for pretty much her entire life. There was no reason to believe that impulse would stop just because she had come home to Sunny Creek or because she was wounded herself.
Dark was falling by the time she pulled into the driveway of her bungalow—a renovation project in progress. She hadn’t grown up here; her mother had inherited the run-down house from a crazy great-uncle after Anna left town.
She could picture the finished craftsman cottage in her mind’s eye, but whether she would ever actually transform the decrepit structure before her into that homey, welcoming vision was anyone’s guess.
But hey. The new roof didn’t leak. And good Lord willing, the furnace she’d spent the past two weeks rebuilding would turn on tonight. Winter was coming, sweeping down out of the high reaches to consume the narrow valley that the Sunny Creek and town by the same name huddled in.
As she hustled inside her house on a gust of bitter wind, a few snowflakes flew past her nose. Yep. The cold was already cutting painfully through her California-conditioned body.
She called Vinny Benson, owner of the junk shop in Hillsdale, as soon as she shrugged out of her coat, scarf, sweater, and mittens. “Hey, Vinny. It’s your favorite impoverished house renovator.”
“Hey, baby. You coming to see me tonight? The windows I got are sweet. Original weighted mechanisms and everything. Dimensions are exactly what you need.”
“I’m sure I’m going to buy them, but I got hung up at the diner today and can’t make it over tonight. Looks like some weather’s blowing in anyway. I can’t risk the trip over the McMinn Pass.”
“It’s not snowing up in the pass, yet. Come on over to Hillsdale anyway. If you get snowed in, you can always shack up with me.”
A chill chattered down her spine. That was the sort of thing a teenaged Eddie would have said. Vinny was endlessly hitting on her, but so far, was harmless. So far. Not that she trusted any man to stay harmless for long. She had no intention of getting snowed in with him or anyone else. She took a deep breath and forced herself not to tell him what she really thought of him and all men. “I can head over there first thing in the morning to buy the windows. Just hold them for me, please.” She grimaced and amended, “Pretty please?”
She despised flirting with men, but if it got her the wooden replacement windows for her living room that she’d been hunting for desperately since she bought this house, she would find a way to stand it.
Vinny tried to extract a dinner date out of her in exchange for holding the stupid windows, but she made a lame excuse about having to work and dodged that bullet. Finally, he agreed to just hold the windows for her.
That unpleasant fire put out, she moved through the kitchen into the bungalow’s main room, a combination dining-living area. Might as well sand a little paneling tonight. The exercise would help keep her warm in the drafty house. Until those new windows were installed, she was resigned to more or less camping inside her home.
She set her phone on top of a cheap speaker and blasted beach music as she sighed, picked up a piece of sandpaper and went to work on the wooden wainscoting. At the current rate of progress, she figured she would complete refinishing the walls in approximately a million years.
It would go a ton faster with a power sander, but she was trying to save every penny and put all her money back into the materials she needed to restore the home. Elbow grease was free, and she had plenty of that. Besides, the mindlessly repetitive work of sanding wood lulled her brain into a state of thoughtless boredom in which she could actually, oh, sleep from time to time. And the physical labor tired her out enough that, on a good night, she wasn’t beset by nightmares that had her awake and screaming in the wee hours.
Sometimes, the enormity of the project she’d taken on got to her, though, and tonight was one of those times. In lieu of crying, she opted to sing along with a classic Beach Boys tune and dance around the spacious living room. It would be a gracious room if she ever managed to make it habitable for humans. Maybe someday she would finally put this house and her life back together. Someday. But not this day.
Brett heated up a can of baked beans and poured them over a couple of slices of toast. He was just sitting down to eat the makeshift grub when headlights flashed through the window. Reggie growled beside him.
“Now who’s come to bug us?” he grumbled at the dog.
Reggie merely glared at the front door and growled again, low in his throat.
A door slammed outside, and a familiar voice called, “Brett? You home?”
Oh dear Jesus. His mother. The original Morgan hurricane. No way in hell would she go away quietly after a few not-so-subtle hints like Anna Larkin had. And he couldn’t very well pretend not to be here. Miranda would have to walk right past his truck, parked out front as proud as you please, to get to the front porch. Swearing under his breath, he opened the door.
“Of course I’m home, Mother. My truck’s parked out front and the lights are on in the cabin.”
“I heard there was some excitement down at Pittypat’s today. Are you okay, sweetie?”
He ground his molars together at being called sweetie. He was a freaking commando, for crying out loud, and had killed dozens, or maybe hundreds, of hostiles over the years. Only Miranda Morgan had the gall to call him something so childish and insulting.
“I’m fine. Thanks for coming up to check on me.”
She stomped up the steps like a freight train gathering momentum. Nope. Not gonna take the hint to go away. Dammit. She barreled inside the tiny cabin, filling it up with her huge personality. “This place is a dump. You really should have let me redecorate it before you moved in here,” she announced.
“It’s fine for me. I don’t need anything fancy. Just a roof over my head and a dry place to lie down at night.” What he did most nights didn’t actually qualify as sleep, truth be told. He tossed and turned in between nightmares that woke him sweating in cold terror, most nights.
“Is that what you’re eating for supper?” she demanded. “Come down to the main house and let Willa cook you a proper supper.”
“Willa Mathers? Hank’s daughter?”
“Correct. She helps me out around the house and does some bookkeeping and filing for your father when she’s not studying. She’s going to school, you know. Working on a PhD in counseling or something.”
Good for her. Daughter of the ranch’s longtime foreman, he remembered Willa as a skinny kid with long black braids and a magic touch with horses.
“Seriously, Brett. I’m not letting you sit up here starving yourself to death.”
“Do I look like I’m starving?”
“All this time you’re spending alone isn’t good for you. Come down to the house and eat supper with us every day.”
Brett’s voice went flat. “No.”
He was not putting himself in the way of his father on a daily basis. No way. John Morgan was a born-again son of a bitch, and he could do without his father’s judgment and condescending crap, thank you very much. Just because his father was a decorated war hero didn’t mean his sons had to be the same.
Hell, he didn’t know if he was a hero or a traitor, anyway, after that last mission. If only he could remember—
“You sound as stubborn your father when you talk like that.”
His gaze narrowed to a cold stare. He would take that as a compliment, this time. “Don’t push me, Mom. I’m only here until I figure out what I’m doing next. If you can’t leave me alone like you agreed to, just say the word, and I’m gone.”
Miranda scowled back at him, no less stubborn than him or his father. Silence stretched