Stirring Up Trouble (19 page)

“You're right. It's not. A gold-lined closet wouldn't cost that much. That's because this check doesn't have anything to do with a closet. Your grandmother was just covering for me. I'm not building a closet or a shelf or anything else for her.”

“Then what is this?” she asked, holding up the check with a tight jaw. “A low-interest loan? Did you talk her into buying an interest in the bar? What, Emmett?”

Emmett's hands clenched at his sides. He wanted to explain everything to her, to calm her down, but she wasn't listening. It was just like when they first clashed over the noise at the bar. Every word out of her mouth made him want to dig his heels in further and further. “It's none of those things, I swear. Just sit down, take a breath and I'll tell you the whole story.”

Maddie narrowed her eyes at him, making no move to sit or relax.

Okay, fine. “I'll admit there are things I kept from you, Maddie, but there are parts of my life that no one knows about. If I told you, I'd have risked everyone in town learning the truth.”

“You don't think you can trust me to keep a secret?”

“I didn't know if I could or not.”

“What could be so terrible that you had to hide it from everyone, including me? Do you have some kind of criminal past? Are you on the run from the cops?”

“No,” he insisted. “It's nothing bad. Why do you always think the worst of people? You seem to have believed that I'm a criminal from the beginning and you're using the flimsiest of evidence to make that conclusion. My first brush with the law came the same day yours did, Maddie. I'm not running from the law and I'm not trying to swindle your grandmother. As a matter of fact, I don't need your grandmother's money, okay?”

Maddie snorted and crossed her arms over her chest in contempt. She had made up her mind and nothing he said was going to convince her that she was wrong. That look was back on her face—the tight lips, the arched, disbelieving eyebrows, and slightly upturned nose. It was that smug, holier-than-thou expression that made him grit his teeth and do anything to aggravate her. Emmett was on the verge of telling her the truth, of letting his secret out, as much as it pained him, but now he was beginning to wonder if she was worth the sacrifice. He thought so, but if she could turn so quickly on him, he might've misjudged her.

“There you go again,” Emmett said. “You think you know so much, but you don't know anything, Fancy Pants. I must not know much, either, because I thought that you and I were really making progress. I thought that someday we might . . .” His voice trailed off, unable to finish what he wanted to say.

“Don't give me that wistful romantic crap,” Maddie snapped. “You're just like all the other guys who saw me standing around looking lonely with a giant target on my chest. I'm nothing but a means to an end, a way to get to my family and everything they can offer you. I thought you were different, but you're just another Joel with a surfer's veneer.”

“You're comparing me to the guy who drugged you and tried to rape you?” Emmett shouted. “Are you kidding me?” He ran his fingers through his wet hair. This wasn't even close, but her reflex to not trust men was stronger than her common sense. “You know what? Forget it. Forget this whole thing.”

Her eyes flickered with a painful emotion that quickly faded. Her arrogant expression returned, projecting to him and anyone else that she didn't care what the unwashed masses thought of her. “Go ahead, break it off now. You got what you wanted.” She held up the check mockingly.

“You know, if you have that little faith in me—
in us
—then our whole relationship is just a ruse. Everything that's happened over the last month is nothing but forced proximity at work.”

“You're right. I fell for your smile and your charms, but my first instincts to stay away from you were right. You were just out to use me and get back at me for calling the cops and getting you in all that trouble.”

Emmett took another deep breath to try and calm himself and keep from saying something he would regret, but it wasn't helping. She wanted to play hardball? Then he'd play. “You know,” he said in a scathing tone, “for someone who practically lives off the money her family gives her, you don't have a lot of room to talk.”

Her blue eyes grew wide with aggravation and surprise. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” he snapped bitterly. “If it wasn't for Mommy and Daddy and Granny, you'd be living in a cheap-ass apartment behind the sporting goods store and scanning groceries at the Piggly Wiggly.”

By this point, she'd damn near developed a nervous twitch. “That's not true,” she said with nearly a wince of pain.

“Oh yeah?” Emmett challenged, ignoring her. “Who paid for your schooling in Paris? Or that Mercedes? Who paid for the bakery and all your fancy, frilly renovations? Who gave you the down payment and cosigned for that Victorian house you call home? Admit it,” he said. “You're less worried about being used than you are about someone else putting their hand in your private golden honeypot.”

