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This book is dedicated with utmost appreciation to my readers. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your encouragement, support and enthusiasm. I hope you’ll stick with me as we all get into Trouble.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
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 FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
MORTIMER POTTS was not insane.
He did, on occasion, like to slip into the past—at least in his mind—and relive his favorite days. Days that were certainly more exhilarating than those he lived now. But contrary to the belief of some of his detractors, he was able to separate fiction from reality. Usually.
The problem with reality was that it was boring. The idea of settling down into his role as elderly millionaire—sipping cognac and smoking cigars on the patio of his Manhattan penthouse as he watched the world go by—simply held no appeal.
He needed adventure. Excitement. Needed to ride through the desert on a fine black stallion, or sail into a secluded jetty on the coast of Malta to escape pirates. Or whisk three young boys away to an African safari.
That was one consolation—his grandsons, at least, did not think him mad. Eccentric? Yes. But not insane.
Or perhaps that wasn’t a consolation. Having a bit of madness in the family would certainly invigorate the lives of those three young men, who’d become just a bit too pedestrian in their adult years. A little insanity could be good for the soul.
He would go insane if he was forced to ring in his eightieth year at a boring club filled with artificial people who wouldn’t dream of walking unaccompanied in Central Park, much less fighting their way out of a smoky tavern in Singapore. Ah, the good old days.
At least, he thought they were his good old days. Sometimes his memory played tricks on him.
“Your morning papers, sir,” said a familiar, well-modulated English voice.
Mortimer looked up to greet his manservant—and best friend. Roderick had been with him since 1945—a dispirited Brit tooling across Africa with a rich American once the Desert Fox had been defeated. He’d saved Mortimer’s life on one occasion and, as incongruous as it seemed, had helped him raise his grandsons.
Roderick had taught the boys how to live responsibly. Mortimer had taught them how to live.
“Anything of interest?” Mortimer asked.
“Not particularly.” Unruffled as always, Roderick, his dark, slicked-back hair now as gray as Mortimer’s was white, spread the papers on the small café-style table on the penthouse patio. Then the butler-cum-mechanic-cum-partner-in-crime-on-occasion stepped back and cleared his throat.
“What is it?”
“I believe the boy might be headed for a storm, sir.”
“Goodness, Roderick, how many times have I told you to call me Mortimer?” he asked. Then he focused on the man’s words. “The boy?”
Roderick merely sighed. “With a woman.”
Ah, Maxwell. A smile tugged at his mouth, even as Mortimer began to shake his head in feigned disapproval.
Mortimer did not play favorites with his grandchildren. But the rascally middle Taylor son, Max, was so much like him that he’d never been able to help being amused by his antics. Max was a rogue. A rapscallion, though a goodhearted one. At least, he had been. Before life had slapped him with a faithless wife.
Mortimer had had a few of those…wives, that is. Only one he’d wanted to keep. None, however, had sent him into the tailspin his grandson’s had. She had apparently destroyed Max’s faith in love. He seemed completely uninterested in trying marriage again…as were his two brothers, who’d never tried at all.
“What type of storm?” It probably didn’t speak well of him that he had a quick hope that his grandson had gotten a young lady in trouble. He would rather enjoy a great-grandchild.
“I fear he may be flying toward some rough publicity.”
Bad headlines. Bah. “Maxwell can handle rough publicity.”
Too bad. The idea of having to help his grandson with something scandalous was more appealing than sitting here in the city waiting to die. And a wrong-side-of-the-blanket infant sounded much more exciting than a media scandal.
Lifting the London paper, he idly began to flip the pages, finding nothing of interest. Until…“Did you see this?” he asked. “Property For Sale—A Pennsylvania Township.”
“A township, sir?”
Mortimer read on, barely hearing the other man. With each word, a surge of excitement built in his veins. Soon he was sitting straight in his chair, rereading, thinking, planning.
