Stranger in the Moonlight Read online

  The two men were almost exactly the same height, appeared to be the same age, and they were both handsome. But Travis’s face showed a lifetime of struggle, a life of loneliness. Every time he’d faced death in his extreme sports was in his eyes, and the war between his parents showed on him.

  Russell’s eyes were angry. He’d grown up in the shadow of the powerful Maxwell family, and he’d come to hate the name because whatever that family wanted came first. This week he hadn’t been surprised when his mother asked him to help Travis Maxwell. It was a name he’d known before his own. He hadn’t even been shocked to be told that Travis had never heard of Russell, didn’t know he existed. The anger he’d felt was on his face, in the way he stood, as though he’d just love for Travis to say something that would allow him to fight.

  “You’re Penny’s son,” Travis said as they stood at the door. “I didn’t know she . . .” He trailed off at the look in the man’s angry eyes. “Please come in,” he said formally, then stepped back as Russell entered the house and went into Kim’s blue and white living room.

  “A bit of a downsize for you, isn’t it?”

  Behind him, Travis let out his breath. The Maxwell name! Being in Edilean and especially being around Joe, had nearly made him forget the preconceived ideas people had about him. All his life he’d heard, “He’s Randall Maxwell’s son so he is—” Fill in the blank.

  It seemed that Penny’s son had already decided that Travis was a clone of his father.

  Travis’s face went from the friendly one he’d adopted in the last week to the one he wore in New York. No one could get to him, so no one could hurt him.

  Russell took the big chair and Travis saw it for what it was: establishing that he was in charge.

  Travis sat on the couch. “What did you find out?” he asked, his voice cool.

  “David Borman wants control of Kimberly Aldredge’s business.”

  Travis grimaced. “I was afraid of that. Damn! I was hoping—” He looked back at Russell and thought, the hell with it! This was Penny’s son, and this was about Kim. It had nothing to do with the Maxwell name. “You want some coffee? Tea? A shot of tequila?”

  Russell stared at Travis as though he were trying to figure him out—and whether or not to take him up on his offer. “Coffee would be fine.”

  Travis started toward the kitchen but Russell didn’t follow. “I need to make it. You want to come in here and talk while I do?”

  The ordinariness of the invitation seemed to take some of the anger out of Russell’s eyes as he got up and went to the kitchen. He sat down on a stool and watched Travis get a bag of beans out of the refrigerator and pour some into an electric grinder.

  “I guess I was hoping,” Travis said loudly over the noise, “that I was going to have to fight him over Kim. A duel, I guess.” He lifted his hand off the top of the machine and the noise stopped. “It’s going to hurt Kim to find this out.”

  Russell’s eyes were wide as he watched Travis put the grounds into a filter and drop it into a machine. He didn’t seem to be able to grasp the concept that a Maxwell could do something so mundane as make coffee. Where were the servants? The butler? “He’s the third one.”

  “Third one what?”

  “He’s the third man who was more concerned with her success than with her.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “According to Carla . . .” Russell paused as he ran his hand over the back of his neck.

  “Was the date bad?” Travis asked.

  “She’s an aggressive young woman.”

  Travis snorted. “Seemed to be. Keep you out late?”

  “Till three,” Russell said. “I barely escaped with . . .”

  “Your honor intact?” Travis gave a half smile.

  “Exactly,” Russell said.

  “Have you had breakfast? I make a mean omelet.”

  “No. That is . . .” Russell was still staring at Travis as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “It’s the best I can do for Penny’s son after all she’s put up with from me.”

  “All right,” Russell said slowly.

  Travis began getting things out of the fridge. “Tell me everything from the beginning.”

  “Do you mean Carla’s complete sex history that she delighted in telling me in detail, or what I could dredge out of her about Miss Aldredge?”

  Travis laughed. “No Carla, but lots of Kim.”

  “It seems that small town men can’t handle a woman who earns more than they do.”

  Travis would have liked to think that he could deal with that, but he’d always had the opposite problem. “So they dumped her?”

  “Yes,” Russell said as he watched Travis pour him a cup of freshly brewed coffee and set it on the counter along with containers of milk and sugar. He wasn’t surprised that the coffee was excellent. “St. Helena?”

  “It is,” Travis said. “I get it here in Edilean at the local grocery. Can you believe that?” He was pleasantly surprised that Russell had recognized the taste of the rare and expensive coffee. “I take it that this Dave is different from the others.”

  “Carla and Borman’s ex-girlfriend are friends, and Carla told the girl all about Kim, even about the men who’d walked away from her. Carla has no understanding of the word discretion.”

  “Or loyalty,” Travis said. “Onions, peppers, and tomatoes all right with you?”

  “Yes,” Russell said. “As far as I can piece together, the girlfriend told Borman and he made a plan.”

  “Let me guess. He dropped the girlfriend and went after Kim.”

  Russell reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out several pieces of paper folded together into a thick stack. “These are the financials of Borman’s company for the last two years.”

  Travis let the vegetables sizzle while he went through the first pages, but then he had to stop to add the eggs to the skillet and put bread in the toaster. “Would you . . . ?” he asked Russell.

  He took the papers and started to go through them, but then paused to remove his suit jacket and drape it over a dining chair. He loosened his tie. “The bottom line is that David Borman isn’t a good cook, he spends too much, and he’s lazy.”

  Travis slid the omelet onto a plate, put it before Russell, and got a knife and fork out of a drawer. “So he dropped his girlfriend and went after Kim—or rather, her business.”

  “It gets worse,” Russell said as he took a bite. “Not bad.”

  “Worse isn’t bad?”

  “No. Borman gets worse; the omelet isn’t bad.”

  “Oh,” Travis said as he watched Russell eat. He could see things about him that reminded him of Penny. He’d spent a lot of late nights with her and they’d shared many meals. Now he wondered why he’d never asked her about her personal life. But then, he would have thought that if he had, Penny probably wouldn’t have answered.

  Russell looked up at him as though expecting something from Travis.

  “The ring,” Travis said. “What about the ring?”

  “Borman took Carla out to dinner, told her a sob story about how he was in love with Kim. He got Carla to ‘lend’ him a ring to give to her when he proposed this weekend.”

  “Then Carla told the whole town that’s what Borman was going to do.” Travis handed Russell the toast and got out the butter. “That’s why Borman invited himself to go with her to Maryland.”

  “Carla didn’t seem to see anything wrong in the fact that you and Miss Aldredge are living together just before she’s to get a marriage proposal from Borman. Carla’s exact words were, ‘I think you should take things when they’re offered.’”

  “I’m staying in the guesthouse,” Travis said absently as he thought about what he’d just heard.

  “The whole town thinks you and Kim are . . .”

  “It’s just gossip,” Travis said, then looked back to see Russell staring at him, his eyes disbelieving. Travis felt anger rising in him. “It