A Home of Her Own Read online

  Praise for Brenda Novak’s “Dundee, Idaho” Stories:

  “A Family of Her Own is an emotionally charged, fast-paced read. I will definitely be awaiting Novak’s next book.”

  —RoundTableReviews.com

  “A Family of Her Own tells a story rich in internal and external conflict…. Novak also explores family dynamics, friendships and other relationships.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “Once again author Brenda Novak delivers a stunningly magical performance…. Novak’s fans will easily recognize her unforgettable style and characterizations from the first chapter.”

  —WordWeaving on A Family of Her Own

  “A powerful author, Brenda Novak is an expert at creating emotionally driven romances full of heat, sensual tension and conflict that not only satisfy her characters, but her readers as well….”

  —Writers Unlimited on A Husband of Her Own

  “Brenda Novak always writes a wonderful story, whether it’s her Superromances or her single-title books. I know when I pick up something she’s written that I’ll be totally satisfied. And I certainly wasn’t disappointed with this one.”

  —Old Book Barn Gazette on A Husband of Her Own

  “Brenda Novak has hooked me with her endearing characters and heart-tugging romance.”

  —EscapeToRomance.com on A Baby of Her Own

  “A one-sitting read! Kudos to Brenda Novak for an insightful and emotional story that tore at my heartstrings!”

  —The Best Reviews on A Baby of Her Own

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome back to the small town of Dundee, Idaho. If you’ve read the first three books in my series, you already know that Dundee is one of those places where family stands for something. It might not always be what we want it to stand for, but Dundee’s definitely a place where a person grows roots. Love the place or hate it, the mountains, the land, the town are in the blood of everyone who lives there. So far, Booker has turned his life around. Rebecca has married her childhood nemesis. And Delaney has given Conner the tether he needed so badly.

  So what about Mike Hill? Those of you familiar with Mike know what a good guy he is—and what a great catch. You also know he’s nearly forty and unmarried. It’s going to take a very special woman to bring this man to his knees. He finds her just about the time he gives up looking—and in a very unlikely place.

  I had a great time writing this story, especially because the inspiration for certain plot elements came from my own family background. I’ll leave you to guess which ones, but as you read, reserve a smile for those of us who truly understand the cliché “Truth is stranger than fiction.”

  I love to hear from readers. Please drop me a line at P.O. Box 3781, Citrus Heights, CA 95611, or visit my Web site at www.brendanovak.com, where you can e-mail me or check out excerpts of my books, research articles and win fabulous prizes.

  Until we visit Dundee again…

  Brenda Novak

  brenda novak

  A Home of Her Own

  To Tonya, my oldest sister. She let her friend offer me my first

  (and only) cigarette when I was eight years old and she was

  eighteen, then cried laughing when I nearly hacked to death.

  She locked me and my other siblings out when she baby-sat

  so she could bake cookies and eat them without us. She

  refused to let us cross the holy threshold of her room,

  where she entranced us (standing outside looking in)

  with such mysterious antics as burning incense and

  making bottle candles out of crayons.

  She also rocked me for hours when I was a baby,

  bathed me until I was old enough to bath myself,

  married young and let me stay with her almost every

  weekend, took the heat from my parents when I stupidly

  caused the loss of something important to the family,

  taught me how to cook and clean and decorate.

  You’ve been a friend, a sister, a mother to me, Tonya.

  For everything, I love you.

  Books by Brenda Novak

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  899—EXPECTATIONS

  939—SNOW BABY

  955—BABY BUSINESS

  987—DEAR MAGGIE

  1021—WE SAW MOMMY KISSING SANTA CLAUS

  1058—SHOOTING THE MOON

  1083—A BABY OF HER OWN

  1130—A HUSBAND OF HER OWN

  1158—SANCTUARY

  1195—A FAMILY OF HER OWN

  HARLEQUIN SINGLE TITLE

  TAKING THE HEAT

  COLD FEET

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE VACANT HOUSE LOOKED haunted. Large and imposing, with a full moon hanging directly behind, the old Victorian cast a grotesque shadow across the snow, and the windows shone like so many eyes.

  Ignoring the gooseflesh that prickled her arms, Lucky Caldwell stood on the ornate porch, braced against a chill wind as she pushed the heavy front door a little wider. She didn’t really want to venture inside now that it had grown so late. The house had sat empty long enough that rats, possums, raccoons or other crawling things could easily have taken over. Or maybe she’d find some mass murderer hiding in one of the rooms….

  If she was anywhere else, she’d head into town and get a motel for the night. But as soon as even one person in Dundee spotted the distinctive strawberry-blond hair she’d inherited from her mother, word would spread all over town that she was back. And she didn’t want to alert anyone to her return just yet. She needed to get her bearings. Coming here was a risk, a huge risk, and she’d never been as lucky as her name.

