knows I’m testing him. But determined to find out the truth about him, anyway, she plunged on. “What pests do we have to watch out for these days?”
He shrugged. Smiled again. Almost mischievously. “Same as always. The boll weevil and the pink bollworm.”
Damn. He did know his stuff, Charlotte thought, stifling a sigh. She tossed down the pen she’d been gripping. So much for her theory. Only the most devoted agriculturalist would know all that. Unless, of course, he had just memorized all this as part of his cover. Or had once lived on or near a cotton plantation himself.
“So, who took over the farming when your mother died?” Brett asked.
“My father.” Charlotte picked up her pen again. She sat back in her chair, wishing Brett would look at something else besides her face. “Unfortunately, he had no talent for it and we lost money on every crop.”
“And so he just quit?” Brett asked gently.
Charlotte closed her fingers around her pen. These memories were even more painful for her. “Actually, he became ill,” she said softly. “Cancer.”
Brett drew an audible breath. “I’m sorry. That must have been rough on you and your sisters.”
Charlotte nodded and once again met Brett’s eyes. His look was so compassionate and understanding she found herself telling him even more. “It was. Paige was still in high school at the time. Isabella and I were in college.” Charlotte stood and began to roam the length of the library restlessly. She touched the spines of the books that had once belonged to her father.
“We came home to be with him, and over the course of the next two years he tried every treatment available and then some.” Charlotte swallowed. “A couple of times we thought he was going to go into remission, but he never did. When he died, our debts were substantial, so we did what the family had always done—talked to Hiram Henderson at the local bank. He gave us two alternatives—sell Camellia Lane, or take out a mortgage on the property, with a balloon payment at the end of ten years. We opted for the mortgage and used the money to pay off our debt, and to help us finish our studies. I graduated first and went to New York. I wasn’t making much money initially, but I paid a portion of the mortgage and set aside everything I could for the balloon payment. Isabella and Paige both did the same.”
“So how come you don’t have that money to make the payment, then?” Brett asked, his brow furrowing.
Charlotte returned to sit behind the desk. “Because this house—which happens to be nearly one hundred and fifty years old, by the way—is a money pit.”
“So why not sell it?”
“Because it’s our home.” Charlotte smiled, unable to help the sentimental note in her low voice. “We grew up here. And we love it. Besides,” she added, shrugging, “this property has been owned by the Langston family since 1842, and we promised our parents we would keep it in the family.”
“So back to cotton farming,” Brett said casually. “Why not try that again, if money is such a problem for you?”
Charlotte bit her lip. “My sisters and I looked into it,” she admitted.
“And?”
“Have you ever priced a piece of farm equipment? We don’t have the capital nor the know-how to get back into it.”
“If you did, would you?” Brett persisted.
Charlotte didn’t have to think very long about that. “Probably.”
“That being the case, would you mind if I took some soil samples of your fields and sent them off to be analyzed?”
“For what purpose?” Charlotte regarded Brett suspiciously. He suddenly seemed awfully eager to help her.
He shrugged his broad shoulders, as if it were no big deal. “I could tell you how much it would cost for you to get back into farming again. Maybe project some future earnings for you,” he suggested mildly.
Charlotte wasn’t sure she would trust any estimate he gave her, but she decided to play along with him. If nothing else, taking soil samples would keep him busy and out of her hair. “All right.”
“So what next, in the meantime?” Brett asked.
Charlotte sighed, looking down at her calendar. “I’ve got an appointment with Hiram Henderson tomorrow. I’m going to try and talk him into giving us an extension on that balloon payment.”
“Are your sisters going with you?”
Charlotte hedged. “They want me to try and talk to him alone.”
“How come?”
“They think I can be charming, in the way that he expects,” Charlotte said with a beleaguered sigh.
“Which is…?”
“You know, the typical old-fashioned Southern-lady thing. Soft and pretty and delicate on the outside, hard as driven steel on the inside.”
“Hmm,” Brett said.
Charlotte didn’t like the sound of that hmm. She glanced at the clock.
She had spent almost fifteen minutes talking to him. She had also told him far more than she had intended. Worse, he seemed to empathize with everything she and her sisters had been through.
“Hadn’t you better go back and tell Isabella to open that bottle of wine?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah.” Brett lazily unfolded himself from the chair and shoved a hand through the dark, rumpled waves of his hair. “I almost forgot why I came in here.”
I’ll bet, Charlotte thought as she scrutinized him silently. She waited until he had left, then picked up the phone and dialed one of her reporter friends. “Listen—ever heard of a reporter named Brett Forrest?”
* * *
CHARLOTTE WAS IN a bad mood as she got out of her car the next afternoon and headed for the bank. No one had heard of Brett at any of the magazines. Nor had he worked for any of the wire services. Nor, as far as she could discover, published anything at all. Therefore, if he was a reporter, he hadn’t made a name for himself yet. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be trying to do so at this very minute, Charlotte told herself firmly. After all, there had to be some reason he was so intent on nosing into her business. He had to be trying to scoop her out of her story on Sterling! Well, she would not allow him to steal the information she had uncovered so far. She might, however, send him on a wild-goose chase if he continued to prove meddlesome.
Hiram Henderson met her at the door and escorted Charlotte into his private office at the rear of the bank. “My, don’t you look lovely today,” he said.
“Thank you, Hiram,” Charlotte said. She hated playing the part of the sugary Southern belle. It seemed like such a waste of time and energy. But in this part of Mississippi, it was also the best way to get what she wanted. And right now the stakes were huge.
Hiram adjusted his clip-on bow tie as he sat behind his desk. “Now, what can I do for you?”
