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nothing.
    "Cara," she said with concern, "what happened?"
    Cara gave her head a shake, as if to break an unwelcome reverie. "Once Gil got his MBA, he left Philadelphia. He didn't have any real contact with Brandon for over a decade, except for running into him at reunions. But apparently, several years ago, Brandon inherited a huge pile of money from his father. He tried to start up some retail venture with it, but he failed miserably. So when he decided to try again with real estate development, he looked up Gil, whom he knew was a business whiz. Once Gil set him up with the right people, Brandon finally started making some money for himself. But being the reckless oaf that he was, he eventually got greedy and started taking on too much risk. When he went ahead with two deals in a row that Gil had specifically warned him off of, Gil dissolved the relationship."
    Leigh nodded. "And that's when Lyle started getting into financial trouble."
    "Exactly," Cara agreed. "You know the rest. He got into this last development mess all on his own, but when he realized Gil had family ties to Aunt Bess and her church Brandon tried to pull him back in, the same way he tried to use you at Hook. Gil didn't want anything to do with him, but he didn't want him to fail, either—it never looks good for a client to go bankrupt, former or otherwise. So he did what he could, but all the while holding his nose, if you know what I mean."
    Leigh knew.
    Color rose again in Cara's cheeks. "Gil didn't go to that church meeting because Brandon was paying him!" she said defensively. "He wouldn't take another dime from the man; the last thing he needed was to have Lyle's soon-to-be-sullied name back on his client roster. You know why he went—he went because he was afraid things might get ugly, and he was concerned about Aunt Bess."
    Leigh's own cheeks reddened. In her case, out of guilt. Cara wasn't saying so, but it was Leigh's own fault her cousin-in-law had been in attendance at the church last night. She had told Gil about Brandon firing Geralyn and storming out of her office, specifically hoping that Gil might offer to referee. It wasn't either of their jobs to keep Lyle in line anymore, but she knew that Gil, like her, still felt somewhat responsible for the havoc Lyle's development plans were wreaking on Aunt's Bess's neighborhood.
    "You told me the meeting went badly," Leigh asked soberly, "but you never said exactly how."
    Cara shook her head. "According to Gil, it started off fine. Brandon made his presentation; the church members listened. The Council Chair, Sid Kendig, could have opened it up for discussion then, but instead he chose to do a preliminary vote, to see if there was any interest in selling before the meeting went any further. The vote went something like twenty to one in favor of 'Hell, no.' There was applause, and people started to leave. That's when Brandon got upset. He started yelling, telling people that they were fools not to take whatever money was offered, because if they didn't, they would lose the land anyway, by eminent domain."
    Leigh's eyes widened. "I hadn't heard that part. Can he do that?"
    "Gil doesn’t think so," Cara answered. "But no one knew that for sure at the time, and some of the church members got really upset. A couple of them raised their voices back at Brandon, which is when Gil hustled him outside—you know, to cool off."
    Leigh's pulse quickened. She was feeling guiltier by the minute. Chewie, perhaps sensing the rise in tension, hopped off and disappeared behind the raspberry bushes.
    "Of course," Cara continued, "then Brandon got mad at Gil. Told him it was all his fault, that Gil should have been on the project from the beginning, that he shouldn't have let Brandon's other ventures fail. The guy was completely irrational. He started going on about how he was going to ruin Gil's business over this—how he would tell everyone what a fraud Gil's consulting firm was. Of course, there were any