“Have you heard the terms of my father’s will?”

Clair shook her head. Nick’s words, “give your house back,” echoed in her head, the rasp of his tone burrowing deeper into her mind.

“Jeff left everything to me,” he said absently, as if he’d forgotten she was listening. “But there were stipulations. He said I have to marry. Fall in love and marry within twelve months.”

Only Jeff Dylan would be arrogant enough to believe he could regulate love. “What do you want?” she asked.

“I want you to marry me. If you pretend to be my loving wife for twelve months, I’ll sign your house over to you.”

“You must know other women. What’s wrong with them?”

He laughed without joy or happiness. “I know other women, but I don’t want to marry any of them. I don’t want to start a marriage with someone who’d expect it to last. Can you imagine you’ll want to stay married to me?”

Her stomach knotted. “No.”

“Then you’re the wife I want.”

Dear Reader,

I grew up in a loud, loving, extended family. My aunts and uncles continue to love me as if I’m theirs, and I can’t really tell my cousins from my own siblings. I know how lucky I am.

How many of you live away from your family, as I do now? Clair, my heroine in this book, shares my longing for hearth and home, for seeing the faces of people who belong to her as she belongs to them. I hope you’ll enjoy reading about Clair and her not-so-convenient husband, Nick Dylan. Out of a marriage contract, they build a life and home and best of all, an extended community family of their own.

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this story, please feel free to write to me at P.O. Box 801068, Acworth, GA 30101 or annaadams@superauthors.com

Sincerely,

Anna Adams

The Marriage Contract
Anna Adams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Sylvia, in memory of Becky.

I hope that soon the joy of her life

eases the pain of your loss.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

NICK DYLAN lifted his glass to the orange sun that glinted through his father’s library window. No. His window. He’d buried his father that morning. Uneven panes of glass twisted the October light, destroyed his perspective of the coming sunset, much as his father’s life had twisted Nick’s outlook on his own existence.

But not on his future. Senator Jeffrey Dylan had no right to Nick’s future.

The library door opened behind him, and a man’s footsteps preceded a gruff voice. “Dr. Dylan, why didn’t you accompany your mother to Mr. Thomas’s office?”

Nick’s temples throbbed. “Leota went without me?” He turned away from the window. His mother’s decision to go alone didn’t surprise him.

He looked at Hunter, who’d run the family home here in Fairlove, Virginia, since before Nick was born. Stubble etched the older man’s face. Though he wore his usual, perfectly pressed navy suit, Hunter’s inattention to his beard was as good a sign as any of the grief that darkened this house.

Grief Nick couldn’t feel. He mourned his father’s lifelong disappointment in him, mourned the relationship he’d never won. Maybe he’d been wrong not to compromise more, not to find a way to be the son his father had tried to make him.

“I saw the limo turn out of the driveway. I thought you were with her, sir,” Hunter said.

“Maybe she didn’t want to wait for me. You know she likes to be early for her appointments.” Nick tried to cover up the unease between himself and Leota. Her anger, a freewheeling, almost tangible entity, had grown with every passing second in the three days since his father’s death. When Hunter had called to tell him about the brandy and sleeping pills he’d found on Leota’s nightstand, Nick had moved back into this house. Though Nick and his mother were not close, he loved her. He wanted to care for her.

“I assumed she’d want your support, sir.” Hunter straightened. “Perhaps she needed a moment to herself.”

Crossing the Oriental rug, which muffled his footsteps on the wide plank floor, Nick tossed back the Scotch he’d poured himself. He set the tumbler on the tray that always stood beside his father’s favorite leather armchair, grimacing as the alcohol scalded his throat. “Maybe I can catch up with her.”

“Sir—”

“I wish you’d stop calling me that. Nothing’s changed between us since Jeff died.”

“I feel awkward calling you Mr. Nick.”

At thirty-two, Nick had almost forgotten the title Hunter had used when he was a child. “Try just ‘Nick.’ You’ve managed not to call me anything for the year I’ve been back in town.”

Hunter’s self-conscious smile looked sad. “I’ll try.”

Nick fought an overwhelming urge to hug the other man. He’d last hugged Hunter on the morning his father had sent him away to boarding school. Hunter, the only man who’d shown him affection. Far more of a father to him than Jeff had ever been.

“If, for some reason, Leota didn’t go to Wilford’s office and she calls here, will you let me know?”

“She’ll be there.” Hunter sounded certain. “Despite her grief, she must be curious about your father’s last wishes.”

Or else she dreaded finding out what Jeff might have planned for them—the housemaid he’d married because she was pregnant and the son who’d almost been born a bastard. Nick grunted agreement. He glanced back at the older man as he curved his hand around the ornate library door frame.

“Get some rest,” he said, uncomfortable with Hunter’s sorrow. How deeply had he cared for his difficult employer? Nick had never discussed Hunter’s feelings for Jeff, because he couldn’t define his own.

The older man had been a refuge of stability for Nick. His presence had buffered Nick from Jeff, who’d found Hunter difficult to criticize.

Nick paused in the wide parquet-floored hall. He owed Hunter more than a caution to rest. He should ask straight out how the other man felt. A normal caring human being would ask the question. And once he crossed the final emotional minefield of his father’s will, he believed he could begin to live like a normal human being. If he survived without a mortal blow, he’d come back here and ask Hunter to join him in a beer.

Nick hurried through the double front doors and then strode down the brick steps to his battered Jeep. The old green car was parked on one side of the curving drive like a poor relative, hoping for a kind welcome. Last night, after the limo driver had brought them back from the family visitation at the funeral home, Leota had suggested Nick hide his eyesore of a vehicle in the garage, or better yet, in one of the empty barns on the property.

Putting the Jeep in the garage would have made it appear he’d come home to stay. And though he’d never admitted it to another living soul, home wasn’t a place where he felt comfortable.

He pushed his key into the ignition. As the engine coughed to life, he watched the lights starting to come on in the town below. From up here on Dylan property, Fairlove looked quaint and warm.

Appearances were deceiving. Since he’d come back to Fairlove, Nick had lived in a small house just two doors from Saint Theresa’s—the church parking lot was where Hunter had taught him to ride his bike. For the past twelve months, Nick had attended countless school-board meetings and potluck suppers. He’d “doctored” townspeople who came to him only as their last resort, and he’d tried to turn himself into one of Fairlove’s ordinary citizens. But the townspeople couldn’t seem to forget he was a Dylan and therefore the last physician they wanted to treat their sore throats, arthritis or lumbago.

As the pole light above the Jeep came on, Nick put the car in gear and started down the winding road into the town spread out below him. Movement on the street in front of the high school drew Nick’s gaze to the kids escaping at top speed from band practice.

Car lights flickered on as the parents who’d waited for their children started their engines and began to head for the tidy rows of federal-style houses. Some of the buildings had been built before the American Revolution, but some were new construction, erected according to the town’s covenants. Nick had bought one of the newer houses. He’d lived in a historical monument long enough.

At the bottom of the hill, he checked for traffic on his left, then his right. The sight of the Atherton house provoked the usual momentary pang of helpless guilt. Derelict, forgotten, except by his father, the house called The Oaks was slowly falling down.

Nick looked away from his father’s trophy. Jeff had destroyed the Atherton family while Nick had been away at college. If he’d been home, would he have tried to end the vendetta before the family disappeared from Fairlove? Or would he have sided with his mother’s wounded pride and stood aside while his father took vengeance on the man who’d married Sylvie Atherton, the woman Jeff had truly loved?

Nick pressed his gas pedal and tried to put the past he couldn’t change behind him. He had to concentrate on the here and now, on Leota, who seemed to be self-destructing, and on the will, which might contain a last, posthumous blow.

He passed his own dark house and the church before he turned in front of the courthouse. His father’s black limo took up two of the hotly contested parking spaces on the square in front of Wilford Thomas’s office. All around the limo, reporters and cameramen waited, their equipment at the ready.

Nick found a space as far away from them as possible and dodged through the evening traffic on foot. Wilford had arranged this after-hours reading to avoid the reporters who’d been following Leota. Obviously his ploy had failed.

“Dr. Dylan! Nick!” As he reached the door to Wilford’s office, a man behind him shouted his name. He ignored the voice and yanked the door shut behind him.

Wilford immediately came out of his inner office. In his mid-fifties, he had white, perfectly coiffed hair and wore a suit as appropriately conservative as Hunter’s. “I thought I heard a commotion. Come on in. I’ll lock this door until we finish. I had the sheriff come by and give the press a talk about trespassing.”

Leota looked up from the far side of Wilford’s desk, slender, blond, perfectly made up and emotionally frozen.

“I thought we planned to drive together,” Nick said to her.

“Why don’t you all stop treating me as if I’m a lunatic on the verge of a breakdown?”

Nick, taken aback at her response, moved to the chair beside hers. He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “I only meant you don’t have to do this alone. You and I are still family.”

Leota flashed him a look that fairly sizzled with rage. Nick made a conscious effort not to show his bewilderment. Jeff’s death seemed to have released all the demons she’d formerly held at bay.

“Can I get either of you a coffee?”

Nick turned to Wilford. The attorney’s nervous tone boded bad news. “I’m fine.” He glanced at his mother. “Leota?”

“No. Let’s get on with it.”

“Do you want word for word, or the gist first?” Wilford asked.

Nick tried to corner the attorney’s shifting gaze. “Why don’t you tell us what’s making you uneasy?”

Wilford Thomas subsided into his chair, fumbling with the knot on his silver-blue tie. “I’m sorry, Nick.” His glance flickered to Leota. “Don’t look like that. Jeff hasn’t left the house to a stranger or anything, but he’s made an unusual stipulation.”

“We’re waiting.” Leota’s voice cut like a knife.

“You have the use of the house for the rest of your life, Leota, and you also receive a generous income. I’ll go over the details in a moment, but first, I want to go over the bequest that concerns Nick.”

“Jeff always wanted me to specialize rather than becoming a GP.” Nick attempted a casual laugh. “Are you about to tell me I have to go back to school?”

“Worse, I’m afraid. All assets not mentioned elsewhere, the bulk of the estate, really, go to you, Nick, but—and this is the part that troubles me—he’s stated a condition.”

