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As if feeling his regard, she shot a nervous glance over her shoulder. He fell back a step or two, for once sorry for his size and appearance which kept people at bay. If he followed and tried to talk to her, at best, she’d think him a stalker.
Better he just watch and wait. It wasn’t as if she’d know the answer to any of his questions anyway.
* * *
TWO MINUTES AFTER Hope stepped into the sunny summer day, Jesse’s pretty black truck pulled up at the curb. Hope opened the door, tripped and stumbled into the blinding-bright poodle skirt–pink seat covers. “I appreciate this Jess, but I could have driven myself.”
Jesse, eyes hidden behind movie star shades, waved her red manicure. “Are you kidding? I have the afternoon off. Who better to spend it with? Besides, we’re on a mission.”
Hope buckled her seat belt, then stroked the pink fuzzy dice that hung from the mirror. “I’ve searched through the paper, Jess. The only places for rent are the same generic apartments I was in before.” Shivering, she aimed the A/C duct at the ceiling, though she wasn’t cold. “I can’t move into one of those.”
Jesse checked her mirror, then pulled away from the curb and headed for the exit. “Well, then it’s a good thing your cousin owns The Farmhouse Café, Widow’s Grove equivalent of the office watercooler.” She pulled onto King’s Highway and headed out of Santa Maria.
“You know of someplace else that’s for rent?” Hope squinted through the glare at the green hills she’d loved since the first time she’d seen them, six years ago.
“Not just someplace.” Jesse winked. “I know the place.”
“But how could you, when I don’t even know what I’m looking for?” All Hope knew was that everything she’d seen so far reminded her way too much of her old place.
“Trust me, sweetie. I know this place. It’s perfect. You’ll see.”
“I hope so. I feel bad, putting you and Carl out, taking up your guest room.”
Eyes on the road, Jesse felt for Hope’s hand. Finding it, she squeezed. “You’re my cousin, and I love you. Frankly, I wish you’d stay with us permanently.”
“Oh, heck, no. I overstayed my welcome last time.” When Jesse and Hope had ganged up on Hope’s mother, she’d finally agreed to Hope’s move to Widow’s Grove, providing Jesse keep an eye on her younger cousin. Apparently Jesse thought the vow extended posthumously, since Vivian Sanderson had given up her iron-fist grip on life two years ago.
“Shut up, we love having you. Besides, you dust.”
“Hello.” Hope rolled her eyes. “You met my mother, right?”
“Yes, hon, and you met mine. Did any of that domestic goddess crap rub off on me?”
“You have a point.” Jess may be a whiz mathematician who gave up Massachusetts Institute of Technology for her childhood sweetheart and his family’s business, but she wasn’t a housekeeper.
Hope looked past the beach houses to the light fracturing off the ocean’s chop. In the ten days since she’d been released from the hospital she’d slowly put her cousin’s house in order, down to organizing Jesse’s two walk-in closets and alphabetizing Carl’s considerable CD collection. Organizing her surroundings usually helped organize her thoughts. But not this time.
So far she’d resigned from her job, said goodbye to her baffled boss and looked for somewhere to live. Jesse had retrieved her clothes and personal items, since Hope still couldn’t face her apartment. She had no idea what career she wanted, moving forward. Like her apartment, going to work for another bank was out. Her palms sweated just thinking about it. What was she going to do for a living for the rest of her life?
The edge of town was easy to discern. It was where the line of Victorian houses began, standing like colorful titled ladies in a receiving line. Jesse pulled over, consulting a scrap of paper before peering out the window.
“Oh, Jess, this can’t be right. You know I can’t afford to rent a house.” Hope traced a scrolled fretwork with her finger on the window. “But what a dream. Look at the paint on that one. Who would have thought to use light gray, French blue and rose together?”
Jesse turned off the engine, snatched her purse from the floor and cracked her door. “Honey, if the local jungle drums are in tune, your dream is about to come true.”
They stepped into the hammered Central California sunshine. Jesse waited until Hope came around the car, then grabbed her hand, checked both ways, and crossed the street, low-heeled sandals clacking.
“I think I’m capable of walking across—oh.” Hope breathed.
The home they approached was in the ornately spindled Eastlake-style Victorian in lavender and white. The frothy gingerbread on the porch also adorned the tiny balcony on one second-story corner.
Jesse adjusted her huge sunglasses. “A little foo-foo for me, but whatever makes your hips wiggle.”
“This from the woman with Pepto-Bismol–inspired seat covers.”
Jesse just tsked and led the way up the steps to the covered porch. When she pressed the doorbell “God Save the Queen” chimed through the interior.
“That is too adorable for words,” Hope whispered.
The door opened. A tiny old lady in a flowered dress and orthopedic shoes stood on the other side of the screen, a messy bun of white hair on top of her head. “Yes?”
“I’m Jesse Jurgen. I called about your guest cottage?”
Guest cottage. Hope even loved the sound of the words.
