Stonebrook Cottage Read online

  Praise for the novels of

  "Neggers's characteristically brisk pacing and colorful characterizations sweep the reader toward a dramatic and ultimately satisfying denouement." —Publishers Weekly on The Cabin

  "Tension-filled story line that grips the audience from start to finish." —Midwest Book Review on The Waterfall

  "Carla Neggers is one of the most distinctive, talented writers of our genre." —Debbie Macomber

  "Neggers delivers a colorful, well-spun story that shines with sincere emotion." —Publishers Weekly on The Carriage House

  "A well-defined, well-told story combines with well-written characters to make this an exciting read. Readers will enjoy it from beginning to end." —Romantic Times on The Waterfall

  "Gathers steam as its tantalizing mysteries explode into a thrilling climax." —Publishers Weekly on Kiss the Moon

  Also by CARLA NEGGERS

  THE RAPIDS

  NIGHT'S LANDING

  COLD RIDGE

  THE HARBOR

  THE CABIN

  THE CARRIAGE HOUSE

  THE WATERFALL

  ON FIRE

  KISS THE MOON

  CLAIM THE CROWN

  Watch for CARLA NEGGERS'S next novel of romantic suspense

  DARK SKY

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Special thanks to Christine Wenger (again!), Fran Garfunkel and her lawyer friends, my lawyer friends and Zita Christian, for their expertise and willingness to dig for answers…and to all my friends in Connecticut—Zita, Leslie O'Grady, Liz Aleshire, Linda Harmon, Bea Sheftel, Mel and Dorothy and CTRWA gang, for reminding me that the beauty of your state isn't just the lay of its land, but also its people.

  Closer to home, many thanks to Paul and Andrea for helping me keep in shape—okay, get in shape!

  Amy, Dianne, Tania, Jennifer, Meg—what a year it's been! Thanks for everything!

  Sam and Kara's story was great fun to do. I love hearing from readers. I hope you'll visit me at www.carlaneggers.com or write to me at P.O. Box 826, Quechee, VT 05059.

  Take care, Carla Neggers

  This one's for you, Joe

  Prologue

  Big Mike Parisi was the first-term governor of Connecticut and a dead man. He knew it even before he hit the water.

  He couldn't swim, an embarrassment not a half-dozen people knew.

  His big, tough body belly-flopped into the water of his elegant pool and dropped hard and deep, hitting the blue-painted bottom that so beautifully reflected the summer sky. He managed to push up off the bottom and out of the water and yell for help.

  "I can't swim!"

  No help would come. His voice barely rose above the gurgling fountain halfway down the classic, kidney-shaped pool. His own damn fault. He'd refused to let his state trooper bodyguards out back with him. If I get stung by a bee, I'll yell bloody murder. You'll hear me. What the hell else could happen?

  Someone could try to kill him.

  He'd rented a house for the summer in Bluefield, a picturesque town in northwest Connecticut. Stockwell country. People assumed he wanted to be close to his lieutenant governor, Allyson Lourdes Stockwell, so they could strategize. The truth was, he was worried about her. Allyson had problems. Big problems.

  Hadn't occurred to Big Mike to worry about himself.

  "Help!"

  As he splashed and kicked, he saw the bluebird that he'd been trying to save. It was barely alive, soaked in the chlorinated water, slowly being sucked toward the pool filter.

  They were both doomed, him and the bluebird. It was a juvenile, its feathers still speckled. It looked as if it had a broken leg. It couldn't have been in the water long.

  Clever. His death would look like an accident. Michael Joseph Parisi drowned this afternoon in his swimming pool apparently while trying to rescue an injured bluebird…

  Christ. He'd look like an idiot.

  Some murdering son of a bitch had dumped the bird in the deep end, knowing he'd bend over and try to scoop it up. Bluebirds were his hobby, his passion since his wife died six years ago. They'd had no children. His desire to help restore the Eastern bluebird population in Connecticut and his personal interest in bluebirds weren't a secret.

