That Stubborn Yankee Read online

  That Stubborn Yankee

  Mill Brook Trilogy, Book 3

  Carla Neggers

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Excerpt: Finders Keepers

  Books by Carla Neggers

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 by Carla Neggers

  2nd Edition

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Prologue

  He would be safe in Vermont.

  It was an odd thought. Laughable, even. Harlan probably would have laughed, but for the pain in his head, his eyes, his jaw, his mouth and his abdomen. Especially his abdomen. Bruised, broken and exhausted, he had gotten off the midnight milkrun to Montpelier in the next town over from Mill Brook, Vermont. Standing in a noxious cloud of black bus fumes, he had considered his idiocy: had no cash, and no ID. Thugs were out looking for him. A sensible man would have called the police, or at least seen a doctor.

  Instead he had pushed up the sleeves of his black polo shirt and trudged the five miles to the outskirts of Mill Brook, the picturesque, New England home town of the one-time woman of his dreams.

  Elizabeth Stiles.

  Mean as a snake, dangerously beautiful, and his first true love. They were married for three short years and hadn’t seen each other in nearly ten.

  If he had stopped at a phone booth and called, would she have come and picked him up?

  Beth had always been a woman to approach with caution. There were things she could have done if her ex-husband had called her at midnight—the least of which was just to hang up on him. Harlan’s newfound caution compelled him to avoid downtown Mill Brook, where, even in the dead of the night, local gossips might alert his ex-wife to his presence. He had tried hitchhiking, but his bruised face, hobbling gait and the overnight case he clutched to his chest seemed to put drivers off.

  He needed to consider the men who had bruised and beaten him and forced him to flee New York. There was an off chance that they’d posted someone in his ex-wife’s hometown, in case he showed up. He didn’t want to be found. Not yet. Not on their terms. He liked to think his motives weren’t merely self-serving; he didn’t want the hoods who’d given him the beating of his life anywhere near Beth.

  Not that she wouldn’t handle herself just fine. If she didn’t go after them with an ax, she would hand him over.

  “It’s my ex-husband you’re after?” he imagined her saying. “By all means, take him!”

  Still hobbling, he urged himself on with the knowledge that he hadn’t much farther to go. Char, Beth’s best friend and new sister-in-law, had written him several weeks ago to inform him that Beth had bought Louie Wheeler’s old place.

  Remember? He’s the old geezer who thinks the world went to hell when they invented flush toilets. He’s retired to Miami now and has his own hot tub, God forbid. Beth paid too much for the place. She’s into being a pioneer Yankee. Beth says we’re all too soft. Honest, Harlan, I think she reads the encyclopedia at night and takes cold baths in the morning. She’s turning into a curmudgeon.

  Harlan grumbled his agreement. Beth Stiles had been a curmudgeon at age twenty. A hellishly sexy one. Irresistible to a southern gentleman like himself.

  I know I’m sticking my neck out, Char had written in conclusion, but Beth believes there isn’t a man alive who can stand to live with her. Mind you, she doesn’t think there’s a thing wrong with her. It’s men who’re the problem. Prove her wrong, Harlan. Beth needs you.

  Marriage to Beth’s older brother Adam had addled Charity Bradford’s brain and turned her into a hopeless romantic, Harlan thought. Elizabeth Stiles had managed fine for nine years without him in her life, and she would be the first to tell him that. She didn’t need him. As for wanting him—that was the stuff of fantasy. Predawn limps through Vermont notwithstanding, he considered himself a practical man.

  He remembered exactly where old Louie’s place was located: it was on a back road west of town, where more than two hundred years ago, Yankee pioneers had carved out fields for their cows and vegetables. The maze of stone walls and the giant sugar maples flanking the narrow, dirt road testified to the strength of character and the capacity for hard work of the men and women who had settled that harsh land. Beth viewed their lives as role models for her own and glossed over the history of her own ancestors, who’d been well-off for generations.

