy. But in this part of Mississippi, it was also the best way to get what she wanted. And right now the stakes were huge.

Hiram adjusted his clip-on bow tie as he sat behind his desk. “Now, what can I do for you?”

Charlotte smiled at him as she tugged off first one lacy glove, and then the other. Slowly, she dropped both into her lap and offered him her most winning smile. “I’d like to ask for an extension on our loan.”

“Charlotte, that balloon payment is due in ten days,” Hiram reminded her. He steepled his long, bony fingertips in front of him and regarded her over the rim of his bifocals.

This was going to be harder than she had thought; Hiram didn’t look as if he were going to budge. Telling herself to be as fiercely determined on the inside and soft on the outside as her mother had always been, Charlotte crossed her legs demurely at the knee. She tossed her head flirtatiously and offered him another smile. “I can trust you to be discreet, can’t I, Hiram?”