Runaway Heir

by Cardello, Ruth

  Nicolette took a moment to appreciate the display in the front of the furniture store as well. “They don’t have a website, either?”

  “Don’t believe they do,” Jackson said while scratching his beard. “I made one for the Bakkers a few years ago, but it never went anywhere.”

  Nicolette took a photo of a long wooden table. “It really is all about getting the word out. I know a lot of people who would love that table. If the Smitses want, I’ll make some phone calls. I’m confident that they’d have a waiting list of clients.”

  Bryant leaned in and said, “You can do this.”

  “I can.” When he looked at her like that, everything felt possible. Was this the magic he’d referred to at the diner? Two people caring about one thing . . .

  Was it really that simple?

  The next building was Lily’s Breakfast Nook. Shelby said, “This is where you’ll find the ice cream kids fly home for. Banana splits the size of your head, with every flavor you can imagine. Be careful, though—one taste and you’ll wonder what every other ice cream is missing.”

  “Can I steal that quote as well?” Nicolette asked in excitement.

  “Of course,” Shelby said, looking pleased.

  “You’re a walking advertisement for the town,” Bryant added.

  Jackson hugged his wife. “Easy on the compliments. Her head needs to fit through our front door.” He softened his words with a kiss to her temple.

  Shelby smiled up at Jackson. “I love this town. Can’t imagine living anywhere else. Love you, too, but that doesn’t mean I won’t clock you.”

  They shared a laugh.

  Nicolette and Bryant did as well. The Nelsons were as easy to like as their town.

  Before moving on, Nicolette scanned the restaurant’s signage. “It doesn’t say anything about ice cream.”

  “Doesn’t have to. Everyone knows they sell it.”

  “Everyone will,” Nicolette said, typing notes.

  “We’d ask you to our place for coffee after this, but my daughter moved home with her husband and kids. They’re only home until one of them finds a job—for now, our place is a bit of a zoo.”

  Jackson nodded. “Zoo is the right word. They brought their pets with them. Two dogs. Two guinea pigs. They had hamsters, but someone left the cage open, so I don’t know if they now count as pets or pests. I’m pretty sure they have a nest under the refrigerator.”

  Nicolette could imagine it perfectly. “That happened when I had hamsters as a kid. By the time we found them, they’d had babies. That was how we learned that Chuck and Norris weren’t both males, like the pet store had claimed.”

  Bryant leaned down. “Chuck and Norris?”

  Nicolette smiled up at him. “I wanted to grow up to be a badass.”

  “Why do I find that so easy to imagine?” Bryant joked.

  “Anyway, that’s how we got Vin and Diesel, but we had to keep them in separate cages, because my mother said we’d surpassed her quota of rodents.”

  “Smart woman,” Jackson grumbled.

  Shelby laughed. “He’s just grumpy because he’s the one who bought them for our grandkids.”

  Jackson shrugged. “Before I knew they’d be under our roof. And don’t think I haven’t heard about it every day since. Those little bastards mock me from under the fridge, but wait until I catch them. We’ll see who laughs last.”

  Shelby hugged her husband’s arm. “Miss Westerly and Mr. Taunton didn’t come all this way to hear about hamsters. Paisley said you might be able to bring business or tourism back to the area. How can we help?”

  Nicolette put aside her insecurities and charged forward. “There are towns just like MacAuley that are doing well in Iowa. What most of them have in common is that they are known for something special. Whether it’s their historical buildings or their wine, they have something that stands out. Once I discover what that is for MacAuley, I can help you build an online presence. There is a tourism stream that comes to Iowa each year—the question will be how to divert them here. What can they find in this town that isn’t anywhere else?”

  “I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for, but I have an idea,” Shelby said. “It’s on the other side of the park.”

  Jackson cocked his head to one side. “The cemetery?”

  “I’ve never heard of one like ours,” Shelby said.

  Nicolette and Bryant exchanged a look. “What’s different about your cemetery?” she asked.

