Page 10 of Taken Away

Deck gave a small shrug.

“Nothing concrete. A few odd calls. Questions about the property. She said she had a feeling somebody was circling Blackwood.”

Something dark flickered across Red’s face near the doorway.

“Mabel trusted her instincts,” he muttered.

Deck nodded once. “Aye. She did.”

Before she could respond, the office door swung open.

Eleanor Harper walked in, and the room seemed to realign around her. She wore a navy sheath dress that cost more than Aubrey’s first car, her blonde hair pulled back in a way that made her look both elegant and untouchable.

“Aubrey,” Eleanor said, her hand warm and firm. “I’m Eleanor. I am so deeply sorry for your loss.”

She guided Aubrey into the lion’s den of the conference room. The book club ladies went silent for exactly three seconds before Mary Lou announced, “Mabel left me her lemon cake recipe. It’s legally mine now.”

“You’ve been stealing it for a decade, Mary Lou,” June sniffed.

Eleanor smoothed her dress and sat at the head of the walnut table. “We’re only waiting on one more.”

Aubrey reached for her water, her hand trembling slightly.

Then, the door opened.

The air in the room didn’t shift; it vanished.

Bennett McCrae stopped dead in the doorway.

For one stunned second, he stared at her. Shock flashed across his face—brows lifting, mouth parting slightly, like he’d walked into the last person on earth he expected to see.

Then it vanished beneath a hard, controlled mask.

He’d traded the rumpled flannel for dark jeans and a charcoal sport coat over a white button-down. He looked rugged, polished, and—to Aubrey’s horror—even more handsome in daylight. Up close, he looked less like a stranger from a bar and more like a man who hadn’t slept in days. Dark hollows smudged beneath his eyes; he looked like he’d tried to outrun the night and lost.

His gaze stayed on hers a beat too long, and her body betrayed her with one sharp, unwelcome memory of the night before, no matter how hard she’d tried to wash him off in the shower.

“You have got to be kidding me,” she said.

The book club ladies leaned in as one, looking from Aubrey to Bennett and back again.

“Miss Langford,” Bennett said slowly, his voice dropping an octave.

“You,” Aubrey snapped, standing up so fast her chair screeched. “You knew. The whole ‘mysterious local’ act at the bar? You knew exactly who I was.”

Red frowned. Deck went still. Even Eleanor paused before saying another word.

Bennett’s mouth pulled tight, a muscle flickering along his cheekbone. “The hell I did. If I’d known you were the niece Mabel was always talking about, I would have stayed home and drank in the garage.”

“Well, that’s charming.”

“Sit down, both of you,” Eleanor said, her voice like silk over steel.

"Oh, don't stop," Mary Lou whispered to June. "This is better than anything we've read all year."

Bennett sat across from her, his presence taking up far too much space. Eleanor began to read, her voice steady as she moved through the bequests of signed books and diamond brooches.

Then she turned the page.