The Debutante's Second Chance. Liz Flaherty

almost grinned. She was, indeed, a licensed Realtor, but her sole contribution to the field was answering the phones at Davis Realty when the receptionist didn’t show up for work.

      “Of course,” she said, and some devil made her add, “Any particular area?”

      He got to his feet, reaching for his coat. “Yeah, I was thinking about something on the River Walk.”

      

      He hadn’t been thinking that at all, but it was worth the lie to see the look of dismay on Lucas Trent’s face, the quick shimmer of glee that crossed Landy’s features. “Are you free now?” Micah asked. “I could buy you a cup of coffee and give you an idea what I’m looking for.”

      Mrs. Burnside took the pitcher Landy was drying from her hands. “She’s free, but you buy her some dinner, too, Micah. She doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.”

      “You kids go ahead.” Micah’s father spoke. “I’ll help finish up here.”

      Landy looked as though she wanted to argue, but Nancy Burnside was holding out her black pea coat expectantly. “All right,” Landy said finally, slipping her arms into the extended sleeves.

      Micah put a hand under her elbow as they ascended the basement stairs. She had a hitch in her walk, and he wondered if she was on the tail end of a sprained ankle. He didn’t ask, but when she pitched slightly sideways at the landing, he tightened his hand.

      “I really don’t do much with real estate,” she said. “Taking the course was just one of the things I did to keep busy at a time in my life.”

      “I know you don’t.” Jenny had told him that much.

      They crossed the church foyer, and he kept his hand under her arm, liking its warmth, the way the heat moved through his own veins.

      In a few minutes, they were seated across from each other in the back booth of the café, Jenny’s fresh coffee steaming between them.

      “What kind of house do you have in mind?” asked Landy.

      “Old. Big. Near the river.”

      “Sort of ‘in your face?’”

      “Not really, although I’m sure the Lucas Trents in town will take it as such.” He shrugged. “I can’t help that.”

      “Tell me about you,” she urged, lifting her cup to her mouth. “What have you done with your life?”

      Her hands weren’t like he remembered them, either, not that he’d paid that much attention to them twenty years ago; her other parts had been much more interesting. In addition to the short, unpolished nails and the fingers’ lack of rings, the hands were thin and capable-looking. A few of the knuckles were more prominent than the others, one of the little fingers crooked. She didn’t flutter her hands or fidget with them the way nervous people he knew did; nevertheless, he felt tension emanating from her.

      “I went to college,” he said, “at the University of Kentucky and stayed in Lexington after that as a reporter and a columnist. I loved what I did, even though it didn’t leave a whole lot of time for a normal life. Then a year and a half ago, my mom died. My dad was lost without her, and the only time he ever showed any interest in anything was when we talked about Taft. The paper was for sale, so here we are.”

      “It’s nice to have you back,” she said politely. “Do you want to look at some houses now? I can pick up keys and take you to ones that are empty. I’m afraid I don’t know what’s available, but we can look at the listings.”

      Micah wanted to touch her pale cheek, wanted to murmur, “It’s all right. Nothing can hurt you now,” and convince her the words were true. He kept his hands wrapped around his cup.

      “At least with this rain, you’ll be seeing the properties at their worst, so there won’t be any unpleasant surprises later.” Her tone was businesslike and crisp, and her eyes avoided his.

      “Fine,” he said quietly. “Let’s look.”

      

      Narrow and tortuous, the Twilight River flowed slow and lackadaisical between wooded hills and dumped itself unceremoniously into the Ohio. Just before reaching the Ohio, the Twilight widened and splattered, looking on the map like nothing so much as a human fist with a short, extended thumb. Taft nestled in the V between the thumb and the fist, beginning toward the end of its second hundred years to meander around the edge of the curled fingers of the river.

      Some of Taft’s earliest inhabitants—the richer ones—had made a walkway around the thumb, complete with a narrow bridge that spanned the appendage. The corridor’s cobblestones had been carefully maintained over the years, its gaslights eventually replaced by electricity, and its park benches painted green each year and replaced as needed. The walkway was low enough to have been flooded a few times, but high enough to elude most of Mother Nature’s watery tantrums.

      Houses surrounded the walkway on oddly shaped lots, scarcely visible even to each other when trees were in full leaf. Most of the houses were old, some of them large and elegant, some small and cozy.

      Landy had grown up here, in her grandmother’s house at the end of the thumb. Blake Trent had lived four houses away, Jessie Titus in Landy’s grandmother’s carriage house.

      Micah had lived across town in what was optimistically termed a subdivision. Three bedroom, one bath ranch houses, six to the acre, filled the neighborhood. A sign at its entrance told all comers its name was Twilight View, but everyone knew it as the Bowery.

      “Do you live in your grandmother’s house?” asked Micah, driving slowly up the wide avenue the houses faced.

      “I sold it after…Blake died. The church bought it for a parsonage. I was going to start over somewhere else, but I didn’t really want to leave Taft.” She gestured toward the end of the thumb. “My house is further down.”

      Micah turned into the driveway of the house that was for sale, and he saw out of the corner of his eye that she was smiling.

      “This is my favorite house on River Walk,” she said, unfastening her seat belt before he’d even stopped the car. “It’s where Eli St. John grew up. Remember him?”

      Who could forget Eli? Class president. Another of the running backs from the high school football team. He’d been neither as flamboyant as Blake nor as good as Micah. “I am known,” he had said from his spot as the sixth man on the basketball team, “as the deuce of all trades because I’m not good enough to be a jack, much less a master.” He’d been, if guys had talked about things like that, Micah’s best friend.

      Eli, would you come and visit if I lived in your old house?

      Micah felt a surge of pleasure with the memories, and—annoyed with himself for the pleasure—said gruffly, “Is he still in Taft?”

      Landy nodded. “Not still, but again, like you. He got divorced a few years ago and came back here to raise his kids.”

      “What does he do?” Without waiting for an answer, he got out of the car and walked around to open her door, but she was already out, closing the door herself.

      “He’s the min—”

      She was interrupted by a shout. “Well, it is him. I thought for sure you were making it up, Landy.”

      Micah felt his shoulders being thumped and turned to look into Eli St. John’s open countenance. The face had changed so little since he’d last seen it that Micah thought for a disjointed moment that Eli was still eighteen.

      “Micah, it’s so good to see you.”

      “Eli.” Micah did a little thumping of his own, and felt his throat tighten.

      “Landy called and told me you were coming to look at the folks’ house,” said Eli, leading the way to the front door, “so I came over to hide where the roof is leaking and stop