“I recognize that expression. You’re going to do something outrageous,” Roderick said, a note of resignation in his voice. “And I’m going to be dragged along, forced to break you out of some prison or find a bottle of your favorite Courvoisier XO Imperial cognac in a remote store that carries little more than six-packs of—” he shuddered “—Schlitz Malt Liquor.”
Ignoring him, Mortimer said, “This town is looking for a sheikh, a prince or a duke to save them from bankruptcy.”
“Is that possible? A town being sold?”
“It happens. Some actor bought a town last year, I think.” Mortimer read on. “Being offered in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is the town of Trouble, Pennsylvania, established 1821.”
A dry chuckle told him what Roderick thought of the name of the place. Most people would probably be put off by it. Mortimer, however, had never been one to retreat, had never liked to ride out of the way to avoid trouble. “This might be just what I need,” he murmured. “They did say they wanted a sheikh.”
He peered out of the corner of his eye, watching for any sign of skepticism from his butler, as he occasionally saw on the faces of others when the subject of some of Mortimer’s adventures arose. There was none, of course. Roderick knew full well that Mortimer had been granted an honorary sheikhdom from the head of a Bedouin tribe after the winter of forty-eight.
“I wonder about the condition of the place, if it’s bankrupt,” Roderick said, reading over his shoulder. “A few buildings, roads and parks for that amount? I should think you’d be able to purchase an entire colony for such a sum.”
“They’re states,” Mortimer said. “Remember that tea party and several years of revolution?”
Roderick lifted a disdainful brow.
Still, the man was correct. The amount named in the ad was not a paltry one. “Well, see here, there is more for the price.” He pointed. “Beyond the courthouse, town hall and fire station, some formerly private buildings are also included.”
“Oh, goody,” Roderick said, his voice as dry as the sawdust-flavored English biscuits he so enjoyed.
Mortimer’s enthusiasm was not dampened as he finished reading the advertisement. “These include a movie theater, photo hut, school, barber shop, a big, furnished house, a gas station, two restaurants—one with working ice-cube maker—and a factory formerly occupied by Stuttgardt Cuckoo Clock Company.”
Roderick sniffed. “How very appropriate.”
“All government buildings are currently in use, all others are closed after bank foreclosure. Also included is the bank.”
Well, that cinched it, didn’t it? His family had been in banking for a hundred years. It was how the Potts family had made their fortune. Which had provided Mortimer with a comfortable inheritance that he’d parlayed into millions through prudent investing and a bit of international intrigue.
Destiny. He was a sheikh. He had the money. He loved trouble. And he would, most assuredly, love Trouble.
“About the boy…”
Mortimer set the paper down. “Is it serious?”
“It may be. He will likely need to do some reevaluating.”
There wasn’t anything Mortimer Potts wouldn’t do for his grandsons. And it suddenly occurred to him that the purchase of his own little Pennsylvania town could help in that respect, too. “You are aware that if I proceed with this, my grandsons are certain to come try to rescue me from my folly.”
Roderick nodded ever so slightly.
“Morgan is preparing to fly off on some assignment for Time magazine. And Michael is doing something quite mysterious, which he referred to as ‘deep undercover’ work.”
That left Max. The rascal. Who would, without doubt, come to Trouble determined to save his grandfather.
Instead, Mortimer hoped, Max would be saving himself.
CHAPTER ONE
PILOTING A TWIN-ENGINE Cessna Citation CJ2+ out of Long Beach Airport in California, Max Taylor was prepared for a lot of things. Bad weather, low visibility, turbulence. He’d dealt with the wind shear off a low-flying commercial airliner. Equipment failure. Hell, even the odd seagull going splat on the windshield or getting sucked up into an engine.
But not this. Not a scene straight out of a bad porn movie. Nothing in his wildest dreams—or darkest nightmares—could have prepared him for a seventy-year-old passenger bursting into his cockpit. Naked. Completely, shockingly naked. “Wha—”
“Mr. Taylor, induct me into the mile-high club!” the gray-haired woman exclaimed, her arms wide, emphasizing the, uh, length of her bustline.
