Secrets of the Lost Summer. Carla Neggers
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In the months since his father’s death, Dylan hadn’t dug through the contents of the trunk. He and his father had had a contentious yet solid relationship, but first the NHL and then NAK, Inc., kept Dylan’s schedule jam-packed, allowing little time to try to understand why Duncan McCaffrey had made the choices he had, or to figure out what treasure hunts he had left unfinished. Dylan didn’t need the money. Money was one thing he had in abundance, and how could anything in the trunk bring him closer to his father now that he was gone?
Dylan couldn’t imagine how long it would take him to properly sort through all the files, boxes, envelopes and scrapbooks stuffed haphazardly in the trunk. Hours and hours, and even if he had the time, he didn’t have the patience.
And there was no guarantee he would find one word about Knights Bridge.
He could send Loretta to Massachusetts to deal with the house and its offending yard, and with Olivia Frost.
He lifted out a tattered stack of a half-dozen manila folders, held together with a thick rubber band. He shook his head. “Leave it to you, Pop, to complicate my life.”
The rubber band was so dry and brittle it broke when Dylan tried to remove it.
He welcomed the distraction when his landline rang. He rolled to his feet and picked up.
“Check your email,” Loretta said. “I sent you some preliminary info on the woman who wrote to you.”
“Are she and Grace Webster friends?”
“Maybe, but Olivia Frost isn’t old. I can tell you that much.”
Loretta was chuckling when she hung up.
Dylan checked his email on his BlackBerry. Loretta had produced a photograph of his tidy-minded neighbor. It was taken at a formal dinner in Boston and showed Olivia Frost accepting an award. Apparently the owner of The Farm at Carriage Hill and artist of chives was also a successful, accomplished graphic designer.
The picture was too small to see in any detail on his BlackBerry. He went back downstairs and fired up his laptop on the kitchen table.
Olivia Frost had long, shining, very dark hair, porcelain skin and a bright smile as she held her gold statue and accepted her award. He couldn’t make out the color of her eyes. Green, maybe. She wore a sleek, rather businesslike black dress that came to just above her knees.
In another picture that Loretta had found on Facebook, Olivia was more casual, dressed in a denim jacket as she stood in front of an old sawmill. Loretta’s email explained that the Frost family owned and operated Frost Millworks, a small, profitable company that did high-end custom work.
She provided a link. Olivia Frost had designed their website.
Dylan called Loretta back. Before he even had a chance to say hello, she broke in, “I can keep digging if you want.”
“I’ll take it from here. Thanks, Loretta. What’s on the internet about me?”
“You beat up that Montreal defenseman—”
“It was a clean check. He should have gotten an Oscar for that fall.”
“What about the ten stitches?”
Dylan hung up. He didn’t care what was on the internet about him. He wondered if Olivia Frost had looked him up by now, or had even thought to, considering the condition of the property he owned in Knights Bridge.
He glanced at her Facebook picture again. It was more of a close-up than the one at the awards ceremony. Her eyes weren’t green, he decided. They were hazel, a fetching mix of green and blue flecked with gold.
He shut off his laptop and called his assistant to book a morning flight east to Boston.
Three
Olivia raked the last of the fallen leaves from the raised herb bed by her back door. The overcast sky and chilly temperature didn’t bother her. The snow had melted out of her backyard, if not in the woods, and signs of spring were everywhere. She loved finding shoots of green under their cover of sodden leaves. The physical work gave her a burst of energy. She was ready to head up the road to Grace Webster’s old house and start hauling junk. Naturally its owner, Dylan McCaffrey, hadn’t responded to her note.
What had she expected? After two years of ignoring his property in Knights Bridge, why would he care?
Elly O’Dunn, who’d provided McCaffrey’s name and address, remembered meeting him when he’d stopped at the town offices. She told Maggie, who’d then told Olivia, that he was a good-looking man in his seventies, with thick white hair and intense blue eyes. She hadn’t spoken to him, and she couldn’t fathom why he’d wanted to buy Grace Webster’s house.
Olivia couldn’t, either. She took her rake with her to the front yard, just as her father pulled up in his truck. She’d almost forgotten she’d invited her parents to lunch. As he stepped onto the dirt driveway, she noticed he was alone. Randy Frost was a big, burly man who had transformed his father’s struggling sawmill into a profitable enterprise, all while serving on the Knights Bridge volunteer fire department since his teens.
“Place is shaping up,” he said, walking around to the front of his truck. He wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves, and his fleece jacket was open over a dark blue sweater.
Olivia held onto her rake. “It is, isn’t it?”
He glanced past her at the woods beyond the strip of yard on the garage side of the house. The area had been farmland before World War II, but hardwoods and evergreens had reclaimed much of the land, old stone walls that had marked fields now lacing a forest that stretched to the shores of the reservoir. Any open land was behind her house and up the road toward Grace’s—Dylan McCaffrey’s—house.
“Snow’s almost gone,” her father said, then sighed, turning back to his elder daughter. “This place is in the middle of nowhere, Liv, even by Knights Bridge standards. Do you really think people will come out here?”
“I do, Dad. No question in my mind.”
“Maybe your sister can be your guinea pig.”
Olivia almost dropped her rake. “She and Mark have set a wedding date?”
“No. She’s waiting for him to come up with a ring. She’s a romantic, but Mark…” Randy Frost ran a callused palm over his salt-and-pepper hair. “None of my business.”
Olivia had graduated high school with Mark. She remembered him sleeping in the back of algebra class, but he’d gone on to become an architect. After ten years going to school and working in Boston and New York, he moved back to Knights Bridge a year ago and had no interest in living anywhere else ever again.
“If Jess had wanted a Byron-esque soul,” Olivia said, “she and Mark Flanagan wouldn’t be together. He’s a great guy, though.”
“Yeah. I guess. What have you been raking?”
“The herb beds. The lavender survived the winter. It’s in a warm spot by the back door. I’ve decided to host a mother-daughter tea as a way to kick things off and get out the word that The Farm at Carriage Hill is up and running.”
“Your mother told me. She says she and Jess are coming. You’re not asking for money?”
“Right. It’ll be like an open house.”
“Makes sense. Then your guests can go home and decide to book their own event.”
“I’ll have meals catered and focus on smaller events at first—teas, bridal and baby showers, meetings.”
Her father studied her a moment. “You sound excited. That’s good.”
“I’ve been dreaming about transforming this place ever since I learned it was up for sale. It’s happening faster than I expected, but so far, so good.”