shop owner of Small Town, U.S.A.”
“It was home the minute I saw it. Come inside,” she said again. “Tell me what you think of the shop.”
Now she could picture it, Rebecca realized the moment she stepped into Past Times. The style, the elegance of gleaming antiques, lovely old lamps and glass and statuary. There was a smell of spice and baby powder that made her smile.
“Mama,” she said after turning around in a circle. “How does it feel?”
“Incredible. I can’t wait for you to meet Rafe.” She moved into a back room, setting the baby in a bassinet, then lifting Nate into a high chair, where he occupied himself with a cookie. It gave her time to take a breath. “Of course, you’ve seen Shane, so you’ve got a fairly good idea of the MacKade looks.”
“Are they all like that?”
“Tall, dark and ridiculously handsome? Every one of them. With bad-boy reputations to match.” She leaned back, took a long survey. “Rebecca, it’s always what people say when they haven’t seen each other for a while, but I have to say it anyway. You look wonderful.”
Rebecca smiled as she tugged on a short tress of chestnut-brown hair. “I got the nerve to have this hacked off when I was in Europe a few months ago. You were always trying to coax me into doing something with my hair.”
“I’d have never been that brave, or inventive. Boy, it suits you, Rebecca. And—”
“The clothes?” Her smile widened. “That was Europe, too. I had a crisis of style, so to speak. I was walking along the Left Bank and happened to catch a glimpse of this woman reflected in one of the shop windows. She looked like an unkempt scarecrow. Her hair was tangled and hanging down in her face, and she had on the most dreadful brown suit. I thought, Poor thing, to look like that in a city like this. And then I realized it was me.”
“You’re too hard on yourself.”
“I was a mess,” Rebecca said firmly. “A cliché, the dowdy prodigy with a sharp brain and bad shoes. I walked into the nearest beauty salon, gave myself no time to think, to rationalize, to intellectualize, and threw myself on their mercy. Who’d have thought a decent haircut could make such a difference to the way I felt? It seemed so shallow. I told myself that even when I walked out with several hundred dollars’ worth of skin creams.”
She laughed at herself as she realized that, after all this time, she was still savoring that moment. “Then I realized that if appearances weren’t important, it couldn’t be a problem to present a good one.”
“Then I’ll say it again. You look wonderful.” Regan reached out for Rebecca’s hands. “In fact, since you’re happy with the change, I’ll be perfectly honest and tell you I wouldn’t have recognized you. You’re absolutely striking, and I’m so glad to see you looking so fabulous.”
“I have to say this.” She gave Regan’s hands a hard squeeze. “Regan, you were my first real friend.”
“Rebecca.”
“My very first, the only person I was close to who didn’t treat me like an oddity. I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time what that meant to me. What you meant to me. But even with you, I had a hard time getting that kind of thing out.”
“You’re making me cry again,” Regan managed.
“There’s more. I was so nervous coming here, worrying that the friendship, the connection, might not be the same. But it is. Hell.” Rebecca gave a lavish sniff. “Got any tissue?”
Regan dived into a diaper bag and pulled out a travel pack. She handed a tissue to Rebecca, used one herself. “I’m so happy,” she said, weeping.
“Me too.”
Rebecca decided the rambling old stone house just outside of town suited Regan and Rafe MacKade perfectly. It had the rough, masculine charm of Rafe MacKade, and the style and feminine grace of Regan, all rolled into one.
She would have spotted Rafe as Shane’s brother from a mile away with one eye closed, so powerful was the resemblance. So she wasn’t surprised when he pulled her into his arms for a hard hug the moment he saw her.
She’d already gleaned that the MacKades liked women.
“Regan’s been fretting and fussing for two weeks,” he told Rebecca over a glass of wine in the big, airy living room.
“I have not been fussing or fretting.”
Rafe smiled and, from his seat on the sofa, reached up to stroke his wife’s hand as she sat on the arm near him. “She polished everything twice, vacuumed up every dog hair.” He gave the golden retriever slumbering on the rug an affectionate nudge with his foot.
“Most of the dog hair,” Regan corrected.
“I’m flattered.” Rebecca jolted a little when Nate knocked over his building blocks and sent them scattering.
“Attaboy,” Rafe said mildly. “If it’s not built right, just tear it down and start again.”
“Daddy. Come play.”
“It’s all in the foundation,” Rafe said as he got up and ranged himself on the floor with his son. They began to move blocks, Rafe’s big hands moving with Nate’s small, pudgy ones. “Regan says you want a close-up look at the inn.”
“I do. I want to stay there, at least for a while, if you have a vacancy.”
“Oh, but…we want you here, Rebecca.”
Rebecca smiled over at Regan. “I appreciate that, and I do want to spent time here, as well. But it would really help if I could stay a few nights there, anyway.”
“Ghostbusting,” Rafe said, with a wink at his son.
“If you like,” Rebecca returned coolly.
“Hey, don’t get me wrong. They’re there. The first time I got a good hold of Regan was when I caught her as she was fainting in the hallway of the inn. They’d spooked her.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Regan said. “I thought Rafe was playing a prank, and when I realized he wasn’t, I got…overwrought.”
“Tell me about it.” Fascinated, Rebecca leaned forward. “What did you see?”
“I didn’t see anything.” Regan blew out a breath. Her son was too involved with his blocks to notice the subject of the conversation. And, in any case, he was a MacKade. “It was more a feeling…of not being alone. The house had been deserted and empty for years then. Rafe hadn’t even begun the renovations. But there were noises. Footsteps, a door closing. There’s a spot on the stairs, a cold spot.”
“You felt it?” Rebecca’s voice was flat now, that of a scientist assessing data.
“Right to the bone. It was so shocking. Rafe told me later that a young Confederate soldier had been killed there, on the day of the Battle of Antietam.”
“The two corporals.” Rebecca nodded at Regan’s surprised look. “I’ve been researching the area, the legends. Two soldiers, from opposite sides, met in the woods on September 17, 1862. It’s thought they were lost, or perhaps deserting. They were both very young. They fought there, wounded each other badly. One made his way to the home of Charles Barlow, now the MacKade Inn. The mistress of the house, Abigail, was a Southern woman, wed to a Yankee businessman. She had the wounded boy brought inside, and was having him carried upstairs to be tended. Instead, her husband came down and shot and killed him, there on the stairs.”
“That’s right,” Regan agreed. “You’ll often smell roses in the house. Abigail’s roses.”
“Really.” Rebecca mulled the information over. “Well, well… Isn’t that fascinating.” Her eyes went dreamy for a moment, then sharpened again. “I managed to contact a descendant of one of the Barlow servants