Miss Charlotte Surrenders

“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.