Surprise Inheritance

by Charlotte Douglas

  Goodbye to the only real happiness she’d ever known.

  “What’s next?” Luke asked, as if he’d read her mind. He’d finished his lunch and was carrying his dishes to the sink.

  “Next?”

  He deposited his dishes and turned back to her. “Just because there’s a storm raging outside doesn’t mean we can’t work in here. Since I’m stuck, I might as well help. Where do you want to start?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to inspect the house yet, so I don’t know what needs to be done.” She set her dishes in the sink, too, but, filled with reluctance at viewing the rest of the house, didn’t move.

  Luke seemed to sense her distress. “Let’s take a survey. If we both carry a lantern, we’ll have enough light to assess each room.”

  His reassurance gave her courage, and she reached for a lamp.

  “Better put your coat on,” he suggested. “The rest of the house will be freezing.”

  After they’d bundled into their jackets, Luke led the way into the hall, with Jennifer right behind him.

  “Jack Hartman and I cleaned the place up some after Henry passed away,” Luke explained. “Shoveled out several bags of trash and years’ worth of old newspapers. Your grandfather didn’t care what the house looked like after Dolly died.”

  “Except for the dust and dirt, it looks exactly as I remember it.” Jennifer circled the living room, making a mental list: dust and polish furniture, launder draperies, wash windows, clean the carpet and scrub baseboards and woodwork.

  She noted similar tasks in the dining room, then followed Luke down the hall toward her grandparents’ room. Luke stopped in the doorway and placed his hand on her shoulder.

  “There’s something you should know before you go in here.” His voice was gentle, but his words made her heart race.

  “What?”

  “This is the only room in the house Henry kept clean. He dusted it every day and kept it like a shrine. Except for clearing the dust, nothing’s been changed since the day your grandmother died. The room’s exactly as Dolly left it.”

  The image of her grandfather faithfully tending the room brought tears to Jennifer’s eyes. “But this was their bedroom. Where did he sleep?”

  “He put a cot in his study at the end of the hall. Moved all his clothes there, too.”

  Jennifer felt as if her heart would break. She should have come home in spite of her grandfather’s banishing her. She could have taken care of him, kept him company, eased his loneliness.

  And her own.

  But his behavior had turned so bizarre after Gramma’s death, would he have let Jennifer set foot in the house again, much less have allowed her to stay?

  Thrusting away the might-have-beens, she stepped across the threshold into her grandparents’ bedroom. It was like stepping back in time.

  The big four-poster bed stood where it always had between the two windows on the south wall. The bedspread with its intricate candlewicking embroidery that Gramma had done herself was neatly arranged, although dingy with age.

  The dressing table held a picture of her grandparents in a silver frame, the same one Jennifer had taken at their fortieth anniversary celebration. Love sparkled in their eyes as they gazed at one another, captured for all time in the camera’s eye. A silver-backed comb and brush set, one that had belonged to Gramma’s grandmother, lay beside the picture. A crystal vase held the dried remains of flowers long dead.

  Tucked beneath the edge of the four-poster were Gramma’s slippers, as if she’d just stepped out of them, and her fluffy pink velour robe lay draped across the foot of the bed.

  “I don’t understand,” Jennifer said. “Grandpa was the least sentimental person I knew. Gramma always had to remind him, in her gentle, subtle way, of course, about birthdays and anniversaries. Keeping this room as a shrine was totally out of character for him. He was too pragmatic, no-nonsense—”

  She feared she was going to cry again, but the firm pressure of Luke’s arm around her shoulders helped keep the tears at bay.

  “Your grandfather was never himself after Dolly died,” Luke said. “It’s as if he’d given up on life.”

  Jennifer swallowed her tears and scooted from beneath Luke’s arm, afraid to become too comfortable with his touch. “Let’s check the rest of the house.”

  THE EXTREME COLD of the unheated building grew more bitter with the storm’s growing power and the day’s waning light, and eventually drove them back to the relative warmth of the kitchen.

