CHAPTER ONE

      OH, CLARENCE, our love can never be, for you are promised to another....

      Brooke had to blink away tears so she could read the elaborate script of the silent movie title card flickering on the enormous television screen. Not that she actually needed to read the words; she’d seen the film so many times that she knew it, and them, by heart.

      Forbidden Love, filmed in 1925, had been the first movie to star the sixteen-year-old Cora Jackson. Decades later, her luminous celluloid beauty still transfixed twenty-five-year-old Brooke Hamilton, companion of the former movie star’s old age.

      The glorious child-woman wafted gracefully across the shadowy screen. Brooke’s hand stilled on the back of the sleek orange cat draped across her lap—Miss Cora’s cat, one of two left in Brooke’s care under the terms of the will. Watching the woman’s first film on the VCR two months after her death, Brooke still found it impossible to believe that her friend and mentor was really gone. Even well into her eighties, Miss Cora had remained a vital and captivating woman.

      The cat stirred, casting Brooke a disapproving glance over one furry shoulder. “Sorry, Gable,” she apologized, resuming a slow stroking. “I know I get carried away, but I miss her so much. I’ll bet you do, too.” She swallowed hard and read the next title card.

      For honor’s sake, you must marry another upon the morrow. But you will always be my only love—no, don’t look at me so!

      The on-screen Cora, the one who would remain forever young and beautiful, pressed the back of a slender wrist against her mouth dramatically, tears sparkling like diamonds on her lashes. Many times Miss Cora had explained to the enraptured Brooke that in those days of silent films, cameramen had moved heaven and earth to photograph stars in the best possible light.

      “It took onions to get those tears to come and a genius with a camera to make them look sincere,” Cora insisted. “Goodness, what did I know about acting? Talent didn’t even enter into it. I was just a little girl from Illinois who found herself in Hollywood.”

      That fortuitous circumstance had changed Cora’s life, and more than a half century later, Brooke’s life, as well. “Go figure,” she mused to Gable, tickling his ear with a gentle fingertip.

      He responded with something that sounded vaguely like “Arough-ooo!” Brooke glanced down at him in surprise to find him staring at the door as if he expected something dreadful to spring through at any second and attack him.

      The door, like everything in Glennhaven, Miss Cora’s magnificent Victorian mansion on a mountain-side overlooking Boulder, Colorado, was dark and elaborate and reminiscent of days gone by. Brooke had come here today ostensibly to “sort and organize,” but had found the prospect so depressing that she’d slipped a tape into the VCR instead.

      She should have known that it would turn out to be a mistake. This house had been a second home to her, but she’d tried to avoid it since the death of the woman who’d been more family to her than her own family had ever pretended.

      Cora Jackson Browne—Brooke’s beloved Miss Cora—had been like a mother to her. Or perhaps the proper term was grandmother, since the woman had been at least sixty years older than her young companion. Her death was even more shocking because it had been completely unanticipated. She’d simply gone to bed one night and never awakened. Although it was a gentle end to a memorable life, Brooke had been devastated.

      And more so when she realized that Miss Cora herself had somehow seemed to sense that her time was near. In a long and detailed letter written only a few weeks earlier but not found until after her death, she’d laid out her plans and expectations.

      A simple burial; no members of her family to be notified of her death until just before the reading of her will; and custody of her cats to Brooke, along with an acre of land and the guest house.

      In typical Miss Cora fashion, she’d been specific in every detail. Although not all of it made sense to Brooke, she was prepared to move heaven and earth to accommodate her beloved patron.

      Thus she had steeled herself to come today to Glennhaven to begin the bittersweet task of organizing Cora’s possessions, pending