Scarlet Nights by Jude Deveraux

Merlin’s Farm. At the time, I tried to get Tess to say no, but …” He shrugged. “You know Tess.” He didn’t embellish his story by telling how Tess had kept in touch with the old woman for the rest of her life. Nor did he tell her that after their grandfather’s death, it had been financially difficultfor him and Tess to keep their grandmother in a retirement home. She had demanded a place that was known for its luxurious accommodations and caring staff.
    Sara stared at him in silence for a few moments. “Everyone wondered why Tess agreed to work here as Ramsey’s secretary. We knew she had an MBA, but she came here to this little town to take dictation.”
    “She swore to our grandmother that she’d do what she could, and the old woman was still alive when Tess graduated, so she felt she had to keep her vow.” Mike smiled.
    “What?”
    “I was just remembering one of the fights Tess and I had while she was still in school. I didn’t want her to go to Edilean, but she wouldn’t listen to me. You know what she said?”
    “Tell me,” Sara said eagerly.
    “She said she’d get Merlin’s Farm no matter what she had to do. I said, ‘And how will you do that?’ Tess said, ‘I plan to get a job with the McDowell law firm, and if I have to, I’ll marry whoever owns that damned farm.’”
    Sara looked at Mike in astonishment. “And that’s exactly what happened. Tess came to Edilean and took a job from my cousin just to get an old farm from him.”
    “It started that way.” Mike was afraid he’d made her think Tess had falsely enticed Ramsey into marriage.
    “I know,” Sara said, and her eyes softened. “Tess fell in love with Rams, then waited for years for him to realize he was in love with her.”
    “Yeah, she did.” His voice showed his relief, and he thought that it was a good thing Grans was dead by that time or the old woman would have shown up with a machine gun. Her granddaughter marrying a McDowell! That’s the worst thing she could have imagined.
    “So now, to Rams’s old-fashioned mind, you’re family, so the farm could be given to you.”
    “With lots of limitations,” Mike added, with the thought that finally, at last, he could get back to what he wanted to talk about: Stefan Vandlo. All in all, he thought, criminals were much easier than “good” people. If he wanted information from a crook, Mike just paid him money. To get information from sweet little Sara he had to bare his soul. Oh yes, criminals were much easier. “Uh, Sara,” he said cautiously. “You mentioned that your fiancé wanted the farm.”
    She gave him a look of apology. “I don’t know what it is about you, but you bring out the anger in me. You’d never believe me, but I rarely show anyone else when I’m angry. You can ask Greg and he’d say I don’t even have a temper.”
    Mike had to resist the urge to kiss her hand in gratitude because he knew that Vandlo liked to hit women who thwarted him. But Mike sat still. “It’s your turn for confessions. Why does he want that old farm?”
    “I’m not sure,” Sara said, but she shifted her eyes sideways, making Mike think she wasn’t telling the truth, or not all of it, anyway. “Greg talked about a lot of things, from remodeling it and opening it to the public, to starting our own organic stores. Whatever Greg plans to do with it, I know he deeply and desperately wants that farm.”
    Mike swallowed, trying hard not to show his excitement. This was a real breakthrough in the case! “But Rams wouldn’t sell it to him?”
    “No.”
    “But you’re part of Ramsey’s family and you’re to marry Greg, so isn’t that the same thing as with Tess and me?”
    Sara tightened her lips. “That’s the way I saw it, but Rams said no. It was the biggest fight Ramsey and I ever had. Thebiggest fight I’ve ever had with any human being—at least until I met you. He went on and on about how that place had been in his family since the eighteenth century,