A stranger’s arrival in a small Southern town stirs up old secrets and new dreams in this beautiful story full of hope and haunting mystery, and with the power to win your heart

Renowned yet private, thriller writer Hayden Winters lives a life colored by lies. As he is deeply ashamed of his past, his hunger for an honest relationship and dreams of starting a family remain unsatisfied, and he can trust no one with his secrets. He’s determined to outrun his personal demons, but the charming old Peach Orchard Inn and a woman whose presence is as gentle as a sparrow’s song stops him in his tracks.

Carrie Riley is afraid of everything from flying to thunderstorms, and pretty much of life itself. But meeting the enigmatic writer staying at the inn emboldens her to learn everything about him. When they discover a vulnerable boy hiding at the inn, Hayden is compelled to help Carrie protect him. Soon they’re led to a centuries-old mystery that haunts Hayden’s sleep, and his only safe haven is Carrie. As the secrets of the past and present cause their lives to become entwined, all that’s left to come to light is love—if the grim truth doesn’t tear them apart first.

Praise for Linda Goodnight

“This is a story of painful emotions, loss, grief, love and redemption. It’s loaded with angst but it’s quiet, smoldering angst not in-your-face, slap you upside the head angst.”

—Dear Author on The Memory House

“These characters struggle to help themselves and others, and their journeys culminate in a most satisfying resolution.”

—Bookreporter on The Memory House

“This is the final installment in the Redemption River series, a truly inspiring story of overcoming trying circumstances and discovering personal strength.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Last Bridge Home, 4½ stars

“From its sad, touching beginning to an equally moving conclusion,

A Touch of Grace will keep you riveted.”

—RT Book Reviews, 4½ stars, Top Pick

“The Heart of Grace, by Linda Goodnight, is a wonderfully poignant story with excellent character development.”

—RT Book Reviews, 4½ stars

The Rain Sparrow
A Honey Ridge Novel
Linda Goodnight

www.mirabooks.co.uk

In memory of Travis Goodnight and with gratitude for the time we had. Though your life was far too short, you made a difference in so many others, especially in those of your family. We miss your larger-than-life personality, your brilliance and wisdom, your giant laugh, and your bigger heart. Love you forever and always.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise for Linda Goodnight

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

1

I’m tired, boss...tired of bein’ on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain.

—The Green Mile

Present Day, Honey Ridge, Tennessee

Brody hated Fridays.

He knew what would happen if he went home. So he didn’t. He hung out at the library until it closed, and then, wishing he had money for a hamburger, he wandered down to his spot on Magnolia Creek. It was a pretty good hike, a couple of miles out of town past the Griffin sisters’ peach orchard and through a hundred yards of tangled weeds, but at eleven, he was up for it. He could have run that far and not been out of breath.

When the night surrounded him and clouds gathered in the inky sky, he once more contemplated going home. He was hungry, but food wasn’t always worth the trouble. He wasn’t afraid of the dark or of being alone deep in the country. Home was a whole lot scarier.

Stretched out on the cool earth with his hands stacked behind his head, he listened to the peaceful night sounds, the sawing rhythm of katydids that sometimes grew so loud he felt as if they were inside him, and the splash of bullfrogs diving from the nearby bank.

A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. It was probably somewhere far off, clean over in the mountains. He wouldn’t worry about that. He didn’t mind a little rain. If he had to, he could hightail it past the inn to the abandoned gristmill, even though the place was kind of spooky.

The mill was probably haunted. That’s what his buddy Spence said. The last time they’d gone there to explore, Spence had heard something and freaked out, so Brody would rather not go to the mill unless he had to.

Would the old man be passed out by now? Or would he be waiting with clenched fist and a hankering to take out his hatred of life on the good-for-nothing son of the good-for-less woman who’d left them both so long ago the boy had forgotten her? Mostly. Somehow it was Brody’s fault that his mother had left, and the old man never let him forget it, though he never gave a reason. Brody was pretty much clueless about his absentee mother. His angry father he understood, but thoughts of his mother left him lonely and nursing guilt he didn’t understand. He must have done something really bad to make her up and leave that way.

A mosquito buzzed somewhere in the humid darkness. He listened close while the pest came in for a landing, waited until the sound stopped and then he swatted. A few bug bites was better than the alternative.

He didn’t like killing anything, even bugs, but as the old man would say, “It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Eat the dog before he eats you.”

Something about that didn’t sound right to Brody, but what did he know? That’s what the old man always said. A punk kid like Brody didn’t know nothing.

He sighed at the moon and closed his eyes.

Better catch some z’s and wait awhile longer. The old man was a bull, and once enraged, he had blood in his eyes. Clint Thomson was seldom anything but enraged on payday, especially when it came to his good-for-nothing son.

2

It was a dark and stormy night, a cliché Hayden Winters dearly loved. These broody, moody nights of lightning and thunder and violent wind fueled his imagination like no other. A man intent on committing murder...

The storm had moved in around midnight, interrupting his original plans to sleep. He could never sleep on a night like this. Didn’t want to, especially here in a house filled with memories and secrets.

Everyone, he believed, had a secret, and the South was filled with them. That’s why he’d come.

Hayden had a secret, too, a psychological cankerworm. One that was eating a raw, black hole in his soul. Not that he’d ever let anyone see inside to know that much about him. To the world, Hayden Winters was a winner, a success, a man who brushed problems away with a charming smile. He was a man invited to the best parties he seldom attended and who gave rare but coveted interviews. A man with a charmed life.

But on these dark, moody, broody nights the demons danced around the edges of his fertile mind. He wondered at his sanity, and he knew it was only by a merciful God that he was strong of constitution and could keep the demons in their rightful place. Most of the time.

So he killed people. Dozens of them. Books littered with bodies fed some perverse need in the populace and kept his bank account fat and happy.

In the elegant rented bedroom—the Mulberry Room—lit only by the glow of his laptop, Hayden rose, went to the windows to watch and listen as rain lashed the sides of Peach Orchard Inn with its silver-on-black fingers clawing to get in.

The view outside was far different from what it had been upon his arrival earlier today. An Australian shepherd, graying around the edges, had drowsed on the long and glorious antebellum veranda. Hayden had immediately envisioned himself on the wicker furniture, feet up on the railing with a glass of Julia Presley’s almost-famous peach tea and his imagination in flight.

The two-story columned mansion had shone in the sun, glowing in its whiteness with dark-trimmed shutters, flowers spilling everywhere and thick vines twining like great green arms around the oak trees. He’d driven down the winding lane of massive magnolias right into an antebellum past, far from the distractions and manic pace of the modern world.

Peach Orchard Inn, a simple name for a magnificent house, restored, he would bet, to better than its former glory. His assistant, who knew him better than most, though not well, had discovered the inn while on vacation and suggested he write the next bestseller here. Exhausted by the city bustle and another romance gone sour, he’d jumped at the idea. His ex should have taken him at his word. He’d told her from the beginning that he was neither husband nor father material. The reasons for this aversion he’d kept to himself, more for her protection than his. She didn’t know that, though, and had been hurt.

He hated hurting people. Other than in his books. And the latest episode had driven him deeper into himself. A man like him ought not to need other people.

He could work here, rest here, research small-town secrets for the next thriller. There were plenty of interesting places to commit murder.

Across the road, a single light glowed like a beacon in the storm. The source was the abandoned, dilapidated gristmill that had once been part of this farm. He knew this because he was ferociously curious and knowing was his business. Abandoned buildings provided perfect places to get away with murder. He’d be suitably inspired here among the hills and hollows of southern Tennessee.

A blue-fire javelin of lightning, fierce as a bolt straight from the hand of Zeus, slit the night like a fiery blade. Gorgeous stuff.

Hayden stretched, rolled his neck, considered a walk in the violence.

He’d be up most of the night during a wild thunderstorm of this magnitude. He could feel the yet-unformed story brewing in his blood, a bubbling cauldron of energy and creativity.

Coffee, and plenty of it, was a must. He wasn’t a Red Bull kind of guy. Something about it seemed addictive to him, and if there was anything he feared greater than losing his only useful resource—his fertile mind—it was addiction. Addictions came, he knew, in many forms.

Leaving the laptop curser to blink a blind eye, he let himself out of the luxurious Mulberry Room and made his way down shadowy stairs carpeted in bloodred, his hand on the smooth wooden banister, taking care on the creaky third step he’d noticed earlier. No self-respecting author of murder and mayhem missed a creaky step.

Lightning illuminated the curved staircase, and thunder rumbled like a thousand kettle drums. The house stood steady, quiet even, as if it had weathered too much to be bothered by a thunderstorm. There were stories here. He could feel them.

Hayden’s Scots-Irish blood heard the dance of his ancestors in the thunder, saw wave-tossed fishing vessels on storm-gray seas and imagined a woman standing on the shore, hand to her forehead, watching while in the misty shadows lurked the equally watchful predator, biding his time.

Hayden tucked away the image for future reference. The new book was to explore the dark undercurrents hidden behind the welcoming smiles and sweet tea of a small town in the rural South, not the storm-tossed coasts of Ireland.

At the base of the stairs, he crossed the foyer through to an area the proprietress had termed the front parlor, a room of times past with a marble fireplace enclosure and Victorian decor, and into the much more modern kitchen. He fumbled for a light switch, mildly concerned about waking the sister-owners who resided somewhere on the first floor, but dismissed the concern in favor of coffee.

A quick survey of the brown granite countertops revealed no coffeemaker. He cursed himself for not remembering to ask about essential coffee equipment in his rented room, of which there was none. Here, in the large copper-and-cream kitchen, the coffee machine could be anywhere. He had no luck locating it but found a tea bag caddie, a discovery that made him snarl.

While he pondered the usefulness of lemon zinger tea, his cell phone buzzed against his hip. He winced at the sudden racket, though if the thunder didn’t wake the house, a ringtone shouldn’t. Still, out of consideration and being the new guest in the place, he slapped the phone silent. He’d intended to dump the device in the bottom of his suitcase and forget it for a few days, but out of habit, he’d stuck the phone in his back pocket.

“A pity,” he grumbled. “And stupid.”

He knew who the caller was. The only person who ever called him in the dead of night. She’d been the one who taught him never to sleep too soundly.

“Hello, Dora Lee.”

He heard her quivery intake of breath and braced himself for the histrionics or cursing. One or the other was inevitable.

When she didn’t respond, a tingle of worry forced a regrettable question. “Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not all right, though a lot you care. I’m sick. You know I’m sick, and you don’t help me. How am I supposed to get my medicine?”

Hayden closed his eyes and leaned against the hard counter edge. He could imagine her there in the cluttered trailer among unwashed dishes and fast-food containers filled with dry, half-eaten meals, hair wild and eyes wilder, hands shaking in desperation. “What did you do with the last money?”

“You think that’s enough? You think I can pay rent and buy food and keep the lights on with that?”

His sigh was heavy. “Is the electricity off again?”

“Been off. I had to have my medicine. What good is lights if a body hurts too bad to open her eyes.”

“Dora Lee, I won’t send money for any more pills.” God knew, he’d contributed to her addiction too long already with the ever-raw hope that she’d change, a hope that even now burned with a flickering flame. “You’re killing yourself. I’ll come to Kentucky, get you into a clinic—”

The scream in his ear was louder than the thunder. “Shut up! Shut up—you hear me? You ungrateful scum. I should have drowned you when I had the chance, for all the good you’ve done me. Keep your filthy money.”

The line went dead in his ear.

Weariness of the past few months pressed in. His stir of creative energy seeped out like lifeblood on the kitchen tile.

He should never have given her his cell phone number, but the desperate little boy inside him still yearned to make things better with his embittered, addicted nightmare of a mother. Even when he was small, before the dark and deadly underbelly of a coal mine had killed his gentle father, Dora Lee had popped illegally gotten pills for imaginary headaches and hated her only child. And he didn’t know why.

His mother had no idea the same hated son was now Hayden Winters, successful novelist. It was a secret he would never share with her. Could never share. The ramifications were too deep and disturbing to consider.

Long ago, he’d changed his name and re-created his past in an effort to become something besides the dirtiest little boy in the worst part of Appalachia. Suave, confident Hayden Winters was as fictitious as the novels he wrote. Dora Lee wouldn’t have cared anyway. All she cared about was that he sent money.

For her unconcerned ignorance, Hayden would ever be grateful to the God who’d rescued him from the mines and Dora Lee Briggs. If the press got hold of his mother, Hayden could kiss his tightly controlled privacy goodbye.

He was glad she couldn’t read, though as a needy boy, hoping to please his mother, he’d offered to teach her. For his offer, she’d battered him with the book until the binding loosened and the pages ripped, raging that she wasn’t as stupid as he thought.

At least a couple of times a year, he made the trek to see her, again out of some psychological wound that needed to be fed. Each time, he’d leave behind another piece of himself along with a parting gift that she would trade, in addition to her monthly draw, for OxyContin or whatever pills she could get that would take her away from reality for a while.

Dora Lee Briggs was his ugly secret. One of them.

With the wound in his soul open and throbbing, Hayden stuck a cup of water in the microwave. Lemon zinger would have to do.

* * *

Carrie Riley tiptoed down the stairs, shivering in her bare feet and lightweight pajamas. Storms made her nervous. Really nervous. She couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t begin to sleep with all that fierce wind whipping the trees and thunder making her jump out of her skin. How anyone else could sleep boggled her well-ordered mind.

She didn’t know where she was going, considering the late hour, but since the family parlor housed the inn’s only downstairs television to check the weather, she’d head there. What if a tornado was coming? Didn’t anyone in this house think about that?

Carrie hated storms. Absolutely hated them. Even in infancy, according to her mother, Carrie had screamed like a banshee, inconsolable, at the first thunderclap. She didn’t scream anymore, but she did quake and shake and long for someone to hold her.

Penlight aimed at the floor, she gripped the banister and made her way down. The third step squeaked. She stopped, winced and then went on. She was such a wimp. Such a mouse.

