Hometown Family

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“I’m with you on that one.”

“Took you long enough to agree with me on something,” he grumbled.

“We Scots are genetically stubborn.”

He chuckled. “Is that we like ‘us,’ or wee like ‘small’?”

“So clever. You should buy a microphone and do stand-up.”

“Nah. John’s the funny one.”

She’d always thought so, but she was discovering that Matt had a wry sense of humor all his own. A little more subtle, but it was there if you were paying attention. A pleasant surprise, it made Matt seem more down-to-earth. When she put her key in the front door, she got a not-so-pleasant surprise.

It didn’t work.

Caty pulled out the old brass key and checked the color of its little plastic frame. Green, for home. It was the right one, so she inserted it again and added some elbow grease. The tumblers squealed but finally rotated with a very rusty click.

“Needs some WD-40,” Matt said. “I’m sure there’s plenty of other stuff around here that could use it, too. Might want to start a list.”

Making a face at him, she pushed the door open. “I’ll remember.”

Dusty was the first word that came to mind when she stepped inside. Musty was a close second, along with dark. The last were easy enough to fix. Two of the cracked shades ripped when she tried to raise them, and the dirty windows muted the sunlight. As she took a good look around, she thought maybe keeping things dim wasn’t such a bad idea.

“Looks like the set for a haunted-house movie, doesn’t it?” she asked, her voice echoing around the living room. Dust-covered sheets were draped over everything and busy spiders had fashioned cobwebs into creepy swags hanging from the ceiling and the corners of every doorway.

Everything was still where Grandpa had left it, right down to the salt and pepper shakers on the rack above the stove. With no one around to wind it, the grandfather clock in the hallway had stopped ticking long ago. Gram’s prized Queen Anne sofa still reigned in front of the picture window, and her heirloom china filled the hutch along the far wall. It was as if time had stopped, trapping the little house in the past.

It should have depressed her, but it actually did the opposite. After so many years away, searching for a place that felt like home, she’d found it right here where it had always been.

“Well, it’s looked better,” Caty joked, turning to find Matt still standing in the doorway. “Come on in.”

He came in a few steps and stomped his foot, unleashing the scurrying of furry feet. “Those are only the ones out in the open. There’s no telling how many more of ’em there are.”

“Afraid of mice?” she asked sweetly.

That got him. He joined her inside and folded his arms with a let’s-get-on-with-this look.

“Okay.” Nobody in Harland knew what had happened, and she wasn’t thrilled about fessing up. Taking a deep breath, she let the words out in a rush.

“I got fired.”

He didn’t parrot the words back at her the way most people would have. Instead, he asked, “Why?”

“You heard me mention that scholarship fund your dad set up for me.” Matt nodded, and she continued. “I keep a list of all the people who contributed, and whenever they needed legal help, I logged it in at the firm as client development. I came to Harland on weekends or vacations, did everything on my own time.”

“No one at your office knew?”

She shook her head. “Pro bono work was allowed only for approved clients and charities. If my supervising partner knew about my work down here, he’d pitch a fit. So I didn’t tell him.”

“But he found out.”

“He summoned me to his throne room this past Sunday morning and confronted me with a stack of papers. He claims he handles personnel issues on Sundays to avoid disrupting business, but I think it’s a power play to ruin people’s weekends.”

She heard the bitterness in her tone and sent up a quick prayer for patience. “Anyway, he didn’t have any actual proof because I did all that work at home with my own equipment and supplies. But he tripped me up like one of those moronic witnesses on TV. I decided to come clean and offered to make amends, but he wouldn’t hear any of it.”

“Nice guy.”

“Tell me about it. He told me I’d gotten too close to my clients, and it clouded my judgment where the firm was concerned.”

“Meaning you were too nice to us poor folk, and the bigwigs lost money.”

“Basically.”

She didn’t mention that he’d threatened to turn her in for more official disciplinary action. Even though she wasn’t sure it was a real possibility, just the thought of it scared her to death. She’d worked too long and too hard to risk destroying her career. While her instincts had told her to fight, she’d backed down and slunk out of his office before things got worse.

“Anyway,” she continued, “he and his wife had brunch plans, so he gave me one hour to clear out my office and leave. Then he had the nerve to check through all my boxes, take my key and lock the front door behind me. By Tuesday, I decided the best thing was to come home, and I started packing. I was renting a furnished town house, so mostly it’s books and clothes.”

Matt looked well-and-truly amazed. “You did that all by yourself?”

“I’m perfectly capable of— What’s so funny?”

He was grinning at her and shaking his head, for what was probably the tenth time since they’d met yesterday. She couldn’t determine whether she was truly that baffling or if the gesture was actually aimed at himself. It didn’t take a genius to figure out she wasn’t the kind of woman he was used to hanging out with.

“Nothing.” After a quick look around, he said, “But you can’t stay here. It’s a mess.”