Cynthia Thomason - Your House or Mine?

“Another hour or so. Then I have to get to work. I have a town to protect.”

“I know I feel better knowing you’ve left my house and are out in the community securing our safety.”

Wade chuckled and turned back to fixing the window.

Meg smiled as she went into the house. The words she’d just spoken were actually the exact opposite of the way she was beginning to feel about Wade. She’d missed seeing his patrol car in the drive yesterday. And she’d been relieved to find the car by the barn today. As much as she might try to fight it, she was starting to like the man, a dangerous and unwise reaction to a person who was trying to sabotage her dreams for the future. But, darn it, he was just easy to like.

“Keep your mind on your goal, Meggie,” she said to herself. “Find the deed and protect your rightful ownership of this house. Remember, Wade Murdock has a good job and a secure future. He'll survive the disappointment.”

Dear Reader,

This book is about special places. We all have at least one. It could be a place we’ve visited all our lives or one we’ve yet to discover, but it’s out there waiting for us to stumble upon its magic. My special place is a rambling old farmhouse in western Kentucky where my aunt and uncle lived and where I spent some of the happiest moments of my life.

It’s gone now, this house, passed to other hands, to hearts that I hope will hold it as closely as I still do. In my mind I will always remember the plank wood floors, the old wooden rockers, the upright piano and every Christmas decoration that turned this home into a wonderland each December.

In these pages you will read about such a house and two very different, wounded people who both long to cherish it forever. But only one of them can have it. I hope you enjoy this journey of a man and woman who find their heart's desire, and perhaps a miracle or two, within the walls of a very special place.

I love to hear from readers. Please visit my Web site, www.cynthiathomason.com, or e-mail me at cynthoma@aol.com. My address is P.O. Box 550068, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33355.

Sincerely,

Cynthia Thomason

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to my best “Buddy,”

my husband and cherished traveling companion

for the past twenty-six years. Thanks, Walter, for paying

my admission to all those tours of old houses

and never once complaining.

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 SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

MEG HAMILTON REACHED for the telephone with one hand and grabbed a pen and paper with the other. She flinched at the recurring pain in her neck as she once again held the receiver to her ear with her shoulder and said, “Colonial Auction House. Meg speaking.”

She tried to be patient with the caller. “Mrs. Winkler, as I told you yesterday, you don’t have to call every afternoon to confirm. You have an appointment for tomorrow. Our buyer will be at your home just as I explained to you a week ago when you first contacted us.”

She nodded her head several times in tempo with the nervous woman’s plaintive voice. “Yes, I promise. My brother Jerry will be coming with a truck and a helper. They’ll pick up anything you want to consign to the auction.” She blew out a long breath as the caller once again repeated what Meg had just said. “Yes, that’s right. Until tomorrow then. Goodbye, Mrs. Winkler.”

Meg leaned forward to settle the phone into its cradle. Then she put her elbows on the desk and massaged her temples. It was four o’clock, the end of an especially grueling day. Time to pick up her son at the neighbor’s house and go home, if only Jerry would get back from his last call of the day. She was imagining a tall glass of iced tea and her favorite chair when she heard the repetitious beep of the auction house truck as it backed up to the loading door. “Thank goodness.”

Moments later Jerry poked his smiling face inside the entrance of their building. “Hi, sis, has it been busy around here?”

Meg could only stare at him. It really was a rhetorical question because he darned well knew the answer. She often thought Jerry got the best of the deal in their business partnership, just as he’d gotten off easy growing up as her kid brother. He drove around in the truck all day making house calls and picking up merchandise for their weekly auctions. She was stuck in the building for eight hours answering the phone, handling drop-in customers, and inputting auction debits and credits on a computer spreadsheet, not to mention acting as the auctioneer.

She didn’t even try to hide her fatigue and frustration when she said, “If I have to answer that phone one more time…”

Of course it rang.

“Get that, will you, Meggie?” Jerry said. “I want to bring something from the truck to show you.”

She groaned once, picked up the phone, and immediately switched to her professional voice. She politely explained to the caller that a ten-year-old sofa which had coexisted with eight cats probably would not sell at Colonial Auction. She’d just ended the call when Jerry clanked and rattled back into the building.

Meg gaped at the rough-hewn piece of lumber in his right hand. It was about ten inches in diameter and nearly as long as he was tall. In his left hand he held an assortment of chains and hooks and other metal fittings she couldn’t identify.

Jerry dragged the contraption to the desk and stood grinning down at her. “Isn’t it great?”

“It might have been once,” she admitted. “But now, maybe a hundred years later, I haven’t the faintest idea what it is.”

