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Secrets of the Lost Summer
Carla Neggers
New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers returns to her contemporary romance roots with a heartwarming tale of riches lost and found.Beneath the surface lie the greatest treasures. A wave of hope carries Olivia Frost back to her small New England hometown nestled in the beautiful Swift River Valley. She's transforming a historic home into an idyllic getaway. Picturesque and perfect, if only the absentee owner will fix up the eyesore next door….Dylan McCaffrey's ramshackle house is an inheritance he never counted on. It also holds the key to a generations-old lost treasure he can't resist…any more than he can resist his new neighbor.Against this breathtaking landscape, Dylan and Olivia pursue long-buried secrets and discover a mystery wrapped in a love story…past and present.“ forces her characters to confront issues of humanity, integrity and the multifaceted aspects of love…. Here is intelligent writing that remains highly entertaining." —Publishers Weekly


New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers returns to her contemporary romance roots with a heartwarming tale of riches lost and found.
Beneath the surface lie the greatest treasures.
A wave of hope carries Olivia Frost back to her small New England hometown nestled in the beautiful Swift River Valley. She’s transforming a historic home into an idyllic getaway. Picturesque and perfect, if only the absentee owner will fix up the eyesore next door.…
Dylan McCaffrey’s ramshackle house is an inheritance he never counted on. It also holds the key to a generations-old lost treasure he can’t resist…any more than he can resist his new neighbor. Against this breathtaking landscape, Dylan and Olivia pursue long-buried secrets and discover a mystery wrapped in a love story…past and present.
Praise for the novels of


“Readers will be turning the pages so fast
their fingers will burn.… A winner!”
—Susan Elizabeth Phillips on Betrayals
“Worth the wait. Well plotted, with Neggers’s trademark witty dialogue and
crackling sexual tension, this is a keeper.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Whisper
“Brimming with Neggers’s usual flair
for creating likeable, believable characters…
She delivers a colorful, well-spun story.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Carriage House
“Well-drawn characters, complex plotting and plenty of wry humor are the hallmarks of Neggers’s books. Jo and Elijah are very well matched, and readers will root for their romance.”
—RT Book Reviews on Cold Pursuit
“A haunting romantic story.”
—Bookreporter on The Widow
“Showcases the award-winning Ms. Neggers’s unique blend of quirky humor, sizzling romance and engrossing suspense, which combine to produce irresistibly entertaining novels.”
—RT Book Reviews on Finding You
Secrets of the
Lost Summer
Carla Neggers




www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
To Jennifer and Murray McCord
Contents
Chapter One (#ub20fd058-5a5a-5c09-a74e-e8d445730b6d)
Chapter Two (#u54325d5c-9ca0-54cc-894f-495b6bee04a9)
Chapter Three (#u73eb0d38-fcbc-52fe-be21-145ff113753f)
Chapter Four (#u27341247-d07c-5429-a967-dde80d8fe789)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)
One
Olivia Frost dribbled water from a measuring cup onto herb seedlings lined up in tiny pots on the windowsill above her kitchen sink. Parsley, dill, rosemary. The window looked out on the alley behind her Boston Back Bay apartment but received enough sunlight to grow a few herbs.
No sunlight today, she thought, setting the cup in the sink.
Just when New Englanders hoped they could put away their hats, gloves and boots, March had decided to turn into a lion again. The weather forecast promised the dreaded “wintry mix” by early afternoon.
Olivia sighed at the fresh green of the herbs. She didn’t hate winter but she was ready for spring. March had less than two weeks to turn into a lamb and usher in April showers and May flowers. She couldn’t wait to drive out to the hills and quiet back roads of Knights Bridge, her out-of-the-way hometown west of Boston, and plant her herbs at the early nineteenth-century house she’d bought last fall. The purchase had felt impulsive, but the owners, desperate to make a quick sale, had offered her a great deal. She had never been one for extravagant spending and kept her expenses as low as possible in Boston. Instead, she had saved her money and was able to snap up her historic house, as picturesque as her hometown itself.
Except for the eyesore just up the road, but that was a problem for another day.
She had enough problems for today.
“Challenges,” she said aloud, turning from the sink. “Challenges, not problems.”
She was already dressed for work, opting for a black skirt and blue merino sweater. She’d add what she needed to accommodate the weather, but she had a client lunch—a critical client lunch—and wanted to dress less casually than when she knew she’d be holed up at her desk all day.
She’d been too keyed up to sit at the table for breakfast, instead downing coffee and a bowl of oatmeal with walnuts at the sink. She liked her apartment, even if it was small and overlooked an alley. When she’d moved to the city five years ago, she had talked her landlord into letting her paint the walls and woodwork, choosing cozy, cheerful colors—misty-greens, rosy-pinks, summer- cloud whites—to offset the dreary light. On her way home from work last night, she’d picked up a dozen pink tulips and divided them between two glass pitchers and placed one on the kitchen table and the other on the dresser in her bedroom.
Tulips and herbs. Olivia smiled to herself. All would be well.
With a deep breath, she walked through the adjoining living room. The wood floor and her sofa were stacked with books on herbs, artisan soap-making, landscaping, old houses and painting furniture. All winter, she had half dreamed, half plotted how she could convert her historic house into a destination for weddings, showers, lunches and small one-day conferences—eventually, perhaps, into an overnight getaway.
She hadn’t thought of her notes and plans as distractions, but maybe they were. Maybe, in part, they were the reason today’s lunch was so critical.
She reached into the closet by the front door and reluctantly got out her scarf and coat, a full-length blend of black wool and cashmere that she planned to wear for years. She skipped gloves. She didn’t care about sleet, snow and freezing rain. It was mid-March, and she wasn’t wearing gloves.
Her iPhone dinged and she saw she had an email from Marilyn Bryson, another graphic designer and one of her best friends.
Hey, Liv. I can’t get together while I’m in town after all. I’m so busy these days I can hardly breathe! I love what I’m doing. I look forward to getting up every morning. I can’t wait to go to work. xo Marilyn
Olivia noticed Marilyn didn’t mention when they might get together or ask about her, but she pushed back any disappointment and typed a quick response.
Glad to hear all is well. Have a fun time!
That was diplomatic, she decided, glancing in the small mirror she had positioned by the door after reading a book on feng shui. Her dark, shoulder-length hair was still slightly damp from her shower. She’d fussed with her makeup more than usual, but it was still understated. She would have to remind herself to put on fresh lip gloss before her lunch.
With another deep breath, she headed out, making her way down the steps of her building, a former single-family house, to Marlborough Street. Gray clouds had descended over the city, but there was no precipitation yet. Olivia tried to focus on her familiar routine. Her lunch was with Roger Bailey of Bailey Architecture and Interior Design, her biggest client. Something was off in their recent communications, and she was worried he was about to jump ship and had scheduled a face-to-face meeting.
The wind picked up as she walked to her building, a five-story brick bowfront just past Copley Square. Roger wanted to refresh the look for his company and she assumed—no, she thought, he’d told her—that he wanted her to take on the job. Landing his Boston-based firm as a client two years ago had been her first high-profile achievement as a graphic designer, and her work for them had won awards. She and Roger had hit it off from the start. Losing him as a client wouldn’t be good.
Jacqui Ackerman, the slim, fifty-four-year-old owner of Ackerman Design, one of Boston’s most prestigious studios, greeted Olivia with a quick “good morning,” then disappeared into her first-floor office. Olivia tried not to read anything into Jacqui’s behavior. She could be in a hurry. She could have a client on hold.
Olivia walked back to her own office and switched on her computer as she pulled off her coat and scarf. She had several small projects that she could clear off her desk this morning, and she’d go over her Bailey Architecture and Interior Design files before lunch, so that everything would be fresh in her mind when she met with Roger.
Three hours later, as Olivia reached for her coat to head to her lunch with Roger, she received a text message from his secretary: Roger has an unexpected conflict and can’t make lunch. He apologizes and will call tomorrow.
Olivia stood frozen by the coatrack. The secretary couldn’t call? Did that mean the cancellation wasn’t that big a deal—or that it was a huge deal?
In the past, Roger would have called or texted himself.
“This can’t be good,” Olivia said under her breath.
Bailey Architecture and Interior Design was not only her biggest and most prestigious client, it was one of the biggest and most prestigious for the studio. The last thing Jacqui would want would be for a defection of that magnitude to start a stampede out the door.
Taking a moment to pull herself together, Olivia put her coat on, anyway, then finally texted the secretary back: You caught me just in time. Thanks, and let Roger know I look forward to speaking with him.
She slid her iPhone into her handbag and left, grateful that she didn’t run into Jacqui or anyone else she knew. It was just as well Marilyn couldn’t get together while she was in town. Olivia had to admit she was too preoccupied with her own problems and wasn’t in the mood to see her friend. Marilyn had worked hard to revitalize her own graphic design career—with Olivia’s help. Marilyn had been stuck at a mediocre agency in Providence. She hadn’t been bringing in clients—never mind top clients—and her work hadn’t been setting anyone on fire. Last fall, she had asked Olivia’s advice on how to break through, and together they had mapped out a Marilyn Bryson career revitalization plan.
It worked, too, Olivia thought as she crossed the street and walked toward Copley Square, not even certain where she was going. The wind was biting, bringing with it sprays of cold rain mixed with sleet. She pulled her scarf over her head and tucked in her chin, rushing with a small crowd across Boylston Street.
From November to mid-January, Marilyn had called almost every day and often emailed throughout the day and into the evening. She was focused, determined, hardworking and open to constructive criticism and advice from wherever she could get them. Olivia had admired her friend’s resilience, her insights, her dedication to her work.
“When I’m successful,” Marilyn would say, “I’m getting all new friends.”
A joke, of course. An irreverent way for her to deal with her uncertain situation. She and Olivia had met at a graphic design and digital media conference in Boston not long after Olivia had started at Ackerman Design and had been friends ever since.
Not only did Marilyn revitalize her career, she opened her own studio in February, immediately wowing everyone. It was as if she had reached critical mass—a tipping point—and her success only brought more success. No longer in need of advice and moral support, enormously busy with her work, she got in touch with Olivia less and less frequently and took longer to respond when Olivia initiated contact. Visits to Boston and invitations to Providence for late-into-the-evening brainstorming ended. By early March, Olivia realized their friendship was in a lull if not in jeopardy, and she backed off, letting Marilyn take the lead.
Nothing happened. Marilyn disappeared, until the email two days ago that she would be in Boston this week and would love to get together. Then came this morning’s email, canceling.
Olivia turned into the wind on Newbury Street and half wished she’d woken up with a sore throat and had just stayed home and planted more herbs, but it wouldn’t have changed anything. She continued down the block, finally reaching one of her favorite restaurants. She descended concrete steps to a small open-air terrace that in warm weather would be filled with diners. It was empty now, a few handfuls of salt and sand scattered on the concrete. The interior of the restaurant, however, was crowded with people who had braved the lousy weather.
Lowering her scarf, Olivia pushed open the glass door. She would enjoy a pleasant lunch by herself and think about how to restart her own career if Roger defected. She couldn’t deny reality any longer. He was on his way out. The signs were there.
The cold, wet wind followed her inside as the door shut behind her. Then again, maybe she’d just never mind her high-stress, competitive career for an hour and think about her herb garden and the color scheme for her house in Knights Bridge. She had never been one to stay in a rotten mood for long. Even if she wasn’t as super-hot as she’d been two years ago, she was still an established, respected designer. Designers and studios lost clients all the time. It was the nature of the business. Why should she be exempt?
She unbuttoned her coat and pulled off her scarf. She was looking forward to warming up with a pasta sampler plate and salving her wounded ego with a glass of Chianti.
The bartender, a slender, black-haired man, waved to her as he filled three glasses in front of him with red wine. The restaurant was narrow, with small tables lined up along a brick wall on one side and a dark-red painted plaster wall on the other, both walls decorated with inviting black-framed prints of Tuscany. Five years ago, Olivia had celebrated her first night in Boston at a table in the far corner. She hadn’t known if she would last six months in her graphic design job, but she was still there, still working.
She noticed that the far-corner table was open, but as she started to take off her coat, her gaze fell on a man and a woman seated across from each other halfway down the brick wall.
Olivia didn’t need to look twice. The woman had her back to the entrance, but Olivia recognized Marilyn Bryson from her glistening pale hair and the way her hands moved when she was animated and trying to make a point. The man was even easier. He faced the entrance where Olivia was standing, coat and scarf half off. She only needed a glimpse to recognize stocky, gray-haired Roger Bailey.
