There was dread in Allan’s sharp intake of breath. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t talk. This is getting complicated. Look—can you just give Mac the message?”

“What about you?”

“I need a few more days.”

“Son.” Allan Carruthers hesitated. “Be careful.”

Jeremy hung up.

Behind him, the screen door banged.

“Bastard,” Ashley said.

He swung around. “Ashley, look, let me explain. I was going to tell you—”

“You’ve been spying on me for Mac Stevens! You have your little network all set up, haven’t you? That’s why you came back from San Diego.” She clenched her fists and stiffened her spine against anything logical and reasonable he might have to say. “Bastard, bastard, bastard!”

She snatched her handbag and slammed out the door. Stricken, Jeremy stood guiltily next to the old wall phone. Damn this entire stinking mess—and Ashley Wakefield along with it.

The stinging words of his ex-wife came back to him. “One day, Jeremy Carruthers, you’re going to fall in love. You’re going to be the one thinking of some woman night and day. You’re not going to be able to get her out of your mind. You’ll do anything to make her want you. You’re going to be the one obsessed. And she’s going to tell you to take a hike.”

But obsession wasn’t love, and he was neither obsessed nor in love with Ashley Wakefield. She was sanctimonious, rich and crazy.

And he had thought about her all night.

A car roared to a start.

“What now?”

He ran out to the driveway and jumped in front of the Jaguar, a foolhardy move, he thought, for one who had just duped a reckless and furious woman. She’d damn well run his ass over.

But she stomped on the brake. Then she poked her head out the window. “Get the hell out of my way.”

“Ashley, let’s talk.”

“So you can tell me more lies? No, thanks. Now move.”

“Where are you going?”

“Hospital.”

Of course. David the wounded brother and sturdy ally was there. “There are no morning visiting hours.”

“So they can throw me out. Move.”

He stayed put. “You don’t tiptoe around when you’re pissed, do you?”

“Move, goddammit!”

She raced the engine. Not pressing his luck, he dived out of the way and watched her speed off. “Jer, you need an honest woman who’ll tell you to go to hell once in a while,” his friends had said too often.

He picked himself up out of the dew-soaked grass and wondered if he should have just stayed there and slithered around for a while. If nothing else, Ashley deserved some time to cool off. Then he’d tell her everything, and hope she’d do the same.

David ached all over. “The pain will be intense, but the break will be clean.” Lunatic. If in his wildest imagination he had seen what was coming, he’d have bonked the old man on the head and carted him off to Northampton State Hospital.

He’d go nuts hanging around a hospital room. He was a man of action, always had to be doing something. Back when they’d first found out about the trust, he’d tried to explain to Evan Parrington that he couldn’t just sit around and be rich; he had to act. Evan hadn’t understood: he’d suggested David start a business. But David had been talking about physical work. The thought of putting on a tie every day and watching the world go by from fifty stories up gave him the creeps. He had to be outside, swinging an ax, puttering around with his Rover, plowing the fields. He wanted dirt under his fingernails and calluses on his hands. That was just the way he was.