LITMIR.BIZ

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter One

       O livia hated to lose. To be truthful, it went beyond hate. She abhorred losing, to anyone, under any circumstances, but she especially loathed being bested by one of her four older and frequently infuriating brothers.

      Together, they had seen to it that she learned to think fast and stand her ground at a very young age. Now twenty-four, she no longer had to dodge water balloons or check for reptiles before climbing into bed, but their propensity for teasing and practical jokes persisted, and she was adept at deflecting, countering or ignoring their efforts as the situation warranted. Sometimes she even enjoyed the challenge, and she dearly loved her brothers. She just flat-out refused to lose a wager to one of them…particularly as ridiculous a wager as the one she’d allowed herself to be roped into this time.

      Olivia winced just thinking about it. If Brad had challenged her privately, she would have found some way to resist the bait. But no, her brother had tossed down the gauntlet in the middle of the Historical Association’s annual ball, in front of dozens of amused witnesses. In Baltimore society, it didn’t get any more public than that. She’d had no choice but to accept the challenge on the spot, and now pride and her own mulish nature demanded she follow through. Precisely as Brad had anticipated when he set her up, she thought with chagrin.

      Pride and pigheadedness. The combination had landed her in a tight spot on more occasions than she cared to recall. But this time she’d even outdone herself. This time she was scaling new heights of absurdity. There certainly was no sane explanation for crawling out of bed at what she deemed the crack of dawn on this brisk October morning, to drive to some godforsaken little town in the backwoods of upstate New York.

      She kicked the large suitcase by her side.

      “Ouch.”

      It was packed solid. So solid she’d had to jump up and down on it before she could close the zipper. The “Rules According to Brad” limited her to one suitcase. That presented a formidable challenge to a woman who required a minimum of two bags for a weekend jaunt, and in the end she’d resorted to cheating by wearing everything she couldn’t stuff into the suitcase.

      There was a reason the layered look went out of style, she reflected, squirming uncomfortably inside a turtleneck jersey, denim shirt and three sweaters. She didn’t even want to think about how she must look. Not that it was likely to matter much where she was headed. For all she knew, the layered look was still the rage in Danby.

      She reached for the oversize tote bag which she defied Brad to call a second suitcase and was rummaging through it for a map when her mother joined her in the foyer of Twin Brooks, the grand Georgian-style mansion that had been home to the Ashfields for nearly a century.

      “What time do you expect Bradford?” Helen Ashfield asked her youngest, and most exasperating, child.

      “I told him I was leaving at ten sharp and he’s supposed to be here to see me off. Which gives him—” Olivia glanced at her watch “—five minutes. Damn, why didn’t I think to stipulate that if he isn’t here on time, he forfeits?”

      “Perhaps because you were too busy making a spectacle of yourself, throwing arrows…”

      “I think you mean darts.”

      “Of course, darts,” her mother conceded, oozing disapproval. “That makes it infinitely more dignified than tossing arrows at a map stuck to the wall of the Continental Ballroom.”

      Olivia shrugged. “It seemed the most logical way to choose a destination under the

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