Her Very Own Family

She sank onto the stairs leading to the loft and pressed against the pressure building behind her forehead. What she’d told Brady about why she’d left her life was only partially true. But she wasn’t about to tell him that she’d simply gotten tired of people always watching her, wondering if she would yet prove to be her mother’s daughter in action as well as genetics. Part of the allure of Willow Glen was that no one evidently knew who she was beyond her identity as the newest resident. And she hoped it stayed that way.

When she heard Brady step back into the mill, she rose and climbed the rest of the way up to the loft. Once there, though, she felt trapped with nothing productive to do. She’d already crunched the numbers half a dozen times, and she couldn’t really start refurbishing the living space until the plumber and electrician completed their respective tasks.

It was too blasted hot to apply sealant to the roof, and she was too antsy to spend time in the same room as Brady. She’d really like to grab her camera gear and head off into the woods to photograph some wildflowers, a hobby that never failed to bring her joy. After all, she had all those beautiful, handmade frames to fill. But with so much to do, she knew she wouldn’t fully enjoy the outing. Time was money, and she wasn’t exactly awash in either.

She walked over to the small loft door. It would eventually become a window overlooking a bend in the creek beyond the mill and the long line of weeping willows lining the bank. She envisioned a gazebo in that bend complete with a table and chairs for special, private meals for guests.

Inspired, she grabbed her notebook of ideas and started sketching the gazebo and the surroundings. She pictured it white in contrast to the greens of the trees shading it, covered in twinkling white lights, a quaint table with two chairs in its center. A romantic spot for couples on a special date. She smiled as she imagined marriage proposals being offered there by nervous grooms-to-be.

She might not be lucky in love, but she had a romantic streak several miles wide. And this gazebo idea had it humming. Even though she should be focusing all her energy on the mill and not adding even more expenses, she couldn’t dampen the enthusiasm. The desire to go buy twinkling lights, tulle for the gazebo’s ceiling and magazines with gazebo designs rushed through her, but she forced her attention back to her list of priorities. With the structural work progressing well, she needed to go buy the lumber necessary for the construction of the kitchen in the back corner next to the stairs. She estimated it was time to look at appliances, as well.

After all, she was at a standstill on the mill until the electrician came tomorrow morning. Maybe she could get some landscaping flowers for the area around the front of the mill, and a couple of hanging pots.

Okay, she had to stop her runaway brain before she imagined herself right into debt.

She grabbed her keys and purse and headed for the stairs. When she reached the bottom, she noticed Brady leaning against the railing around the mill’s machinery, wiping the sweat from his face with a paper towel. She swallowed when she saw how his damp T-shirt molded to his honest-work muscles. For a shocking moment, she pictured her and Brady in that fairy-tale gazebo before she looked away and mentally smacked herself upside the head.

“Where you off to?” he asked.

“Need some supplies. I think I’ll drive down to Elizabethton.”

“Mind if I ride along? The last piece of framing I have isn’t quite long enough. We could use it for a smaller window, but not this one. And since the old man left me without wheels…”

So much for the peace of a solo trip. She forced herself not to scream at his self-invitation. As if to spite her efforts to avoid him, now she was going to be trapped in a small, confined space with him for the twenty miles to Elizabethton and back.

“Sure. We’ll get enough to do the window upstairs, too, while we’re at it. And make sure we get the best lumber for the kitchen.”

“Do you have the measurements for the upstairs window?”

“Yeah.” She patted her purse where she kept her running to-buy list. “Right here with your dad’s specs for the kitchen.”

“She’s on the ball,” he said as he pushed away from the railing.

It was hardly a romantic compliment, but she couldn’t help how her skin warmed as she met his gaze. Seriously, she should have dunked her head in the creek instead of her feet.

“YOU DO KNOW that Christmas is seven months away, right?”

Audrey glanced up from her spot in the garden section at Lowe’s as Brady wheeled the cart with the lumber needed for the window up next to her. He looked so at home here, in the middle of a warehouse full of home-improvement ecstasy.

