Restless in Carolina (30 page)

As I set a hand to the door, I look to the glass-partitioned offices that allow one to view the agents and clients within. I pause. No need to go in unless Caleb is here. One after another, I dismiss the occupants of each office, and then my gaze falls on Wesley’s office, obvious not only because of the size but her presence. She nods and smiles across the desk at a man whose back is to me, whose light brown hair—not dark—is lightened further by the overhead lights.

It can’t be. I put my face nearer the door. After all, there’s no reason I should know him from the back. Wesley’s client just reminds me of him.

I sip air as I continue to stare at the man’s back. And then he raises an arm and gestures in that expressive, excessive-energy way that first caught my attention when I crashed his Atlanta meeting.

T
he receptionist rises from her desk, a question furrowing her brow as she stares my way.

I force an apologetic smile, shake my head, and hurry past the windows. At the short brick wall between the real estate office and a stationery store, I press my back against it. I have to think this through, whatever “this” is. Unless I am imagining things. After all, J.C. can’t be the only man with light brown hair who gestures like that. However, the car parked at the curb
is
identical to his rental car.

What does this mean? That Caleb and J.C. have the same real estate agent? Is that ethical? It couldn’t be. So the day the gum landed on my windshield, Caleb wasn’t the “very important person” in the car looking to maintain his anonymity. It was J.C. He’s the one who saw my indignation through those impenetrable sunglasses. And yet, what are the chances that of all the developers in the country, the man I hand-picked to buy the estate was already looking to acquire it? That’s pretty unbelievable.

What’s going on? Why didn’t J.C. tell me he was already interested? Why didn’t he mention it that day on Pickwick Pike? He had to have recognized me although I still had my dreads. Or maybe not. No, he did, though not at first. I recall standing in his conference room and correcting his assumption that I was a real estate agent. When I told him my full name, Bridget
Pickwick
Buchanan, surprise widened his eyes, and he
looked from my empty left ring finger to each side of my face. I’d thought my undreaded hair had been victimized by the Atlanta humidity, but that wasn’t it. That was when he realized I was the one who forced Wesley Trousdale to stop her car. She must have told him who I was.

A groan slips from me, causing a middle-aged, dual-ponytailed man to look around as he treks past.

“I’m fine,” I say, and he continues to the curb.

So J.C. knew from that moment on … amused himself with the glaring contrast between the barefooted woman who hopped out of a pickup truck and the one who crashed his meeting wearing high heels and bearing a briefcase. And he’s been laughing ever since, probably straight through our kiss.

I pull a hand down my face. Despite the looks I receive from a hand-holding couple, I start to scoot down the brick wall. I don’t care what they think. I need to think, to figure out what’s missing.

“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything,” says a voice that drips sickly sweet honey.

I look to where Wesley Trousdale exits the real estate office with J.C., who is carrying a briefcase.

I should have kept walking, but it’s too late. I have only enough time to straighten from the wall and clear my face of confusion before J.C.’s jangling ceases.

“Bridget,” he says.

“Bridget Pickwick?” Wesley puts her hands on her hips. “Goodness, it is you. And don’t you look different from the last time we met? In fact, if J.C. hadn’t said anything, I don’t know I would have recognized you without that poufy dress, not to mention … uh, what are they called? Dreadlocks?”

I square my shoulders. “I clean up well, as I’m sure Mr. Dirk can attest.”

She presses her lips inward as if to contain laughter. “Well, you are wearing shoes today. That’s something. So, what brings you to Asheville?”

I look at J.C. “Mr. Dirk gave me a ride in so I could visit my mother in the hospital.”

Wesley tut-tuts. “Why didn’t you say, J.C.? I had no idea you and Bridget had gotten friendly and all.”

He shifts his regard to his rental car. “Are you ready to head back, Bridget?”

Wesley’s presence saves me from acting juvenile and being forced to call on Daddy, who would call on Caleb to take me home. Considering J.C.’s deception, that might not be so bad, but there are a few things I need to say to this man. Too, he has the missing piece of the puzzle.

“I’m more than ready.” I cross to the car, Mellow Mushroom reduced to a distant stomach rumble.

“I’ll be in touch,” J.C. tells Wesley; then the car twitters as the locks are released. I reach for the handle, but he gets there ahead of me, and I jerk back when his hand brushes mine.

I glare at him as he holds the door for me, continue to glare as he walks around the car, lowers into the driver’s seat, and sets his briefcase onto the backseat. And I keep it up as we head out of Asheville.

“How’s your mother?”

Oh no, if we’re going to talk, it will not be touchy-feely stuff, especially about my mother. And cancer. “How is your conscience?”

His jaw shifts, and I can’t help but be satisfied with his discomfort.

I pick his sunglasses from the console. “All this time, I thought it was Caleb with Wesley that day on the pike, but it was you.” I hold out
the sunglasses. “Need these? It’s not as bright as it was last July, but they’re still good for hidin’ behind.”

He gives me a sidelong glance. “No, thank you.”

As he accelerates on the on ramp to merge with highway traffic, I return the glasses to the console. “You must have thought it funny when the woman whose phone calls you refused to return—”

“I thought you were a real estate agent.”

“Right. Anyway, out of the blue and dressed down to her formerly bare feet, Bridget Pickwick Buchanan shows up at your office beggin’ to sell you on something you were already sold on—something I’ll bet you had a firsthand look at that day.” I sigh. “Yeah, funny.”

He glances at me. “I didn’t recognize you until you said you were a Pickwick.”

Then I guessed right. Wesley told him who the barefooted, truck-driving woman was. “Don’t you think it all a bit of a coincidence? No.” I hold up a hand. “Too
much
of a coincidence.” I swing my body toward him. “Caleb may have a secret agenda, but so do you. What else aren’t you telling me?”