“Go on.” Nick’s pulse nearly choked him. He let go of all hope that Jeff had finally forgiven him for the fact of his birth.

“He wants you to get married. Actually, the language states you must ‘fall in love and marry within the next twelve months.’ The marriage must exist for at least a year, and the other executors, along with your mother and I are required to ascertain your marriage is valid. Also, you must remain in the family home for the first year of marriage.”

Nick lifted his hands as if he could stop the world from falling in on his head. “Don’t finish.” Standing, he dragged a hand through his hair. “Only my father would believe he could force me to fall in love with someone.”

“And marry her,” added Wilford, a stickler for details.

“And stay married for at least a year.” Leota’s voice was leavened with bitterness. “That’s true love for you. Jeff’s idea of it, anyway. Wilford, can we seal this will? Can we keep the papers from publishing it?”

Dumbfounded she could so easily accept his father’s plans, Nick understood that her first priority was still protecting the family name. She’d sold vital parts of herself to hold that name.

He turned to Wilford. “Can his terms be enforced?”

“You’d have to go to court to fight them. And, Nick, your cousin Hale inherits if you don’t meet the conditions.”

Leota sprang to her feet. “I won’t let you contest your father’s will. You can’t broadcast our private family matters to…to—” she pointed through the windows “—to them!”

Her hysterical tone betrayed her pain, but he wouldn’t go along with a farce of a marriage like the one his birth had caused. “Jeff still wants revenge because you got pregnant with me. I won’t let him have it, and I don’t care who finds out.”

“I know you, Nick. You do care—about people you’ve never even met. People who believed in your father. Look at those happy family pictures your father’s office distributed to any newspaper or magazine who’d run them. You could have stopped posing for them.”

“That was politics. I’m his son. You know this doesn’t compare.”

“What about me? I care what happens to his name. I don’t want anyone to know Jeff the way we did. And what about the house? Do you want to lose everything?”

He didn’t put a comforting arm around her shoulders. They never touched each other that way. “You and I will be all right.” But could he just let Hale take over?

Leota grabbed his arm, her gaze haunted. “Promise you won’t contest your father’s will. I couldn’t stand facing any more reporters. And Hale—he’ll turn our home into an amusement park.”

Wilford’s chair squeaked as he leaned forward. “Let’s get back to Jeff. I don’t understand what you’re trying to hide about him.”

Leota tightened her hand on Nick’s arm as she met the attorney’s gaze, a sheen of moisture lighting her eyes. “Jeff and Nick and I were a family. Our lives are no one else’s business.”

“You can’t expect Nick to marry someone in the next twelve months just so he can keep the property and money?”

“I can.”

She dropped smoothly into her pattern of subservience to Jeff’s wishes, as if she were a drowning woman who’d grabbed a rope. She didn’t know any other way, and Nick feared what it would do to her if he forced the issue.

“I don’t expect my son to marry just anybody,” she said. “We know plenty of suitable women. He’ll fall in love with a woman of good breeding and quality who would have made his father as proud as she’ll make me.”

Nick’s concern for his mother overwhelmed his urge to break free of Jeff, but he had to point out the obvious. “You want me to just pick a woman and fall in love with her?”

“I want you to do what your father asked.” Leota lowered her voice to a hiss. “For once, carry out one of his dreams for you.”

Dreams, hell. He refused to allow Jeff to turn his life into a nightmare. His father’s idea of a suitable woman piled insult on injury. “I never made a choice he liked. Now would be the worst time to start.”

Wilford stacked the pages of Jeff’s will. “One thing I think Leota’s right about, Nick. Are you sure you’d want to go over this in front of a courtroom? Whatever drove your father to make these demands would come out. Do you need to ruin his reputation? He was, after all, a United States senator.”

“And how about my reputation?” Leota said.

Her broken tone reached him. Hadn’t she suffered enough at his father’s hands? “Why do you still care?” he asked, more honest with her than he’d ever been.

“He was my husband.”

She lifted her chin, perfectly formed through expensive surgery she’d undergone because she’d never looked good enough for Jeff. In his eyes or, consequently, her own. Nick’s knowledge of her pain weighed much more than his concern for name or money.

“I can’t decide this now.” But he was pretty sure he’d already decided. To help Leota he would force himself to give in to Jeff. “I’ll call you, Wilford, to schedule a time so we can go over the rest of the will.”

He didn’t look at Leota again as he unlocked the office door and stepped into the anteroom. As soon as he closed the door behind himself, another woman rose from a straight-backed chair.

“Nick?”

“Mrs. Franklin.” Selina Franklin and her husband, Julian, known around Fairlove as “the judge” ran Franklin House, an upscale bed-and-breakfast. “Can I help you? Are you sick?”

She shook her steel-gray head. “I have a question to ask you.” She opened her purse and plucked out a yellowed piece of paper. “Read this first. I received it almost twelve years ago.”

What now? Barely holding on to his patience, Nick took the paper. The writer had typed the words and hadn’t signed the note.

“If you value your husband’s career,” it read, “you’ll stay out of my plans for the girl. And if you tell anyone about this, it’s your word against mine. I’ll enjoy ruining the judge while we find out I’m more credible.”

Nick didn’t need a signature. He knew the tone intimately. “What girl?” he asked.

“Clair Atherton. After her mother, Sylvie, died, I tried to get her out of foster care and adopt her. Someone kept blocking me, no matter what I or my husband tried. When I realized who was behind our problems, I spoke to a few other people in town. After I visited with Mayor Brent, I received this note. I knew the mayor and every other man your father owned would line up to say I’d typed it myself.”

She was right. Mayor Brent and Jeff had fished, hunted and apparently practiced extortion together. Jeff’s eulogy at Brent’s funeral had won him his fourth term in the Senate.

“Where is Clair Atherton?” Anger produced a note in his voice he didn’t even recognize. He didn’t want to believe Jeff could hurt a child.

Selina didn’t answer. He’d known her most of his life, but since he’d come home, she’d treated him with icy deference. Now he understood why.

“Are you like your father?” she finally asked.

“What are you talking about?” He wanted to tear someone apart, not stand around discussing whether he would persecute little girls. Clair Atherton must be in her twenties now. Surely old enough to take care of herself.

“I’m going to invite Clair back to Fairlove. If she comes and you try to harm her, you’ll face all of us who had to let her go. We were afraid we couldn’t protect her any better than we protected her parents, but you don’t have your father’s political clout.”

Deep in Selina Franklin’s eyes burned guilt as strong and relentless as Nick’s own. He felt her start of surprise as she also recognized his secret shame. Turning away from her, he started toward the door on legs that felt as stiff as iron pokers.

He glanced over his shoulder, but didn’t allow himself to meet Selina’s gaze. “Clair Atherton has nothing to fear from me,” he said.

TWO DAYS BEFORE HALLOWEEN, Clair turned off the interstate at the Fairlove exit. Immediately, the trees seemed more lush. She rolled down her window to breathe in the crisp air of home. A small green sign directed her toward town. Within seconds, she came upon Shilling’s Gas ’n’ Go.

It looked pretty much as it had the day she’d left. The same sign displayed gas prices in bold black letters. Twelve years ago, she’d stared at that sign through the back window of a social worker’s van.

She didn’t need a map to find her way from here. She could have driven to Franklin House with her eyes closed. This hour of the day, breakfast cooking in Selina Franklin’s kitchen lured anyone with a sense of smell.

Clair suffered from even stronger appetites. Mrs. Franklin’s invitation had answered a longing Clair had never satisfied. Her mother’s old friend had said she’d found her through the “white pages” on the Internet, and she’d wondered if Clair ever thought of the old town.

Clair hardly ever forgot. The house she’d lived in might have fallen into ruin after all these years of neglect. Often, she’d dreamed of Jeff Dylan demolishing it with a big yellow crane and a wrecking ball. But she couldn’t forget the place where she’d known love, unconditional and ever-present, love whose memory made her hungry for the place she’d felt it.

But she was no longer a naive child, and she had to wonder why Selina Franklin had suddenly remembered her. Her parents’ dearest friends, Mrs. Franklin and her husband, an ambitious attorney whom Clair’s father had nicknamed the Judge, hadn’t been the only ones to look the other way when Social Services had cast around for someone who might take Clair in. None of the people she’d thought were like family had found room for her.

Which made Mrs. Franklin’s invitation all the more suspect. She’d asked for whatever time Clair could spare. Clair reminded herself to be wary. People rarely made such generous offers without an ulterior motive.

She slowed her car at the small elementary school, and memories assaulted her, of books and paper, overheated children who played hard outside at recess. Her memories had never left her, had, in fact, grown more important to her, because they formed a lifeline back to Fairlove.

The bell at Saint Theresa’s began to peal, a call to morning prayers, and Clair turned her car toward the sound. Those deep chimes had punctuated so many moments of her first fourteen years. She was glad she’d broken her trip from Boston in D.C. the night before. She’d wanted to arrive with the morning bells.

As soon as she rounded the corner into Church Street, she saw him. Nick Dylan. The man whose father had destroyed her family. Tall, lean and prosperous-looking in a dark suit and a long black overcoat, he was carrying what appeared to be shirts from the dry cleaners.

Clair began to shake as she saw him approach a Jeep and open the door. The long dry-cleaning bags twined around his body. She slowed as he tucked his laundry in his back seat.

Good. With any luck, he was on his way somewhere else. Since the cleaners was closed on Sunday, he must have brought the shirts from his house. Maybe Fairlove wouldn’t keep him now that his father had died.

He straightened, and the wind lifted his jet-black hair. She glimpsed his sharply etched, aristocratic Dylan face, dark eyes that met hers and instantly flared. Clair looked away, but she couldn’t help looking back at him. His pale, shocked expression struck her as she passed him.

Barely three feet separated them, a space poisoned by years of family enmity. Clair clamped her teeth together, to keep from shouting her frustration. How could she have prepared herself for a Dylan mundanely packing his shirts in a car?

Rattled, her heart pounding, she drove twice around the square. People stared, but no one else recognized her. To push Nick Dylan out of her mind before she saw Mrs. Franklin, she concentrated on the buildings.

A landscaper had taken over the old ice-cream shop. The local newspaper had bought out Mrs. Clark’s sewing-and-crafts shop and added on to their property.

