Page 29 of The Biker's Brother

Tennessee

Cami got behind the steering wheel and fumbled to get the wet garbage bag off her. Brandon reached over to help. When he pulled it away, they were face to face and experiencing a connection neither of them was prepared for. He pulled his eyes away as he threw the garbage bag in the rear floorboard. He came back up with a pack of cotton hand towels. He reached toward her face with one of them. She took it, smiled gratefully, and rubbed it over her face and hair.

“I’m not sure the bag is doing any good. I’m wet through and through.”

“I’m wishing I wasn’t wearing jeans. I think they’re starting to chafe.”

“Ouch.” She chuckled. “We could find a place to stop right now. Pull over. Get warm and dry. Watch TV.”

“Nice try. Shut up and drive.”

“Stop being so bossy. You work for me.”

“No, Rose. I work for your daddy.”

She waved a hand in the air as she backed out. “Whatever.”

They continued southwest on the state highway. When visibility was as much as twenty feet they crawled along at twenty mph. At times the downpour was so hard they were forced to pull over and wait. The storm created a cocoon of intimacy as they sat side by side, both a little uncomfortable with the nearness of the other, each silently wondering if the attraction was one-sided. Cami telling herself that she couldn’t possibly get involved with somebody whose background was so drastically different. They had nothing in common. Brandon telling himself that she was a means of earning cred in the club. Nothing more.

To break up the silence and create a distraction from the air that was feeling heavier in the SUV, Brandon said, “You’ve got a story to finish. You were saying that you told your father you’d meet him for lunch just to get rid of him.”

“Wow. You’ve got a good memory.”

“I know. So pick up where you left off.”

She took a deep breath. “I was going to make a list for the housekeeper, but every pen I kept in the kitchen drawer had gone dry. I’d spent ten minutes drawing inkless swirls on paper. I went to Trey’s study to borrow a pen and found one in the top drawer where you’d expect it to be. Trey is kind of anal about neatness.”

Brand couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought she might have been clenching her jaw when she said that last sentence.

“I was almost to the door when something made me turn around. I can’t explain it. I know it’s going to sound like one of those crazy ESP things. Call it woman’s intuition. But I had the feeling I should look through his drawers. The bottom drawer was locked.

“So I called downstairs to the doorman, Tony. I told him that I had accidentally locked my desk drawer and asked if he knew anybody who could open it. Right away. For cash. Without mentioning to my husband that I’d lost the key.

“Tony is agreeable and bright and, although he certainly never said so, I got the impression, call it woman’s intuition, that he wasn’t crazy about Trey.

“He said he might know somebody like that and said he’d call me back shortly. And he did. There was a guy there within the hour. I wasn’t too worried about being discovered breaking into Trey’s desk because he never came home during the day and, whenever I had visible bruises, the housekeeper got a week off.

“So Tony’s guy was into the desk drawer within a minute. He waited while I had a look around and then put it back the way he found it. I gave him a hundred bucks cash and let him out.”

She slowed down because the rain was surging.

“What was in the drawer?” Brand asked.

“A will. My will. And it was signed. I mean… not by me. But it was a perfect copy of my signature.”

“A forgery?”

“Yes.”

“Massachusetts is not a community property state.”

She shook her head.

“No. The only way for him toautomaticallyinherit everything that’s mine would be for me to will it to him. And I really, really don’t want this to come off like bragging, but my inheritance would be enough to tempt somebody who was greedy, without conscience or principle. I’m an only child and the family has been doing okay for a couple of generations.”

“And by okay you mean top one percent of top one percent.”

“Yes. That’s what I mean. And that wasn’t all he planned.”

---