A sleepover was a silly thing for grown women to do, but yesterday in the light of day, before the storm, time spent with sisters and friends had sounded like the perfect respite. She and her two sisters, lifelong friends of the inn’s sister-owners, Valery Griffin and Julia Presley, had decided on a weekend retreat to reconnect and have some fun. Julia was making a fresh effort to reclaim old friends and move forward after the terrible abduction of her son six years ago, and Carrie was pleased to be part of her friend’s healing.

They’d had a great time, exchanging stories and giggling over a bit too much Moscato as they painted toenails and discussed Julia’s engagement to Eli Donovan of the Knoxville Donovans and urged her to have a big, fancy wedding right here at Peach Orchard Inn.

Now the others were snoozing like fossil rocks while she trembled in fear over the storm and nursed the teeniest headache. Wine had a tendency to do that to plain old Carrie of the boring life who rarely drank anything stronger than a single-shot espresso. She couldn’t even tolerate a double. Wimp.

At the bottom of the steps, she noticed a light in the kitchen. Curious and eager for human companionship, Carrie hurried on shaky knees across the cool wood floors, but skittered to a stop in the arched doorway when she spotted him. For the person in the kitchen was definitely a him. A lean, rangy, masculine him.

He obviously had not yet been to bed. Still in casually expensive jeans she recognized only by the label on the back pocket holding a cell phone and a long-sleeved navy pullover with the sleeves pushed back, he was turned away from her, lifting a tea bag in and out of a China cup. His wide shoulders, like his forearms, were muscled, his hands long and strong-looking as if he worked outside for a living. But not in those jeans. Or with that haircut.

He wore a rich man’s haircut. She knew this because her sister Nikki was the most fashion-conscious woman in Honey Ridge. Boutique owner Nikki knew fashion, knew haircuts, knew high-end anything, unlike Carrie, who couldn’t tell Gucci from a gunnysack and basically didn’t care. The man’s straight brown hair was casually shoved off his forehead in a loose, sexy muss that probably cost a bazillion dollars to maintain.

Carrie couldn’t decide whether to speak or wait until he noticed her. In her case, that might be another fifty years. Men did not notice Carrie Riley. Not unless they wanted to check out a book.

The loudest clap of thunder ever heard, at least to Carrie, rocked the countryside. The house trembled. More lightning followed on its tail, a blinding explosion of light and sound that crackled the air.

Carrie jumped, fists raised, and squeaked.

The spoon clattered against the counter. The man stilled and then slowly turned his head. He was good-looking, darn it. Romantic-looking, like one of the poets she read incessantly with a deep longing for that kind of love to find its way to her house. Now she’d be a bumbling, stuttering mess for more reasons that the storm.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” She crossed her arms tightly over her chest.

A very nice, full-lipped mouth curved. Eyes the color of fog and smoke and mystery watched her. “You squeaked.”

Like a mouse. Stupid. Stupid.

“Storms scare me. I thought I’d better check the weather.”

“It’s raining.”

Carrie rolled her eyes, almost smiled, though she was still too shivery. “What if there’s a tornado?”

He shook his head. “Not going to happen.”

Something about the easy way he rejected the idea of a tornado soothed her. Maybe he was a meteorologist.

Carrie took a few steps into the kitchen. She didn’t know this man, but she could always scream if he tried something, though not a soul in this house would hear her over the storm.

Comforting thought.

“Want some—” he saluted her with one of Julia’s delicate white cups and a wry arch of eyebrow, sipped and made a face “—lemon zinger tea?”

At times like this she wished she was as outgoing as Nikki or gorgeous like Bailey or even a little wild and easy with men like Valery. But she was none of those things. She was plain Carrie, the librarian, wishing she could say something snappy and clever.

“If you don’t like lemon zinger, pick a different kind.” Very snappy and clever. No wonder she was past thirty and still single.

“I wanted caffeine,” he said with a shrug.

“You won’t get it from lemon zinger. Make coffee.”

“I would if I knew where the machine was.”

She lifted a finger. “That I can help you with.”

He dropped his head back. “Praise the saints and Maxwell House.”

Bare feet soundless on the cool tile flooring, Carrie moved to a pantry and removed one of Julia’s sterling silver French press urns. “We’ll have to grind the beans. Julia’s a bit of a coffee snob.”

“Won’t the noise disturb the others?”

Thunder rattled the house. Carrie tilted her head toward the dark, rain-drenched window. “Will it matter?”

“Point taken. You’re a lifesaver. What’s your name?”

“Carrie Riley.” She kept her hands busy and her eyes on the work. The fact that she was ever so slightly aware of the stranger with the poet’s face in a womanly kind of way gave her a funny tingle. She seldom tingled, and she didn’t flirt. She was no good at that kind of thing. Just ask her sisters. “Yours?”

“Hayden Winters.”

“Nice to meet you, Hayden.” She held up a canister of coffee beans. “Bold?”

“I can be.”

She laughed, shocked to think this handsome man might actually be flirting a little. Even if she wasn’t. “Bold it is.”

As she’d predicted, the storm noise covered the grinding sound and in fewer than ten minutes, the silver pot’s lever was pressed and the coffee was poured. The dark, bold aroma filled the kitchen, a pleasing warmth against the rain-induced chill.

Hayden Winters offered her the first cup, a courteous gesture that made her like him, and then sipped his. “You know your way around a bold roast.”

“Former Starbucks barista who loves coffee.”

“A kindred spirit. I live on the stuff, especially when I’m working, which I should be doing.”

She didn’t want him to leave. Not because he was hot—which he was—but because she didn’t want to be alone in the storm, and no one else was up. “You work at night?”

“Stormy nights are my favorite.”

Which, in her book, meant he was a little off center. “What do you do?”

He studied her for a moment and, with his expression a peculiar mix of amusement and malevolence, said quietly, matter-of-factly, “I kill people.”

3

Hayden didn’t know what possessed him to say such a thing when this pleasant woman was already a nervous wreck and had saved his night with a terrific cup of coffee, but he’d given his standard glib answer when asked about his line of work. The press seemed to love it. Carrie, not so much.

She squeaked again. Cute. Mouse-like. Her eyes widened to two huge, espresso-colored circles. He had the random thought that those soft eyes could melt concrete.

Hayden set the cup aside and took a step toward her. “Metaphorically speaking.”

She took a step back, arms tight over her chest. “Excuse me?”

“I’m a writer. Thrillers.”

“Oh.” The big doe eyes blinked. “You’re a writer. You don’t kill people literally.”

“Only in the pages of my books.”

She put a hand to her heart and blew out a breath. “Thank goodness. I thought for a minute...stormy night, thunder, lightning, murder.” She arched her back in a body shrug.

“Bad habit of mine.”

“Murdering people?”

“That, too.” He smiled. She was pretty cute.

“Wait a minute.” She held up a finger. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Hayden Winters.”

“Well, do I ever feel stupid.” Fists on hips, she shook her head in self-disgust. “Hayden Winters. The novelist. We have all your books in the library—very popular, too, I might add—but apparently my brain did not register an actual bestselling author here in Honey Ridge.”

He braced for it, fully expecting her to fawn over him and make all kinds of gushy noises before an onslaught of tedious questions about the easy way to get published and why he’d chosen to write thrillers. He hadn’t. They’d chosen him.

Why couldn’t he have a conversation with a woman without things getting awkward?

“Now that I know you’re not going to kill me,” she went on, “I’ll share a secret with you. I know where Julia keeps the cookies.” She clinked her cup on the countertop, stood on tiptoe and opened an overhead cupboard. “Oreos or pecan sandies?”

The back side of her intrigued him, threw him off. Everything about her threw him off. She wasn’t impressed by Hayden Winters, and he didn’t know if that bothered or pleased him.

He let his eyes roam, taking her in, a writer’s habit of observing nuances, gestures. And yet something essentially male stirred, just a bit, as he watched Carrie Riley stretch up high for the cookies. He should have offered to reach them, but he’d rather watch her.

She wasn’t tall—average height, maybe, with ample curves, maybe a little extra in the hips that he found...comforting. Her hair was the color of roasted pecans, short and shoved behind her ears and messy on top. Side bangs fell across her forehead. She looked good sleep-mussed, her classic pajamas in an almost see-through shade of pink cupcakes.

And her feet were pretty.

He must be asleep and dreaming because he didn’t have a foot fetish. Never noticed women’s feet unless they were in shoes sky-high and strappy at the end of very long legs. But Carrie’s bare feet were perfectly shaped, feminine and smooth, and her toes polished a shiny pearl. Around her left ankle was a delicate silver chain he found particularly intriguing.

She turned her head and looked over one shoulder at him. “Which kind?”

He snapped his eyes to hers. “You choose.”

She handed down the sandies and then reached back for the Oreos, grinning. “Who says we can’t have both?”

Plastic crinkled as she ripped open the packages and offered him first dibs. He took his mind off the interesting little ankle bracelet to help himself to an Oreo.

“Julia prefers to bake from scratch. This is her emergency stash.”

“Is this an emergency?”

“In a storm of this proportion? You bet it is.” She crunched down on a sugary sandie, scattering crumbs.

He saluted her with the Oreo and thought how pleasant and comfortable this unexpected late-night encounter had become. She had no idea she’d saved him from a bout of melancholy after the conversation with his mother.

He was about to pry into her life, a natural result of his writer’s curiosity, when a sound from outside caught his ear.

He tilted his head. “Did you hear something?”

Carrie’s espresso eyes got bigger. “No. Did you?”

“A clatter. On the porch. As if a chair fell over.”

Thunder rolled, and rain gushed against the house as loud as Niagara Falls. “How can you hear anything over the storm?”

He shrugged. “Probably nothing.”

“It’s your murderous writer’s brain.”

She wasn’t wrong about that, but he walked to the window anyway and peered out.

“Black as the heart of a coal mine.” He started to turn back to his bold coffee and chocolate cookie when a shadowy bulk caught his eye.

“What is—?” He tensed, leaned in, squinted. “Turn the light off.”

“What? What do you see?”

“Turn the light off so I can be certain.”

“You’re making me nervous.”

“It’s probably some poor animal trying to get out of the storm.”

“A mountain lion. Or a bear.”

He smirked at her. “You have a vivid imagination.”

“From the mouth of Hayden Winters.” She clicked off the light. “Don’t do something juvenile and try to startle me. I’ll scream and wake the whole house.”

But Hayden’s attention was focused on the dark lump against the wall of the porch. “There’s someone on the veranda.”

“No way.” She flipped the light back on. “No one would be out in this.”

“No one should be.” He strode to the entry leading out onto the veranda, flipped on the porch light and jerked the door open.

Rain and wind battered the flowers along the railing and sprayed mist against the entry. Hayden felt Carrie’s warmth close behind him, felt her shiver.

Her sharp intake of breath matched his.

“Oh, my gravy,” she whispered.

Storm or no storm, Hayden strode outside. A wind gust sprayed him with fat drops of rain, and cold prickled the skin on his arms.

A boy, drenched to the bone and shivering, huddled against the wall, a soggy bundle of plastered hair and pale skin.

“What are you doing out here?” Hayden demanded.

The kid’s teeth chattered. “I—I got lost.”

“On a night like this?”

Miserably, the boy nodded but glanced away, either lying or too chilled to hold eye contact. No kid would be out alone in a storm without good reason.

Hayden grabbed him by the arm and said, “Come inside.”

The boy came willingly, eagerly, and stood in the entry dripping water everywhere. He shivered like a wet Chihuahua.

Hayden pulled the door closed and blocked out the chilly wet air.

“We’ll need towels.” Carrie rushed away.

While she was gone, Hayden quietly assessed the young boy. He was slender built, close to skinny, with a heart-shaped face kissed by a sprinkle of brownish freckles. A Huckleberry Finn kind of kid who was trying to look anywhere except in Hayden’s eyes. There was something frighteningly familiar about the kid, so much so that Hayden softened.

In a patient voice, he said, “I’m Hayden. Who are you?”

“Brody.” He rubbed a soggy hand across his wet eyes. His rain-darkened eyelashes stuck straight out above cheeks pale as sand.

“So you got lost?”

The boy stared down at the ever-widening puddle on the floor. “Um...yeah.”

Lost didn’t feel right to Hayden. He was reasonably sure the boy was hiding something. The question was, why?

“What were you doing out in this kind of weather?” A beeping sound came from the kitchen. Hayden kept his focus on the child.

“Camping out.” Brody’s voice was soft and uncertain. “I wasn’t expecting the storm.”

Camping out. Okay, that made sense. Country boys did that kind of thing. He’d done it plenty of times.

“By yourself?”

“Yeah.”

Carrie appeared with two snow-white towels and draped one around the boy’s shoulders. “I warmed them for you in the microwave.”

That explained the beep.

“Smart.” Hayden glanced at her in appreciation.

“Thank you.” Brody shivered and huddled beneath the fluffy towel while Carrie patted at his face and soggy hair with the other. Kind. Tender. Her actions stirred something in Hayden’s chest. He couldn’t remember anyone ever drying him off.

“What’s your phone number, Brody? I’ll give your folks a call.”

“Uh, they’re, uh—” The boy fidgeted. “They’re not home.”

“No?” Suspicion, like a hairy spider, crawled over Hayden’s scalp.

Brody flashed pale blue eyes at Hayden before letting them slide away. But in that instant, Hayden saw the truth. The kid didn’t want to go home. He preferred a stormy, cold, wet night alone.

An icy feeling of déjà vu lodged in Hayden’s chest.

He’d camped out in the woods dozens of times to avoid going home.

Carrie disappeared again to make noises in the kitchen. Lightning flickered against the windows, less intense than earlier.

“You camp by yourself often?”

“I like the woods.” Brody’s quiet words were almost imperceptible.

If the kid knew the woods well enough to camp, he likely had not been lost at all.

“How old are you, Brody?”

“Eleven.”

“You live close by?” The lopsided conversation felt more like an interrogation, which Hayden supposed it was.

“In town.”

Hayden had stopped in the picturesque town of Honey Ridge, a couple of miles down the road, when he’d come through on his way to the inn. “Pretty long walk.”

