LITMIR.BIZ

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could Julia have gotten the location wrong? She tried to tap on her calendar app to confirm that she hadn’t screwed up twice this morning, but she accidentally ended the call. Ugh. She squeezed the phone in frustration, then took a deep breath and reminded herself that she was smarter than this. She tried to pull up Freckles’s number, but before she could find the right button, a text message from her aunt popped up saying they could just meet at the new house, so Julia put her MINI Cooper in gear.

      Turning onto her street, Julia gazed up at the ramshackle old Victorian that stood at the end of the cul-de-sac on Pinecone Court, a proud smile making her cheeks stretch and alleviating her lingering shame over that awkward encounter just a few moments ago. If one didn’t count the Federal-style mansion in Georgetown, the summer cottage on Chincoteague Island in Virginia or the countless commercial properties still held in the Fitzgerald Family Trust, Julia had never owned her own house.

      She parked her car in the driveway, biting her lip and staring out the window, trying to envision all the possibilities spread out before her. Unlike Julia, this house was anything but practical and understated. But all thirty-two hundred square feet of it was hers.

      There were no interior designers to suggest beige color palettes and overpriced modern art. No maids to rush in and make up her bed the moment she’d robotically woken up at five thirty every morning to practice the cello. No private tutors waiting in the informal library—the formal library in the Georgetown residence being reserved for when Mother invited her university colleagues over—to ensure Julia’s MCAT score was high enough. After all, they needed the med school admission counselors to overlook the fact that she wasn’t old enough to buy liquor, let alone cut open cadavers to research the long-term effects of liver disease. And there was no personal chef here to tell her that her parents had already instructed him on the week’s menu, so she would not be eating processed carbs for dinner, no matter how many of her classmates were cramming for finals over pizza and Red Bull energy drinks.

      A horn blasted behind her, and she turned to see her elderly Aunt Freckles behind the wheel of a slightly less elderly rusted-out 4x4 that Julia didn’t recognize. Freckles was actually her great-aunt on her father’s side, and while Julia only had sporadic contact with her relative until her parents’ joint memorial service several years ago, it didn’t take a neurosurgeon to figure out why the flashy waitress and former rodeo queen had been estranged from their conservative and academic family.

      “Morning, Sug,” Freckles hollered—there was really no other way to describe the woman’s cheerfully brash voice—as she patted the Bronco emblem near the driver’s-side door. “Ain’t she a beaut? My second husband, Earl Larry, had one just like it back in ’73. We hitched an Airstream to it and cruised all over Mexico.”

      She brushed her aunt’s weathered and heavily rouged cheek with a soft kiss as Freckles wrapped her in a bear hug that threatened to crush several ribs. Julia was still accustoming herself to the woman’s hearty displays of affection. “Whatever happened to Earl Larry?” she asked, always interested in hearing about her aunt’s series of past relationships.

      “His grandpappy died and left the family business to him. Earl Larry went corporate on me, and after that Forbes report came out with him on the cover, I told him I wasn’t made for that kind of life. I couldn’t stand being married to some stuffy old three-piece suit, no matter how many capital ventures he sank our RVing money into.”

      It was hard to imagine anyone named Earl Larry wearing a suit, let alone having a grandpappy who left him a company that would be featured in a well-respected financial magazine. Of course, it was just as difficult to imagine seventy-eight-year-old Eugenia Josephine Brighton Fitzgerald of the Virginia Fitzgeralds wearing orange cowboy boots, zebra-printed spandex pants and an off-the-shoulder turquoise T-shirt emblazoned with the words Cowgirl Up Café—We’ll Butter Your Biscuit.

      “Whose car is this?” Julia asked.

      “It’s Kane’s,” Freckles said. “I saw him pulled over on Snowflake Boulevard, and he said he’d eaten something that hadn’t agreed with him. I told him he just needed some fresh air, and since I’ve been itching to take this old Bronco of his for a spin, he agreed to let me drive it so he could walk the rest of the way. It’s only a couple of blocks, so he should be here any sec.”

      Julia had yet to meet Kane Chatterson, the contractor Aunt Freckles suggested she hire to remodel the house. But if this derelict hunk of junk on wheels was any indication of the man’s rehab skills, her once-stately Victorian abode was in serious trouble.

      Of course, if her overzealous impromptu CPR skills back at the restaurant were any indication, Julia’s medical career as a Navy surgeon might be in serious trouble, as well.

      “Would you like to see the inside of the house?” Julia asked.

      “You bet,” Freckles said in her mountain drawl.

      “I have only an hour before my shift at Shadowview, so I might ask you to give Mr. Chatterson the tour if he isn’t here soon. I can email him some of my notes and suggestions later.”

      What Julia didn’t say was that it would certainly be a load off her mind if she could just skip all this formal meet and greet business and fire off a quick note to the guy. Especially after the disastrous morning she’d already had. But Aunt Freckles’s quick shake of her dyed and teased peach-colored hairdo was enough to suggest Julia shouldn’t keep her fingers crossed.

      “Kane’s a good boy and dependable as sin. He’ll get here in time. Besides, I’m holding his baby ransom.” Freckles dangled the metal keys above her head. “And men have an unnatural attachment to their cars. If you ever took the time to go out on a date with a decent fella, you’d find that out for yourself.”

      Julia rolled her eyes, a practice that she never would’ve dared in the presence of her parents when they’d been alive. But, seriously. Her aunt referred to every male under the age of sixty as a boy and never missed an opportunity to suggest Julia’s social life was too date-free—at least by the older woman’s standards. Freckles liked men almost as much as she liked sequins and comfort food.

      “I’m in and out of surgery all day, and when I do get the occasional time free, I usually spend it swimming laps or sleeping at the officers’ quarters near the base hospital.”

      “You work too hard, Sug,” Freckles said, rubbing her niece’s shoulder. Julia, who normally tried to remain as reserved as possible, had difficulty not leaning in to the comforting motion. “And you gotta eat sometime. In those blue hospital scrubs and that cardigan, you look like you haven’t got a curve to your name. Isn’t there a nice doctor or admiral or someone you could go out to dinner with?”

      “I don’t need a man to take me to dinner.”

      “Hmph.” Had her aunt just snorted? “I don’t know if I mentioned this yet, but the town of Sugar Falls puts on a big to-do at the end of the year to raise money for the hospital. Since you’re one of the new surgeons and an official resident of Sugar Falls, the committee is going to expect you to be there as a guest of honor. With a plus-one, if you know what I’m saying?”

      Guest of honor? A plus-one? Julia’s stomach twisted and her forehead grew damp, despite the fact that the early November sun still hadn’t peeked out of the clouds. She was pretty sure her aunt was suggesting she’d need to find a date, which was much easier said than done. Besides, Julia never wanted to show her face in the town of Sugar Falls again.

      “Oh, look,” Freckles continued. “Here comes Kane now. Smile and try not to look so dang serious.”

      Julia’s insides felt tighter than a newly strung cello as she turned around to await the contractor who would be doing the remodeling work on her new home—if his estimate was reasonable. Yet before she could formulate her plan to refrain from shoveling out piles of her inheritance to someone in order to avoid the hassle of negotiating, she recognized the familiar gray flannel shirt, and her heart dropped.

      Oh no. Please, no. This can’t be happening to me.

      The man hadn’t seemed quite as tall when

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