I had purposely not paid attention to many details when the family had talked about what the inheritance included. Looking at the valley before us, the five hundred acres seemed a lot bigger than it had on the online map we’d checked.
The village of Wildstone’s bright, colorful buildings started not far from the opening. The old-fashioned quaintness of the place reminded me of something. A few of the houses even had thatched roofs.
“Some of those would give Nan’s purple house a run for her money,” I said. True to the culture of her youth, our Brazilian grandmother loved colorful houses.
“Very European,” Ezra said.
The place looked under construction, with scaffolding around several buildings. No workers labored anywhere, and it had the sense of a project interrupted.
“Is Dad responsible for the village too?” I asked, as something occurred to me.
“Yep,” Ezra said, his voice flat.
With a groan, I closed my eyes. I should have paid more attention to Dad’s plans and what I’d agreed to help with. We might have spent our junior high and high school years working for him and his construction company, but Ezra had good reason to be getting a degree in computer programming, and I had trained to be a pastry chef.
“Oh, look, Phoebe,” Mellie cried, pointing at the people pouring from the buildings to watch us drive past. “There are some little girls we can play with.”
Ezra and I exchanged glances.Phoebe’s back?he mouthed.
Through the rearview mirror, I caught Mom’s expression turn dark for a second. The therapist had told us two years ago that Mellie’s way of coping with the death of her twin included creating an imaginary friend with the same name. He’d assured my parents Mellie would outgrow it. We’d thought she had.
No surprise when Dad didn’t stop in the village. We all knew how anxious he was to get to the castle. Once we drove past the buildings, it came into view. In the distance, on a small rise, partially blocked by the gatehouse, stood the two front towers of Savage Citadel.
Everyone sat in silence as we approached it, even the boys. The gatehouse looked like a mini-castle, with its two towers connected by a building-like bridge thingy. Someone must live there because curtains hung from the windows. Pretty cool looking, actually. If I wanted to be honest with myself—and I wasn’t sure I did—everything about the valley looked pretty cool.
Dad stopped in front of the gatehouse. Mom pulled up beside the moving truck, and the boys scrambled out.
“That wouldn’t be very effective at keeping out an advancing army.” Ezra pointed to the low stone wall, not more than three feet high, that ran out from the gatehouse. It formed a fence around the large castle grounds.
“Maybe our nutcase ancestor figured he didn’t need fortress walls here.” Leaning over, I turned my head toward him while I searched for my sandals. “Who would attack here, anyway? Canadians?” I grinned.
He shot me a flat look as he unzipped his laptop case. “The problems between the early settlers and the local tribes had calmed down by the time this thing was reconstructed here in the mid to late 1800s.”
“Look.” Mellie tugged on my sleeve. “Who are those people?”
With the sandal in hand, I straightened. A gray-haired woman was shaking my dad’s hand. She stood nearly as tall as he, and the younger man who waited a couple of steps back towered over them.
“No way.” My heart beat a little faster, and I leaned closer to the window. Mellie pushed past me and hopped from the car behind the boys.
“What do you see?” Ezra lowered his head to peer out my window.
“Remember last summer? The guy doing the gardening internship?” The guy I’d crushed onallsummer. He’d boarded with the parents of one of Ezra’s friends.
“Yeah, I do.” Ezra grinned. “Coop Montgomery.”
Coophere. I slid on my shoes, trying to think calm thoughts.
“Montgomery. Of course,” Ezra said. “Don’t know why I never considered it.”
“Never considered what?”
“Haven’t you listened toanythingDad’s talked about the last two months? The caretakers here are theMontgomerys.” In his hurry, Ezra was struggling to get the laptop straight enough to slide into its case. “I mean, what are the odds our Montgomery would belong to these Montgomerys?” He finally shoved his not-quite-loaded computer and bag to the side, opened his door, and got out. “I don’t see anyone who might be Mr. Montgomery anywhere, so he must be up at the castle. Come on.” He didn’t wait for me but turned and jogged toward the group.
Taking my time, I eased from the car and tried not to look like I was looking at Coop. I was coolness personified. Not a sign showed of the tingles running clear down to my toes, or the swirling butterflies that had taken up residence in my stomach. I hoped.
Last summer had been the best of my life, and Coop had been a huge part of it. Since Ezra and I usually hung out with the same friends, we’d always done a lot of things together—camping, rafting down the American River, boating on Folsom Lake. Coop had spent most of that time around us, and I’d thought maybe …
Well, it hadn’t mattered anyway. The summer idyll had ended; he’d gone back home. I stole a glance at him. Here. How crazy was that?
