Lady's Man Read Free

up for me too,” she said and cheerfully patted Lady on the head.
    And then she grinned. Who said she couldn’t roll with the punches? With a little luck, before this was all over, she’d wind up with that devil-may-care attitude and a resilient new lease on life, too.
    If her grandmother was up there somewhere, watching, Annie was sure she was nodding in approval. She gulped down the rest of her tea and said, “Come on, Lady. Let’s go stake our claim before he comes back and changes his mind.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                            

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER TWO
     

    Much to Annie’s delight, the house looked exactly as it had in the photos. Throughout the interior, there were billowy white linen drapes and ivory canvas sofas and chairs interspersed with knotted pine furnishings. The kitchen, open to the living room, was done in leaden blues and greens with touches of beige—as were the bathrooms. Clean, sedate and alluring—it couldn’t have been better done if she had designed it herself.
    Upstairs, the windows were open to the breeze, letting in a mix of scents—not all of them wonderful. From somewhere, the odor of sulfur—or something like it—wafted in. Two large bedrooms shared an adjoining bathroom and a sizable sitting room with French doors led to a back upper deck.
    Annie chose the bedroom nearest to the inside stairs, dumping her suitcase inside the door and then changed her mind and chose the room closest to the sitting room and deck—in case of a fire. Since the door downstairs would be locked, it might be better to be closer to the deck.
    Good planning was the starting point to all favorable outcomes. After all, despite her grandmother’s dire warnings about living too rigidly, it was planning that had gotten her where she was in life.
    And where is that? a little voice at the back of her thoughts harassed her. Alone. Great career, but no one to share the fruits of her labors. No kids. No prospects to ever have any. Her best friend was a dog. And the only family she had to speak of was gone—though certainly not forgotten.
    “Thanks, Gram,” she muttered.
    Obviously, there was no one else in the room. Lady, who had found herself a nice little spot beneath an open window, cocked her head and whined in answer.
    Annie was never quite certain what she was responding to or how much she understood, but there was one thing she was one-hundred percent convinced of: Lady was a bright, intuitive dog. “I’m not talking to you,” she reassured, although she wasn’t sure which was more ridiculous: the fact that she was talking to a dog … or that she was arguing with a memory. Clearly, her grandmother’s provident guidance would follow her to the grave.
    But that was perfectly OK, she reassured herself, because despite their extreme differences in life philosophies, Annie knew her grandmother had loved her and wanted only the best for her.
    Lady abandoned her spot to follow Annie while she investigated the bathroom, then followed close at her heels as she checked drawers, closets and looked under the beds. Although she wasn’t quite ready to unpack yet, it was good to know what she was dealing with. She was trying hard to heed her grandmother’s advice, but she generally just felt better when there was a plan.
    Annie, dear … you would plan your own funeral.
    Annie eyed her suitcase on the way to the window. “Not today, Gram. Today, it’s all about you.”
    Across the street, a single row of houses stood between her and the ocean. It was late afternoon and sunburned folks were already beginning to drag their chairs and coolers off the sand, hauling them toward parked cars on the street, although it wasn’t very crowded here at the edge of the edge of America. East Ashley officially ended about one hundred feet northeast of the house, giving way to a poorly maintained roadway that continued on to the beach. Annie could see the dunes at the end of