  The floor creaked as she stepped across the threshold. Instinctively she reached for the light switch, but then paused. Somehow, waltzing inside and lighting up the place seemed too brazen. She didn’t belong here; she’d never belonged here.

  But she didn’t belong anywhere else, either.

  Marshalling her nerve, she flipped the light switch anyway.

  Nothing happened. The pace of life in Dundee was maddeningly slow but, evidently, not so slow that Mike Hill, executor of the Caldwell Family Trust, hadn’t gotten around to having the utility company shut off the electricity. Which, after six years, didn’t come as any big surprise. She’d inherited this rambling Victorian when Morris died and hadn’t been back since. During that time, she’d received a couple of calls from Fred Winston, the town’s only real estate agent and a man she remembered as wearing a cheap brown toupee. He’d told her the paint was peeling and the porch was sagging and asked if she wanted to sell. But she knew who wanted to buy and the answer had been and still was—no. At least not yet. She had unfinished business here in Idaho.

  She set her backpack on the dusty floor and searched for her flashlight. Unfortunately, it was already on when she found it and, judging by the weak beam, had been on for several hours.

  Lucky considered returning to her car for the extra set of batteries. She’d had to par
k out front because the roof on the garage had collapsed. But she was afraid she’d lose her nerve if she turned back now. Better to forge ahead….

  She hefted her backpack to her shoulder, trained the dim light in front of her and left the door open in case she encountered something or someone she’d rather not meet.

  Entering the formal living room, she quickly swept the light around the perimeter. Nothing moved—but the familiarity of the place evoked bittersweet memories. As bad as her childhood had been, she’d been truly happy for a few short months while living in this house. Especially that first Christmas after her mother had married Morris.

  In the dark, cobwebby corner to her left, she could easily imagine the splendid tree that had once stood there, proudly bearing a thousand twinkling lights and an abundance of shiny gold balls. That was the first time her family had possessed enough money to buy a tree any taller than a token three or four feet. And to have it flocked with fake snow and decorated so elegantly was really an extravagance. Every year since she’d become an adult, Lucky bought as big a tree as her current abode would allow and always flocked it, on principle. But she’d been living off the money she’d inherited from Morris, which was barely enough to get by on, since she gave most of it away. In order to keep traveling, she’d had to cut down on expenses. The places she’d been renting, for a few months here and six weeks there, had low ceilings and generally weren’t the nicest. Which meant she’d never been able to duplicate the opulence of that damn tree.

  She wrinkled her nose at the musty smell and glanced back at the open door before moving deeper into the house. The moonlight filtered through the bare, thick-paned windows, painting silver squares on the hardwood floor and, together with the faint beam of her flashlight, made it possible for her to see.

  The Georgian-style staircase rose up in front of her. A large office with double doors jutted off to the right, along with what used to be an impressive library. Lucky waved a cobweb out of her way and poked her head into the library, then the office, relieved to find them both vacant of scurrying animals and—thank God—anything larger.

  She continued her search, pausing to listen carefully here and there, until she reached the kitchen and family room. Situated at the back of the house, they were more like one big room with floor-to-ceiling windows that curved into a semi-circle and looked out over the pond at the bottom of the hill.

  Unfortunately, most of the windows at the back were broken now. Bending to retrieve a small rock lying among the glittering shards of glass on the old stone floor, Lucky tossed it up and caught it again. So much had changed. Morris was dead. Her mother, too. Her brothers, Sean and Kyle, who were both older than she was, had sold the land they’d inherited and moved elsewhere. But the feeling of being unwelcome here, the resentment of this small community, seemed to linger.

  Lucky threw the rock away and watched it skitter across the floor. So much for the hope that coming back would be easier than she’d anticipated. Owning a house didn’t make it a home.

  Considering the state of the Victorian, she wondered whether she should sleep in her car. A metallic blue ’64 Mustang, it was fully restored and beautiful. But sitting out in her car would be as cramped as it was cold. She’d be better off inside. Despite the creepy feel of the place, she hadn’t seen anything more threatening than a few spiderwebs. Discarded trash here and there indicated that others had been inside the house since it had been closed up, but nothing showed recent activity.

  Her tension easing, Lucky delved into her backpack and retrieved her supplies. Ten tall fragrant candles. Three fire-starter logs. Matches. A jug of water. Trail mix. And barbecue-flavored sunflower seeds. Her suitcase, cleaning supplies and bedding were still out in the car.

  With its stone floor and broken windows, the kitchen was colder than the front of the house. But the family room portion had a wood-burning stove and provided the most natural light. Come morning, Lucky planned to make the place livable. For now—she blew on her hands to warm them—she just needed to get through the next six or seven hours.

