Sugar lay sprawled at Lili’s feet while she worked with Josh. He brought her files; he provided passwords; he made phone calls and okayed her access to information. She took his suspicions and her expertise and knitted together the tale. The final tally made her stomach sink. She circled the number in red and handed the piece of paper to him without comment.
His complexion drained of color. “I can’t believe this. This is going to kill Brick.”
“Financially or personally?”
“Both.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know that Stardance can survive the hit. The personal part will knock him for a loop, though.”
“It’s possible some or even all of the money is recoverable.”
Hope lit his eyes. “How do we find that out?”
“We have to get law enforcement involved.”
“Aw, jeez. I have to talk to Brick before we take that step.” Josh dropped the paper back onto the desk and began to pace the office where they’d been working, laced his fingers behind his head, and gazed up toward the ceiling. “How could she do this to him, Lili? He gave her a job. He gave her a place to stay. He considers Courtney his sister!”
“So do you, Josh. She did this to you, too, Josh. You gave her your friendship.”
“Yeah.” He began to pace the room. “I can’t believe that Brick chooses now to up and disappear on me. And not answering his phone? I swear, it would serve him right if I just walked out on him.”
Lili couldn’t stop herself from asking, “So he didn’t tell you where he was going?”
“No. He rushed out of here like his shirt was on fire. Asked me to keep an eye on things until he returned. I didn’t know to ask if it’d be anytime this year. Shoot, he could have run off to Texas for all I know. I can tell you one thing. He’d damn well better be back before Courtney returns from her day off tonight. I won’t be able to look at her.”
“Well, I can’t help you there, Josh.”
Sugar’s tail began to thump the floor and the office door opened. Patsy stepped inside carrying a tray of sandwiches. “You two have been working too hard. Take a lunch break. I have pimento cheese and tuna.”
“I’m not hungry, Patsy,” Josh said.
Sugar got up and walked to Patsy’s side. Absently, the older woman petted the dog as she spoke to Josh. “Sit down and eat, young man. You worked awfully hard helping me pack while Lili worked on your bookkeeping problem. Any word from Brick yet?”
“No,” Lili said. She glanced at the clock. “I don’t know that you should wait much longer to say good-bye to him, Patsy. You don’t want to be too late getting on the road.”
“I said I’d wait until two o’clock, and that’s what I’m doing. Besides, Celeste said she’d drop by around one thirty to see me off. I have to wait around until then.”
“Well, you should at least go lie down. If you take a nap now, you won’t be as tired if the day runs long.”
“You are such a mother sometimes, Lili. I’ll make a deal with you. You both eat a sandwich and I’ll go lie down.”
“Deal.” Lili reached for a tuna sandwich and took a big bite.
“You, too, Josh,” Patsy warned.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Patsy turned to leave and Sugar moved to follow. Lili’s heart broke a little when Patsy spoke to the dog. “Stay, girl. Go whimper at Lili. She’ll probably give you a bite of her lunch.”
Lili blinked back the tears that had hovered all day. This waterworks needs to stop.
Josh looked at her sharply and said, “What’s up with her? This is more than simply cutting her trip short, isn’t it?”
“Don’t ask me, Josh. I can’t say.”
He studied her with a long look, then nodded. “This has been one helluva day, hasn’t it?”
“Most definitely.”
As Lili fed Sugar the rest of her sandwich, Josh asked, “Is there anything else we can do before Brick returns and I can give him the news?”
The office door opened before Josh finished his question. Brick stood holding the door for someone else. “Give me what news?”
Courtney Gibson walked inside carrying shopping bags from a boutique in Creede. Brick followed her and upon seeing the person to whom Josh had been speaking stopped short.
Lili couldn’t read the look in his eyes as he said, “Liliana.”
* * *
Brick wasn’t ready. He wasn’t prepared. He’d expected her to be in her trailer or off on some activity with the Alleycats. Possibly waiting for him at his place.
He hadn’t expected her to be here in the office.
He was rattled. He couldn’t read her expression. She certainly hadn’t lit up with a welcoming smile like he’d grown accustomed to. Something is wrong. “Tell me what, Josh?”
Courtney glanced from Josh to Brick and then to Lili. “Okay, um. Whatever is going on isn’t my business. I think I’ll just go on up to my room and put away my new shoes. If you all will excuse me?”
She headed for the staircase that led up to the office apartment that Josh had vacated for her, but Josh’s voice stopped her. “No. You stay, Courtney. You need to hear this, too.”
Brick tensed. Oh, hell. “Is it Mom and Pops? Did something happen to them?”
“What?” The question obviously caught Josh off guard.
“Something’s obviously wrong!” Brick snapped.
“Oh no. It’s nothing to do with Cindy and Paul.”
That, at least, was a relief.