  Harlan stumbled and collapsed from weakness in the cold, dew-soaked grass alongside the road. His overnight case, the one item that the hired thugs hadn’t taken, only because they hadn’t seen it, slid down the embankment. He lay there, exhausted and disgusted with himself. He should have had more sense than to slink off in his hour of need to an ex-wife long shed of him. It would serve him right if he died of exposure and stupidity under a rusting, barbed-wire fence.

  He heard the rumble of an approaching automobile. Edging down the embankment on his back, he scooted under the barbed wire, close to his overnight case and the stone wall. If the thugs tracked him to Vermont, they’d have no qualms about taking advantage of the isolation of the back road to finish their job on him. Dying of exposure and stupidity was one thing; dying at the hands of those charming individuals was quite another. And this time they wouldn’t miss his suitcase.

  The car was coming fast, kicking up rocks and dust on the narrow road. There was something familiar about the sound of its engine. Something that grated on his nerves. It flew past him, a streak of sea green, rust, bald tires and bodywork not seen on the streets of America since the early days of the Beatles. Harlan gritted his teeth, as Beth’s refurbished 1965 Chevrolet Bel Air sped down Maple Street toward town.

  If he could have been sure she wouldn’t run over him, he’d have crawled to his feet and flagged her down. Not the smartest decision he’d ever made— seeking sanctuary with a woman who might want to hurt him more than the men who already had.

  Still, he had nowhere else to go. And if he played his cards right, she might never find out he was in close quarters.

  Chapter One

  Legs aching and lungs burning, Beth was relieved to turn the corner onto Maple Street and complete the last stretch of her ten-mile run in the shade. The next house would be hers. Thank heaven. She felt sweat pouring into the bandanna tied around her forehead, and down her back, matting her mango-colored shirt to her skin.

  Home. Her house. Her place. No more renting, no more waiting. At thirty-four she had entered the world of home ownership.

  “Shack ownership, you mean,” her older brothers, Adam and Julian had joked.

  That was their opinion. She had hers. The eighteenth-century converted carriage house had a roof, paned windows, wide-board pine floors and charm galore. So what if it lacked central heating and hot water!

  The real selling point had been its location. It was situated on a knoll, surrounded by fifty rolling acres of the fields, woods and stone walls of northern Vermont. Beth would have lived in a lean-to to get that picture-postcard view.

  If only she didn’t have Harlan Rockwood to thank.

  That galled her no end. Her ex-husband had been unusually and mysteriously charitable in selling an interest in Stubborn Yankee, his now-famous thoroughbred, to Char. Without Beth’s knowledge, Char had inv
ested virtually every cent of her own money and twenty thousand dollars of Beth’s savings in the promising three-year-old. Beth had only learned about Char and Harlan’ s agreement after their horse had won the Kentucky Derby. To her mind, it was a deal with the devil. Nevertheless, her share of the winnings—which she’d demanded Harlan fork over at once—had enabled her to buy Louie’s old place.

  After winning the Kentucky Derby, Stubborn Yankee had gone on to win the Preakness, but had fallen short of the Triple Crown when he came in second in the Belmont Stakes. Beth hadn’t taken to having a horse named after her. Right there on national television, Harlan had told reporters that he used to call his wife “Stubborn Yankee.” He hadn’t said “ex-wife.” Adam, Julian and Char all said that was because he had ideas about a reunion with her. She could see it: Here she is now, folks, my two-legged, stubborn Yankee! She’d have to wear her leather chaps and L. L. Bean boots.

  She rationalized that Harlan hadn’t referred to her as his ex-wife because—Southern aristocrat that he was—he considered public discussions of divorce an unseemly business. Never mind that they had been divorced for nine years. Her brothers and Char remained unconvinced.

  Almost three months later, they still wouldn’t admit they were wrong. Of course, they were. Harlan Rockwood had backed out of Beth’s life as abruptly as he’d bulldozed his way into it. She didn’t demand that her brothers and best friend recant, since that would have involved an admission that she had him on her mind. Too damned much for her taste.

