The New Girl In Town. Brenda Harlen

chuckled. “Actually, she looks exactly like Nick’s baby pictures.”

      “No kidding?” He glanced at the proud father standing by the window. “Let’s hope she has better luck as she grows up.”

      His partner chose to ignore the comment, asking instead, “How was your appointment with Ms. Kozlowski?”

      “It was…interesting,” he said, unconsciously echoing Zoe’s description of their initial meeting. He carried the vase of flowers he’d brought for Jessica over to the windowsill to join the other arrangements that were already there. “The house needs a lot of work.”

      “What did you think of the owner?” Jess asked.

      “I think she needs her head examined,” he said. “And so do you, for not trying to talk her out of buying that place.”

      “No one could have talked her out of it.”

      Mason had caught only a glimpse of Zoe’s steely determination and guessed Jess was probably right.

      “You still should have tried,” he said, setting the pint of promised ice cream and a plastic spoon on the table beside her bed.

      “If she hadn’t bought it, we wouldn’t have got the referral,” Nick pointed out. “And it would’ve killed you to watch another architect put his hands all over that house.”

      “So long as you keep your hands on the house,” Jess said.

      Nick lifted an eyebrow in silent question.

      Mason shook his head. “She’s not my type.”

      “Is she female?” his friend asked dryly.

      “A very attractive female,” Jess interjected. “Who’s new in town and doesn’t need to be hit on by the first guy she meets.”

      “I was the consummate professional,” Mason assured her, and it was true—even if he’d had some very personal and inappropriate thoughts about her.

      The baby squirmed, and when Jess started to shift her to the other arm, Nick swooped in and picked her up.

      “Do you want to hold her?” he asked his friend.

      Mason took an instinctive step in retreat. “No, um, thanks, but, um…”

      Jess took advantage of having her hands free to reach for the container of ice cream. As she pried open the lid, she commented, “I’ve never seen you back away from a woman before, Mason.”

      “My experience is with babes, not babies.” He felt a quick spurt of panic as his friend deposited the infant in his arms and stepped away, leaving the tiny fragile bundle in his awkward grasp. Then he gazed at the angelic face again and his heart simply melted.

      He reminded himself that he didn’t want what his friends had. Marriage, children, family—they were the kind of ties he didn’t dare risk. Yet somehow, these friends had become his extended family.

      He’d had a family once, a long time ago. Parents who had loved one another and doted on their two sons. He’d been fourteen years old when his mother got sick; Tyler had been only ten. Elaine Sullivan had valiantly fought the disease for almost two years, but everyone had known it was only a matter of time. The ravages of the illness had been obvious in her sunken cheeks, dull eyes and pasty skin.

      Gord Sullivan had fallen apart when he’d realized the woman he loved was dying. Unable to deal with the ravages of her illness, he’d looked for solace in whiskey—and other women. Mason had never figured out if it was denial or some kind of coping mechanism. He only knew that his father’s abandonment had hurt his mother more than the disease that had eaten away at her body.

      Four years after they’d lowered Elaine’s coffin into the ground, her husband was laid to rest beside her. The doctors blamed his death on cirrhosis of the liver. Mason knew his father had really died of a broken heart.

      It was a hard but unforgettable lesson, and when he’d buried his father, Mason had promised himself he wouldn’t ever let himself love that deeply or be that vulnerable. He refused to risk that kind of loss again.

      And yet, when he looked at Nick and Jess and their new baby, the obvious love they felt for one another evident in every look that passed between them, he found himself wanting to believe that happy endings were possible. He wanted to believe his friends would be luckier than his parents.

      

      One of the drawbacks of buying the house and its contents, Zoe realized, was having to clean the house and its contents. After Beatrice Hadfield died, her grandson hadn’t removed anything from the house, which meant there was a lot of cleaning up to do before she could even begin to tackle the dust and cobwebs that had taken up residence in the vacant house over the past couple of years.

      She took down all the curtains and stripped the beds, then spent half a day and a couple rolls of quarters at The Laundry Basket in town. She emptied out closets and dressers and shelves and cupboards and packed up dozens of boxes for charity. She sorted through cabinets full of china and stemware, tossing out anything that was cracked or chipped. When she was done, she still had enough pieces left to serve a five-course meal to twenty guests.

      It took her three days to get through the rooms on the first two floors, then three more days to sort through everything in the attic. There were trunks of old clothes, shelves of old books and boxes and boxes of papers and photos. She was tempted to just toss everything—it would certainly be the quickest and easiest solution—but her conscience wouldn’t let her throw out anything without first knowing what it was.

      She found letters and journals and lost a whole day reading through them. She felt guilty when she opened the cover of what she quickly realized was a personal journal of Beatrice Hadfield’s from some fifty years back, but the remorse was eclipsed by curiosity as the woman’s bold writing style and recitation of details quickly drew Zoe into the world in which she’d lived back then—and the passionate affair the woman had had with a writer who had rented a room in the house for several months one summer. A writer who had gone on to win several awards for plays, more than one of which Zoe had seen on Broadway.

      On the morning of the seventh day in her new home, there was still cleaning to be done and she’d run out of supplies. So she grabbed her keys and purse and headed into town for what was intended as a quick stop at Anderson’s Hardware. She didn’t anticipate that being a newcomer in a town where almost everyone knew everyone else would make her a curiosity.

      She’d barely managed to put the first items—a bucket and mop—in her cart when a tall, white-haired man approached.

      “I’m Harry Anderson,” he said. “You must be the young lady who bought the Hadfield place.”

      She nodded. “Zoe Kozlowski.”

      “Welcome to Pinehurst, Zoe.” He smiled. “Is there anything I can help you find?”

      “I just needed to pick up a few cleaning supplies.”

      She thought she was capable of browsing and making her own selections, but Harry Anderson clearly had other ideas. Instead of leaving her to her shopping, he guided her around the store, asking questions and making suggestions along the way.

      Other customers came and went, each one exchanging greetings with the store owner who, in turn, insisted on introducing her. While he was occupied with Sue Walton—“her family owns the ice-cream parlor down the street”—she steered her cart toward the checkout.

      She wasn’t sure she had everything she’d need, but she had at least enough to get started and she really wanted to get back home and do just that. She was paying for her purchases when Tina Stilwell, her real estate agent, came into the store.

      “I thought that was your car outside,” Tina said to Zoe, then she stood on tiptoes to kiss the cheek of the man beside her, “Hello, Uncle Harry.”

      “Hello, darling.”

      “Did