  Not like not knowing how to swim. That was a secret. Hell, everyone knew how to swim.

  His mother had regularly dumped his ass in the lake as a kid, trying to get him to learn. It didn't work. She'd had to get his brother to fish him out.

  Was the bastard who'd planted the bluebird watching him flail and yell?

  It'd look like a goddamn accident.

  Rage consumed him, forced him up out of the water, yelling, swearing, pushing for the edge of the pool. It was so damn close. Why couldn't he reach it? What the hell was he doing wrong? He could hear his mother yelling at him. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Michael, you're such a wienie. Swim, for the love of God.

  These days a mother like Marianne Parisi would be arrested for child abuse or put on pills or something. Total nutcase, his mother was, though she meant well. She died of a stroke when Mike was twenty-four, still thinking her second son would never amount to shit.

  The pool water filled his nose and mouth, burned his eyes. He coughed, choking, taking in even more water. He couldn't breathe.

  There'd be a lot of crocodile tears at his funeral.

  Allyson would do fine as governor…

  Who the hell was he kidding? Allyson had her head in the sand. He'd tried to help her, and he knew that was why he was drowning now.

  Murdered.

  They'd have to cut him open. They'd find out he hadn't hit his head or had a heart attack or a stroke. He'd drowned. The autopsy wouldn't pick up where he'd been poked in the ass. It'd felt like a stick or a pole or something. The pool was fenced in, but the deep end backed up to the woods. His murderer could have hid there and waited for Mike to come outside, then tossed in the bluebird when he had his back turned.

  Easier to shoot him, but that wouldn't have looked like an accident.

  He stopped yelling. He stopped flailing.

  The faces of the living and the dead jumbled together in his head, and he couldn't distinguish which was which, couldn't tell which he was. Thoughts and memories, sounds came at him in a whirl. He could see bluebirds all around him, dozens of them, iridescent in the sunlight.

  Ah, Mike, you had it good….

  But all of that was done now.

  He prayed the way he'd learned in catechism class so long ago.

  Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…

  His mother came into the bright light now, shaking her head, not with disgust this time, but with love and bemusement, as if she hadn't expected him so soon. His wife was there, too, smiling as she had on their wedding day thirty years ago.

  They held out their hands, and Big Mike laughed and walked toward his wife and his mother, and the bluebirds, into the light.

  One

  Austin was in the grip of its fifteenth consecutive day of ninety-plus-degree weather, a quality of Texas summers Kara Galway had almost forgotten about dur
ing her years up north. Even with air-conditioning, she was aware of the blistering temperatures and blamed the heat for her faint nausea. The heat and the seafood tacos she'd had for lunch.

  Not Sam Temple. He was another possibility for her queasy stomach, but not one she wanted to consider.

  She'd been putting in long hours since Big Mike's death two weeks ago, but memories of their long friendship would sneak up on her no matter how deep she buried herself in her legal work. Kara had met him through her friend Allyson Lourdes Stockwell, now the governor of Connecticut. She and Kara had gone to law school together, before Allyson's husband died of cancer and left her with two toddlers to raise on her own.

  Henry and Lillian Stockwell were twelve and eleven now. After Big Mike's funeral, they'd flown back to Texas with Kara, and she'd dropped them off at a kids' dude ranch southwest of Austin, a long-planned adventure that Allyson had decided not to cancel, despite the trauma of Mike Parisi's death. Henry and Lillian had loved him, too. Everyone had.

  The kids wrote to Kara, who was their godmother, from the ranch, complaining about the food, the heat, the bugs, the snakes. They never mentioned Big Mike.

  Kara tried not to think about him, or his funeral. How he'd died. The Connecticut state police and the state's chief attorney's office were conducting a joint investigation. But none of that was her concern. All she should concentrate on were Henry and Lillian, who would be spending a few days with her after their dude ranch experience, then flying back to Connecticut to enjoy the last of summer and get ready for school.