Max’s first thought was to dive back below five thousand feet so they wouldn’t be a mile up. His second was to think that all her millions hadn’t managed to make Mrs. Rudolph Coltrane look as young from the neck down as it had managed to deal with her tightly Botoxed face. And his third was to realize that he was being attacked in his own plane. By a woman old enough to be his grandmother.
“Mrs. Coltrane, what do you think you’re doing?” he asked, somehow managing to keep his voice steady, his hands on the controls and his gaze straight ahead. Not that it was going to do much good—he’d already gotten an eyeful.
Still in shock, Max suspected he was going to have nightmares tonight. Nightmares about the unattractiveness of breast implants going south, and sags that couldn’t be lifted by a crane, much less the best plastic surgeon in L.A.
“I was going to wait until we were higher up, but I can’t,” the woman said. “I’ve waited too long as it is. I know you’re used to a slightly younger woman…”
Decades.
“…but we’re alone now and I’m willing and a man with your…appetites probably can’t go for long without giving in to his carnal urges.”
Currently, Max’s only urge was to jump out of the plane.
“I’ve paid good money for this trip, and I fully expect you to be my in-flight entertainment.”
“That’s what the DVD player is for,” he whispered, shaking his head in bewilderment.
This couldn’t be happening. Not along with all the other weird crap he’d been experiencing lately. A constant stream of women had been driving him nuts for weeks, almost sending him into hiding. He seemed to be the latest fad among the “ladies who lunch” of southern California.
Max had always enjoyed relationships with his fair share of females. Probably the next guy’s fair share, too. He certainly wasn’t going to apologize for liking women.
And he did. Oh, he really did. He liked how they smelled and how they looked. Liked the tender bit of skin at the nape of a lovely neck and the feel of soft hair against his bare chest. Liked tangled sheets, steamy nights and slow, deep kisses.
Careful not to get snagged in any commitment nets—not after his one disastrous experience with marriage and the major screw-up he’d made of his life following his divorce—he only got involved with women who were looking for the same things he was. Intelligent conversation, a few nice meals and, occasionally, scream-like-a-banshee sex. No strings.
Which meant, he supposed, that the strange abundance of propositions coming his way the past few weeks should have been a good thing.
It wasn’t.
Because Max had become much more careful and circumspect about his sex life in recent years. Besides, he had always been the pursuer, not the pursued. He liked flirtation and seduction. A shared glance and the not-completely-innocent brush of a hand against a soft female arm. Charming his way into the good graces of even the most cool and unattainable ice queen gave him a great deal of satisfaction, whether sex was involved or not.
Lately, though, he’d been like a lame zebra being stalked by a pride of hungry lionesses.
He was being felt up by women in line at the bank, and having notes and drinks delivered to him in restaurants. One brunette with about ten carats of diamonds glittering from her fingers had been sitting on the hood of his Porsche last week. He’d been so concerned about possible dents in his car that at first the woman’s lack of panties beneath her short dress hadn’t registered. Once it did, his only reaction had been annoyance that he was also going to have to get the car washed.
“It’s gotta be the cologne,” he muttered, wondering if he was the subject of a secret scientific experiment. Maybe Calvin Klein was slipping some kind of animal secretion into his aftershave. Something that made Max give off irresistible pheromones that turned women into sex-starved vixens.
“Mr. Taylor…”
Or sex-starved bovines.
“Return to your seat,” he said from between clenched teeth. He didn’t look around, focusing instead on the blue sky spread in a brilliant panorama outside the windshield. Not on the age-spotted lady in the doorway spread in an Eve-old invitation. “Get dressed and sit down or I’ll return to the airport.”
“You can’t mean to tell me you’re refusing.” The spoiled, rich socialite wasn’t used to being told no. And as the owner of a young private charter company that was still struggling under last year’s expansion from a four-jet fleet to a six-jet one, he wasn’t used to saying it—not when it came to business.
Max had worked his ass off in the past three years, determined to get himself out of the quagmire his life had become after he’d left the Air Force. After a brief, yearlong bout of drunkenness during his divorce, he’d pulled his shit together and had launched his small, regional airline. It was something he’d dreamed of doing since his teenage years when he first learned to fly over the African desert, taught by one of his grandfather’s cronies.
