Home to You
Page 69
“Yes,” she said, a grin curving her lips.
“Oh, my gosh!” Eve cried. “That’s wonderful!”
“Do your father and brother know?” Riley asked.
“We told them last night,” Simon said. “As soon as we arrived in town.” Although they’d lived mostly in L.A. since Christmas, Simon had finished remodeling 811 Autumn Lane when they’d come for a couple of weeks in March and he’d brought out the movie props he’d promised to provide for Eve’s B and B. They loved staying at their own place when they visited Whiskey Creek, had been there several times already. But they’d begun a tradition of spending their first night back in town at Martin’s. Martin loved having them, and it made Simon feel good to please her old man.
“How long have you known?” Eve asked.
Gail squeezed Simon’s hand. “Since Tuesday. But it’s only now starting to feel real.”
“That’s so wonderful!” Callie said. “What about Big Hit? Will you continue to work?”
“Not for the first few months. After that, I might go back part-time, but I’m really only doing Simon’s PR these days. Josh and Serge are handling the rest of our clients.”
“When’s the baby due?” Kyle asked.
Gail opened her orange juice and took a sip. “February 21.”
Ted added sugar to his coffee. “So what do you want? Another boy or a girl?”
“A baby sister!” Ty shouted, but Gail said she just wanted a healthy child and Simon felt the same.
“Are you excited?” It took Simon a few seconds to realize that the usually reserved Cheyenne was talking only to him. The others had Gail’s attention, were asking her all kinds of questions, but Cheyenne sat next to him.
“I’m thrilled about it,” he said. He’d once sworn he’d never trust a woman enough to have another child, but that was before he’d met Gail. “There’s nothing like that first moment, when the nurse puts your baby in your arms.”
“You and Gail seem so happy together,” she said wistfully.
She was looking for a level of honesty none of the others had demanded of him so far, but they hadn’t lived the kind of hard life Cheyenne had. She wanted to believe in happily ever after, wanted to know it was possible, and he felt no hesitation in building her confidence.
Placing his arm around her shoulders, he gave her a reassuring squeeze while grinning at his beautiful wife. “Gail’s the best thing to ever happen to me,” he said, and meant it.
* * * * *
Look for the next irresistible romance in New York Times bestselling author Brenda Novak’s new SILVER SPRINGS series, NO ONE BUT YOU.
Available May 30, 2017, from MIRA Books.
Keep reading for an excerpt from NO ONE BUT YOU by Brenda Novak.
“A thought-provoking look at women...and the choices they make when they realize their lives aren’t exactly what they expected—or thought they were.”
—Kirkus Reviews on Four Friends
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Moonlight Road
Promise Canyon
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Harvest Moon
Bring Me Home for Christmas
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Sunrise Point
My Kind of Christmas
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Never Too Late
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“Brenda Novak doesn’t just write fabulous stories, she writes keepers.”
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When Lightning Strikes
When Snow Falls
When Summer Comes
Home to Whiskey Creek
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Come Home to Me
The Heart of Christmas
This Heart of Mine
A Winter Wedding
Discovering You
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No One but You
by Brenda Novak
1
The century-old farmhouse looked haunted...
Sadie Harris wasn’t particularly superstitious, but knowing two people had been murdered in an upstairs bedroom of this isolated white clapboard home didn’t make her eager to work here. She parked outside the gate and sat in her car, engine off, angling her head to see through the passenger window.
Dawson Reed, who’d placed the newspaper ad she’d responded to, was out of jail, all right. A pickup truck that didn’t appear to be in much better shape than the rattletrap Chevy El Camino her mother’s brother left her when he died three months ago sat in the drive. Not only that, the 2x4s that’d blocked the doors and windows of the house for the past twelve months had been pried away, some of the weeds had been trimmed in front and the mailbox had been straightened and reinforced. But Dawson hadn’t been home long enough to get around to everything that needed tending to. What with the vandalism that’d occurred in his absence and the deferred maintenance that went along with having a house sit empty for so long, he had his work cut out for him.
