Her Safe Harbor: Prairie Romance (Crawford Family Book 4) Read Free Page B

to receive the credit for her discoveries, and
more than that, she could never describe the elation she felt when facing
hundreds of pages of entries, many so small that it was difficult to read them
and some sloppily written, and the challenge of untangling those rows of
digits.
    Then occasionally, she would allow gloom to descend on her
when faced with the reality that Jeffrey would be mortified if he ever knew she
did this sort of thing, as it appeared that she actually worked for the bank,
and he would never allow it if they married. This passion she felt for numbers
would always transcend any passion he would elicit, even if intimate, she
suspected. How lowering to feel less for the man she was intended to marry than
for crinkled documents with an occasional tea stain.
    Jennifer stopped her reminiscing as she scanned the final
document and began a meticulous accounting of every stock certificate
transaction listed. “Just as you said, not every stock sale garnered the bank
six percent. Some were five percent. How odd. Wouldn’t it make sense for the
bank to charge the same percentage each time?”
    “I don’t really know,” O’Brien said. “Is there someone we
can ask?”
    “My father, I suppose,” Jennifer said. She pulled the stock
certificates that the bank held in collateral from the folder and compared the
hand-stamped serial numbers to the ones on the lists. “These ten were charged
six percent and the remaining twenty-four were charged five percent. How odd.
The dates are random, as well.”
    “Who signed off on the column entry?”
    “Two of the six by two different clerks and four of them by
the same clerk,” Jennifer replied. “But the initials themselves are difficult
to decipher.”
    “So three different clerks. If we can match the initials to
a name, could we ask them why they charged six percent? Could your father?”
    “I hesitate to ask my father before we can say something
definitive. Perhaps there is a way to determine whose initials are whose,”
Jennifer said. “Let us think of way, O’Brien, without revealing why.”

 
    Chapter Two
     
    “It doesn’t seem possible that
you’ve already been here a week, Zebidiah,” Bella Moran said to her brother,
seated at the dining room table in their family home in Athens, Georgia. “I
will miss you more now that I have seen you again after these five years since
mother’s death.”
    “I’m going to get home more often, I promise,” he replied.
    Bella turned from the buffet where she poured her tea, and
arched a brow. She carried her cup to the table and sat down across from her
brother. “No, you will not. You have a life of your own, a very good one, and
successful one, too, that will keep you very busy. And in our country’s
capital, no less, working for a United States senator.”
    “Don’t make it out to be more than it is. I wonder if this
whole thing is a fool’s errand,” he said.
    “Fool’s errand? I don’t think even Father would say that to
his cronies.”
    Zeb smiled ruefully. “I don’t imagine Foster Cummings had
anything good to say.”
    “He asked if you would be raising the Confederate flag when
you got there.”
    “Sounds like him,” Zeb said with a laugh. He looked at his
sister then, all the levity and casualness gone from his face. “I should have
moved back here after Mother died. I shouldn’t have left you alone here to
shoulder the burden. You should marry and have your own family, Bella. Not be
saddled with taking care of Father.”
    She stared at him, and her face turned pink. “What a
horrible thing to say, Zebidiah,” she said with a shaking voice. “How dare you
reduce my life to something pitiful and not of my own making? How dare you?”
    “So you prefer this life, do you? You can’t lie to me,
Bella.”
    “Do you think I begrudge one minute, one second, of the time
I spend helping Father with his work? I don’t. I’m active and useful and
respected. Not all women are so