Sugar Pine Trail. RaeAnne Thayne

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СКАЧАТЬ specifically in the spindled Queen Anne style. It consists of seven bedrooms and four bathrooms. When those bathrooms were added in the 1920s, they provided some of the first indoor plumbing in the region.”

      “Interesting,” he said, though his expression indicated he found it anything but.

      She was rambling, she realized, as she tended to do when she was nervous.

      She cleared her throat and pointed to the doorway where the three cats were lined up like sentinels, watching him with unblinking stares. “Anyway, through those doors is my apartment and yours is upstairs. I have keys to both doors for you along with a packet of information here.”

      She glanced toward the ornate marble-top table in the entryway—that her mother claimed once graced the mansion of Leland Stanford on Nob Hill in San Francisco—where she thought she had left the information. Unfortunately, it was bare. “Oh. Where did I put that? I must have left it inside, in my living room. Just a moment.”

      The cats weren’t inclined to get out of her way, so she stepped over them, wondering if she came across as eccentric to him as she felt, a spinster librarian living with cats in a crumbling house crammed with antiques, a space much too big for one person.

      After a mad scan of the room, she finally found the two keys along with the carefully prepared file folder of instructions atop the mantel, nestled amid her collection of porcelain angels. She had no recollection of moving it there, probably due to her own nervousness at having Jamie Caine moving upstairs.

      She swooped it up and hurried back to the entry, where she found two of the cats curled around his leg while Audrey was in his arms, currently being petted by his long, square-tipped fingers.

      She stared. The cats had no time or interest in her. She only kept them around because her mother had adored them, and Julia couldn’t bring herself to give away Mariah’s adored pets. Apparently no female—human or feline—was immune to Jamie Caine. She should have expected it.

      “Nice cats.”

      Julia frowned. “Not usually. They’re standoffish and bad-tempered to most people.”

      “I guess I must have the magic touch.”

      So the Haven Point rumor mill said about him, anyway. “I guess you do,” she said. “I found your keys and information about the apartment. If you would like, I can show you around upstairs.”

      “Lead on.”

      He offered a friendly smile, and she told herself that shiver rippling down her spine was only because the entryway was cooler than her rooms.

      “This is a lovely house,” he said as he followed her up the staircase. “Have you lived here long?”

      “Thirty-two years in February. All my life, in other words.”

      Except the first few days, anyway, when she had still been in the Oregon hospital where her parents adopted her, and the three years she had spent at Boise State.

      “It’s always been in my family,” she continued. “My father was born here and his father before him.”

      She was a Winston only by adoption but claimed her parents’ family trees as her own and respected and admired their ancestors and the elegant home they had built here.

      At the second floor landing, she unlocked the apartment that had been hers until she moved down to take care of her mother after Mariah’s first stroke, two years ago. A few years after taking the job at the Haven Point library, she had redecorated the upstairs floor of the house. It had been her way of carving out her own space.

      Yes, she was an adult living with her parents. Even as she might have longed for some degree of independence, she couldn’t justify moving out when her mother so desperately needed her help with Julia’s ailing father.

      Anyway, she had always figured it wasn’t the same as most young adults who lived in their parents’ apartments. She had an entire self-contained floor to herself. If she wished, she could shop on her own, cook on her own, entertain her friends, all without bothering her parents.

      Really, it had been the best of all situations—close enough to help, yet removed enough to live her own life. Then her father died and her mother became frail herself, and Julia had felt obligated to move downstairs to be closer, in case her mother needed her.

      Now, as she looked at her once-cherished apartment, she tried to imagine how Jamie Caine would see these rooms, with the graceful reproduction furniture and the pastel wall colors and the soft carpet and curtains.

      Oddly, the feminine decorations only served to emphasize how very male Jamie Caine was, in contrast.

      She did her best to ignore that unwanted observation.

      “This is basically the same floor plan as my rooms below, with three bedrooms, as well as the living room and kitchen,” she explained. “You’ve got an en suite bathroom off the largest bedroom and another one for the other two bedrooms.”

      “Wow. That’s a lot of room for one guy.”

      “It’s a big house,” she said with a shrug. She had even more room downstairs, factoring in the extra bedroom in one addition and the large south-facing sunroom.

      Winston House was entirely too rambling for one single woman and three bad-tempered cats. It had been too big for an older couple and their adopted daughter. It had been too large when it was just her and her mother, after her father died.

      The place had basically echoed with emptiness for the better part of a year after her mother’s deteriorating condition had necessitated her move to the nursing home in Shelter Springs. Her mother had hoped to return to the house she had loved, but that never happened, and Mariah Winston died four months ago.

      Julia missed her every single day.

      “Do you think it will work for you?” she asked.

      “It’s more than I need, but should be fine. Eliza told you this is only temporary, right?”

      Julia nodded. She was counting on it. Then she could find a nice, quiet, older lady to rent who wouldn’t leave her so nervous.

      “She said your apartment lease ran out before your new condo was finished.”

      “Yes. The development was supposed to be done two months ago, but the builder has suffered delay after delay. I’ve already extended my lease twice. I didn’t want to push my luck with my previous landlady by asking for a third extension.”

      All Jamie had to do was smile at the woman and she likely would have extended his lease again without quibbling. And probably would have given him anything else he wanted, too.

      Julia didn’t ask why he chose not to move in to Snow Angel Cove with his brother Aidan and Aidan’s wife, Eliza, and their children. It was none of her business, anyway. The only thing she cared about was the healthy amount he was paying her in rent, which would just about cover the new furnace she had installed a month earlier.

      “It was a lucky break for me when Eliza told me you were considering taking on a renter for your upstairs space.”

      He aimed that killer smile at her СКАЧАТЬ