Since then, his airline had become one of the fastest-growing private carriers in Orange County. Especially with customers like Mrs. Rudolph Coltrane, who freely shelled out major dollars to grab a ride to Vail or down to Cancún.
Of course, he’d always thought he’d be living this life after he finished a career as an Air Force pilot. That hadn’t exactly gone as planned. Don’t go there, he silently reminded himself.
“Look, I’m willing to fly you wherever you want to go,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “As long as it’s within the safety parameters of the aircraft. And sex in the cockpit is not.”
He didn’t go into the whole “I’d rather poke my liver out with a burning pogo stick than have sex with you” bit. Hopefully the woman cared enough for her own skin to sit down.
“Rubbish.”
Okay, apparently she didn’t.
“I know you have autopilot,” she added. “Everyone knows about this airline and your new planes.”
Yeah, they did. Word had spread about Taylor Made until they could barely keep up with demand. So the idea of merging with a large outfit trying to break into the lucrative southern California market had seemed perfect when he’d been approached by a New York executive a few months ago.
The merger was progressing nicely and would be wrapped up later in the year. Determined to make it happen, Max was working double time to keep the business lucrative. He could take a vacation after he had a partner.
Mrs. Coltrane put her hand on his shoulder. “Now, set the autopilot and turn around.”
Pleasing the customer was a top priority in his business, and he didn’t want to alienate someone with as powerful a reputation as Mrs. Coltrane. But despite the special extras and level of excellence he advertised in his promotional material, flying the twin of the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” lady to the heights of passion was not in his job description.
“You’ve got to the count of five, then I radio the tower and we make an immediate landing,” he said, trying to shrug off her hand.
“Don’t be coy. I know all about you.”
He stiffened, having no idea what she meant. “One.”
“Surely you can at least do me the courtesy of a quickie.”
The woman’s indignance would have been laughable if Max’s laughter hadn’t been sucked out of him like spit through a dentist’s tube. “Two.”
“But I thought…”
He reached for the radio handset. “Three.”
“Well,” the woman said with a phlegmy harrumph, “if I don’t have a thing or two to say to Grace Wellington.”
The word four died on Max’s lips as he focused on the name his passenger had uttered. Grace Wellington. What on earth a woman he’d gone out with a few years ago could have to do with Grandma getting naked in his Cessna, he had no idea. But he’d very much like to find out. Especially because he couldn’t help wondering if all the other strange experiences he’d been having with women were also connected to Grace, whom he’d dated briefly after the death of her scandalous politician husband.
“What about Grace?” he couldn’t help asking.
“She’s a liar, that’s what I think,” Mrs. Coltrane said, her tone nasal.
He didn’t have to look over his shoulder—and wouldn’t have for the single winning lottery ticket in the biggest Powerball jackpot in history—to see the woman’s chin jutting up and out, and her nostrils flaring with patrician arrogance. He was familiar with the expression, having seen it on the faces of a lot of his rich, female clients.
Of course, most of them were clothed when they got all haughty and pretentious. Wrinkly nudity probably ruined the effect—not that he wanted to find out.
“I never was certain whether the stories she wrote about you were true—that any man could be as sexually potent and addictive. Now I’m quite sure they’re not.” The woman grunted. “Some sexual fiend you are—a naked woman standing a foot away and you couldn’t even manage a quick game of hide-the-joystick.”
He didn’t know whether to be relieved that she’d given up her seduction attempt, or offended that she thought him incapable of, uh, playing her game. But since the only place he wanted to hide his joystick was behind his own zipper, maybe her interpretation wasn’t such a bad thing.
Then the rest of her words sunk in. Sex fiend? “What stories? What, exactly, are you talking about?”
She was silent for a moment. If he had had a whole lot more nerve, he would have turned around to see if she was wearing a guilty expression at spilling some kind of secret. He wasn’t that brave, however, so he settled for prompting her. “Mrs. Coltrane?”
