New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers returns to her contemporary romance roots with a heartwarming tale of riches lost and found.
Beneath the surface lie the greatest treasures.
A wave of hope carries Olivia Frost back to her small New England hometown nestled in the beautiful Swift River Valley. She’s transforming a historic home into an idyllic getaway. Picturesque and perfect, if only the absentee owner will fix up the eyesore next door.…
Dylan McCaffrey’s ramshackle house is an inheritance he never counted on. It also holds the key to a generations-old lost treasure he can’t resist…any more than he can resist his new neighbor. Against this breathtaking landscape, Dylan and Olivia pursue long-buried secrets and discover a mystery wrapped in a love story…past and present.
Praise for the novels of
“Readers will be turning the pages so fast
their fingers will burn.… A winner!”
—Susan Elizabeth Phillips on Betrayals
“Worth the wait. Well plotted, with Neggers’s trademark witty dialogue and
crackling sexual tension, this is a keeper.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Whisper
“Brimming with Neggers’s usual flair
for creating likeable, believable characters…
She delivers a colorful, well-spun story.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Carriage House
“Well-drawn characters, complex plotting and plenty of wry humor are the hallmarks of Neggers’s books. Jo and Elijah are very well matched, and readers will root for their romance.”
—RT Book Reviews on Cold Pursuit
“A haunting romantic story.”
—Bookreporter on The Widow
“Showcases the award-winning Ms. Neggers’s unique blend of quirky humor, sizzling romance and engrossing suspense, which combine to produce irresistibly entertaining novels.”
—RT Book Reviews on Finding You
Secrets of the
Lost Summer
Carla Neggers
To Jennifer and Murray McCord
Contents
One
Olivia Frost dribbled water from a measuring cup onto herb seedlings lined up in tiny pots on the windowsill above her kitchen sink. Parsley, dill, rosemary. The window looked out on the alley behind her Boston Back Bay apartment but received enough sunlight to grow a few herbs.
No sunlight today, she thought, setting the cup in the sink.
Just when New Englanders hoped they could put away their hats, gloves and boots, March had decided to turn into a lion again. The weather forecast promised the dreaded “wintry mix” by early afternoon.
Olivia sighed at the fresh green of the herbs. She didn’t hate winter but she was ready for spring. March had less than two weeks to turn into a lamb and usher in April showers and May flowers. She couldn’t wait to drive out to the hills and quiet back roads of Knights Bridge, her out-of-the-way hometown west of Boston, and plant her herbs at the early nineteenth-century house she’d bought last fall. The purchase had felt impulsive, but the owners, desperate to make a quick sale, had offered her a great deal. She had never been one for extravagant spending and kept her expenses as low as possible in Boston. Instead, she had saved her money and was able to snap up her historic house, as picturesque as her hometown itself.
Except for the eyesore just up the road, but that was a problem for another