“They’re for the gazebo, not a Christmas tree,” she said as she placed several boxes of stringed white lights in the cart. At his confused expression, she flipped open one of the magazines she held and showed him a beautiful gazebo decorated for weddings. “Guys find these things cheesy, but women will love a romantic gazebo by the creek, a private dining area for couples.” She looked at the picture again and smiled at the magic the simple picture conveyed. “We might even have weddings there.” She was trying to cram as much happiness and positive energy into her life as possible, and what could be happier than a wedding?

She hadn’t planned to buy anything for the gazebo today. But when she’d finished ordering what she needed and found Brady busy at the contractors’ counter, she’d gravitated to the garden center, where her imagination got the best of her.

“Does your brain crank out ideas even when you’re sleeping?” Brady asked, sounding amazed and amused at the same time.

“As a matter of fact, it does.” She laughed and tossed the magazines into the cart. “I wake up in the middle of the night and have to jot them down before I forget them.”

They started down the aisle as Brady shook his head once. “Sounds like it makes for terrible sleeping.”

“I’m not a very restful sleeper anyway.”

At least not since her life had been turned upside down and inside out more than a year ago. That memory dampened her enthusiasm, so she headed for the outdoor part of the garden center, hoping that immersing herself in colorful, fragrant flowers would lift her mood again.

As they moved up and down the aisles, she selected several flats of impatiens in a variety of bright colors, a couple of gorgeous hanging baskets filled with purple petunias and a rose trellis for the bush she’d noticed at the back of the mill.

“You know, if you’re going to put that gazebo in the creek bend, you might want to make a stone path to it from the drive, for when the ground is wet.” Brady pointed out shelves filled with different-colored stepping-stones.

Another unexpected expense, the type she suspected Brady wouldn’t think twice about, but a good idea nonetheless. “So, what do you think, the gray or the red?”

Brady ran his fingers over the surface of the rock slabs in question, and an unexpected warmth flowed along Audrey’s arms at the thought of those long fingers doing the same thing to her skin.

Maybe she had stayed in the sun too long that morning and baked her brain. She felt like she was experiencing Brady overload. She’d caught herself snatching glimpses of him ever since they’d arrived at the store, glimpses she didn’t dare in the car because he would have noticed. But each time she looked at him, the more attractive he became. The archetypal sexy carpenter. She wondered if he looked as good as she imagined in nothing but a pair of jeans and a tool belt.

What was wrong with her? Hadn’t Darren’s desertion taught her anything?

But Brady wasn’t Darren.

Still, she couldn’t risk getting too involved, not when it could put everything she had and was trying to build at risk.

“The gray.”

“Huh?” Audrey zipped back from Fantasy World and stared at Brady, wondering what he was talking about.

“The stepping-stones.” He pointed. When she didn’t react, he pecked against the stone with his fingertip. “Hello?”

“Oh, yeah. I think you’re right. They’ll go better with the surroundings. That’s way down the list of priorities though.”

“Where were you a moment ago?”

“Sorry, brief side trip to la-la land.” Trying to dispel the jittery feeling threatening to overtake her, she took a few steps away from Brady and grabbed two pairs of gardening gloves hanging from a shelf. “You finished with your business?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, hello there,” a silver-haired lady said as she guided her cart up next to theirs.

“Hi, Miss Brenda,” Brady said as he gave the woman a quick hug. “How are you?”

“If I was any better, I don’t know how I’d be able to stand it,” she said with a big smile. She looked at Audrey. “Are you a friend of Brady’s?”

“This is Audrey York,” Brady said. “Dad and I are doing some work for her. Audrey, this is Brenda Phillips. She was my sixth-grade teacher.”

“Oh, you must be the little gal who bought the old mill,” Brenda said. “I’ve got to tell you, the ladies at church are already twittering about that.”

Audrey’s breath caught. But if this woman knew who she really was, why would she be smiling and acting friendly?

“It’ll be so nice to have someplace quaint to have lunch with the girls,” Miss Brenda said, giving Audrey’s hand a gentle squeeze. “You need to come to service next Sunday, meet all the ladies. Good way to start getting to know your neighbors and potential customers.”

Audrey managed a smile. “Thank you for the invitation.” Though the idea of stepping back into a church left her cold. Of course, that was due to what had happened with her mother and not the church itself.