“You’ll know soon enough, I suppose.” Her voice sounded farther away, meaning she was back in the passenger cabin, hopefully getting dressed. “The book comes out this fall. And there’s talk of a story in the Star or the Globe or something.”
“Book?”
“Grace’s autobiography. Huh! As if that woman is interesting enough to need a whole book. If not for the scandals, it would be nothing more than a page.”
An autobiography. Grace Wellington—spoiled socialite turned scandalous widow after her bribe-taking politician husband had eaten the muzzle of a gun—had written her memoirs. And included him. Damn.
Almost afraid to hear the answer, he asked, “What exactly did Grace have to say about me in this book?”
The woman snorted an inelegant laugh. He realized she’d returned to the cockpit and was right behind him. When she moved her arm within view, he saw the sleeve of her designer blouse and breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“There’s a whole chapter devoted to you, my boy, and it’s been making the rounds. The lurid details are enough to make even the most risqué piece of erotica look tame.”
His stomach rolled over. It hadn’t done that in a cockpit since the first time he’d sat in an F-15 during his Air Force days…the early ones, before an unplanned pregnancy and a fucked-up marriage had derailed his plans to complete the pilot training program. “I can’t believe this.”
He didn’t want to believe it, but Mrs. Coltrane seemed sure of herself. Grace had written a bunch of raunchy stuff about him and circulated it among her highbrow friends. Which explained why he’d become the flavor of the month among the Beverly Hills set.
“The book’s coming out in hardcover in November.”
His temple began to throb as the full implication hit him. A book with a chapter full of sordid stories about him was about to go public. Now. Right when he was entering negotiations to take his company to the next level with a major merger.
God, how he wished he’d never laid eyes—or hands—on Grace Wellington.
“This is wrong.”
His passenger seemed unaware of his dismay. “If the rumors of an accompanying tabloid article are true, I imagine the book will sell well.”
Tabloid article. He felt like throwing up.
“Well, if you’re really not going to provide me with any form of entertainment, you may as well turn around. I want to go home,” Mrs. Coltrane said, her voice sharp with annoyance.
Max didn’t have to be asked twice. Within a half hour they were on the ground and Mrs. Coltrane was flouncing toward the terminal used by the private airlines. Max, meanwhile, stood on the tarmac, cell phone in hand, dialing a familiar number.
His brother Morgan—who lived in New York managing the family assets when he wasn’t off on some wildlife photographic safari—would know what to do. Or at least, who to call. But the minute Morgan answered the phone, Max heard a surprising note of excitement in his normally calm and collected older sibling’s voice.
“Max. You heard?”
“I heard.” He covered his free ear as a small Lear roared to life nearby. “Who’s the best literary attorney you know?”
“Literary?” A crackle of static interrupted, then Max thought Morgan said, “…a real estate attorney!”
Jogging toward the terminal entrance to get better reception, he spoke loudly so his brother could understand. “I don’t want to buy the woman’s house, I want to stop her damn book.” Speaking as he stepped inside, his raised voice garnered the attention of a number of people. This was so not his day.
“A book? Max, I’m talking about Trouble.”
Max strode into the private pilot’s lounge, which was, thankfully, deserted. “Tell me about it. I know I’m in trouble.”
“You are? You’re there? Then you’ve seen him?”
“Seen who?”
“Grandfather.”
Grandfather. Ah…that explained Morgan’s excited mood. If anything could send his level-headed older brother into a tailspin, it was their wildly flamboyant grandfather, the elderly man who’d raised them after their parents died. “Where is he and what has he done now?”
“I just told you, he’s in Trouble.”
“Yeah. I got it. He’s gotten himself into another mess.”
“No.” His brother’s voice was impatient. “You don’t get it. Grandfather is in a small town called Trouble.”
Max had to laugh. Because if there was anywhere Mortimer Potts was destined to be, it was in a town with that dubious name. “Okay. So he’s visiting a weird town. That’s nothing new.”