“How does he know that?”
“Through your real estate agent. Mr. Hunt knows the owner of the agency she works for,” she explained. “Harry bought a building through him last month for his wife so she’d have a headquarters for her new venture. When he learned why you couldn’t move forward with the purchase of the house you’d found, he remembered Mrs. Hunt’s project and thought you’d be a perfect referral. So we checked you out.” Her smile brightened. “And you are.
“Anyway,” she continued, anxious to get to her point. “Cornelia knows of a property for sale that you might want to purchase. She’s aware of your current unemployment,” she hurried to assure her, “but she said you’re not to worry about that little detail right now. Just look at the place. If you’re interested, suitable arrangements can be made for you and for the seller.
“It’s not exactly what you told your agent you want,” she cautioned, reaching into a pocket of her coat. “But it could be perfect for you and your little boy. You really do need to keep an open mind when you see it, though,” she warned. “Don’t judge it as is. Look for the possibilities.
“You’ll be met at the address on the back.” She held out a white, pearlescent business card. “The owner’s representative will be there at ten tomorrow morning. A man by the name of Erik Sullivan. He’s quite knowledgeable about the property, so feel free to ask him anything that will help you decide whether you want the place or not. You should keep an open mind about him, too.
“I have to run now. Double-parked,” she said, explaining her rush but not the warning. “If you like what you see, I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”
Rory took the pretty little card. Neatly hand-printed on the back was an address outside Port Orchard, a short ferry ride across the sound from Seattle.
With questions piling up like leaves in the fall, she glanced back up.
The woman was gone.
Seeing no sign of her in the Pacific Northwest mist that was closer to fog than rain, she looked back to the shimmery little card.
The past fourteen months had left her without faith in much of anything anymore. The sudden, devastating loss of her husband to an uninsured drunk driver who’d run a red light. The whispered and crushing comments about their marriage that she’d overheard at his funeral. The exodus from her life of people she’d once thought of as family and friends. Each event had been shattering in its own right. Together, they’d made her afraid to trust much of anything. Or anyone.
And that had been before she’d lost the job Harvey Bleaker had said was hers for as long as she needed it.
The lovely woman with the bookish glasses had appeared out of nowhere. As if by magic, she’d disappeared into the mist the same way, like some sort of a fairy godmother dressed in faux fur and carrying Coach.
Dead certain her sleepless nights had just caught up with her, Rory dropped the card into the open compartment on the console. Whatever had just happened had to be either too good to be true or came with a spiderweb of strings attached to it.
Probably, undoubtedly, both.
Still, she, Tyler and the for-rent section of the newspaper were going apartment hunting in the morning. Having just picked up a check for the small down payment she’d put on the house she hadn’t been able to buy, less fees, she had enough for three or four months’ rent and expenses. In the meantime, feeling a desperate need for either magic or a miracle, she figured she had nothing to lose by checking out the address on that card.
She just hoped that this Erik Sullivan would be as accepting of her circumstances as Mrs. Cornelia Hunt seemed to be.
Chapter One
“Are we lost, Mom?”
“No, honey. We’re not lost.” Parked on the dirt shoulder of a narrow rural road, Rory frowned at the building a few dozen yards away. “I’m just not sure this is the right address.”
“If we can’t find it, can we go to the Christmas place?”
“We’ll see, sweetie. We’re looking for a new place to live right now.”
“I don’t want a new one.”
“I know you don’t,” she murmured. Freckles dotted Tyler’s nose. His sandy hair, neatly combed when they’d left the house, fell over his forehead, victim of the breeze that had blown in when she’d lowered his window to get a better look at the address on the roadside mailbox.
Nudging wisps back from his forehead, she smiled. “But we need one. And I need you to help me pick it out. It’s our adventure, remember?”
“Then can we go to the Christmas place?”
They had seen a banner for a holiday festival in nearby Port Orchard when they’d driven off the ferry. Tyler had been asking about it ever since.
Everything she’d read last night on the internet made the area around the shoreline community a few miles around the bend sound nearly idyllic. The part of her that didn’t want to get her hopes up knew that could simply have been good marketing by its chamber of commerce. The part that desperately needed this not to be a wild-goose chase focused on getting them moving.
“Not today, I’m afraid.” She hated to say no, but housing had to be their first priority. “We don’t have time.”
It was nine fifty-five. They were to meet the seller’s representative at ten o’clock.
Reminding Tyler of that, and agreeing that, yes, they were still “exploring,” she pulled his hood over his head and glanced to the structure surrounded by a few winter-bare trees, dead grass and a wet patch of gravel that, apparently, served as a parking lot.
The address on the mailbox matched the one on the card. The structure, however, bore no resemblance at all to a residence. The two-story flat-roofed rectangle of a building faced a partial view of a little marina two city blocks away and backed up to a forest of pines.
A long, narrow sign above the porch read Harbor Market & Sporting Goods. Signs by the screened door read Fresh Espresso and Worms and Closed Until Spring.
Mailboxes farther up the road indicated homes tucked back in the trees. The only vehicle to be seen, however, was hers. With no sign of life in either direction, she was about to pull out her cell phone to check the address with Phil Granger when she remembered what the woman had said.
She’d warned her to keep an open mind when she saw the place. To look for possibilities.
The potential goose chase was also, apparently, a scavenger hunt.
A narrow driveway curved around the back of the building and disappeared down a slight hill. Thinking there might be a house or cottage beyond the gate blocking it, she grabbed the shoulder bag that held everything from animal crackers to a Zen meditation manual and gamely told her little boy they were going to look around while they waited for the person they were to meet to show up.
The damp breeze whipped around them, scattering leaves in their path as they left the car. With a glance toward the threatening sky, she was about to reconsider her plan when the relative quiet gave way to a squeak and the hard slam of a door.
Tyler froze.
Across twenty feet of gravel, she watched six feet two inches of broad-shouldered, purely rugged masculinity in a fisherman’s sweater and worn jeans cross the store’s porch and jog down its three steps.
“Sorry about that.” His apology came quickly, his voice as deep as the undercurrents in the distant water. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I keep forgetting to fix the spring.”
The breeze blew a little harder, rearranging the otherwise neat cut of his slightly overlong dark hair. He didn’t seem to notice the wind. Or the cold bite that came with it. All lean, athletic muscle, he strode toward them, his glance shifting