Dreams of Fire (Maple Hill Chronicles Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

contemplated color schemes from the three sample palettes laid out on the floor around her. The ceilings were high. She was going to have to borrow a ladder from someone. Maybe a neighbor would be willing to lend her one? Perhaps she could introduce herself tomorrow evening after people got home from work.
    She wanted to unpack and get rid of these boxes, but if she was going to paint, that wasn’t a good idea. The floor in here was pretty dirty, and there was dust everywhere. Maybe clean everything first, then paint, then unpack. It was a really good thing she didn’t have pressing deadlines at the moment.  
    She polished off both salads and gathered Oscar into her arms for some quality kitty time. He sat in her lap, twelve pounds of solid tabby, purring loudly and rubbing his head on her hands. When she put her hands down, he butted his head against her chin. After a bit, she urged him off her lap and cleaned up their respective dishes.
    Wandering down the hall to her bedroom, she looked at the stacks of boxes piled everywhere, the unmade bed, and closet doors ajar. It wasn’t particularly inviting, so she found the boxes with sheets and blankets and towels and set about making the bed and making the bathroom homier. The evening sun streamed in the western window and added to the heat inside. There was no air conditioning in the house, only central heating, she recalled. Curtains might help. She earnestly hoped the house cooled down overnight.
    With the bed made and the boxes pushed against the walls so she could get around without tripping, the room looked a little better. Tomorrow she would deal with putting the rest of the house in order.  
    There had been no time to hook up cable or Internet service, so she was temporarily out of entertainment. But she found her bedside clock/radio and brought it into the living room. She spun the tuner to a classic rock station and turned it up to fill the heavy silence as she pushed some more boxes around in the living room. She’d wanted to put the sofa in front of the fireplace but realized that might not work. Whoever had designed the house had made a straight path between the front door and the hallway right past the fireplace. She supposed that she could set the sofa back from the pathway and still use it but couldn’t see how it would work yet. She stood with her back to the fireplace and tried to imagine how things would look.  
    It was nearly full dark outside now, and only the light from the overhead fixture lit the room, making shadows everywhere. The silence was broken only by the forlorn, small sound of the little radio. She was used to the constant noise of traffic outside as well as the muffled voices, footsteps, bumps and bangs of other people living in the building around her. The quiet was disconcerting and got on her nerves. She really hadn’t thought about this when she’d imagined living in the country.
    She suddenly remembered Oscar’s fright upstairs and the unexplored basement below her feet. She was in a little island of light between two unknown, foreboding floors. Her belly did a few anxious flip-flops. What if the basement and attic were full of old junk? She’d have to spend hours cleaning it out. Much worse, what if there was a body hidden under all of it? Sometimes the house felt creepy enough to have a dead, shriveled corpse in the rafters. She shivered.
    “Oh, this is stupid! I don’t want to be afraid in my own house!” She got up and went to the kitchen for some more ice cream. She took the whole pint back to the sofa and tucked her feet up on the cushions. Oscar jumped up and joined her.
    “There you are. Want some?” She offered him some ice cream, which he sniffed and disdained. “Cherry vanilla not your flavor, huh?” He seemed perfectly at ease for now. She stroked his beautiful fur till he curled up next to her and began washing himself. At least Geoffrey was no longer there to make her feel bad about eating the whole pint. She