LITMIR.BIZ

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter One

      As she slowly drove down the single street in the tiny mountain community of Iron Springs, Dana Marsh felt like she was stepping back into the past. She hadn’t been here in fourteen years, yet nothing had changed. If it hadn’t been for the little boy sleeping in his car seat behind her, she would have felt that she was a teenager again, coming to spend the summer with her grandmother.

      In the town that had betrayed her. She’d sworn never to come here again.

      “Wake up, darling. We’re here.”

      She was glad Danny had slept almost the entire trip from New York. He still didn’t understand that his mother’s sudden death a month earlier from cancer meant he’d never see her again. He asked for Mattie all the time, especially at night. Dana hadn’t wanted to change his routine by uprooting him from his home so soon, but his uncle had insisted that she bring him to Virginia the minute he recovered from his fever.

      Dana pulled her Jaguar to a stop in front of a two-story, white, clapboard house.

      “Want juice,” Danny announced.

      Danny had his mother’s soft Southern accent rather than the sharp edge of Dana’s New York inflection. Even though Danny wouldn’t be two for another month, he could already talk as well as a four-year-old. That didn’t surprise Dana. He had a brilliant executive of a Fortune 500 company for his father, and an innovative artist for his mother.

      “Let’s wait until we get inside,” Dana said.

      He still wasn’t potty trained. She didn’t think her initial meeting with Gabe and his lawyer would be the best time to change a wet diaper. She expected Gabe would cringe in disgust. Why should he have any ability to understand a child’s feelings, even his nephew’s? He hadn’t understood hers when she was sixteen.

      She got out of the car and opened the back door.

      “I’ll get you out of this nasty old car seat. You’ll soon be able to run around to your heart’s content.” There had to be some advantages to living at the ends of the earth. There were plenty of safe places to play.

      She took Danny out of his car seat and carried him up the steps of the tall, stark-white house built in the shape of an L. It used to be mostly hidden by trees and vines, but the trees had been trimmed, the vines pulled down and the overgrown boxwoods pruned to a manageable size. Marshall Evans opened his door before she could ring the bell.

      “You’re late,” Marshall said.

      “Sorry, but I can’t gauge the exact length of a trip from New York,” she said as she stepped inside.

      Dana had forgotten that Marshall’s house was filled with Victorian furniture as valuable as it was ugly. She wondered if he would sell her a few pieces. She had a client who was heavily into Victorian. She told herself to forget antiques. She had come to fight for Danny’s future. She was also on vacation. Her doctor had ordered her to take a complete break from business.

      “Where’s Gabe?” she asked as her eyes adjusted to the dimly lit interior. Marshall had pulled the heavy, floral print curtains together to shut out the sunlight.

      “In the kitchen,” Marshall said, turning in that direction and leaving her to follow.

      Everything was backward here. In New York people entertained in the living room. In Iron Springs, only strangers sat in the parlor. Dana passed through a second parlor, a dining room and an old-fashioned butler’s pantry. Enough antiques to set up an entire showroom.

      Dana didn’t get a chance to look at the kitchen. Gabe Purvis rose from the table when she entered the room, banishing all thoughts of antiques from her mind.

      Shock sent the past thundering down on her like a rock slide. One summer, when she was eleven and Gabe seventeen, he had winked at her as he handed her a cone of butter pecan ice cream. She had fallen in love then and

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