She was positive that Roger and Marilyn hadn’t seen her.
They couldn’t see her.
Olivia had never been good at the small social lie and knew she couldn’t come up with one now, under pressure. Instead, she mumbled something unintelligible to the bartender, then fled, pushing past a couple coming through the door. Ignoring the icy conditions, she raced up the steps back out to the street.
Out of sight of anyone in the restaurant, she adjusted her scarf and debated her options. Just go back to work? How could she? She’d have to tell Jacqui what she’d just witnessed.
Unless Jacqui already knew.
Olivia headed up Newbury Street, not slackening her pace until she reached the corner. She paused to catch her breath and button her coat. Wind whipped sleet into her face and onto the clothes she’d carefully chosen for the meeting that had never happened. She shivered, blaming the tears in her eyes on the sharp wind and cold, even as a sudden sense of dejection and demoralization sank over her. Losing a major client to a stranger would be bad enough…but to a friend?
“Olivia!”
She pretended not to hear Marilyn behind her. The light changed, and she crossed the street at her normal pace, not wanting to look as if she were upset or fleeing from anything.
Marilyn caught up with her on the opposite corner. She hadn’t grabbed her coat and already looked cold. “I thought that was you.” She reached out a hand but didn’t quite touch Olivia. “Are you okay? You ran out so fast—”
“I got a text message from a client,” Olivia said quickly, hating to lie, suspecting she sounded phony. “It’s nice to see you. I have to run, though.” She faked a smile. “Just as well with this weather. Enjoy your lunch.”
“It’s with Roger Bailey, Liv. I should have told you but I didn’t know what to say.”
“He called you?”
Marilyn lowered her hand, and her eyes, their vivid blue enhanced by contact lenses, shifted back toward the restaurant, then focused again on Olivia. “We agreed to have lunch. This was the only place I could think of on short notice.”
It was an evasive answer. Olivia forced herself to nod. “Tell Roger I said hi.”
“I’ll do that. It’s good to see you, Liv. Everything’s going so well for me right now that I just haven’t had time—”
“I understand. I’m glad you’re doing well, Marilyn. I have to go.”
“Call me anytime.”
Olivia didn’t respond as she continued down the street. After half a block, she glanced back, but Marilyn was already out of view, in the restaurant that she knew was Olivia’s personal favorite. Had Marilyn chosen it, risking that her friend might walk in, or just figuring she wouldn’t?
Why had Marilyn chosen the restaurant and not Roger?
Did it even matter?
Olivia shoved her hands into her pockets, wishing now she’d worn gloves. She could see sleet collecting on the sidewalk and car windshields. She turned stiffly off Newbury toward Commonwealth Avenue.
Think about spring wildflowers. Trillium and lady’s slippers, jack-in-the-pulpit, wild geraniums....
She lost her footing in a slick spot, dispelling any image of wildflowers trying to take form. She and Marilyn had developed a pattern in their friendship of focusing on Marilyn—her work, her problems, her accomplishments. Olivia hadn’t felt any great need to talk about herself or break out champagne over her own accomplishments, but it was more than that. She saw that now, if too late.
Intellectually, she knew that her own situation had nothing to do with the turnaround in Marilyn’s career. Every career, Olivia told herself, went through downturns and she would get through whatever was coming at her. She rarely discussed her career with Marilyn. She tended to be more private, and Marilyn was busy, caught up in her newfound success and focused on herself and her own career. She had said repeatedly that she couldn’t allow distractions. It was easy to think she had pulled back from their friendship once Olivia was no longer of use, but Olivia doubted it was that simple.
Until just now. Seeing Marilyn with Roger Bailey had Olivia reeling. Had Marilyn actually targeted a friend’s major client?
The wind eased as Olivia came to Commonwealth, one of her favorite streets in Boston. She waited for the light, then crossed the wide avenue in front of a line of stopped cars, their headlights glowing in the gray, their windshield wipers grinding steadily against the unrelenting rain and sleet. Only the buds on Commonwealth’s dozens of magnolias suggested that spring had, indeed, arrived and was just having a setback.
Olivia smiled to herself. “I can identify.”
She had seldom taken time to celebrate when she was Boston’s hot designer. Now she couldn’t help but wonder if she would ever have another reason to break out the champagne.
Well, she thought, she would just have to make up a reason—like getting parsley, rosemary and dill to grow in pots in her city window. Wasn’t that reason enough to open a bottle of bubbly?
The attempt at boosting her mood failed. She’d just walked into a restaurant and caught her biggest client blowing her off to have lunch with another designer—who happened to be one of her closest friends.
Not happened to be. Marilyn knew about Roger because of her friendship with Olivia.
Marilyn knew that what she was doing was unethical.
If Roger Bailey was in her orbit, who was next?
Olivia couldn’t deny the reality of her situation. It wouldn’t take many more Roger Baileys for her career to spiral into an outright tailspin.
She reminded herself that how she felt about today was for her to decide. Roger was making a business decision. The meaning she gave it was her choice. She was a professional, right? A positive person, right?
A dog walker, a graduate student who lived in her building, breezed past her with five tongue-wagging dogs of various sizes and breeds. He smiled in greeting but didn’t pause as he and the dogs barreled toward Commonwealth, all of them looking unperturbed by the weather.
Olivia laughed as she watched them retreat.
Nothing like a quintet of happy dogs to lift the spirits. Her family had always had golden retrievers back in Knights Bridge.
Her father had warned her about Marilyn when he’d met her on one of his rare visits to Boston. “She’s using you, Liv,” he’d said, cutting right to the chase.
That was Randy Frost. He denied he was cynical, instead insisting he had a realistic view of human nature. Olivia hadn’t listened. She was the one who knew Marilyn. Marilyn was driven and ambitious, but those weren’t offenses in their world.
When Olivia reached her apartment, she shed her coat and scarf and left them in a heap by the door and walked in her stocking feet to her galley kitchen. She had pulled wool socks on over her black tights, but no one else could see them. She had wanted her lunch with Roger Bailey to go well. She had worked on fresh concepts and was ready to listen, get his thoughts on what he was looking for.
Instead, their lunch hadn’t happened at all.
No, she amended. It had happened with Marilyn.
Olivia opened her refrigerator. She didn’t have a bottle of champagne chilling, or anything she wanted to eat, either.
She wasn’t hungry, anyway, she thought, shutting the refrigerator again. Her herbs looked cold on the windowsill. She raked one hand through her hair, damp from the sleet and rain. How could she go back to work and tell Jacqui Ackerman what had just happened?
She heard her iPhone ding and went back to the door and unearthed her handbag. She pulled her iPhone out of the outer pocket and glanced at the screen, hoping for a minor distraction—the latest from J.Crew or L.L.Bean—but, her day being what it was, she saw it was an email from Peter Martin, a digital marketing specialist she had dated last summer. He’d taken a job in Seattle in September, and that was that. He and Olivia had never been that serious, but the thought of relocating to the West Coast had seemed as out of the realm of possibility as her signing up to be an astronaut.
She couldn’t help but read his email.
Can you send me Marilyn’s phone number and email? I have a client I’d like her to talk to.
Olivia started to respond, then realized she was out of her mind and deleted the email. Feeling faintly as if she’d done something wrong, she shoved the phone back in her bag. She dreaded going back to her office. She’d have to tell Jacqui what was going on. Olivia reached into the closet for a dry scarf. Last fall, when she and Marilyn were still regularly laughing and bitching over wine and takeout, plotting Marilyn’s career revival, had her friend been envious, tapping Olivia for her contacts, expertise, insights and energy but secretly hating her for her success? Had Marilyn always planned to dump her as a friend once her own career took off?
Olivia wasn’t sure she wanted answers. They were moot questions now, anyway.
“Make friends with a plumber or a kindergarten teacher or something,” her father had advised. “Forget other designers. They’re your competition.”
It wasn’t how Olivia viewed herself or the creative world in which she operated, but now she wondered if he didn’t have a point.
She loved her little apartment and she loved Boston, but as she lifted her winter coat, she knew she was done. It was spring. The wintry weather would end. The magnolias would soon be in bloom on Commonwealth Avenue. All would be well, she thought as she put on her coat. She’d head back to work, but as she locked her apartment door behind her, she pictured the herbs on the windowsill and knew, deep in her gut, that it was time to make a change.
It was time to go home to Knights Bridge.
Olivia didn’t wait. She got busy that night, packing her books and calling her sister to borrow her truck. The next morning, she gave Jacqui official notice. Jacqui asked her to stay, but she also indicated she was open to having Olivia freelance. Roger Bailey had finally called, first Olivia, then Jacqui, to explain his defection to Marilyn Bryson. He insisted it wasn’t a reflection on Olivia’s work. He just needed a fresh eye.
Jacqui was obviously disappointed but also philosophical. “You know this business, Liv. The only constant is change.”
She did know.
A week later, when Jessica Frost arrived on Marlborough Street in her pickup truck, Olivia had what she wanted from her apartment ready to go. She and Jess would load everything into the truck themselves.
“I don’t know how you lasted here all this time,” Jess said as a cockroach scurried across the kitchen floor.
Olivia smiled. “It’s only the occasional cockroach. I think it’s because I stirred things up in here when I started packing.”
“Oh, that’s reassuring.”
Jess, eighteen months younger, was blunt to a fault, as pragmatic as their father and as caring as their mother. She wore a faded blue plaid flannel shirt over jeans that were baggy on her slender frame. Her hair, as dark as Olivia’s, was chin length but still managed to look wild and unruly. Her eyes were flat-out green, not Olivia’s hazel mix. Her sister’s one concession to not looking as if she had just stepped out of a barn was a silver Celtic-knot necklace, a present from Mark Flanagan, a Knights Bridge architect who specialized in historic preservation and restoration. Olivia, and no doubt everyone else in town, expected an engagement ring would be forthcoming.
It was Mark who had introduced Olivia to Roger Bailey in the first place.
“How long are you keeping your apartment?” Jess asked.
“Through April, at least. I’ll be freelancing for a while, but my landlord won’t have trouble finding another renter when the time comes.”
“You’ll miss Boston.”
“It’s not even two hours from Knights Bridge. I’m not moving to Tucson.”
Jess lifted a box of dishes. “Have you decided on a name for this getaway of yours?”
“I have. I’m calling it The Farm at Carriage Hill. What do you think?”
“Love it.” Jess headed through the kitchen into the living room with her box, but stopped abruptly at a large open box on the floor. She glanced back at Olivia. “Why do you have a hundred sets of sheets?”
Olivia smiled at her sister’s exaggeration. It was at most fifty sheets—a lot, she knew, by most standards. “They’re antique sheets. I’ve been collecting them at flea markets and yard sales and such.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“I don’t know. Something will come to me.”
Jess shrugged. “You’re the one with the creative flair.”
When they finished loading the truck, they threw a blue tarp over the back and secured it with bungee cords as best they could. Olivia could have hired a mover but why spend the money? She had always watched her expenses. A good thing, she thought, now that she wasn’t drawing a regular paycheck. In the back of her mind, especially lately, she had known she would go back to her hometown one day and start her own business. Over the past week she had wondered if that was part of the reason she hadn’t experienced the kind of explosive success Marilyn was enjoying. Then she reminded herself that she had enjoyed great success and was still a sought-after designer.
Her sister was frowning at her and Olivia forced herself to stop thinking about the past. She couldn’t let Marilyn get to her. Marilyn was a superb designer. Her work was striking a chord with people. Olivia didn’t want anything bad to happen to a friend, even if that friend had betrayed her trust and dropped her once she was no longer of use.
She’d just learn to watch her back.
“No one’s here to see you off?” Jess asked.
“It’s a workday and I’m not going far.”
As she pulled open the passenger door, Olivia felt a sense of excitement tempered by no small measure of uncertainty at what lay ahead. Maybe on some level she was running from failure and disappointment, but she was also running to something. A new life. A new set of challenges.
“All set,” Jess said, climbing in on the driver’s side. She gave her sister a sideways glance. “Are you sure you don’t want to change your mind?”
“Positive.”
“It’s warmer here than at home. We still have snow on the ground.”
Olivia settled into the passenger seat with her little pots of herb seedlings on her lap. The dill was tall enough to tickle her chin. “I know, Jess. I was just there.”
“All right, then. Let’s go.” Jess was still obviously unconvinced. “Olivia, are you sure—”
“I’m sure.”
“Nothing’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Liv—”
“It’s just time to make a change, Jess. That’s all.”
Her sister gripped the steering wheel. “It’s Marilyn Bryson, isn’t it? She’s done something. Flaming narcissist. Never mind. You’ll tell me if you want to. I’m not going to pry.”
