The Marriage Contract. Anna Adams

carved, a wooden sign banged against the house. Normally this sign hung from an iron arm attached to one of the clapboards. Rust had decayed the chain at the end farthest from the house, and the sign had scraped a rut in the wood.

      Clair read the sign, even though she knew every curlicue in the burnt engraving. The Oaks. An ancestor had named the house for the great gnarled trees that surrounded it. Clair’s father had burned its name into the current sign one hot summer day when she was still too small to reach the top of his workbench. Once in every generation an Atherton had to make a new sign for their home. Responsibility for renewing the sign had passed down through the family with the house.

      Fresh grief swamped Clair, but she choked back tears, unwilling to waste any more valuable seconds. She’d ached too deeply to surround herself with the familiar sensations, the sigh of the breeze that wound a loving embrace around the corners of her home, the click of branches that seemed to tap each other in secret conversation a human couldn’t understand.

      Ahead of her, something moved in the long uncut grass. A bird rose with a startled cry, and a wiry black feline sprang into the air.

      “Hey!” Clair raced for the cat to shoo it away, but the bird had flown out of reach.

      Clair stopped abruptly. Its original prey gone, the cat sagged into a crouch, seemingly more interested now in her than in the liberated meal that mocked him from the air.

      “Go away.” She firmed up her voice and wondered about rabies. Had this feral feline had its shots? The cat growled. Who knew a cat could growl? “Go away!”

      Throwing its entire scrawny body into a hiss, the cat looked painfully hungry. Half its right ear was gone, and something had nipped out patches of its coat. Just as Clair began to feel a sense of sympathy for a fellow stray, it turned and streaked out of sight. The grass closed, and she stood alone.

      She turned slowly in the new, unnatural silence. Wildlife rustled in brush that had taken over her mother’s once carefully landscaped lawn. Twelve years of neglect gave the house a lost look, which Clair connected with.

      She wanted to fix the house, make it a home again.

      She could look all she wanted, but she was a trespasser here. She had no rights. She wasn’t allowed to change anything—couldn’t help a bird, feed a wild, hungry cat, or clean up the bits of trash that had blown against the kitchen wall.

      Fighting a sense of futility, she understood the crippling failure that had hounded her father to his grave after he’d lost the house to Jeff Dylan. She didn’t dare go close enough to peer through a dirt-stained window. Emptiness inside her left her unable to look at the bare spaces inside those walls.

      WHEN SHE RETURNED to the bed-and-breakfast, Julian Franklin met her at the top of the steps. Decked out for court, he reminded her of the old days, when her father had teased him about his “litigious” wardrobe.

      “Hello, Judge.”

      His smile, lacking his wife’s nervous edge, greeted her. “Selina told me you’d arrived. I wanted to welcome you.”

      He held out his hand, and Clair clasped it. “Your house is lovely.”

      He turned toward the door and opened it for her. “All due to Selina’s reconstruction plan. I always do what she tells me when she makes a plan.”

      Clair laughed. “You’re subtle, sir. Are you saying she’s made a plan for me?”

      He took her hand again. “I don’t have time to be subtle. I declared a recess to give myself a brief break from court. I wanted to tell you we’d love to have you stay here as long as you can.” He let her go and reached back for the door. “God, you look like Sylvie. I’ve missed you and your mom and dad. There’s been a hole in my life ever since you left.”

      “Mine, too.”

      Grinning, he looked back one last time. “You listen to my wife. She’s rarely wrong.”

      Clair smiled back at him as he headed out. If Selina was never wrong, she’d been better off in foster care. Hard to believe.

      She glanced into the dining room. It looked empty, but a man’s husky voice came from around a paneled corner.

      “I won’t do it, Wilford. I don’t care who finds out about the will or anything else Jeff did. You’re an executor and my attorney. Get me out of this. Give everything to my mother.”

      “You know it doesn’t work that way. Your cousin will inherit and move her out like yesterday’s rubbish.”

      Clair leaned around the door frame, shamelessly curious, but when she met Nick Dylan’s dark blue gaze, she almost lost her balance and fell. She fled—from him and the appalled-looking white-haired man he was talking to.

      An image of The Oaks reared in her mind, peeling, anchored deeper to the ground by its aura of neglect. She’d lost everything to that man’s family. She’d had to flee, or she’d say things that would force her to leave a town where Dylan word might still rule.

      Crossing the lobby, she snatched a newspaper off the stack on Mrs. Franklin’s desk and sprawled on the love seat. Footsteps made the floor creak. She knew when she looked up she’d see Nick standing in the doorway.

      “Good morning,” he said.

      She nodded. He looked lean and barely leashed, as if the powerful emotion that darkened his eyes might explode from his body at any moment. Restraint furrowed strong lines from the aristocratic nose someone had bent for him to his surprisingly full mouth.

      “Maybe we should talk.” The husky voice that had drawn her into the dining room took on a deeper timbre.

      He stepped closer. She held still while inwardly she strained to look indifferent. Nick Dylan would never best her as his father had.

      “I don’t need to talk to you.” Her voice sounded smooth to her, and she took courage.

      “I know who you are.”

      “Because I look like my mother. You remember her?”

      He took another step closer. Losing her grip on her composure, she pressed against the love seat’s cushions.

      “Are you afraid of me, Clair?”

      “Your father bought our mortgage and bided his time until Dad got in trouble and he could demand payment in full. Jeff hounded my father into his grave, and why? For the sake of his sick, obsessive love for my mother. He destroyed my father out of vengeance. Should I be afraid of you?”

      Nick yanked at his black tie as if it had tightened around his throat. “I’m not my father.”

      “Then give me my family’s house. Do what’s right.” Her unreasonable demand poured out of her.

      His desperate look reached inside her, made her feel for him. “I can’t.”

      The other man had come out of the dining room. “Nick, your hands are tied until you do what your father wanted,” he said. He took Nick’s arm, but Nick pulled away.

      “We’ll talk somewhere else, Wilford.” He turned back to Clair. “I can’t give you that house. You’re asking me to do what I cannot do.” He turned and waited for Wilford to leave in front of him.

      Clair let out her breath when the door closed behind his too-straight back. She resisted the sympathy she’d felt for his pain. His weakness gave her strength.

      It seemed he wanted to give her house back, and she’d take it if he gave her the slightest opening.

      She turned her face to the newspaper, visions of her empty home haunting her. What if she stayed? What if she found a job?

      Assuming she could persuade Nick Dylan to at least sell her the house, she’d still never find the kind of money he’d want. How would she find a job that could pay her that kind of money?

      She simply didn’t have the qualifications to afford