“I don’t mind it.” A glint of humor showed in the blue eyes Brody flashed his way. “Except when it storms.”

“Can’t say I don’t feel the same.”

Carrie returned, carrying a steaming white cup and the bag of Oreos. “Here you go, Brody. A mug of hot cocoa should warm you up.”

Shaky hands took the offered treats. “Thanks.”

The kid gobbled a cookie in two bites. Hungry, Hayden thought, when he dispatched a second one every bit as quickly. Pondering, Hayden munched on his Oreo while the boy ate and drank.

“You’re welcome to all the cookies you want.” Carrie urged the package toward Brody.

“I should...go.” But he made no move to shed the now-damp towels or move toward the door.

Carrie put another cookie in his hand. “Drink your cocoa, and we’ll figure something out.”

The kid had nowhere to go. Hayden had already figured that out even if Carrie hadn’t. A thought danced through his head, and he latched on.

“I have a perfectly good room upstairs that I won’t be using tonight,” Hayden offered. “Why don’t you bunk there until morning?”

Brody shook his head. “I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not? I paid for the bed, but I won’t be in it. Someone might as well sleep there.”

“But—”

“He works at night, Brody.” Carrie flashed Hayden a look of gratitude. “It’ll be okay. Julia won’t mind.”

Hayden didn’t know if the innkeeper would mind or not, and he didn’t much care. The kid was cold, hungry and too exhausted to be any trouble. He was staying. If Julia wanted to charge extra on Hayden’s tab, fine.

“I’ll take my laptop into the front parlor close to the coffeemaker. The bed’s all yours.”

The boy looked relieved, hopeful. “You sure? I wouldn’t bother nothing.”

“Drink up, and let’s get you upstairs.”

Brody took a long swig and drained the cup, handed it off to Carrie. “Thank you. You make delicious cocoa.”

Carrie touched his wet hair. She was, Hayden noticed, a toucher. “You’re welcome.”

“Ready?”

The boy nodded, and Hayden led the way up the stairs, whispering, “Watch the third step. It creaks.”

With a solemn nod, Brody imitated Hayden’s path and nothing squeaked.

Inside the bright and pretty Mulberry Room, Brody stood awkward and silent while Hayden dug out a pair of drawstring sweats and a T-shirt. The air was thick and humid from the damp night and a wet boy who smelled of river and woods.

“They’ll be too big, but they’re dry.” He motioned toward the bathroom. “In there. You can grab a hot shower if you want to.”

“I’m pretty tired.”

“I bet you are. Change, then, while I gather my work gear.”

Hayden needed less than a minute to organize his laptop, charger and notebook. For good measure, he added the extra blanket from the closet and pocketed his wallet. Sometimes a kid did things out of desperation.

Brody reappeared, a waif in oversize clothes, the gray sweats rolled up at the ankle and the shirt hanging below his hips. He’d scrubbed at his hair with a towel and it stuck out like porcupine quills. He held the wet clothes in his hands. “Where should I put these?”

“I’ll take them. They’ll have a dryer.” Carrie would know, and he hoped she hadn’t gone to bed. She was apparently a friend of the innkeeper and knew her way around the inn.

Hayden added the jeans and shirt to the items he’d take downstairs, then flipped back the mulberry-print comforter and gestured. The boy climbed in, his cold feet brushing Hayden’s hand. Tucking in a kid brought an odd sensation, and he had a sudden gray-edged memory of his father, the scent and soot of the mines imprinted in his pores, snugging a blanket beneath Hayden’s chin.

Brody’s pale fingers gripped the edge of the cover. His eyes drooped and he sighed, a pitiful sound of relief and exhaustion.

Hayden stepped back to leave.

“Mister?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks.” Brody’s lips barely moved as his eyelids fluttered shut.

Full of a pity he didn’t want to feel, Hayden waited less than a minute before the skinny chest rose and fell in rhythmic sleep. Softly he murmured, “Good night, Brody.” What was left of it.

He clicked the switch and sent the room into darkness lit only by the flicker of leftover lightning. So much for writing during the storm. The best part was nearly gone.

Skirting the third step, he made his way back to the kitchen, where Carrie cleaned up the evidence of the night’s activities.

When he entered the room, she paused, closed Oreo package in hand, to nod at Brody’s wet garments. “Let me have those.”

Hayden handed over the soggy clothes and followed Carrie down a short hall behind the kitchen to a laundry room.

“That was nice of you,” she said.

“What else was I going to do? Toss the kid back out in the storm?”

“I could have woke up Julia and gotten the key to a vacant room.”

He shrugged. “No need. I’m up anyway.”

“Right.” She tossed the clothes into the dryer, added a softener sheet, clicked the door shut and hit a button that set the tumbler into humming motion and the warm humid smell of peaches swirling about the space. “So you can kill people.”

“Uh-huh.” Starting with the parents of a certain half-drowned boy, he thought with grim satisfaction.

Carrie headed back to the kitchen to finish the cleanup. A neat freak with the neurotic need to be cleaner than his boyhood, Hayden joined in.

“I know that boy,” Carrie said as she sponged down the countertop. “He comes in the library nearly every day after school for our tutoring program.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

She shrugged. “He probably doesn’t know who I am. Kids don’t notice librarians.”

He did. “What do you know about him?”

“He hangs out and plays on the computers, reads some but rarely checks out a book. He likes mysteries and adventure.” She flashed the charming dimple. “Librarians always notice reading preference. He doesn’t say much or bother anyone, but he generally stays awhile, as if he has no place else to be. We get our share of those at the library.”

“Do you know his parents?”

“He lives with his father. No mother in the picture. Brody’s one of the street kids around Honey Ridge. I don’t believe for one minute that he was lost.”

Hayden filled a coffee carafe and started another pot. “That was my take, as well. His father isn’t out of town, either.”

“Why would he lie about a thing like that? If his dad is at home, why didn’t he let us call him?”

There were plenty of reasons, and Hayden, unfortunately, knew too many of them.

* * *

Long after Carrie trudged up the stairs in hopes of a few hours’ sleep, Hayden contemplated the night’s events and stared at a blank word processor. Fueled by the cookies and strong coffee, his mind whirled, though not in the direction he’d hoped. Carrie, Brody and Dora Lee wouldn’t leave him alone.

He stretched, rolled his neck and roamed the parlor.

Finally, frustrated by the lack of progress, he grabbed the blanket and a throw pillow and flopped down on a curved, skinny Victorian sofa clearly not intended for napping. Especially by a man with long legs.

After fifteen minutes of misery, he rolled off onto the area rug, taking the pillow and cover with him. Much better.

The pillow smelled of peaches and the floor of wood polish, though a dark stain spread from the rug to the fireplace. The wood was old, likely original to the house, but he wondered why this section hadn’t been replaced.

He sifted through the memories of the day, tossed out the conversation with his mother, which was guaranteed to keep him awake and suffering from dyspepsia, and focused on the fascinating old house.

His fingers grazed the stain, interestingly cool to the touch. With a weary sigh, he closed his eyes and let himself feel the memories clinging to the fireplace and the floor, searching for that one kernel of story that would become a novel. His last conscious thought was the low vibrating rumble of a distant train.

4

It is said that some lives are linked across time, connected by an ancient calling that echoes through the ages.

—Prince of Persia

1867

Heat seared his lungs and scorched his skin. Flames leaped and clawed. His shirt melted against his back. He coughed, once, twice, as hot tears rolled down his face.

Amelia! Grace! Where are you? Their names stuck in his throat, burned shut by the hungry flames.

“Sir! Wake up. You’s havin’ a bad dream.”

Thaddeus Eriksson opened his eyes with a start. A broad black face, as dark and shiny as a coat button and most certainly not his wife or daughter, stared down at him. Thad sat up straighter, reorienting to the inside of the Tennessee passenger train. The metallic click of the tracks rumbled below him. Smoke puffed past the windows. He was on a train bound for southern Tennessee, not in the burning house in Ohio.

He dragged a shaky hand down his face. “I was dreaming.”

He’d not had the dream in weeks. The engine smoke must have set him off.

“Yes, sir. You sure was. You all right now?”

Thaddeus saw kindness in the obsidian eyes of Abram, an ex-slave, fit and strong like a field-worker, not old but old enough to be on his own on a southbound train, though from the haughty glances and grumbles, there were plenty on board who disapproved of his presence. The slaves were all free now that the war had ended and a bumpy kind of peace had descended on the country. Still, a black man alone on a train was taking a risk.

From the moment Abram had boarded the train, Thaddeus had kept a watchful eye until fatigue and the train’s rhythm had lulled him to sleep. He hadn’t intended to doze. A former Union soldier and a freed slave on a Southern train weren’t especially welcome, and he knew better than to let down his guard. He tried to keep his voice low to hide the Ohio accent, but Abram couldn’t hide who he was.

Surrender may have come, but the nation was far from being united.

Even now, a rotund man with a cigar squinted at them in hostile speculation.

The scarlet padded seat gave as Thaddeus twisted toward the friendly freedman. Abram sat behind him, but they’d exchanged a cordial conversation on the long ride. No one else seemed inclined to pass the time.

“I’m obliged you woke me.”

He’d slept for five nights on a series of conveyances on his way from Ohio to Honey Ridge, Tennessee. The train cars were noisy, dirty, and the interruptions unpredictable but the ride was still a luxury considering the miles he’d marched and places he’d slept during the war.

Like most of the South, railroad service had yet to fully recover, and the flood of Northern profiteers into the South had raised the hackles of former Confederates.

“Bad dreams can be an omen. That’s what my mama always said.” Abram’s rough, weathered hands gripped the seat back as he leaned forward, speaking low. “You were hollering out to somebody named Amelia.”

Sometimes bad dreams were reality. The hard knot of pain tightened in Thad’s gut. “My wife. She died.”

Even after a year, the words shocked him.

“Now that right there is a pure shame, Mr. Thaddeus. I sho is sorry for yo’ loss. Do you have any chilren?”

“Grace. She died, too.” He was the only survivor of the fire that had taken his home and family, and Thaddeus knew he should be thankful to the Almighty for sparing him. But after a year alone, a year of strangling grief and regret, he often wished he’d died with them. “What about you, Abram? You got a wife and children?”

“No, sir. I had me a sweetheart once, but the masta’ sold her off somewhere when the war started. My mama and brothers, too. Pappy, he died in the fightin’.”

Abram’s words were a useful reminder that others had lost as much or more in the long, painful War Between the States, a struggle he still believed was righteous.

“That’s a shame.”

“Yes, sir. I’m gonna find them, though.”

“Is that where you’re headed now?”

“Uh-huh. Chattanooga. Miz Malden, she couldn’t pay us no more after Mr. Malden passed. The war done took everything.” He laughed softly. “Even us workers, thank the Lawd. But she looked in Mr. Malden’s book, and told every one of us where our families was sold off to.”

“Kind of her.” Thad’s heart had returned to a steady rhythm as the dream faded. He was grateful for Abram’s distracting conversation. “You think your family is still there?”

“Yes, sir. Hoping so. My mama and my brother, Jesse.”

Since emancipation former slaves were scattered, searching for one another and for a new start to a way of life few of them understood. There was no telling where Abram’s family was now. But Thaddeus didn’t have the heart to steal the man’s hope.

“Chattanooga sounds like the place to start.”

“Won’t be long now.”

Thad removed his pocket watch, a timepiece he’d carried since before the war. A long-ago Christmas gift from Amelia, it was his most treasured possession. Even as the polished silver glinted in the sunlight, he recalled her smile, her joy at presenting him with such a fine watch. The memory both hurt and comforted.

“Ought to be coming up on my stop soon and then Chattanooga not long after.”

He’d no more than spoken than the train began to slow and the brakes squealed. A shrill whistle nearly split his eardrums.

“This yo’ stop right here?”

“This is it.” A water stop for the train, and a place for passengers to disembark or board that wasn’t much more than a handful of clapboard buildings. “I hope you find your family, Abram. If you ever get up around Honey Ridge, stop in and say hello.”

Thaddeus hoisted his satchel and rose, turning to offer a hand to Abram. The ex-slave seemed momentarily taken aback before he clasped Thad’s hand with a grin. “Good luck to you, Mr. Thaddeus.”

Steam smoke swirled around Thad’s face as he disembarked, and the strong odor made him anxious. He knew the scent came from the train and yet the memory of the fire that had stolen too much haunted him more than the years of unrelenting battle.

He glanced around at the tiny town, then toward the rising blue haze that would be the Smokies to the east and the rolling countryside that spread in every direction in undulant shades of green. The landscape across Tennessee was beautiful, even though too many burned farms and ravaged villages littered the countryside like the dead Confederacy.

Weary but hopeful, Thad aimed toward a sign proclaiming General Store in search of information. If he was fortunate, someone would share an easy route to Honey Ridge. If he was very lucky, he might even find a wagon headed in that direction.

His boots echoed in the hot afternoon as he stepped through the doorway into the tiny store. The inside was dim and smelled of coffee and leather and hog grease. Shelves stuffed tight with an array of goods lined the walls of the narrow room, a promising sign. Three men stood talking around a spittoon, while a white-haired merchant wrapped a length of brightly printed calico in brown paper.

Thaddeus approached the merchant. “I’m headed for Honey Ridge. Might you direct me toward the best route?”

Nimble fingers paused in tying the package. “I might.”

Thaddeus waited, but the merchant didn’t say more.

One of the tobacco chewers, a short, squat man with a big nose, approached. “Where you from, boy?”

It wasn’t the first time he’d answered that question, though not everyone across the South had been unkind to a former Yankee soldier. There were sympathizers in Tennessee, including the rosy-cheeked woman who’d sold him a loaf of bread and thrown in some dried apples for good measure. Thaddeus had a feeling this man wasn’t one of those.

He sighed. “Ohio.”

The man spat a long stream of tobacco, narrowly missing Thad’s boots. Thad followed the insult with his eyes.