Olivia said nothing, watching out her window as urban sprawl gave way to rolling hills and fields.
The Farm at Carriage Hill…
It was perfect, she thought. Just perfect.
A winding, off-the-beaten track road led from the main highway to Knights Bridge, often cited as one of the prettiest villages in New England. Situated on the edge of the Quabbin Reservoir and its protected watershed, the village had changed little in the past century, at least in appearance. Olivia watched the familiar landmarks pass by: the white church, the brick library, the town hall, the general store, the school, the pristine town common surrounded by classic houses, the oldest built in 1794, the newest in 1912. When her historic house came onto the market in October, the idea of converting it into a getaway had seemed more like a fantasy than a realistic goal. Regardless, she had expected to keep her job and apartment in Boston for the foreseeable future.
Jess was silent as she turned onto a narrow road just past the village center and navigated a series of potholes as they came to an intersection with an even narrower road. Olivia grimaced at the run-down house on the corner. The whole place had become an eyesore. The house, built in 1842, was in desperate need of repair, its narrow white clapboards peeling, sections missing from its black shutters, its roof sagging. If possible, the yard was worse, overgrown and littered with junk.
Its one redeeming feature was its location, one of the most beautiful and desirable in Knights Bridge with its sloping lawn, mature shade trees, lilacs, mountain laurel, surrounding fields and woods—and, peeking in the distance, the crystal-clear waters of the Quabbin Reservoir.
Jess downshifted as she turned onto the quiet one-lane road. They were only two miles from the village center, but it seemed farther. “Mark says the house should be condemned.”
“At least someone should clear the junk out of the yard. Grace hasn’t seen it, has she? She’d be devastated.”
“I don’t think she’s been back here since she moved out.”
Olivia noticed a rusted refrigerator on its side amid brambles, melting snow and brown, wet leaves. Whoever had bought the house two years ago from Grace Webster, a retired English and Latin teacher, hadn’t done a thing to it.
“How did a refrigerator end up in the yard?” Olivia asked.
“I don’t know,” Jess said. “Kids, probably. The house has sat empty for two years. There’s a washing machine, too.”
Indeed there was.
Olivia had asked her friend Maggie O’Dunn, a local caterer, to find out what she could about the absentee owner. So far, Maggie had discovered only that it was an older gentleman from out west. California, probably. Maggie, however, was sure that her mother, Elly, who worked at the town offices, could produce a name and address.
“Why would someone from California buy a house in Knights Bridge and then disappear?” Olivia asked.
Jess shook her head. “No idea.”
The Websters had moved to Knights Bridge more than seventy years ago, after they were forced out of their home in one of the Swift River Valley towns that was depopulated and flooded for the reservoir. Grace was a teenager then. She never married and lived in her family home alone until a small assisted living facility opened in town and she finally decided to move.
Olivia pondered the situation as the truck rattled down the road to her own house, a gem set among open fields, stone walls and traditional, well-established landscaping. When the house was built in 1803, the road wound into a pretty valley village, now under water. These days the road led to a Quabbin gate, then through what was now a wilderness and eventually straight into the reservoir itself, a reminder that, as beautiful as it was, it was a product of both man and nature.
Jess pulled into the gravel driveway. “Do you want to wait for Dad and Mark to get off work, or shall we unload the truck ourselves?”
“We loaded it ourselves. We can unload it. Unless you have something else you need to do—”
“Nope. I’m all yours for the day.”
“Thanks, Jess.”
“No problem. It’ll be great having you back in town.”
Olivia got out of the truck, herb seedlings cuddled in her arms like little babies. The air was cold, clean, smelling faintly of wet leaves. “Home sweet home,” she whispered, even as she felt a stab of panic at the uncertainty of her future.
Jess joined her on the driveway. “It’s so quiet here. You’re close to the village, but that way…” She paused and gestured down the road, toward Quabbin. “That way, Liv, it’s nothing but wilderness and water for miles and miles.”
Olivia smiled. “I know. It’s perfect.”
“So you say now. Wait until it’s two o’clock on a moonless night, and it’s just you out here with the bats, bears, eagles and mountain lions.”
“There’s been no confirmed sighting of mountain lions yet in Quabbin.”
“I wouldn’t want you to be the first to see one,” Jess said with a grin.
They went inside before unloading the truck. The rustic, homey kitchen, in an ell off the original 1803 structure, was washed in the bright midday light. Her friend Maggie had left a lunch basket and a milk-glass pitcher of forced forsythia on the table, a square, battered piece of junk Olivia had discovered at a yard sale and repaired and painted a warm, cheerful white.
She felt some of her tension ease. It was almost as if the forsythia were smiling at her. Suddenly she couldn’t wait to get her stuff from Boston into the house and make it feel like home.
Jess lifted chocolate chip cookies, apples and cloth napkins out of the basket. “Lunch first, or unload the truck first?”
Olivia opened the refrigerator and found sandwiches and a mason jar of tea. She grinned at her sister. “I’m starving. My question is whether we have the cookies first or the sandwiches first.”
Jess handed her an index card she found in the basket. “Maggie left you a note.”
Olivia glanced at her friend’s messy handwriting: Mom came through with info on the owner of Grace Webster’s old house.
Maggie had jotted down a name and address.
“Dylan McCaffrey,” Olivia said, not recognizing the name. “Ever hear of him, Jess?”
Her sister bit into an apple. “Uh-uh.”
It was a San Diego address. Far away for the owner of a wreck of a house in Knights Bridge to be living.
Olivia slid the card under the edge of the pitcher of forsythia. She didn’t care where Dylan McCaffrey lived or why he’d bought the house up the road. She just wanted him to clean up the place.
Two
The note was handwritten on a simple yet elegant white card decorated with a sprig of purple clover. It came with a half-dozen color photographs in a matching envelope, also with a clover sprig. Dylan McCaffrey pushed back his chair, put his size-twelve leather shoes on his desk and contemplated his twentieth-story view of San Diego, which, on a good day, such as today, was nothing short of breathtaking.
Who the hell was Olivia Frost, and where the hell was Knights Bridge, Massachusetts?
Dylan read the note again. The handwriting was neat, legible and feminine, done in forest-green ink—probably a fountain pen.
Dear Mr. McCaffrey,
We’ve never met, but I’m your neighbor in Knights Bridge. I own the center-chimney 1803 house just down the road from your house.
Dylan stopped right there. What was a center-chimney house, and why was he supposed to care?
He gritted his teeth and continued reading:
You might not be aware of this, but your house is in rough shape. The structure itself isn’t my concern, but the yard is. It’s overgrown and strewn with junk, including, as you can see from the enclosed photographs, a discarded refrigerator.
He had lined up the photographs side by side on his dark wood desk. He glanced at the leftmost one. It did, in fact, show a rusted white refrigerator cast on its side amid brambles and melting snow. The fridge had to be at least thirty years old. Maybe older. He wasn’t an expert on refrigerators.
He returned to the note:
I understand if you’re unable to clean up the yard yourself and would like to offer to do it myself, with your permission. Of course, I’ll waive any liability if I get hurt, and if I find anything of value, I’ll let you know.
My family runs a small business in town that specializes in architectural reproductions and components—doors, windows, mantels and so forth. We’ve been in Knights Bridge for generations. I would hate to get the town involved in this matter. I look forward to putting it behind us and meeting you one day soon.
Thank you so much,
Olivia Frost
Whoever she was, Dylan suspected Olivia Frost thought the man she was writing to was old, or at least feeble. He was neither. He had to admire how she managed to offer help at the same time she threatened to sic the town on him, an outsider. His main issue with her note, however, was more immediate and direct.
He didn’t own property in Knights Bridge, Massachusetts.
He dropped his feet back to the floor and tapped a few keys on his laptop, pinpointing the town on a map of Massachusetts. It was on the northern edge of what appeared to be a large lake, the largest by far in the small New England state.
He sat back.
Knights Bridge and Olivia Frost still didn’t ring any bells.
He was about to zoom in for a closer view when Noah Kendrick entered the sprawling corner office. The door was open. Noah and Dylan had been best friends since first grade in a Los Angeles suburb. Noah, the genius geek. Dylan, the C-student hockey player. Now they were business partners, except it wasn’t that simple. Dylan owed Noah his livelihood and maybe even his life. Noah said the same thing about Dylan, but it wasn’t true and they both knew it. NAK, Inc., was Noah’s brainchild, a four-year-old, highly profitable high-tech entertainment software company named for him—Noah Andrew Kendrick. Dylan had just helped put it together and keep it together. He knew how to fight. Noah didn’t.
“What’s up?” Noah asked.
Noah had on, as always, a black suit. He didn’t care that he looked like an undertaker. He thought black made him look older and tougher. He was thirty-three, but even in his suit, he looked much younger. He was fair and angular and had to be coaxed into sunlight. He was deceptively tough and fit—a fencer and a brown belt in karate.
Dylan was the opposite. He was thirty-four but looked older. He and Noah had met in first grade and graduated high school the same year, but Dylan had repeated kindergarten after his mother decided she should have held him back a year to begin with. The school didn’t disagree. Everyone said it was because of his September birthday. Maybe, but he’d never been a great student.
He’d discovered ice hockey in fifth grade. No looking back after that. After twenty years on the ice, finishing up in the NHL three years ago, he was fit, scarred and lucky to have all his teeth. He could clean up a yard in New England if he needed to, even a yard with a refrigerator in the brambles.
Unlike Noah, Dylan wore jeans and a sweater. No suit, black or otherwise, today. He only donned a suit when necessary, such as when he had to be a fly on the wall for one of Noah’s meetings and warn him that someone was a jackass who should be thrown out the nearest window.
Not that Dylan had ever thrown anyone out a window or ever would. He could give the heave-ho to most people he met. He knew how, and he had the strength. His gift, however, was his keen instinct—at least compared to Noah—for people who were looking to cause trouble.
He sighed at his friend. “I didn’t buy a farm in Massachusetts when I was drinking Guinness one night, did I?”
“Not that I recall. Have you ever been to Massachusetts?”
“Boston Garden when we played the Bruins. Since then, I’ve visited Alec Wiskovich a few times. He’s a former teammate. Otherwise…that’s it.”
Noah leaned over his shoulder. “Go to street view.”
Dylan did, and in a moment a quaint village with clapboard houses and shade trees materialized on his screen.
“No horses and buggies, at least,” Noah said. “Who’s the letter from?”
“Louisa May Alcott.” Dylan handed over the note card.
Noah gave a low, amused whistle as he read. “Do you have a great-uncle Dylan McCaffrey? Maybe Olivia Frost confused you with him.”
“No.”
Noah, of course, knew that Dylan had no family left on the McCaffrey side. His father, an only child, had died two years ago. His grandparents were gone, too.
“Maybe it’s a long-lost uncle,” Noah said, placing the note next to the photos lined up on Dylan’s desk. “I bet Miss Frost will fly out here and smack your hand with a ruler if you don’t clean up the place. What’s The Farm at Carriage Hill?”
“The what?”
“It’s on the card. See?”
Noah tapped a finger on the back of the note card, The Farm at Carriage Hill printed in dark purple lettering. Dylan had missed it. He did a quick search but nothing came up anywhere in Massachusetts, never mind Knights Bridge.
“I guess a farm would explain the chives on the front of the card,” Noah said.
“I thought it was clover.”
“Chives are more romantic than clover, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever thought about chives or clover.”
Noah grinned. “Good luck. Let me know if you need my help.”
“With moving the refrigerator or figuring out why Olivia Frost thinks I own this house?”
“Either one,” Noah said.
He withdrew from Dylan’s office. His own was just down the hall, at least for the moment. NAK had gone public late last year. He and Noah had both made a fortune in the process, but NAK as a public company was different from it as a private company. The tight team of the early years was transforming into something else, and Dylan wasn’t sure what his new role would be, or if he’d have one. He’d always been willing to walk away when Noah no longer needed him.
He looked out at the view of his adopted city and dialed Loretta Wrentham, his lawyer and financial manager.
He worked for another two hours, then drove out to his house on Coronado Island, a two-story tan stucco built in the 1950s. Kidney-shaped pool out back, the Pacific in front. Loretta arrived thirty minutes later, glanced at the note card and photographs from Olivia Frost that he’d arranged on his coffee table, then walked straight across the living room to the beveled glass door that led onto his front porch. At five-nine, Loretta was almost as tall as he was, slender and impeccably dressed. Her silver curls were cut short, emphasizing her wide brown eyes, high cheekbones and strong chin.
