of antique salt shakers was displayed on a corner shelf, meticulously free of dust. There were new drapes, expensive and overly ornate to Rosa’s eye.
“Hasn’t changed much, has it?” Bitsy sighed. “I guess that’s why you’re here.”
“I can’t believe we were chosen.” Rosa wanted to pinch herself. She was here in the old inn that held such bittersweet memories, and now she would be breathing new life into the place, repaying the woman who had breathed new life into her and Cy. “Where should we start? I’ll need to make sketches, consult with you on some color palettes, and we can come up with a common vision. I’m...”
Bitsy laughed. “Time enough for that. Maybe we should get you settled in first. I’ve closed the inn to guests for a few weeks. There weren’t many anyway, so it should be quiet.”
“We don’t want to...” Rosa’s words trailed off as a loud thump sounded from the roof. A slithering, scraping noise followed, and Bitsy’s face creased in consternation.
“What was that?” Rosa asked, already headed for the front door.
“Honey, there’s something you should know....” Bitsy called after her.
Rosa pushed the door open anyway, startled as a man dropped off the roof right in front of her.
ROSA STARED AT the man sprawled on the steps. First his eyebrows lifted in surprise, and then they lowered into a glare of unmitigated hostility, probably the perfect match to her own.
Bitsy pushed past Rosa. “Are you okay, Pike?”
“Fine, fine,” he said. He stood and unbuckled the tool belt from around his waist, brushing twigs and leaves from his jeans, spilling nails onto the ground. His forehead furrowed as he stared at Rosa. Her brain made note of his thick hair, now cut in a spiky, modern style, the slight dimple in his chin, his broad shoulders and lean physique. Her heart added its own observation: the arrogant arch to his eyebrow, his hands propped in irritation on his hips, the annoyed quirk of his full lips.
“What are you doing here?” they both articulated in unison.
Pike blinked. “Bitsy owns the place, remember? I’m a relative.”
Of course he would lead with that. He was blood. She was an interloper, a squatter on Bitsy’s generous affections.
“So what’s the deal, Rosa?” Pike demanded.
Slowly, Rosa turned and leveled a look at Bitsy, the picture of innocence.
“Isn’t this the oddest coincidence?” the older woman asked.
“Bitsy,” Rosa began sternly.
Cy inserted himself between them and shook Pike’s hand. “Hey, man. Good to see you.” He stared Pike full in the face, a man’s way of sizing up a potential enemy, Rosa knew.
Pike smiled, cordially. “You, too, Cy. Still hanging out with your crazy sister?”
Cy opened his mouth to answer but Rosa cut him off.
“Crazy?” she asked, lips twitching. “I wasn’t the one who just fell off the roof.”
“For your information,” Pike said, “I had it all under control. I didn’t fall, just skidded a little.”
“Uh-huh,” Cy said.
Rosa pressed her brother’s arm. “I need to have a private word with Pike.”
“You sure?”
She nodded.
“Okay. I think I’ll just go, er, sand something, then.”
“Let me show you where I keep the sandpaper, Cy,” Bitsy said gaily.
Before Rosa could get a word out, Bitsy vanished into the house with Cy. “I’ll talk to you later, Aunt Bitsy,” she grumped before turning back to Pike. “So, you were telling me why you’re here, Pike.”
His eyes narrowed. “First off, Bitsy is my aunt, so I don’t really need a more compelling reason than that. Second, the roof isn’t getting any younger, as you might have noticed, so I was doing some repair work at the request of Aunt Bitsy. Therefore...”
“You can drop the lawyer shtick.” He did it intentionally, to remind her again that she’d left law school while he’d sailed through on his way to a lucrative career that afforded him expensive, albeit attractive, haircuts and a silver Mercedes. He probably ran in the same legal circles as Foster Pardee, the man who’d used her. Her gut tightened. “I have as much right to be here as you do,” she couldn’t help adding.
“I didn’t say otherwise.”
“No, you wouldn’t actually have the guts to say it to my face, would you?” she snapped, heart slamming into her ribs. “Back in high school you made sure everybody knew my family and I didn’t belong in Tumbledown.”
His eyes flashed. “I didn’t need to tell them. They all knew once your mother...” His words died away as a look of horror flickered in his brown eyes. “I didn’t mean that.”
She tried to get a breath in past the pain in her chest. “Oh, I think we both know exactly what you meant.”
He looked down at the ground, and she heard him expel a breath through his teeth. “Your father tried to ruin my family. I had a right to be angry.”
“He was doing his job,” Rosa said.
“And I was doing mine, defending my father.”
She glared. “By humiliating his enemy’s daughter.”
Pike started to answer, then closed his mouth and fixed his gaze on a spot somewhere over their heads.
Rosa’s skin felt hot, as if she’d swallowed some incendiary drink that burned past her heart deep down into her stomach. “Maybe,” she managed, “we should keep our families out of this.”
“Excellent idea,” he barked.
A man in his mid-forties sauntered into the yard sporting a long ponytail draped over his shoulder and carrying a large wicker basket.
“Hello, Rocky,” Rosa said. He was an ever-present fixture at the inn for a long as Rosa could remember. Rosa had lived with Bitsy until she turned twenty, her brother leaving the year before. Had it really been sixteen long years since she’d moved away from Tumbledown? Her visits to Aunt Bitsy had become less and less frequent the more drama and stress filled her life.
Rocky was a veteran of the early days of the Persian Gulf War. He was a quiet man, and he could get anything to grow. Hydrangeas in a kaleidoscope of colors, daylilies, azaleas, spring bulbs.
Rocky lowered the basket to the ground while he dredged a stick of gum from his pocket. Then he flashed Rosa a peace sign, picked up the basket and continued toward the coop.