“Yankee.” The man bit off the word as if it left a nasty taste. He looked to his friends, both of whom stared at Thad with more than a little animosity. The one in red suspenders tilted back to stare and Thad saw what he’d missed. One of the men was missing a leg. A soldier, no doubt. A Rebel. Probably all three of them had been.

“I’m not looking for trouble,” Thaddeus said. “Just directions.”

“You won’t find them here.” The man ran his hands under his suspenders. “You best head on back to where you come from.”

The tiny hope that he might purchase some food or even share a ride on a farmer’s wagon dissipated in the dark confines of the general store.

The merchant kept his attention on the parcel now neatly wrapped and tied with string.

Thaddeus gave a head bob and walked outside. A hundred yards down the track, the train chugged onward toward Chattanooga, its smoke a gray feather tickling the blue sky.

The air was sticky and thick. Nights would be cooler, though every bit as humid. Will had sent him a map, drawn by his own hand. A former army captain who’d campaigned all over Tennessee, William Gadsden would be accurate. The trip to Peach Orchard Farm was a long one, especially without food, but nothing to a man who had marched with a hungry infantry for three years.

He shouldered his satchel and started walking.

* * *

“You can’t. I won’t have it.”

Josie Portland tossed down her napkin to glare at Will Gadsden across a long oak table that had fed four generations of Portlands. Portlands, not Gadsdens. The former Union captain had married her late brother’s widow, and now the uppity Yankee thought he owned Peach Orchard Farm and Mill.

“Josie, please,” Charlotte said mildly. “Don’t fuss.”

“Fuss? You expect me to sit back and let more and more of the enemy invade my home? Haven’t we lost enough?”

Will’s jaw tightened. “The war is over, Josie. We are not enemies.”

“Tell that to Tom!” The chair scraped against a floor where dozens of wounded had once sprawled in bloody misery. Josie bolted upright. Heat swamped her, burning her cheeks. She fought hot tears, ever present at the mention of Tom.

Four pairs of eyes watched her. Her sister, Patience, as sweet and holy as Mother Mary herself, looked baffled as she usually did by any kind of disturbance, while her nephew, Benjamin, clearly sided with Captain Will. He always did. Admittedly, Will had been good to the eleven-year-old after the tragic death of Ben’s father.

Lizzy’s dark face appeared at the kitchen door, eyes wide. Charlotte’s former maid was one of the few slaves who’d stayed behind to work for provisions and little else. They were all like slaves now, doing what they could to survive.

“Josie, sit down please and let’s speak of this sensibly.” Charlotte folded her hands together on the edge of the table as calm as bath water. Ever serene, the British vicar’s daughter was too pious for Josie’s liking. Never a bad word, never a complaint, no matter how awful things had been since the war. At times, she didn’t know how Charlotte had kept the farm and the mill going, though her sister-in-law gave credit to God and the handful of crippled Yankees and former slaves who’d stayed to help.

Certainly, Josie comprehended all that her brother’s widow had done. She wasn’t a fool. If not for Charlotte’s stiff resolve and clever wrangling, they would have lost the farm and mill to Yankee carpetbaggers. Nevertheless, Josie wanted her life back the way it was before the hated war, before Father and her brother, Edgar, had died.

“Why couldn’t you hire someone from Honey Ridge?” Her chest heaved beneath the hatefully dull brown dress. She was so angry her face must be as red as her hair. “Why do you have to hire a Yankee?”

“Because no one here has Thad’s skills. He’s from a family of millers. He is a millwright as well as a miller, which means he can repair the machinery and make improvements. He can teach us what we need to know to make the operation smoother and more profitable.” Will lifted the letter he’d received earlier that day. The hateful letter he’d read to them over a supper of dumplings and stewed fruit. “We are fortunate he’s agreed to come.”

“You’ve been doing fine by yourself,” she spat, though the compliment cost her. Will was a decent man for a Yankee, but he was still a Yankee. Men like him were the reason her Tom had never come home from the bloody, horrible war. They were the reason so many women like her cried for sweethearts still missing or buried in some remote place without so much as a name marker. They were the reason she would never wear Mother’s wedding gown.

“I’ve barely kept things going, Josie. The mill needs repairs that I can’t do, and even if I could, I haven’t any more hours in the day. I need Thad, and he is already on his way. He’s a fine man who’s had his share of loss, and I expect you to treat him with respect.”

Helpless fury shook her. Let Thaddeus Eriksson come if he must, but Josie would do her best to make his visit short and miserable.

She would choke before she’d show respect to another bloody Yankee.

5

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

—Ray Bradbury

Present

Hayden awoke with a jerk, disoriented as he stared into a nineteenth-century fireplace. Where was he?

He sat up, heart chugging with the hard rhythm of a train. Except for the blue glow from his laptop, asleep but powered on, heavy darkness shrouded the room.

The dream had been so real. Even now when he was awake, Thaddeus’s sorrow lay heavily in his chest, as real as if he had suffered the loss of a wife and child. He’d smelled the smoke, looked into the eyes of the ex-slave and sat at the dinner table with the Portland family.

“Weird,” he muttered. He’d dreamed scenes from his work before but never anything like this. These characters were realistically familiar, as if he knew them. As if he was them.

Blowing out a shaky breath, Hayden tapped the keyboard to shed more light on his surroundings. The tiny digital clock in one corner said he’d slept a few hours. Dawn would break soon.

His senses slowly returned as he recognized the antebellum inn and recalled why he was in the parlor instead of in the cushy bed upstairs in the Mulberry Room. Still, the dream lingered and the strong emotions persisted.

In his imagination, the computer clock morphed into a silver pocket watch, glinting in the Tennessee sun.

He scrubbed his face with both hands, uncomfortably aware that the dream man, Thaddeus, had done the same.

Thaddeus, Abram, Josie. Three fascinating characters who had nothing to do with the kind of book he was contracted to write.

Yet the rich images prodded at his imagination, stirring the creative hunger.

Before the gauzy cobweb dream was cleaned away by the hand of wakefulness, Hayden grabbed his computer and began to write.

By the time he purged his memory, morning had broken through the drapes in September’s pure yellow-white streaks, and delicious scents wafted from the kitchen, waking his senses and his taste buds. If Julia had found his presence in the parlor odd when she’d come through at dawn, she’d said nothing. A short time later, she’d placed a fresh cup of coffee next to him. He’d called her a goddess.

The classy blonde innkeeper had simply smiled and padded quietly away, a courtesy he appreciated. He didn’t like interruptions when he worked. In fact, he didn’t like people when he worked. He supposed his assistant had relayed that persnickety piece of information when she’d booked the room for an indefinite period of time for enough money to get him anything he wanted. Today he would express his desire for a coffeemaker. Or he’d go into town and buy one. He wasn’t a purist. Any old cup of java worked, though he appreciated Julia’s freshly ground beans.

He sipped the rich, bold grind, a reminder of Carrie, the squeaky cute librarian, his fellow storm watcher from last night. He wondered if her jittery nerves had finally settled enough to sleep.

When he heard a man’s voice in the kitchen, his curiosity got the better of him. Ready for a refill, he hit Save and closed the laptop. Forget the dream. He didn’t write historical novels.

Right now he needed coffee.

Upon reaching the kitchen door, he stopped, amused. Innkeeper Julia and a dark-haired man were locked in a passionate kiss. If Hayden were polite, he’d do the well-bred thing and slip out again. But he was a writer and therefore fascinated by the innate bonds that attract male and female, sometimes to their joy and every bit as often to their detriment.

As the pair broke apart, rather reluctantly if he was any judge, the man noticed him and said, “Caught again.”

Julia made a soft noise, flushing slightly, as she turned and offered a sheepish but glowing smile.

“Hayden Winters, this is my fiancé, Eli Donovan, who apparently returned to the carriage house late last night without warning me.” Her June-blue eyes flashed adoration at her fiancé. “Eli, Hayden is a newly arrived guest.”

Eli extended a hand, though he seemed to regret releasing his hold on Julia. Who could blame him? Love was a beautiful thing. For other people.

“A pleasure, Hayden. I read your books.”

“Thank you. I apologize for interrupting.” Not that he meant it. “Mind if I snitch another cup of coffee?”

“She makes the best.” Eli took Hayden’s cup and refilled it. “How was your room?”

“I’m not sure.”

Julia, who now peered into the oven, looked up with a frown. “Was something wrong?”

“Not at all.” He told her about Brody but skipped the dream.

“For heaven’s sake.” She gazed up at the ceiling as if she could see the boy wrapped in sleep and the plush bedding of the Mulberry Room. “That poor child.”

“I hope you don’t mind.” Being a good guest often reaped benefits. “You can charge me extra if you’d like.”

“For what? Being nice enough to rescue a little boy from the storm? For giving up your own night’s rest?”

“I slept a little,” he said, and the dream pushed in. He pushed back.

“Speaking of kids,” Eli said to Julia. “How’s my son?”

“Good as gold and sweet as pie. He missed his daddy, though.”

“I’ll run up and see if he’s awake.” Eli grabbed her for another kiss that left him grinning and her flustered. “Save me some bacon.”

Hayden took his coffee out on the long wraparound veranda, propped up his feet and watched morning slide across the emerald-green magnolias. The large shady yard was littered with leaves dispatched by last night’s wind, the grass glistened, still wet, and the flowers along the porch front drooped, too battered by the storm to lift their colorful heads. But the rain-washed air smelled glorious-fresh and moist and clean like the Appalachian woods in spring.

He found it interesting, if a bit pathetic, that even after all the years away, after all the fabrications, the success and money, he missed the green hills and deep, secret hollows, the crystal creeks and thick woods of Appalachia. Coming to Tennessee reminded him starkly of the home from which he’d escaped at sixteen. He could almost smell the Smoky Mountains to the east, like his Kentucky Mountains, a part of the long Appalachian chain that had once split east from west. With a kind of nauseating nostalgia, he’d driven the rental car around the curves of roads populated only by horse pastures or thick woods and shadowy secret trails the country boy still hiding in him longed to explore.

At his back, an old-fashioned wooden door opened and the blue Australian shepherd he’d seen yesterday trotted out for his morning business, black nose to the sparkling wet grass. Carrie appeared, carrying her own cup of coffee. Hayden whiffed the spike of vanilla flavoring she’d added, along with Carrie’s own scent, fresh and clean with a spicy edge of mystery.

“Good morning.” Her voice was throaty, a rough morning sound that sent his mind spinning down inappropriate avenues, to tumbled beds and warm, sleep-drenched interludes.

His head lolled in her direction. Her short hair was slicked back in a headband, her pale skin scrubbed pink and void of makeup. Over a blue print dress, she’d tossed a jean jacket against the morning chill. Simple and charming.

“You didn’t sleep long,” he said, not minding that she’d interrupted his solitude.

“When the sun rises, so do I. It’s a nasty habit left over from college when I’d get up early to cram before class.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Late nights?”

“Uh-huh. Slinging macchiatos.”

“Ah, yes, the wild midnight barista,” he said with a slight smile.

With an answering curve of bowed lips, she leaned against the veranda railing and sipped at her coffee. “Get any writing done?”

The dream rushed in, the people, the train, the watch, disturbing in a way that carried undercurrents he hadn’t quite put his finger on. The dream itself had not been terrible, not like the killers who stalked the edges of his thoughts and littered the pages of his books. Those didn’t disturb him at all.

“Some.”

“Did you kill anyone? Metaphorically speaking.”

“Will you be disappointed if I say neither metaphorically nor literally?”

She laughed, and a single dimple flashed at the corner of her mouth. She had a sweet face, made even more innocent by her round puppy-dog eyes and fresh-scrubbed style. She was doubtless younger than him by several years and a lifetime of experiences he wouldn’t wish on anyone. A small-town woman protected by and comfortable in the bosom of familiarity.

“Have you checked on Brody yet?” she asked.

“Later. He needs the sleep.”

“That’s what I thought, too.”

“Great minds.” He stretched his legs out on the porch, propped his crossed ankles on the railing.

“When he wakes up, I’ll drive him home.”

“Nice of you,” he said, though he would have made the same offer. He was curious about Brody’s home life, curious to know why the kid had lied and didn’t want to go home. He was also gritty-eyed from lack of sleep and wouldn’t mind a few hours’ sack time on the pillow top upstairs.

“I’m going that way. Might as well give him a ride.” She sipped again, dainty and ladylike, fingers on the handle and the opposite hand beneath the cup. “Thank you for keeping me company last night.”

“Storms really scare you that much?” He wanted to probe deep, his usual response to anyone’s fears because, quite frankly, he could use the information in a book. Psychology, even one’s own, provided powerful motivation.

“The fear is silly, I know, but they do. Always have. I owe you one.”

“Count us even.” He toasted her. “You knew where to find the coffee and cookies.”

He thought of her pretty pink toes and hid his grin with the coffee mug. The lack of sleep and the bizarre dream were giving him weird thoughts.

* * *

The kid didn’t want to go home.

Hayden figured that out about two minutes after stepping into the Mulberry Room with Brody’s dry clothes.

Still in the baggy sweats, the Huck Finn look-alike stood in front of the bathroom mirror. He’d wet his sandy-colored hair and was doing his best to slick down a frontal cowlick with both hands.

Hayden tossed him a comb. It would wash.

“When you get dressed, come down to the dining room. Julia has breakfast ready.” Hayden hung the dried clothes over the towel bar. “After breakfast, Miss Carrie will drive you home.”

The kid tensed, the comb flush against his wet hair. He kept his focus on the mirror, but Hayden could see the wheels turning. The kid’s body language spoke volumes.

“I’m okay. She doesn’t need to do that. I can walk.”

“A ride’s no problem. She lives in town and is going that way. See you downstairs.”

Hayden left before Brody could argue or come up with an excuse, though he didn’t know why it mattered. He was here to write a book, not get tangled up with some wayward kid.

The chatter of too many voices met him at the bottom of the crimson-carpeted stairs. He’d expected other guests, but when he walked into the red-walled dining room, one china-laden table was flooded with animated, laughing, gesturing women. Carrie was one of them.