He stares at the road, and his tension rubs so hard against mine it’s all I can do not to raise a hand to it. “That bad, hmm?”

“Could be.”

As much as I long for him to be straight with me, I almost wish for a lie. Because if it is that bad, I shouldn’t have liked his kiss so much. “Tell me.”

“All right.”

I steel myself, but then … nothing. As I’m about to press him, he flips the turn signal and takes a nondescript, roughly paved exit.

“Where are we going?”

“To talk.”

“We are talkin’.”

He slows the car. “What you want to know not only requires your full attention but mine.” He stops the car on the shoulder of the exit and turns to me. “I should have told you sooner.”

“What?”

He pulls out his wallet and opens it to his Georgia driver’s license. “This.”

I stare at the small picture that can’t have been taken long ago, the resemblance is so strong, then read through the personal data of Jesse E. Dirk.
Jesse?
I wouldn’t have guessed, but then I’m accustomed to J.C.

I shake my head. “I don’t know what—” I return to the license. Jesse
E.
, not Jesse C. “What does
E
stand for?”

“Emerson. My mother’s maiden name.”

I turn up my hands. “Why J.C.?”

“That’s what I started going by when my brothers and I took our stepfather’s name. It was my way of staying connected to my father and not forgetting what I’d promised him—to get back what was lost.” He tosses the wallet on the dashboard. When he faces me again, I see something in his eyes I’m not going to like.

“The
C
is for Calhoun, Bridget.”

But that’s the name of the family Uncle Obe believes was cheated—

I think I must stop breathing, I get so tight in the throat and full in the chest, but air rushes in when the name drops neatly into the hole left by the missing piece. J.C.’s interest in the estate isn’t an outlandish coincidence. The only coincidence is he’s the eco-friendly developer I
landed on when he stared out at me from the magazine cover. So much explained. There was the drive to the Atlanta airport—

“Bridget?”

—when J.C. cornered me about the center piece of the property, and I’d had to acknowledge the quarry. At the statue dedication, I’d seen Wesley wave at someone and minutes later discovered J.C. was in town. When I’d taken him on a tour of the estate, he’d insisted on seeing the chewed-up piece of land, asked about the old Calhoun homestead, and broodingly walked around the huge hole in the ground. He knew the way to my folks’ home and stiffened up when Mama talked about the dogs that had chased some boys and bitten one of them on the face …

“You were the boys our bull mastiffs went after.” The reason he’s wary of big dogs. “It was you and …” I recall the scarred man who walked me into the conference room. “Parker.”

“Yes. That day at your parents’ house when you accused me of relying on gossip rather than firsthand knowledge of your family, I was going to tell you I was a Calhoun, but Birdie came downstairs.”

I return to that day. As we sat at the kitchen table, he admitted to being guilty of “some sniffing” due to Caleb’s “sniffing,” told me his past tended to bring out the worst in him, said he let seemingly unfinished business get in the way of the present.
Was
he trying to tell me? Or was it just part of his plan—reel me in with personal confidences to make me think he was interested in me beyond his acquisition of the estate, thereby forcing Caleb out of the picture?

I don’t want to believe it, but that would be like playing dead, which I do not care to be better at than Reggie. If J.C. wasn’t laughing at me
before, my acceptance that he had no other chance to come clean would give him cause for a laughfest.

“Well, seein’ as that was your only opportunity to let me in on your little secret, I suppose I’ll have to pardon you for the deception.”

His nostrils flare at my sarcasm. “The time was never right after that; then it seemed too late—that I’d waited too long and it would be best if my Calhoun roots were revealed when the sale of the estate was finalized so you and I wouldn’t go where we are now.”

Now
being this moment when the evidence points to him being a widow sniffer all along. And of the worst sort—after monetary gain.

“The way your father reacted yesterday to the news your uncle’s caregiver is Obadiah’s daughter was further confirmation I’d made the right decision.”

Another scene to replay, this one with Daddy up in arms as he accused Daisy of being underhanded, spying on our family, and seeking vengeance. J.C. left soon thereafter, looking as uncomfortable as if
he
were under attack. He was.

“If he knew I was a Calhoun, he wouldn’t view the revelation in any better light than he did when he learned the woman who has been calling herself Mary is his niece.”

“And it would provide ammunition in his push for Caleb to acquire the property. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

If only I’d known this before his kiss. “That sounds like a bad thing for Jesse Calhoun, who is carrying the torch his father passed to him—to not only take back his family’s land but repay the Pickwicks in kind by taking their land.”

“Buying, not taking, Bridget.” His mouth is flat. “Though I do admit to feeling satisfaction at the prospect—in the beginning.”

“Only the beginning? What about now?” Before he can answer, I laugh, a creaky bitter thing. “I suppose you can’t really answer that since you’ve been found out and the prospect is”—I shrug—“not much of a prospect.”

He stares at me. “You’re saying you’ll oppose our offer on the estate even if we are the only ecologically responsible choice?”

“You’re saying after all this I should believe Caleb’s the con? No.” I shake my head, hating the rising ache I feel at allowing myself to believe his kiss was real. “You used me when you learned the property wouldn’t necessarily go to the highest bidder.”

“That’s how it started, I’ve already admitted it, but that’s not how it ended. And you have to know that after you opened up about Easton, I was prepared to chance answering your question about what was taken from my family.”

That
was
the direction he was heading before he got the call about his brother. Or was it? Maybe it would have been a lie had there been time to speak it. “I don’t know that. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get home.” I look out the passenger window at the kudzu strangling the trees. If deception were a plant, it would surely be that tangle of life-sucking ivy that relentlessly grows with leaps and bounds.