Her face had turned a mottled red, running down her neck and around her ears. She was so angry; she seemed as though she'd nearly lost her grasp of English. She sputtered and stumbled through a response, finally looking as though she were about to go primal and just roar at him. “How dare you!”

Her anger just fueled his words. He laughed at her frustration. She wasn't used to being challenged or having someone force her to look in the mirror. It wasn't pretty. “You know what, Fancy Pants?
I dare
. I dare because I don't give a shit about your family and their money. I don't care about how important they think they are or how paranoid they can be about people just wanting to use them. I say what I want because I don't need them or you to condone my life and make me feel like I contribute.”

He wanted to shout the truth at her now. That he could buy and sell her. That even if that check were going to him and not into her grandmother's investment account, he didn't need a dime of it from her or anyone else. He didn't even need the money from the bar; it just gave him something to do and some business expenses to keep the IRS from eating him alive. He would've happily paid those five-hundred-dollar noise fines until she was blue in the face because it didn't mean a damn thing to him.

But he wouldn't tell her. If she couldn't love, trust, and accept him as a broke bartender, she didn't deserve to know he was rich. Or that he was dumb enough to have fallen in love with her.

Maddie had no response. She stood, searching for words, and when she couldn't find them, took it out on the check. She tore it into twenty pieces, tossing them in the air before she marched out of his apartment and slammed the door.

Damn it, he thought as he listened to her stomp down the stairs. Not only had all this not gone the way he'd planned, but Adelia was going to be pissed that she had to get another check written. Now he had two angry Chamberlain women on his hands.

Chapter Nineteen

An unexpected knock
at the door startled Maddie out of her thoughts. She was sitting at her desk trying to wade through the bakery bookkeeping she'd ignored these last few weeks while she'd spent time with Emmett. It'd been a week since they broke up and now that all that was over, she had a mountain of receipts and other paperwork to deal with. It was hard enough when she stayed on top of it. She was no mathematician, but with her business finance software, she could keep her arms around it.

Today, she couldn't focus. The visitor at the door was just the latest in a string of interruptions she'd allowed because she didn't really want to deal with any of this. Her head was somewhere else, running over that fight with Emmett again and again. Something about it wasn't right. Something about the look in Emmett's eyes when she hurled insults at him haunted her. There was a mix of betrayal, fear, and then the anger came in and she watched him completely shut down. That was her fault. She'd pushed too far and let her own hang-ups get in the way. Now, all she could do was worry about bookkeeping and try not to think about how she may have ruined something really special.

With a sigh, she sat a cupcake paperweight on the crinkled and precarious stack of receipts and went to the front door. It was late afternoon on a Sunday, the time of day usually reserved for watching football, taking naps, or cleaning up after Sunday supper. She couldn't fathom who would be stopping by her house at this hour.

She opened the door to find her grandmother standing there. She was still dressed up in the light blue suit she'd likely worn to church that morning. Her pocketbook was resting on her forearm, a tiny powder-blue pillbox hat sitting stylishly askew on her head. There was also a concerned frown on her face and that was what made Maddie's stomach start to ache with worry.

“Granny,” Maddie said, trying to sound excited.

“You've missed two Sunday suppers in a row,” Adelia said, stepping into the house and pushing Maddie aside to enter her formal living room. She chose a wingback chair to sit in and looked at her granddaughter expectantly.

Maddie knew her cue. She was a properly raised southern woman after all. “Can I offer you something to drink? Something to eat?”

“Something warm to drink would be lovely. It's certainly November now. Quite chilly outside today.”

Maddie nodded and went into the kitchen. She made a pot of English breakfast tea and paired it with a plate of orange jasmine scones.

She returned to the living room, pouring them both a cup of tea. “I'm sorry about supper, Granny. I'm just not quite ready to face everyone after what happened on Halloween.”

“Why?” her grandmother snapped. “Nothing happened to
you
, from what I can gather.”

Maddie frowned and hid it quickly with a sip of tea. It felt like something had happened to her. She'd been lied to by her father and had a brother she didn't know about. “Not directly,” she admitted. “But Daddy did something terrible to Mama, and I didn't want to be around to watch their marriage fall apart. I'm not ready to hear Daddy try to apologize to me or the other kids, either.”