The only males in the room, Eli Donovan and a small black-haired boy who could only be his much-missed son, sat next to a double window overlooking a backyard garden. Their plates were loaded with French toast, fruit and bacon, and the smell was enough to make Hayden’s mouth water.

“You’re surrounded,” Eli said wryly with a tilt of his head toward the female contingency. “Might as well enjoy it.” He pushed at an empty chair. “You’re welcome to join us.”

Hayden did, though he overheard the women’s chatter, gleaned bits of gossip, catalogued names. Julia slipped away from the others to bring his breakfast and more coffee.

When Brody appeared in the arched doorway, Hayden almost laughed. The kid looked shell-shocked, either by the abundance of estrogen or the opulence of the breakfast room.

Carrie saw the boy, too, and sent a smile in his direction. “Good morning, Brody. You look better.”

Brody offered a shy grin and made his way, silent as a memory, to what Hayden thought of as the guys’ table.

“They don’t bite,” he promised.

With a flourish, Valery placed a glass of orange juice in front of the boy. “In fact, girls can be kind of handy. Do you like bacon?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“French toast?”

This time the boy floundered. He stared at his juice.

“Ever had French toast, Brody?” Hayden asked gently.

The boy shook his head.

“Might as well try it,” Valery said. “Julia makes the best.”

“It’s sort of like pancakes, only better,” Hayden said.

This brought Brody’s head up. “I love pancakes.”

“There you go, then. French toast with plenty of powdered sugar and syrup coming right up.” Valery flounced out of the room like a flamenco dancer. The innkeeper was flashy, a head turner, with dark hair curling around her shoulders and bright red lipstick.

Food was served, and Brody ate like a starved pup, speaking only once to say, his mouth stuffed with French toast, “This is good.”

The exceptional meal made Hayden sleepy and lethargic. If he ate like this every day for the next few months, he would have to do some serious walking or find a gym.

During the meal, he made polite conversation with Eli and listened to sweet exchanges between the father and son that stirred thoughts of his own father. Donald Briggs had been his light in a dark childhood and when that light went out, Hayden had been lost. If not for an English teacher who had seen his talent, he’d still be lost, likely in the same drug-dulled world that had sucked Dora Lee under.

Eli’s son, Alex, finished his meal, hopped down from his chair and hugged his father. “I missed you, Daddy.”

Hayden experienced a pinch beneath his breastbone. He missed his daddy, too.

Hayden tossed his napkin on the table. He must need sleep worse than he’d thought.

* * *

Brody was stuffed. He couldn’t remember when he’d tasted anything as good Miss Julia’s French toast.

With both hands on his full belly, he leaned back in the seat of Carrie Riley’s Volkswagen Bug. The inside smelled good, like something strawberry coming from a little tree dangling from the rearview mirror. Miss Riley smelled good, too. He always noticed that about her when she helped him with something at the library. She smelled like cinnamon, he thought. Or maybe gingerbread. The smell was nice, like her. She was always nice to him, and sometimes he imagined his mother had been like her or like Mrs. Timmons, the art teacher, who told him he had talent.

He liked drawing animals, especially wildlife like Max, but the Sweat twins let him draw their parrot, too. Mrs. Timmons said Binky was his best work, and she’d entered the picture in the county art show.

“What grade are you in this year, Brody?” Miss Carrie asked as they pulled out of the driveway onto the pavement leading into Honey Ridge.

“Fifth.”

“Who’s your teacher?”

“Mrs. Krouper.”

“You like her?”

He hiked one shoulder. “She’s okay.”

“I’ve heard she’s pretty strict.”

“Yeah. She sent me to detention for a whole week.” He didn’t know why he’d told her that. Maybe because his belly was full and he’d slept in that soft bed last night, where he’d dreamed of riding a horse. He’d always wanted to ride a horse.

Miss Riley grinned at him. “Uh-oh. What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

When she hiked an eyebrow, he felt compelled to explain. He didn’t know why. He just did.

“There’s this boy. He’s a bully, but no one does anything about it. He was picking on this little kid named Jacob, so I told him to stop and he kicked me. We kind of got in a fight.” He hated fighting, but when Jacob cried and looked all helpless, he had to do something. Like the time he’d found a cat with its head stuck in a soup can.

“Did you tell your dad? Maybe he could have talked to the teacher?”

“He wouldn’t.” Why’d she have to bring up his dad? Now he was thinking about him again. Would the old man be sober yet? Or would he still be drunk enough to be mad that Brody had been out all night?

Miss Riley cut him a curious look, so he hurriedly said, “My dad works a lot. He’s real busy.”

“Where does your dad work?”

“Big Wave, on the second shift. I don’t know what he does.”

“Something to do with boats, I’m sure.” And she laughed. She had a pretty laugh with a little hiccup on the end that made his chest tickle.

“Which way?” She pulled the VW Bug to a stop at the red light in the center of Honey Ridge.

“My house is not far. I can walk from here.” Brody reached for the door handle.

“Brody,” she said gently. “Which way?”

She was so nice, he didn’t want to hurt her feelings or look like some kind of ungrateful kid without a lick of manners, so he guided her down the side streets, across the railroad track.

His heart beat hard enough to hurt in his belly. If he was lucky, the old man would still be asleep. He wasn’t lucky very often.

“Right there.” He pointed. “Where the white car is.”

“Looks like your dad is home now.”

“Yeah.”

Brody hoped Max was okay, still safely tucked in a shoe box under the bed. He should have brought him camping like usual, but the old man had already been drunk when school let out, and he’d been afraid to chance a return to the house.

“Was he really gone somewhere last night, Brody?”

She was hard to lie to. “He might have been.”

“I see.”

He sure hoped not. He tugged at the door handle and stepped out. No sign of his father. “Thank you, Miss Riley.”

“See you at the library.”

He slammed the door and hustled across the mowed grass, tension in his neck slowly easing. The old man was probably still sleeping it off. His relief was short-lived when Clint Thomson appeared in the doorway without his shirt, his black eyebrows pulled low in a frown of displeasure at the sight of his son. No big surprise there.

“Where you been?”

Brody heard Miss Riley’s car backing out of the driveway and hoped she’d leave quickly.

He searched for a lie that would appease his father but finding none, told the truth. “I went camping.”

“Why is someone driving you home?” His dad listed to one side, wobbly. He slapped the door to catch himself, and Brody jumped. “You’re not supposed to ride with strangers.”

“That’s Miss Carrie from the library.” Knowing a glance could be mistaken for defiance, he kept his eyes trained on the porch. “She’s not a stranger.”

His dad cuffed the back of his head. “Don’t get smart with me.”

Brody snuck a fast glance at the street and saw the blue Volkswagen turn the corner. Relieved, he ducked inside the house before his father could really get going.

6

If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?

—Lily Tomlin

The library was always busy after the weekend.

The small one-story building in the middle of Honey Ridge was Carrie’s domain, her vocation and avocation. She loved the tidy rows, loved reading and sharing books and loved that the library sponsored adult literacy classes. In fact, she loved everything about the library, including her sometimes troublesome patrons.

Herman Peabody, bless his heart, couldn’t hear a freight train if it ran over his foot, but he forgot his hearing aids as often as he remembered them. Whenever that happened, his voice never dropped below bullhorn level.

Patrons of the library looked at him with either annoyance or resignation.

Wearing a jaunty tam angled on his semi-bald head and in blue overalls that could use a good scrub, Herman Peabody was one of the afternoon regulars.

“Am I talking too loud again?” he asked.

She leaned close, refusing to insult him by wrinkling her nose at his less-than-pleasant scent. “Did you forget your hearing aids?”

He slapped at his ears. A twinkly smile wrinkled an already-wrinkled cheek. “I guess I did.”

Carrie aimed an eye at his overalls. “Maybe in your pocket?”

He squinted and leaned closer. “What?”

She pointed. “Your pocket.”

Recognition dawned, and he patted the overall bib, coming up with a small pair of flesh-colored hearing aids. He popped them in, winced, made an adjustment and then said, “All better?”

Carrie smiled. Most people didn’t bother to know Mr. Peabody had been a Nashville studio musician back in the day when self-trained artists played by ear and before time took away his ability to do exactly that. Now he had nothing to fall back on and barely eked by on a meager Social Security check. She knew this because she volunteered at Interfaith Partnership, a social charity that collected and distributed food and clothing to the needy.

After Mr. Peabody settled onto one of the couches with a sigh and a groan, grabbing at his left knee, she handed him the Honey Ridge Register. “Do you need some aspirin for that knee?”

“Nah. Just an old man’s stiff joints. I must have sat too long with the good ol’ boys down at the café.”

The café was the coffee klatch of retired men who gathered at the Miniature Golf Café every morning without fail to shoot the breeze and resolve the political and social ills of the universe.

“Did you fellas come up with a solution to world peace?”

“Just about.” He nodded, chuckling. “Just about. Mr. B. says we’ll never get out of this world alive, so what difference does it make?”

Carrie laughed. Mr. B., short for Bastarache, a name few of them could pronounce, was the town undertaker. His fatalistic views were legendary.

“Well, that’s Mr. B. for you,” she said. “You tell me if you need some aspirin for that knee, okay? I have a bottle in my purse.”

He patted her hand. “You’re a good girl, Miss Carrie. Your mama raised you right.”

Carrie’s chest squeezed in affectionate sympathy for the man as she returned to the front desk.

“Why doesn’t he loiter somewhere else?” Tawny Brown, the other media specialist, ran the scanner gun across the bar code on the back of The Cat in the Hat. The computer beeped, and she crammed the book onto a roller cart for reshelving.

Carrie offered a sympathetic glance but said nothing. Tawny got all stirred up about the computer hogs and the regulars who hung out for lack of anything better to do. In Carrie’s opinion, everyone needed time in the safe haven of a library.

The thought of a safe haven brought Brody Thomson to mind, which brought Hayden Winters to mind, as well. The boy concerned her, but she didn’t know what to do about it. The man—well, he was a famous writer and she was a book person.

Beyond his incredible gift of words and the stormy night encounter at Peach Orchard Inn she didn’t know anything about him. He was an enigma even to book lovers.

Out of curiosity, she’d read his website bio, which was primarily about his novels and devoid of personal information. Because of his profession and hers, she also followed him, along with other popular authors, on Facebook and Twitter. Again, no personal information on Hayden Winters. Only book talk. A writer of his stature probably had an assistant handling social media anyway.

She’d had coffee, in her pajamas no less, with Hayden Winters.

Laughing at herself a little, she focused on work. The man had probably put her out of his mind the moment she’d driven away.

At noon, her sister Nikki came flying in, a swirl of energy and beauty. All the Riley siblings had dark hair, but Nikki took hers to a whole other dimension. Sleek as a mink and layer-cut in the latest style, Nikki’s hair gleamed. Today, the fashionista sister wore eggplant heels as high as the biography stacks. Carrie’s back hurt to look at them. No matter how hard she’d tried in high school, she’d never been able to pull off the beauty-queen look.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “Taking me out to lunch or jumping off into the deep to actually read something besides Fashion and Fad magazine?”

Nikki ignored the jab.

“Wasn’t this weekend at Peach Orchard Inn fun?” Her sister leaned an elbow on the circulation desk.

“Except for the tornado.”

Nikki rolled luminous brown eyes. “Don’t be a ninny. I slept right through it.”

“Two glasses of wine will do that to you.”

“Three, but who’s counting.”

“The hammer in my head was counting.” Carrie thanked a patron who dropped a couple of books on the desk and left. “One reason I seldom drink anything stronger than espresso.”

Hayden Winters flashed through her head again. Bold. He liked his coffee bold.

Nikki was nodding, her face repentant. “I don’t think Julia was particularly pleased that I’d brought wine in the first place. After we poured Valery into her bed, I understood why.”

“She did get a little crazy.”

“A little? Carrie, she was smashed. Having a glass of wine is one thing, but Valery didn’t seem to have a cutoff point.”

Carrie bit down on her bottom lip. “You sound as if you think she has a drinking problem.”

Nikki’s shoulders arched. “I’ve heard rumors, but you know how people like to talk in Honey Ridge.”

Yes, Carrie knew. She’d been the object of those rumors at one time, and the experience had made her cautious. The memory pressed in and caused an ache beneath her rib cage.

“If Valery has a problem, gossip won’t help. Nor will friends who come bearing wine. So, to be on the safe side, no more vino at our get-togethers.”

“Which means we have to have more.”

“Wine or get-togethers?” She beeped the wand across a bar code.

“Get-togethers, silly. Pedicures, weird hairdos and that hilarious Reese Witherspoon movie. Did I ever tell you about the time I saw her in Knoxville? We were in the same boutique, and she bought the exact scarf I had my eye on?”

“About a million times,” Carrie said, glad they’d moved away from the rumor mill topic.

She didn’t want Nikki rehashing the incident, which always brought on a painful slew of sympathetic hugs and the false assurance that nobody remembered anymore. She remembered.

“Some things are worth repeating.” Her sister hitched a purse Carrie recognized as a Coach only because it said so right on the front. “So are you in for some more fun?”

Carrie’s hand stilled on the two books she was now checking in. “Shoot! I let Maggie get out without paying her fine again.”

“Are you listening to me?”

“What? Oh, sure. Reese Witherspoon.”

Nikki exhaled in a long, beleaguered sigh. “Fun, Carrie. You know, something besides this musty library.”

Insulted, Carrie drew back. “My library is not musty.”

But that was the way things went with her sisters. Carrie’s choice in clothes, occupation and lifestyle was stodgy and musty. Theirs was perfection.

Most of the time she even agreed with them but not when they criticized her library.

“Bailey and I think we need a break, all three of us,” Nikki was saying. “Chad’s on board and Ricky doesn’t count.”

Ricky was her longtime on-again, off-again boyfriend who pretty much let her do anything she wanted and was always waiting when she returned. That she took advantage of the easygoing man never crossed Nikki’s mind.

Carrie beeped a book and added a worn copy of Laura Ingalls Wilder to the cart. “What are you talking about?”