She wondered what he had to be thinking, now that he’d returned to Silver Springs. After a year spent fighting for his freedom, he’d narrowly escaped a verdict that would’ve landed him on death row. But he couldn’t be too excited to rejoin this small community. Regardless of what the jury said, he was guilty in the minds of all those who lived around here.
Sadie frowned as her eyes traced the graffiti that was still on the house. Someone had spray-painted the word murderer on the wood siding above the porch, in letters large enough to be read from the highway a quarter mile away. That Dawson hadn’t scrubbed it off first thing said something about him, didn’t it? But what? Was he too beleaguered after his long ordeal to care what folks thought? Too busy with items he felt should be handled first? Or was leaving it there his way of flipping off the many concerned citizens of Silver Springs?
He could be taunting his detractors because he’d wound up inheriting the property despite what they thought...
The alarm she’d set on her phone sounded, startling her so much she whacked her hand on the steering wheel. “Ow!” she complained as she grabbed her cell and turned off the noise. If she planned to be on time for this interview, she had only three minutes to walk the length of the dirt drive leading to the front door. And yet she wasn’t completely convinced she should keep the appointment, couldn’t even say what kind of job it would be. Although Dawson had advertised for a housekeeper/caregiver, he lived alone. Why couldn’t he take care of himself?
Not many healthy adults had a housekeeper in Silver Springs. That sort of freaked her out right there, before she even got to the fact that it was dangerous to meet a man out here, alone, who might’ve hacked his adoptive parents to death with a hatchet.
She shuddered at the bloody image that crept into her mind. The gruesome details of the Reed killings had been reported in the papers and on the evening news with great regularity. Any murder in these parts would be shocking. LA was only ninety minutes to the south. Such a crime wouldn’t be so unheard of there. But this was a peaceful artist and farming community with mission-style adobe buildings and beautiful murals. The worst thing that’d ever happened, before the Reed murders—at least in recent memory—was when the Mueller girl ran away and was kidnapped. Even that was twenty years ago, and she went to Hollywood, so she was kidnapped there.
Pressing the button that would bring up her display, Sadie checked the time on her phone—the clock in the car was broken, along with everything else that didn’t directly contribute to the drivability of the vehicle. Two minutes. Dared she go? Or should she take off while she still could?
Sly, her domineering, soon-to-be ex-husband, would warn her to keep her distance from Dawson. He’d already put in his two cents. They’d argued about it for over an hour last night. “You don’t want to work for that bastard. What kind of guy kills two old people in their sleep—the couple who took him in when no one else would? Fed him? Clothed him? Treated him as their biological child? They were so proud of him! And you wouldn’t believe what he did to those people. Talk about the ultimate betrayal.”
When Sadie had pointed out that no one knew for sure whether Dawson had killed his adoptive parents, that there hadn’t been enough evidence for a conviction, he’d alluded to having some insider knowledge to suggest Dawson was as guilty as the infamous O.J. had been. “Trust me. You don’t know everything,” he’d said.
He knew everything, though—always had. She was tired of that, tired of him. He’d been playing games with her since before the murders ever occurred, drawing out the divorce proceedings, hiding any extra income he earned working security at various functions so it wouldn’t be included in his child support calculation, threatening to fight her for custody of their five-year-old son if she didn’t accept the pittance he offered. Since she’d been the one to move out, he was living alone in a three-bedroom while she and Jayden were squeezed into a tiny one-bedroom guesthouse. But having the better living situation wasn’t enough for him. He was trying to keep her destitute, so she’d have to come back if she wanted to be able to feed and clothe their child—and eat herself.
She let her gaze range over the farm and the fields that stretched on either side. The place didn’t look inviting. Several windows had been broken, an outbuilding had been burned and a pile of cast-off furniture and other rubbish from God knew where had been dumped in the yard. Even more notable, the closest neighbor had to be a mile away...
