Read Online Mint Juleps and Justice by Nancy Naigle - Free Book Online

do?”
    “Nothing. I just wanted you to know.” Brooke caught her reflection on the side of the toaster. This divorce was making her look old. Pulling a hand through her bangs, she noticed a gray hair. Thirty-three was way too young for gray hair. She plucked it, frowning at her reflection.
    “’Bout time you started listening to your big brother.”
    “I always listen to you.” Her childhood had been such a hodgepodge of unplanned events. Between her OCD daddy and manic mama, before she hit junior high, she knew the one thing she’d do different in life was always know what was ahead. The one sure thing she could count on was Dean. He was the best brother she could have ever asked for.
    “Yeah, right. As long as I’m telling you what you want to hear.”
    “Thank you, sweetest, dearest, most wonderful big brother.” Brooke wasn’t sure what a private investigator could even really do, but the constant looking over her shoulder and worry was beginning to wear on her. She had to do something.

CHAPTER TEN
    I t only took Brooke a few minutes to drive from her house to her office on Main Street. It never took long, but Saturday-morning traffic was nonexistent. She only had to work a half day today, and that was always a treat. Just as Brooke sat down at her desk, her phone rang.
    “Glad I caught you. It’s Connor Buckham.”
    She closed the folder in front of her and turned her attention to the call. “Hey there. Thank you for calling me back so quickly. Thought I might not hear back from you until Monday.”
    “If this is about that almost-ex-husband of yours again, better to not let it wait. Sometimes these things get nasty. I do have the name of an excellent private investigator. He’s got some military background, great guy, and really fair prices too. Got a crayon?”
    Brooke grabbed a pen and a sticky pad. “Sounds perfect. I’ve got a pen handy.”
    Connor rattled off the number. Brooke jotted each digit as he gave them. “Got it.”
    “His name is Mike Hartman.”
    She underlined the number twice.
    “His office is right upstairs from mine,” Connor said. “He’s good people. He’s usually in the office in the late afternoons if you’d rather just stop in.”
    “I’ll give him a call. Thanks again.” But rather than make the call, she stared at the number. Was it possible this was the same Mike Hartman that she just met over at Kasey Phillips’s farm? It was a common name, but it was also a very small town. He’d said he was just helping out, but how awkward would it be to hire him to help with her disaster of a divorce, after she’d agreed to go to dinner with him. Damn him for being so good-looking. She never should have said she’d have dinner with him.
    She got up and snagged the slim phone book from her credenza and flipped to the H ’s. She swept her finger through the short list of Hartmans. Only one Michael.
    “It had to be you, didn’t it?” She closed the directory and tossed it aside. After an hour of pushing work from one side of her desk to the other and feeling anxious about another connection with Mike, rather than make the call, she got up from her desk and walked down the block to see Jenny at the yoga studio.
    “Knock-knock,” Brooke called out as she pushed through the tall doors on the old building. What a stroke of luck that the building had been for sale when Jenny was with her on the house-hunting trip, else Jenny may not have gotten the wild idea to relocate with her.
    She could still see the look on Jenny’s face when she’d spotted the bright-orange building. Brooke had laughed because it was about the tackiest pumpkin-orange building she’d ever seen, but the yoga chakras or good karma must have reached inside the car and tapped Jenny right on the shoulder, because Jenny had nearly jumped out of the car before they stopped to go look in the window.
    She’d bought and closed on the building before Brooke even closed on her own house. As crazy as it had