Maggie blinked back tears, remembering her sister’s ashen face at twenty, their father not yet cold in his grave when her college boyfriend—the man everyone expected her to marry—had walked out on her. It hadn’t been “just like that.” Nothing ever was. But it had been fast, permanent and devastating.
Brandon and his brothers, ever Phoebe’s champions, had wanted to chase down the weasel, but she’d stopped them. Maggie had looked him up on Facebook last year. He was a lawyer now, married and living in Orlando. She knew Phoebe would never look him up herself but hadn’t told her that she had.
Knowing Phoebe, she wished him well.
Maggie didn’t.
Her ability to hold a grudge was something Brandon used to appreciate about her. He didn’t anymore. “Let it go, Maggie,” he’d tell her. “Just let it go.”
“Mom,” Aidan said from the back. “When can we go camping with Daddy?”
“He has a tent,” Tyler said, sitting next to his brother.
Maggie’s idea of camping was a cabin with heat and indoor plumbing. “We’ll work out a date with your dad, okay?”
They thought that’d be great and proceeded to regale her with all that they’d do with their father on their camping trip, even if it was just in Dylan McCaffrey’s backyard.
That was Brandon, wasn’t it? Always able to fire up their sons, fill them with can-do optimism. Even at his darkest moment, when he’d watched his dreams go up in smoke, when a temporary lay-off had dragged into flat-out unemployment, he hadn’t taken his disappointments out on Tyler and Aidan. Maggie wasn’t even sure if he’d taken them out on her, but she’d felt them, internalized them, let them make her bleed.
She hadn’t wanted him to throw his dreams overboard and yet she’d known they were weighing them down, hurting their chances of creating a stable life for their sons. For themselves.
Now here he was, in their hometown, working for Sloan & Sons.
“If I ever go back to Knights Bridge, Maggie, you’ll know I’ve failed.”
He’d been seventeen then.
Things changed, she thought. People grew up.
And yet, as she drove along the common and turned onto her own pretty little side street, she couldn’t help but feel that Brandon had given up. That he did see himself as a failure…and maybe so did she.
*
After Maggie O’Dunn Sloan whirled out with her two sons, Noah got two beers out of the refrigerator, opened them and took them out to the terrace. He handed one to Brandon, who’d dried off a couple of chairs at Olivia’s round table. He took a long drink. “So, Noah. You may be good with a sword, but if I’ve misplaced my trust and you do anything to upset my wife or her sisters—”
“You’ll key my car?”
Brandon grinned. “Right. Key your car. You really are a trip. You don’t even have a car here.” He drank more of his beer. “Why are you here? Really.”
Noah sat down. A cool breeze stirred. He swore he could smell pesto but assumed it was just rain-drenched basil. Finally he looked across the table at Brandon. “A Los Angeles private investigator named Julius Hartley has been on my tail. I don’t know why. I saw him several times in San Diego. Then I saw him in Boston.”
“At the masquerade?”
“That’s right. I can’t say for sure that he followed me east.”
“But it’s a safe bet,” Brandon said.
Noah didn’t disagree. “I stayed in Knights Bridge in part to make sure he’s not hanging around here.”
“Do you think he was hired by someone from here or from California?”
Brandon Sloan obviously had grasped the situation immediately. Noah drank some of his beer, appreciating the cooler, drier evening. How frank could he be with this man? “It could be either one,” he said finally.
“Explain.”
Noah told Brandon what he knew, but he left out his reaction to Phoebe—and her reaction to him. The attraction they’d experienced at the ball hadn’t been just a fleeting thing born of their anonymity and the roles they were playing.
Phoebe O’Dunn, his princess.
If anything, he found her even more appealing with her wild red hair, in her element making pesto, working at the Knights Bridge Free Public Library, talking to Audrey Frost and Grace Webster at Rivendell.
Her baggy sweater that morning at the library wasn’t in the same league as her elegant Edwardian gown, but Noah didn’t care. It’d been chilly in the library and Phoebe had obviously grabbed the sweater from the collection of vintage clothes for the upcoming fashion show. He appreciated her ease with herself and her surroundings.
He’d also noticed the swell of her breasts as the old sweater had slipped off her shoulders, but he blocked that image from his thoughts, in case Brandon Sloan could read minds and decide to throttle him.
These were treacherous waters he was navigating, Noah thought.
“Do you think Maggie and Phoebe have anything to do with this Hartley character?” Brandon asked. “Because if you do, you’re wrong.”
Noah appreciated the other man’s confidence. “I understand your concern but I don’t think anything. I’m trying not to speculate.”
“You sound like my cop brother.”