“Let’s plan a winter getaway to somewhere warm and wet. A Christmas gift to ourselves. What do you think of Hawaii?”

“Christmas is still months from now.” She beeped another book.

“Plans, darling. Plans.” Which in Nikki’s world meant planning her wardrobe.

“Hawaii sounds beautiful,” Carrie said hesitantly. “But it’s a long way from here with water in between.”

“That’s the whole point. Water, beaches, shirtless men, getting a tan in the dead of winter.” Nikki circled a finger in the air. “Water’s not a problem. You can swim.”

“Not hundreds of miles across the ocean.”

“Don’t start with that. Flying is safer than riding in a car.”

“Crashing isn’t.”

“We won’t crash. I promise. So what do you say?”

“You know how I hate flying.” Carrie’s pulse got all rickety at the mere mention of stepping on a plane. She’d flown once. Once. And thrown up twice, an experience she never wanted to repeat. “Besides, I don’t think I can take the time off.”

Nikki snorted so loudly, Carrie had to shush her.

“You probably have a hundred years of vacation time coming.”

Tawny whisked past, pausing long enough to say, “Go, Carrie. I’ll cover.”

“Eavesdropper,” Carrie groused.

Tawny tilted a shoulder and grinned.

Nikki’s lips curved in triumph. “There you go. No excuses. The three of us will have such fun. You might even meet a hunky Hawaiian who’ll teach you to surf.”

“Sharks eat people who surf.”

Nikki pursed her lips and got serious. “What’s the deal, Carrie? You don’t want to hang out with your big sisters for a week of fun in the sun?”

Carrie dropped her head back.

“I love the idea of the three of us doing more things together.” She touched her sister’s hand. “Really, Nik. I just...” Hated the idea of hanging over an ocean for hours in a plane held up only by invisible air. Hated the unknown and unexpected, where men lied and people assumed things that weren’t true and left you with a hole in your heart.

She preferred her predictable world of Dewey decimals and alphabetical order.

“I’m saving for a house. A trip to Hawaii is not in my budget.”

“Oh.” Nikki looked deflated. For once, the whirlwind sister had no argument. “I didn’t know you were planning to buy a house.”

That’s because she’d only this moment decided to start saving. Maybe it was time to move forward and stop looking back and dreaming of something that was never going to happen. She was a career woman now. She had a stable, steady income. She certainly wasn’t going anywhere else. Not even Hawaii.

To ease the disappointment on her sister’s face, she said gently, “You and Bailey go. I’ll help Chad with their kids while you’re gone.”

Nikki pouted pink lips. “The whole sister bond thing. Come on, Carrie. Nearly four years have passed since—”

Carrie pointed a finger, expression stern. “Do not go there, Nikki.”

“Then get over it. No one even remembers anymore.”

“You do.”

Nikki huffed. “I wouldn’t if you’d move on and get a life.”

“I am over it. I have moved on. That’s why I’m saving for a house.”

Hers wasn’t Nikki’s or Bailey’s idea of a life, but Carrie had learned to be content. She’d accepted the fact, thanks in large part to “the incident,” that she was as ordinary and uninteresting as a slice of plain white bread. And she was okay with that. Most of the time.

“Go to Hawaii,” she said. “Get a great tan, see a real volcano and a rain forest.” All the reasons Carrie would love to visit Hawaii. “You can Skype me from Waikiki Beach with a hunky Hawaiian on your arm and say, ‘I told you so.’”

Nikki’s eyes squinted in suspicion. “You’re a coward, Carrie Leanne. You’re scared to death to get out of this town and do something. You’re terrified of making the same mistake—”

Carrie quickly interrupted. “Remember when we went to Graceland? That was fun.”

“Out of Tennessee, Carrie.” Nikki rolled her well-mascaraed eyes. “You’re going to spend the rest of your life stuck in this library if you don’t branch out a little. Really, Carrie, don’t you want to meet people?”

“I meet people every day.”

“I meant people as in the single male variety, not the shut-ins and bookworms and computer geeks you meet through the library.”

“Hey!”

“Sorry. But did you see those shoes Maggie had on?”

“No, I didn’t. And you shouldn’t be so shallow as to judge a woman by her shoes.” Carrie fought the urge to glance at her own discount store flats. “Don’t you have a boutique to run?”

Nikki flipped a nonchalant hand. “Bailey’s in the shop today. She can handle the customers.”

Carrie’s two older sisters co-owned the Sassy Sisters Boutique. Nikki coordinated the fashion end while Bailey managed the business details and kept spendthrift Nikki firmly in check. Theirs was the perfect partnership and one they’d tried to interest Carrie in, another case of the oddball sister who couldn’t quite fit.

The week had barely begun and already she’d had too many reminders of how drab and pathetic she was. Like a sharp knife in the throat, she’d never forget the moment she’d accepted the truth. No one needed to remind her ever again.

Yet she knew they would.

“Then you’ll excuse me,” Carrie said. “I have work, even if you don’t.”

“You’re overwhelmed with customers.” Nikki’s index finger bobbed up and down as she counted. “Seven.”

Though she loved them, her sisters had the power to drain her.

“Patrons. And computer three needs to move on so the next patron can take over.” Happy for an excuse to escape, Carrie went to the computer section and quietly reminded the bearded man that his time was up.

He scowled, thick eyebrows coming together. “I’m not done.”

“You’re playing a game, sir.” “Zombie Zap,” for pity’s sake. “Other patrons are waiting for the computer. So please, log out.”

With a growl, the man logged out, shoved back his chair and stalked out of the library. If he’d been a real zombie, she’d be toast right now.

Carrie tooled through the library, shelving a book here and there, stopping to point out the biography section to a woman in shorts and flip-flops before returning to the front.

She was sliding a weathered copy of Wuthering Heights into its exact spot—823.8—when her sister rounded the end of the stack.

“I thought you left,” Carrie said.

“Isn’t it cool having a famous novelist staying in Honey Ridge? At Julia’s inn, no less.”

A little jitter danced in Carrie’s stomach. “He’s researching a book.”

“Really? Then I guess that explains why he just walked in the door.”

“Here? In the library?” From her spot behind several rows of books she couldn’t see the front, but she craned her head in that direction anyway.

“He’s not a rock star, Carrie. I didn’t even recognize him.”

He was a star in the literary world, though Nikki wouldn’t know that.

“Most people wouldn’t recognize John Grisham or Nicholas Sparks if they met them on the street, either. Authors’ names and books, yes, but their faces? Not so much.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Have you ever read one of his novels?”

Nikki looked shocked at the very idea. “All that violence? Not on your life. Valery had to tell me who he was. She thinks he’s hot.”

“Valery thinks anyone with testosterone is hot.” So what if Carrie had thought the same thing the other night in Julia’s kitchen. She had an excuse. The storm had rattled her nerves and he’d been kind, not only to her but to Brody. He’d given up his bed and his rest for the pitiful little boy. In Carrie’s book, a man who showed kindness was hot with a capital H.

Nikki, still standing at the end of the stack, gaped toward the entrance. “Oh, my goodness.”

“What?”

“Ferragamo!”

“Who?”

Nikki tossed her head and made a disgusted noise. “I swear, sometimes I wonder if we share any DNA at all. The man is wearing Ferragamo loafers.”

“What man?”

“Hayden Winters! The man we’re discussing.” Nikki let out a long sigh. “Ferragamo. Such fabulous taste. His hotness rating has officially sailed off the meter.”

“He’s more than a pair of shoes, Nikki. He’s a nice, ordinary guy who likes strong coffee and Oreo cookies and isn’t afraid of storms.”

Nikki eyed her sister with speculation. A perfectly groomed pair of black eyebrows rose in a higher arch.

Carrie could never get her eyebrows to look that good.

“I thought you were busy rescuing the drenched boy.”

“Before that. The storm scared me. Don’t roll your eyes. I can’t help it. I came downstairs to watch the weather on TV.”

“And your hottie writer pal was already there?”

“He was trying to find the coffeepot. I showed him. We made coffee.”

“You must have nearly fainted when you learned who he is. I mean, you being a bookworm and all. Valery’s right. He’s not hard to look at, even if he’s older by a few years.”

Late thirties. Maybe even forty. When a guy looked that good, age didn’t matter.

“It was storming, Nikki,” Carrie said in exasperation. “You know how I feel about storms. I would have hung out with anyone wearing skin. I didn’t care if the guy was a writer or a skid-row bum.”

She might be stretching the truth a little, but she had been deeply relieved at finding a living, breathing, unterrified human in the kitchen. The fact that he was Hayden Winters was icing on the cake.

“Are you ever going to stop being a ninny about a little thunder and lightning?”

“One can only hope.” But how could she, when she lived with memories of that one particular stormy day, of the helpless dread and shattering humiliation that came with every thunderclap? All her life, she’d known something terrible would eventually happen during a storm. She’d been right.

Her sister glanced at her cell phone. “Aren’t you going up there? See what he wants?”

“Tawny’s got the front desk. She can assist him.”

Nikki made a hissing noise and shook her head in dismay. “You are the most hopeless female in Honey Ridge.”

Carrie laughed. “Bye, Nikki. See you.”

Her sister rolled her eyes for the tenth time, tossed her sleek hair and departed, eggplant stilettos tip-tapping on the indoor-outdoor carpet.

As Nikki disappeared from sight, Tawny whipped around the end of the stacks. “Someone wants to see you at the desk.”

Carrie suffered a little swell of energy, quickly tamped down.

He might be Hayden Winters, the most celebrated name in killer thrillers, but to Carrie, he was the guy who liked bold coffee and books and kept the tornadoes away. A pleasant and passing acquaintance.

Keep telling yourself that, and maybe you’ll believe it.

“Be right there.”

7

Libraries raised me.

—Ray Bradbury

Hayden scanned the library, taking in the small computer bay, the cozy sections of brown vinyl couches and chairs, the study tables, and the rows and rows of books tidily divided into sections. Along the east wall, a rack of current magazines overlooked round tables littered with various newspapers.

With each breath, he drew in the redemptive smell of books. Places like this had saved his life.

At the circulation desk Hayden asked for Carrie. A tiny blonde librarian, after giving him a puzzled stare as if she couldn’t quite place him but knew she should, took off toward the rows of books. Apparently, Carrie hadn’t mentioned his presence at Peach Orchard Inn, and he couldn’t decide if he was grateful or wounded.

He liked his midnight barista. Had been intrigued by her. Had found an excuse to see her again.

While he waited, Hayden perused the new releases shelf, flipping through Mary Higgins Clark’s latest as he kept half an eye out for Carrie.

When she came into view, a quick kick deep in his gut caught him off guard. His glance drifted to her ankle, noting the bracelet she’d worn a few nights ago was there again above simple black flats. Even in his sleeplessness, he hadn’t imagined Carrie Riley’s fresh appeal. Dressed in black skinny slacks and a white button-down, she’d tucked her short dark hair behind pearl-studded ears.

She was like the library, neat and orderly.

“You looking for a cup of coffee?” Her mouth curved.

“Might be. You have a few minutes?”

“Not for coffee. Sorry.”

So was he.

“Another time, then.” He slid a hand into the pocket of his chinos. “I wondered about Brody. Did you get him home all right?”

A crease appeared between Carrie’s eyes. She motioned toward a round table nearby, and they sat down across from each other.

Hayden had an uncomfortable feeling about the kid, and he was seldom wrong in his character analyses. Whether fictional or real, he discerned people. Right now, he discerned trouble for Brody Thomson and concern in Carrie Riley.

Posture erect, the tidy librarian clasped her hands together on top of the table. Her fingernails were unpolished, unlike the pearl-pink toes from Friday night. She wore no jewelry on her slim fingers, either. Another point of interest he filed away.

“Brody acted very uncomfortable about me driving him home,” she said in her soft-as-rainwater voice. “He wanted me to drop him off in town. He said he’d rather walk.”

“You let him?”

“No. I insisted on driving him all the way to his house.” She shrugged, dark eyes widening. “I had a funny feeling.”

“As did I. Any sign of his father?”

“He came to the door. Brody was anxious for me to leave.”

An oily feeling curled in his belly. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“This may seem silly—” she glanced up at him and then back down, absently picking at the curled corner of the Knoxville News Sentinel “—but as I drove away, I tried to keep watch in my mirrors without being too obvious.”

“Not silly at all. See anything?”

“When I turned the corner, I thought I saw his father slap the side of his head.” She exhaled a little breath of frustration. “I’m not sure, though, and it might have been a friendly thing like dads do sometimes.”

“You mean like a welcome home, a love pat?”

“Exactly. My dad used to put my brother, Trey, in a headlock and they’d wrestle around. Guy stuff. That’s probably what I saw.” She nibbled her bottom lip.

“But you don’t think so?”

“Something’s not right, or Brody would have let us call his father that night. His dad was not out of town.”

“The kid lied.” He wasn’t surprised. No drowned rat of a boy refused to go home to dry clothes and a warm bed without good reason.

“I think so. I asked him directly and he sidestepped the question with a vague reply that was all but an admission.”

Hayden inhaled deeply and sat back in the chair.

Home was hell for some kids. A few were lucky enough to escape. He’d lied about a lot of things, too, usually to his mother but often to others. Lies he passed off as excuses. His mama was out of town. She was sick. He’d forgotten to ask her.

He swallowed back the intruding thoughts. They were discussing Brody, not him.

“I talked to Trey,” Carrie said. “He couldn’t recall any problems from that address, not since he’s been on the force.”

“Did he know anything about the kid’s father?”

“Basically common knowledge stuff and what Brody told me. Clint Thomson is employed at the Big Wave boat factory. He hangs out at Brannon’s bar on Second Street. No record of arrest except for a DUI a few years ago.”

“An alcoholic?”

“Or maybe a man who has a few beers after work and got caught once.”

“What about Brody’s mother?”

“She left before Trey came back to Honey Ridge, but I asked my mother. Brody’s mom, Penny, was the quiet type who didn’t socialize much. She didn’t even attend church, which is a social no-no in Honey Ridge. Mama didn’t recall anything about their divorce.”