  This obsessive thinking about Harlan had to stop! Harlan had gone into that deal with Char and had named his horse after Beth just to aggravate her. Nearly a decade after their divorce, he was finally getting in his digs for all the trouble she had caused him during their three years of marriage. Except in bed. She had never caused him a bit of trouble there. Nor he her.

  “Will you stop!” As she came up to her driveway, she kicked a loose stone, sending it skidding wildly.

  “Hey,” a man’s voice drawled, “be careful there, Sugar.”

  Sugar?

  Snapping out of her daze, Beth saw a tan Ford Taurus parked behind her infamous 1965 Chevrolet Bel Air. A sturdy, short man with steel-wool hair was shutting the Ford’s driver-side door.

  Two of her mutts lapped at his hand; the third was up on the porch, fast asleep. Her half-dozen Rhode Island Reds scratched in what passed for a yard. She didn’t see a sign of any of her cats. So much for her oft-stated rationalization for taking in strays: not one was worth a damn at watching the place while she was gone.

  The stranger smiled graciously as Beth walked toward him. “Almost got me,” he said with a cheerful wink. “My name’s Sessoms, ma’am. Jimmy Sessoms.”

  The sugar, the ma’am, the accent, the name. Beth glanced at the car’s license plate and wasn’t surprised to see it was from Tennessee.

  She tugged the bandanna off her head. Ten miles had taken their toll on her hair, as well as the rest of her. She pulled the covered rubber band off her ponytail and let her sweat-dampened locks fall loose onto her shoulders.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked warily.

  She saw Sessoms run one hand slowly across his lower jaw and look from her to her house. The previous owner, Louie, a seventy-five-year-old widower, had given up on the yard some thirty years ago. The barn out back had been crumbling for the better part of the century. The outhouse, which had satisfied Louie, but at which Beth drew the line, was in fine shape.

  Sessoms narrowed his eyes, trying to reconcile what he saw—the house, the animals, the Indian paintbrushes dotting the knee-high field grass of her yard— with what he had presumably expected to see. Beth didn’t care to explain that she had moved in to Louie’s old place only three weeks ago and hadn’t yet gotten around to the outside. Or that exercise and her body had had an uneasy relationship for years, and she was entitled to sweat. The man would come to his own conclusions.

  “You’re Mrs. Harlan Rockwood?” he asked.

  Now it was Beth’s turn to narrow her eyes. Even when she had been married, no one had ever called her Mrs. Harlan Rockwood. It wasn’t her style. For his part, Harlan hadn’t given a damn what Beth called herself. But Eleanor Rockwood, Mrs. Taylor Rockwood, had had her own ideas. Her mother-in-law had given her stationery with Mrs. Harlan Rockwood embossed at the top in elegant lettering. Although Eleanor had never openly challenged Beth, she’d always introduced her as Mrs. Harlan Rockwood and made it plain that she considered Beth’s decision to be called by her own name as another sign that she would never be a Rockwood. It hadn’t seemed to occur to her that Beth didn’t want to be a Rockwood. She was just in love with one. In retrospect, the tension over the Rockwood name had been a symbol of her three-year struggle to retain her own identity within her marriage.

  On that score, she had succeeded only too well.

  Beth saw Jimmy Sessoms eyeing her closely. She wiped the perspiration off her face with her bandanna and tried to look more like an Olympic athlete and less like a thirty-four-year-old woman bound and determined to stay in reasonable shape. She was fitter than she had been in years. Nevertheless, ten-mile runs were ten-mile runs, and no breeze-through!

  “My name’s Elizabeth Stiles.” Her clipped words stood in marked contrast to his drawl. “Harlan Rockwood and I are divorced.”

  Sessoms nodded. “I understand. Mind if we go inside?”