  After several games of hearts and multiple hands of gin rummy, they dined on grilled cheese sandwiches, apples and chocolate chip cookies.

  Through the entire afternoon and into the evening, Luke had wrestled with conflicting impressions of Jennifer. Her obvious distress over returning home and learning of her grandfather’s last years disproved Luke’s theory that she had turned hard-hearted and cold after leaving Jester. Her love of Cottonwood Farm had been evident in their tour of the house. But he’d also sensed her restlessness, as if she couldn’t wait to leave.

  She claimed she’d left him a letter, and she appeared to be telling the truth, but he couldn’t figure out what had happened to the message—if it had really ever existed.

  While Jennifer washed the supper dishes, Luke went upstairs to her old room and wrestled the mattress off her double bed and down the stairs.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded when he manhandled the mattress into the kitchen.

  “Fixing us a place to sleep. We’d freeze in the bedrooms.”

  He could almost see the hackles rise on her neck, and there was no mistaking the distress in her voice. “The bedrooms have fireplaces. I’ll be fine in my old room. You can sleep in here if you like.”

  He flashed her an apologetic grin. “You won’t be fine in your old room. This is your mattress.”

  “Then I’ll sleep in the guest room.” Her voice now held an edge of desperation.

  Luke dropped the mattress next to the stove. “It’s minus two degrees Fahrenheit outside. Even if you started a fire in the guest room now, it would take hours to warm the room to a bearable level. The kitchen’s already warm.”

  “But there’s only one mattress.”

  “Don’t try to read something into this that isn’t there. Our body heat will keep each other warm during the night. Especially once the fire dies down.” He tried to convince himself of the practical reasons for their sleeping arrangements, but the thought of lying with Jennifer in his arms generated a quiver of longing deep inside that he couldn’t deny.

  Spending the afternoon with her had reminded him of all the reasons he had loved her in the first place. It wasn’t just her extraordinary beauty that drew him, but her intelligence, her humor, her rejection of the material riches of her parents in favor of the solid, old-fashioned values she’d learned at Cottonwood Farm, and her genuine caring and compassion for her grandparents.

  Luke was beginning to believe the inconceivable, that for some twisted, unexplainable reason, Henry actually had sent Jennifer away and broken all contact. As moved as she was by her homecoming, Luke realized, she would have been back long before now if she’d felt she’d have been welcomed.

  Her inheritance obviously wasn’t a factor. She hadn’t mentioned the money or what she planned to do with it. If the fact that she was now a millionaire had registered with Jennifer, it hadn’t made much of an impression.

  Apparently, however, she didn’t share his enthusiasm for keeping each other warm all night. “I’ll wrap in a quilt and sleep in the rocker,” she insisted.

  “Suit yourself.” He shrugged, as if her reluctance hadn’t affected him, when in reality, all he wanted was to hold her in his arms again.

  She disappeared into the hallway and returned with an armload of sheets, pillows and down comforters. “At least the cedar closet kept these fairly fresh. They’re not as musty as the rest of the house.”

  He took the linens from her arms and spread the sheets and one of the
comforters on the mattress. The bed looked inviting, but Luke wasn’t sleepy. He wondered if he’d be able to rest with Jennifer so close but beyond his reach.

  She took the other comforter, flung it around her shoulders and settled in Henry’s rocker. Luke fed more wood into the store and sat in Dolly’s chair next to Jennifer.

  “I’ve been wondering,” he said, trying to find the courage to ask the question that had bugged him since her return. “You always said you wanted a home and children. I figured you’d have been long married by now.”

  “Never stayed in one place long enough,” she answered quickly, and the pain in her eyes made him wish he hadn’t asked.

  “That doesn’t sound like you. The Jennifer I knew was a homebody, not a rover.”

  “It’s been ten years. I’m not the girl you knew anymore.”

