Authors: Mariah Stewart
Jesse tossed the doodled envelope into the trash can and got up from his chair to pace. He went first to the
front window, from where he could see Old St. Mary’s Church Square—known to the locals as just the square—and the narrow streets that led to it. This was the most historic section of a historic town, the house in which he now stood one of the oldest. The oldest section of the Oliver Shallcross House had been built in 1702, and was purchased in 1820 by Peter Enright, Jesse’s great-great-great-grandfather, and Enright and Enright was established the following year. Ever since, there’d been at least one Enright to provide legal counsel to the residents of St. Dennis and the surrounding communities. But even with this legacy, Jesse wondered if he’d ever feel like he’d earned the right to walk up that cobbled path and to call St. Dennis his home.
He had his grandfather, Curtis Enright, to thank in no small part for his uncertainty.
Jesse went into the small kitchen at the end of the hall and poured himself a cup of coffee. He never walked past the steps leading to the second floor without remembering his first visit here.
He’d heard through the family grapevine that his grandfather was retiring due to age and ill health, and that his uncle Mike—his dad’s brother—was taking a leave to care for his terminally ill wife, Andrea. Jesse had been practicing law in Ohio, where he’d grown up and where his mother and sister still lived, but from day one, he’d been under the shadow cast by his father. When the idea of relocating to St. Dennis first occurred to him, Jesse arranged to take the Maryland bar exam so that if he was successful in repairing the damage his father had caused, and was able to convince
his grandfather to take him into the firm, Jesse would be ready to go.
He hadn’t been aware of just how devastating the damage had been.
Just something else to thank you for, Dad
.
Curtis Enright had been cordial when Jesse showed up in St. Dennis and asked to see him. When he realized that Jesse had come, not for a visit, but for an interview for a position with the firm, Curtis’s cordiality turned decidedly cool.
“Can we speak frankly?” Curtis’s eyes had narrowed almost to the point of slits. He didn’t wait for a response. “Your father was a great disappointment to me. How do I know the apple hasn’t fallen too close to the tree?”
“You don’t, unless you’re willing to take me at my word that I am nothing like my father,” Jesse had replied calmly. He’d expected some resistance, but not this chilly a reaction. “Something tells me you’re not willing to do that, so why not give me a trial? Test me. Let me work for you for six months.”
“Anyone can pretend to be anything they want for six months.” Curtis had waved away the proposal.
“Then make it a year.” Suddenly Jesse had wanted this job more than he’d realized. Maybe it had been the chance to prove to his family that he was a better man than his father, that he was more worthy to inherit a position with Enright and Enright than his dad had been. “A year with you looking over my shoulder.”
His grandfather had fallen silent, and for a moment, Jesse had thought he was thinking over the offer he’d just made.
“I had high hopes for all my children, but Craig was my first son, and God, he was so bright! Had so much promise. Just shows how astute I am when it comes to judging character,” Curtis had grumbled. “They say it’s a wise man who knows his own child.” He’d shaken his head almost imperceptibly. “Obviously, I wasn’t very wise. Craig was a screwup from the time he hit his teens until”—he paused to glance at his watch—“two-twenty this afternoon.”
Curtis had turned slightly to gaze out the window. When he’d turned back to Jesse, it was to ask, “Is there something in your background I should know about?”
“Excuse me?” Jesse had asked.
“DUIs? Been kicked out of college? Annulled marriage to a Vegas stripper? Embezzlement?”
The last one had struck home hard and fast. Jesse had stared at the old man seated behind the desk for a long moment, then stood.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said as he walked toward the door. “This was a waste of time for both of us.”
He’d paused in the doorway. “I know better than anyone the kind of man my father is. I’ve had to deal with his antics all my life. If I said it hasn’t affected me, I’d be lying. But I hope it never affects me the way it’s affected you. I’m really sorry that your expectations of me are so low.”
Jesse’d left his grandfather’s second-floor office, wishing that he’d listened to his mother when she told him that coming here, hoping for an offer to join the family firm, was a really bad idea, that the trip could only end in disappointment. Well, she’d had that right.