  Seeing them would be a welcome distraction.

  George Carter stopped in the open doorway to her office and peered at her. "You sick?"

  Kara focused on her boss. "I think I had bad seafood tacos at lunch."

  He winced. "There's no such thing as a good seafood taco."

  At sixty-two, George Carter was a man of strong opinions, a prominent and respected attorney in Austin, a founding partner of Carter, Smith and Rodriguez, Af-rican-American, straightforward, brilliant, father of three, grandfather of two. He was also one of Kara's biggest doubters. He made no secret of it. He said he liked her fine and didn't hold her Yale education or her years as an attorney in Connecticut against her. He'd never even asked her about her Texas Ranger brother. His doubts weren't personal. George was a buttoned-down lawyer who fought hard and played by the rules, and Kara was an out-of-the-box thinker, someone who came at problems sideways by nature, training and experience. She liked to get a fix on the complexities of a problem, understand every angle, every approach, before committing herself to a strategy. In other words, the two of them were polar opposites.

  He'd agreed to hire her the previous fall on a one-year contract because, he said, he thought she brought skills and a way of thinking to the firm that it needed. At the end of the year, if the fit between her and Carter, Smith and Rodriguez worked, she'd become a full partner. If not, she'd be looking for work.

  "Damn, it's freezing in here." He gave an exaggerated shiver. "I'm getting goose bumps. What's the air-conditioning on?"

  "Sixty-eight. I'm still acclimating to August in Texas."

  "You're wasting energy and running up the electric bill."

  He was six feet tall, his hair just beginning to turn gray, an impressive figure in court with his deceptively understated suits and manner—but Kara didn't believe for a second he was cold. He had on a coat and tie. She just had on slacks and a simple top, and she wasn't cold.

  She felt her stomach roll over. Maybe she'd developed an allergy to seafood.

  She thought again of Sam Temple. She was accustomed to men who preferred to love her from afar. Romantics. Nothing about Sam Temple was from afar— it was up close and personal, immediate. And crazy, inexplicable, totally unforgettable. She pushed him out of her mind because thinking about him was insanity. Having a Texas Ranger for a brother was one thing— sleeping with one was another. George would hold that against her.

  He shook his head. "A born-and-bred Texan like you, fussing about the heat."

  "When I first went up to New England, I was always complaining about the cold. I thought I'd never get used to it, but I did. It's like that now with the heat."

  "There's no end in sight to this heat wave, you know."

  She'd seen the long-range forecast on the news that morning. It was August in south-central Texas. What did she expect? She pushed back her chair slightly from her desk. Her office was small, with standard furnishings. She hadn't bothered adding pictures and her own artwork, the lack of personal touches giving it a temporary feel, as if she was stuck between the kid she'd been here and the woman she'd become up north.

  She smiled at George. "You didn't come here to listen to me complain about the heat."

  "No, I didn't. Kara—" He sighed, obviously not thrilled with what he had to say. "You've had a rough couple of weeks. I can see they're taking their toll on you."

  She knew what he was talking about. "Mike Parisi was a good friend."

  His warm, dark eyes settled on her. "Nothing more?"

  "No."

  But Big Mike had wanted more. He admitted as much after she'd decided to move back to Texas. He was half in love with her, he'd said, and had been since his wife had died, but didn't want to ruin their friendship by saying anything. Now that she was leaving, he wanted her to know. When she met a man in Texas, he'd told her, don't hold back. Go for it. Life was too short, his own missed opportunities too numerous, too bitter, to contemplate.

  Would it have made any difference if he'd told her sooner?

  No, she thought. She'd never been in love with Big Mike. Nor had he been in love with her—not really. He knew it that day in Connecticut and so did she.

  Kara smiled, picturing him in his cluttered office, a fat cigar stuck in his mouth. "He liked to tell me bad Texas jokes," she told George Carter. "He thinks—he thought we were all hard-asses down here."