“No close friends or job or anything?”

“I didn’t ask, but apparently not, because Mama, who basically knows everyone and his dog in Honey Ridge, was barely acquainted. Apparently, the breakup was one of those private things that happen. She was unhappy in her marriage and left.”

“But she left her son, too.”

“Sad, isn’t it? Maybe she thought Brody, being a boy, would be better off with his father. I’ve known couples who did that. Mama took custody of the girl. Daddy took the boy.”

“But wouldn’t she care if the old man is knocking him around? I wonder if he hears from her. If she knows things are rocky?”

“I think your writer’s brain is kicking into gear.”

“Meaning?”

“We don’t know if Brody is being mistreated, Hayden. Maybe he and his dad had a disagreement that night. Maybe he got in trouble at school and didn’t want to face the music at home. Kids do that.”

Hayden rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess that’s possible.”

His fertile mind did overreact at times and suspect trouble where none existed. That was how he got his story ideas. Experience had taught him that beneath every smile was a heartache. Behind every cloud was a tornado. Not that he’d mention a tornado to Carrie.

“When Trey was about that age, he got in trouble with Dad for something. I don’t remember what he’d done, but he ran away and hid in Grandpa’s barn all day.” She spread her hands. “And I can promise you, the Riley kids were not abused.”

All of what she said was true, but Hayden’s instincts, honed for survival, rarely let him down. “If he doesn’t complain and no one sees anything illegal going on, his dad could get away with hurting him.”

“He goes to school. His teachers would notice.”

Hayden didn’t smirk. He didn’t even react. Once in a great while a teacher noticed, but mostly not. Hayden knew better than anyone. Teachers were only human, and if a kid kept his mouth shut and wasn’t a class disturbance, no one noticed; no one asked the uncomfortable questions.

That was the problem with home situations. A stranger, even an interested one, couldn’t see what was happening behind closed doors. “Perhaps you’re right and it’s nothing serious.”

For all her reasoning to the contrary, the small frown between Carrie’s eyebrows said she still worried.

“Does he come into the library much?”

“Almost every day after school.”

Hayden glanced at his watch. “Which can’t be too long from now.”

“What if he does? How is that helpful?”

A muscle jerked below his eye. He reached up and rubbed as if he had an itch. A tic. A twitch. A mental hiccup in a man with crazy in his genetic code. “If something is happening to him at home, he’s safe here.”

Knowing the kid had a refuge, even for little while, brought Hayden a measure of peace.

“Tawny and I set up a cookie tray in the foyer for after school.” Carrie gestured toward the front of the library. “I think that may be his dinner.”

“Another reason to be concerned.”

“Maybe. But maybe I’m wrong. All of the kids, especially the older boys, gobble the cookies like hungry wolves.”

“Gut feelings count.” Especially his gut. She wouldn’t understand, and he certainly couldn’t explain.

“I care about kids, Hayden. If his home situation is bad—” she bowed her shoulders “—well, I want to be alert to any signs. He’s a nice little boy. Puts the books and magazines neatly back where they belong or brings them to the reshelf cart. Doesn’t turn down the page corners.”

“Librarians get testy about those page corners.” His lips quivered.

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Defacing a perfectly wonderful book is a serious thing, especially when we have bookmarks at the desk. Free!”

Letting the grin slip through, he lifted both hands from the tabletop. “Won’t get an argument from me.”

Mr. Franks had taught him that people who respect themselves respect public property, too. This was after Hayden had carved his name on a bathroom stall. He’d never forgotten that lesson or how the event had begun the change that saved his life.

Carrie silently slid her chair back from the table and started to stand.

“If you need any help with your research, let me know.”

“Can you point me to archives of the town’s history?”

“Sure, but you can learn more, especially the colorful, gossipy stuff, from the good ol’ boys down at the Miniature Golf Café. You are guaranteed to get an earful any day of the week.”

“Would you be willing to come along and introduce me? I’ll buy your breakfast.”

Carrie tucked an invisible strand of hair behind her ear. “The good ol’ boys have no trouble talking, but I understand what you’re saying. Someone to break the ice, so to speak.”

“Exactly. Tomorrow morning at eight?”

“I can’t tomorrow. We have an early staff meeting.”

“You pick the day.”

“I don’t work until ten on Thursdays.”

“Thursday it is. I’ll swing by and pick you up at eight.”

“I can meet you at the cafe.”

“You’re safe with me.” He grinned. “I only kill people in my books.”

She tilted her head, mouth pursed, amused. “You think I’m afraid to be alone with a man who devises ways to commit murder?”

“Are you?”

“You saved me from the tornado. That’s nearing hero status in my book.”

He laughed, flirting, enjoying her. “I’ll need your address.”

“I’ll write it down before you leave. Anything else I can help you with?”

Reluctant to lose her company, though not needing anything in particular, Hayden said the first thing that popped into his head.

“Tell me about the dark side of Honey Ridge. Every place has dirty little secrets. Unexplained deaths. Suicide pacts. Murders.”

“In my library?” She drew up straight, pretending insult though her brown eyes sparkled with humor.

“Perfect place to find an unsuspecting victim,” he said. “Her attention is riveted on a book. The villain sneaks up behind her and—” In pure melodrama, he slid a finger across his throat. “Murder in the Stacks.”

She grimaced. “How about Death by Dewey Decimal?”

“Hey, that’s not bad.” His mind started racing with the possibilities. “A serial killer. I’m good at those.”

“Don’t you dare! There are plenty of places in Honey Ridge to commit homicide.” She gave an overly dramatic shudder. “Please no murder in my library.”

A passing patron shot a strange glance in their direction. Carrie backpedaled. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Mayes. We’re talking about books.”

Mrs. Mayes waved both hands. “No need to explain. Nothing like a good suspense.”

Carrie shot a wry glance at Hayden. “We have the latest Hayden Winters novel, The Last Blackbird, two stacks over.”

“Oh, I haven’t read that one yet. Thank you, Carrie.”

The woman disappeared behind a wall of books, and Carrie followed her with her gaze.

“He’s here,” she said quietly.

Hayden swiveled his body in that direction. The Huck Finn look-alike stood in the entry, wolfing down cookies, a camo backpack over his shoulders.

Brody had lost the battle with the cowlick. The sprout of hair waved like a blond feather.

Hayden watched the boy with his usual curiosity, memorizing the little details. After a few cookies, four of which went into his backpack, Brody came into the library and looked around. When his gaze met Hayden’s, his expression flickered.

Hayden lifted a hand and motioned at him. To Carrie, he said, “A conversation won’t hurt anything. Maybe I can learn something to allay our concerns.”

“Sounds good. Want me to go or stay?”

“Suit yourself.”

“I’ll check the desk and be back in a few minutes.” With her easy, quiet manner, she strode toward Brody. As she passed, she smoothed his hair, said something to him and pointed toward Hayden.

Brody blinked a couple of times and glanced behind him before hitching the backpack higher and approaching Hayden’s table.

“Miss Carrie said you wanted to talk to me?”

“I’m Hayden. Remember from the other night?”

“Sure.” Pale, cautious eyes questioned why Hayden wanted to speak to him. “At Peach Orchard Inn.”

“That’s right. During the big storm.”

“Yeah. It was a good one.”

A kindred spirit, perhaps, in more ways than one? “You like thunderstorms?”

Brody hiked a shoulder. The dirty camo backpack rustled against a faded black Honey Ridge Raptors T-shirt. “They’re okay. Do you?”

“Love them. They’re wildly exciting.”

“Especially when you’re asleep in the woods.” A tiny smile crooked the corners of Brody’s mouth, drawing attention to his cleft chin. Pale eyes twinkled above a splatter of tan freckles. “Camping, I mean.”

“I’ve done that a few times, but I don’t think I’ve ever been caught in a storm that powerful. Did you get home okay?”

Brody’s chipper countenance changed. His gaze dropped to the table. “Fine. Miss Carrie dropped me off. Thanks for letting me stay in your room.” He glanced up again. “Did you write your book?”

“Not yet.” The strangely realistic dream pressed in, messing with his head. “I’m still thinking about it. Want to sit down?”

“I gotta do my homework.” Brody made a face. “English is hard.”

“I feel your pain.” Hayden kicked the chair back. “Go ahead. Sit. I might know a thing or two.”

Brody slouched out of his backpack and took the offered chair. “Did you hate English?”

Loved it, which infuriated his mother. He, she claimed, was sneering at her with his fancy vocabulary and fat books. All he’d wanted to do was learn...and to escape. Books offered both.

“Math,” he said.

“Math is not so bad. It’s just numbers.”

“Do you like to read?”

“Reading’s okay, I guess. Not the stuff they want us to read in school, but Miss Carrie helps me find cool books.” He reached into his backpack and dragged out an English literature text. A golden cheetah sleeked across the cover with verbs falling from his tongue.

Hayden placed a hand on top of the book. “Could we talk a minute before we start on homework?”

Uncertainty flitted across Brody’s face. He fidgeted. “What about?”

I want to know if your old man is knocking you around. I want to know if your mother calls or visits.

Instead, Hayden kept the conversation neutral. “You know your way around Honey Ridge pretty well—don’t you?”

“Lived here all my life.” Brody sounded as if he was ancient instead of eleven.

“I’m new to Honey Ridge, so maybe you could tell me about your town.”

Brody looked bewildered. “Like what?”

Hayden had the fleeting notion that he was about to jump off into uncharted territory. He didn’t get involved, certainly not with kids that reminded him too much of himself. He donated to causes, to literacy, to poverty programs, but he never got involved. Not personally and never more than necessary. He observed, he pried into other people’s business to get what he needed for his books and felt no guilt for refusing to allow them to pry in return. Then he quietly disappeared to write his stories.

Involvement was temporary and surface only. Involvement danced too close to the fire of revelation.

He studied the boy and had a painful flashback of being ten years old and feeling completely alone in the world.

Dora Lee had gone somewhere with her latest boyfriend, which was always a relief to Hayden. Boyfriends tended to dislike Dora Lee’s bookish brat.

The trailer had no heat, no food, and he’d slept huddled inside a sour-smelling quilt between the mattress and box springs for warmth. His gnawing belly kept him awake.

He’d never told a living soul of those cold, hungry days alone. It had been Christmas.

He suppressed the urge to ask the hard questions, knowing Brody would lie the same as Hayden would have. Protect the guilty because they were all you had.

One person, one calm oasis in a world of chaos, could change everything.

Brody needed an oasis.

But Hayden was no one’s savior. He didn’t have the hero gene. His time in Honey Ridge was limited. Brody’s situation, if there was one, was like a knife pressed too close to the bone.

Do the right thing, Hayden.

What if Mr. Franks had been a coward? Where would Hayden be today?

With an inward sigh and confident he’d live to regret the decision, he said, “I have a proposition for you.”

“What’s a proposition?”

“A deal. I need a guide to show me around town sometimes. Got any ideas for me?” Not that he actually needed a guide any more than he needed to get involved with a boy from a troubled home. Potentially troubled, as Carrie had reminded him.

Hayden felt compelled to find out one way or the other. He didn’t need a shrink to know the reasons.

The boy tilted his head and squinched his face. Nose freckles consolidated into a patch of tan across his cheekbones. “The Sweat twins know everything, but they’re really old. They might not have the energy.”

Carrie reappeared. She didn’t say a word, but Hayden felt the quiet freshness of her presence. Brody looked up. “Hi, Miss Carrie.”

She smoothed a hand down the back of the boy’s head. Hayden felt her touch all the way to his toes. Pathetic that he should still long for what he’d never had. He, a man with everything he ever wanted. Except that.

Steeling himself against the bizarre thoughts, he turned his attention back to the boy. “I was thinking about you.”

There. He’d done it. Jumped into the deep, aware that he was projecting his own sorry past and angry parent onto Brody.

Being wrong was acceptable. Being right and doing nothing wasn’t.

Brody lit up. Sitting up straighter, he tapped a hand against his chest, expression equal parts incredulous and excited. “Me?”

“Why not? You can do the job, can’t you?”

“Sure. I guess. I’m not doing anything anyway. And I know everybody in town. Mostly.”

“Great. We have a deal, then. After school on the days you’re not too busy with homework and while your dad is working, I’ll pick you up at your place and you can show me around.”

Brody’s mood darkened. “My dad might not like it.”

“I’ll talk to him first and explain that you’d be doing me a favor and getting paid at the same time. How about that?”

Brody shook his head. “I come to the library every day after school anyway. We can meet up here. My dad won’t have to know.”

That worked for Hayden. Sometimes keeping your mouth shut was the safest way.

Carrie’s soft voice intruded. “Not a good idea, Brody. Your dad would worry if he doesn’t know what you’re doing or who you’re with.”

“Nah, he don’t care about that. He just gets mad if I bother him about stupid stuff that don’t matter to him.” Then, as if he’d said too much, Brody slunk down in his chair and went silent, arms crossed tightly over the raptor logo.

Hayden huffed a frustrated breath. This was between him and Brody. Carrie should stay out of it.

He shot her a warning look and then said to Brody, “Is your dad working tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing for dinner?”

“I don’t know.” The words were mumbled.

“Can you recommend a good burger place?”

Brody’s head came up. “Plenty of them around here.”

“I’m starved. Let’s grab a burger and talk this over. We’ll figure out something.”

The boy looked to Carrie. Her lips had thinned as if she was annoyed with Hayden for pushing. But pushing was how he’d gotten to where he was. No risk, no reward.

Soften a kid up with food and they’d tell you things. He knew about that, too.

“I guess I can do my homework later.” Brody jammed the English book back into the bag.

“You should do your homework first, Brody.” Carrie glared at Hayden with those soft eyes now glittering with annoyance.

Hayden held up both hands in surrender. “I guess you’re stuck, Brody. We don’t want to make Miss Carrie mad. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to need this library over the next couple of months.”

“Yeah. Me, too. Miss Carrie’s usually real nice.”

