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before dinner, Julie went to the little built-in nook in the kitchen, where she kept her laptop. She uploaded the pictures she’d taken, then opened a new file and typed in both recipes. Such a lot of meticulous, painstaking work, she chided herself. I really have to sit down and write that book one of these days.
    Done!
    Just time enough to wash her face and comb her hair, which she promptly did.
    “Okay, Gracie, go get our guest. You only have to ring the doorbell once,” Julie said, opening the back door to let the big dog out. Cooper waited to see if he was to follow. When he didn’t get his command, he trotted over to the sink and lay down on the rubber mat, his beloved red tennis ball between his paws.
    While the beaters went to work on the mashed potatoes, Julie realized that she was nervous. Just as nervous as she was when she had to look at the paper she’d been carrying around in her pocket for over a month now. Her heart thumped in her chest. When it quieted down, she muttered to herself, “What will be will be.”

Chapter 3
    D inner over, Julie suggested they head for the veranda with their second cup of coffee. Mace agreed, and they settled themselves in two of the five ancient—repainted a hundred times—rockers. The paddle fans overhead gave off a soft whisper of a breeze, while the mister sprayed the luscious ferns that hung from the overhang. Julie smiled when she heard Mace sigh.
    “This is so . . . I don’t know what the word is I want to use. Your dinner was beyond my expectations. I can’t remember when I had a meal like that. Probably when I was a kid, and my mother cooked for me. I can’t believe you cook for your dogs. Lola loved the beef meatballs you mixed with her dog food. I didn’t know you couldn’t give dogs turkey or tomato sauce. I never met anyone like you, Julie Wyatt,” Mace said as he held his face up to the mist swirling over the ferns. “I just love all this,” he added, waving his arms about.
    “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment, Oliver Goldfeld. Tell me about yourself. I probably should know something about my tenant. I’m not talking secrets here, just normal stuff.”
    Mace hated lying to his landlady, the same lady who had shared dinner with him, the dinner that she had cooked. Well, she did say not to share secrets.
    “I’m a pretty boring person, Julie. I never married.” That was true, Oliver had never married. “Corporate law is dull and time-consuming. I live in New York. There are times when I love it and times when I hate the frenzy of it. I liked this little town the minute I arrived. My original intent was to drive to Huntsville, but when I walked around your town square, and people—people I didn’t know—said hello to me and smiled at me, I thought this might be a good place to hang my hat for a little while.”
    Julie digested the information. She didn’t know why, but she thought Oliver was parsing his words very carefully. She decided it was the lawyer in him just being careful.
    “The South, Rosemont in particular, is a wonderful place. I had a hard time adjusting to the slower pace down here, slower even than in Vermont, which is not particularly frenzied itself, but I acclimated fairly quickly. I wouldn’t go back to the North for all the tea in China. And our winters are mild. The older I get, the more I appreciate the milder temperatures. How do you like living in New York?”
    “I’ve never lived anywhere else. Never found a place that appealed to me. Until now.” He laughed. “I might decide to retire here one of these days.”
    Julie chuckled. “That’s pretty funny. Everyone who visits me says the same thing. Then they go back home to wherever it is they live and promptly forget about this place.”
    “This is really a big—how should I refer to it?— spread , for one person living alone. Don’t you get lonely?” His stomach churning about the lies he’d told, with more to follow, he hoped Julie wouldn’t ask