Beckett's Convenient Bride by Dixie Browning Page B

several, actually. Anyhow, at the time all this got started, his family had lost everything in the War Between the States and he was having a hard time getting back on his feet. The Becketts had been in banking before the war. To make a long story short, old Lance did a favor for an Oklahoma cowboy named Chandler, who, according to a genealogical chart we commissioned, was your great-great-grandfather. You still with me?”
    Grudgingly, she nodded, her interest growing in spite of herself. She wished old Cast Iron could hear this, whether or not it was true. He’d always claimed the Chandlers were trash, her mother the trashiest of the lot, and she didn’t know enough about that side of her family to disprove the charge.
    â€œSo—where was I? Chandler gave old Lance some money to invest, but by the time the investment paid off, Chandler had disappeared. The Becketts went on to prosper, but they never found out what had happened to the cowboy. He never got in touch again, and unfortunately, the debt never got repaid. So that’s where the ten grand comes in. There’s a bundle of stock and some old letters, but they’re worthless and almost impossible to pry apart, much less to read. A hundred years in an attic under a leaky roof can do that.”
    He waited.
    She waited.
    The coffeepot signaled its readiness, and Kit turned and took down two mugs. She plopped them down on the counter, poured, and set out a can of fat free evaporated milk and a sugar bowl filled with brown sugar.
    Carson accepted the coffee, declined the rest and waited for her to argue. He inhaled suspiciously. The woman was evidently some kind of a health nut. For all he knew, the coffee might be roasted acorns or something equally disgusting, but it smelled all right. Damned good, in fact.
    â€œWho’s Margaret?” she asked out of the blue.
    He choked on the coffee—it was the real thing—and set his mug down. “She, uh—she’s my fiancée. Sort of.”
    â€œSort of? What kind of an answer is that?”
    â€œLook, it’s not important right now. We need to settle two things, and then I’ll get out of your hair. First, I’ve got a cashier’s check and the stock—you might as well have it, no one else wants it. Maybe you can sell it to an antique dealer. Next, I’ll stop by the sheriff’s office on my way out of town and try and convince him that a crime’s been committed, and that you need some protection until things are cleared up.”
    â€œYou’re leaving, then?”
    The sound of a distant siren wove through the room like an errant breeze. The front door was open; it was that kind of day. Fickle March.
    â€œYeah, it seems I’ve got this situation at home that needs handling.”
    â€œDoes it have something to do with your sort-of fiancée?”
    So then, without intending to, Carson found himself telling her what was going on down in Charleston. About his mother and her wedding fixation, and his decision to marry while she was still able to take part. “I’m thirty-seven years old, never been married—I’m a cop,” he said with a shrug. “That makes me a pretty lousy risk. Margaret understands, though. She grew up next door, and she happens to love my mother.”
    â€œAnd you?”
    Without answering, he rose and moved to look out the window. “Something’s going on down by the wharf. An unmarked and an ambulance just pulled in.”
    â€œUnmarked what?”
    He turned then to look at her, and wished he hadn’t.Wide gray eyes, freckles, frowsy hair—both white-knuckled hands gripping her coffee mug. The combination of gutsiness and vulnerability was bad enough. Throw in a kind of sexuality that was all the more effective because it was—he was almost sure of it—totally unintentional, and you had a major hazard.
    â€œAn unmarked car,” he said, dragging his thoughts back in