Up to Snow Good - Kelly Collins Page 0,46

back to him? There were hundreds of dollars that seemed to disappear, just enough to keep that loan from being paid.”

It made sense; it made too much sense.

“Something else,” she said, her voice quivering with uncertainty. “Sam asked me if I was interested in him, personally.”

“You mean romantically?”

She nodded.

Anger rose in him like an inferno. “And he was coming against you the whole time! That’s what you thought I was doing. My God, I’m lucky you’re talking to me at all.”

She said nothing, leaving a cooling chill in the surrounding silence.

“The real question is, what do we do about it? What can we do about it? I’m not letting my father take your lodge, I can promise you that.”

“That’s sweet, but like you said, what can anybody do? With the weather and the animals, maybe it is time to pack it in.”

“No, that’s not the solution.”

“At least you could still have a family; only seems fair that one of us should come out of this not alone.”

Max took her hands. “No, he’s no family to me, not anymore. And you never have to be alone, not if you don’t want to be, not as long as I’m around.” He shook his head. “There has to be a way out of it. Obviously, Sam won’t be any help.”

“Could he be? Could we get him to turn on your father?”

“I doubt that my father would make himself vulnerable to that. He’d use a man like Sam but wouldn’t let himself be used by him. If he was our accountant, maybe, but my father’s smarter than that.”

Lauren sat, looking exhausted by the stress. “I suppose we could go see a lawyer,” she said. “Maybe there’s one in Moss Creek your father hasn’t corrupted yet.”

It was a good thought; it was promising, and it spoke to Lauren’s indomitable spirit, one of the things about her that excited and attracted him most. But the thing that really stood out to him was when she said, "we." Maybe her including him in her plans, meant she had reconsidered his innocence and was going to give him another chance at the happiness he was certain had escaped him.

If given this opportunity, he wasn't about to let her down, not again.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Lauren

It had been as they had feared. Max’s father had reached out to every lawyer in Moss Creek, rendering them unable to represent anybody else in the matter of the fate of the lodge.

Lauren’s heart sank, but Max pushed forward. There was a resolve in his eyes that she found not only inspirational but necessary. It didn’t seem to have the same effect on portly Mayor Shipley.

He looked over a copy of the letter of agreement between Frank and Eaton, shaking his head and sending his jowls into a gelatinous jiggle. “It’s quite an arrangement, I’ve seen nothing like it.”

“We don’t think it’s on the level,” Max said. “We think he put the accountant in as a plant, and that Sam was embezzling money to keep their profits low, making it impossible to pay back the debt. That means the agreement wasn’t in good faith, and it could be challenged on that basis, couldn’t it?”

Mayor Shipley shook his head and looked at his deputy, Carl Roberts, who sat in a chair next to the desk. “I’m not a lawyer,” Mayor Shipley said.

“But I am,” Deputy Mayor Roberts said, seeming to attract the ire of his boss. “There could be a way to challenge the contract in court, yes, but you’d need a full copy of the lodge’s bank records, you’d need the books and the tax return filings. The buyout could be forestalled, but you’d have to keep up your mortgage payments in the meantime, and that could be years. Do you think you can manage that, realistically?”

Lauren glanced at Max, but she could see in his expression that he didn’t hold out much hope. He said to the mayor, “If we can prove this man was working for my father to doctor those books and embezzle the money, that would be a felony, and I can hold that over my father’s head.”

“Unless you’re worried about being an accomplice,” Mayor Shipley said. “Though I shouldn’t get involved with this any further. It’s an election year and important to avoid scandal.”

“I can prove that I’m not an accomplice,” Max said, turning to Lauren, who nodded in agreement. Hot doubt festered in her belly, making her skin prickle with a million invisible needles.

“Going after your father would destroy more