That Night on Thistle Lane (21 page)

They walked past an old stone wall that marked a field that Phoebe told him the goats had cleared last summer. The tall grass was dotted with wildflowers—yellow, white, deep orange. Noah had no idea what they were but suspected the O’Dunns would, Phoebe especially. She was the sort who soaked up knowledge, loved to learn new things.

She seemed pensive and yet also comfortable at her childhood home. She squinted back at the shed. “My father built the shed when he first moved out here. He lived in it for a few years, before he met my mother. He always planned to convert it into a barn. There’s a natural spring just into the woods, and a stream that he loved. There’s a lake in the state forest farther down the road.”

“This area seems to have a lot of water,” Noah said.

“It does. Ponds, lakes, streams, rivers. That’s why the Swift River Valley was chosen for a reservoir. Quabbin is a Native American word that translates as ‘place of many waters.’”

“It’s a beautiful spot to have grown up, Phoebe.”

“My father was twelve years older than my mother. He worked in forestry jobs. He wanted to make money as a farmer but it never happened.” She took a breath. “We still miss him. We always will.”

“Brandon told me what happened. He didn’t go into detail. Phoebe—”

“I found him,” Phoebe said abruptly. “I had to tell my mother, my sisters. It was a difficult time but we got through it. My mother has a full life but she’s never remarried. Some days I don’t know how she manages this place, even with our help. She has a live-for-today mentality that sometimes makes tomorrow a little sketchy.”

“You worry about her,” Noah said.

“It’s hard not to sometimes. I can’t imagine why Hartley went to the trouble of driving out here. The goats are providing milk for Maggie and Olivia’s soaps. Olivia’s the fiancée of your best friend.” Phoebe slowed her pace. “Could Hartley be interested in Dylan and not you? Worried we’re taking advantage of him?”

“No one takes advantage of Dylan.”

Phoebe stopped, the sunlight deepening the rich turquoise of her eyes as she studied him a moment. “Do people take advantage of you?” she asked finally.

Noah shrugged. “They didn’t when Dylan was working down the hall.”

“Are you worried they will now?”

“I’m making the transition from having total control over NAK. It’s good for the company and its future. Regardless, I’ve always been better at creating ideas than watching for snakes in the grass.”

“Fencing helps?”

“It helps me focus on the present.”

“Otherwise you get stabbed,” Phoebe said. “It must be a great motivator.”

He leaned in close to her. “In classical fencing, we try to touch without being touched. Any touch with a sharp sword can be deadly. Sport fencing is different. It’s based on a point system.”

“You get points for touching.”

Noah saw her amusement and smiled. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, but sports fencing isn’t the same as a real fight. It’s an athletic competition. Classical fencing isn’t a real fight, either, since we’re not out to kill each other and take safety seriously, but it simulates a real fight.”

“Are you good?” Phoebe asked.

“I’m not competitive in that way. I enjoy fencing and karate because they work with my schedule and personality.” He heard the caw of a crow out in the field and suddenly realized how quiet it was. “And you, Phoebe? Do you participate in a competitive sport?”

She shook her head. “Never have. I like to walk and work in the garden. I took a yoga class once. I enjoyed it, but yoga’s hardly competitive.” A breeze blew strands of red hair into her face as she gave him a sideways glance. “So if you don’t want to continue to run NAK or end up as the loose-end founder hanging out in the halls, you have to figure out what to do with the rest of your life.”

“I could learn to make goat’s milk soap.”

“Maybe that’s why Julius Hartley is following you,” Phoebe said quietly. “Maybe the uncertainty about what’s next for you and even Dylan is causing problems in San Diego.”

“Maybe it is,” Noah said, slowing as they reached the shade of a birch tree, its trunk a bright white against the lush green leaves and grass, the clear blue of the sky. “You’re perceptive. Have you always been, or has your work at the library helped?”

“Work at the library’s helped me in many ways, but I don’t think of myself as perceptive. I get surprised by people all the time.”

“Who broke your heart, Phoebe?”

Her eyes widened but she smiled. “See? I was just surprised by you. I didn’t expect that.”

He stood closer. “Have you given up on love? Falling in love is fine for your sisters, your friends, but for you…”

“I know everyone in Knights Bridge.” She spoke lightly but the way she averted her eyes told a different story. “I’d have to go looking out of town.”

