Secrets of the Lost Summer by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online Page A

water and ice, but he didn’t see anyone else out there.
“Buster!” the woman again called. “Buster, where are you?”
Dylan turned back to the dog. “You must be Buster.”
A note of panic had crept into the woman’s voice. Maybe with good reason, Dylan thought, noting that the dog was on alert, his head jerking up at the sound of her voice. She was probably less worried about Buster getting hurt than doing the hurting, although who she thought might be out here was a mystery.
Well. Dylan grimaced. He was. But he hadn’t told her he was coming.
A slim figure materialized around a slight curve in the road.
Olivia Frost. Had to be. She was hatless and coatless, as if she’d bolted out of her house in a hurry—probably when she realized her dog was missing. Dylan wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves but he had on a canvas three-quarter-length coat.
As she stepped off the road into the patches of snow and soaked, cold, muddy brown leaves, the big dog again became agitated, snarling and growling.
Dylan figured he had seconds to live unless he thought fast.
He put up his hand in front of him in a calm but assertive gesture that stopped any advance the growling dog had in mind, then called to the woman. “Buster is right here.”
“So I see,” she said, coming closer, freezing rain visible on her dark hair.
“He and I just met. He seemed surprised to find anyone here.”
Olivia came to an abrupt stop. She was obviously surprised to find him there, too. Up close, Dylan could see her eyes were definitely hazel, and even prettier than in the photographs Loretta had sent him. Incredible eyes, really, with their deep blues and greens and flecks of gold. Maybe they stood out because of the bleak surroundings, or maybe because he was just happy to have survived his first hour in Knights Bridge.
She frowned at him as her dog trotted to her side. “Did you decide to pull off the road and wait out the freezing rain?”
“No, although it sounds like a good idea.” With Buster visibly calmer, Dylan dared to lower his hand. “I’m your neighbor. You wrote to me about the junk in the yard.”
“ You’re Dylan McCaffrey?”
“I am.”
“I’m Olivia Frost. I thought—” Her frown deepened as her eyes narrowed on him. As cold as she had to be in her black corduroy shirt and jeans, she wasn’t shivering. “Are you sure you’re the right Dylan McCaffrey? I didn’t get in touch with the wrong one? You own this place?”
“Right McCaffrey, and yes, I own this place.”
He was obviously not even close to what his Knights Bridge neighbor had expected. Buster growled next to her. She made a little motion with her fingers and he quieted. She recovered her composure and nodded to the refrigerator in the muck. “Then you’ll be cleaning up this mess. Excellent. It’s turned into quite a junkyard, hasn’t it?”
“No argument from me.”
He glanced at the mess behind him. The cast-off washing machine was farther up the slope, in more prickly vines. Between it and the fridge were tires, hubcaps, a rotting rake with missing tines, bottles, beer cans and—oddly—what was left of a disintegrating twin mattress.
“There was never a report of a break-in,” Olivia said. “We suspect kids partied out here and got carried away.”
“Hell of a place to party.”
She seemed to take no offense at his comment. “As I explained in my note, I live just down the road.”
“The Farm at Carriage Hill,” Dylan said with a smile.
“More like The Soon-to-be Farm at Carriage Hill.” She brushed raindrops off the end of her nose, then motioned vaguely up the tree-lined road, toward the village. “My family lives in town. They’ll be checking on me with this nasty weather. It’s not as remote out here as you might think. People come by at all hours.”
Dylan realized her comment was a warning—a self-protective measure, given that the two of them were the only ones out on the isolated road. He didn’t want to unnerve her, but he