When Harriet Came Home by Coleen Kwan Read Free Book Online Page B

at least he didn’t refuse her straight away.
    “Come on, what harm can it do?” she continued in her shmooziest tone. “You’ll still be able to contact someone else tomorrow afternoon if you think I’m no good, and maybe I’ll surprise you.” She lifted her eyebrows. “Maybe you’ll actually enjoy your lunch.”
    His gaze tempered as he considered her offer. Instead of furious, now he merely looked steely. “Very well,” he said. “You cook me lunch tomorrow, and then we’ll talk.”
    She couldn’t help the tentative smile spreading across her lips as she let go of the car door. “Excellent. Is there anything in particular you’d like me to cook?”
    He shook his head. “I’m not allergic to anything. Surprise me.”
    “Where should we meet?” She thought of her parents’ bungalow and her mother, and quickly rejected that option. “How about I open up The Tuckerbox just for you?”
    “No. Come to my place. Noon. You know where it is.”
    “Your place?” She crinkled her brow. “You don’t mean…”
    “Blackstone Hall. Of course. Where else would I live?”
    “But I thought…”
    “The bank repossessed it, yes, but I managed to buy it back a couple of years ago.”
    A cloud of questions buzzed round her, but she had no time to ask any as Adam revved up the truck. He slammed the door shut then wound down the window to lean out.
    “I’m not in the main house,” he said. “I’m round the back. Just drive round till you see my truck.”
    He drove off, leaving Harriet to wonder what she’d let herself in for.
     
    Harriet had passed the wrought-iron gates of Blackstone Hall countless times, but had never actually entered the grounds. As she nosed her hatchback down a gravel driveway overgrown with weeds, her curiosity grew, overtaking the nervousness which had been brewing in her stomach all morning. She’d heard that Blackstone Hall was a magnificent colonial country home, and as she rounded a bend and caught her first glimpse of it, she wasn’t disappointed.
    The Georgian-style mansion stood on a slight rise, surrounded by mature Moreton Bay fig trees. Built of sandstock brick and slate, it had an air of refinement and historic mellowness. But as she neared, she began to notice the signs of neglect—the missing roof tiles, the cracked stained-glass windows, the broken wooden fretwork on the front veranda. A pile of rotting timber and building rubble mouldered on a patchy front lawn infested with dandelions and oxalis.
    As Adam had instructed, she followed the driveway as it wound past the main homestead and curved down the hill. Here was a cluster of old barns and dilapidated workshops, and on the rising slope of the next hill she spied Adam’s truck parked outside a modest brick cottage with a red corrugated-iron roof. She brought her car to a halt next to his just as he strolled out of the cottage.
    Her pulse rate kicked up as she greeted him. Adam in casual weekend mode looked dangerously attractive. He wore clean, faded denim jeans and a Mambo T-shirt. His feet were bare and his jaw unshaven, the short dark stubble highlighting his rugged good looks. He could have stepped out of the pages of an advertisement for men’s cologne, and here she was about to cook lunch for him.
    She lifted a box out the back of her car.
    “Here, let me get that for you.”
    His deep voice came from behind her, and her chest tightened when his fingers brushed against hers for a brief second as he took the box from her and carried it into the cottage. She inhaled deeply. What a schoolgirl she was. She picked up a second box and followed him.
    “Why are you living in this cottage and not in the main house?” she asked.
    “You saw the house when you drove past.” He dumped the box on a scrubbed kitchen table. “It’s not exactly habitable, so I’m staying here in the meantime.”
    She pushed her box onto the table. “What is this place? The visitors’ cottage?”
    “No. It used to be the