Noah saw that she wasn’t going any deeper, not here, not now. He smiled. “You could always wait for a rich, good-looking swashbuckler to turn up.”

He noticed her immediate relief at his teasing tone. “My perfect fantasy,” she said with a laugh. “What’s yours?”

“Maybe it’s a redheaded small-town librarian.”

As they walked back to the house, Noah received a text message from Brandon Sloan that Julius Hartley had just taken a booth at Knights Bridge’s one and only restaurant. Brandon was all set to meet Noah there, but Noah texted him back that he’d go alone.

He debated whether to tell Phoebe about the message from her brother-in-law and finally did.

“You can’t move a muscle in Knights Bridge without a Sloan knowing,” she said, then nodded up toward the driveway where he’d parked. “Go on. I’ll stay and help with the tomatoes. My mother or one of my sisters will give me a ride back to town. Smith’s is the name of the restaurant. It’s just down the street next to the country store.”

“I’ll find it.”

She hesitated. “Are you sure you want to meet Hartley on your own?”

“I’m the one who brought him here,” Noah said. “I’ll deal with him.”

Phoebe gave him the slightest of smiles. “Then I recommend the turkey club,” she said, heading off to her mother’s vegetable garden.

*

Julius Hartley didn’t seem surprised or nervous when Noah sat across from him at a dark-wood booth at Smith’s, a small, family restaurant located in a 1920s house around the corner from the country store. Framed color photographs of the Quabbin Reservoir and wilderness hung on the walls. Noah studied a photograph of a bald eagle soaring above blue reservoir waters as he collected his thoughts.

“I’m having the turkey club,” Hartley said. “I hear it’s an O’Dunn favorite.”

Noah knew it was meant as a provocative statement, a way to tell him that he was dealing with a private investigator, a man who was good at his job. Noah shifted his gaze from the eagle. Hartley already had a tall glass of iced tea on the table in front of him

“The meatloaf is supposed to be good, too,” Hartley added. “Homemade. Have you ever had meatloaf, Kendrick?”

“Not in a while.”

“Since the first million or the first billion?”

Noah didn’t respond. “What did you want with Elly O’Dunn?”

“What, you don’t believe I’m interested in buying goats, either?” Hartley grinned and slung an arm over the back of the booth. “I’m taking that as a positive. I assume you’ve been out to the O’Dunn place.”

“I just came from there.”

“With your princess?” Hartley waited a half beat for a response and when he didn’t get one, lowered his arm and helped himself to his tea. “How much do you know about these people?”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

Hartley raised his eyes. “Here to kick my ass? No problem. I get that. Elly O’Dunn works in the town offices. She and your librarian princess are probably putting a dossier together on me.”

“Good,” Noah said.

“And if they aren’t, you and your friend Loretta Wrentham are.”

“You showed up in Loretta’s office. Why? How do you know her?”

Hartley shrugged, clearly unconcerned. “It’s my job. As you well know by now, I’m a private investigator in Los Angeles. I had a few questions, I got them answered and now I’m going home. It’s all you need to know.”

Noah shook his head. “I’ll decide what I need to know.”

Hartley was clearly not intimidated. “Knock yourself out.”

“Who are you working for?”

“You know better than to ask.” Hartley leaned back, glanced around the quiet restaurant. “If you think what comes after NAK is here in Sleepy Hollow, you’re kidding yourself.”

Noah said nothing. A waitress took his order, and he asked just for iced tea. He wasn’t having dinner with Julius Hartley, L.A. private investigator. Noah was aware he could be naive about people and oblivious to obvious rogues and scoundrels, but he wasn’t that naive and oblivious.

Hartley swirled the tea and ice in his glass. “You like the action, the pressure of the work you do. Solving problems. Building something from scratch. Getting other people involved, like your hockey-player friend.”

“Dylan was invaluable in building NAK.”

“Invaluable is one of those words that sounds like it means the opposite of what it means. It doesn’t matter to me what comes next for you. I’m not working for your board of directors, in case that’s what you’re thinking.”

“It’s not my board. It’s the shareholders’ board.”

“Right. Things have changed for you.”

“Is that why you’re on my tail? To find out what I’m up to?”

“I just told you I don’t care what you’re up to.”

Their waitress delivered Hartley’s club sandwich and Noah’s iced tea.