Clair fought back unwanted tears. The sheer, comforting familiarity of these streets and buildings brought her past back to her. Her memories hadn’t just been myths she’d created to help her survive in foster care.

She turned down the town’s outer road toward the high school where she’d been in her first year when her parents had died. Those rooms hadn’t left a strong impression. Nor had the apartment block behind the school, where they’d lived until her father died, a victim of his own sense of failure after he’d lost their house to Senator Dylan. After her father’s death, her mother lost interest in everything. Including her own life. Within months she’d suffered a heart attack and followed her husband to the grave.

Clair looked up the hill. If her home still existed, thick evergreens hid it from her, but the Dylan home remained as commanding as ever. An image of Nick flashed through her mind, but his stunned expression got all mixed up with his father’s customary contempt.

She turned away from that house, determined to conquer the pain that still tore at her. She shouldn’t have come this way. She drove straight to Mrs. Franklin’s bed-and-breakfast, determined to live in peace with her memories of the Dylans.

Her other choice was revenge. A pointless exercise that couldn’t bring back the parents and the home she’d lost.

Clair parked at the bottom of the steps in front of the bed-and-breakfast and climbed out of the car. She swung her backpack over one shoulder. Caution moistened her hands and dried her mouth.

She marched up the stairs and then curled her fingers around the cool brass door handle. Counting two quick breaths, she pushed the door open and stepped into a shadowy hall. Overhead, a fan’s blades whiffed in rhythmic puffs of sound. She waited for her eyes to grow accustomed to the subdued light.

“Clair, you’ve come home.”

Her heart hammered. Home. She knew this woman’s voice—rich, ragged around the edges. Selina Franklin had been a frequent visitor at Clair’s house. She’d brought homemade oatmeal cookies and sock puppets with black button eyes.

The shadow in front of Clair slowly formed itself into a woman who seemed too short to be Mrs. Franklin. Clair had last seen her through the back of that Social Services van. Her memory of her mother’s friend was all bound up with a painful mantra the woman who’d driven her to D.C. kept repeating. “You can’t stay. You have no one here to take care of you.”

That memory had become a nightmare. Mrs. Franklin must have known how she’d felt. Old resentment she no longer wanted to feel rose in her and she swallowed convulsively.

The other woman lifted pale hands to her own throat. “Can you be Clair?” A slight change in the arrangement of lines around her mouth conveyed her welcome. “You look so much like your mother that for a moment I thought you were her. Sylvie was your age when I first met her, when she came here to teach. What are you now? Twenty-four?”

“Twenty-six.” Clair drank in the other woman’s delicate features, pale blue eyes she remembered laughing at her mother’s jokes, a generous mouth that had grown thin after her parents’ deaths. “How is the judge?”

“He lived up to your dad’s expectations. The governor appointed him to the bench about ten years ago.” Mrs. Franklin turned to pluck an object from a cubby behind her desk. “I’m so glad you’ve come. I’ve given you a room, because I thought you’d be more comfortable on your own than staying in my guest room.” She slid a big old-fashioned key across the desktop. “I’m not sure how many of your friends are still in town. Most of our young people seem to leave these days. Except for Nick Dylan.” Clair stiffened at her mention of the Dylan name, but Mrs. Franklin went on, her words tumbling over each other. “He took over Dr. Truman’s practice last year, and he refuses to leave.”

“Refuses?”

“Apparently. Because every time I go past his office it’s empty. People don’t go to him unless they need serious help fast. Maybe he should advertise.”

Trying not to see his shocked face in her mind again, Clair reached for the registration book on its spindle. Mrs. Franklin spun it away from her.

“Don’t bother. You’re my guest. You know, you’ll probably see Nick sometimes. You can understand the quandary folks find themselves in. Honestly, who wants to take her bunions to Senator Jeffrey Dylan’s boy?”

Clair concentrated on Mrs. Franklin’s widow’s peak. Why did the woman go on so about the Dylans?

“I guess you heard about Jeff?” Mrs. Franklin said.

She meant the fact that he’d died a month ago. The nation had mourned him. Clair could not. She adjusted her backpack strap. “I heard.” She searched her key for a room number, but nothing marred the smooth swirls of old brass. “Which room should I put my things in?”

“The Concord. A few years ago, I named the rooms for Revolutionary War sites. The tourists seem to like it.” Mrs. Franklin patted the scarred top of her eighteenth-century accountant’s desk.

Clair worked at a smile, bewildered by Mrs. Franklin’s rapid chatter and the watchful gaze that vied with her light tone. “How do I get to the Concord?” she asked.

“Take the elevator to the second floor and turn right. Three doors down on the left.”

“Thanks.”

“You haven’t said how long you plan to stay.”

Had she been wise to come at all? “I’m not sure. I’m kind of between jobs.”

A frown crisscrossed the older woman’s forehead. “We’ll talk about that when you come back down. I want to know everything you’ve been doing.”

Clair turned away from the desk, cast adrift. The woman looked like Mrs. Franklin, but she sure didn’t act like her. What had made her so nervous? Did she regret her invitation?

Clair glanced back with a smile as she stepped onto the elevator. As soon as the doors closed, she sank against the paneled back wall. She’d carried enough clothes for tonight in her backpack. Maybe she wouldn’t stay any longer.

In the upstairs hall, a wide brass plate announced the third door on the left as the entry to the Concord. Clair opened it and stepped into a room with just enough clutter to feel cozy. She dropped her backpack on the bench at the end of the bed and crossed to the windows to pull back the velvet drapes. Sunlight spilled over a fragile writing desk, tracing patterns on the floor.

Clair laughed. In work boots and jeans and a thermal turtleneck, she was the room’s jarring note. She opened the bathroom door and promised herself a soak in the claw-footed tub. She took a soap from the marble dish on the counter and sniffed its fragrance. She was washing her face when she thought she heard a knock at the door.

Straightening, she blotted her face with a towel and the tapping was repeated. She crossed the room, still holding the towel as she opened the door. It was Selina.

“You probably think I’m a nut,” the other woman said.

“Different from how I remember you,” Clair admitted, smiling to soften her words.

“I haven’t been honest.”

Clair dropped the towel. After a nonplussed moment, she scooped it up again. “Do I want you to be?”

“I have to tell you the truth, because I’d like you to stay in Fairlove.”

Dread weighed on Clair’s shoulders, but she’d perfected a knack for floating with unexpected punches. “What’s your secret?”

“Your parents’ other friends and the judge and I—” Selina broke off, clearing her throat. “We let Social Services put you in foster care.”

She’d known her family’s friends hadn’t stopped her from leaving, but she’d never imagined they’d decided not to help her. Backing blindly toward the bench, Clair managed to sink onto her backpack. Metal rings and rough canvas didn’t hurt half as much as the truth.

“Why would you do that to me? Didn’t you love my parents?”

“We loved you. We had to let you go.”

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU LOVED ME, so you decided to make me live with strangers? My parents trusted all of you, but no one thought I might be better off with a family who cared about me?” Clair curled her fingers into the towel, wadding it against her stomach. Unbelievable.

“You don’t understand. We weren’t able to protect David and Sylvie, and we didn’t think we could save you from Jeff Dylan, either.”

Clair licked her dry lips. “You looked for me now because he died?”

“When you first left, I used my husband’s influence to watch over you. I made sure you stayed around the D.C. area, and my friend in Social Services led all Jeff Dylan’s inquiries astray. I know this may not comfort you, but we worked hard to keep him from finding you.”

“He could have hired detectives.”

“He did, but they always stumbled across the false trails my friend laid. She stepped outside the lines for me.”

Clair turned and dropped the towel on the desk.

“Maybe I owe you gratitude, but I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t expect you to trust me, but I’m glad you’re home. I’m sorry about the way I talked downstairs. I just knew you’d inevitably run into Nick Dylan, and I thought I’d test the waters, find out how you’d respond.”

“I already saw him.” She closed her eyes against that nagging image of his shocked face when he’d seen her. “I don’t care about him.”

“You don’t?”

Clair shook her head, trying to convince herself. From the moment she’d accepted Mrs. Franklin’s invitation, she’d wondered if it might be time to come home. She’d given her resignation to the landscaping firm she’d worked for in Boston. Whatever happened, she was ready for more-southern climates. “I don’t ever have to see Nick Dylan.”

“Don’t fool yourself. He wants this community to accept him. He doesn’t keep to his side of the Dylan hill.”

“I’m not afraid of him.” Clair lifted her chin, and Mrs. Franklin planted her hands on her hips.

“Why would you be with all of us behind you? We’re on your side.”

Clair considered. Why would she want to stay in a place where people she’d trusted had developed feet of clay?

Because she wasn’t fourteen anymore. She could reason beyond a fourteen-year-old’s pain, and she didn’t care about clay feet or disappointment. She’d been happy in Fairlove. Her mother and father were buried in the ground her family had lived on for generations. She belonged in Fairlove.

She dropped her company manners. “Is my parents’ house still standing?”

Mrs. Franklin looked puzzled, but Clair held her breath, waiting for an answer that meant everything to her. Jeff Dylan had stood in the dusty dirt driveway while she and her father and mother packed the last of their things into a rental truck. Jeff swore he’d never touch the house again. He just wanted to watch it decay until the earth claimed it.

He’d always talked like a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher.

“It stood for over a hundred years,” Mrs. Franklin said at last. “It wouldn’t crumble in a mere twelve years, but it looks neglected. Let me drive you out there.”

Clair struggled to add kindness to her tone. She’d rather rebuild relationships than choke them all off just because they hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped.

“Thank you, but no. I need to see it on my own the first time.” Living in foster care, she’d stopped depending on anyone for support. Truthfully, she wanted to believe someone on the face of this earth would back her up if she needed help, but she’d long since forgotten how to reach out and trust.

“If you haven’t already had breakfast, I’ll make it for you when you get back.” Mrs. Franklin touched her throat again, a nervous gesture Clair remembered. “You’ll come back?”

Nodding, Clair flipped open the top of her backpack and plucked out the small purse that held her driver’s license. “I want to come back, Mrs. Franklin. And no, I haven’t had breakfast.”