  “You have to see it to appreciate it, but it’s not much farther.” Shelby pointed to a place just beyond the trees. “My father used to be the groundskeeper, so I know all the stories.”

  “People like history. Just look at all those DNA sites,” Bryant said. “And ghost tours are popular. It’s worth a look.”

  Shelby and Jackson led them to an area closed off by low wrought iron fencing. About an acre of land was filled with neat rows of headstones, sixty or so. The stones were faded, old but not weathered away like some of the historical sites on the East Coast. At first glance it wasn’t an impressive sight—nothing that would put a town on a map.

  “If this were a tour, it would have to start with the Clarks.” She stopped near a headstone in the far left corner of the cemetery. “A hundred years or so ago, this land belonged to the town and was part of the park we just walked through. Mr. Clark had a falling-out with the local church because of some harsh things the priest said about a young unwed mother. Mr. Clark thought it was horrible that a member of their community would be treated to such a public humiliation. He and his wife took in the woman until she found a job and could support herself. She wasn’t the only person the Clarks helped when the church turned their back on them. No one was too poor, too drunk, or too different for them to care about. ‘People is people.’ That’s what Mr. Clark used to say. No one knows exactly what happened between him and the priest, but they had an awful argument. When Mr. Clark died, the church said he couldn’t be buried at their cemetery. Mrs. Clark wanted to bury him on their land, but the town wouldn’t allow that, either. Angry with the church and the town, she had this stone made and hired some local boys to dig a hole and put up the headstone.” She laid her hand on the top of the stone as if it were an old friend and read, “‘Here lies a good and humble man / Who always went to Mass / Don’t like him here / You can kiss his ass.’”

  “Is that really what it says?” Nicolette walked to where she could read the epitaph for herself. “Oh my God, that’s awesome. I can’t believe the wife wasn’t forced to move him.”

  Shelby’s eyes widened, and she became more animated. “They were going to. The town administrator said he would not only have Mr. Clark moved, but he would have whoever was responsible for the illegal burying arrested. He jailed the widow when she refused to tell him who had helped her. He had the police question everyone in town. It got really ugly. Something like that pulls townspeople together. No one would dig Mr. Clark up. The town administrator hired an outside contractor, but before the job was completed, the administrator died suddenly. He didn’t have any family, which might have been for the best, because the night before he was scheduled to be buried in the church cemetery, someone stole him and buried him here—right beside Mr. Clark. The stone appeared the next day.”

  Bryant was standing beside the headstone Shelby pointed to. He bent to read the words engraved there: “‘He lived without pity or remorse / So we buried him here of course.’” Bryant coughed on a laugh. “That’s karma for you.”

  Shelby continued in an excited voice. “And a crime. No one knew what to do. The sheriff said he’d have both men moved out of the park, but then he fell very ill. That’s when people started saying Mrs. Clark had put a curse on her husband’s grave. Anyone who tried to dig him up would end up buried next to him. The sheriff said he didn’t believe in curses, but he was scared. He released Mrs. Clark, made an announcement that he planned to leave the Clark grave alone, and he got better within days.”

 
“How did it become a full cemetery?” Nicolette snapped a photo of the first two stones. Then stepped away to look at another headstone. Was it too much to hope they all told a story? The next stone read, STEVEN MILLER, 1898–1918. “This one is from during World War I.”

  Shelby walked over to join Nicolette. “Steven Miller. He died in Belleau Wood, France, but his family paid to have him brought home. He could have been buried in a military cemetery, but he’d told his best friend exactly what he wanted if he fell in battle and wrote his own epitaph. What could the town do—deny a hero his final request? No way. So he had the first legal burial here.”

  Nicolette touched the engraving on his stone as she read it aloud. “‘If I fall, take me to the park / Bury me next to my first hero, Mr. Clark.’” She took a photo of that stone as well. “Do you think he was one of the ones Mrs. Clark hired to bury her husband?”

  Shelby nodded. “My father thought so. Mrs. Clark was the next in town to die. Someone buried her beside her husband. No one ever admitted to it, but people had bigger worries. The war ended. Some of the boys were buried abroad. Some were never found. It was a sad time. People kind of forgot about these plots until one morning someone was walking through the park and they noticed a fresh grave with no headstone.”