Hartley helped himself to a golden-brown fry. “I can’t remember the last time I had fries and a club. I should have ordered a chocolate shake. What the hell, right?” He reached for a bottle of ketchup on the side of the table. “I’m not a threat, Kendrick. If there’s a threat, it’s these people and their ideas about you and yours about them.”

“And you know what their ideas about me and my ideas about them are?”

“They know you don’t belong here. You’re trying to pretend you do.”

Noah didn’t rise to the bait. “You were on my tail in San Diego and then you followed me out here. Why?”

“I didn’t ‘follow’ you. Careful with the language.”

“I’m giving you a chance by meeting you here by myself. I could have called my security team at NAK and had them arrange for people to meet you here.”

“That’d get this town talking. You don’t want that, do you? You can fool them into thinking that you’re normal until you summon a big black SUV filled with private security types.”

Noah hadn’t tried to fool anyone, and even if he had, he hadn’t met anyone in Knights Bridge who gave a damn that he was a billionaire. Except Phoebe, and then only because he’d kissed her.

“You don’t think like normal people, Kendrick.” Hartley dipped a fry into his mound of ketchup. “You’re a solo operator when it comes right down to it. Dylan McCaffrey got that about you in first grade. That’s why you two get along.”

Noah drank some of his tea. He was used to people trying to figure him out. “Does your presence here have anything to do with Dylan?”

Hartley ate his fry in two bites. “He and Olivia Frost are an interesting pair, aren’t they? I drove out to the Frost sawmill. Pretty setting. Must be tough, your best friend, maybe your only real friend, falling for a woman on the other side of the country. Think that’s making you vulnerable to Phoebe O’Dunn’s charms?”

“You’re not answering my questions,” Noah said.

“You date beautiful Hollywood actresses who want you to bankroll their chance at the big time. Phoebe’s not in their league when it comes to being a good trophy.” Hartley picked up a triangle of his club sandwich, then grinned at Noah. “You’re doing fencing breathing, slowing your heart rate, so you stay calm and don’t go for my throat?”

It wasn’t that far from the truth. “Did an actress I dated hire you?” Noah asked calmly.

“You’re assuming anyone hired me. Relax. I’m leaving Sleepy Hollow as soon as I finish my dinner. The club really is good. You should try it.”

Noah wasn’t even close to being hungry. “It’s good you’re leaving town but I still intend to find out why you’re here.”

“Go for it. The O’Dunns might grow tomatoes and raise goats and such, but it would be a mistake to think they’re pushovers, or that they need you to protect them.”

Noah didn’t want his presence in their town to harm them. Then why had he stayed? Why did he continue to stay?

Hartley wiped his fingers with a cloth napkin. “One of the dessert specials is something called apple brown betty. It’s made with local apples. First of the season, apparently. I don’t think I can resist. I’ll be in Boston tonight and back in sunny Southern California tomorrow.”

Noah got to his feet and tossed a few bills on the table for his tea. “Then what?”

“We’ll see. Have fun in Sleepy Hollow, Noah. Every town has its secrets.” Hartley grinned. “So does every redhead. Ask your mild-mannered librarian how she got the scar on her knee.”

“We’re not done, Hartley.”

“Nothing more dangerous than a bored billionaire,” Hartley said, more amused than intimidated.

Noah left the restaurant and walked up to Main Street where he’d parked. It was a pleasant summer evening. He was used to being a fish out of water wherever he was and Knights Bridge was no exception, but it was also different—and not just because it was small. His friend had discovered a grandmother here and fallen in love here, and now he was making a home here.

And there was Phoebe.

She was as intriguing as a small-town librarian as an Edwardian princess.

As he started to get into Olivia’s car, he noticed Phoebe across the street on the common. She was with her sister Ruby and another young woman he took to be Ruby’s twin, Ava.

Phoebe waved to him. He thought she smiled.

Noah was in no rush to get back to Buster. He crossed the quiet street.

Phoebe broke away from her sisters and intercepted him by an old-fashioned gazebo. “That was a fast dinner,” she said. “Was Hartley there?”

“He was.” Noah nodded toward her sisters. “What happened to canning tomatoes?”

“We got things rolling and then Mom ran us out so she could finish up in peace. She seemed preoccupied, which isn’t like her, so we gave her some space.” Phoebe pulled a lightweight shawl up over her bare shoulders. “We’re figuring out some of the staging for the fashion show. It’s such a beautiful evening, we came out here.”