Adelia Chamberlain snorted indelicately. “Do you think your father is going to apologize to anyone? He is many things, but self-aware is not one of them. I doubt he sees that he's done anything wrong in the situation with Logan. The child was conceived before he married Helen, so he won't allow her to be angry with him. He probably believes that keeping the secret was the noble thing to do, protecting you kids.”

“I doubt Logan would agree with that assessment.”

“No, I very much doubt that as well. But again, none of this is about you. Yes, your father lied to you while protecting his secret, but that's hardly the end of the world. So tell me the truth about why you haven't been to the house. There has to be more to it than that.”

There was. Really, the breakup with Emmett had been what had kept her in the house this week. She didn't want to talk about that, though. Her grandmother had played an unwitting role in that debacle and she'd rather Granny not know about it. “I'm just not feeling very sociable, Granny.”

“I hear you're also not feeling much like serving your remaining community service. You missed Wednesday and Judge Griffin told me that if you didn't show up Saturday, you'd be facing contempt charges and he'd issue a warrant for your arrest. Did you go yesterday?”

Maddie shoved a dry bit of scone into her mouth to prolong her answer. When she finally chewed and swallowed, chasing it with a sip of tea, she had to shake her head. “No, I didn't.” Not because she didn't value the local government or feel like she'd served the price for her time. She simply hadn't wanted to spend all those hours alone with Emmett. Not after their blowup last week. She'd rather get arrested than deal with that right now.

“Something happened with you and Emmett,” her grandmother said. “I can tell. What did you do?”

“Me?” Maddie said with a near-hysterical edge to her voice. “Why is it that you assume I was the one who did something wrong? And anyway, since when do you know Emmett so well as to take his side on anything?”

Adelia sighed and sat back against the plush cushions of the chair. “My dear, there are a great many things you don't know about me and your Emmett.”

“Like what?” Maddie challenged. “Like how you're giving him loads of money?”

Adelia's white brows went up in surprise, but she recovered quickly. “I told you he was lining your mother's closet with cedar.”

“Try again, Granny. He told me that wasn't true and the check I saw was for a hell of a lot more money than a cedar closet upgrade.”

“Ah,” she said, folding her hands in her lap. “I was wondering what had tipped you off.”

“That wasn't the only thing. If the story about the closet is a lie, why did you sneak into Woody's that afternoon? What was that about?”

Her grandmother narrowed her gaze at Maddie. “I should just tell you that I was visiting for a little afternoon delight. That would certainly shut down the questions, wouldn't it?”

Maddie winced. “Granny, please. I don't want to even think about the idea that you two were . . . ugh.”

“Relax, Maddie. I'm not paying good money for afternoons with your man.”

“Emmett is not my man,” she said a touch too quickly. Her grandmother pinned her with her sharp gaze for a moment and Maddie felt the tears well up. Her granny could see right through her, whether she was a seven-year-old lying about taking a brooch from her jewelry box or a twenty-seven-year-old bottling up all her feelings about Emmett.

“I like Emmett Sawyer,” Adelia said. “I've known him a long time, and I've always thought he was a good man. When he moved here to Rosewood, I began to wonder if he wouldn't be a good match for you.”

“Wait,” Maddie interrupted, wiping her cheek. “You knew Emmett before he came to Rosewood?”

“Yes,” she replied, but failed to give Maddie the information she was craving at this point. Emmett never talked about his life in Florida. The fact that her granny knew him back then was intriguing. It also complicated everything.

“When you chose the house right across the street from Emmett's bar, I was certain this was fate bringing you two together. A shouting match ensued, of course, because you're both such strong personalities, but even that gave way in time.”

“After we ended up in court, yeah,” Maddie said. “Granny, did you even talk to Judge Griffin? You said you were going to talk to him about me before we went to the courthouse.”

“Yes, and I did speak with him.”

“It didn't seem like it,” Maddie noted. “I was expecting him to take my side in the case or, at the very least, sentence me to a less harsh judgment. And less time with Emmett.”

“Ah, well, you see, that part of the punishment was actually my idea.”

“What?”