“You’re wrong about the age. It’s more than a hundred years old.” Jerry stood the end of his worn log on the office carpet and gave the antique a look of reverence. “This probably went west with the pioneers a hundred and fifty years ago.”

Jerry imagined potential heirlooms in every cast-off piece of flotsam sticking out of a garbage can. And he was usually wrong. Meg liked old things too, pretty ones whose value could be verified in a collector’s catalogue.

She scrunched up her nose at the worm-eaten log. “You still haven’t told me its use,” she said. “If, indeed it has, or had one.”

“It’s a doubletree,” he announced, draping the chains over his shoulder and running his palm halfway down the length of the lumber. “See how it’s arched in two places…” He jerked his hand away and pulled a splinter out of his little finger with his teeth.

Meg automatically opened a drawer to get the antiseptic ointment and tin of bandages she always kept handy.

“That’s so the farmer or wagon driver could fit it over the necks of his team of oxen,” Jerry explained. “Then, of course the chains and hooks enabled him to attach the yoke to the tongue of the wagon.” He rattled the chains still dangling from his shoulder. “Amazing, isn’t it? This thing’s as good as new.”

Meg handed him a bandage and pointed to the nearest window. “Truly amazing, Jerry. Just this afternoon I was wondering how we were going to bring in our oxen from the south forty along Colonial Boulevard in downtown Orlando. Looks like that problem’s solved.”

He scowled at her. “Go ahead and make fun, but this is a real antique. And the guy I bought it from…”

The hackles stood up on Meg’s neck. “You actually paid money for this?”

“For something this rare? Of course. A hundred and twenty-five bucks—a bargain.”

Somehow Meg managed to keep the scream in her head from erupting into what her brother would call another hissy fit. She’d long ago accepted that she was the sensible, mature one, and Jerry, five years her junior, was the charming, unpredictable one—the one she’d helped out of too many jams to remember. Now he was the one who was adored by everybody who came to the auction while she was the one they mostly tolerated. But never was this personality difference more difficult to accept than when money was concerned.

She drummed her fingers on the desktop and spoke calmly. “Jerry, do you remember me telling you this morning that I didn’t know how we were going to pay next month’s rent? Much less the Yellow Pages ad, workman’s comp insurance and a host of other bills.”

“Sure I remember, but I think the doubletree will bring at least three hundred at the next auction.”

Suddenly Meg had a splitting headache. She could practically feel the veins tightening behind her eyes. And worse, the phone rang for the hundredth time. She tried but couldn’t find her professional voice. “Colonial Auction,” she half barked into the phone.

The voice that responded was competent and controlled. “Is this Margaret Hamilton?”

“Yes.”

“This is Nadine Harkwell, administrator of the Shady Grove Convalescent Center in Mount Esther, Florida.”

“Convalescent Center?” Meg repeated. “Is this about my aunt?”

“I’m afraid it is.”

Meg’s stomach plummeted. Her great-aunt Amelia was elderly, ninety-two on her last birthday. And while her mortality was something everyone in the family would have to face, Meg had never wanted to think about it. Aunt Amelia was a treasure. And she’d seemed in good health and great spirits when she’d traveled by bus to Orlando to spend Christmas with the family. That had only been six months ago.

“What’s wrong with my aunt?” she asked. “She’s not…?”

“No, Ms. Hamilton,” Nadine Harkwell said. “Amelia hasn’t passed away. But she fell in her home on Sunday. Broke her hip and bruised some ribs.”

She fell four days ago? “Why didn’t anyone call me before this?” Meg asked.

“Amelia didn’t want us to call until now. I should tell you, though, that she’s confused and disoriented. It’s no secret to those of us in town,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper, “Mrs. Ashford has been suffering from dementia that has worsened considerably in the last few months. I’m afraid that because of this fall, she’ll never be herself again.”

Meg talked to her aunt at least every other week. She hadn’t noticed the woman’s mental capacity slipping. But maybe she should have been listening more closely. “What can I do?” she asked. “Can I talk to her?”

“That wouldn’t be practical. Amelia probably wouldn’t even recognize your voice. But in one of her lucid moments today she asked for you. She wants you to come to Mount Esther. Something about settling her affairs. I can give you more details when you arrive assuming you are able to come.”

“Of course I’ll come. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

Something near panic was etched on Jerry’s features. Tomorrow? he mouthed, having heard only her part of the conversation. You can’t go tomorrow.

Meg silenced him with a warning look. Leaving the auction in Jerry’s hands was just one of the problems she would have to address before leaving for Mount Esther. A minor one really when compared to the welfare of her ten-year-old son who still had a week left in the school year before he’d be out for the summer. What was she going to do about Spencer? Still, she reconfirmed the plans with Nadine. “Tell Aunt Amelia I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon. And tell her I love her.”