11

      Peach Orchard Inn

      Present Day

      A honeybee orchestra serenaded the rhododendron as Julia led Eli Donovan out the back way across the plank-board porch and down the steps toward the carriage house. Bingo ambled around the corner of the inn to sniff the newcomer’s pant leg. A shadow of his former self, the old dog had once been as hyper as a kindergarten class on red Kool-Aid. Oh, the wonderful times he and Mikey had enjoyed. She wondered if Mikey remembered the dog who adored him, who had looked for him and refused to eat when Mikey didn’t come home.

      “That’s Bingo,” she said simply. “He’s friendly.”

      Eli scratched Bingo’s floppy ear and ruffled the neck fur, all the while looking toward the ramshackle carriage house. Julia winced, seeing it from a stranger’s perspective.

      “The previous owner, maybe even the one before that, didn’t do anything with it, either. The rooms are piled with old junk.”

      The tired two-story building with the sagging upper balcony sported a boarded-up bottom where carriages and later cars had been parked. At one end, near a tangled mass of wild roses Julia hadn’t had the heart or time to cut down, was an entrance door with a dirty upper window. The top floor would have been the living quarters for the driver and his family, though now the dormer windows were obscured by cardboard boxes and other stored items.

      “What’s in there?” Eli asked.

      “Odds and ends. Junk. A few ragged antiques. A bit of everything, I think. When Valery and I bought the house, we added to the collection. Anything we didn’t immediately toss was stuffed in here or down in the cellar.” And both had already been packed.

      He paused a few feet out from the building and looked up. He had a quiet about him, a deep reserve. She couldn’t decide if he was thoughtful or hiding something. The latter troubled her slightly. She knew nothing about this man who was willing to work for little beyond a roof over his head. What kind of man did that?

      A desperate man. A man down on his luck. A man with nowhere else to turn.

      But why? He seemed intelligent, well-spoken with the soft drawl of a well-bred Southerner. He was sad, an emotion that circled him like an aura. That alone had kept Julia from rejecting his strange offer outright. She understood bone-deep, unshakable sorrow.

      “A lot of work,” he said.

      “Too much?” She watched him in profile as he perused the derelict building.

      He was taller than her by several inches, with broad shoulders and well-muscled arms that had seen work. But he was too thin and the bones of his face were too prominent, as if he didn’t eat enough. Neither detracted from his dark and rugged good looks, though noticing men was Valery’s pastime, not hers. Yet, there was mystery about Eli, perhaps due to his tendency toward silence. Not that silence was a bad thing.

      “No.”

      Terse, to the point and a little uncertain, as though he expected her to send him down the road in that jalopy of a car he drove. He intrigued her, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

       Thanks a lot, Val.

      She’d never hired anyone for help around the inn other than Dylan Winfeld, a teenager who cut the grass when she or Valery grew overwhelmed. But she’d known Dylan forever. His family lived next door to her on Sage Street. Eli Donovan was a stranger.

      They’d reached the weathered entrance into the carriage house.

      “Where are you from, Eli?”

      The question seemed to catch him off guard. His hand paused on the doorknob and his body went still. He focused on the closed door. “Knoxville. Is this locked?”

      She reached into her pocket and handed him the key. The door screeched open and he stepped aside to let her enter. A gentleman’s action and one she duly noted just as she’d noted the way he held a fork and used a napkin and the way he’d remained standing until Valery was seated.

      “You have family waiting there?”

      Her back was to him as they entered the small space, but when he didn’t reply, she paused to look over her shoulder.

      “No,” he said, and something in those mysterious eyes flickered. Family was not an easy topic for Eli Donovan.

      “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’d do without mine. When—” She caught herself before it was too late. She’d almost said, When Mikey disappeared.

      Talking about Mikey today seemed to be emotional quicksand and she did not want to suffocate in front of a perfect stranger.

      “You have other sisters? Brothers?” He asked the question quickly as if he somehow knew about her son and couldn’t bear to hear the story again.

      “Only Mom, Dad, Valery and me, but a pretty big extended family.” She didn’t add that her parents had been divorced for years but lived in the same town without killing each other.

      “You’re not married.” Again, that terse comment as though conversation was a struggle. Was he naturally shy?

      “Divorced.” A wound that didn’t throb anymore. David’s marriage to Cindy Bishop had ended that. Not that she hadn’t wept bitterly when he’d produced another son within a year. He’d forgotten Mikey the way he’d forgotten her. Clean sweep, put the past behind him and moved on as if they’d never lived together in the pleasant three-bedroom brick house on Sage Street. “You?”

      Theirs was a casual conversation, nothing personal, a potential employer getting to know a potential employee.

      “Never.” He gave a short, self-deprecating huff that made her wonder.

      When she tilted her head in question, his gaze shifted from the rising stairs to the door leading into the carriage bay. “Up first or through the lower floor?”

      “Let’s go up.”

      “You should lead. I don’t know the way.”

      She stepped around him, aware of his size and close enough to catch the earthy, outdoors scent of him. Her elbow brushed his jean jacket and the rough texture prickled the skin on her arms.

      Disconcerted, she gripped the railing and started up. His movement behind her was quiet, but she could feel him there, a polite distance though still too close for comfort. She felt self-conscious, as if her hips were too wide and their sway meant something other than advancing up a set of narrow, rickety stairs.

      At the top, a musty, dusty odor greeted them. Julia stepped into the open space. “We could make two bedrooms and baths up here, I think. Or perhaps a family suite.”

      He regarded the crowded space with interest. “A lot of stuff up here.”

      “I warned you. Valery poked around in some of it. Old trunks of clothes, discarded furniture, tools, anything and everything. It appears everyone who ever lived here left things behind.”

      “What are you going to do with it?”

      “Considering we’ve had no immediate plans to rehab the space, I hadn’t really thought about doing anything, but you’re right. To transform this into guest rooms, we’ll have to get rid of everything.”

      “Or store it somewhere else.”

      “Maybe I could have a sale.”

      He hitched one shoulder. “Maybe.”

      “First, we’ll have to sort through, I guess.”

      “I can do that for you.” He gestured toward a battered vanity. “How old is this place?”

      “Pre–Civil