  Bryant walked with Nicolette to the next headstone. He read it. “‘Gertrude Peterson, 1896 to 1935.’ That was during the Great Depression.”

  “Her epitaph is a meat-loaf recipe,” Nicolette said in surprise.

  “It sure is,” Shelby responded. “The stone wasn’t added until almost a month after she was buried. Her family couldn’t afford a proper burial, but Gertrude was known as one of the best cooks around, and her family had her secret recipes. They say they traded one for a headstone. It was a fair trade. Many of the local families still serve her meat loaf at the holidays.”

  Nicolette took a photo of the headstone. “This is fascinating.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way. You can sample her food at Lily’s Breakfast Nook.” Shelby touched the top of the stone. “Gertrude was the unwed mother Clark had helped. She had twin daughters: Lily and Lucy. They’re buried here as well. Best recipe for apple-pie moonshine you’ll ever find, but you have to read both stones for the complete directions.”

  “Moonshine? Do the locals still make that as well?” Bryant asked with a smile.

  “Bet your ass we do,” Shelby said proudly.

  Jackson chimed in, “We’ll send a bottle over to you.”

  “So that’s it? It just became a cemetery naturally after that?” Nicolette asked.

  Shelby waved a hand toward the park. “Not quite that simple. The next town administrator had a problem. He didn’t want people to think they could just go around burying bodies wherever they wanted to, but he’d also heard about the curse. He tried to gift the land to the church, but they refused it. Eventually, he sold it to the Russo family for a dollar, just to get the problem off his docket. They put up the fence and had it declared the Friendship Cemetery. Paisley’s grandfather made three stipulations for being buried there. The person had to be from this town, they had to be buried at night in an unpublicized ceremony, and their epitaphs had to be witty.”

  “Makes you wonder what’s in the water ’round here, doesn’t it?” Jackson asked. He flashed a toothy smile. “I’m from McGregor. We didn’t do shit like this.”

  Nicolette met Bryant’s gaze. He had that look in his eyes again, the one that sent a flutter through her stomach. “Pretty interesting, right?”

  “Very,” he agreed.

  Nicolette turned to Shelby. “Have you thought of doing a paid tour?”

  Shelby shook her head. “Oh, I can’t imagine charging for stories everyone has heard.”

  “Everyone who lives here might know them, but tourists wouldn’t. This is great. It’s different. It’s unique. People travel to see things like this.”

  “You really think so?” Jackson asked, looking skeptical. “Half that shit might not even be true.” Shelby smacked his arm. He shrugged. “No offense, but your father liked two things: drinking and telling tall tales.”

  Shelby stormed over to a headstone several aisles away. “Keep talking like that, Jackson, and this will be what I have written on your stone.”

  Nicolette glanced at Bryant. Jackson and Shelby made marriage look easy, but that wasn’t her experience with it. Her parents had been a good example of how love could tear people apart—for decades. What little experience Nicolette had in the relationship department hadn’t done much to change her opinion that happily ever after was a myth.

  Jackson read the stone aloud. “‘He finally found peace, and so have I.’” He smiled as he looked around. “Really nice. Hang on—as long as we’re stealing quotes, I know the one that fits you.” He scanned a few of the stones, then called out, “Here it is: ‘Beloved wife, wish you were still here / Without you, who will bring me a beer?’”

  Bryant laughed. “This needs to be a tour, and you should do it together.”

  Jackson strolled back to his wife and put an arm around her. “What do you think, Shel? Might be fun.”

  Shelby tipped her smiling face up at him. “Hon, I’d insult you for free, but if there’s also money in it? I’m in.”

  He kissed her temple. “Such a sweet, sweet woman I married.”

  Nicolette snapped a few photos of the couple, wanting to capture the warmth of that moment. They turned from laughing with each other to smile at her. She told herself it was for the website, but she also wanted to hold on to the image of them looking at each other like couples should.