He’d walked out the front door and down the cobbled path to the sidewalk, oblivious to the simple beauty of the square he cut across on his way back to the bed-and-breakfast where he’d been staying. The pain he’d carried inside was so sharp, so fierce, it seemed to burn right into his heart. Back in his room, he’d sat in quiet mourning for all the pieces of his life that had scattered: for the man his father might have been; for the dream he’d had of being accepted into the fold here, and for the place he’d hoped to carve for himself in St. Dennis, away from the scandals and the taint on his name that had nothing to do with him.
Well, they say you can’t pick your family. Except for his mother and his sister, the rest of them could all go rot for all he cared.
Jesse’d sat by a window and stewed until it grew dark and his stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in hours. The innkeeper had suggested a place for dinner, and Jesse had followed the directions to a restaurant several blocks away on the main street that went through the town. He’d been two storefronts from the restaurant when his cell phone rang.
“You’ve got one year.” Curtis hadn’t bothered with pleasantries nor had he identified himself. “Let me know when you’ve passed the Maryland bar.”
“I already have,” Jesse had replied with as much warmth as his grandfather offered.
“Pretty damned sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“I just always like to have my ducks in a row.”
“In that case, you can start the first of next month.
I’ll be looking over your shoulder. Don’t ever forget it.”
“Don’t you want to check my references?” Jesse had asked.
“Already did that.” Curtis had paused, then added, “I like to have my ducks in a row, too.”
That had been eight months ago, and while those first two months had been hell—with Curtis initially micromanaging to the point that he demanded to see every one of Jesse’s letters before they were mailed—by the six-month mark, Curtis rarely questioned Jesse’s judgment and had stopped shadowing him in court. They’d entered into a quiet truce based on growing mutual respect, but there was still a bit of unease between them.
Jesse took his coffee outside to the small courtyard off the kitchen. The day that had started out with the promise of sunshine had grown overcast and he could smell the coming rain. The leaves that had dropped since the beginning of the week formed a deep carpet of red and gold and brown across the yard. He set his coffee next to some potted plants on a table near the back door and went to the shed at the rear of the property. He found a rake and began to rake the leaves into a big pile near the driveway. He was so engrossed in what he was doing that he didn’t hear the back door open.
“I hope you’re not thinking about jumping into that pile.” Violet Finneran folded her arms across her ample chest. “Your granddaddy has someone to do that.”
“I know. I just felt like I needed a little fresh air and exercise.”
“Well, while you were playing maintenance man, you had a few calls. Lou MacGruder wants to change the settlement conference on the Jackson case from Monday afternoon to Tuesday morning, which of course will remove the trial from Monday’s calendar if you’re agreeable, which I told him you would be. He’ll take care of the motions. Liz apologized but she wasn’t able to come back in after lunch because she got a call from the elementary school to come pick up her sick daughter.” Violet counted off the calls on the fingers of her right hand. “And Brooke Bowers called to make an appointment to have her will drawn up.”
“Why didn’t you tell me she called?”
“Did you tell me you were coming out here? If I hadn’t gone into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation now.”
“Touché.”
“Indeed.”
“So did you give Brooke an appointment?” he asked.
“I gave her the Monday slot that would have been the settlement conference.”
“Good. Thank you.” Jesse went back to raking leaves. He could feel Violet’s eyes burning through his shirt. He and his grandfather may have come to an understanding, but clearly, the jury was still out as far as Violet Finneran was concerned.
He glanced over his shoulder and found her still standing in the doorway.
“What else?” he asked.
“I’ve known Brooke since she was a child.”
“Nice lady.” He made an attempt at sounding noncommittal but wasn’t sure he succeeded.
“Well, she is now but she wasn’t back then.” Violet paused. “When she was a child, that is. She was a bit of a brat for a while there.”
“Okay.” Jesse stopped raking and waited to see where she was headed with this.
“This firm has served as legal counsel for that family going back over a hundred years.”
“And …” He gestured for her to continue.
“And the girl needs her interests looked after.” She stared a hole right through the center of his face. “Don’t screw it up.”
She went back into the building, the door slamming behind her. It was almost a full minute before Jesse was able to pull his jaw off the ground and follow her.
“What makes you think I’d do anything to screw up Brooke’s will?”