  “Either that,” he said, studying her face in an effort to decipher what was going on behind those gorgeous eyes shuttered with thick lashes, “or I never really knew you in the first place.”

  “But you did! You knew me better than anybody.” Her words came in a rush, and, as if regretting them, she blushed furiously.

  Loss welled in him like a geyser ready to blow. “What happened to us, Jennifer?”

  “What’s that old saying? Circumstances beyond our control?” She shivered and tugged the comforter closer. “You’d better get some sleep. If the storm passes, you’ll have your work cut out for you tomorrow.”

  If she had once loved him, she apparently didn’t want to acknowledge those feelings now. And she was right about tomorrow’s chores. He’d have to find Henry’s chain saw, clear the maple off his SUV and use its battery to jump-start Henry’s old pickup, still parked in the barn.

  Luke stoked the fire with more wood and extinguished the lanterns. The room plunged into immediate darkness. He sat on the mattress, pulled off his boots and slid between the sheets. But it was a long time, listening to the soft, tantalizing sound of Jennifer’s breathing, before he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE QUIET JERKED Jennifer out of a sound sleep. Sore and stiff from sleeping in the chair, she stretched and tried to get her bearings in the darkness of her strange surroundings. The silence that had awakened her indicated the storm had passed. The wind wasn’t shaking the windows as if trying to force its way inside, and ice no longer pelted the glass.

  And the crackle of burning wood had ceased, also. Racked by bone-deep cold that caused her teeth to chatter, she realized she’d have to restart the fire or she and Luke would both freeze.

  She flung aside the cumbersome quilt and felt her way through the darkness to the stove. Once she’d opened the door to the firebox, the glow from the dying embers and moonlight streaming in the kitchen windows from the clearing sky cast just enough light for her to find the wood Luke had stacked nearby, and to fill the cavity. With shredded newspapers, she coaxed the embers into flames, and soon the wood caught fire, as well.

  By now, however, she was even colder than before. She pivoted on her heel, prepared to rush back to the enveloping warmth of the comforter, when her other foot bumped the edge of the mattress where Luke slept. Unable to catch herself—the only thing at hand was the hot stove—she felt herself pitching forward.

  Right on top of Luke.

  He awakened with an “ummphff,” and his arms closed around her.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, and attempted to pull away.

  His strong embrace held her fast, and in the pale moonlight, she could read the amusement in his eyes.

  “We have to quit meeting like this, sunshine.” His reference to their previous collision outside the bookstore didn’t lessen her embarrassment.

  “I tripped.” Again she tried to rise, but he wouldn’t let her go.

  “You’re freezing.” He released her long enough to tug the covers from under her, then whipped them around both of them. She was now lying along the hard, firm length of him, her lips mere inches from his, his warm breath like a summer breeze against her face.

  “I’ll…b-be…f-fine…” She couldn’t finish her sentence because she shook so hard from the cold. Or was it the excitement of being so close to Luke again after all those years?

  He tugged her closer, and with strong but gentle hands began rubbing her arms, her back, and legs. “You need to get the blood flowing again. You’re like a block of ice.”

  At his touch, fire seemed to course through her veins, alleviating the chill. She propped herself on her elbows to stare down at him. “Are you calling me frigid?”

  “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck—”

  She swatted at him playfully. “As I recall, you were always the one with reservations.”

  His deep blue eyes turned smoky with desire. “No reservations. Only a promise to your grandfather.”

  Her body melded to his and throbbed with longing. “But Grandpa’s gone, and I’m a big girl now. I can make my own decisions.”

  She dipped her head and his came up to meet her. With a groan of pleasure, she opened her mouth to his, and he returned her kiss with a fierceness that fired her blood and drove away every remnant of cold, leaving only white-hot heat and desire. She abandoned all conscious thought as he explored the curve of her back, the swell of her breasts, the contours of her thighs.