  I want that.

  She met Bryant’s gaze again. What is wrong with me? I hardly know you. Nicolette forced herself to turn away. She snapped more photos of the cemetery. As she spun to get a new angle, she caught Bryant watching her and snapped a few photos of him. He had the same look in his eyes that he’d had the night he stepped out onto the balcony in London.

  That’s lust.

  Don’t confuse it with more.

  Her body didn’t care about the distinction. It hummed for him, warming as if he were already caressing it. Her lips parted when she relived the feel of his mouth claiming hers.

  He winked, and she realized she’d stopped taking photos and was simply staring at him through the camera lens. She lowered the camera. Her hands were sweaty; her heart was going crazy. Holy shit, was this how it was supposed to be?

  The moment was broken by the sound of Shelby’s phone ringing. “Okay. Okay. Calm down. We’re five minutes away. Don’t touch anything.” She ended the call, then took Jackson by the arm. “Don’t be upset, but the kids were having guinea-pig races in your office, and one of them got wedged behind your desk.”

  “One of the kids or one of the guinea pigs?” Jackson asked.

  “Oh my God, I didn’t ask. I just assumed it was one of the guinea pigs.” She waved to Nicolette and Bryant. “Call us if you have any questions or if there’s anything we can do.”

  “We will,” Nicolette said. “And thank you for meeting with us.”

  “Thank you,” Shelby answered. “I hope it was helpful.”

  “What would be helpful would be if we knew who the hell is stuck behind my desk,” Jackson grumbled. “Or where our daughter and her husband are.”

  “Oh, hush. I’ll call them as you drive,” Shelby said. “They probably went to the store. The kids are old enough to be home alone.”

  “Good luck, and nice to meet you both,” Bryant called out as the couple began to walk away.

  They both waved without breaking their stride. Jackson’s voice carried back to them. “Tell Paisley if my grandkids broke my new computer, she’s getting four new guests, pets and all.”

  “He doesn’t mean that,” Shelby added with a final wave before they both climbed into a car.

  Alone with Bryant again, Nicolette didn’t know what to say at first. Finally, she said, “Wasn’t that amazing?”

  Bryant stepped closer. �
�Yes, it was.”

  A battle raged within Nicolette. She didn’t want him to leave, but she wasn’t ready to ask him to stay. “Paisley will be disappointed when you leave.”

  “What about you?” He touched her cheek gently.

  She tensed so much, she shook beneath his caress. “This is too fast for me. I’m still wrapping my head around being in Iowa and thinking I could make a difference here. I like you, but I can’t figure out what you’re doing here.”

  He pulled her gently into his arms. “Is it so hard to believe I might simply like you?”

  Her mouth went dry, and she could barely breathe. “Yes.”

  He leaned down, the warmth of his breath a caress of its own on her cheek. “All it took was one look, and I couldn’t get you out of my head. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.”

  With her heart beating wildly in her chest, Nicolette said, “I want to believe everything you’re saying, but things like this don’t happen to me.”

  “Until now.” He bent closer until his lips hovered just above hers. “My favorite word has three letters.”

  “I’m sure it does,” Nicolette joked in a husky voice.

  “Yet. It’s a powerful word.”

  Mesmerized, Nicolette began to melt against him with powerful thoughts of throwing her arms around his neck.

  “Try it,” he coaxed. “Nothing like this has happened to you—yet. That one little word makes everything that might seem impossible suddenly very . . .” He brushed his lips over hers. “Very possible.”

  He tucked a hand behind her head and deepened the kiss. Their tongues met briefly, circling intimately before he raised his head. “So sweet,” he said.

  She wanted him in a way she couldn’t remember ever wanting another man, but that’s what scared her. She hadn’t come to Iowa to hook up with someone. She’d come to work on herself, and she had a chance to do something good for the town.

  Bryant was a distraction from both of those goals. She pushed out of his arms and took a step back. “I can’t do this. I know I’m sending you mixed signals, and I’m sorry. It’s better if you just leave.”