A Family Likeness. Margot Dalton

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      “Mary’s upset with you again,” Gina said at last. “I promised I’d talk to you.”

      Roger sighed. “What did I do this time?”

      “It seems you’ve been sabotaging Annabel’s diet.”

      Roger looked up, feigning innocence. “Is Annabel on a diet?”

      “Roger, you know she’s too fat.”

      “She certainly is. She’s probably the most obese poodle in the province.”

      “So why do you insist on feeding her table scraps?”

      Roger grinned and began to carve another neat groove. “That animal was howling so loud yesterday the couple in the patio room were complaining about the noise. I just gave her an old soup bone to chew on, that’s all.”

      “With a bit of meat on it?” Gina asked wryly.

      “Maybe a little,” he admitted.

      She chuckled, then sobered. “You’re a sweetie, Roger, and you know how much I love you. But you’ve got to stop upsetting Mary that way. Someday this will escalate to the point where I’ll lose one of you, and then I’ll probably have to close the business.”

      “Nobody’s indispensable,” Roger said mildly. “Always remember that, Gina. You could get along perfectly well without either one of us. We’re just a habit, you know. A well-worn groove.”

      Gina glanced at him sharply, caught by something in his tone. “You keep saying things like that.”

      “Do I?”

      “Lately you’re always talking about how capable I am, and how perfectly well I could manage on my own. Are you setting me up, Roger? Is there something you want to tell me?”

      He shook his head and went back to his careful whittling. “I don’t like hearing you say you’d have to close the place down if one of us left, that’s all. It doesn’t sound like you, Gina. You’re a fighter, not a quitter.”

      “I know. But I’ve grown used to having companions in the battle, that’s all. I’d really hate to be all alone again.”

      “So why don’t you find some nice young man to work at your side?”

      Gina kicked his leg gently with the toe of her sneaker.

      “Stop that,” she said. “Immediately.”

      Roger moved his leg slightly. “I mean it,” he said, holding the shaft of wood to his eye like a rifle and squinting down its length. “You’re not that bad-looking, and still reasonably young. Aren’t there any decent prospects out there who don’t mind a skinny, freckled, hot-tempered girl with a will of iron?”

      Gina relented and sank onto the grass, sitting cross-legged next to him and frowning at a ragged tear in the hem of her shorts. “All the men I meet fall roughly into two categories,” she said.

      “Okay.” He put the wood down and rubbed his knife on a small whetstone, then tested the blade with his thumb. “I’ll bite. What are they?”

      Gina plucked a stem of grass and chewed on it thoughtfully. “Well, there’s the kind of man who feels really threatened by a woman living alone and running her own successful business. Those men seem to need to put me down in all kinds of subtle ways just to prove they’re still dominant.”

      “Mmm. That’s attractive,” Roger said. “What’s the other kind?”

      “The ones who think what I’m doing is great, because they could move in with me and have a nice free ride on my efforts.”

      “Equally attractive. So which category’s worse?”

      “I don’t know,” Gina said gloomily, throwing the grass away. “I hate them both.”

      “Not an attitude that’s going to get your dance card filled, my dear.”

      She grinned and got to her feet. “Oh, there are a whole lot of openings in my social calendar, all right. And it’s probably a good thing, because I never have .enough time to get my work done as it is.”

      “Speaking of work, what are you doing in the gold room this afternoon?”

      “Putting up new wallpaper. You should come and see it, Roger. It looks terrific, especially around the window seat.”

      “Isn’t that the paper Mary thought was going to be too yellow?”

      “Yes, but now she admits she was wrong.”

      “She does?” Roger’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Now, there’s a first. For such a timid little thing, Mary can be pretty hardheaded in her opinions, you know.”

      “You be nice,” Gina told him severely.

      She left him under the tree with his whittling, strolled across the grass and let herself through the gate into the courtyard, recalling, too late, that she still hadn’t told Roger about the cracked toilet seat in the blue room.

      No rush, she decided. Roger was busy with other things at the moment, and the blue room wasn’t booked for at least a week.

      She paused inside the hedge and looked up at the house. Even after all these years, the sight of its massive vine-covered bulk against the distant violet of the mountains and the cloudless blue sky was enough to make her heart beat faster.

      “It’s really beautiful, isn’t it?” a feminine voice said at her elbow, echoing her thoughts. “Like a scene out of Sleeping Beauty or something.”

      Gina turned and smiled at the honeymoon couple who, dressed in bathing suits now and carrying towels, were on their way down the path to the beach. They were an attractive pair, both medical students from Minnesota who’d just completed their residencies before their June wedding. This Canadian honeymoon had been a gift from the groom’s parents.

      “The house is more than a hundred years old, fairly ancient by local standards,” Gina told them. “Actually it’s quite a romantic story.”

      “Tell us,” the girl commanded, leaning against her young husband and gazing up at him. “We’re in the mood for romance these days.”

      Gina smiled, thinking about their cozy love nest up in the rose pink dormer room with its little stone fireplace.

      “The house was built by Josiah Edgewood,” she began. “Josiah was a Scottish nobleman and adventurer who came out to Canada when he was a young man and discovered gold up north in the Caribou region. Josiah made a fortune at his mine and fell in love with the area. He picked the Okanagan Valley for its spectacular scenery and mild winters, and started trying to convince his new wife to come and join him here.”

      “But she wouldn’t?” the young bride asked, still looking up at her husband as if unable to believe that any woman would be reluctant to follow her man to the ends of the earth. He dropped a kiss on her nose.

      “She СКАЧАТЬ