  With gentle but eager hands, he eased the shirt from her shoulders, the jeans from her hips. In the haste of her own excitement, she pulled at his clothes until they were both naked beneath the comforter. Sparks showered along her nerve endings, igniting a tremor of need, making her long for more.

  She traced the strong line of his jaw with one finger, and he threaded his own fingers through her hair, pulling back her head to skewer her with a gaze so filled with passion she trembled at the sight of him.

  With one powerful movement, he rolled her over and bent above her, trailing kisses from her throat, across her breasts and down the length of her until her body arched in ecstasy beneath him.

  “Please, Luke—”

  He shoved back, rose from the mattress and moved away. Her heart sank, and her body ached with unfulfilled need. Surely he wasn’t still honoring his promise to her grandfather? His withdrawal could mean only one thing.

  He didn’t want her.

  Then suddenly he was beside her again, drawing her against him with one arm, his other hand brandishing the box from Cozy’s Drugstore. With a devilish grin, he held it up for her to see.

  “Remind me to thank my sister,” he said with a delicious laugh. “Now, where were we?”

  THE ROAR OF THE CHAIN SAW split the early-morning calm. The storm had passed, leaving the countryside glittering in ice. When the rising sun struck the frozen landscape, it shimmered like prisms reflecting the full spectrum of colors. A breathtaking sight, Luke thought.

  And a pain in the butt.

  Forcing his attention to the job at hand, he attacked the downed maple with Henry’s chain saw again, working his way toward the hood of his car in hopes of extracting the battery. But his mind kept wandering to the night before. Over the years, he’d dreamed many times of making love to Jennifer, but not one of his dreams had come close to the joyful reality. Joining his body with hers had produced not only exquisite physical pleasure, he’d also felt emotionally fulfilled for the first time in his life. She was the other half of him that he’d been longing for, the one who made him whole.

  Then why the hell hadn’t he told her how much he loved her?

  Because you’re still afraid she’s going to leave you again, an inner voice taunted him. She’s never said she’s going to stay.

  With a sigh of disgust, he shut down the chain saw. If he kept on while his thoughts whirled, he’d either chop off his fingers or butcher his vehicle. At the slam of the front door, he looked up to see Jennifer standing on the porch, her face contorted with sorrow.

  His heart wrenched with pain. Was she already regretting last night? When she awoke with a smile in his arms this morning, he’d
had the distinct impression she’d enjoyed their lovemaking as much as he had. And over the breakfast he’d cooked, she’d chattered happily about the day’s tasks that lay before them.

  Right now, however, she looked as if the world had caved in on her.

  He laid the chain saw aside and walked gingerly toward her over the icy terrain. “What’s wrong?”

  His heart swelled with love. Even with her face stricken with grief, she was the most attractive woman he’d ever seen. Desire stirred within him again, but he tamped it down. In her current state, the last thing she needed was a romp in the hay. She obviously wanted comforting.

  “Come inside.” Emotion choked her voice. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  He followed her through the chilly house to the warmth of the kitchen. The only thing that had changed in the room since he left it was the addition of a huge Bible, centered on the round oak table. Jennifer laid her hand on it.

  “I brought this in from the front room,” she explained. “It’s been in the family for generations and holds the records of all the Faulkner marriages, births and deaths.”

  “I can understand why reading those would make you sad.”

  “That’s not what upset me.” She flipped open the Bible, removed an envelope and handed it to him. “This is. Read it.”

  The envelope was addressed to Jennifer in a thin, spidery handwriting. “From Henry?” Luke asked.

  Jennifer nodded and sank into the nearest chair. “It explains a lot.”

  Luke pulled the folded pages from the envelope, spread them open on the table and noted the date on the top page, a few days after the Big Draw win. He began to read:

  Dear Jennifer,

  If you’re reading this, it means I’m dead, but don’t be sad for me. I’m with your grandmother now and finally at peace. She was one of God’s own saints, so I know she’ll forgive me for what I’ve done. I can only hope that you will, too.