Page 43 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

Garrett glanced her way, a small smile on his lips. “That’s a very good point. Dad’s an atheist. All my efforts to tell him about Christ have been met with scorn.”

“Your mom?”

“She listens, but she believes like Dad does.”

“Are Dean and Deborah believers?”

“Yeah. Dean told me that he’d once done something much worse than breaking and entering, and he’d been given a second chance, and it was his pleasure to offer that same grace to me.”

Aspen reached across the console and laid her hand on Garrett’s forearm. “Thank you for trusting me with that story.”

“I find you very easy to talk to.”

To prove it, Garrett shared stories about life with his aunt and uncle, about all the remodeling projects they’d done together over the years, about his uncle teaching him to cook—which he hated—and to build furniture, which wasn’t his forte. “I mean, I can measure and cut and build things, no problem. But my uncle makes these ornate and beautiful pieces.” He lifted his large hands on the steering wheel. “These things don’t do ornate.”

“But you have an eye for beauty. That’s clear in the designs you did of the house.”

He shrugged. “I guess. Just don’t ask me to carve a table leg into the shape of a lion’s paw and we should be fine.”

She giggled. “I think I can live without that.”

They’d made almost the entire drive, and Garrett’s truck was rolling up the mountain road to her house. Through the trees to her right, she watched the world fall away and caught sightof what looked like a white field below. “What’s with that big valley?”

He glanced that way. “I think you’re looking at Lake Ayasha. Coventry is right on the edge of it. Three seasons a year, it’s beautiful.”

“But it’s white.”

He cast her an amused look. “It’s frozen.”

“Oh.” She felt foolish, but in her defense, she’d never seen a frozen lake. “Ayasha. What a funny name.”

“It meanslittle one.You can see it from your house, you know.”

“I can? I thought…” Right. The snow-covered valley she had peeked at through the trees. “That’s the lake?”

“You ought to hang around and see it in the spring. It’s beautiful.” Garrett made the turn into her driveway when he said, “So I guess I’ll start in about three weeks.”

“What?” She studied his profile and caught the hint of humor in the twitching of his lips. “Why three weeks?”

“You want me to start in the kitchen. You were very clear about that.”

“It is the most logical place.”

“If you say so.”

When he added nothing, she asked again. “Why exactly are we waiting three weeks?”

“Well, we don’t want to start tearing out your current kitchen until we get the new cabinets and island, and they won’t arrive for?—”

“Three weeks.”

“Of course, I have almost all I need for the bathrooms already, and they promised to deliver the new tub on Thursday, but you want me to start in the kitchen.” He shrugged, and she didn’t miss the smug look on his face.

“Why don’t you start wherever you want?”

“Well, there’s an idea.” He shot her a smile. “I wish I’d thought of that.”

When the doorbellrang that evening, Aspen pulled it open to find Grace on the front step. Though the woman smiled, her mouth apparently hadn’t told the rest of her face the plan. Her eyes were wide, her skin a little pale.

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