Teeth bared, Carrie flared her fingers like claws. “They don’t call me the dragon lady for nothing.”

Hayden offered his most charming smile, wanting back on her good side. “The dragon lady wins. Homework first, Brody, my man. We’ll hang around until closing time and feed Miss Carrie a burger, too. Maybe some ice cream. Sweeten her up.”

“The library doesn’t close until five,” she said.

“Which gives my pal and me time to wrestle out the English assignment. Then we can drive around Honey Ridge, and you can show me the sights.”

Carrie shook her head. The light caught the pearly luminescence of her earrings. “We already have breakfast on Thursday.”

“You only eat once a week?”

She huffed, amused. “I have books to drop off after closing. Shut-ins that live up on the ridge.”

“Mind if I tag along?”

She blinked, puzzled. “Why would you want to?”

Because you intrigue me. All buttoned up, neat and tidy, and fresh as a flower. When his curiosity was roused, he never backed off until it was satisfied.

If he was truthful, he felt a connection with Carrie, whether because of Brody or their obvious shared love of books or something else. He wanted to know her better.

“Research,” he lied, smooth as warm butter. “I need to get the lay of the countryside anyway.”

“Oh, right.” Her eyes twinkled. “A place to commit murder.”

His smile was intentionally diabolical. “Exactly.”

“In that case, you’re staying across the road from the creepiest place in Honey Ridge. You should check that out first.”

“Yeah.” Brody piped up. “The old gristmill. People say it’s haunted.”

“Haunted, is it?”

The South was full of supposedly haunted places. Hayden had never given the stories credence. But then the dream flashed in his head, the dream about a Yankee miller and the Portland Grist Mill.

8

Victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

—William Faulkner

1867

If the watch was an omen, Thaddeus faced a dismal future.

Late in the evening on the first hot, sticky day of walking, he’d reached inside his vest to check the time only to come away empty. A search of his carpetbag proved every bit as futile. His silver pocket watch was gone.

Distraught to lose this final link to Amelia and the past he never wanted to leave behind, Thad considered turning back to retrace his journey.

Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades as he contemplated a long, hungry walk that would likely turn up nothing. He didn’t even know where to look. The last he’d seen the timepiece was on the train before disembarking. A train bound for Chattanooga and beyond.

For an hour, he sat under an oak by the side of the dusty trail, head in his hands, and mourned. More than the loss of his timepiece, Thad mourned what the watch represented. Amelia. Their love. Their life together.

Gone. Everything that mattered gone.

He’d given up the familiar and his future in Ohio to come to this hostile state. Losing the pocket watch felt as if he was giving up the last vestige of who he’d been, of who he was. It felt like letting go of Amelia and Grace all over again.

He considered making camp for the night, but night was still hours away, so he finally roused himself and, weary now in a way he hadn’t been, trudged onward.

Without the watch, he kept time by the morning and evening of each day as God had done in Genesis, though he quaked to compare himself to the God who gave and took away.

Each night he lay his head beneath the oaks and willows, listened to their whispers, thankful he traveled in summer, though mosquitoes and chiggers feasted on his flesh until he had no place left that wasn’t covered in itchy bumps. Last night, he’d stolen an ear of corn from a farm and gnawed the raw kernels after river fishing proved unsuccessful. He’d found blackberries growing along the river’s edge, but too many berries pained a man and he’d learned to be careful.

At the third daybreak, after a night on ground soppy with southern dew, he ate a handful of those same berries, then dipped in the river, the cold water soothing his insulted, itchy skin. Then he hiked up and over a long, wooded ridge, confident that a township wasn’t far away. Yesterday, the number of farms had increased, and he’d stopped to ask directions. The cautious-eyed occupants had mercifully obliged, though not one single Southern soul had offered the Northern wayfarer a meal or shelter.

Now with the sun blistering his neck and his belly snarling around the berries, he entered the edge of a town that according to William’s map must be Honey Ridge, Tennessee.

Outside a tidy cottage a pair of chickens pecked. Thaddeus fought the urge to wring a neck in the name of survival as he had done during the war even though thou shalt not steal was as ingrained in him as his belief that all men were created equal. The cottage owner, no doubt, needed the birds every bit as much, and they were not his to take. Not since the war ended. He and the Union might be the victors, but the vanquished foes would soon be his neighbors and his employers. He’d best not steal their chickens.

As he hurried on, a young widow, evidenced by her black-dyed dress and veil, tossed a dishpan of water out her front door, barely missing him. She looked up and smiled an apology, her face tired already this morning. He touched the brim of his hat, aching a little as he suspected she was a war widow and wondering if he or Will or someone he knew had taken the life of her man.

A wagon rumbled past, drawn by a single mule. Horses were in short supply, seized by the armies and never replaced. Like towns and cities everywhere across the war-torn regions, Honey Ridge had seen better days. Only a handful of businesses had survived the lean times, others were boarded up, and the charred remains of a large building scarred the town square.

A melancholy hung over the South as thick and oppressive as humidity.

Beneath the shady porch of the mercantile, an aproned man swept the boardwalk. Hoisting his bag, Thaddeus approached.

“Good morning, sir.”

The merchant stopped sweeping to stare at him, his squinted gaze taking in Thad’s unshaven face, rumpled clothes and carpetbag.

“Morning.”

“Is this Honey Ridge?”

“What’s left of her.” The man, eyes cautious beneath a wrinkled brow, his brown beard salted with gray, leaned his broom against the wall. “Looks like you’ve been traveling.”

“Yes, sir.” Thad rested a boot on the edge of the boardwalk. “Name’s Thaddeus Eriksson. I’ve come to work at the Portland Grist Mill.”

“Jess Merriman. This is my store.” He jerked a thumb toward the dark entryway behind him. “Gadsden mentioned a cousin millwright.”

“That would be me.”

“From up North?”

Thad tensed. “Yes, sir. Ohio.”

“Well, son, you’re either brave or a fool. The war’s not over to some, but you’ll find welcome at my store. The wife has kin in Pennsylvania.”

Tension seeped out. Thad’s shoulders relaxed. “I’m obliged.”

On the opposite side of the road, a woman exited a milliner’s shop, a basket in hand, and started across in a jaunty, purposeful stride, her head held high, hair as bright as a copper penny gleaming in the sunlight.

He watched her, mesmerized by her energy and hair. She was color to the town’s tired drab, a slender redbird on a bland canvas of dust and unpainted buildings. Even the dull gray of her dress couldn’t hide her vibrancy. Her skin was pale peaches and cream, and her bright hair, though tucked up on the sides, sprang loose in headstrong ringlets along her cheeks and neck.

She was, in short, a stunning beauty.

At that moment, a wagon, going much too rapidly, sped down the dirt thoroughfare. The woman, halfway across, looked up in alarm, too late to get out of the way.

The mules kicked up a dust devil, and the woman cried out. The wagon barreled on past, the driver yelling at the out-of-control mules. Thad dropped his carpetbag and rushed to the woman’s side. She was on the ground, struggling to sit upright.

Thaddeus went to his knees beside her. “Ma’am, are you injured?”

Her chest rose and fell in breathy gasps. Her peach cheeks had turned as red as summer roses. She shook her head. Her bonnet was askew, her ribbons untied.

“I don’t think so. I am, however,” she said with a jut of her chin, “quite furious.”

A smile tugged at Thad’s lips. There was fire beneath that red hair.

“Allow me to assist you.” Without waiting for her reply, he slid both hands around a very narrow waist and easily lifted her to her feet.

She landed with her hands gripping both his arms to steady herself, and he couldn’t help noticing how utterly feminine and fragile she seemed to his superior height. Closer now, her beauty struck him like a blow. He’d not noticed a woman other than Amelia since he was eighteen. Noticing this one disturbed him. He loosened his hold and stepped back. Her hands still rested on his arms, too close, close enough that her rose scent tickled his nose and sent a hot spiral of memory through his body.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, in a drawl as thick and sweet as honey. “You are too kind.”

“Glad to be of service. Looks like the wagon had a runaway.”

“Sterling Bridges couldn’t drive a wagon if his life depended on it, and the silly man doesn’t have the decency of a field rat. He should be flogged. But you, sir, are clearly a gentleman.” She pouted prettily, and Thad had the uncomfortable feeling that she was flirting.

“Your bonnet,” he said, with a pointed glance. The garment skewed toward her left ear, dislodging handfuls of copper hair. Thad battled an overwhelming and altogether undesirable urge to smooth the mesmerizing curls.

To his relief, she released her hold on his arms to straighten her bonnet.

“Oh, dear,” she murmured as she bent to dust her skirt. “Would you look at that?”

The basket she had carried now lay crumpled in the dirt, at least a half-dozen eggs broken and seeping yellow.

“A shame,” he said, though he was tempted to scoop up the raw yolks, dirt and all, and gulp them down. “Let’s see if we can salvage any.”

They crouched together and gingerly picked through the sticky mess. Thad removed his handkerchief. “Use this to wipe off the unbroken ones.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.” But she did, and another smile tugged at his mouth.

When at last they’d salvaged thirteen eggs, she said, “You’ve saved my morning, sir, and I don’t even know your name.”

“Thaddeus Eriksson, ma’am.” He handed her the damaged basket. “Just arrived in town. I’ve come to work with my cousin Will at the Portland Grist Mill. Perhaps you could direct me there.”

Her hand flew to her lips. She shrank back. “No!”

Puzzled at her violent reaction, he offered his best smile. “Yes, ma’am. My apologies for the way I must look. I’m a mite rusty around the edges from the long trip but eager to see my cousin again and be of service.”

As if the air had suddenly taken on a nasty smell, she tossed her nose up high. Thad resisted the urge to sniff his armpits.

“No one around here needs your services, Mr. Eriksson. Go back to Ohio.” Giving an insulted toss of her head, she stalked to a wagon parked in front of the milliner.

Thad stood in the middle of the main street with his mouth open and a furrowed brow. Had he mentioned Ohio to her? Had William changed his mind? Was Thad’s skill no longer needed at the mill? Who was she?

When the fiery woman slapped the reins and drove away, wagon rumbling like a distant storm, Thad heard laughter. Turning toward the sound, he saw the apron-clad merchant leaning on his broom, his salt-and-pepper mustache curled above a wide grin.

“Ran into a wildcat, didn’t you, son?”

Embarrassed, Thad dusted his cap against his britches. “What did I do?”

“’Sakes, man, you ought to know by now. It’s not what you did. It’s who you are. Nothing that woman hates more than a Yankee.”

Thad stifled a sigh. “Who is she?”

“That furious little firebrand is Miss Josephine Portland.”

“Portland?” Realization dawned and dread seeped into his tired, hungry body.

“Yes, sir.” Merriman chuckled again and pointed in the direction of the now distant wagon. “If you’re looking for the Portland Mill, just follow her trail of dust.”

9

The Portland Mill operation was a handsome endeavor. Nestled in a thick green wood with vines growing up the sides of the white-mortared red brick and with the sound of clean creek water bubbling over the wheel, the mill stirred a passion in Thaddeus that nearly erased the hostile meeting with one Miss Josephine Portland.

The woman engendered any number of feelings in him, most of which he didn’t know what to do with. Amusement, annoyance and, though it made him feel disloyal, attraction.

Seeing her again at the farmhouse could prove...interesting. But for now, his focus was his cousin and the gristmill.

With Will grinning at his side and his belly filled with cold corn bread, he roamed through the mill works, pausing to smooth his hands over the fifteen-hundred-pound runner stone, immobile now as the wheel waited for his expertise.

“Who’s been running this place?” He turned to the second cousin on his father’s side who’d brought him here.

William Gadsden was a fine specimen of man. At two years Thad’s senior, he maintained his regal military bearing and air of command. Lean and dark-haired with a wisdom born of sorrows, Will was a man to trust and respect, and the fact that they’d once climbed trees together and prowled on bare feet through Grandfather’s marble factory making a nuisance of themselves made him a man to like.

“Charlotte before I came. Now mostly myself.”

Thad heard the tenderness and admiration in William’s voice. “Charlotte? A woman ran the mill?”

“Wait till you meet her, Thad. She’s the strength that kept the farm and gristmill going when others would have faltered. She’s beautiful and kind and—”

Thad clapped him on the shoulder. “And you are a happy husband.”

“In a way I thought impossible during the campaign years and even for a time thereafter. Though God spared my life from the twin hells of combat and Confederate prison, Charlotte gave me a reason to live again.”

Forever and always, I will love you.

Thad turned away, pretending to study the pulley system used to move the grain to the upper floor. The iron needed oiling, parts needed cleaning, repair and replacing. There was much to do here. But it was not the mill that occupied Thad’s mind. Though he rejoiced in Will’s good fortune, he selfishly despaired in his lack thereof. What plan did the Almighty have for one such as him?

As if he knew he’d touched a tender spot, Will said, “I am truly grateful that you’ve come, cousin. The burden you carry does not go unnoticed.”

“As I am truly happy for you and Charlotte. You seem to have found your anchor.”

“I have.”

He, on the other hand, flailed in the winds of happenstance like a feather on a stormy sea. His foundation had been yanked from beneath him, and he had no solid rock on which to stand. He, like his cousin before him, sought a reason to live again.

“I never would have picked you for a farmer and a mill operator,” he said.

“That, my friend, is where you come in. The farm thrives. On the other hand, the mill limps along like a hobbled mule. I’m convinced we can do better with the right man at the wheel.”

“The family thought you’d return to the marble factory. Grandfather’s business would have been yours.”

A soft smile lit Will’s face. “Love is stronger than commerce.”

“Stronger than the anger and resentment a Northerner encounters here in the broken South?”

His cousin cocked his head and squinted. “Your journey was not a pleasant one, I take.”

“Nor my arrival. I met one of the Portland women in Honey Ridge this morning.”

Will’s eyebrows rose. “Did you now? Who would that be?”

“A beautiful redhead named Josephine.” He unwittingly recalled her rose scent, the fire in her eyes and the heat in her touch that had made him feel alive again, if only for those few seconds.

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