“Clair, I’m so sorry about the past—about everything.” The other woman folded her arms across her stomach.

Clair nodded, uncomfortable with her own need for a relationship as much as with Mrs. Franklin’s. “You don’t have to apologize. I think we both want to start again from here.”

“I do.” Eyes filled with surprising tears, Mrs. Franklin scooped the hand towel off the desk. “Go on, and I’ll start breakfast. Good Lord, I forgot I have other guests.”

She vanished through the bathroom door, and Clair made her escape. She’d like to forgive and forget, but she had to be sure she could before she made a move. Every breath she took here in Fairlove made staying more important to her. For twelve years, she’d taken action to keep from indulging in self-pity. Often action had translated into running away. She needed a more mature attitude if she was going to make a home here.

She drove out of town to the familiar road that led to her family’s old house. She saw the roof first, rising above the trees. It looked surprisingly intact, but time, neglect and peeling paint had colored the clapboard siding a dreary gray. Clair nosed her car onto the old graveled drive, sparsely covered now in patches of thin grass. She got out and picked her way through ruts onto Dylan property, property that had once been Atherton.

Suspended above the oak door her grandfather had carved, a wooden sign banged against the house. Normally this sign hung from an iron arm attached to one of the clapboards. Rust had decayed the chain at the end farthest from the house, and the sign had scraped a rut in the wood.

Clair read the sign, even though she knew every curlicue in the burnt engraving. The Oaks. An ancestor had named the house for the great gnarled trees that surrounded it. Clair’s father had burned its name into the current sign one hot summer day when she was still too small to reach the top of his workbench. Once in every generation an Atherton had to make a new sign for their home. Responsibility for renewing the sign had passed down through the family with the house.

Fresh grief swamped Clair, but she choked back tears, unwilling to waste any more valuable seconds. She’d ached too deeply to surround herself with the familiar sensations, the sigh of the breeze that wound a loving embrace around the corners of her home, the click of branches that seemed to tap each other in secret conversation a human couldn’t understand.

Ahead of her, something moved in the long uncut grass. A bird rose with a startled cry, and a wiry black feline sprang into the air.

“Hey!” Clair raced for the cat to shoo it away, but the bird had flown out of reach.

Clair stopped abruptly. Its original prey gone, the cat sagged into a crouch, seemingly more interested now in her than in the liberated meal that mocked him from the air.

“Go away.” She firmed up her voice and wondered about rabies. Had this feral feline had its shots? The cat growled. Who knew a cat could growl? “Go away!”

Throwing its entire scrawny body into a hiss, the cat looked painfully hungry. Half its right ear was gone, and something had nipped out patches of its coat. Just as Clair began to feel a sense of sympathy for a fellow stray, it turned and streaked out of sight. The grass closed, and she stood alone.

She turned slowly in the new, unnatural silence. Wildlife rustled in brush that had taken over her mother’s once carefully landscaped lawn. Twelve years of neglect gave the house a lost look, which Clair connected with.

She wanted to fix the house, make it a home again.

She could look all she wanted, but she was a trespasser here. She had no rights. She wasn’t allowed to change anything—couldn’t help a bird, feed a wild, hungry cat, or clean up the bits of trash that had blown against the kitchen wall.

Fighting a sense of futility, she understood the crippling failure that had hounded her father to his grave after he’d lost the house to Jeff Dylan. She didn’t dare go close enough to peer through a dirt-stained window. Emptiness inside her left her unable to look at the bare spaces inside those walls.

WHEN SHE RETURNED to the bed-and-breakfast, Julian Franklin met her at the top of the steps. Decked out for court, he reminded her of the old days, when her father had teased him about his “litigious” wardrobe.

“Hello, Judge.”

His smile, lacking his wife’s nervous edge, greeted her. “Selina told me you’d arrived. I wanted to welcome you.”

He held out his hand, and Clair clasped it. “Your house is lovely.”

He turned toward the door and opened it for her. “All due to Selina’s reconstruction plan. I always do what she tells me when she makes a plan.”

Clair laughed. “You’re subtle, sir. Are you saying she’s made a plan for me?”

He took her hand again. “I don’t have time to be subtle. I declared a recess to give myself a brief break from court. I wanted to tell you we’d love to have you stay here as long as you can.” He let her go and reached back for the door. “God, you look like Sylvie. I’ve missed you and your mom and dad. There’s been a hole in my life ever since you left.”

“Mine, too.”

Grinning, he looked back one last time. “You listen to my wife. She’s rarely wrong.”

Clair smiled back at him as he headed out. If Selina was never wrong, she’d been better off in foster care. Hard to believe.

She glanced into the dining room. It looked empty, but a man’s husky voice came from around a paneled corner.

“I won’t do it, Wilford. I don’t care who finds out about the will or anything else Jeff did. You’re an executor and my attorney. Get me out of this. Give everything to my mother.”

“You know it doesn’t work that way. Your cousin will inherit and move her out like yesterday’s rubbish.”

Clair leaned around the door frame, shamelessly curious, but when she met Nick Dylan’s dark blue gaze, she almost lost her balance and fell. She fled—from him and the appalled-looking white-haired man he was talking to.

An image of The Oaks reared in her mind, peeling, anchored deeper to the ground by its aura of neglect. She’d lost everything to that man’s family. She’d had to flee, or she’d say things that would force her to leave a town where Dylan word might still rule.

Crossing the lobby, she snatched a newspaper off the stack on Mrs. Franklin’s desk and sprawled on the love seat. Footsteps made the floor creak. She knew when she looked up she’d see Nick standing in the doorway.

“Good morning,” he said.

She nodded. He looked lean and barely leashed, as if the powerful emotion that darkened his eyes might explode from his body at any moment. Restraint furrowed strong lines from the aristocratic nose someone had bent for him to his surprisingly full mouth.

“Maybe we should talk.” The husky voice that had drawn her into the dining room took on a deeper timbre.

He stepped closer. She held still while inwardly she strained to look indifferent. Nick Dylan would never best her as his father had.

“I don’t need to talk to you.” Her voice sounded smooth to her, and she took courage.

“I know who you are.”

“Because I look like my mother. You remember her?”

He took another step closer. Losing her grip on her composure, she pressed against the love seat’s cushions.

“Are you afraid of me, Clair?”

“Your father bought our mortgage and bided his time until Dad got in trouble and he could demand payment in full. Jeff hounded my father into his grave, and why? For the sake of his sick, obsessive love for my mother. He destroyed my father out of vengeance. Should I be afraid of you?”

Nick yanked at his black tie as if it had tightened around his throat. “I’m not my father.”

“Then give me my family’s house. Do what’s right.” Her unreasonable demand poured out of her.

His desperate look reached inside her, made her feel for him. “I can’t.”

The other man had come out of the dining room. “Nick, your hands are tied until you do what your father wanted,” he said. He took Nick’s arm, but Nick pulled away.

“We’ll talk somewhere else, Wilford.” He turned back to Clair. “I can’t give you that house. You’re asking me to do what I cannot do.” He turned and waited for Wilford to leave in front of him.

Clair let out her breath when the door closed behind his too-straight back. She resisted the sympathy she’d felt for his pain. His weakness gave her strength.

It seemed he wanted to give her house back, and she’d take it if he gave her the slightest opening.

She turned her face to the newspaper, visions of her empty home haunting her. What if she stayed? What if she found a job?

Assuming she could persuade Nick Dylan to at least sell her the house, she’d still never find the kind of money he’d want. How would she find a job that could pay her that kind of money?

She simply didn’t have the qualifications to afford a falling-down, hundred-year-old house. After she’d dropped out of college, she’d been a ticket taker in a theater, she’d managed a Laundromat and she’d washed dishes in a diner. Then she’d found landscaping. She’d planted other peoples’ yards from D.C. to Boston for the past five years. But without a degree, she couldn’t command the kind of pay a qualified landscape designer could.

“Clair? Why are you sitting out here?” Mrs. Franklin had come out of nowhere—or at least from the shadows behind her desk. She set her mouth. “You’re upset because you saw the house.”

Clair didn’t feel comfortable enough with Selina yet to share what had just happened between herself and Nick. She attempted a smile that trembled uncomfortably on her lips. “The judge met me at the door.”

Selina smiled knowingly. “I thought he’d drop by. He’s glad you’re home.”

Home? Clair wasn’t sure yet. She changed the subject, lifting the paper. “Still published twice a week?” The pages rustled in her shaking hands. She flattened the paper on her lap.

“Thursday’s edition still carries the classifieds.”

Clair understood Mrs. Franklin’s message. “I haven’t said anything about looking for a job here.”

“But you’d like to stay? You feel strong ties. The house wouldn’t have bothered you if you could just leave.”

“You make it sound as if I can turn my life around overnight.” But hadn’t she already decided to stay? The moment she’d received Mrs. Franklin’s invitation? Hadn’t she decided then?

Mrs. Franklin came around the desk, ushering Clair before her into the breakfast room. “At least think about staying.”

“I’m thinking I can’t buy my house back.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

Clair stopped beside a small round table that glittered with crystal and china, and reminded her of the table her mother used to set. “Where do you want me to sit?”

“Wherever you like. You didn’t answer me.”

She hadn’t because Mrs. Franklin’s eagerness, after twelve years of silence, put her off. “Most recently I worked for a landscaper. I notice there’s a landscaping business on the square.” She pulled out a chair and sat while the older woman brought a coffee carafe from the sideboard and poured her a cup. She left the carafe on the table.

“Paul Sayers owns Fairlove Lovelies. Do you remember him? No, you wouldn’t. He moved here about four years ago. Still new in town.”

“Nearly a stranger.”

Mrs. Franklin smiled. “We have a new subdivision going in by Lake Stedmore. The development company hired Paul to maintain the common areas. Why don’t I call him?”

“Why don’t I think about it first?”

“I’m crowding you.” The older woman’s cheeks flushed. “You were part of my life, as much as I could keep you in sight without alerting Jeff Dylan. I care about you, and I guess I’m trying to make up for those years.”

Touched, Clair let down her guard. “You have nothing to make up. I’ve made my own decisions for a long time.” She grimaced, remembering some of them, a love affair with a professor that had, however unfairly, ended her college career, the jobs and towns she’d left because she hadn’t belonged. She could have made herself a home in any one of those places. “I’d like to stay, but I’d have to find a job and I’d have to face the fact that I’ll never live in my house again.”