Josh continued, “I … um … well … you’re right. Something has … um … happened. I … oh, damn. Patsy’s leaving today. She just up and decided to go home.”
Lili’s expression revealed that she’d expected him to say something else. “Lili? What do you know?”
“She said it’s time. She’s been waiting to say good-bye to you.” Lili looked at Josh and silently encouraged him. The man appeared downright miserable. When she reached out and rested her hand on his brother’s arm, Brick had had enough. He needed to talk to Lili alone. Needed to make things right with her.
If Patsy was leaving early, was Lili planning to go, too? Was he too late? Had he screwed this up already? Just as his uncles and dad had warned him against?
He shouldn’t have taken time at Stardance River Camp to shower and clean up. He should have just come straight here and thrown himself at her feet.
Well, he could do that now. She wasn’t gone yet.
His brother and sister needed to be gone so he could talk to Liliana. “Just spit it out, Joshua.”
“Okay. Well. It’s like this.” Josh took hold of Lili’s hand. He held her hand! “Lili and I spent the morning together and…”
Betrayal cut like a knife. He’d been here before, hadn’t he? Was this the thanks he got for forgiving Josh for dating Tiffany after their breakup?
“There’s a problem with your books.”
Brick barely heard his brother. Et tu, Liliana? Gotta get your payback in just like every other manipulative bitch. Had they slept together? It must have been more than just “spending the morning” for Josh to look so miserable.
“Someone has been stealing from you, Brick. Almost eighty thousand dollars.”
Wait. What?
Courtney dropped her shopping bags. “Lili did it!”
* * *
The accusation in his eyes pierced Lili’s heart like a shard of ice and spread chilling pain throughout her body.
“I asked her for help,” Courtney continued. “I gave her my passwords.”
Josh glared at his foster sister. “You’ve been skimming, Courtney. Probably ever since you got here.”
“That’s a lie. It wasn’t me. I’m innocent. I wouldn’t know how to skim. She does. She’s the professional.”
“She is the professional,” Josh fired back. “That’s why, for one example, she looked at the check for the taxes and realized something was wrong.”
To Brick, he explained, “Courtney wrote the check to ‘IRS.’ Not the Department of the Treasury like it’s supposed to be done. June’s taxes haven’t been received. The check has cleared. Deposited by Intrepid Resort Services.”
“Wait.” Brick shook his head, looking confused. “Repeat that.”
Josh did as he asked, and at that point Brick’s expression turned thunderstruck.
“I didn’t do it!” Courtney declared. She pointed her finger at Lili. “She did. You just don’t want to believe it because you’re sleeping with her.”
Lili never took her gaze off of Brick. She watched the comprehension sink in. She saw when he pulled his condemning gaze off of her and shifted it toward his sister.
Speaking to Josh, he asked, “How did we not know this?”
“She’s been moving money around like a pro. Changed our address and telephone number with many of our vendors. Plus the biggest chunk of it came this week.”
“You stole from me, Courtney? You stole eighty thousand dollars from me? Why?”
“I didn’t do it! Your shack-up did it. She’s in the office almost every day. She’s been using my computer all summer because she doesn’t have one of her own. Besides, I wouldn’t know how to steal.”
A series of different emotions flickered across Brick’s face. Disbelief. Betrayal. Sadness. Finally, anger. A muscle working in his jaw and his green eyes blazing with anger, he spoke in a hard tone. “Josh, call Zach.”
“Yeah. Tell him he needs to come arrest your girlfriend. Again.”
Lili knew Brick well enough to tell that he wasn’t buying Courtney’s claims. That was something, she guessed. Nevertheless, that first reaction of his had been devastating.
That he could have thought she’d do that, even for only a moment, ripped her heart out.
He slowly shook his head. “Man, was I a fool. Courtney, I thought you had changed. But I guess that change was for the worse, not the better. What have you done with my money?”
“I didn’t take it!”
“Bull. Like my grandfather likes to say, I might have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. So tell me, have you been stealing from your employers all these years or is this something you save for family? You stole a hundred and twenty dollars from me when we were in high school. Took it out of my stash in the closet. You lied like a rug and fooled Mom and Pop, but I always knew it was you.”
“Your grandfather,” Courtney sneered, her eyes blazing right back at Brick. Bitterness dripped from her words as she said, “You know, it wasn’t enough that Cindy and Paul actually adopted you and you didn’t get sent back and forth and back and forth to a stepfather who snuck into your bedroom at night. Oh no. You had a rich daddy come out of the woodwork. You got to have a big new happy family who have more money than God. So I took a little from you. Then and now. You can spare it.”
Lili didn’t believe that Courtney realized she’d just confessed to the crime.
Josh hung up the phone. “Zach is on his way.”
Courtney fired off a string of curses, finishing with, “This is ridiculous. I’m not standing for it. Forget you both.”
