Met Her Match Read online

  “Yeah?” Rowan smiled. “I agree. Simple. Clean.”

  “You remember the Stanton house?”

  Rowan put his hand to his forehead. “Stanton house? Big place smack in town? Falling down but could be restored?”

  “That’s it.”

  Rowan opened a drawer, pulled out a stack of menus and looked through them. “That’s a great old house. I always liked it.”

  Nate shook his head. “You like that house?”

  “Very much.” Rowan handed Nate a menu. “Italian. Lots of meat. If you can’t read it, I can translate. Call and order while I take a shower.” He left the room.

  Nate looked at the menu but didn’t see it. Likes kale, loves the Stanton house, his apartment is all white. Maybe Kit had been right in matching his son with Stacy. And maybe he’d been right in putting Nate in Terri’s house.

  But Nate had messed it up. He’d been so jealous that Kit had given his son a beautiful young woman that Nate had... He took a breath. He’d done whatever he had to do to win her—including becoming someone he wasn’t. He didn’t want to think this was true, but maybe he’d tried to be a Montgomery—specifically, he’d tried to make himself into Rowan.

  “I gave Stacy beer when she wanted champagne,” he whispered.

  Rowan appeared in the doorway, a towel wrapped around his waist. “Did you order?”

  To Nate’s eyes, Rowan was too thin. In good shape, but with little muscle on him. But maybe that’s what Stacy liked. From the way she was always trying to get Nate to reduce his size, he thought so. “Not yet,” he said, and pulled out his phone.

  * * *

  By the time their meal arrived, Rowan and Nate were so glum they were hardly speaking. They sat at the glass-topped table, heads bent. That Rowan didn’t get plates and proper silverware out showed that he was in a serious funk. He moved a plastic fork around in his lemon pasta that was still in the foam container.

  “Can you get me a picture of William Thorndyke?” Nate asked. “But then, maybe I should check at a church because by now the kid is probably up for sainthood. Terri will float away on a cloud with him.”

  “Rayburn! I just remembered. Didn’t her mother run off with some man?”

  “Yeah,” Nate said gruffly. “Her mother did.”

  “I was a kid but I remember when it happened. We were in Dubai at the time. Dad got angry and wanted to go home and find out what really happened. He was on the phone yelling at somebody.”

  “I wasn’t there then or I’m sure it would have been me.”

  Rowan ignored Nate’s statement. “It was the sheriff. Dad was yelling that Lisa—”

  “Leslie.”

  “Leslie could have been murdered and her body thrown in the lake, but the sheriff wasn’t investigating.”

  “I can believe that. I was cleaning up garbage around the old dock and I saw something down there. It looked like...” Nate’s eyes widened like in a horror movie.

  “Like what?”

  “Like...” Nate’s voice fell to a whisper. “It looked like the roof of a car.”

  Rowan looked at his cousin, trying to read his mind. “Maybe Dad was right. Could have been an accident.”

  “She left behind a note,” Nate said.

  “Any reason not to believe she wrote it?”

  “Yeah. Everyone who knew her says she was mad about her husband and kid.” Nate took a breath. “Frank said that Leslie Rayburn didn’t exist before she came to Summer Hill. You have access to FBI files? I’d like to do some research.”

  “I do.” Rowan was smiling. “Anything to get my mind off what’s in my brain!”

  Nate took out his phone and started typing a text. “Frank gave me his cell number.”

  Send me your files on Leslie. Everything you have.

  He added his FedEx account number and the address of the apartment. At the end, he inserted: My FBI cousin is with me. He’ll search all. He put his phone on the table. “The files should be here in a day or two. If Frank is even speaking to me, that is. I’m going downstairs to the gym.”

  “I’ll go with you.” They both needed the physical exertion.

  * * *

  At 4:00 a.m. the next morning, Rowan flung open Nate’s bedroom door. “They just called me from downstairs and said there’s a man in the lobby with a bunch of boxes and he wants to come up.”

  Nate had had a hard time going to sleep and he was groggy.

  “It’s your sheriff.”

  Nate’s eyes opened. “Frank?” He threw back the cover, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, and slid his feet into sandals. “I’ll go down.”

  “So I don’t have to hear him say what he thinks of you?”

  “That and so I can get my hands on the files before he changes his mind.” He quickly left the apartment. If he hadn’t been on the eighteenth floor he would have run down the stairs. As it was, the elevator seemed to take forever.

  Frank Cannon, looking worn-out and angry, was standing in the big marble lobby, his hand tightly gripping the bar of a tall luggage cart. Half a dozen beat-up old file boxes were piled on it. He gave Nate a look that said he hoped he and his descendants went up in smoke.

  Nate didn’t say anything, just gestured toward the elevator, then stepped aside. Silently, Frank pushed the cart inside.

  Inside the elevator, cheerful music was playing. It seemed out of place considering the dark looks of the two men standing on opposite sides of the cart.

  The elevator stopped on the sixth floor and a white-haired lady got in, her little dog in her arms. The door closed.

  “How’s Stacy?” Nate asked.

  “Tearing into the Thorndyke house remodel with a fury. She gave away all that white furniture and the bucking bronco pictures, and she’s sending you the bill. I think she’s keeping the barbed wire as a special memory of you.”

  Nate nodded. The woman got off at the tenth floor.

  “Brody and Elaine?” Nate asked.

  Frank’s jaw was barely moving. “He’s staying in his office. Somebody asked him to help back a boat into the water and Brody told him what he could do with the boat. In detail. Elaine put everything in her store on sale. Looks like she may leave town.”

  Frank pushed the red button, the elevator halted and he looked at Nate. “Why aren’t you asking about her?”

  Nate stared straight ahead. “Because I know about her. She’s doing her job but she’s quiet. She won’t participate in anything. At night she sits in one of...” He hesitated. “In one of our chairs and watches the water.”

  Frank stared at Nate’s profile for a moment then he pushed the red button again and the elevator started. Nate was right. “So who’s the FBI cousin?”

  “Kit’s son.”

  Frank gave such a loud sigh of being pleased that Nate rolled his eyes.

  Rowan was waiting for them at the open apartment door. He was fully dressed in a crisply ironed shirt, trousers with a crease down the front and Italian loafers.

  Frank looked from him to Nate in his T-shirt that said “Shhh... I’m dreaming of beer,” jeans and ugly black sandals, then back again. “You the son Kit wanted Stacy Hartman to meet?”

  “I am,” Rowan said.

  “Smart man, your father.”

  Behind him, Nate glared, and Rowan suppressed a laugh.

  Frank finally let go of the cart. “You two kids get busy reading. I drove all night to get here so I’m going to bed.” He looked at Rowan in expectation.

  “Both beds have been slept in. I can change the sheets, or—”

  “Show me to your bed,” Frank growled, then followed Rowan down the hall. He paused at the doorway. “He made up his bed,” he said loudly, meant for Nate to hear. “A real gentleman.” Frank went into the bedroom and firmly shut the door behind him.

  When Rowan got back to the livi