LITMIR.BIZ

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was exactly how Gram functioned. She should have been the one spending these last days with Gram, not some stranger. It was her own fault. She was the one who’d put off coming home.

      “If only I’d come home a few days earlier! I was almost ready to leave the Cities when Emma called. I was able to pull on clothes, throw already-packed suitcases into my car and be on the road in less than thirty minutes.”

      “So you’d been planning to come to Pleasant anyway?”

      It was what she’d always done whenever she needed to recharge. She’d already stored her personal belongings in a storage space and arranged for a Realtor to begin showing her house once she vacated it. There was nothing to stop her from leaving the city for as long as she wanted.

      “Yes.” She’d assumed there would be a time when she and Gram could curl up in massive wingback chairs, sip peppermint tea and discuss the twists and turns her life had taken, as they had done so many times over the years. Then Gram would pray for her. That was what Catherine found herself most hungry for right now. She closed her eyes and sighed.

      Will studied Catherine Stanhope intently. He hadn’t expected her to be so beautiful.

      Abigail had warned him that her granddaughter was easy on the eyes. He just hadn’t known how easy. Will immediately chastised himself for being so crass at a time like this, but he knew if Abigail were here she would have been tickled by his surprise. “See? I told you!” she would have chortled gleefully.

      But she was gone and her granddaughter felt frail and fragile against his side as they walked slowly to his pickup truck. Her long honey-gold hair tumbled over his arm in a glistening wave and her profile, when he glanced at her, seemed carved from porcelain, smooth and pale. Long black lashes fanned over her cheeks and tears hung from them like dew.

      He felt as if he’d been punched in the belly with a battering ram at the idea of losing Abigail. What flood of emotions must this woman be feeling?

      Although he knew better, Will had somehow assumed that Abigail would be around forever; that her indomitable spirit would allow her to survive no matter what. They’d had dinner together just two nights before her death. While Will made ribs on the grill, Abigail had whipped up a batch of her special slaw. They’d finished with coffee and huge slices of coconut cake and watched the sun go down together. And now she was gone. He couldn’t get his head around it, at least not yet.

      He’d been proud to say, “I work for Abigail Stanhope.” Present tense, he thought. That wasn’t right anymore. He’d worked for Abigail. Past tense.

      If only there were something he could do for Abigail’s granddaughter to ease her pain, Will thought helplessly. The only thing he knew to do was to show her that Abigail’s wishes for the house were being carried out even after her death. Perhaps that would be a comfort to her, but now was not the time.

      “This is your vehicle?” Catherine asked, forcing him to study the beat-up club-cab truck he used for construction jobs. It never occurred to him to back his sporty Camaro out of the garage anymore. Pleasant was a pickup truck kind of place and he liked it that way.

      “Sorry.” He saw her distressed expression and, feeling a flicker of annoyance, opened the door and began to brush nails, paint-chip samples and bits of molding off the front seat. “I didn’t realize I’d be having a guest on the way home.” The only other person he’d ever apologized to for the state of his truck was his sister-in-law, Sheila. “I am a groundskeeper and carpenter, you know.”

      “I’m sorry. That sounded snippy. I’ve been around too many people who think of cars as status symbols. Gram would have scolded me roundly for that.”

      She looked embarrassed. Will appreciated that. Snobbish women like his sister-in-law turned him off. He didn’t want Catherine to be one of those because he was drawn to her, even under these difficult circumstances.

      He helped her into the cab, pulled out the seat belt for her and then circled to the driver’s side of the truck. For some reason he felt as if his life had just become terribly complicated.

      Chapter Two

      Catherine didn’t speak as they drove through town but reclined against the seat back, vacantly watching buildings go by. Stanley’s Meat Market, Wilders’ drugstore with its original soda fountain and the Stop-In gas station. The doors were open on several of the rooms at the Flatley motel, being aired out for the next guests.

      They pulled up to the front gate of the Stanhope mansion, an impressive three-story structure with wide porches, ornate gingerbread trim and white lace curtains blowing in the windows. There were cars everywhere, parked down both sides of the street and in neighboring driveways. More cars, it seemed to Will, than there were in the entire town of Pleasant. Abigail had been a well-loved woman.

      The geraniums in the huge metal vases that flanked the stairway and the front door were a vibrant red. The variegated hostas Abigail loved so much marched, lush and beautiful, around the foundation of the house. Will had stripped and repainted every baluster with care and was pleased with the results. The porch railing looked brand-new. Abigail had loved it…. Will fought back the emotion swelling in his chest. At least she’d had the opportunity to enjoy it before she died.

      As he helped Catherine out of the car, she looked at him again, with those sad gray-green eyes. When she grabbed his forearm to steady herself, Will felt an unexpected frisson of energy make its way up his arm. Was he feeling electricity between them?

      You’re just plain stupid if that’s what you think. He was merely a convenient pillar to lean on. He could have been made of wood or plaster for all she cared. He felt closer to her than she to him only because Abigail had talked so much about her.

      “Thank you,” she said softly. She tipped her head to look at him and he saw gratitude in her eyes.

      Well, maybe she cared a little.

      “I’m very sorry about your grandmother. She was one of a kind.”

      Catherine smiled faintly. “She certainly was. I still can’t believe it’s true.” She looked at the massive home before her, its gleaming windows and glossy gray porch floor sparkling back at her. “Maybe once I’ve been inside I’ll realize she’s gone.”

      I wouldn’t count on it, he thought grimly as he followed her into the house. This place was as alive with memories of Abigail as a house could possibly be.

      Still carrying her shoes, Catherine stared up at the mansion that was her childhood home. This was where she belonged right now, she realized, as she was swept up in an overpowering sense of rightness, of home. This was the repository for her family’s history, this quaint step-back-in-time place. It was particularly true of her great-grandfather, Obadiah Elias Stanhope.

      Obadiah had come from Illinois in the late 1800s and opened a small bank on Main Street. A savvy man who wasn’t afraid of either risk or criticism, Obadiah had, during the Great Depression, amassed a number of failing banks and invested prudently. Thus the Stanhope banking fortune was born and the Stanhope name embedded in the very fabric of the town. He’d built a mansion for his beloved wife and son and, eventually, daughter-in-law, Abigail. Now she, Obadiah’s great-granddaughter, was the only remaining Stanhope. What might Obadiah have expected of her? He was a man of grand ideas and splendid schemes. A weighty blanket of duty and obligation settled around her shoulders like a thick wool cape, unwieldy, confining and fraught with responsibility—the very things she’d tried to leave behind in her law practice.

      She could see people milling around inside the house, holding coffee cups and plates of food. Mr. and Mrs. Flatley, owners of Pleasant’s only motel, were there, awkwardly balancing plates of food on their knees. Even the gentleman from Stop-In station was there, though Catherine knew he was relatively new to town. Others were on the wide expanse of porch, including Stanley Wilder and his wife, who ran the drugstore. In fact, everyone who’d ever lived in Pleasant seemed to be present. Aunt Ellen, her mother’s sister, was pouring coffee from a silver server and her uncle Max was handing around a tray

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