“Oh, yes. Please, come in.” She unlatched the screen door and ushered them in. “I’m Opaline Settle.” She led them into a formal sitting room scented with old furniture–mustiness and old lady dusting powder. “Would you like some tea?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” Hope settled on the ornate but faded wingback sofa and looked around. “What a delightful home you have.” Threadbare antique rugs covered wooden floors. Dusty floor-to-ceiling damask drapes were drawn back.
Opaline perched on the edge of a wingback chair. “Why thank you. Mr. Settle bought it for me as a wedding gift over sixty years ago. He’s gone, but the old lady abides,” she said in a soft, wobbly soprano. “Both of us.”
“I’m Hope Sanderson. Jesse’s cousin. I’m the one looking for a place to rent.” She shot an optimistic smile across the ornate wooden tea table. “You have marvelous antiques, as well. I have a few Tiffany pieces myself.” She nodded at the stained glass lamp on the gateleg table in front of the window.
Opaline’s faded blue eyes sparked. “You have antiques?”
“Yes, quite a few that I inherited from my mother. She—eeep!” Hope jumped up when something bounced out from behind the sofa.
The old lady tittered. “Oh, that’s just Euphengenia. She’s named after Mrs. Doubtfire.” She bent and lifted a large buff-colored rabbit into her lap.
A flop-eared black-and-white rabbit hopped in from the hall, followed by a black one. Soon there were ten.
“They’re curious. We don’t get company often. I won’t bore you with introductions.”
Hope scooted back into the couch, wishing she could lift her feet onto the cushion. She wasn’t afraid of animals, exactly. She’d just never been around them much. Her mother wouldn’t even allow Hope a goldfish, declaring that animals in the house were filthy, disgusting and unmannered.
“They’re just bunnies, for cripes sakes. Deal,” Jesse whispered out of the corner of her mouth. “Is the cottage still for rent?”
Don’t they carry fleas? Hope watched the rabbits to be sure none ventured close. The plague?
“Oh, yes.” She watched Hope like a bird eyes a scarecrow. “I have to be careful to choose the correct tenant. I don’t want any wildness back there. You know—” she lowered her voice to a wavery whisper “—that sex, drugs, and rock and roll stuff.”
Jesse coughed into her hand to cover a laugh.
Hope smiled. “I don’t do any of those things, I assure you, Mrs. Settle. I live a very quiet life.” But the words pinched, coming out. That was her old life. Her new one would be different. Different how, she didn’t know, but different.
Opaline looked her over from her headband to her hands, clasped in her lap. “You appear to be a well-brought-up young lady.” She gathered the rabbit, bent and returned it to the floor, then stood. “Would you like to see the cottage?”
“Oh, yes, please.” Hope and Jesse stood.
They followed the little woman through the front hall, to the kitchen, then through the door that led to the back porch. Hope counted eight more rabbits on the way; she’d had to hug the wall to avoid two that chased each other toward her in the hall.
I’ve heard of crazy cat ladies before, but never a crazy bunny lady.
But when they stepped through the back door, all her concerns blew away. In the corner of the huge yard sat a cottage—a perfect, tiny gingerbread Victorian cottage. It looked like one of the painted ladies, only one-fifth the size, dressed in the same lavender and white trim as the main house.
“Ohhhh...” Something in Hope’s chest moved. It was her heart, cracking open. “Oh, my gosh, it’s precious!”
The tiny covered porch wrapped around a bay window, with room only for two painted white rocking chairs. Fretwork graced the roof’s peak, and window boxes spilled bright pansies and geraniums.
As they walked the flagstone path to the cottage. Jesse asked, “How many square feet is it?”
“Five hundred and fifty, I believe.” Opaline took the one step, crossed the porch, and unlocked the door. “It’s small, but I think you’ll find it has everything you need.”
Hope followed her inside. Light from the bay windows shone on the polished wood floor of what she’d call a “sitting area,” since it was too small to be a living room. To the right, a diminutive fireplace with a stone hearth sat, wood laid, awaiting only a match. She walked toward the kitchen at the back of the room.
My little dining table would be cute as a divider between the two areas.
Behind a door on her left, a cubby guest bath had a round window which saved the tiny space from feeling like a closet.
She stepped to the kitchen area. Matching yellow tieback café curtains hung in the windows over the kitchen sink in the corner, and over the Dutch door that led to the backyard.
Sighing, she took in the ambience. Snug and sweet. It was a happy place; she felt it in the empty spaces within her.
Opaline pointed to a tight spiral wrought-iron staircase that disappeared into the ceiling. “You’ll need to climb up to see the loft. The stairs are beyond me, I’m afraid.”
Hope led the way, Jesse on her heels. The stairs rang with their steps. At the top, Hope looked around. “Oh, wow.”
Jesse’s fingernail poked her butt. “If you’d move, I could see, too.”
Hope took the last stair and moved aside. This floor had the same footprint as the house below, so it was a large room, with small windows at either end. But it was the skylights on either side of the sloping ceiling straddling the painted brick chimney that caught her eye. “Jess, if I put the head of my bed against the chimney, I could see the stars through those skylights at night!”
