LITMIR.BIZ

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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?”

      Charlotte smiled at him as she tugged off first one lacy glove, and then the other. Slowly, she dropped both into her lap and offered him her most winning smile. “I’d like to ask for an extension on our loan.”

      “Charlotte, that balloon payment is due in ten days,” Hiram reminded her. He steepled his long, bony fingertips in front of him and regarded her over the rim of his bifocals.

      This was going to be harder than she had thought; Hiram didn’t look as if he were going to budge. Telling herself to be as fiercely determined on the inside and soft on the outside as her mother had always been, Charlotte crossed her legs demurely at the knee. She tossed her head flirtatiously and offered him another smile. “I can trust you to be discreet, can’t I, Hiram?”

      “Absolutely, Charlotte.”

      “My sisters and I are a little short on cash at the moment.”

      Hiram disengaged his fingertips and dropped his forearms to his desk. He leaned forward, his expression regretful. “As much as we here at First Unity Bank would like to help you, Charlotte, we can’t give you an extension on the balloon payment.”

      She kept the smile plastered on her face with a great deal of effort. She was not going to give up until she got her way. “Why not?” she asked, summoning up the sweetness that came so naturally to her sister Isabella. “You gave us a loan the last time we were in financial trouble.”

      “And at that time, we financed the maximum amount available to you and your sisters,” Hiram explained sternly. “Since then, you’ve paid down nothing of the principal. That’s why the balloon payment is due now.”

      “What about a second mortgage?” Charlotte asked.

      “Against what? You’ve already borrowed against ninety-nine percent of what the property is worth. If I might be so bold,” Hiram said as he picked up a pen and doodled aimlessly on the notepad in front of him, “there is a solution here. There’s an auto plant going in here in the next few months. It’s expected to be operational within a year.”

      Charlotte toyed with the strand of fake pearls around her neck. “What does that have to do with us?”

      “Six thousand people will be moving to the area, looking for homes. Homes that we don’t currently have.”

      “I’m not a home builder, Hiram.”

      “I know that. But Heritage Homes is, and they want to purchase Camellia Lane, Charlotte, and turn it into a subdivision of affordable tract homes. Frankly, I think the three of you would be fools to refuse the offer,” he continued. “With the money you and your sisters earned from the sale of Camellia Lane, you could pay off the mortgage on the property and be out of debt completely.”

      “Forget it. There’s no way we’re selling Camellia Lane,” Charlotte said firmly. It was their home. It was all they had left of her parents.

      “Perhaps you need time to consider,” Hiram suggested kindly.

      “I don’t think so.” Charlotte got up and started for the door.

      “There’s something you should know, Charlotte,” Hiram said, his voice hardening. “If you don’t pay the fifty-thousand-dollar balloon payment, the bank will have no choice but to foreclose on the property.”

      “I bet that would just break your heart, wouldn’t it?” Charlotte said, whirling to face him.

      Hiram removed his bifocals and set them ever so slowly on his desk. “I know you’re upset, Charlotte dear. But First Unity didn’t get you and your sisters into this mess. The bank and I are only trying to help.”

      Trying to force them into a corner so the bank could make a profit was more like it, Charlotte thought. “Tell me, Hiram, who is representing Heritage Homes?”

      He didn’t answer. But then, Charlotte thought bitterly, he didn’t have to.

      * * *

      BRETT WAITED UNTIL all three Langston sisters were gone, then let himself into the house and headed straight for the library.

      He frowned when he saw the top of the desk. Last night it had been covered with Charlotte’s papers and notes. Now it was clean as a whistle. He had been hoping to get some idea how far along she was in her investigation of Sterling.

      Brett tried the desk drawers. Locked. Cursing, he picked up the phone and punched in his credit-card number. Seconds later, Franklin came on the line.

      “Brett? What have you got?”

      Not as much as I’d like so far, he thought. “Charlotte Langston called your secretary last night.”

      “Yeah, I know. Marcie told me this morning. She also said she hung up on Charlotte. I suppose it’s too much to hope Miss Langston won’t try again?”

      “Way too much,” Brett concurred grimly.

      “Have you learned anything else?” Franklin asked.

      “Just that Charlotte Langston and her sisters are in desperate need of money.” Briefly, Brett explained what Charlotte had told him. “She’s meeting with the bank this morning to see about a loan,” Brett finished.

      “You think that’s why she’s so hell-bent on unmasking Sterling?” Franklin asked.

      “That’s part of it,” Brett said.

      “And the rest?”

      “She sees it as a challenge.” And Charlotte Langston was not a woman to turn away from a challenge, Brett had discovered.

      “Any chance she’s onto you?” Franklin asked.

      That,

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