The Sapphire Brooch Katherine Logan (best beach reads TXT) 📖

Jack slammed the cover to his iPad and tossed the device on the seat in front of him. “You’re not without blame, Charlotte. I screwed up. I accept it, but can you? You never should have brought him here.”

Her chest tightened and anxiety ambushed her. “I couldn’t let him—”

The astonished look on his face instantly changed to total disbelief. “Did someone name you God and then fail to send the message to the rest of the world telling us you were in charge?”

“We’re not talking about me.”

“Then maybe we should. You didn’t think about the consequences of your actions either, so don’t give me grief about my inadequacies.”

She adjusted her seat, leaned back, and closed her eyes. “We’re done talking.”

“We have to go after him. You have a responsibility to clean up this mess.”

“A mess I didn’t make,” Charlotte said in a dismissive voice, refusing to acknowledge there was any truth in what Jack had said.

He sat rigid in his seat. “Listen to yourself. Sometimes you’re off-the-wall crazy.”

She had learned long ago to be careful, to edit what she said to him. After all, he was a lawyer and a wordsmith. When it came to their discussions, she couldn’t compete with him. He always spotted holes in her arguments and threw them back at her with a blazing, fastball pitch.

But he was right. She had messed up. Braham should have died in Chimborazo, and now she had a responsibility to clean up her mistakes. But she adamantly refused to go back in time to make it happen. There had to be another way. She was an intelligent person and could solve this dilemma without putting her life in danger again.

25

Mallory Plantation, Richmond, Virginia, Present Day

Charlotte had always seen herself as a pragmatist, quick to make surgical decisions and expedient by nature, but personal decisions required time, thought, analysis, and more thought.

At the hospital, she remained a hundred percent focused, but she struggled with the dilemma of what to do about Braham and the assassination. She had gotten home after a thirteen-mile run, yet her head was as jumbled as it had been when she set out two hours earlier.

The situation had to be resolved somehow before she went nuts. Going nuts, though, was preferable to going back in time and dodging bullets and threats.

If she was ever going to find a solution, she first had to patch things up with Jack. She hadn’t spoken to him since the flight home from Kentucky days earlier, and she missed him terribly.

Since she had the night off, it was time to have a chat with her brother. Should she apologize? For what? Jack was the one who skipped out and left Braham to his own devices.

If she didn’t intend to apologize, then she needed to forgive him and move on. But move on to what? Braham was still an issue. The problem wasn’t only about forgiving Jack. It was about going back in time and keeping Braham from changing history.

This was another red-light moment in her life. She had taken a chance, ripped through the last one, and look what happened. She had created a mess. She might as well run another one. It couldn’t get any worse.

Wait a minute. The consequences could be a lot worse. She could get shot. She could be thrown into prison. She could…

Yes, she could even die, but she could also die in the next five minutes sitting in her living room. Her mother had suffered a fatal attack and died in her chair at work. A tight tug in Charlotte’s gut caused a constriction around her heart. The loss of their mother had been traumatic, which was probably why she and Jack clung so tightly to each other.

Whew. Forty degrees outside and she was burning up. She grabbed a bottle of cold water, went out onto her screened-in porch, and looked over her garden. Everything had been cut back to enhance next season’s growth. She loved the beauty of Richmond in the spring. If she and Jack went back in time now, they might be spending next spring in Washington in the year 1865, long before the cherry blossom trees had arrived from Japan.

She rolled her cold-water bottle along her forehead from one side to the other. Was she really considering going back? Yep, she was. There was no other way. Braham had to be stopped.

Okay, then. Let’s do it.

Two hours later, she marched into Jack’s office at the mansion. He didn’t bother to stop typing or turn away from his dual monitors. “Hey, sis. What’s up?”

She plopped down in a chair on the other side of the desk. “I’ve made a decision.”

“About what?” To be annoying, he continued typing. “A date Friday night? What you’re going to do this afternoon? How many miles you’re going to run this weekend?” He sat back in his chair and swiveled around to face her. He let the silence lengthen before saying, “Tell me your decision. I’m all ears.”

She drummed her fingers on the edge of the desk. “You’re also a butthead. But you know it already, don’t you? And you also know exactly what I’m talking about.”

He was pissed and hurt, and she was confused and scared. They would dance around each other until they found their way again.

He came around to the front of the desk, leaned against it, and crossed both his ankles and his arms. There was a glint in his eye and a half smile he couldn’t contain. He knew damn good and well what she was going to say, but he wasn’t going to let her do it easily.

There was an uneasy rumble in her stomach. “Stop smirking. This isn’t funny.”

He held up his hands in a mock dramatic gesture. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sometimes she wanted to haul off and smack him. It was a darn shame they had outgrown wrestling matches. “You were wrong to go off and leave Braham alone,