“It’s like a little Hobbit house!” Jesse walked to the door at the far end of the room. “Come see this.”
Hope walked over and stuck her head into an old-fashioned bath, complete with a deep claw-foot tub and faux Tiffany lights over the washbasin sink.
She and Jesse looked at each other and squealed. Hope grabbed her cousin’s arms and waltzed her carefully across the bathroom floor, singing, “I feel lucky. I feel lucky. I feel—”
“It’s perfect, sweetie. But if you keep caterwauling, Mrs. Settle is going to think you’re into that rock and roll stuff.”
Hope giggled for the first time in... I’ve never giggled. “Jess, that song is country, not rock and roll.”
Jess grinned. “Let’s hope Opaline knows the difference. Now, get down there and offer a deposit before she rents this baby out from under you!”
This place would be way more than an out-of-work bank manager could afford, if not for her mother’s estate. Hope hadn’t touched the money, but not needing it was only part of the reason. Every time she’d thought about spending it, her mother’s voice haunted from the grave: you’re spending my hard-earned money on that? Surely I didn’t scrimp and do without so you could squander...
This time, Hope wasn’t listening. The money would give her time to get her feet back under her, and find a new career. A new life.
Thank you, Mother.
She took one last look at her new bedroom before she walked down the spiral stairs. Her old life may be gone, but her new life yawned like a black hole, but she now knew where it would take place.
In a world where nothing was familiar, inexplicably, this cottage somehow fit.
“Home,” she whispered to the room. The word felt right on her lips.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_3f8646b2-fa4d-55d3-8d2e-f67391c053a2)
BEAR UNLOCKED THE padlock on his rickety barn, still chewing his energy bar breakfast. He’d rather have had eggs, but money came from work, not from cooking. He left the door open to get a cross breeze, flipped on the big overhead lights and walked the narrow corridor formed by crates and various flotsam he’d moved aside to create a work area in the center. He bent over and gave in to an explosive sneeze.
Maybe someday there’d be time to clean the place, too. But he wasn’t being paid to do that, either, so it was going to have to wait.
Bear had saved his soldier pay, invested it and let it to grow while he was in prison. He liked the golden rolling hills he’d seen from behind the razor wire–crowned fence at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. So when he got out, he scouted around until he’d found this place; a remote tumbledown cabin and barn, outside Widow’s Grove. It didn’t look like anything. Hell, it wasn’t anything. Yet.
He flipped on his pole lights, strode into the open area in the center of the spotless concrete floor and sank to his knees beside his latest job, a 1989 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide Classic. On the tank, orange-tipped gold flames rose through the black paint—some of the best ghost flames he’d ever done. He’d laid the last clear coat two days ago, and returned the tank to the bike last night. Two coats of wax this morning, and it’d be ready for pickup this afternoon, right on schedule.
This was what brought in money. He’d opened The Gaudy Widow Custom Paint Shop six months ago. Turned out, Widow’s Grove sat in the heart of some of California’s best motorcycle roads, as well as being a stop on the custom car circuit. He had all the business he could handle.
He smoothed a finger over the edge of the tank. “Pretty damned sweet, if I do say so myself.” Pushing himself to his feet, he walked to the back of the barn to open the big door there, then put on a pot of coffee.
A half hour later, he was in the loft, trying to locate a custom-welded metal easel to hold his next job, when he heard a scuffle and a kid’s awestruck voice.
“Oh, wow.”
He strode to the ladder, and had to grab it to steady himself. A brown-skinned kid was on his knees in front of the Harley. He didn’t look much like the kid from Bear’s waking nightmare, but that didn’t stop his mind from running through the stop-action film anyway: a boy around the same age, in a traditional long shirt and long linen pants, a round kapol on his black hair. But it was the eyes, huge and black with panic that chased Bear through his dreams.
Bear used to like kids. Before.
The one downstairs reached his fingers to the tank.
“Don’t you touch that!” Bear’s voice was too loud and splintered with pain.
The kid jerked his hand back as if the ghost flames had burned him.
A young woman with black spiky hair stepped from the box corridor and looked up at Bear, mouth open.
He glared down at them. “Do. Not. Move.”
The warning wasn’t needed. The two stood, shocked to stillness.
He turned and started down the ladder, anger building with every step. Last week some kids had broken in and stolen a case of spray paint. Where were these kids coming from? Why couldn’t they just leave him be?
At the bottom of the ladder, he turned, and hands fisted, stalked to them. “Goddamn kids. You come to rip me off, too?”
Eyes huge, the kid just stared.
“Hey!” The woman, too young to be the kid’s mother, stepped between them. “Back off, dude. He’s not hurting anything.”
He had to give it to her, she had balls. She turned her back and took the kid’s hands. He shook her off, raised his chin and hung his thumbs in the belt loops of his baggy jeans, a kid’s version of chilly.
