Page 165 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

“Daddy, when are you going to get married again?”

His head snapped up. “Where did that come from? I’m not getting married again, Molly. We’re happy, just the two of us, aren’t we?”

Molly angled her body against a round table by the window and played with the fringes on the crocheted doily on top of it. “Uh-huh. But it was nicer when there were three of us. And I can’t have a baby brother or sister if you don’t get married.”

“You don’t want to share me with a brother or sister anyway,” he said with a smile. He held out his hand to her and she came to him.

“I wouldn’t mind. I thought maybe Uncle Tate and Aunt Shayna would have a baby cousin for me, but they fight too much. That wouldn’t be good. So we have to have one for ourselves.”

Max tried to hide his amusement. “There aren’t any women around to marry. They’re all taken.”

“There’s Becca. She’s nice.”

Max’s grin faded. “I don’t think so, Molly. She’s not my type.”

“She’s my type. She listens to me.”

“I listen, don’t I?”

Molly nodded. “But Becca is a girl.”

“When have you talked to her enough to know you’d like her? She’s only been here two days.”

“I went to her room when she was looking through the drawers.”

“What drawers?”

“In the dresser.”

Why would she be going through the drawers? The lower ones in the guest room just had old memorabilia from Gram’s grandkids.

“She was crying.”

Max’s scowl deepened, and all his earlier suspicions about why Becca would choose to hole up here came flooding back. She was hiding something. But what?

Becca broughtdown her packet of licorice tea from her bedroom and fixed a cup. She took her tea and an apple to the verandah and settled onto the chair. This was her favorite spot in the entire estate. From here she could see the formal English garden her grandfather had built.

If she followed the path through the woods, it came out to another stone house, this one smaller and crumbling to ruin. The folly, Gram called it. It sat on a sheer cliff and looked out on the water from the other direction.

As a child, she’d loved to roam the ruins until the summer she fell and twisted her ankle during one such excursion. Her parents had forbidden her to venture there again, but she’d sometimes sneaked a short visit when her ankle healed.

Maybe she’d just take a stroll through the folly after breakfast. She glanced at her watch. And maybe not. It was almost time to get to work. She was relishing the research, even though Max usually only answered her questions in clipped tones.

She was determined to do a good job and show the maddening man she was capable and not some airhead like most people saw her. Mom always said a capable, organized woman lurked under Becca’s surface flightiness, and it would come out in due time. Becca had decided it was time to prove her mother’s prediction.

“Ready to get started?

She whirled at the sound of Max’s voice. “Now?”

He tapped his watch. “It’s eight o’clock.”

She gulped the last of her tea and stood. “Sorry, I lost track of the time.”

He tossed her a steno pad. “I brought out a stack of books I’ve brought over from the mainland. You can start going through those today.”

“I like reading.” She fell into step beside him, and they walked to the library.

“I need to make sure I have myths and culture details exactly right. Did you bring me a copy of your thesis on Ojibwa culture? I’ve been forgetting to ask.”

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