She turned and took three strides toward the door before Brick gripped her around the arm. “Oh no you don’t. You’re not going anywhere but to jail.”
Courtney struggled, but Brick wasn’t about to release her. When she began to spout seriously ugly epithets, Lili had had enough. Rising, she said, “I’ll wait for Zach outside. Come on, Sugar.”
Brick opened his mouth as though he wanted to speak to her as she passed. His foster sister interrupted the moment with more vicious accusations directed toward Brick. Lili and the dog escaped into the bright summer sunshine and clean, fresh air. Lili breathed a sigh of relief that failed to ease the ache in her heart.
Zach’s sheriff’s department SUV pulled up as Lili spied Patsy’s truck and fifth wheel pulling out of her campsite spot. In that moment it was simply too much for her to bear. A mood similar to the one that had sent her running to Colorado swept over her. She marched up to Zach and her story poured from her mouth.
“You’re going to want a statement from me, but if it’s not against the law or anything, I’d like to do it over the phone. I can’t stay here any longer, Zach. I told him I loved him and he ran away and came home and thought I’d stolen money from him. I’ve been down that road and was accused of drunk driving. Since I’m sober—not that I want to be, mind you—I’m going to drive Patsy home.”
At what point the tears began falling she couldn’t say. Zach pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her. “A handkerchief. You carry a handkerchief. Oh, Zach. I miss my daddy. I’ve never had a grandmother and now Patsy wants to go home. I want to go home. He keeps breaking my heart and I’m tired of being nine years old and kept out of the tree house. Can we do this over the phone? Please?”
“Honey, I’m sorry. I can’t answer that. I’m not sure what we’re doing.”
She gave him a brief summary and her part in it, then offered a name and phone number. “You should call her right away. She’s the best out there. If anyone can find his money, she’ll do it. She’ll be of great help to you. So … can I leave, Zach? Please? I don’t know how much time Patsy has left.”
“Sure. Go. I have your number. Good luck, Lili.”
“Thank you.” She started to leave, stopped, and returned his hanky, then hurried toward Patsy.
“What’s wrong, love? What in the world is going on at the office? I saw Brick return, so I went to say my good-byes, but when I approached the office I heard Courtney yelling some vicious things.”
“I’ll tell you the whole story. Only in the truck. Sugar and I are going with you, Patsy.”
“But Lili, I’m going home.”
“I know. Me, too. Start the truck, Patsy. I’m going to get my purse and some dog treats and lock my trailer and go. My Stardance summer is officially over.”
* * *
Following a lengthy interview during which Courtney proceeded to brag about how she’d duped Brick, Zach asked his deputy to take Courtney off to jail. To Brick and Josh, he said, “Your turns. Which of you wants to give your statement first?”
“You go,” Brick said to Josh. “I need to go find Liliana.”
Zach visibly hesitated before he flipped a page on his notebook. “I don’t get paid enough for this job,” he muttered before adding, “She’s not here, Brick. She went home with Patsy.”
Josh dropped his chin to his chest. Brick frowned at the reaction. “You mean she’s gone to Patsy’s trailer?”
“If Patsy lives in a trailer in Oklahoma then, yeah, I guess. She asked to make her statement by phone since she was returning to Oklahoma with her friend.”
“You’re saying Lili left. Eternity Springs.” Brick stalked to the window. “That can’t be. She left her rig.”
“She said she was going to drive Patsy home.”
“Patsy left, too?” Brick shoved to his feet. “So what is this? Tit for tat? I leave for a couple days, so she decides to pay me back?”
“Look, Callahan, I most certainly don’t want to get involved in your love life, but the lady who left here was deeply upset.”
“About?”
Zach closed his eyes and exhaled heavily. “I seriously don’t get paid enough.”
Then he told Brick as best he could recall exactly what Lili had said. “I think that’s the important stuff. Honestly, I didn’t follow all of it. Stuff about being nine and kicked out of a tree house. Women’s tears give me the shakes.”
“She was crying?”
“Oh yeah. She was definitely crying.”
“Because she thought I believed Courtney. That really pisses me off. I never for a minute thought that! How could she have such little faith in me?”
“You did have a weird look on your face, bro.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way you watched us when I told you about the money. Damn, Brick. Talk about if looks could kill.”
“I wasn’t even listening to that at first. She had her hands all over you. And she was looking at you all dewy-eyed.”
“What?” Josh gaped at him. “Jeez, Brick. How stupid are you?”
“Okay,” Zach said, flipping his notebook closed and standing. “I think we’ve done enough for now. Think I’ll go visit my wife. Y’all look me up when you’re ready to continue this.”
Brick barely noticed Zach’s departure. The news that Liliana had left was beginning to sink in.