  "The new governor, Allyson Stockwell, is a friend of yours, as well?"

  Kara nodded. Allyson's husband, Lawrence Stock-well, had died ten years ago, now Big Mike. Two strong, powerful men in her life. Lawrence's half brother, Hatch Corrigan, didn't have that kind of magnetism or influence, but he was all Allyson had left.

  Allyson had insisted for months Hatch was another one who loved Kara from afar. Kara, who never noticed such things, refused to believe it until Hatch decided to tell her at Big Mike's funeral. We were both in love with you, Kara. Stupid as hell, huh?

  No wonder she had a sick stomach.

  "Worried about her?" George asked.

  "I don't know. Allyson's only thirty-seven—she let Big Mike talk her into running as his lieutenant governor. But she's devoted to public service…"

  Kara trailed off, remembering her friend's panicked voice the night of Big Mike's death, not long after she was sworn in as governor. I'm not ready, Kara. I'm just not. She'd called on her cell phone to give Kara the terrible news. Kara had just arrived at the Dunning Gallery in Austin for the opening of the Gordon Temple exhibit. Temple was a prominent Cherokee artist, raised in Oklahoma, a former teacher in Texas who was now based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Getting him for their gallery was a coup for Kevin and Eva Dunning, whose daughter Susanna was married to Kara's brother Jack.

  That Gordon Temple and Sam Temple, a Texas Ranger, shared the same last name was, Sam said, just one of those things. Kara didn't believe it.

  Every second of that surreal evening was etched in her mind.

  "Big Mike was a larger-than-life kind of guy," she went on, aware of George's scrutiny. "He won't be an easy act to follow, but people shouldn't underestimate Allyson. Once she gets over the shock of his death, she'll do fine."

  Kara blamed her own shock for her subsequent behavior that night at the gallery. She'd turned off her cell phone after Allyson's call and slipped it into her handbag so she wouldn't have to hear more, know more, and when she swept up a glass of champagne off a passing tray, Sam Temple was there. He was not unf
amiliar to her. They'd met a few times at her brother's house in San Antonio—she was not as oblivious to Sergeant Temple's black-eyed charm as Lieutenant Jack Galway no doubt would have hoped.

  But she never thought she was crazy enough to go to bed with him. He was so dark and sexy and irresistible, and when he suggested they sneak out for coffee, she'd seized the moment.

  They ended up at her house a few blocks away. He stayed all night and all the next morning, and never once did Kara mention Big Mike's death.

  She'd had no contact with Sam since. She left that afternoon for Mike Parisi's funeral in Connecticut. She talked to the state detectives about his death and how she'd come to know he couldn't swim, that she'd never told anyone his secret. Although not specifically assigned to the case, Zoe West, Bluefield's sole detective, asked Kara about Big Mike's interest in bluebirds and exactly who knew he couldn't swim. When she questioned Kara on her whereabouts the night of Mike's death, Kara ended up giving her Sam's name and number. It had seemed like the thing to do at the time. She thought Zoe West would be satisfied once Kara offered up a Texas Ranger to corroborate her story.

  "It was an accidental drowning," she said half to herself. "Big Mike's death."

  "You really called him that?" George's voice was unexpectedly soft, and he tapped the far edge of her desk, not looking at her. "Take tomorrow off," he said abruptly.

  Kara was instantly suspicious. "Why? It's been two weeks. I can do my job."

  George headed for the door. "You've been putting in ridiculous hours, even for an attorney. You're going to crack." He glanced back at her, none of his usual doubts about her apparent now. "Trust me on this, Kara. I know from experience. Take a day or two off, all right?"

  "I'll look over my workload and see what I can do."

  He didn't push—at least not yet. After he left, Kara took out the compact mirror she kept in her tote bag and checked her reflection. Pale, definitely on the green side. No wonder George was concerned about her. She looked awful.