Her Heart's Desire (Sunflower Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

than just a structure
built on some land. It represented her past and her future. Safety.
Comfort. She loved it, but loved Lucas as much. That was a secret
she shared only with the house. How would he react if he knew her
honest feelings? Would he brush her off this time, like the times
in the past, all because she was Craig’s sister?
    For some reason she hadn’t figured out yet,
she feared Lucas knowing the true depths of her feelings. Telling
him was a risk she wasn’t willing to take at this point. Her heart
still ached over the loss of her parents, and she couldn’t handle
rejection from him again.
    If she let him know how much she cared, and
he didn’t share the same feelings, it could very well be her final
heartbreak. Only then, would she consider moving off the farm.
Torture would be seeing him with another woman. If he
married...then Craig just might get his wish. She’d be the one to
plant the For Sale sign by the road. But she held on to a thin
thread of hope about Lucas. As much as the man infuriated her,
fighting with him was better than not having him in her life at
all.
    Walking with Gentleman Jack through the yard
and around the house, she surveyed what she owned. The house rested
on the crest of a rolling hill. A hundred yards away, oak and hedge
apple trees lined a stream slicing through the thousand-acre
property. Passing the line of birdfeeders, she made a mental note
to refill them. She selected different feed for each one to attract
different species of birds. Cardinals, blue jays, and a few
bluebirds came, along with brown wrens and gray doves. Just beyond
the yard surrounding the house, as far as she could see, corn
whispered in the wind and one field of sunflowers lifted their
faces to the sun. Here the wind always blew. She missed it whenever
she traveled.
    Satisfaction settled over her like a warm
blanket on a cool night. She’d show Craig. The crop had been
planted with a lot of hard work, and she’d already contracted to
have it harvested within the month. No way would she miss the
mortgage payments. The sale of the corn, yellow like gold, would
provide enough money for her to make it through the winter, plus
pay for planting in spring…as long as internet sales of the boxed
stuff her mother had left hidden in the barn remained steady for
the next few months. However, to ensure her success, it was time
for plan B, a visit to the gallery in Kansas City requesting to
show her work. If her collection of paintings sold, she’d be in high cotton , as her mother used to say.
    A trail of dust caught her attention. A truck
traveled up the hill on the mostly hard-packed clay road. She
glanced at her watch. The delivery driver was right on time, but as
usual, he passed the house, continuing on his route to one of the
neighbors down the road. Had her mother kept watch through the
sunroom window and anxiously waited for the arrival of new
packages?
    “Here, Jack!” Lia called. The dog ran to her
with his ears peaked and his tongue hanging out. She bent to pet
him, rubbing behind his ears. “I guess it’s a good thing after all
that you never bit the FedEx man who delivered all that stuff to
Mother.”
    The news of her parents’ death had been
difficult enough to take, but when she and Craig got to the hard
part of disposing of some of their parents’ belongings, in the barn
along with equipment and tools, they’d discovered a room built into
the back corner with a lock on the door. When they busted in, to
their surprise, they uncovered a ten-by-ten space stacked from the
wooden floor to the fourteen-foot ceiling with unopened boxes. The
mystery of the packages revealed itself after they searched a file
cabinet and found receipts providing information identifying the
contents of the multitude of packages. But the reason for the
merchandise was only a guess. By all appearances, their mother, a
meticulous bookkeeper, became an internet shopaholic after Lia went
off to college more than ten years