Cold Heart by Sheila Dryden Read Free Book Online Page B

barn when he heard her SUV and greeted her warmly.
    “Hey Tucker,” she said giving him a big cuddle. “Sorry boy, you must be hungry.”
    He followed her as she picked up his dishes and went into the kitchen. She decided to just put his bowls down there and he was happily munching immediately. Lexi reached for one of the bottles from the case of wine that she had been gifted, may as well give it a try. It was becoming a habit she thought, but wasn’t a glass or two of wine supposed to be good for you. She wondered what she should have for dinner and finally after staring into the open fridge for a few minutes she decided she would cook the lone pork chop she had purchased.
    Before she cooked however, she decided that she would try to install the router that she had just purchased while she still remembered what the man at the store and the cable guy had told her. She would put it in the office and that would allow her Wifi in there and in the dining room area. That should suffice for now. Lexi was pleased with herself when she was able to attach all the appropriate wires to the appropriate places but then when she tried to set a password, she wasn’t able to. She found her purse and fished out the help line phone number she had been given. The service was prompt, a pleasant surprise and the fellow on the end of the line had things up and running for her in no time. He stayed on the line until she had booted up her laptop and managed to connect to the internet.
    Lexi was so pleased with herself that she poured a second glass of wine. She supposed it was time to do something with that pork chop. Here she was a trained chef but cooking for one was decidedly boring she thought. Maybe one night she should ask Carter to come for dinner reminding herself it would be strictly as a friend. Still she was smiling and she got busy preparing a meal for herself while sipping her wine. The wine was very good she had to admit.
    She wondered what Montgomery’s winery looked like. She had presumed the party was in his home but now realized she wasn’t sure. That would probably become obvious when they arrived. Once her dinner was ready she took it out to the dining room and Tucker followed. He seemed content to spend the evenings with her now and she was very pleased about that. She was convinced that before long he would be sleeping in the house instead of the barn. For now she felt a little less lonely with this big brown dog at her feet.
    Since her laptop was still on the table and connected to the internet she decided to see if the Montgomery Estates Winery had a web page. While she ate her meal she found the website and looked under each heading to see what was there. There was lots of information about the wines they made, their process, wine tasting and tours and also pictures of the outside and the inside of the winery and a couple of the outside of the house and the grounds. It was very impressive. She found herself looking forward to the outing on Saturday.
    Lexi went on to look at restaurants and hotels in the Valley and even checked out the menus on some of the websites. She knew that she wanted to make this a family friendly place so her cuisine would be much simpler than it was in most of these places. It was important to her because she felt that family life had changed so much with both people in the family working that she wanted to provide a place where they could gather as a family and relax. She definitely wanted the pond to be stocked with fish so kids could fish and she was thinking about trail rides of some kind.
    She was getting ahead of herself again but it was hard not to. When it came to dreams they couldn’t be too big. So just whose dream had this been? How was she going to figure out who the mystery woman was that Uncle Max had done all of this for. He must have loved this woman a lot. He had clearly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this place. It was nice for her because she was going to benefit