“Do you love The Oaks more than the town? People who care about you, people who hold your history in their memories live in Fairlove, and we want you back now that it’s safe for you.”

Clair wanted to believe. “I’m not sure I can stay when I’m afraid I’d be letting Mom and Dad down if I don’t try to get the house back.”

“I’ll ask Paul Sayers to come over. You just talk to him. You don’t have to decide now.”

Agreeing to meet him meant she’d made a decision. Clair knew herself well enough to realize she’d accept a job if the landscaper offered it. She wanted to be sure before she took action, but she heard herself answering, “I’ll call him if you’ll give me the number.”

Mrs. Franklin pursed her lips. “Let me do this one thing for you, and then I’ll lay off.” She clapped her hands together. “Now, do you want the continental breakfast, or can I make you bacon and eggs and home fries like your mama used to make?”

Clair set the menu aside, hungry after such an exhausting morning. “No contest. I’ll take the bacon and eggs, thank you.”

Mrs. Franklin turned smartly for the kitchen and Clair opened the paper. A man and woman came into the dining room so completely engrossed in each other she couldn’t help watching them. She envied the couple their intimacy.

As they took the corner table, she tried to return her attention to the newspaper. The dry cleaners had an advertisement that promised they’d clean six shirts for a low, low price. So Nick Dylan had found himself a bargain.

“All right, I talked to Paul.”

Clair jumped. “I didn’t see you come back, Mrs. Franklin.”

She set a plate on the mat in front of Clair. “Better start on this. Paul’s coming over. He had some free time, and he said he wanted to talk to an experienced worker.”

Clair felt a bit nauseous, but she picked up her fork. “This is a huge decision. I still think I should take some time to make it.”

“Talk to Paul. Then think.” Mrs. Franklin straightened the knife at Clair’s right hand. Her gaze made Clair uncomfortable. “You look so much like your mother.”

“I think you’ve confused me with her. That’s why you’re so glad to see me.”

“Maybe partly. I’m ashamed I couldn’t do more for you, but maybe I want to know you better, too. And you have a right to live in the town where you were born. Fairlove can be a good place to live.”

“If your name isn’t Atherton and you don’t attract the hatred of a Dylan.”

“Jeff Dylan loved your mother once.”

“Then he hated her, and he hated my father and me.”

“I don’t think Nick Dylan is like his father. If you can stand seeing him around town, you’ll like living here again. Leota stays up at the house. She hardly ever comes down to town, and she won’t have anything to do with the likes of you or me.”

“You?” Clair was surprised. “You’re a judge’s wife. You’re just the kind of people Leota Dylan liked.”

“She likes most judges’ wives.” Mrs. Franklin turned away, and this time she was clearly hiding her thoughts. “We’ll talk about Leota later. My other guests will think I’m ignoring them.”

Clair welcomed time on her own to put her meeting with Nick Dylan behind her and think about her impromptu interview with Paul Sayers. About whether she should even consider talking to this man about a job in a town where Nick Dylan looked at her as if she’d risen from the dead.

Her breakfast went untouched as she stared at the newspaper whose ink she’d smeared, but not read. Did she have enough courage to try to make a life in Fairlove?

“Excuse me. Are you Clair Atherton?”

She looked up. A tall man towered over her table, his jeans clean but stained, his belly a gentle protrusion above his wide leather belt. He pried a Braves baseball cap off wild brown curls sprinkled with gray and threaded his fingers through them.

“You must be Paul Sayers.”

He nodded. “Selina tells me you have experience and you might be looking for work. I could use another pair of hands.”

Folding the paper away, Clair pointed at the other chair. “Do you want to sit down?”

He sat and hitched his chair closer. “Do you have any references? I know you won’t have them on you now, but you can bring them to me.”

She nodded. “I worked for a nursery in Connecticut for about two years, and then I moved on to a couple of landscaping firms in Boston.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a notepad. “I can write down names and numbers right now.”

As she wrote, he said, “I’ll take them, but first I need to know how long you think you’ll be staying in town.” He reached for a cup from the next table and poured himself coffee. “Not that I should ask, but I’ve had a hard time keeping people for longer than a season.”

She hesitated for a long moment. He was asking for a commitment. And it scared her, but this was a commitment she suspected she’d been running to, not one she would run from.

“I’ve come home,” she finally said. Paul Sayers didn’t know her, didn’t know her family. She didn’t have to prove she belonged in Fairlove to him. “I lived here once.”

“Good. Wait a minute. Atherton? Your family owned that old house in the oak grove at the bottom of the Dylan estate?”

She nodded.

“I hate seeing folks let a fine old place like that go. It’s a beauty, or it could be if someone with a little elbow grease took it over. Do you plan to buy it back?”

She looked away, not wanting to show him how much the loss of her home hurt. “I’d need more than one job to manage that.”

Paul nodded. “I sure can’t pay you that kind of money, but the company’s young. If your references pan out and you’re a strong worker and you actually stay, you’d be helping me stake my business in this town. If the business grows, my employees grow with it.”

“I don’t have a degree.”

At his crooked smile, Clair wished she hadn’t felt quite so compelled to be honest. Her embarrassment amused him.

“Mine’s over twenty years old,” he said. “Thanks for telling me, but I’m happy to teach anyone who stays. I figure I’m grooming people who’ll take ownership in my business.” He picked up his coffee cup and sipped. “Do you think Selina would bring some breakfast for me?”

“Probably.” His matter-of-fact attitude put Clair at ease. She freshened his coffee cup from the carafe. “How often does she arrange job interviews for her guests?”

“Not very.” Paul took a sip before he said, “Between the two of them, I guess the Franklins know most of what goes on in this town. If you work out, I may consider paying her a recruiting fee. Why don’t you tell me what kinds of jobs you’ve done for those other companies?”

“I have some sketches.”

Clair drew her pad out of her backpack, and they talked work. Mrs. Franklin brought breakfast for Paul without being asked. Finally he pushed back from the table and stood.

“Why don’t you drop your résumé by my office in the morning and meet my two associates. We’ll assume you’ll start on Wednesday, and I’ll call you if I have any questions about your references.”

“Thank you.” As she stood to shake his hand, she noticed the familiar scent of mulch. “I think I saw your office on the square.”

“I took over the Tastee Cone shop.” He dragged his baseball cap over his hair and smiled crookedly. “I hear my neighbors miss the ice cream.”

Clair wondered. She’d been too young to understand nuances, such as socially acceptable businesses for the square, when she’d left. What if she had come back to a place she’d made up to comfort herself? It looked the same, but so far the people hadn’t turned out the same as she’d remembered them.

She refused to think that way. She’d decided to stay. Now she had to find out if she’d really come home.

“Mrs. Franklin thinks highly of your work, and I’m grateful you had the time to come by here.”

Paul was buttoning his jacket as Selina Franklin came through the swing door from the kitchen. “You’ll probably work with me the first few days—kind of a probation period. I want to see what skills you bring, and then I’ll pair you with other staff who complement what you know. This being winter, you know we’re mostly cleaning, preparing for the spring.” He lifted his hand to Mrs. Franklin. “What do I owe you?”

“Not a thing. I’m glad you had a free hour. Did you and Clair finish your business?”

“To our mutual benefit, I hope. Thanks for everything, Selina. I’ll see you Wednesday, Clair.”

He left, and Clair turned awkwardly to her hostess. “I’d like to hug you, Mrs. Franklin, but I remember my mother telling me to keep my muddy hands off your dress.”

“You always did like growing things, didn’t you?” She dropped her arm across Clair’s shoulders and squeezed. “What do you say you call me Selina, and I’ll tell you what I propose for your living arrangements.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sit down. I’ll join you in a cup of coffee. We’re not too busy right now.”

“Mrs. Franklin, I can’t let you do anything more for me.”

“Selina. And I want you to do a few things for me. When we finish our talk, I’ll show you my back garden. It’s a jungle.”

Clair stared in dismay at the third cup of caffeine Selina had poured for her. “That lovely garden?” she said. “I used to think it was a playground.”

“It looked like one. The judge had more time to work with it back then, but his taste ran to the gauche.” Selina crossed her legs. “And I’m being generous. Since he took office, I’ve hauled away the candy-striped poles. I took down the birds and the wires he used to make them look like they were flying. I even got rid of that horrible birdbath sculpture his mother insisted we keep in front of her window. You remember the Furies in stone? They were most indecent—looked like snake women writhing all over each other, but then, you know the judge had to get his taste from somewhere.”

“Are you asking me to work on your garden?” Excited, Clair forgot her caffeine buzz and sipped the coffee. “I’d love to, but like Paul said, I can’t do much more than clean and plant bulbs for the spring.”

“Cleaning.” Selina sighed in overstated relief. “Just what I need back there. You do what you can after your work with Paul, and I’ll give you a room until you find a place to live.”

“I’m not going to pretend I don’t want to.” A garden she’d loved as a child proved irresistible. “You have a deal.”

“Great. Take today to rest. You can start tomorrow.”

“Thanks.” She set her napkin on the table and broached an uncomfortable subject. “Can I ask you one more favor, Selina?”

“Ask away. I’ll do what I can.”

“I appreciate your help, but I remember how this town works. Please don’t make me some sort of a…community project. I’d like to start fresh.”

“Don’t worry. I haven’t told anyone else I had any part in bringing you back here. As far as they’ll know, you decided to come home.”

“They? I don’t think I want to know who else was in on your plan all these years.”

Selina’s mouth quivered, but she wound her arms around Clair. “You’re going to be all right now.”

Clair hugged her back. Maybe coming home really was the right decision.

Clair unpacked the rest of the things from her car and then checked Selina’s gardening shed for tools. She made a list of things she’d need and slipped it into the pocket of her jeans to take to Bigelow’s General Store.

As she shopped the garden section at Bigelow’s, she found herself circling flats of pansies. Her mom’s crocuses had heralded the end of winter every spring. In fall, she’d planted pansies in her favorite flower bed by the front door.

