Home at Rose Cottage Read Free Page B

father.”
    “Cornelia Lindsey was Southern through and through, according to the neighbors. You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”
    “I’m not. I’m from Boston.”
    “You have any ID?”
    She regarded him with a mix of amusement and defensiveness. “None with my family tree printed on it. Who are you? The local sheriff or something?”
    “Just a neighbor. This place has been empty a long time. Someone turns up out of the blue like this, I just want to be sure they belong here. If you are who you say you are, I’m sure you can appreciate that.”
    It was evident to Melanie that he wasn’t going to budge without some sort of proof that she wasn’t a stranger setting up housekeeping in an abandoned property. He was right. She ought to be grateful that a neighbor would take such interest in making sure the cottage was secure.
    “Stay there,” she muttered, then stared at the lamp she still held clutched in her hands. She set it back on its table, then crossed the room to grab her purse and several of the framed snapshots sitting on the old oak sideboard.
    When she returned, she handed him her driver’slicense, then a photo of a grinning girl with freckles and hair bleached almost white by the sun. “That’s me at six,” she said, then showed him the rest. “My sisters, Maggie, Ashley and Jo with our mom. And this one is of all of us with my grandmother, Cornelia Lindsey, just before she died. Did you know her?”
    “No,” he said, taking the photo and studying it intently.
    To her surprise, he barely spared a glance for her sisters, all of them long-legged beauties. Instead, his gaze seemed to be focused on something else in the picture.
    “I knew it,” he mumbled, then scowled at her. “You all should be ashamed of yourselves.”
    She flinched at the outrage in his tone. “I beg your pardon!”
    “The garden,” he said impatiently. “You’ve let it go to ruin.”
    Melanie sighed. She could hardly deny it was a disgrace. She’d all but had to chop her way through it to get inside. She was pretty sure her car was likely to be swallowed up by aggressive vines if she didn’t move it on a regular basis.
    “I noticed,” she conceded mildly.
    His frown deepened. “Now that you’re here, what do you intend to do about it?”
    Melanie shrugged. She could have told him it was none of his business, but she didn’t have the energy to argue about something so unimportant with a total stranger. Nor was she inclined to defend their neglect of the house or the garden. It really was indefensible, given the way their grandmother had loved this house and doted on her roses.
    “I don’t know,” she said eventually. “Something, I suppose. First, though, I have to air this place out and chase out seven years’ worth of spiders and bug carcasses.”
    The man on her doorstep regarded her with undisguised disapproval. “Don’t wait too long. Now is the time of year to fix it.” He dug in his pocket and handed her a card. “When you’re ready, call me. It needs to be done right, and something tells me you’ve never gotten your hands dirty.” He shot a disdainful glance toward her pale, smooth hands. “I’ll show you what to do, so you don’t make things worse than they already are.”
    Before she could reject the ungracious offer, before she could even muster a suitably indignant retort, he’d turned on his heel and gone, crashing through the overgrown weeds and vines like an intrepid explorer in alien jungle territory. He stopped several times to examine the rosebushes with a surprisingly gentle caress or to tug violently at a choking strand of honeysuckle, muttering to himself in an undertone. Melanie had little doubt that whatever he was saying was unflattering.
    Annoyed by his judgmental attitude, she was about to rip the card to shreds, but something about the delicate artwork in one corner caught her eye. It was only a line drawing, but the combination of seagrass and roses reminded