Maid to Match Read Online Free PDF Page A

then he’d need to turn elsewhere. And wherever that was, it would have to involve a person of influence.
    The only person like that he knew was an old friend of his late father’s. A man who’d been president of the college Pa had taught at. The man who’d first brought Pa to Asheville. The man who was now Buncombe County’s state representative.
    Mack glanced at a giant clock on the wall of the rotunda. Maybe he could catch Leonard Vaughan before he left for the day. It had been years since he’d seen him, but he knew the man would give him an audience.
    He wandered the corridors of City Hall until he finally found a door with Vaughan’s name painted on the glass. He knocked, peering through the window. A man on the other side waved him in.
    The office smelled of books and cigars, but the giant oak desk was clear of papers, as if Vaughan had just cleaned it off in anticipation of going home.
    “May I help you, young man?” he asked, standing as he closed a drawer.
    The familiar face of his father’s dearest friend made Mack’s chest catch. He catalogued the changes the years had wrought – a receding hairline, gray at the temples, wrinkles at his eyes. Mack tried to superimpose those changes onto the memory he had of his father, but could not.
    Mack whipped off his hat. “Hello, sir. Danver, here. It’s good to see you.”
    Vaughan stilled, lifting his brows. “Earl?”
    “Mackenzie, sir.”
    “Well, for the love of Peter.” He waved him into a seat and resumed his own. “I see you’ve exceeded even your father’s height. Is Earl the same?”
    “To the inch.”
    “Imagine that.” After a moment, his facial muscles sobered.
    “I’m sorry about your mother. I went to your homeplace the moment I returned from Europe and heard of her death, but it was abandoned. All I could find out was the family had been split up.”
    “I tried to keep us together, but Earl wouldn’t give up his job at Biltmore and come home. He’d acquired a taste for women and spirits. So the children were left to me.”
    “How old are they now?”
    “Ora Lou’s thirteen. The boys are nine, eight, and seven, respectively.” He sighed. “Not so little anymore, now that I think on it.”
    “So what happened?” Vaughan opened a drawer and offered Mack a cigar.
    Waving it off, he settled back in his chair. “Nothing changed for me, of course. Ever since Pa died I’d been using what I made at the hotel to put food on the table for Ma and the children. But with her gone, it was hard on Ora Lou.”
    “I guess she felt she should step into your mother’s shoes?”
    Mack nodded. “I couldn’t bring the boys with me to work, nor could I quit and help Ora Lou.”
    “What’d you do?”
    “I decided to start working as many double shifts as I could. By the time I made it back up the mountain, Grandpa had moved into the cabin and told the boys they didn’t have to do any work. That’s what Ora Lou was for. And if she didn’t comply, he’d raise a hand to her.”
    “The devil you say.” Cutting the cap off his cigar, Vaughan clucked his tongue. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. It was always his way.”
    Mack tightened his jaw. “Even still, Pa spent years training us to respect the womenfolk. I can remember Earl and me laughing about it behind his back, thinking how ridiculous it all was. But when I came home and saw those boys doing nothing while Ora Lou planted, hoed, gathered fodder, split rails, cooked, washed, and everything else, something just snapped in me.”
    “I can imagine.”
    Mack ran a hand through his hair. “I realized then, I couldn’t provide for them and simultaneously protect Ora Lou and the boys from Grandpa’s influence. So I took Ikey, Otis, and John-John to families on the other side of the mountain, where folks school their children. But Ora Lou was different. Even though most clans treat their women well, I couldn’t quite bring myself to leave her so far out of my sphere. So I put