LITMIR.BIZ

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together as if she weren’t satisfied with his negative response. Or the question he’d lobbed at her. “Something like that,” she said as if he should have known.

      In the next few minutes, the previously tidy parlor was strewn with ornaments, bows, lights and tinsel. Ruth reeled out the seemingly endless strings of lights as he attached them to the tree. The task threatened to overwhelm him with memories of the Newland family decorating a fresh-cut tree in this room so many years ago. Stringing the lights had been Mr. Newland’s job, and he and Chris had hung the ornaments while Mrs. Newland stood back and pointed out bare spots. The only thing that kept him from bolting from the room was the woman who stood at his elbow, patiently handing up lights. And every time their hands touched, he had to fight the urge to pull her to him and kiss her breathless.

      All the while, she kept firing questions at him. The only explanation he could imagine was that she thought he looked familiar and was trying to establish how they may have first met.

      He could have come right out and told her they’d never seen each other before this evening, but he liked the sound of her voice. Despite his earlier need for solitude, he found himself enjoying the company of the tiny woman with the giant curiosity.

      When he claimed no knowledge of the various names she threw at him, her attitude seemed to change from curiosity to misgiving. Maybe she was finally figuring out that, although he might look familiar, they’d never met before today.

      By the time they finished the tree, they’d settled into an uneasy silence. Tucker didn’t know what had derailed their conversation. He didn’t think he’d said anything out of the way. He’d tried asking her a few questions, like what part of Willow Glen she was from, but that seemed to make her even more edgy. So he turned his attention to the other guests and surprised himself by having a good time. For a brief while, the laughter and joking made him forget why he’d come to Willow Glen…and Willow Glen Plantation in particular. After the tree was finished and he’d helped put away the excess decorations, he excused himself and returned to his room.

      Ruth watched him go up the stairs.

      “The rear view is just as interesting as the front, eh?” Vivian teased.

      “Yeah, but he has no business being here.”

      “Are you still on that?” Vivian put a hand to her perfectly styled bottle-blond hair. “Why can’t you just leave the guy alone? He seems really nice. Very charming, if you ask me.”

      “So did Ted Bundy, but I wouldn’t want him crashing my family reunion.”

      “Who’s crashing our family reunion?” Brooke demanded. “Cousin Tucker?”

      “He’s not our cousin,” Ruth insisted.

      Brooke smiled broadly. “Cool. I call dibsies on him.”

      Ruth rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. For all we know, he could be an escaped convict.”

      “Or maybe he’s with the Internal Revenue Service, and he’s snooping around for unreported income,” Vivian suggested. She smoothed her soft red sweater over her slim hips. “I wouldn’t mind him looking over my form. In fact, he can audit me anytime.”

      Brooke giggled, but Ruth wasn’t amused. “You two may think it’s funny, but something about that guy bugs me.” He seemed to her like a man on a quest, but she wasn’t sure what he wanted from them. She glanced up the stairs, wondering what would motivate a perfect stranger to insinuate himself into their home for the holidays. Well, the others might be willing to swallow the notion that he was a family member, but Ruth knew otherwise. And she was determined to get to the bottom of it. “I’m going up there and see exactly what he’s doing.”

      Vivian laughed. “Probably changing his clothes, if you’re lucky.”

      Ignoring the laughter of her sister and young cousin, Ruth mounted the steps, taking care to avoid the creaky ones. If Tucker Maddock was truly up to no good, she doubted he’d be so careless as to let her catch him at it. Even so, the least she could do was confront him about his identity and his intentions. She hadn’t wanted to do so downstairs in front of the others, partly to keep from putting him on the spot in case he actually was related in a way she had overlooked, and partly because she knew her gullible family would rise to his defense even if he was an imposter as she suspected. After he’d charmed his way into her family members’ hearts, joking and laughing while decorating the tree, they were convinced he could do no wrong.

      As she climbed the last few steps to the third floor—the same level her room was on—she heard what sounded like something being scraped across the floor. Quietly, she made her way down the hall, glancing at the room numbers that remained from the house’s brief bed-and-breakfast days. Ruth tapped lightly at the door of number nine. When no answer came, she turned the knob and peeked inside.

      The room was empty.

      Closing the door, Ruth went to her own room and checked to see if anything had been disturbed, but it looked the same as she’d left it earlier today. A glance around the empty hallway revealed that the attic door stood ajar several inches.

      Ruth walked closer and saw that the attic light was on. Then she heard the sound again…a bump and a dragging scrape. Somebody was up there, and she had a good idea who it might be.

      Moving quietly up the rickety stairs, she was at once shocked and yet not quite surprised to find their dark-haired houseguest running his hands over the loose floorboards where Aunt Shirley’s trunk once sat. It was obvious he was searching for something.

      Ruth placed her hands on her hips, enraged by the stranger’s audacity.

      “What do you think you’re doing?”

      Chapter Two

      It was common knowledge in Willow Glen that Aunt Shirley had recently bought a new car with moldy money—cash that had apparently been buried somewhere on the property and retrieved when her dotty aunt was ready to make her purchase. Judging from the way Tucker had moved stuff around up here, it appeared as though he had heard about Aunt Shirley’s odd banking habits and decided to make a withdrawal for himself. Just as she had suspected, he was not only a fraud, but an opportunist as well.

      Tucker stood abruptly and cracked his head against the low attic ceiling. Rubbing the tender spot, he rumpled his hair, which made him look even more devilish.

      Humph! The others might be swayed by his charm and good looks, but Ruth had learned to develop an immunity to such virtues, especially after Aunt Shirley had been taken to the cleaners by the fly-by-night roofing repairman and the so-called investment counselor. Besides, she had seen it all and heard it all, from adorable fourth-grade boys and girls who were adept at manipulating their parents and other adults into giving them what they wanted.

      Ruth had a sixth sense about knowing when her students were up to mischief, but it didn’t take a psychic to see that something was definitely off-kilter here.

      “It’s not what you think,” he said, putting a hand up to the exposed beam he’d cracked his head against a moment before. He seemed to consider something for a moment, then asked, “Do you work here?”

      “Do I work here? What kind of question is that?” Sure, she was working—especially this year as she sought to relieve her aunt of the burden of being hostess to so many houseguests. But he had asked as if he thought she were being paid to do her labors of love. Ruth climbed the remaining steps into the attic, but she didn’t have to stoop as he did. “What I want to know is what you’re looking for.”

      “Well, it’s a long story, actually.” Tucker wondered if he should go into the drawn-out course of events that had brought him here. When she hollered downstairs for Aunt Shirley to call the sheriff, he decided it would be prudent to start explaining. He paused, wondering how to begin.

      “I’m waiting.” Her toe tapped the rough board beneath her feet. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and he tried not to notice

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