She slid behind the wheel of her Nova and disengaged the emergency brake. The little car sprang forward, as if as eager as she to view the mansion owned by the man who had nearly single-handedly ruined her family.
The drive was overgrown with weeds, but still seemed inviting as it curved through a forest of sequoia, oak and pine. Pale winter sun streamed through the leafless branches and spattered the ground with pools of shimmering light.
As she glanced in her rearview mirror, she noticed the huge gate swing closed again, cutting her off from the stretch of road that wound through the hills surrounding Whitefire Lake.
She’d thought often of leaving Gold Creek, but after her shattering experience with Hayden, and what had happened to her as a direct result of her short-lived romance with him, she’d never left again. Her family, or what was left of it, still resided in the town, and she wasn’t the kind of woman who would fit into the suburban sprawl or the hectic pace of the city. She’d learned that lesson the hard way. So, after being shipped off to a boarding school her parents could barely afford, she’d returned to Gold Creek and her battered family. Through her parents’ divorce, through her eldest brother’s death and through a bad marriage, she’d stayed.
She’d even, for a brief period, fancied herself in love with Turner Brooks, a rough-and-tumble cowboy whose house she cleaned on a weekly basis.
Nadine squelched that particular thought. She hadn’t let herself think of Turner for several months. He was happily married now, reunited with Heather Tremont, the girl of his dreams. He’d never even known that Nadine had cared about him.
Why was it that she always chose the wrong men?
“Masochist,” she reprimanded herself, as the lane curved and suddenly the lake, smooth as glass, stretched for half a mile to the opposite shore. Mountains rose above the calm water, their jagged snowcapped peaks reflected in the mirror that was Whitefire Lake.
Nadine parked and climbed out of her old car. She shoved her hands into her pockets and shivered as a cold breeze rushed across the water and caught in her hair. Rubbing her arms, she stared past the gazebo, private dock and boathouse and tried to see her own little house, situated on the far banks of the lake, but was only able to recognize the public boat landing and bait-and-tackle shop on the opposite shore.
Her small cottage was a far cry from this, the three-storied “cabin” that had once been the Monroe summer home. The manor—for that’s what it was, in Nadine’s estimation—looked as if it should have been set in a rich section of a New England town. Painted slate gray, with navy blue shutters battened against the wind, it was nestled in a thicket of pines and flanked by overgrown rhododendrons and azaleas.
This was where the Monroes spent their summers, she thought, surprised at her own bitterness—where Hayden had courted Wynona Galveston before the accident that had nearly taken the young socialite’s life. He’d never called Nadine, never written. Nadine had told herself that the pain and disappointment were long over, but she’d been wrong. Even now, she remembered her father’s face when he’d come home and caught her trying to sneak out and visit Hayden before he was transferred to San Francisco. She’d begged and pleaded until Ben had agreed to take her over to County Hospital while her mother had been working at the library, but George Powell, his shift shortened that day and for many days thereafter, had come home early and caught them. Thin lines of worry had cracked her father’s ruddy skin, and anger had smoldered bright in his eyes.
After sending Ben out of the room, he’d rounded on his daughter. “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from him?”
“I can’t, Dad. I love him.”
She’d been banished to her room, only to come down later and find her parents engaged in another argument—a horrid fight she had inadvertently spawned.
“I’ll kill that kid,” George had sputtered.
“Daddy, you wouldn’t—”
He changed tactics. “Well, I’ll let him know how I feel about him using my daughter. No one’s going to get away with hurting my little girl.”
“You think you can stop him?” Donna had interjected bitterly, pinning him with a hateful glare. “Haven’t you learned yet that those people have no souls? How could you hurt a man like Hayden Monroe? The way you hurt his father? By giving him everything we ever owned.”
“Stop it!” Ben had snarled. “Just stop it!”
At that point Nadine’s father had nearly broken down; it was the only time Nadine had seen him blink against tears in his usually humor-flecked eyes.
Now, years later, she saw the irony of the situation. Obviously, because her name was no longer Powell, the attorney who’d paid off her father hadn’t recognized her. Instead, he’d offered to hire her at an exorbitant rate to clean the place from stem to stern. “...and I don’t care how much time it takes. I want the house to look as good today as it did the day it was built,” Bradworth had ordered.
That would take some doing, Nadine thought, eyeing the moss collecting on the weathered shingles of the roof.
She’d almost turned down the job, but at the last minute had changed her mind. This was her chance to get a little of her father’s lost fortune back. Besides, anything to do with the Monroes held a grim fascination for her. And she needed to prove to herself that she didn’t give a fig what happened to Hayden.
So now she was here.
“And ready to wreak sweet vengeance,” she said sarcastically as she grabbed her mop, bucket and cleaning supplies.
The key she had been sent turned easily in the lock, and the front door, all glass and wood, opened without a sound. She took two steps into the front hall, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. Cloths, which had once been white and now were yellow with age, had been draped over all the furniture and a gritty layer of dust had settled on the floor. Cobwebs dangled from the corners in the ceiling, and along the baseboards mice droppings gave evidence to the fact that she wasn’t entirely alone.
“Great. Spiders and mice.” The whole place reminded her of a tomb, and a chill inched up her spine.
To dispel the mood, she began throwing open windows, doors and shutters, allowing cool, fresh mountain air to sweep through the musty old rooms. What a shame, she thought sadly. French doors off the living room opened to an enclosed sun porch where a piano, now probably ruined, was covered with a huge cloth. Plants, long forgotten, had become dust in pots filled with desert-dry soil.
It looked as if no one had been to the house in years.
Well, that wasn’t her problem. She’d already been paid half her fee in advance and spent some of the money on Christmas presents for the boys, as well as paying another installment to the care center where her father resided. The money hadn’t gone far. She still had the mortgage to worry about. Soon John would probably need braces and God only knew how long her old car would last. But this job, which would take well over a week, quite possibly two, would stretch out the bills a little. And the thought that she was being paid by Monroe money made the checks seem sweeter still.
Covering her head with a checked bandanna, she decided to work from top to bottom and started on the third floor, scouring bathrooms, polishing fixtures, sweeping up cobwebs and airing out the rooms that had obviously once been servants’ quarters. Paneled in the same knotty pine that covered the walls, the ceiling was low and sloped. She bumped her head twice trying to dislodge several wasp’s nests, while hoping that the old dried mud didn’t contain any living specimens.
As she turned the beds, she checked for mice or rats and was relieved to discover neither.
By one-thirty she’d stripped and waxed the floors and was heading for level two, which was much more extensive than the top floor. Six