I Slept With My Enemy, Now He Won't Let Me Go novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Let Him Think He's Winning

The doctor released Neil two days later, on the condition that he did not stand up unless it was necessary.

Jude carried him up the lodge steps anyway.

"The doctor said no stairs," Neil said.

"It's only the porch," Jude said.

"Still stairs."

"I'm thorough."

Winifred had set up the study as a sickroom.

There was a daybed by the window, a quilt, a tray of dry crackers, and a map of Port Harlan harbor pinned to the wall with six red tacks in it.

Britt was already there, eating the crackers.

"Don't look at me like that," she said. "I drove two hours for these."

Winifred closed the door and leaned on her cane in the middle of the rug.

"Sit, all of you," she said. "I'm only going to explain this once, and Jude is going to like it least."

Jude sat on the arm of the daybed, next to Neil's feet.

"Why me?"

"Because you'll want to hit him."

"I do want to hit him."

"Which is exactly what he's counting on." Winifred tapped the first red tack. "Here is what Ansel has. A petition. A lawyer who is owed a favor. Eleven percent of the yard in a holding company, which the board has frozen. And whoever is sending my grandson those messages."

"We think he's the whoever," Britt said.

"We know he is. Knowing and showing are different." Winifred tapped the second tack. "He wants the chair. He wants it in front of the harbor, and he wants Neil to look weak while he takes it. That means he has to do it in public."

"The regatta dinner," Neil said.

"The dinner. Two hundred people. The Gazette. Every board member, every foreman, every family that has built a hull in this harbor since my husband's father." She smiled. "He will have a whole stage, and I intend to let him walk onto it."

"Gran, he'll try to expose me again."

"Of course he will."

"He already did."

"And what happened?" Winifred said.

Neil opened his mouth.

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