“You inherited the house from your father,” she said, cracking open the door. She wore expensive jeans, a silky top and heels that didn’t seem to bother her but would kill most other women half her age. She glanced back at him. “I assumed you knew.”
“How would I know?”
“He was your father, Dylan. Didn’t you two talk about these things?”
“No. What about a mortgage?”
“There isn’t one. He paid cash. It wasn’t an expensive property.”
“What about property taxes? What about upkeep?”
“I’ve paid property taxes on your behalf. They’re not high. Upkeep…” Loretta grimaced. “No one’s lived in the house for a while. It was unoccupied when your father bought it shortly before his untimely death. Upkeep is minimal, just enough to prevent the pipes from freezing.”
“Who was the original owner?”
“A woman by the name of Grace Webster. I should say she’s the most recent owner. The house was built in 1842. The original owner would be dead by now for sure.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Loretta grinned as she pushed the door open wide. “Oh, yes.”
Dylan leaned against the back of the couch. His house, a few blocks from the famed Hotel del Coronado, was professionally decorated in shades of cream and brown. Restful and sophisticated, supposedly. The yard, too, was professionally landscaped. No junk.
“What do you know about this Grace Webster?” he asked.
“Not much. She’s in her nineties.” Loretta stepped onto the porch, her back to him as she took in the view of the Pacific. Finally she turned to him. “Her father bought the house in 1938, after the state forced everyone out of their hometown to make way for the Quabbin Reservoir.”
That had to be the lake Dylan had seen on the map.
“Quabbin,” Loretta continued, still clearly amused, “is a Native American word that means ‘place of many waters,’ or ‘meeting of the waters.’ It refers to the Swift River Valley, which was laced with three branches of the Swift River and multiple streams—the perfect location for a reservoir.”
“Loretta,” Dylan said.
She waved a perfectly manicured hand at him. “Miss Webster’s ancestors settled in the valley in the mid-1700s. Two hundred years later, she and her family were forcibly bought out, along with everyone else in four towns, so the state could dam the valley and let it fill up with fresh water for metropolitan Boston. It’s one of the most egregious examples of eminent domain in U.S. history. I’d love to fight that case now.”
Dylan had no doubt, but he was lost. “How did you find all this out?”
“Internet. Our Grace is quoted in an interview with some of the last living residents of the valley before it was flooded. She’s a retired high school English and Latin teacher. She never married.”
Dylan considered his predicament, and the note from Olivia Frost. He couldn’t even guess why his father had bought the house, or why there was a cast-off refrigerator in the yard.
He joined his attorney and friend on the porch. A vibrant sunset filled up the sky and glowed on the Pacific across the street. “What do I do?” he asked.
“It’s your property,” Loretta said, gazing out at the sunset. “You can do whatever you want. Sell it, renovate it, give it away. Move in.”
“Move in? Why would I move in?”
“I don’t know. You could take up chopping wood and picking blackberries.” She crossed her arms in front of her in the chilly wind. “Those are blackberry vines in the picture of the old refrigerator, aren’t they?”
“I have no idea what they are.”
“Blackberry vines have thorns.”
Other vines had to have thorns, too, but Dylan really didn’t know or care. “What did my father pay for this place?”
“A pittance. He wrote a check. The house is a wreck but it sits on seven acres. Knights Bridge is out-of-the-way, in part because of the reservoir. It’s not like the area grew up naturally around a big lake. Quabbin didn’t exist when the towns were settled. Look on the map. You’ll see what I mean.”
He had, and he did.
“What’s the name of this farm again?” Loretta asked.
“The Farm at Carriage Hill.”
“Quaint. And the owner?”
“Olivia Frost.” Dylan ignored the cool wind as he watched joggers on the beach. “Why did my father buy a house in Knights Bridge, Loretta?”
“That,” she said, dropping her arms to her sides, “is your mystery to solve. If I were you, I’d let sleeping dogs lie and hire someone to clean up the yard, then quietly sell the place or give it away.”
“You’ll check out this Olivia Frost?”
“First thing when I get home. Right now, I’m going for a walk on the beach and enjoy the last of the sunset.” She headed to the steps but stopped before descending, again looking back at Dylan. “You’re not worried about this woman taking legal action, are you?”
“Not really, no.”
“Good. An old refrigerator and whatnot in the yard aren’t a serious concern.”
“I think I saw a washing machine, too.”
Dylan could hear Loretta laughing all the way down the steps and across the street to the water. He went back inside, shutting the door firmly behind him. The sunset was fading fast. He sat on his couch and picked up the note card from where he’d left it and the half-dozen photographs on the coffee table. Loretta hadn’t asked to inspect them. No point, he supposed. He eyed the chives, or whatever the hell they were. They looked hand-drawn. The design, the use of color and the handwriting were contemporary and stylish, not old-fashioned, yet they also conveyed warmth, hospitality and rural charm. He wasn’t quite sure how his Massachusetts neighbor had pulled off the effect but it worked.
He didn’t care how she’d pulled it off, either. Olivia Frost had written to him to ask—or demand—he move junk and a rusted appliance off property he hadn’t, until today, even suspected he owned.
He scooped up the photographs and took them and the card upstairs with him to his bedroom, the drapes still pulled from last night. He hadn’t bothered opening them since he had left for his office before light, but it wouldn’t have mattered. He wasn’t spending a lot of time in his bedroom these days. A few hours for sleep, time to get dressed—that was it. He hadn’t had a woman in his life in a long time. Too long, maybe, but he wasn’t checking off days on a calendar.
Not yet, anyway.
He set the card and photographs on the end of his bed, then sat on the floor and rubbed his fingers over the black-painted hinges and latch of an old flat-topped trunk. A nomad at heart, his father had left behind few possessions. On his fiftieth birthday, he had quit his day job as a business consultant and spent the rest of his life—more than twenty years—as an adventurer and treasure hunter, tackling obscure mysteries on his own and with a small team of professionals and avid amateurs. He had never sought financial gain for himself. Prowling the world for lost treasures had been his passion more than a source of income. He’d just enjoyed the adventure.
In the months since his father’s death, Dylan hadn’t dug through the contents of the trunk. He and his father had had a contentious yet solid relationship, but first the NHL and then NAK, Inc., kept Dylan’s schedule jam-packed, allowing little time to try to understand why Duncan McCaffrey had made the choices he had, or to figure out what treasure hunts he had left unfinished. Dylan didn’t need the money. Money was one thing he had in abundance, and how could anything in the trunk bring him closer to his father now that he was gone?
Dylan couldn’t imagine how long it would take him to properly sort through all the files, boxes, envelopes and scrapbooks stuffed haphazardly in the trunk. Hours and hours, and even if he had the time, he didn’t have the patience.
And there was no guarantee he would find one word about Knights Bridge.
He could send Loretta to Massachusetts to deal with the house and its offending yard, and with Olivia Frost.
He lifted out a tattered stack of a half-dozen manila folders, held together with a thick rubber band. He shook his head. “Leave it to you, Pop, to complicate my life.”
The rubber band was so dry and brittle it broke when Dylan tried to remove it.
He welcomed the distraction when his landline rang. He rolled to his feet and picked up.
“Check your email,” Loretta said. “I sent you some preliminary info on the woman who wrote to you.”
“Are she and Grace Webster friends?”
“Maybe, but Olivia Frost isn’t old. I can tell you that much.”
Loretta was chuckling when she hung up.
Dylan checked his email on his BlackBerry. Loretta had produced a photograph of his tidy-minded neighbor. It was taken at a formal dinner in Boston and showed Olivia Frost accepting an award. Apparently the owner of The Farm at Carriage Hill and artist of chives was also a successful, accomplished graphic designer.
The picture was too small to see in any detail on his BlackBerry. He went back downstairs and fired up his laptop on the kitchen table.
Olivia Frost had long, shining, very dark hair, porcelain skin and a bright smile as she held her gold statue and accepted her award. He couldn’t make out the color of her eyes. Green, maybe. She wore a sleek, rather businesslike black dress that came to just above her knees.
In another picture that Loretta had found on Facebook, Olivia was more casual, dressed in a denim jacket as she stood in front of an old sawmill. Loretta’s email explained that the Frost family owned and operated Frost Millworks, a small, profitable company that did high-end custom work.
She provided a link. Olivia Frost had designed their website.
Dylan called Loretta back. Before he even had a chance to say hello, she broke in, “I can keep digging if you want.”
“I’ll take it from here. Thanks, Loretta. What’s on the internet about me?”
“You beat up that Montreal defenseman—”
“It was a clean check. He should have gotten an Oscar for that fall.”
“What about the ten stitches?”
Dylan hung up. He didn’t care what was on the internet about him. He wondered if Olivia Frost had looked him up by now, or had even thought to, considering the condition of the property he owned in Knights Bridge.
He glanced at her Facebook picture again. It was more of a close-up than the one at the awards ceremony. Her eyes weren’t green, he decided. They were hazel, a fetching mix of green and blue flecked with gold.
He shut off his laptop and called his assistant to book a morning flight east to Boston.
Three
Olivia raked the last of the fallen leaves from the raised herb bed by her back door. The overcast sky and chilly temperature didn’t bother her. The snow had melted out of her backyard, if not in the woods, and signs of spring were everywhere. She loved finding shoots of green under their cover of sodden leaves. The physical work gave her a burst of energy. She was ready to head up the road to Grace Webster’s old house and start hauling junk. Naturally its owner, Dylan McCaffrey, hadn’t responded to her note.
What had she expected? After two years of ignoring his property in Knights Bridge, why would he care?
Elly O’Dunn, who’d provided McCaffrey’s name and address, remembered meeting him when he’d stopped at the town offices. She told Maggie, who’d then told Olivia, that he was a good-looking man in his seventies, with thick white hair and intense blue eyes. She hadn’t spoken to him, and she couldn’t fathom why he’d wanted to buy Grace Webster’s house.
Olivia couldn’t, either. She took her rake with her to the front yard, just as her father pulled up in his truck. She’d almost forgotten she’d invited her parents to lunch. As he stepped onto the dirt driveway, she noticed he was alone. Randy Frost was a big, burly man who had transformed his father’s struggling sawmill into a profitable enterprise, all while serving on the Knights Bridge volunteer fire department since his teens.
“Place is shaping up,” he said, walking around to the front of his truck. He wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves, and his fleece jacket was open over a dark blue sweater.
Olivia held onto her rake. “It is, isn’t it?”
He glanced past her at the woods beyond the strip of yard on the garage side of the house. The area had been farmland before World War II, but hardwoods and evergreens had reclaimed much of the land, old stone walls that had marked fields now lacing a forest that stretched to the shores of the reservoir. Any open land was behind her house and up the road toward Grace’s—Dylan McCaffrey’s—house.
“Snow’s almost gone,” her father said, then sighed, turning back to his elder daughter. “This place is in the middle of nowhere, Liv, even by Knights Bridge standards. Do you really think people will come out here?”
“I do, Dad. No question in my mind.”
“Maybe your sister can be your guinea pig.”
Olivia almost dropped her rake. “She and Mark have set a wedding date?”
“No. She’s waiting for him to come up with a ring. She’s a romantic, but Mark…” Randy Frost ran a callused palm over his salt-and-pepper hair. “None of my business.”
Olivia had graduated high school with Mark. She remembered him sleeping in the back of algebra class, but he’d gone on to become an architect. After ten years going to school and working in Boston and New York, he moved back to Knights Bridge a year ago and had no interest in living anywhere else ever again.
“If Jess had wanted a Byron-esque soul,” Olivia said, “she and Mark Flanagan wouldn’t be together. He’s a great guy, though.”
“Yeah. I guess. What have you been raking?”
“The herb beds. The lavender survived the winter. It’s in a warm spot by the back door. I’ve decided to host a mother-daughter tea as a way to kick things off and get out the word that The Farm at Carriage Hill is up and running.”
“Your mother told me. She says she and Jess are coming. You’re not asking for money?”
“Right. It’ll be like an open house.”
“Makes sense. Then your guests can go home and decide to book their own event.”
“I’ll have meals catered and focus on smaller events at first—teas, bridal and baby showers, meetings.”
Her father studied her a moment. “You sound excited. That’s good.”
“I’ve been dreaming about transforming this place ever since I learned it was up for sale. It’s happening faster than I expected, but so far, so good.”
“I don’t have to tell you it’ll be a lot of hard work. What kind of food are you offering?”
“I thought I’d base the menu on herbs.”
“Herbal hors d’oeuvres, herbal bread, herbal soup, herbal dessert? Like that?”