Clair wanted to go home and tell her parents about today, that she’d met Nick Dylan and survived, that she’d found a way to stay in Fairlove if she got the job with Paul Sayers.

Maybe she couldn’t tell them in spoken words. Maybe she hadn’t been able to force herself to look inside the house, but she could do something about the way the outside looked. Purple had been her mom’s favorite, so Clair added purple pansies and soil nutrients to her purchases.

She parked at the end of the driveway again, got out and followed the path she’d made earlier, marked by the bent grass.

Taking tools, plants and bucket up to the house required a couple of trips, but contentment stole over her. She forgot about time as she pulled weeds and restacked the bricks that had fallen away from the retaining wall in a dry puddle of crumbled mortar.

She hummed to herself while she blended the nutrients into the black earth. She ought to leave this flower bed for another day or two, but she couldn’t. One of the Dylan attorneys might turn up at Selina’s and tell her to stay off Dylan property.

She planted the pansies, then brought water from the stream that ran behind the house to thoroughly moisten the bed. At last she stood back to admire her work.

The sad, chipped house paint nagged at her, but the past twelve years had taught her not to dwell on what she couldn’t change. Her pansies gave The Oaks an air of hope again. She felt foolish about being too afraid to look inside earlier.

Clair marched around the house to the kitchen window and scrubbed at the glass until she could make out the white enamel sink. Because dirt filmed the other side of the window, too, she still couldn’t see anything in the shadows.

“Clair?”

She recognized his voice. Slowly, she turned and found he’d taken control of his emotions, and he’d inherited the Dylan ability to gaze arrogantly at the rest of the world as if he understood its relation to him. Patience stalked behind his gaze. He could wait for what he wanted.

Would this Dylan know how to grind the family ax against her?

“I’m surprised to find you here,” he said.

“Surprised I’d trespass?” He gestured at the house. “Seeing this place has to hurt you.”

Ashamed of the way she’d fled without looking back earlier, she put on some arrogance of her own. “It looks better now, with the pansies. They’re trespassing, too.”

“How much have you missed this house?” His unexpected question suggested he’d stumbled upon the solution to a mystery.

Uneasily, she headed back to the front of the house to collect her tools. “I’ve missed it enough that I won’t promise not to trespass again.”

“I didn’t ask you not to come here.” His voice came from close behind her.

His changed mood signaled a shift in the balance of power between them. She picked up her things in one armload for the return trip to her car. Nick stood behind her again when she turned. He nodded toward the house.

“Do you want to go inside?”

Her breath caught. She wanted to go in. More than anything. But he was Nick Dylan. The son of the man who’d taken hearth and home from her. She couldn’t make herself beholden to him.

“I have to leave.” Immediately, she cursed her foolishness. He was the one person who could let her into her old home. She turned back. “Maybe some other time, I could come to your office and pick up the key?”

“You know where I work?” He seemed surprised that she would have talked to anyone about him.

“It’s a small town.”

“Come to my office. I’ll have the key for you.”

She held back, feeling suddenly vulnerable. To think she would walk into her house again, touch the walls and floors her mother and father had loved, dispel her nagging sense of having dreamed her first fourteen years.

But how much of Nicholas Seton Dylan’s character rose out of his father’s gene pool? He must have ulterior motives.

She forced herself to take measured steps back to her car. In case he was watching her as his father had watched her mother…

CHAPTER THREE

CLAIR HAD BEEN WORKING with Paul every day for a week when she stood at his shoulder as he tossed a quarter into the air.

“Heads, you aerate, tails, I go across the street and try to sell our services to Mrs. Velasco,” he said.

Clair clamped her hand around one of the aerator’s handles. “You think I don’t notice you’re sticking me with this bone-shaker either way?” She turned it toward the front of the lawn. “How do you know Mrs. Velasco’s name?”

“I read her mailbox.” Paul’s sheepish grin was infectious. Friendly and open, he lacked Nick Dylan’s intensity. He shrugged. “I can’t afford mailing lists, but she’ll see you over here, giving me your all, and she’ll beg us to help her.”

“Giving you my what?” Clair asked.

“Your all to make a more beautiful lawn for her neighbors.”

At his prim spiel, Clair had to smile. “I guess her leaves need mulching.”

“I’ll promise her the industrious young lady across the street will do the job.”

He moseyed over, and Clair fired up the aerator. At the end of her first row across the lawn she peeked at her employer in his salesman persona.

“Mrs. Velasco” turned out to be a man of dignified years. His white hair floated in the cool breeze. He looked frail enough to rustle like the leaves that glided across his yard. He lifted a hand to Clair, joining Paul in a wave. She waved back, but then latched onto the aerator before it took off without her.

Its tendency to act independently forced her to keep her mind on her task, but when she finished, she turned to find Paul leaning against his truck, his feet crossed at the ankles. Silence echoed in her ears after the aerator’s roar. She worked her way around Paul to hoist the equipment back onto the trailer.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“You’re a strong woman. You remind me of my wife before she told me she couldn’t work with me anymore.”

“Thanks.” She tied the machine down with safety straps, guessing she could offer insight into Mrs. Sayers’s reasoning. “But what I meant was, am I safe to work on my own, or are you afraid I’ll single-handedly bring down the Fairlove Lovelies empire if you turn your back on me?”

“Every time you say our name I think you’re making fun of my business.” Paul jabbed at her forearm. “Don’t mock the company that feeds you.”

“Have you decided it’s going to feed me?”

“You have some real authority issues, Clair, but you work hard.” He held out his hand. “Congratulations. You’re official. Probation’s over.”

“Thank you.” She shook his hand and walked around him again to open the passenger door. “I can use the paycheck.”

“How do you feel about Mr. Velasco?”

“You promised me to him?” Paul didn’t care whose soul he sold to lock down new work.

“You closed the deal when you tossed that branch. No man can resist a woman who can whip him in a wrestling match.”

“Get in the truck, Paul.”

“Could you come back and work up a design for him?”

She let honesty get in the way of her ambition again. “I’d work like crazy at it, but remember, I’m not professionally trained to draft a plan.”

“I don’t care about this college degree that seems to be sticking in your craw. Can you do the work?”

His confidence pleased her. “You bet I can. Will you go over it with me before I show it to Mr. Velasco?”

Instead of answering, Paul took a tape measure from his pocket. “I told him we’d look over the yard before we left. He’s especially interested in reclaiming the back from nature.”

Clair fell into step beside Paul. “I’d better warn you, I tend to be on nature’s side.”

“I figured that out already.”

She enjoyed working with him. He’d quickly sized up her skills, and she’d learned from him during her probation period. They thought alike, and their working association had quickly become a friendship Clair valued. That afternoon, when they returned to the office, the others had gone home for the day. Clair took over Paul’s drawing table and lost herself in her work.

BY PLANTING FLOWERS in her old yard, Clair had shown Nick a way out of his problems. Maybe he could offer her what she wanted and persuade her to help him. He’d just have to make her forget who he was. For a year.

He’d hired a detective to find out where and how she’d spent the past twelve years. Two weeks later, he’d come home from his volunteer shift at the Staunton clinic and found the detective’s report in his mail.

The number of foster homes she’d gone through surprised him, and they’d all been in the suburbs outside Washington, D.C. How had she felt, living within a couple of hours of the town she’d left after her parents died?

After high school, Clair had won a scholarship to Wellesley, which she lost after the first year. The detective reported rumors of an affair with one of her professors. Nick dropped the report, frowning at the list of jobs she’d held before she settled down to work at landscaping.

She’d been troubled. Maybe she still was. Even if she wasn’t still changing jobs, she’d left her home in New England to make her way back here. How stable was she?

The detective reported she’d known several men besides the professor. Nick assumed the “known” was a euphemism. He tightened his mouth. Had she tried to replace the love she’d lost because of his father’s need to hurt a former lover?

He’d like to know more about how Clair’s father had lost their house. He hardly remembered David Atherton. Older than Sylvie by more than twenty years, his very existence had been an insult to Jeff Dylan. Jeff saw him as a less-virile man who’d stolen the one woman Jeff truly loved. Jeff liked to forget he’d told Sylvie she wasn’t good enough to marry.

After she’d moved on, Jeff’s second thoughts had nearly destroyed two families. Jeff had searched for revenge against David and Sylvie, who’d truly loved each other, until he wound up with the Atherton mortgage. And then he’d foreclosed.

Twenty at the time, preoccupied with premed, Nick had never asked for details. To Nick, Jeff’s anger at the woman he’d thrown away had been an insult to Leota and an emotional counterbalance to Jeff’s disappointment with the son he’d fathered on the rebound.

Clair had found the healthier response—contempt for his father’s “love.” But the past still held her as tightly as it did Nick. Like sought like when pain struck this deep, and he’d recognized how hurt she must still feel.

He pictured her, lithe muscles straining as she’d planted those flowers at her house. Humming a song as she reclaimed a small piece of her past.

Maybe he was crazy, but he thought Clair might be the perfect wife. She certainly wouldn’t want the position permanently, but she longed for the house only he could give her.

At a knock on his door he shoved the letter, report and envelope into a drawer before he opened the door to Hunter.

“Dr. Dylan, I’m just on my way to tell Mrs. Dylan dinner is ready. I was concerned you might forget to come down again.”

Nick felt a surge of warmth for the man who still treated him as the neglected child in a rich man’s house. “Making sure I eat isn’t your job.” Gratitude roughened his voice.

“I’m concerned about your mother, as well.” Hunter shrugged uneasily and pointed at the door. “May I come in?”

Nick stood aside. Frightened for Leota, he’d flushed the pills, poured out the brandy and told his mother he’d invite a therapist to live with them if she renewed her supplies. “What else has happened?”

“I don’t know whether I should talk to you about Mrs. Dylan. Telling you what I think is going on with her might be inappropriate, but you know my loyalty.”

“What is wrong, Hunter?”

“She stays in her rooms until lunch. She’s never hungry. I find this most difficult to say, but her maid suspects she’s begun to cry herself to sleep at night. Mrs. Dylan’s pillowcase is still damp when she makes the bed.”

Cold dread grabbed Nick low in the gut. He’d been reason enough for his parents to marry. He hadn’t made Jeff love Leota, and Leota always seemed to wish her son would try a little harder to make Jeff’s love possible.