“It’s not just her will. She needs solid counsel.”
“Why do you think I’m not capable of giving her good legal counsel, Violet?” He stared her down. For a moment he felt as if he was staring into the face of a dragon.
“Law of averages, sonny. I’ve known your grandparents all my life, went to school with your grandmother. So I knew your father. I know what he did to this family. How all his nonsense broke his mother’s heart. Sooner or later, blood will tell.”
“My grandfather is satisfied with everything I’ve done since day one. If he had any complaints, I imagine he’d have let me know, but hey, I’m still here.” He paused. “And don’t call me ‘sonny.’ ”
“Right now Curtis doesn’t have anyone else, what with Mike having to take care of poor Andrea day and night. He’s just waiting for the other shoe to
drop.” A mean little smile crossed her face. “We’re all just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sooner or later, it will.”
She started into her office near the front door.
“Violet, I’m not my father,” Jesse said softly.
“Like I said, blood will tell.” Violet went into her office and started to close the door in his face. At the last minute, she added, “And don’t think I didn’t see you flirting with Brooke, standing out there in the middle of the square, holding up traffic.”
“I wasn’t flirting; she stopped at the stop sign and called me over.”
Why
, he asked himself,
am I bothering to defend myself to this old shrew?
“And even if I had been, what business is it of yours?”
“Like I said, I’ve known her all her life. Her grandmother and I were best friends all through school,” Violet said, as if that explained her interest. “We watch out for each other here.”
Jesse nodded slowly. “This is your way of letting me know I am now, and always will be, an outsider, right?”
“Take it as you see it.” She sniffed pointedly and closed the door.
He went back into his office and closed the file, making a note that the trial would be postponed at the request of defense counsel and that a settlement conference would be held on Tuesday morning. All of which was fine with Jesse, but he would have appreciated it if Violet had given him the opportunity to have had a say in the change. Apparently, over the years, Curtis had given her a certain amount of responsibility when it came to such things, and she assumed that she still had the authority he’d granted her. Jesse’s
first reaction had been to remind her that things had changed and that he wasn’t his grandfather, though he knew she was all too aware of that. Violet kept his calendar much as she had kept his grandfather’s. Was that really such a bad thing? Hadn’t he given the same authority to his secretary back in Ohio?
And just this morning, when he stopped at Cuppachino, hadn’t Grace Sinclair patted him on the back for keeping Violet on, telling him how the older woman had devoted her life to the firm and his grandfather, how she’d lived for her job and taken such pride in being Curtis Enright’s right hand?
Jesse sighed. There was no graceful way to get rid of Violet, and apparently no way to make her like him, or to convince her that he had the right to be there, or to accept him as Curtis’s successor. He understood that none of those things were likely to happen. Which, in itself, was okay; he could be mature and reasonable about the situation, even if Violet couldn’t. After Sophie’s call that morning, he was ready to put a big black
X
on the entire day.
But there’d been those few unexpected moments with Brooke that morning, he reminded himself, so the day hadn’t been a complete wash. There was something about that woman that made him smile, inside and out, and had since the first time he noticed her.
Well, she was hard to miss. To his eye, she was drop-dead gorgeous.
It had been months before that they’d been introduced by Steffie one night at Captain Walt’s. He’d gone there for dinner with Stef and her family, at her mother’s invitation, and on the way out, Brooke, her
brother, Clay, and Wade MacGregor were seated at the bar. It had been obvious to Jesse that there was a strong undercurrent between Stef and Wade, and he hadn’t been at all surprised when the two of them left together, leaving Jesse at the bar in conversation with Brooke. That first conversation, which had started with her asking his advice about her will, had lasted for almost two hours, during which they’d covered everything from sailing (she did, he didn’t) to rock climbing (he did, she didn’t) and the best place in St. Dennis to hear live music (Captain Walt’s on Friday nights). Over the course of those few hours, it was apparent that she was more than just a pretty face. When she spoke, she looked directly into his eyes. When he spoke, she listened, as if what he was saying mattered to her. And she had a knockout laugh. Brooke wasn’t one of those women who covered their mouth when they laughed. Nothing was more irresistible than a beautiful woman with a good sense of humor, and he’d wanted to see more of her.