Olivia grinned. “Yeah. Like that. People can wander in the gardens and woods, and I’ll offer books and lectures on various aspects of herbs—cooking, drying, using them in potpourris and fragrances.” She grabbed her rake and flipped it on end, pulling off wet leaves stuck on the metal tines. “I have lots of ideas. Right now I’m concentrating on cleaning out the gardens. You’re staying for lunch, right? I thought Mom was coming, too.”
“She’s home planning her trip to California. She wants to do the coastal highway.”
“Sounds beautiful.”
“She’ll never go, but don’t tell her I said that.” He seemed to give himself a mental shake and nodded toward the house. “How’s Buster?”
“Staying. He refused to be persuaded not to dig up the lavender.” Olivia was relieved at the change in subject. Buster, a large mix of German shepherd and who-knew-what-else, had shown up at her house unaccompanied by owner, collar or leash, and for the past ten days had gone unclaimed. “I was thinking in terms of getting a friendlier dog. A golden retriever or a chocolate Lab, maybe. Buster looks like he could chew someone’s leg off.”
“Good. Keep Buster. I’ll feel better about you living out here alone.”
She felt her father scrutinizing her again as she set the rake against the garage. “I should have worn gloves. My hands are cold, and they’ve taken a beating since I moved out of the city.”
“It’s only been a couple weeks. You got enough money in the bank, Liv? You’re not betting everything on this place, are you?”
“I have time to make it work before I go broke.”
“A business plan?”
Sort of. She didn’t like discussing her finances with anyone, including her well-intentioned father. She smiled at him as she headed for the kitchen door. “Blood, sweat, laughter and tears. How’s that for a business plan?”
“Liv—”
“I’m still freelancing. Jacqui Ackerman gives me as much work as I can handle.” Olivia pulled open the door. “Come on in. Lunch is ready.”
“Where’s Buster?”
“Cooling his heels in the mudroom. You’re safe.”
Not, clearly, that her father was worried. Olivia led him into the kitchen. She had set the table for three and felt a pang of disappointment and frustration that her mother had bailed on lunch. She probably was home planning her trip, but if she couldn’t get herself out here for a visit, how was she going to get herself to California? After two weeks back in Knights Bridge, Olivia still hadn’t seen a sign of her mother on her doorstep. So far, any contact was at the mill, her parents’ house or her mother’s usual haunts in the village.
Olivia watched as her father quietly stacked up the extra place setting and set it on the butcher-block island. Randy and Louise Frost had known each other since kindergarten and had been married for thirty-two years. Olivia was confident that whatever was going on between them—if anything—would sort itself out. After her experience with Marilyn Bryson, Olivia was resisting the temptation to help anyone, much less her parents. She was essentially working two jobs as it was with her freelancing and her efforts to turn her house into The Farm at Carriage Hill.
“What’s that, Liv?” her father asked, pointing at the pot of soup simmering on the gas stove.
“Parsnip, turnip and apple soup.”
“Ah.”
“It’s seasoned with a dash of nutmeg. I have chopped fresh parsley and grated Parmesan cheese for garnish. It sounds festive, don’t you think?”
He picked up a wooden spoon and dipped it into the pot. “Sure, Liv. I’m game.”
“I’m experimenting with different recipes.”
He tasted the soup and set the spoon down. “Let’s see what it tastes like with the parsley and Parmesan.”
Olivia laughed. “That bad, is it?”
The parsley and Parmesan helped, but not enough. The soup was a little…earthy. Her father helped himself to two hunks of warm oatmeal bread, although he passed on the rosemary jam. “It’s got cranberries in it,” Olivia said. “I made it myself.”
“All right. I’ll try a little. For you, Liv.”
She grinned at him. “Thanks, Dad. You’re my test case.”
“Guinea pig, you mean.” He tried the jam and nodded. “Not bad. If you call it rosemary-cranberry jam, it won’t sound like something out of a feedbag.”
“Good point. I’ll do that.”
He made no protest about dessert, old-fashioned molasses cookies made from his mother’s—Olivia’s grandmother’s—recipe. He took a cookie with him as he stood up from the table. “Let’s have a look at your backyard now that the snow’s melted,” he said.
He’d been through the house last fall, after she’d said she was seriously considering buying it, but not since she’d moved in. He’d inspected the center chimney, the wiring, the furnace, the hot-water heater, any signs of potential water damage. The previous owners had done most of the infrastructure repair and renovation, allowing Olivia to focus on cosmetic changes and any adjustments to comply with local and state regulations in order to open up her house to the public. But the previous owners had thought of most of that, too, since they’d planned on starting their own bed-and-breakfast.
Buster barely stirred when they went out through the mudroom. Olivia left him inside. Her father wasn’t one for gardens and yard work, but he nodded with approval at what she’d managed to accomplish in just two weeks. “It’s a great spot, Liv,” he said. “No trouble with wild animals wandering over here from Quabbin?”
“Not yet.”
He pointed at the old stone wall that ran along the side of her property. “Beyond those woods are eighty thousand acres of wilderness. You’re closest neighbor in that direction is miles and miles from here.”
“I know, Dad. And my closest neighbor in the other direction is an old man from San Diego who hasn’t done a thing to his property in two years.”
Olivia didn’t mention that she’d written to her absentee neighbor. When she and her father returned to the kitchen, Buster had knocked down the mudroom gate and was in the living room, asleep on the hearth in front of the low fire she had going.
“My kind of dog,” Randy Frost said with a grin as he left.
He was on the road with cookies and soup for her mother when she called. “Is your dad still there? There’s freezing rain in the forecast. It’s supposed to be bad.”
“He just left.” Olivia sat on the couch in front of the fire. “He’ll be back before it starts.”
“Right. Good.” Her mother took an audible breath, obviously trying to control her anxiety. “How was lunch? Sorry to miss it, but some things came up here. I suggested we come tomorrow, but your dad—well, it doesn’t matter. Did you have a good time?”
Her mother had been worried about the weather forecast, Olivia realized now. “Lunch was great. Dad didn’t like my parsnip soup.”
“But you got him to try it?” Her mother laughed. “That’s an achievement right there. He doesn’t always like to try new things.” There was no hint of criticism in her tone. “I’ll get out there, Liv. Soon. I want to help you with the place. Jess says you’re raking and painting everything in sight. I can handle a rake and wield a paintbrush.”
“That’d be great, Mom. I know you’re busy planning your trip—”
“California,” she interrupted, almost as if she were gulping. “I’m going. No matter what.”
She made the trip—one she wanted to take—sound like an impending biopsy, but Olivia felt her own throat tighten at the prospect of her parents flying across the country. “I’ve seen pictures of California’s Pacific Coast Highway. It looks beautiful.”
“Yes. Right. I’ll call you later, Liv. Be careful out there alone in this freezing rain.”
“I will, Mom. I’m not that far from town, and I have Buster here with me.”
“You’ve had the vet look at him? He could have worms—”
“Yes, and he got a clean bill of health.”
“Your dad should be walking in the door any minute. Oh—I just looked out the window. I can see the ice forming on my car. Freezing rain is the worst.”
“Do you want me to stay on with you until Dad gets there?”
“No, no. He’ll be here any minute.”
Her mother was close to hyperventilating as she hung up. Olivia took a breath, suddenly feeling anxious and unsettled herself. She jumped up from the couch and went into the kitchen. The freezing rain had ended her raking for the day. She’d clean up the lunch dishes and work on a design project.
She stood at the sink and noticed the raindrops on the window, the glistening film of clear ice on the grass, the gray mist swirling in the woods.
The house was so quiet.
“Buster,” she said. “Buster, where are you?”
She checked the living room, but he was no longer asleep by the fire. She checked the cellar door, in case she’d left it open and he’d gone down there, but it was shut tight.
She called him again, but received only silence in return as she headed back to the kitchen.
She felt a cold draft and went into the mudroom.
The door was ajar.
She grimaced. “Damn.”
Buster was gone, and she was going to have to go out into the freezing rain to find him.
Less than an hour after arriving in little Knights Bridge, Dylan found himself up to his calves in a patch of snow and mud next to a rusted, cast-off refrigerator and face-to-face with one seriously mean-looking dog.
The dog had bounded out of the trees as if he’d been lying in wait, planning his attack on the unsuspecting new arrival to his quiet country road. His wild barking had subsided to intermittent growls.
“Easy, pal,” Dylan said. “Easy.”
Olivia Frost had to be the dog’s owner. Hers was the closest house; in fact, from what Dylan had seen, it was the only other house in the immediate vicinity. Freezing rain was coating everything in a film of clear ice. Prickly vines, pine needles, bare tree branches, exposed grass, last year’s dropped leaves. The old fridge. The mean dog. Dylan.
“You should go home.” Dylan pointed in the direction of The Farm at Carriage Hill. “Go. Go home.”
The dog barked once, growled and didn’t budge.
Dylan debated his options, none of them good. The freezing rain showed no sign of letting up. He was trapped out here in the middle of nowhere until it did. His flight from San Diego had been long but unremarkable, putting him in Boston late yesterday. He’d stayed with a hockey player friend, Alec Wiskovich, a Russian who had passed muster with Boston’s discerning fans as a forward with the Bruins. Alec had never heard of Knights Bridge, either. Dylan rented a car in the morning, typed “Knights Bridge” into the GPS system and went on his way.
Whether it was jet lag, the freezing rain, the mean dog or thinking about his father, he felt at least slightly out of his mind. If he were sane, he thought, he would indeed have sent Loretta to deal with Olivia Frost instead of coming himself. He was a busy man. He could afford to pay someone to sort out a misunderstanding about an old house and junk in the yard.
“Buster!”
It was a woman’s voice. Keeping the dog in the corner of his eye, Dylan shifted his gaze slightly and peered through the mist and rain at the one-lane road. The many potholes were filling with water and ice, but he didn’t see anyone else out there.
“Buster!” the woman again called. “Buster, where are you?”
Dylan turned back to the dog. “You must be Buster.”
A note of panic had crept into the woman’s voice. Maybe with good reason, Dylan thought, noting that the dog was on alert, his head jerking up at the sound of her voice. She was probably less worried about Buster getting hurt than doing the hurting, although who she thought might be out here was a mystery.
Well. Dylan grimaced. He was. But he hadn’t told her he was coming.
A slim figure materialized around a slight curve in the road.
Olivia Frost. Had to be. She was hatless and coatless, as if she’d bolted out of her house in a hurry—probably when she realized her dog was missing. Dylan wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves but he had on a canvas three-quarter-length coat.
As she stepped off the road into the patches of snow and soaked, cold, muddy brown leaves, the big dog again became agitated, snarling and growling.
Dylan figured he had seconds to live unless he thought fast.
He put up his hand in front of him in a calm but assertive gesture that stopped any advance the growling dog had in mind, then called to the woman. “Buster is right here.”
“So I see,” she said, coming closer, freezing rain visible on her dark hair.
“He and I just met. He seemed surprised to find anyone here.”
Olivia came to an abrupt stop. She was obviously surprised to find him there, too. Up close, Dylan could see her eyes were definitely hazel, and even prettier than in the photographs Loretta had sent him. Incredible eyes, really, with their deep blues and greens and flecks of gold. Maybe they stood out because of the bleak surroundings, or maybe because he was just happy to have survived his first hour in Knights Bridge.
She frowned at him as her dog trotted to her side. “Did you decide to pull off the road and wait out the freezing rain?”
“No, although it sounds like a good idea.” With Buster visibly calmer, Dylan dared to lower his hand. “I’m your neighbor. You wrote to me about the junk in the yard.”
“You’re Dylan McCaffrey?”
“I am.”
“I’m Olivia Frost. I thought—” Her frown deepened as her eyes narrowed on him. As cold as she had to be in her black corduroy shirt and jeans, she wasn’t shivering. “Are you sure you’re the right Dylan McCaffrey? I didn’t get in touch with the wrong one? You own this place?”
“Right McCaffrey, and yes, I own this place.”
He was obviously not even close to what his Knights Bridge neighbor had expected. Buster growled next to her. She made a little motion with her fingers and he quieted. She recovered her composure and nodded to the refrigerator in the muck. “Then you’ll be cleaning up this mess. Excellent. It’s turned into quite a junkyard, hasn’t it?”
“No argument from me.”
He glanced at the mess behind him. The cast-off washing machine was farther up the slope, in more prickly vines. Between it and the fridge were tires, hubcaps, a rotting rake with missing tines, bottles, beer cans and—oddly—what was left of a disintegrating twin mattress.
“There was never a report of a break-in,” Olivia said. “We suspect kids partied out here and got carried away.”