  She lit the candles, then arranged them on the marble countertop. They created a dim, ethereal glow and gave off a comforting scent that helped dispel the dank odor of neglect. Building a fire didn’t take long, either, thanks to the starter logs. When Lucky was a senior in high school and Morris had divorced her mother and moved back in with his first wife, across town, where he’d lived the final few months of his life, Red had stripped the place bare. She took everything of value down to the drapes, the stained-glass window on the second-floor landing, even the expensive knobs on the cupboards. But, thankfully, she hadn’t bothered carting off the wood by the stove. Lucky used the last of the split logs to build up her fire, welcoming the infusion of heat and hoping it would last for a few hours. Then she moved gingerly back, her feet crunching over the broken glass from the windows, which was thickest by the stove, to watch the smoldering orange flames catch and grow.

  The fire seemed symbolic somehow—her first step, a beginning. But the settling noises of the old house reminded her that she still needed to explore the upstairs, just to be sure she was as alone as she thought she was.

  After tapping her failing flashlight, to no avail, she went outside to collect the sack she’d placed in the backseat of her car. She replaced the batteries, left the front door standing open again for reassurance, and climbed the stairs to the five bedrooms and three bathrooms she knew she’d find there.

  A dark spot on the landing showed water damage. Clearly, the wind and rain had pushed through a tear in the plastic her mother had used to cover the hole when she took the stained-glass window. Lucky frowned at the stain, disappointed that she hadn’t stood up to Red that day. Red hadn’t had any real use for the window. She’d stuck it in a closet of the mobile home she’d moved into when she remarried.

  But Lucky wasn’t sure, even now, that it would’ve done any good to fight her mother. Red had been determined to take absolutely everything she could loosely interpret as “furniture”—because that was all she’d been awarded in the divorce, and she wasn’t happy that ten years of marriage to one of Dundee’s wealthiest old ranchers hadn’t netted her more.

  The door downstairs slammed shut, and Lucky bit back a startled scream.

  “Hello?” she called, pressing a hand to her chest.

  All she heard was the keening of the wind through the eaves outside.

  She gripped the flashlight more tightly, her heart pounding as she listened for footsteps. She heard nothing but couldn’t help imagining ghosts. She certainly wouldn’t blame Morris if he’d decided to stick around and haunt this old place. After everything he’d done for her mother, for the whole family, he’d been treated pretty shabbily in the end. It had been his first wife who’d come through and nursed him once his health turned.

  But Morris had been a good man. Certainly he had better things to do in the afterlife, Lucky thought wryly. Chances were far greater that Red would be the one rattling chains and roaming the grounds….

  “There’s not much left here, Mother,” she muttered as chills rolled down her spine. “You took everything except the Sheetrock and the two-by-fours.”

  Silence settled on the house like a fresh layer of dust as Lucky leaned over the banister and shone her flashlight into the corners below. She saw bird droppings, an old rug that looked as if it had been chewed on one end, a broken chair. Lucky’s brothers, who’d stayed in Dundee a little longer than she had, once told her that Morris had never returned to the place or fixed it up after Red moved out—and they were obviously right.

  Finding nothing of particular concern, Lucky walked slowly on, still apprehensive as the plastic flapped noisily behind her.

  She discovered bed rails in two of the bedrooms, an old mattress with no bed rails in a third. The master had a large sitting area, which had been lovely. But the mirrored doors on the closets and the mirror over the vanity were now cracked. Graffiti covered the walls. Bitch! Whore! Killer!
May you rot in hell!

  A searing pain in Lucky’s stomach—her ulcer acting up—made her feel as though she’d swallowed acid. She forced herself to turn away from those nasty words and concentrate on practical matters. That was the trick, wasn’t it? To grow a thick skin like her brothers and not let her mother’s legacy of shame and embarrassment bother her?

  There was so much else to think about, so much work to be done.

  She glared over her shoulder at the graffiti. Maybe she’d start by painting. After a few months, when she had the place fixed up, she’d finally sell out and put Dundee behind her forever.

  Just as soon as she found what she was looking for.

  MIKE HILL BROUGHT his Cadillac Escalade to an abrupt stop in the center of the road and squinted at the property next to his ranch. He couldn’t tell for sure, but a light seemed to be burning in the big Victorian. From the dim glow, he guessed it might be candles. Kids in these parts loved to visit his grandfather’s old mansion. Occasionally, they broke in to make out or to vandalize it. On Halloween, he’d caught a group of teenagers trying to spook themselves by holding a séance, although they were too drunk to take anything seriously. He knew this because he’d done his best to scare the hell out of them so they’d think twice about coming back, and they’d simply laughed and fallen over each other as they piled out.

  He grinned at the memory. Mike didn’t mind a bit of fun and games; he’d never been a saint himself. But he was afraid some poor kid would accidentally burn the place down, possibly injuring someone in the process. And he couldn’t bear the thought of losing the house. Mike had grown up spending his weekends there, with Grandpa Caldwell. He loved the old Victorian, had always been told he’d inherit it one day.