Brock sighed and squeezed the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache. “I didn’t want to ask this,” he muttered. “Why are you down here?”
“I told you. My lawyers—”
“Why did they send you to me?”
“It wasn’t specifically to you,” she told him. All the same, she thought, his broad shoulders could handle anything.
“It was specifically to get you out of their hair for a while. Why did they send you away?”
“Because I hired a financial consultant to help me set up a foundation.”
“Douglas,” Brock said.
Regret and anger roiled through her. Felicity frowned. “Yes. Doug. He once worked for the firm my father used. I met him at a social function, and he told me he’d gone into business for himself. He called me a few times and appeared genuinely interested in helping me. I began to transfer funds for the foundation. Three weeks ago, he took that money and left for South America. My attorneys don’t trust my judgment. At the moment, I don’t trust myself either. I need someone I can trust. Someone who isn’t interested in me. Someone with integrity,” she said, looking at him thoughtfully.
“After you dump your money, what will you do?” Brock asked.
Felicity shrugged. She had only a vague picture of her future. “I don’t know. Enter a convent or buy a cottage on the coast of Maine and read and have three cats. I’m not sure it’s all that important. What’s important is that I set up this foundation.”
“They’re not going to let you in a convent with your body,” Brock muttered.
Her stomach took a little dip. She ignored it. “Then Maine it is,” she said wryly, then turned serious. “Would you help me?”
He shot her a wary look. “You just met me. Why would you trust me?”
“Several reasons. Gut feeling.” She wouldn’t tell him she had an odd sense of fate about Brock. Nothing romantic, of course. He was trustworthy. “You’re solid and responsible. You give the impression that you were born forty years old. You come highly recommended,” she said. “Your daughter says you’re the best. You kept your end of a bargain you didn’t make by letting me stay in your home. Plus there are the other reasons.”
“And they are?” he prompted in a skeptical tone.
“You don’t like me. You don’t want me here. In fact,” she said, pushing aside her little twinge, “you don’t want me, period.”
Three
God save him from the female gender, Brock thought, and shook his head. “I said you weren’t ugly,” he told her.
“There’s a large gap between not ugly and attractive,” Felicity said with a Mona Lisa smile.
She hugged her arms against the cold and Brock couldn’t help noticing the way her nipples beaded against her sweater dress. It was easy to imagine how her breasts would look and feel naked; rounded ivory mounds with small raspberry tips, soft, sensitive, responsive. She would feel like heaven in his hands, against his chest, in his mouth.
And there would be hell to pay, he thought as he remembered Felicity was the proverbial Ms. Moneybags.
“You’re an honorable man,” she said, meeting his gaze. “I thought honor was an extinct virtue among men, but you possess it. I think you could help me.”
Brock sighed. He didn’t spend much time thinking about honor and virtue. He just tried to do what was right. “What do you want from me? I’m no lawyer.”
“You can help me find someone I can trust to set up the foundation. I can tell you’re not a man to be taken advantage of. I don’t seem to have developed that skill yet,” she said wryly.
Everything she said was true, but Brock still didn’t feel right helping Felicity part with half her fortune. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four,” she said. “Why is that important?”
“I’d feel easier about this if you were about sixty years older, if you’d lived more and longer and had more experience.”
“Maybe you could pretend,” she said with a cheeky smile.
He eyed her body once more and shook his head. “Not likely,” he said dryly. “You’ve never been married or had any children,” he repeated.
“Neither,” she said.
“Getting married and having children might change your perspective,” he told her.
“I already told you I’m not doing that.”
“You could change your mind.”
“I can’t. It’s not meant to be. I accept that. My purpose is to do something else,” she said earnestly and stepped closer to him. “I may not be older, more experienced or married, but I can identify need. I want to do something about it. There’s an emptiness in me, and I know the only way I can make it go away is to do this. Is it so bad that I want to make life better for some people? Is it so bad that I don’t want to hoard what I have? That I want to share it instead?”
Her passion and vulnerability tugged at his heart. For someone with so much, she understood the fulfillment in giving. Brock was torn. On one hand, it went against every drop of his Logan blood for Felicity to insist that she was unconcerned about the heritage of her future family. On the other hand, he could see that she was trying to create a different kind of heritage. “Okay, duchess, just for this moment, let’s say I help you give away your money. What are you going to do with the rest of your life?”
“I don’t know. That’s not what is important—” she began.
“That’s where I disagree. This is a mighty big decision, and you have the rest of your life to live with it. And I have the rest of my life to live with aiding and abetting your…” he paused, then finished his thought, “…your insanity or generosity.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” he said, adjusting his hat. “I want you to think about this for a couple of weeks and tell me what you have planned for yourself, how you’re going to live your life. Then, we’ll see.”
Felicity didn’t want to wait. Her goal burned like a coal in her gut. Since Doug had left the country with her money, she’d felt as if she’d taken ten steps backward. “It’s called exploring your options.” Brock leaned closer. “I can tell you’re trying to find a way around what I’m saying, but if you want my integrity, honor and help, then you’re gonna have to do this my way. I have a bad feeling that if I don’t take the reins when you and I go down this road together, then I’ll end up in the ditch.”
Although Brock could tell she wanted to argue, some remnant of sanity must have made her hold her tongue. After he escorted Ms. Moneybags back to the house, he took the truck out to make a late-night check on the cow. She hadn’t dropped. It could happen tomorrow or the next day. One of his neighbor’s bulls had waded through a shared stream and had a field day with his cows. That could mess up the birth weight of the calves, so he had to watch carefully. The weather was still iffy at night. Cattle weren’t the most intelligent animals on the earth and he’d watched a few new moms drop their babies in freezing water. After Felicity had disrupted his evening, he needed some time to himself to clear his head. He took in the wide starry sky and gradually began to feel a glimmer of peace return.
Brock looked out at the north pasture and knew he was where he was supposed to be. The uncomfortable thought struck him, however, that Felicity had no idea where she belonged.
He got into the truck and rode back to the house. He turned out the lights and carefully locked the doors. Since his dad got sick, it had been his job to lock