“Hell of a place to party.”
She seemed to take no offense at his comment. “As I explained in my note, I live just down the road.”
“The Farm at Carriage Hill,” Dylan said with a smile.
“More like The Soon-to-be Farm at Carriage Hill.” She brushed raindrops off the end of her nose, then motioned vaguely up the tree-lined road, toward the village. “My family lives in town. They’ll be checking on me with this nasty weather. It’s not as remote out here as you might think. People come by at all hours.”
Dylan realized her comment was a warning—a self-protective measure, given that the two of them were the only ones out on the isolated road. He didn’t want to unnerve her, but he didn’t think he looked particularly threatening standing there in the mud, mist and freezing rain, especially when she was the one with the big dog.
Nonetheless, he made an effort to give her an innocuous smile. “You’re lucky to have family close by in this weather.”
She returned his smile. “Spring can’t come soon enough, can it? As I mentioned in my note, I can help with the yard if you need it.” She glanced at his rented Audi parked on the partially washed-out driveway, then shifted back to him. “I also have access to a truck.”
“Good to know.”
“I should get Buster back to the house. You’re not…” Olivia grabbed her dog’s collar. “I thought you’d be older.”
“You were expecting my father, Duncan McCaffrey,” Dylan said, figuring it was a good guess. “He died a few months after he bought this place. I didn’t know about the property and didn’t realize he’d left it to me until I received your note.”
“Really? How could you not know?”
“Long story. You’re not wearing a coat. Why don’t you take mine? You don’t want to get hypothermia—”
“I’ll be fine. Thanks, though.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come inside and dry off? Looks as if I won’t be going anywhere for a while.”
“That’s nice of you to offer, but Buster and I will be on our way. He’s not good with strangers.”
Another warning, Dylan decided as he watched Olivia turn with her badass dog and head through the ice-covered patches of grass, snow, dead leaves, mud and muck. He noticed she was wearing close-fitting jeans and had mud splattered on her butt and the backs of her thighs. She must have tripped or stumbled in the freezing conditions while chasing Buster up the road.
It was sunny and seventy-five degrees when Dylan had left Coronado yesterday.
He hadn’t been kidding; he wasn’t going anywhere until the weather cleared, and he certainly wasn’t hauling junk. He didn’t entirely understand Olivia Frost’s fuss over her neighbor’s makeshift dump and overgrown yard. Her place wasn’t visible through the trees. It wasn’t as if she were right next door. Managing not to slip, he made his way to his nondescript little New England house. Loretta had given him the keys. He’d done a quick walk-through already. The front door was on the left side of a roofed porch and opened into an entry with green-carpeted stairs leading up to three small bedrooms and one bathroom on the second floor. To the right of the front door on the first floor was a living room with tall windows and a double doorway to an adjoining dining room with a bay window overlooking the side yard opposite the spot with the junk.
Off the dining room was the kitchen, with doors to the cellar and backyard.
That was it.
The house was modestly furnished with a couch, a cupboard, a dining room table and chairs, and old player piano. Bookcases upstairs and in the dining room were filled, but otherwise, there were no personal belongings. It was as if Grace Webster had left behind whatever she couldn’t find room for in her new residence or just didn’t want or need.
Dylan flipped a switch on a dusty overhead in the living room.
The power was out.
He sighed. “Great.”
Naturally the house didn’t have a landline, and he couldn’t pick up a signal on his cell phone. He glanced out the front window and saw the power lines were drooping with the ice that had formed on them.
What about his neighbor? The power had to be out at her place, too.
Dylan wondered if he should check on her. Small towns looked after their own, didn’t they?
Olivia Frost’s family and friends wouldn’t be able to get out here. No one and nothing would be moving in these conditions.
Dylan buttoned his jacket and stepped back out to the porch. As far as he could tell, the precipitation was still freezing rain—it fell as rain and landed as ice, creating treacherous “black ice” conditions.
“Miserable,” he said, pulling up the collar to his jacket as he ventured down the slippery porch steps.
Slipping and sliding, Dylan made his way down the road to The Farm at Carriage Hill. Clear ice and a film of rainwater covered everything, including the sand that was supposed to help with traction.
He heard a branch snap somewhere in the woods, then nothing.
The silence was downright eerie.
He reminded himself he liked ice. He had been a natural on skates. These weren’t rink conditions, but he was good at keeping his balance, or so he told himself as he considered that if he fell, he was on his own. No one would find him.
Unless Buster sneaked out again, he thought with a grim smile, pressing on.
Smoke was curling out of the chimney of his only neighbor’s cream-colored house. An ice-and-rain-coated walk took him to a wide stone landing, and he knocked on the front door, painted a rich blue. There was another door to his right, to a newer addition. This was obviously the oldest part of the house.
“Miss Frost?” he called. “It’s Dylan McCaffrey.”
She opened the door. Her hair was still damp, and her cheeks were pink from the cold—or warmth, Dylan realized suddenly. Even from his position on the landing, he could tell that her house was toasty. She obviously had a fireplace or woodstove going. Hence, the smoke coming out of the chimney.
With his dripping coat and wet, muddy pants and shoes, he felt marginally ridiculous coming to her aid. It probably should have been the other way around. He was the unprepared stranger.
“I thought I’d check on you,” he said. “The power’s out at my place.”
“Here, too. I called the power company and notified them. Power’s out all over town. We’ll be among the last to get it restored.”
“The power company doesn’t like you?”
He was joking but Olivia gave him a cool look. “We’re on a sparsely populated dead-end road.”
“It’s just the two of us out here in the sticks?”
“I have my dog,” she said.
“Buster. He’s—”
“Asleep out by the fire at the moment. It wouldn’t take much to wake him.”
Dylan wondered if his presence was making Olivia nervous. That wasn’t his intention, but he could be thickheaded at times, or so Noah Kendrick, various hockey coaches, teammates and an assortment of women had told him. Often.
He attempted to look amiable and easygoing, not half frozen, hungry and out of his element. “If you need anything, I’m right up the road in the cold and the dark.”
“You weren’t expecting to spend the night in Knights Bridge, were you?”
“I thought I’d figure that out once I got here. I wasn’t counting on an ice storm.”
“Do you have food? I have homemade parsnip soup and oatmeal bread from lunch that I’d be happy to send back with you.”
Parsnip soup. He felt a fat, cold raindrop splatter on the back of his neck. “Thanks, but I brought some basic provisions with me, just in case.”
“I remember Miss Webster had a woodstove. Did she leave it behind?”
He hadn’t even considered a woodstove. “It’s in the dining room.”
“You’ll want to check to make sure a bat or a squirrel hasn’t taken up residence in the chimney.” Olivia leaned out of her warm house and pointed a slender finger vaguely in the direction of her garage. “You can help yourself to some dry wood if you’d like.”
Dylan figured he would only be able to carry enough for a few hours’ fire. There wasn’t much point. At the rate he was going, he’d die of hypothermia before he reached his house, anyway.
It was only a slight exaggeration.
He thanked his neighbor and noticed she didn’t press him to take wood or offer him a spare bedroom. “Thanks for stopping by,” she said politely, then shut the door quietly behind him.
He half skated back to the road, which was even more treacherous. What had his father been thinking, buying a house in this backwater little town? There couldn’t be lost treasure in Knights Bridge, or even clues to lost treasure. Impossible.
Then again, Duncan McCaffrey had been a man who relished taking on the impossible.
When Dylan arrived back at his inherited house, he examined the woodstove that was hooked up in a corner in the dining room. It looked like an oil drum. It couldn’t be that efficient, but it was better than a cold night in the dark. He found dry wood in an old apple crate in the kitchen and hit the stovepipe chimney with a log to warn any critters before he lit matches.
He wasn’t worried about a buildup of creosote. If the house burned down, so what?
The wood was dry enough that he needed little kindling and only one match to get the fire started. As the flames took hold, he checked his cell phone and walked around the house until he got a weak signal by the back door.
He dialed Noah in San Diego. “Tell me there’s been an emergency and you need me back there,” Dylan said.
“All’s well. What’s happening in New England?”
“Freezing rain. No heat, no electricity. I’ve turned into Bob Cratchit.”
“What’s the house like?”
“It’s a dump.”
“Have you met Olivia Frost?”
“I have.” Dylan pictured her pink cheeks and hazel eyes. “She’s warm. I wonder if she has a generator.”
“Not sharing her heat?”
It wasn’t a bad quip for Noah, who wasn’t known for that particular variety of verbal quickness. “She offered me cordwood. I’m not going anywhere for a while. We’re in the middle of an ice storm.”
Noah burst out laughing.
Their call got dropped just as the ceiling in the kitchen started to leak.
Dylan slid his phone back in his pocket and watched water pool on the wide-plank floor.
“Well, hell.”
What could he do? He was stuck here.
He hoped Grace Webster had left behind a bucket.
Four
Olivia’s house had come with a generator for nights just such as this one, but she only turned it on for an hour before she decided to wait out the power outage. She had little food to worry about spoiling, and she didn’t like generators. In storms, people too often misused them and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. She had dutifully read all the instructions and had her father do a dry run with her, but the thing still made her nervous. She wanted to be positive she knew what she was doing before she ran it for any length of time.
As she snuggled under a soft wool throw in front of the brick fireplace, she told herself it was decent of Dylan McCaffrey to check on her. He hadn’t meant anything by his visit except to make sure she was all right in the midst of a nasty ice storm.
The wind picked up, and a spruce tree swayed outside the front window, casting strange shadows in the living room. She heard the crack of a branch breaking off in the old sugar maple in the side yard. Right now, the branches and power lines were weighed down with ice, but once the temperature rose above freezing, the ice would melt as if it had never been. Spring would resume its steady march toward daffodils, tulips and lilacs in bloom.
The fire glowed, the only light in the darkening room. A chunk of burning wood fell from the grate, startling her, but she quickly told herself it was nothing. She had lived alone in her Boston apartment, but she had to admit that living alone in her antique house in Knights Bridge was taking some getting used to. The creaks, the groans, the shadows, the dark nights—anything could fire up her imagination. At first, she’d slept with her iPod on, playing a selection of relaxing music, but she was beginning to develop a routine and was getting used to the sounds of the old house and country road.
Tightening her throw around her, she turned her attention back to her neighbor. Elly O’Dunn must have run into Duncan McCaffrey, Dylan’s father. When Olivia had written to Dylan, she hadn’t expected him to show up in Knights Bridge, and she certainly hadn’t expected to meet him the way she had, muddy, yelling in panic for her wandering dog.
She especially hadn’t expected the new owner of Grace Webster’s house to be a man close to her own age, with a sexy grin, sexy broad shoulders and sexy black-lashed deep blue eyes.
The McCaffreys had no ties to Knights Bridge that Olivia knew of. Because of the massive Quabbin Reservoir, her hometown was out-of-the-way, not an easy commute to any of the major cities in Massachusetts. The University of Massachusetts Amherst, Mount Holyoke College, Hampshire College, Smith College and Amherst College—the Five Colleges—were a more reasonable commute. A number of people from town worked at the different schools. She had no idea what Dylan McCaffrey did for a living but supposed he could be a college professor.
She pictured him standing in the snow and mud.
He wasn’t a college professor. She knew some rugged-looking professors, but Dylan McCaffrey didn’t strike her as someone who could sit in a library carrel for more than ten minutes before he needed to get moving.
Olivia heard a gust of wind beat against the windows. The truth was, she hadn’t given her neighbor much thought once she wrote to him. She just wanted his place cleaned up. She had so much to do before her mother-daughter tea. She swore she had lists of lists of things to do to get ready.
She wished the power would come back on before nightfall. She didn’t look forward to sitting there in the pitch-dark.
Her landline rang, startling her. Buster barked but settled down, spent from his romp up the road. She reached for the phone on an end table, a flea-market find that she planned to paint. It was on one of her lists, she thought as she picked up and said hello.
“Hey, kid,” her father said. “You and Buster okay out there? Everything’s at a standstill but we’ll be through the worst of it soon.”
He didn’t sound concerned, and Olivia assumed that her mother had put him up to calling. “The power’s out but we’re fine here.”
“Are you using the generator?”
“I did for a while but not right now. It’s okay. Buster and I are nice and cozy by the fire.”
“Cozy. Right. If you need anything, call. I’ll find a way out there.”
He would, too. Olivia debated a moment, then said, “My neighbor’s here.”
“Neighbor?”
“Dylan McCaffrey. He’s the guy who owns Grace Webster’s old place.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“You did? I should have asked you about him. That was his father.”