But Hunter had been family to him when his own mother and father couldn’t help reminding him he’d failed as a son. Time he took the load off Hunter’s shoulders. And time he found out if he could be the son his mother needed.

“Thank you, Hunter, for telling me. I’ll bring Leota down for dinner.” But doubt hounded him as he went to his mother’s room. He could talk her into dinner, but could he persuade her to get help? Maybe—if he managed to keep their home.

ALONE IN THE OFFICE, Clair was working on her design when Paul came in to lock the company’s cell phones away. “You still here?” he asked. “Don’t stay any longer. Your idea’s almost ready to present.”

“I want to finish it tonight before I go.”

“What are you trying to prove? I know you can do the work.”

“I need to polish.” She pointed her pen toward the dark outside the windows. “It’s too late to work in Selina’s garden tonight and—” A tall, dark-suited man walked into the light shining through the windows onto the sidewalk, and Clair’s throat dried out instantly. “What’s he doing here?”

“Who cares? Whatever he wants, we’ll do it for him.” Paul hurried to open the door for Nick. “Dr. Dylan, come in.”

“I’d like to speak to Clair, if she has time.”

Both men looked at her. No sprang to mind. She’d avoided Nick since he’d offered to let her tour her house. Tending her pansies later, she’d thought hard about him and his family. She didn’t want to owe him for even the smallest pleasure, but Paul’s pleading gaze told her he didn’t share her lack of enthusiasm for Dylan business.

Paul, she owed.

“Go ahead.” She shooed her employer toward the door. “I’ll lock up.”

“Don’t stay too much longer.” He slipped out. He’d “Velasco’d” her again.

“Can I offer you coffee, Dr. Dylan?”

Nick tugged at his tie. “I’d rather have a Scotch. Want to join me?”

Not even for Paul. “As you can see, I’m working. What can we do for you?”

He shook his head, his dark blue eyes serious. “I didn’t come to ask you to work for me.”

She declined to feel alarmed. “Then why are you here?”

“After we talked the other night, I expected you’d come ask for the key to your old house.”

“Why look at decay I can’t clean out?” An unaccustomed blush warmed her skin. She sounded melodramatic, but it was the truth.

“How would you change the house if you could?”

“Paint.” Plans she’d never consciously made spilled out of her without warning. “After twelve years, I’d probably have to rehang doors, take down wallpaper, redo the floors—” She interrupted herself, appalled. “But I don’t think about it.”

One corner of his wide mouth tilted, and he looked human. “Maybe you should think.”

“Want to explain what you mean?”

“What if I could make the house yours?”

Pain streaked through her body. She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Are you saying you’d sell my family’s house back to me? I can’t afford to make an offer you wouldn’t laugh at.”

“I’m not asking for money.”

“What do you mean?” Either money or power fed the Dylans.

“Let’s get a drink and talk seriously.” He opened the door and reached for the light switch, but stopped. “Think how you’d feel if I could give your house back to you.”

She didn’t know she’d backed away from him until she bumped into the table. “Why would you?”

“Have you heard the terms of my father’s will?”

She shook her head. His words, “give your house back,” repeated over and over in her head, the rasp of his tone burrowing deeper into her mind.

“Jeff left everything to me,” he said absently, as if he’d forgotten she was listening. “Land, investments, bank accounts, your house.” He switched off the light. “But he made stipulations.”

“Please turn the light back on.”

“He said I have to marry. Fall in love and marry within twelve months, and stay married for a year.”

Only Jeff Dylan would be arrogant enough to believe he could regulate love. She shook her head to chase the thought away, feeling too close to Nick in the darkness. They both knew too much about the effects of his father’s illogical resentment. A sense of intimacy with Nick Dylan was the last thing she wanted. “Turn on the light.”

“Every time you look at me I know you despise me, but your voice—when I can’t see your face—your voice hates me more.”

“What do you want?”

“Clair, I want you to marry me. If you pretend to be my loving wife for twelve months, I’ll sign your house over to you, and no one will ever take it from you again.”

A gust of wind rattled the glass behind him.

“Do you think you’re funny? I’m not laughing.”

“I saw that as a good sign. I’m serious. Give me what I need, and I’ll give you your house.”

“I want it.”

“I knew you did when I found you planting pansies.”

Suddenly safe in the dark with her own disjointed emotions, she was glad he hadn’t listened to her about the light. “You must know other women. What’s wrong with you?”

He laughed without joy or happiness. “I know other women, but I don’t want to marry any of them. I’m not seeing anyone right now, and I don’t want to start a marriage with someone who’d expect it to last. Can you imagine you’ll want to stay married to me?”

Her stomach knotted. “No.”

“Then you’re the wife I want.”

The light switch clicked, and Clair blinked in the startling brightness.

“Want to come for that drink now?” he asked, weariness in his voice.

“Someone might see us together and misunderstand.”

“We may need people to see us together. If you want your house back, everyone will have to believe we want to be married to each other.”

“Stop using my house against me. You’re trying to buy me.”

“I’ll do what I have to,” he admitted.

Silence lay between them. Why pretend she felt any differently? “If I said yes,” she ventured, “I’d want our agreement in writing.”

“Wilford Thomas is my attorney. You won’t want me to suggest someone for you, but I believe you know Judge Franklin?”

“I’m staying with him and Selina.”

“He’ll suggest someone you can trust.”

Clair hugged herself more tightly. “How did you choose me?”

“I have to marry someone. No one else wants something I have as badly as you do.”

Clair thought of the Dylan mansion, the stables, the pools and tennis courts. The offshore bank accounts. “Use your imagination.”

He had a way of smiling that made him seem as if he saw his own failings. Clair looked away from him.

“I need to think,” she said. “I never expected a chance to take my home back.”

“I’m trying as hard as I can to give you a chance.”

He broke off as another man stepped out of the darkness into the light from the windows on the sidewalk. Clair couldn’t place his rugged, weather-lined features. He stared from the pediment over the door to the interior of the shop. Nodding at them both, he opened the door and came inside, looking at them with a curious frown.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“What do you mean, Fosdyke?” Nick eyed the other man with surprise.

“I saw the lights go off and on. Thought you might be having a problem over here.” He studied Clair. “I know you.”

Nick moved closer to her. “I forgot you might not recognize each other. Ernest Fosdyke, this is Clair Atherton.”

“I knew your mother,” he said. “I’m the fire chief. You certainly look like Sylvie.”

“Thank you.” She didn’t want to talk about her mom in front of Nick.

“I heard you were working for Paul Sayers.”

She used her job to head off gossip about Nick’s visit. “Dr. Dylan and I were discussing some work on his house.”

“No problems, then? You know these old buildings and their electricity. I guess I’ll move on. I was on my way home. Night, Clair. Nice to see you back in town.”

“I’m glad to be home.”

“Good night, Dr. Dylan.”

Clair glanced at Nick. Ernest Fosdyke had all but made a subservient bow.

“Wait, Ernest. I’ll come with you. I want to talk to you about the clinic in Staunton.” Nick opened the door, but looked back at Clair. “I can’t wait long. I need a decision.”

Clair lifted her hand in answer to Fosdyke’s brief wave, and both men disappeared.

She shivered. What better revenge could she ever hope to take against Jeff Dylan? It was just that she’d decided before she came back home not to look for revenge. No one like the senator would ever take advantage of her again, but she didn’t intend to let anger turn her into a version of him.

She’d like to understand Nick before she thought about his idea. Marriage, an idea? A plan? Why didn’t he contest the will? She’d have dragged a worthless piece of paper like that through the legal system front-ward, backward and sideways.

Just went to show how different people could be. She fought back when someone tried to hurt her. Nick Dylan was willing to contort himself into a knot to come up with a compromise.

She laughed shortly. If she was willing to seriously consider his proposal, they weren’t so different after all.

LEOTA WAS CRYING. Nick heard her that night as he climbed the stairs to his bedroom. He followed the sound to the hall outside his father’s door. He’d tended to see his mother as the softer-hearted of his parents, but he’d never heard her cry.

He knocked, but he knew she wouldn’t ask him in, so he opened the door. Leota sprang up from his father’s bed. Gold and silver bracelets jangled on her wrist as she brushed her smooth blond hair from her face. Lying down had wrinkled her silk blouse and dark green trousers.

Baffled, Nick met her wild gaze. “Are you all right? Can I help you?”

“Are you here this time as my son or as a doctor?”

“Why not both? I’m concerned about you.”

“I don’t need a keeper. If you don’t like seeing me this way, go back to your house.”

“And leave you alone? Even if I weren’t your son, I couldn’t.”

“I don’t need your interference. I need time.”

“You’re suffering from pretty severe mood swings.”

“My husband has been dead for a month.”

“But you won’t talk about your feelings, and you aren’t in control of them. At least trust me. Talk to me.”

“How can I talk to you when you’ve always pushed us away?”

“I’ve pushed you?” She and Jeff had sent him to boarding school when he was eight. They’d disapproved of every major decision he’d ever made. Discussion had led to recrimination and finally, to silence. He rejected his own thoughts. Now wasn’t the time to air his grievances. Whether or not she would admit it, Leota needed help. At least he could offer a watchful eye. “I’m not pushing,” he said. “I’m asking you to put the past behind us and trust me to help you.”

“You think getting me to see a therapist will help,” she said sarcastically. “I need you to do what your father wanted. If you don’t get married, we’ll lose everything that matters to me.”

Nick hesitated. His marrying Clair would drive her crazy, but at least he’d decided to comply with the will. “You’re right. I have to get married, but you’ll have to trust me to choose the right woman.”

Leota wiped her eyes. “Thank God. Who are you thinking of? Someone I know?”

“You can’t choose a wife for me.” His parents’ choices had been part of his reasons for avoiding marriage so far.

He didn’t want to hurt his mother, but he couldn’t settle for one of the women she and Jeff had paraded past him since college, all beautiful, with bloodlines Jeff approved of. Prepared to love him for his name and the wealth he’d inherit. Clair suited him better.

“I’ve met someone.” Taking Leota’s arm, he led her toward the door. He turned off the light as they went into the hall. “I’ll introduce you to her before I make a decision.”