He’s a nut job. That was what Sly had said just before he hung up. As a Silver Springs police officer, he spoke with more than a little arrogance and authority. But in recent years, he’d related so many stories that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up—stories about breaking up a high school drinking party but not reporting the kids so long as they gave up all their beer, or picking up a prostitute but not arresting her if she “baked the force some cookies.” Although Sadie had a feeling there was a lot more involved than cookies—she’d once heard Sly make a crude joke about it—he denied any wrongdoing when she questioned him. Said he was only kidding. But if he thought he could get away with using his badge to gain some advantage in a situation, even if it was just to scare people or make someone scramble out of the way, he’d do it. And, especially toward the end of their marriage, he’d started throwing his weight around with her, too. Although he’d never seriously hurt her, he’d come close.
As far as she was concerned, he was a “nut job” himself. So why would she let him make her decision for her? She couldn’t trust him. At least, as far as trust went, Dawson was still a question mark.
With only a minute left, she got out of the car. Dawson was offering full-time employment doing...something she hoped she was capable of, and he was promising to pay much more than she was making waiting tables at Lolita’s Country Kitchen. If she wanted to escape her ex-husband for good, this was her chance. It wasn’t as if she could get anything else, not with Sly using his influence to sabotage her in every way possible. No one dared get on his bad side—he’d make life too difficult—so whenever she applied for a job, she was told she didn’t qualify, or a better candidate had been selected. The only reason she had her job at Lolita’s was because she’d been working there since before she left him.
Dawson didn’t have any reason to harm her. That’s what she had to remember. If he killed Mr. and Mrs. Reed, he did it because he wanted their farm—not that that was any small thing.
As she drew closer to the house, she could see storm damage to the roof, peeling paint and bird droppings on the railing of the porch. These physical details added to her overall apprehension,
but she didn’t get truly chilled until a curtain moved in the window. The idea that Dawson was looking out at her, watching her approach, almost made her turn back. She stopped, but before she could do anything the front door opened and her prospective employer strode out.
“You must be Sadie Harris.”
Silver Springs had only about 5,000 residents. The town wasn’t large by any stretch of the imagination, and yet they’d never met. Not only was he two years older—she knew his age because of the many newspaper reports and the trial that’d revealed so much about his life—they’d gone to different high schools. She’d attended the public high school; he’d attended New Horizons, a boarding school exclusive to boys. Troubled boys.
So...how troubled was he? Troubled enough to murder the couple who’d taken him in? Troubled enough to lure a woman out to his farm with the false promise of employment?
She hoped not.
“Yes. I—” she cleared her throat as she shoved that last thought away “—I’m Sadie.”
“And I’m Dawson.”
As if he needed to identify himself. Close to six feet, he’d been out of jail long enough to have seen several days of sun. His sandy-colored hair, cut in a military style typical of county jail inmates, blended well with the golden color of his skin while contrasting sharply with his eyes, which were blue but not a deep blue—more icelike. She’d known he was handsome before she came. Everyone had made a big deal about how his “angel” face didn’t jive with his “devilish” actions. She’d seen so many pictures she would’ve recognized him even if he hadn’t been standing on his own porch. “I know.”
“You followed the trial.”
“To a degree, yes. It was the talk of the town, pretty hard to miss.”
He nodded as if her response was nothing less than what he’d expected. “Right. That’s unfortunate, of course. But...thanks for coming.”
“No problem.” She wiped her sweaty palms on the flowing black skirt that constituted half of her best outfit. Sly had thrown away most of her clothes—everything she hadn’t been able to carry in that first load—when he came home to find her moving out. She’d grabbed Jayden’s things first, so that didn’t leave her with a lot of wardrobe choices. No doubt she looked a little silly hobbling down the rutted lane in a black blouse, a flowing skirt and high heels, but she didn’t feel as if she could show up for an interview in jeans.