“I met him a couple of years ago. Ran into him at Hazelton’s.” Hazelton’s was the general store in the village. “I didn’t ask why he wanted to buy a house in town. Why’s his son here?”
“I wrote to him about the junk in his yard. He lives in San Diego. I didn’t expect him to actually come out here. I offered to do the work. I figured he’d jump at the chance since no one’s touched the place in two years.”
There was a moment’s silence on the other end of the phone. “I hope he doesn’t mind freezing rain,” her father said finally.
After she hung up, Olivia got out a sketch pad and colored pencils and, curled up in front of the fire, worked on a color scheme for the interior of her house. She had narrowed down her choices to three different palettes. For each, she drew a large rectangle, then drew smaller rectangles of various sizes inside it. She filled in the large rectangle with her main color and the smaller rectangles with secondary colors and accents. She had decided against a traditional New England look, as much as she loved it. She wasn’t sure exactly what colors she wanted, but she definitely wanted a palette that was lively, vibrant and welcoming, with a touch of rustic charm.
Intrigued by the play of the flames in the fading natural light, she chose a golden yellow lightened with white for her first large rectangle. For the smaller rectangles, she used two shades of aquamarine, a watery blue, a creamy linen, a splash of red. She wanted to choose colors and paint finishes that worked with the sharp differences in New England seasons—from the frigid temperatures of winter to the hot, humid conditions of the dog days of summer. She would have to pay attention to the orientation of her different rooms. An eastern room that received the cool light of morning might need a different shade or tone than a western room that received strong afternoon light.
Buster rolled over, his back to Olivia, as if to tell her how boring he thought paint palettes were. She stayed in front of the fire and continued working. As darkness descended, she liked having him there, close to her, rather than in the kitchen or locked up in the mudroom. Soon the fire provided the only light in the house. She hadn’t lit any candles or turned on her flashlight. She put away her colored pencils and left them and the sketch pad on the floor.
The power still hadn’t come on.
More trees creaked and groaned in the wind. The fire flared in a backdraft in the chimney. She shuddered, a ripple of irrational fear running up her spine. She had locked the front door after Dylan had left and was positive she had already locked the other doors. She knew no one was in the kitchen and mudroom, or in the garage—or hiding upstairs.
She dreaded turning on her small flashlight and walking up to her bedroom.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked aloud. “Nothing’s up there with the power off that isn’t there with the power on.”
The living room glowed in a flash of lightning followed by a rumble of thunder.
It was an ice storm. Why was there thunder and lightning?
Never mind, Olivia thought, grabbing another throw off a chair. She wasn’t going anywhere. She curled up with the two throws on the thick rug in front of the fire, staying close to warm, mean-looking Buster. She had no reason to be afraid alone in her country house, but the occasional bump in the night nonetheless could get her heart racing and her mind spinning with possibilities.
She wondered how Dylan McCaffrey was doing up the road. Grace’s house wasn’t in good shape, especially after sitting empty for so long. People in town speculated that the new owner had bought it for the land, not for the house itself. After receiving the note about the yard, had Dylan decided to head east to check out his newly discovered inheritance and put it on the market? Olivia would love to have the seven acres to add to The Farm at Carriage Hill, but she couldn’t afford them right now and had her hands full getting her own house in shape.
Wrapped up in her warm throws, she noticed the wind was dying down and the one flash of lightning and rumble of thunder seemed to be all the storm had in mind. The power didn’t come back on, but she suspected it would soon now that the weather was improving.
She grabbed a pillow off the couch and placed it under her head. She doubted Grace had left behind blankets and sheets, never mind a bed, or if she had that any of them were usable. Was Dylan sleeping on the floor, too? He probably hadn’t planned to spend the night in a house on the verge of being condemned.
A run-down house, a yard filled with junk, a confrontation with a big dog, an ice storm and a power outage—not an auspicious first day in Knights Bridge. Olivia shut her eyes, imagining what her neighbor thought of her hometown and if he’d be there in another twenty-four hours.
The power came back on just after two in the morning, the floor lamp popping on, the refrigerator cranking into gear, startling Olivia out of a deep sleep. She left the lamp on, letting the glow of the low-wattage bulb settle her heartbeat. She didn’t go upstairs to bed and instead stayed under her throws. Buster got up and stretched as if he thought it was morning, then settled down again in front of the fire, just a few hot coals now.
By morning, the sun was shining and any ice from the storm had already melted. That, Olivia reminded herself, was one of the key differences between early spring and the dead of winter. In winter, the ice would still be there, with more on the way. She could safely hope that last night was the end of any freezing precipitation in her part of New England until next winter.
She switched off any lights that didn’t need to be on and went upstairs to shower and get dressed, figuring she’d head into the village after breakfast. The house, although not large, felt huge in comparison to her apartment in Boston. Back downstairs, she made coffee and toasted some of her oatmeal bread, spreading it with peanut butter. She ate at her table overlooking the herb gardens. Even without checking her palettes from last night, she knew she’d reject the watery colors. She wanted earthy colors that still felt light, inviting, vibrant.
Picking out colors, she thought, was the fun part of opening The Farm at Carriage Hill. The uncertainties and the sheer amount of work that needed to be done were the hard parts.
She finished her toast and coffee and cleaned up the kitchen, wondering what her neighbor was doing for breakfast. She watered her rapidly growing herbs and decided that Dylan McCaffrey was perfectly capable of looking after himself. The roads were clear. He could get out now, and Knights Bridge had a restaurant, run by family friends, that served a great breakfast.
If he wanted her help, he’d ask.
She walked Buster and left him in the mudroom with his bed and bowls of food and water. She didn’t put up the gate. He seemed calmer, more at home. “Back soon, my friend,” she said, and headed outside. The air was sharply colder than yesterday, but it’d warm up to the fifties by midafternoon—another difference between winter and spring.
She started her car, a Subaru in serious need of body work, and turned onto the road.
When she came to the Webster house, Olivia noticed Dylan’s Audi—undoubtedly a rental—was still there. A rivulet of rainwater was running down a split in the dirt driveway. A massive, overgrown forsythia, however, was about to burst into yellow blossoms, a telltale sign of spring in New England.
Which also meant her opening day mother-daughter tea was getting closer, and she had much to do before it arrived.
She was surprised to see Dylan down by Grace’s old mailbox at the bottom of the driveway. He had a long-handled shovel and stood it up, leaning into it as Olivia braked and rolled down her passenger window.
“Morning,” he said. “Quite an ice storm last night.”
“We’re lucky the temperature rose as fast as it did. Everything all right here?”
“Just fine. The driveway didn’t wash out into the road. The leak in the kitchen stopped. Life is good.” There was only the slightest trace of sarcasm in his tone as he picked up a take-out coffee he had set atop the crooked mailbox. “I’ve already been out for breakfast. Nice little restaurant in town. I suppose you know the owner.”
“The Smiths. Sure. I’ll tell them you liked your breakfast.”
Olivia watched him sip the coffee. Even in sunlight, without the adrenaline of yesterday’s storm, her missing dog and the surprise of discovering Dylan McCaffrey wasn’t in his seventies, she still found him incredibly sexy. She probably should have just waved on her way past him.
“I see you found a shovel,” she said.
He set his coffee back atop the mailbox. “It was in the kitchen, interestingly. I’m not even going to try to guess why. The drainage culvert down here got filled up with leaves and ice, and the water was diverting onto the road. I figured I’d dig it out.” He picked up the shovel again, his eyes on her as he smiled. “Then I’ll get the junk removed.”
“I have to run out for a little while, but I can help when I get back. Feel free to check my garage for any tools or materials you might need. It’s unlocked. There might be work gloves in there that would fit you.”
“Good to know.”
His tone suggested he hadn’t considered work gloves. Although he was from Southern California, the chilly morning temperature and stiff breeze didn’t seem to bother him.
Olivia suppressed a shiver when the cold air coming in the open window overtook the warm air blowing out of her car heater. “You aren’t planning to do all this work yourself, are you?”
He stabbed the tip of the shovel into the gravel and squinted at her in the bright sunlight. “Not if I can help it.”
Maybe, she thought, she should mind her own business. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Where’s Buster?”
“Who knows. I threw caution to the wind and let him have the run of the house instead of locking him in the mudroom.”
Dylan’s deep blue gaze settled on her. “Is that fair warning?”
Olivia laughed. “If you want to look at it that way.”
She rolled up her window and continued into the village and on to Frost Millworks, located on a wide, rock-strewn brook. The building was just ten years old and occupied a section of flat land above the brook, its exterior designed to fit with the rustic surroundings, its interior modern. Jess lived in an apartment in the original nineteenth-century sawmill overlooking the rock dam and millpond. It was one of the few surviving sawmills that had once dotted the streams and rivers of the region. As kids, Olivia and her sister used to swim in the millpond. The water was clear, clean and ice-cold, even on a hot August afternoon. They’d grown up a half mile down the road in the same house where their parents still lived.
By the time Olivia parked in the small lot, she had decided she didn’t have the whole story about Dylan McCaffrey and his intentions in Knights Bridge. Whatever they were, her reaction to him was perfectly normal. He was sexy, and there was no point in denying otherwise, at least to herself. His presence up the road from her was her doing, and if he complicated her life, it was her own fault.
She found her mother at her cluttered rolltop desk in the office just inside the mill entrance. Louise Frost smiled brightly at her elder daughter. “How’s your road?”
“Not a problem, except for the potholes. They’re brutal this year.”
“Do you keep a bag of sand in your trunk, just in case?”
Olivia shook her head. “I figure I can always call you or Dad if I get stuck.”
“That’s true, but sand makes sense.”
Her mother stood up from the desk. At five-five, she was shorter than either of her daughters. She worked out most days and was in good shape, wearing a fleece vest over a thick turquoise corduroy shirt, jeans and mud boots. She had dyed her hair auburn about five years ago and kept it cut short and, with her green eyes and round face, reminded Olivia of her younger sister. She tended to favor their father.
She peered at a new photograph taped to the top edge of the antique desk, this one of palm trees, sandy beach and ocean. It joined a dozen others her mother had printed off the internet of the famous 123-mile Pacific Coast Highway in central California: Monterey, Carmel-by-the-Sea, San Simeon, Cambria, Morro Rock, sea otters, sunsets, surf crashing on sheer rock cliffs.
“That’s the beach in Santa Barbara,” her mother said.
“It’s beautiful.”
“We’re going to fly into Los Angeles and spend the night in Beverly Hills or Malibu, then head up to Santa Barbara for at least one night. I’m investigating hotels and inns. I haven’t made reservations yet. I’d do a bed-and-breakfast, but I don’t think your father would like it.”
Olivia smiled. “You could try. It’d only be a couple nights, right?”
Her mother nodded, staring at the pictures on her desk. “They say driving south-to-north isn’t as unnerving with the cliffs and water as north-to-south, but people do both. Driving south you hug the coast. You see more, I guess. I think we’ll see plenty.”
“Are you going as far as San Francisco?”
“I think so. It depends on how much time we have.” She shifted from the photographs to a map of California she had tacked to the wall, with pushpins marking various stops she wanted to make. She seemed transfixed, then took a slow, deep breath and turned to Olivia, obviously forcing a smile. “It’ll be fun. I can’t wait.”
“When do you leave?”
“We haven’t set a date yet. Depends on the work here. Your father is overdue for a vacation.”
“You are, too,” Olivia said.
“I suppose. I started dreaming about this trip a few years ago when we did the custom windows for that house in Carmel. Remember, Liv? It was outside our usual area, but the family used to live in Boston and knew about us. They sent pictures…” She sighed, standing back from the desk. “It’s beautiful here. I don’t want to live anywhere else, but I knew I had to go to California, see this part of our country.”
“Good for you, Mom.”
“Yeah.” She seemed a little shaken, as if she’d said too much. “Thanks.”
Olivia heard the main door open. In another moment, Jess appeared in the office doorway, tightening the belt to her tan raincoat. “I’m on my way to Boston and thought I’d stop in. I’m meeting with clients. Want to come, Mom?”
“I should mind things here.”
“It’s quiet today. There’s nothing to mind—”
“There’s always something. I’m never bored.”
“You haven’t been out of town in weeks,” Jess said, impatient. “It’d do you good.”
“I have plans, Jess.”
Olivia could see their mother wasn’t about to budge and would only get her back up and go on the defensive if Jess kept pushing her. “I’m heading over to see Grandma. Care to join me?”
“You go, Liv,” her mother said, dropping back to her chair at her desk. “Tell your grandma I said hi. We’re having her out to the house this weekend. I’m doing a Sunday dinner for a change. You two will both be here?”
