Dreams of Fire (Maple Hill Chronicles Book 1) Read Free

looked at her cell phone. The movers should be here soon, so she couldn’t leave. She could bring the rest of her stuff in from the car, though. She was just about to go out the front door when she hear a frightened meow, and Oscar came racing down the stairs, an orange and white blur. He bolted for the carrier in the middle of the floor and disappeared inside.
    “What happened to you?” Marianne murmured as she knelt down and peered inside. Oscar was bushed up as big as he could be, looking twice his normal size. She reached in and stroked his fur, murmuring soothing noises until he relaxed enough to let her gather him up into her arms. His heart beat a frantic tattoo against her hand. “Goodness! What did you meet upstairs? Is my big, tough guy, city cat afraid of the country? It’s okay. We’ll clean up in here and make it our home. We’ll chase out all the birds and squirrels in the attic, and you won’t have to be scared anymore,” she cooed lovingly.
    Oscar had come from the animal shelter after her divorce. Geoffrey wouldn’t have liked him, but she had always wanted a cat. She remembered with a smile how he’d calmly sat and stared at her while she looked at all the other cats in the white cement room. Finally, when she’d looked at him, he’d put his paw between the cage bars and given her a look that said, “ What took you so long? Get me out of here!” And that was that.  
    She cradled him until his fur settled back down, and she put him back into the carrier and shut the door. Carrying it to the bathroom, she put the cage in the bathtub for now, opened the metal door to give him free rein, and closed the bathroom door behind her.  

Chapter 2
    Ruari Allen closed and locked the doors of his workshop reluctantly. It was a little before nine o’clock, and he was due at work on the dot. He wished he had enough orders to keep him working at his bench all day. He got up at five usually to take advantage of the coolness of the day and spent a few blissful hours shaping and caressing wood into furniture and a variety of objects. He’d inherited his grandfather’s talent for woodworking and learned as much as he could at the old man’s knee. He just wished he could make a living at it.
    Right now he was in the middle of making one of the sculptures that came into his head occasionally. They happened a couple of times a year and were so compelling that he had to drop what he was doing and focus on them until they had worked themselves out of his system. If he didn’t, his commissioned work suffered or ended up with elements of the sculpture in them that his client hadn’t requested. Better to follow his subconscious muse and let it have its way.  
    Sighing, he climbed into his old white truck and headed to Gloria’s Valley Homes and Properties. Fixing mechanicals and doing odd jobs for the manager paid the bills at least, even if it didn’t make him happy. Fortunately he had only himself to look after. Still single at thirty-four, it was a bone of contention with his parents. He’d managed to convince them he wasn’t gay. He simply hadn’t found the right woman to settle down with. His younger sister Erin got along better with them than he did, though she wasn’t married and “producing” yet either. Better that she was living at home with them than him.
    It had been another long and boring summer fixing things, and he wondered if his life was going to go on like this indefinitely. It was not a happy prospect. He’d lived in Maple Hill all his life, and though he loved its familiarity, it was confining. He was in a rut and didn’t know how to get out of it.
    He pulled into a space in front of the converted family home on Main Street that now bore the flowery sign for Gloria’s and stepped inside. His boss, SueAnn Talmadge, was already bustling around and looked at him with an irritated glance. Her tailored red linen suit practically glowed with energy. She must drink high test, full caf