ALLISON STANDISH WAS swept with an overpowering urge to throw the nearest heavy object or scream at the top of her lungs or, at the very least, slam the door. She did none of those things, clinging instead to the maxim she’d hammered out for herself years ago: if they see you lose control, they win.
She actually managed to pin a stiff smile on her face. “Sorry I interrupted.” She turned and walked steadily toward the door of Greg’s loft.
It was Diane, her boss, who rushed after her from the bedroom, wrapping a sheet around her abundant curves. “Allison, wait. This isn’t what it looks like.”
Allison’s temper nearly slipped its leash at the trite remark. “It’s exactly what it looks like. No wonder you were so eager to see me get on the road.”
“Now, Allison.” Diane reached for her with one hand while she grabbed the wandering sheet with the other.
The sheet was one of those Allison had picked out to go with the bedroom furniture she’d helped Greg choose. She’d even gotten him her professional designer’s discount.
“Let’s be adult about this,” Diane continued. “There’s no reason why we can’t continue working together.”
“Listen to her, baby.” Greg appeared in the bedroom doorway, wearing a hastily donned T-shirt and shorts.
“Shut up.” Diane tossed the words back over her shoulder.
Greg ran a hand through the shoulder-length black hair that inevitably attracted female attention. If he’d said something to her then...
But he didn’t. He subsided, looking sulky. Diane had that effect on a lot of people.
“Come on, Ally.” Di’s voice turned coaxing. “These things happen. Take your week off. By the time you come back to the office, this will just be a memory. You have a good thing going. Don’t ruin it.”
For a man. Di didn’t say the words, but they were implied. Di wouldn’t dream of sacrificing one single step of her career for a man. That was how she’d become manager of the most prestigious interior design firm in Philadelphia.
Allison found she actually could manage a smile at that. “Sorry. I guess I’m not really that adult.” This time she did slam the door.
She’d gotten all the way to the car before reaction set in. It took her three tries to unlock the car door, and she slid behind the wheel, relieved that she didn’t have to trust her legs to hold her up any longer. She clutched the steering wheel, willing herself not to be sick.
A rusty meow from the backseat demanded attention. If Hector had to be confined to the cat carrier, he considered the least she could do was keep the vehicle moving.
“In a minute,” she muttered. If cats were supposed to sense one’s mood, Hector was deficient in that ability.
Diane had been similarly concerned to get her moving this afternoon, suggesting Allison leave the office early so she could beat Philadelphia’s rush-hour traffic. Clearly she hadn’t anticipated that Allison would stop by Greg’s loft to say goodbye before setting off for Amish country.
She nearly hadn’t. Hector had been recalcitrant about getting into the cat carrier, wedging his fat orange-striped body under the dresser just out of her reach the instant he’d seen the carrier. She’d finally had to resort to a can of tuna to snag him.
Then, with cat carrier and suitcase stowed in her compact, she’d had, she thought, just enough time to give Greg a goodbye kiss before heading for the wilds of Lancaster County and the property she’d so surprisingly been left in her grandmother’s will.
She’d probably known the truth when she’d spotted Diane’s Volvo parked in front of Greg’s building. Her head just hadn’t been able to convince her heart. She’d had to see for herself.
Well, she’d seen, all right. Now she just had to figure out what she was going to do with her life.
Hector complained again. Loudly.
“All right, all right.” She started the engine and pulled onto the street as cautiously as a sixteen-year-old learning to drive.
At least she had a breathing space before making any tough decisions. She’d already planned to spend a week in Laurel Ridge arranging to rid herself of the white elephant her birth father’s mother had so surprisingly left her. But now she didn’t have any reason to rush back.
Allison joined the steady stream of traffic heading out of the city. There would be other jobs. One thing she could say about Di: her code, whatever it was, might allow her to poach a friend’s man, but she wouldn’t stoop to withhold a glowing reference, even if it meant Allison would be decorating multimillion-dollar homes for one of her competitors.
As for Greg—well, apparently he didn’t live by any code at all except the whim of expediency. Allison must have had blinders on not to see that. Still, it was easy to be dazzled in the early stages of love, or whatever had passed for love between them.
Several hours later, Allison had begun to think she’d also had blinders on when she’d read the map and decided she could reach Laurel Ridge before dark. The April evening had quickly faded, and only the faintest glow on the western horizon remained. She seemed to have been wandering past fields and forests on a two-lane county route for hours, and the sole vehicle she’d passed in miles had been an Amish buggy.
The GPS she relied on was not helpful. Its metallic voice hadn’t contributed anything in the past half hour but a persistent “Recalculating” that was nearly as annoying as Hector’s raucous complaints. When the cat started sounding like a rusty hinge, it meant the situation was getting desperate.
Her tired brain played with the idea that Laurel Ridge didn’t exist, that her legacy was one last spiteful act on the part of the grandmother who’d never acknowledged Allison’s existence while she was alive.
Pondering the possibility, Allison nearly missed the sign. She stopped, backed up and read the words she’d been looking for. Laurel Ridge, 2 Miles. Relief swept over her, and she put the car in gear.
“Cheer up, Hector. The end is in sight.”
A doubtful scratch at the carrier’s door was his only response.
A few minutes later she was driving down Laurel Ridge’s main, and maybe only, business street. Storefronts were dark and foot traffic nonexistent. Apparently Laurel Ridge shut down early. The only sign of life was a café and, across the street, a bed-and-breakfast with a porch light left on. Probably for her, since she’d booked a room there for the week.
As she pulled to the curb, Allison’s gaze was caught by the building next to the bed-and-breakfast. In contrast to the homey Victorian charm of the white clapboard inn, this building loomed over the street, three stories of Italianate classic architecture dwarfing the smaller buildings around it. She could just make out the brass plate attached to the wrought-iron gate. Blackburn House. So this was her inheritance.
An Italianate mansion dating from the 1850s. The attorney’s voice, dry and pedantic, sounded in her mind. It belonged to Laurel Ridge’s founding family. Your late grandfather purchased it from the Blackburn family fifty years ago. He had it zoned commercial and divided to form several