Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 80035 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80035 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Get this…I hadn’t been able to bribe anyone to come earlier. I’d asked the manager to handle it, but he had a dentist appointment and wouldn’t be in till ten. It was glaringly obvious that if I wanted anything done, I had to do it myself. There was no way I could continue at this rate and remain sane in this town.
And that was why I needed the hockey player. Denny was my ticket out of here.
My cell buzzed, pulling me back to reality.
“Hankster! How’s it going in the land of maple syrup?”
I smiled for what felt like the first time in hours and sat back in my chair. “Hey, Cassy. I’m okay. How about you?”
“Great. I wanted to thank you referring the Crane kid. I hooked him up with Jazzy. Remember her? She’s that Appaloosa I was telling you about. She’s just as sweet as Bess, and Max took to her right away.”
“That’s good news,” I replied.
Cassy agreed and launched into a report about the goings-on at the stable and a new client she’d taken on who’d recently been in an accident. She was an animated single mom in her forties who’d started out assisting me at the stable and had basically taken over. Temporarily. I couldn’t decide if I was grateful or jealous.
Definitely jealous.
I hummed as cued, ignoring the pang of homesickness while I stared out the window at the forest. I thanked Cassy for the update, assuring her I’d visit on my trip to Denver next weekend. Then I grabbed my hat and keys, pushed away from my desk, and at the last second, snatched the dog-eared Post-it note stuck to my computer screen.
A green melon…and a phone number.
A green melon? Mellon maybe?
Denny?
No, he wouldn’t call the mill directly. I checked my cell for a message from him, but there wasn’t one. Emily had handed over the note first, so maybe this green melon message had been important too.
And now, I was looking for clues to interpret messages at work. Wow.
I locked up and headed out to the lone truck in the lot. I started the engine before inputting the number. A woman answered on the second ring. I explained that I was returning a call, apologizing for not knowing her name as I navigated toward the main road.
“Oh, the wood guy,” she said around a cough.
“Well, yes. I guess I am. How can I help you, Ms.…”
“Mellon. Denny’s grandma.”
My eyebrows shot to my hairline. What the fuck? Denny’s grandmother?
“Uh…”
Confusion caught my tongue, but she didn’t notice. “I think I’m being uncool, but I don’t give a rat’s ass. I want to meet you to be sure you aren’t a psycho looking for a cheap story. I don’t drive anymore, and I’m not paying that cranky old Sal to take me on a joyride to Wood stinkin’ Hollow. You’ll have to come to me. I can offer you cookies or bread for your trouble. I work at the bakery in Elmwood on Tuesdays at ten a.m…or whenever I feel like coming in. Just ask for Annie. I have nothing else to say, so don’t make this weird. Good-bye.”
She hung up.
I stopped at the corner of Pecker and Belvedere to stare at the screen on my dashboard. This was a new one. I’d never been summoned to meet an acquaintance’s grandmother. And that was all Denny and I were…acquaintances. Nothing sexy had happened and he hadn’t agreed to help me out, so we weren’t even business associates. Or friends.
We were just…
Okay. Fuck it. I didn’t know what was going on, so I scrolled for the number I’d inputted a few nights ago and texted Denny.
Your grandmother wants to meet me.
I continued along the winding road to Elmwood, passing Lake Norman and the giant copse of elms near Carlton Creek. The moon shone like a spotlight on bare trees, church steeples, and quaint homes dotting the wintery horizon. I missed Denver, but I had to admit this place was charming and idyllic, like a picture straight out of a Vermont travel brochure.
I stopped by my father’s new house and checked in with the contractor finishing up the kitchen and bathroom remodel. It was very…nice.
The house itself was unassuming—a two-story white colonial with green shutters and a narrow porch. The hardwood flooring was in decent shape and the rooms were spacious with large windows overlooking a grassy field and the forest beyond. The kitchen and bathrooms had been stuck somewhere in the eighties and desperately needed updating, but it had good bones.
Dad hadn’t been willing to go from a sprawling ranch in the mountains of Colorado to a tired, hundred-year-old Wood Hollow house. He’d wanted the comforts of home, including a tricked-out, modern kitchen, space for his horses, and privacy. This was a humble version of Red Robin Ranch, but he would have approved.