“You have to look at the rest of her family, too, if you want your marriage to last. What kind of people are they?”

Distaste chipped at Nick’s patience. Had she always been this way, or was she taking Jeff’s stand? “You don’t have to worry yet. Will you let me make an appointment for you with the therapist I told you about?”

“I’m all right now that I know we’ll be able to keep what belongs to us.”

Her relief wouldn’t survive the mention of Clair’s name. So Nick didn’t tell her. She needed to rest. “Try to get a good night’s sleep tonight.”

“I’ll be fine now.”

No matter what he did, he’d hurt someone. He couldn’t marry a woman he didn’t love and pretend he cared for her, and Clair was the only woman he knew he could trust to stick to such a ludicrous bargain.

CLAIR FOUND Nick’s office down a side alley on the opposite end of Main Street from Paul’s shop. No one sat behind the receptionist’s counter or in the waiting room. She knocked on the glass that separated the reception area from the back office.

Nick appeared in a corridor to the left of the desk. When he saw her, his mouth thinned, but he opened the door for her.

“I didn’t expect you.”

“You don’t have a receptionist?”

“She works part-time.”

A muscle in Clair’s cheek twitched. “I spoke to Angus Campbell yesterday.”

“Angus is a good attorney.” Nick led her down the corridor to a small, forest-green-painted office. “Can I get you a drink? Coffee? Soda?”

“I’m fine.” She wasn’t sure she could swallow. “Angus suggested you and I should discuss specific terms.”

He sat on the edge of his desk. She declined the chair he offered, because she didn’t want to sit at a lower level than he. It put her at a disadvantage. As if he understood the political byplay in her mind, he sat in the chair next to her. Recognizing they were finessing each other—and getting nowhere—she gave in and sank into soft, tufted leather.

“Two terms,” he said. “Marry me, and pretend you want to.”

She tried to picture him as a husband. A woman couldn’t glance his way once and forget him, even if his attraction had more to do with the passion that simmered just barely beneath the surface control. Tall and lean, he had a maleness that distracted her. She couldn’t think of him as the man he was and go through with the marriage he needed. “How much do I have to pretend?”

His smile emphasized his strong jaw. Clair pushed her fingers down the arms of the chair. She ought to put more distance between them.

“In front of other people we’ll touch each other. Occasionally.” He swallowed. Talking about touching obviously bothered him, too.

“Selina told me you’ve moved back into your family home.” Clair had assumed he still lived there, so she was already as accustomed as she’d ever be to the idea of living on Dylan property.

“We’ll share a door,” he said. “I’ll make sure we have adjoining rooms.”

She threaded her fingers together. Her turn to demand. “I want to start repairing my house now. If I leave before our…before the time’s up, I wouldn’t expect you to repay me for any work I do.”

“If you leave?” He leaned forward. “What would make you leave? I don’t want to marry you and have to start over again in a few months.”

She tried to take his lead and think of marriage as a business deal. “I’m just saying if. I don’t know why I’d leave. Some emergency, maybe, but I don’t plan to leave.”

“Do you need time to think? I can’t make a mistake.”

She took a deep breath and held it. If she thought too long, she’d realize a house and land couldn’t be worth marrying the son of her family’s enemy. She wasn’t making dramas. She shouldn’t eat lunch with Nick Dylan, much less marry him.

“I can’t help it.” She met his gaze evenly. “I want my home and my past. I want my memories back.”

“You can’t remember your childhood without living in the house?”

His interest startled her, but again she should follow his example. She had to find a way to live with Nick Dylan for the next year.

“I’d rather not talk about my past or your father.”

Sitting back, Nick stretched his long legs in front of him. “I guess we have a few more terms to iron out before we meet with our attorneys.”

She curled her legs under her and pulled her skirt over them. “I’d like to move home as soon as we sign the prenuptial agreement.”

“But you’ll move into my house after the wedding?”

“Yes. I can sand all the floors downstairs before we put a wedding together.” Her skirt hid the way her knees shook every time she thought about marrying him.

This was the only way she’d ever get her home back.

“LISTEN, CLAIR, I wanted to talk to you alone because I have to assign you to a job at the Dylans’.”

She blinked. When Paul had asked her to his office, she thought she might have done something wrong on an assignment. “What kind of a job?”

“You’re the only person I have who has experience installing fountains, and Mrs. Dylan wants one. I gave her a catalog, and she’s supposed to put in her order this week.”

“You want me to work for her?”

Paul picked at the chipped top button on his shirt. “I have to ask you to do the job. I’m afraid I’ve heard the story about your family and the Dylans, but their business is important to me. I don’t want to risk an untrained person making a mistake.”

Clair knew her responsibility. “When do you want me to install the fountain?”

“Depends on when it arrives, but I need to warn you, Leota Dylan makes certain rules for people who work in her house.”

Big surprise. “Like what?”

Paul cleared his throat. “She doesn’t want us to mix with the servants or with her or Dr. Dylan.” He licked his lips. “I know you’ll dislike her caste system, and I’m afraid you’ll tell me you won’t do the job, but we’re welcome in the greenhouse and nowhere else.”

Clair had dreaded telling anyone about her upcoming wedding. If she didn’t tell Paul now, he’d wonder why later. She’d agreed to make her marriage look real, but her heart pounded as if she were pointing herself headfirst over the edge of a cliff. “I’m marrying Nick Dylan.”

Paul gaped at her, obviously trying to decide if her engagement helped his business or hurt it. “I guess Mrs. Dylan will have to modify her policy for you.”

HUSHED TONES filled the church. A sibilant “she,” repeated over and over, as the wedding guests spoke of Leota. “She’s not coming. Her own son’s wedding, and she’s not coming.”

Clair listened from the vestry. The undertones sounded almost like a laugh track from a bad TV sitcom. She didn’t care so much for herself. She didn’t embarrass easily, and she might have had to wrestle herself into the church if she were Leota. But Nick probably wanted his mother’s approval. According to the discussions they’d had during the prenuptial negotiations, Leota was one of the executors they had to convince.

The lace cap on Clair’s veil made her scalp itchy. She slid her fingers beneath and scratched, mindful that Leota Dylan didn’t suddenly show up and catch her being unladylike.

With each passing second, escape looked more attractive than marrying Nick. She’d give Leota five more minutes, and then she’d beg the judge to run her down the aisle before she sauntered out there and called the whole thing off.

“Clair, she’s finally here.” Selina fluttered into the vestry, plucking at Clair’s dress like a small bird trying to put its nest in order. “Are you ready?”

“Stop, stop.” Clair caught her hands. “I’m so nervous, Selina.”

“Brides are supposed to be nervous. Your wedding wouldn’t feel real if you weren’t. Can I tell the minister you’re ready?”

“The moment Leota takes her seat.”

“Let me peek outside and make sure the judge is ready to give you away. Oh, you look so lovely. I can’t help thinking of my own wedding.”

Clair slid a finger under her left eye, where a tear burned. Would she ever love a man enough to marry and mean it? Was she capable of real love?

Selina beckoned from the door. “Come on.”

“You’d have made a great matron of honor.”

“You don’t need me.”

“Not true.” Clair hugged her mother’s friend—her friend. “Thanks for your help. The church is beautiful.” She grinned. “The judge is beautiful.”

“Make him use his hanky if he cries.”

Selina slipped out. Clair and Nick had agreed to forgo attendants except for the judge. She waited for Selina to take her place in a pew before she stepped into the aisle and took the judge’s proudly offered arm. Clair returned his warm smile, but faltered as she looked at the man who waited for her at the altar. She hadn’t prepared herself for Nick in a tux and candlelight.

He looked gorgeous. No other word for it. His black hair gleamed. His suit embraced him, defined the lines of the tall, strong body to which she was about to pledge her troth. The determination in his gaze pulled her up the aisle.

The music she’d chosen, a piece from Massenet’s Thais, overwhelmed her. The traditional “Wedding March” hadn’t seemed appropriate, but she loved this music. It seemed to flow into her body, making her powerful and womanly. She should have gone for the traditional. It might have been another lie, but it wouldn’t have meant so much to her.

Nick came forward, and the judge pressed their hands together.

The minister spoke. Clair clung to Nick’s heat, wary of her own pounding pulse. During a small silence, she realized the minister had asked if anyone knew why she and Nick shouldn’t be married. She looked into Nick’s dark boundless eyes. No one answered, and the minister went on. Nick took her other hand.

A physical connection vibrated between them, startling Clair, increasing her uncomfortable awareness of him at her side. Dreading the kiss they had to share, she stole a glance at his full, firm mouth. In truth, she wanted to feel him against her, wanted to know how he tasted.

The minister gave his permission, and Nick slid his hands up her waist. As he grazed the swell of her left breast, Clair stopped breathing. He brushed his cool lips against hers. With a surprised breath that felt hot against her mouth, he pulled her closer.

“I give you Dr. and Mrs. Dylan.”

Amid more whispers, the church doors banged open, and two men rushed inside. “Fire!” one shouted. Everyone froze. “Fire!” he yelled again.

Men and women in their Sunday best began to pour toward the exits.

“Here?” someone demanded.

“Where?”

“Whose house?” a woman shouted.

The first man answered, just loudly enough to make everyone stop and listen. “The Atherton house.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“I’VE NEVER SEEN a place burn down around its own door before.” Ernest Fosdyke nudged Clair, smearing soot across the sleeve of her waterlogged wedding dress. “But doesn’t that oak door your granddaddy carved still look fine?”

Clair peered from the black streak at her elbow to the golden oak door standing tall in wet rubble. She turned blankly to the fire chief, blinding herself in his truck’s headlights. “I’ve lost everything I loved most.”

“Nonsense. You just married the man you love.” Prodding his big silver hat back on his forehead, the chief squinted with relief at someone beyond her shoulder. “Dr. Dylan, over here! I found Clair, but she’s not talking sense.”

Nick. She’d tried not to think of him for the past eighty minutes. She’d married him for her house, and now her house had burned down.

He draped his heavy black overcoat across her shoulders and caught her arm, offering comfort Clair couldn’t afford to accept. The unexpected passion they’d shared for that brief, confusing moment in the church threatened to change the way she looked at Nick. She was too smart to give in to physical need.

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