  Beth hesitated. She wanted to know why this competent-looking man with his thick, middle-Tennessee accent had driven up to see her. She could make a guess: Harlan must have sent him. But why? Who was he? Not a Rockwood lawyer, for sure; they all wore bow ties. Someone involved with the Rockwood stables? Last fall one of Harlan’s trainers had tried to swindle him by switching one of his most promising thoroughbreds—in which he’d sold a share to Char— for a dead ringer. The switch had sent Char into near bankruptcy. To make amends, Harlan had let Char invest in his favorite horse, Stubborn Yankee.

  In fact, Beth had only found out about that deal when the time came for her to collect her share of Char’s profits. However, since the Kentucky Derby, she had begun to suspect Harlan had another scheme in the works.

  Was Jimmy Sessoms involved?

  She felt her muscles stiffening and was already regretting missing her cool-down stretch. “Mr. Sessoms...”

  “I’m a private investigator,” he said quickly. “From Nashville. Your mother-in-law, Mrs. Taylor Rockwood, hired me. Please, Mrs. Rockwood, it’s very important that we talk.”

  Beth balled up her bandanna in one hand. “What about Mr. Rockwood? Taylor, I mean.”

  “He’s not associated with this.”

  Jimmy Sessoms withdrew his wallet, showed her his ID, and quietly repeated his request that they go inside and talk. Unembarrassed by the ramshackle condition of her house, Beth led the way. She had only been able to accomplish so much in the three weeks since she had moved in. The entire first floor was maybe as big as the Rockwood foyer, if she included the attached woodshed. There was an eat-in kitchen of 1930s vintage, a pantry and what Louie had called his “great room,” which served as a living room and bedroom. Beth’s first order of business had been to have a bathroom installed. Next was getting hot water. After that she planned to convert the upstairs into a proper bedroom with a dormer, to take advantage of the view. Right now she could still see hay marks on the old, rough-hewn walls. Some noisy rodent was up there, waking her at night. It sounded bigger than a mouse. In her brothers’ opinion, she should tear the place down and put up one of Mill Brook Post and

  Beam’s high-quality houses. As a vice president, she could get a sizable discount. Her brothers shared her keen interest in old houses, but hers, even she had to admit, didn’t qualify as an antique.

  Beth pulled a pitcher of iced tea from the refrigerator, a refugee from the fifties.

  “You live here?” Sessoms asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Summer place?”

  Beth shook her head and got down
two tall glasses from the open shelves above the sink, added ice and poured the tea, while Jimmy Sessoms took a seat at her round table, covered with a blue-and-white-checked cloth. She had deliberately placed the table in front of the window, with its spectacular view of the valley and mountains beyond. Despite the uneven floor and peeling wallpaper, the place was homey, she knew, if not Rockwood elegant.

  She sat down in a white-painted, wooden chair across from the private investigator. “So what’s this all about?”

  “Mrs. Rockwood—”

  “Ms. Stiles,” she said emphatically. “Please call me Ms. Stiles.”

  “When was the last time you saw your husband?”

  “I haven’t seem my former husband in years. Why?”

  “You owned an interest in Stubborn Yankee, didn’t you?”

  “A very minor interest, arranged by a friend without my knowledge. I never actually talked to Harlan or even saw him. What’s this all about?”

  Sessoms drank a mouthful of tea. She watched him resist making a face: it was peppermint tea. “But you communicated with him?”

  “Not in person.”

  He sighed. “When’s the last time you saw him in person?”

  Jimmy Sessom was being cagey. Beth doubted she’d get anything substantive out of him until she gave him a satisfactory answer.

  “In person? Let me think.”

  Not that she had to. The last time she’d seen Harlan Rockwood was nine years ago this September, on the seventh. The date was embedded in her memory, because it was the day her marriage had officially come to an end.

  It had also been the last time she and Harlan had made love—for old times’ sake, they had told each other. That steamy afternoon was far more deeply embedded in her memory than any other. They had made love so passionately, so exquisitely that Beth wasn’t likely ever to forget her last day with Harlan Rockwood. Even with their marriage over, she found herself wanting him as much as ever. And the feeling had been entirely mutual. She could still see Harlan, walking stiffly toward his car after their twelve-hour marathon.