“You didn’t really think she and I…” Josh waved his hand, unwilling to put it into words.
“No.” Brick grimaced. “No, of course not. I just … I went a little wacko there for a minute. I’ve had a tough couple of days. Got my ass kicked by my dad and his brothers. Learned that Lili was in love with me and then … aw jeez, Josh. I love her more than my life.”
“I know you do.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“How is it that everybody else knew it, but I didn’t?”
“Because you have a brick for a brain?”
“I guess I can’t argue that point since I just figured it out this morning. It knocked me off my game.” Brick raked his fingers through his hair. “Why did she leave without talking to me?”
“Who the hell knows why women do anything? You’re gonna have to ask somebody other than me. Why don’t you go ask your aunt Nic or something?”
Brick dragged a hand down his jaw and considered it.
“All the wives are back for the weekend. I guess I could go talk to them. But I don’t know that I have the energy for that. They won’t settle for just kicking my ass. They’ll skin me alive.”
“Go talk to Claire, then. Or Lori.”
“Actually … I have another idea.” Brick rose and hurried toward the door. “Thanks, Josh. For everything. You saved my bacon. I owe you.”
“Glad I could help. Wish I’d caught on sooner, though, and you don’t owe me anything. It’s the other way around.”
As the door closed behind Brick, he heard Josh add, “You saved me. You just don’t know it.”
Under other circumstances, Brick would have turned around and demanded an explanation, but he was a man on a mission now. Ten minutes later, he pulled his car into the lot at Angel’s Rest and he breathed a sigh of relief to see Celeste on her hands and knees in the rose garden, a trowel in her hand.
He parked and crossed the green grass toward the garden. “Celeste, mind if I interrupt you for a moment?”
She rolled back on her knees and smiled in welcome. “Not at all. Pull up a weed and join me.”
“I can do that.”
She returned to her weeding and asked, “So, what can I do for you, Mr. Callahan?”
“I screwed up. I need advice. I need your help. I need your prayers.”
“Isn’t that handy. I’m happy to offer all three. Tell me what’s been happening.”
So he did. He weeded half the bed as he poured out the whole pitiful story to her. When he finished, Celeste dug a dandelion from the dirt. “Yes, I know she left. She and Patsy stopped in to say good-bye on their way out of town.”
“Was she still crying?”
“No. She’d moved on to the angry stage by then.”
“Oh, man.” He pushed up onto his knees. “What am I going to do, Celeste?”
“You messed up rather badly.”
“I know. The whole stealing thing … it’s her bugaboo. And, to be honest, the cheating paranoia is mine. Tiffany wasn’t faithful to me.”
“Oh, Brick.” She clicked her tongue. “You won’t win this battle if you don’t put that woman behind you.”
“I have. Honestly, I have.”
“Then why that reaction?”
“Habit? A knee-jerk reaction? I haven’t trusted in a very long time.”
“But you trust Liliana.”
“I do. Totally, I do.” He paused a moment, then added, “I’m really angry at her, though.”
“Because?”
“Because she left without talking to me. Because she didn’t … oh.”
“Trust you,” Celeste finished.
“Well, we’re a pair, aren’t we?”
“You’re both human. Humans make mistakes.”
“So how do I fix it?”
“First, you have to forgive each other.”
“I’ve got that one covered. On my side, anyway. But how do I get her to forgive me if she’s in Oklahoma and I’m here? Do I go to Oklahoma immediately? Do I give her some time to cool down? What should I do, Celeste?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Marry her,” he said without hesitation.
“In that case…” She set down her trowel. “Help me up, dear. Let’s walk a bit. I do have an idea.”
Brick assisted Celeste to her feet and tucked her arm through his as they began to stroll.
“She wanted a summer romance,” Celeste said. “I think it’s time you kick it up a notch.”
“I’m happy to do that. But how?”
“Have you ever heard the story of when your uncle Matt proposed to your aunt Victoria?”
“He’s mentioned something about a tuxedo and a beach.”
Celeste stopped and smelled a rose. “I suggest you speak to him or Victoria and get the complete story. I will tell you, we’ve had some fabulously extravagant marriage proposals here in Eternity Springs. Definitely high romance.”
An extravagant marriage proposal. Hmm. After a bit of consideration, Brick nodded. “I like it. I can do extravagant. And if you think it’s a good idea, then I’m on board.” He hesitated a moment, then asked, “Where do I start?”
“Actually, I have an idea about that, too.”
“I hoped you might.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon making plans and arrangements. When everything was in place, he picked Celeste up, swung her around, and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you, Celeste. You are my romance angel.”
“I am always happy to help steer the course of true love.”
Brick set Celeste on her feet and headed for the door. There he paused and glanced over his shoulder. “One last thing. Celeste, am I gonna get one of those angel necklaces?”
Her smile lit the room.