Adelia shrugged off Maddie's shriek. “You told me to talk to Judge Griffin. You never said anything about talking him into reducing or commuting your sentence. Both of us were stumped on how best to put an end to the nonsense. Forcing you to work together for the greater good was the perfect solution. I think it worked well. You two stopped fighting and really seemed to hit it off. I was expecting you two to last longer than your sentence, to be honest.”

Maddie looked down at her hands resting in her lap. “So did I,” she admitted. “But he was keeping things from me. What was all that money about, Granny?”

Adelia sat forward and watched her granddaughter with a thoughtful expression. “First, tell me honestly how you feel about Emmett.”

“How I feel? Well, before the Halloween fallout, I felt really good about us. He was the first man in a long time who really seemed to see me. He made me want to be a better person. For the first time, all the things I thought were important in a man I dated, like money and a successful career, seemed silly. He made me start to believe that someone could love me for me, not for who I am or what my family could do for him. I started to think that maybe I was falling in love with him, but I was wrong. I think that's what made it hurt that much worse when I found out he was lying to me. I thought I could trust him, but the moment I let my guard down, I found he's just like the others.”

“What makes you think that? The check you found?”

“Yes. I asked him about it and he wouldn't answer me. I accused him of using me to get to you.”

“And what did he say about that?”

Maddie opened her mouth, but then found she didn't know. She'd been in such a red rage, she'd barely listened to a word he said until he started hurling insults at her. “He denied it, I think, but I wouldn't listen. Then it turned into a verbal brawl and we both said terrible things.”

“He's more stubborn than I thought,” Adelia noted. “I thought for sure that if he was pushed hard enough, he'd tell you the truth.”

“The truth about what?”

Adelia sighed. “That is not something I can tell you. Only Emmett can do that. But what I can do is assure you that Emmett is not after your money, dear.”

Maddie felt her heart start to soar in her chest. Could it really be true? She wanted it to be, but she was so uncertain. “How do you know that?”

“Because he works for me and has for a very long time. I'm the one who told him about the bar and suggested he move to Rosewood when he was looking for a change of pace. That check you tore up—which I had to get replaced, by the way—wasn't anything nefarious at all. Your earlier instincts about Emmett were spot-on. He's a good person, and I think he genuinely cares about you.”

Maddie shook her head, her doubts creeping in again. If he cared about her the way she said, why didn't he just tell her the truth? “You say that, Granny, but how can I know it for sure while he keeps secrets from me?”

“Sometimes you just have to follow your heart and take a leap of faith. You've been hurt before and I know it's hard, but I think this is a risk worth taking.” Her grandmother reached for her purse and stood up. “This was a lovely chat, but I'd better be going. I expect to see you next week at supper.”

“Yes, ma'am. Are you headed back to the house?”

“No, I'm going to the bar.”

Maddie's nose wrinkled. “Really?”

“Yes. For one thing, I've got to take Emmett the new check. And for another, I've got a hankering for a nice, dark lager. See you next week, dear.”

Logan wandered into Woody's
on a quiet Tuesday night. Emmett was surprised to look up and see the reclusive lawyer sitting at the bar. He hadn't been at the Halloween festival, but there was no doubt he knew what happened. Emmett figured he'd been hiding out until things settled down.

“Hey, Logan,” Emmett said, turning to face his customer. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Scotch. Neat,” Logan said.

“That good, huh?”

Logan shook his head. “I doubt it's even that good, but I don't want to crawl home on my hands and knees.”

“Fair enough.” Emmett poured Logan's drink and set it down on a paper napkin in front of him. “How's the fallout been?” he asked. To be honest, Emmett hadn't really kept up with it. He'd been more focused on his own life and how it had suddenly gone awry.

“Surprisingly negligible,” Logan said. “I guess in my mind I had thought that a scandal like this would actually hurt Norman Chamberlain's reputation, but he seems to be made of Teflon. Nothing sticks.”

“How did you find out about it?”

“Grant and Pepper came by the house after the video clip aired. I kind of held my breath waiting for something to happen, but nothing really did.”

“Really?”

Logan shrugged. “Well, Blake and Simon came by the house to see me. They seem to be taking the news okay. They apologized on their father's behalf, and like Grant, told me they wanted to build a relationship with me. A few people have pulled my mother aside at church or in the grocery store and told her how bad they felt about Norman's treatment of her. But that's about it.”