“Of course, Mom,” Jess said with a sigh, then left.
Louise Frost stared at the spot her younger daughter had vacated, then finally said, half under her breath, that she needed to get to work and started tapping keys on her computer. Olivia said goodbye and headed back out.
She found her sister standing on the rock wall at the edge of the millpond. “You can’t enable her, Liv.” Jess shoved her hands in her coat pockets and watched the rushing water, high with the spring runoff and yesterday’s rain. “It won’t help.”
“Arguing with her isn’t going to change anything.”
“What will? Medication? Therapy? Some herbal potion?”
“There are a number of herbs that can help alleviate anxiety, but she has to want to do something about it.”
“Planning a trip she’ll never take…”
“Maybe she will take it,” Olivia said.
“Dad doesn’t think so. It’s pathetic, Liv. She didn’t used to be this bad.”
Olivia watched a dead leaf float over the small dam into the rushing stream below. “I think she’s trying, Jess.”
Jess didn’t respond at once. The only sound was the rush of the water over the old dam. “I’m worried I’m catching it,” she said finally.
“Catching what, Jess?”
“Mom’s anxiety. I woke up last night in a sweat and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was ready to jump out of my skin. The power was out....” She pulled her hands out of her pockets and raked her fingers through her hair. “I turned on a flashlight and just sat there, trying to calm myself.”
“The weather was nasty.”
“Freezing rain, clouds, fog, darker than the pits of hell…” Jess shuddered. “I felt closed in. I couldn’t breathe.”
“We’re all feeling closed in after the long winter. Green grass and daffodils will help. What about Mark? Was he—”
“He wasn’t here. He never stays past sunup. We’re old-fashioned that way, with Mom and Dad right up the road, working here.” She squatted down suddenly, picked up a stone and flung it into the millpond as she stood again, the ripples spreading across the clear, coppery water to the opposite bank. “What if I was freaked out at the prospect of going to Boston today?”
“Did that run through your mind?”
“Everything ran through my mind.”
“Who are you seeing in Boston?”
“The manager of a small law office in the North End that wants to redo the interior of their building, the owners of a house on Beacon Hill, a hole-in-the-wall library that specializes in early New England history. It’ll take all day.”
“You’re feeling the stress,” Olivia said.
Her sister almost laughed. “I hope that’s all it is. I hope I’m not…” She didn’t finish. “There’s so much I want to do, Liv. I don’t want to be afraid to leave Knights Bridge. What about you? You won’t fly.”
Olivia averted her eyes. “I’ll fly.”
“Ha. You’re not a good liar.” Jess abandoned the subject and spun away from the dam. “Mom’s driving us all crazy. She’s driving Dad crazy, too, but he’ll never admit it. Mark hasn’t said anything but I know he’s getting impatient.”
“Jess, is anything going on between you two?”
“Nothing, no—” She stopped, turned back to Olivia. “I don’t know. This California trip has taken on a life of its own. I sometimes wonder if Mark’s waiting to see how it turns out, if he looks at Mom and sees me in twenty or thirty years. She’s a mess, Liv. You haven’t been around day to day. You haven’t seen her.”
“I know but I’m here now.”
“We all are so busy. You, me, Mark, Dad, Mom. My hours have been insane since January. It’s a sign business is good, which is terrific, but I have to do almost all the off-site client meetings. Dad does what he can, but he and the crew have their own work here. It doesn’t make sense to hire someone just because Mom’s gotten to the point she’ll hardly go anywhere.”
“Have you talked to them? Told them you’re feeling overburdened?”
“Wouldn’t do any good.”
Her sister, Olivia realized, was in a mood to vent, not to work on solutions. “I can always help.”
“You have your hands full as it is.” Jess sighed, calmer. “It’s going to be a long day.”
“Why don’t you stay in Boston and not kill yourself to get back here tonight? You can stay at my apartment. I have it until the end of the month. I left the couch. It’s not bad to sleep on.”
“That’d be great.” Jess gave a wry smile. “What if I run into your friend Marilyn?”
“You won’t run into her.”
“I know she did something to you—”
“She looked after herself. That’s what Marilyn Bryson does. Maybe we should, too.”
They walked up to the parking lot together, the mill’s handful of employees arriving for the day. Olivia noticed green shoots on the bank of the brook and remembered that her mother had planted a hundred daffodil bulbs there last fall, turning down help from anyone. She’d wanted to do the work herself.
Jess stopped at her truck, one hand on the driver’s door as she squinted back at her older sister. “You love Boston, Liv. Are you sure you’ll be happy living in Knights Bridge full-time?”
“So far, so good, Jess. Really. I’m fine.”
“You have big plans for Carriage Hill. Between it and freelancing you’re already working long hours. Unless you’re very lucky or get some major backing, this first year’s going to be tight financially and grueling in terms of workload. I can help—I want to—”
“You have your hands full with your work here.” There was also whatever was going on with Jess and her almost-fiancé, Olivia thought. The last thing Jess needed right now was to worry about her sister. Olivia gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about me, okay? I was ready to make a change or I wouldn’t be here.”
“Dad says Dylan McCaffrey’s shown up. Your note about the mess in Grace’s yard must have gotten to him.”
“It’s his yard now,” Olivia amended.
“He reminded you of that, did he?”
“That’s one old house that should be condemned,” Mark Flanagan said, emerging from behind an SUV. He was angular and long legged, his dark blond hair cut short. He wore pricey jeans and a black windbreaker over a flannel shirt, his usual outfit even through a good chunk of summer. “There’s no point in sinking money into trying to renovate it.” He stood next to Jess. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
“When did you get here?” Jess asked, regaining her composure.
“A few minutes ago, but I’m not staying. I just need to check on an order. I saw you two talking and figured I’d say hi.”
She yanked open the door. “What were you doing, sneaking up on us?”
He gave Jess a mystified look. “You probably couldn’t hear me over the water.” He left it at that and turned to Olivia. “I ran into Dylan McCaffrey at breakfast this morning. I understand he’s the new owner of Grace Webster’s old house, but I can’t believe he’s staying there. That place is a dump. I’m not sure it’s even safe there.”
For no reason that could possibly make sense to her, Olivia felt her cheeks flame. “He looked alive and well an hour ago. He was digging out a drain, and the house was still standing.”
“What’s he doing here?” Mark asked.
Jess either hadn’t noticed his mystified look or was pretending she hadn’t. “Olivia wrote to him.”
Mark raised his eyebrows at Olivia. “You wrote to him? Why?”
“I asked him to clean up the yard,” she said, trying not to sound defensive. “It’s an eyesore. It sends a bad message to people passing by—”
“What people passing by?” Mark asked, amused.
“No one now, but I am opening a business. My clientele will want a picturesque country setting. They won’t want to go by rusted appliances and cast-off mattresses.”
“Relax, Liv,” Mark said. “People who want to eat chive soup won’t mind passing the Webster place. You can tell them it’s authentic country.”
“Not funny, Mark,” Olivia said good-naturedly as he continued across the parking lot to the mill entrance. “Not funny at all. And it’s not chive soup. It’s potato-leek soup sprinkled with chives.”
He laughed. “I feel so much better.”
Jess watched him disappear inside the mill. “Don’t mind him, Liv. He’s getting to be as big a stick-in-the-mud as Dad. I can’t wait to try your soup.”
“Thanks, but he was just teasing. Jess—”
“I have to get going. I’ll see you later. Good luck with McCaffrey.”
She climbed into her truck. Olivia shook her head with bemusement and returned to her car. She drove the short distance into the village, turning onto another of Knights Bridge’s narrow roads, this one dead-ending at a popular gate that fishermen and hikers used to access Quabbin. She pulled into Rivendell, a small assisted living facility situated on open land dotted with sugar maples and white pines, with views of the waters of the reservoir in the distance. Audrey Frost, Olivia’s grandmother, lived in a one-bedroom apartment down the hall from Grace Webster.
Grace had been entirely unhelpful in tracking down the new owner of her house, which Olivia had attributed to her advanced age. Grace was, after all, in her nineties. With Dylan’s arrival, Olivia was no longer as sure age had anything to do with it. The story of how he’d ended up with the house had too many unanswered questions.
Maybe Grace was hiding something. Maybe whatever she was hiding had brought Duncan McCaffrey to Knights Bridge—and now his son.
“Or maybe I didn’t get enough sleep last night,” Olivia muttered under her breath as she passed the sunroom. She spotted Grace in a chair, alone in front of a wall of windows, and went in. “I thought that was you. Good morning, Miss Webster.”
Grace beamed, her eyes sparkling at her visitor. “So good to see you, Olivia. You know you can call me Grace now. I was always ‘Miss Webster’ to my students, but I’m no longer a teacher. We live in a more casual age than when I was younger.” She set a small but powerful pair of binoculars on her lap. She was a tiny woman with snow-white hair she kept neatly curled, and light blue eyes that added charm to what could be a stern demeanor. Her attention was on birds fluttering at feeders outside. “I just saw a male cardinal. We’ll have to take the feeders down soon, though. Now that the weather’s warming up, they’ll attract bears and mountain lions.”
“Mountain lions, Grace?” Olivia asked with a skeptical smile.
“Darn right,” she said, clutching the binoculars with her arthritis-gnarled fingers. “I heard that catamount scat was discovered in Quabbin. Mountain lions are shy animals. They stick to the wilderness and avoid human contact. Who would have thought bald eagles and moose would return to the area? But they have, so why not mountain lions?”
Olivia wasn’t arguing about mountain lions in Quabbin. There had been periodic reports of their return to the back areas of the protected, limited-access wilderness surrounding the reservoir, but no confirmed sightings.
“The bird feeders are a nice touch,” she said.
Grace sank into the cushions of her high-backed chair. “We take care of them ourselves. How are you, Olivia? Your grandmother and I have yoga class together in a little while. She’s younger than I am, but I hold my own.”
Of that, Olivia had no doubt. “I’ll stop by and say hi, but I also wanted to see you. I’m wondering if you’ve thought more about the man who bought your house.”
She gazed out the windows as three chickadees darted at the feeders. “I haven’t, no.”
Stonewalling, Olivia thought. “Apparently he died and left the house to his son in San Diego. He’s here.”
That got Grace’s attention. She peered up at Olivia. “He’s in Knights Bridge?”
“He arrived yesterday and spent the night at your old house.”
“You asked him to clean up the yard?”
Olivia nodded. “I told him it’s become an eyesore since you sold the house.”
“Hoodlum teenagers. I left the washer and refrigerator on the back porch for the new owner to get rid of. That was part of our deal. I didn’t want to be bothered with taking them to the dump…” Grace sniffed, a touch of the old-fashioned, formidable teacher coming out in her. “I wish I’d been there to catch the little devils having their fun. I’d have had every one of them arrested for criminal mischief.”
“Just as well you weren’t there, Grace.”
“That’s why kids run wild these days. There’s no one to take a firm hand. We don’t want to be bothered. Look at me here, holed up in an old folks’ home, watching birds....”
“You did your bit for the youth of Knights Bridge.”
Grace loosened her grip on her binoculars and raised a hand, pointing one finger at Olivia. “I don’t believe for one minute the brats who vandalized my house were from Knights Bridge.”
By their own account, some of the adults in town who had been students of Grace Webster back in her days as an English and Latin teacher were still afraid of her. Olivia could understand why. Grace in her prime must have been something.
She was something now, Olivia thought, and steered the conversation back to her reason for being there. “The son—the man who inherited your house—is named Dylan McCaffrey.”
Grace lowered her hand, her brow furrowed as she waited a moment before speaking. “McCaffrey. Yes, I remember now. His father was also a Dylan?” She shook her head, stopping Olivia from responding. “No, it was something else.”
“Duncan,” Olivia said.
“That’s right. Exactly so.” Grace kept her eyes on the bird feeders. “This Dylan McCaffrey—he’s a scoundrel, isn’t he?”
Scoundrel? Olivia bit back her surprise, as well as a smile. “Why would you think he’s a scoundrel?”
“His father was a treasure hunter.”
“A what? Grace—”
She raised her binoculars again. “Spring’s here despite last night’s storm. I’ve seen robins. I’m sure I saw a bluebird, too, but your grandmother isn’t so sure.”
“Grace,” Olivia said, “if you know of any reason I should be wary of Dylan McCaffrey, you need to tell me.”
“I would think you would be wise to be wary of any man who mysteriously inherited a house on the other side of the continent from a dead father.” She set her binoculars back in her lap and fixed her gaze on Olivia. “Is this Dylan McCaffrey single?”

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