Secrets of the Lost Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

these days. A few hours for sleep, time to get dressed—that was it. He hadn’t had a woman in his life in a long time. Too long, maybe, but he wasn’t checking off days on a calendar.
Not yet, anyway.
He set the card and photographs on the end of his bed, then sat on the floor and rubbed his fingers over the black-painted hinges and latch of an old flat-topped trunk. A nomad at heart, his father had left behind few possessions. On his fiftieth birthday, he had quit his day job as a business consultant and spent the rest of his life—more than twenty years—as an adventurer and treasure hunter, tackling obscure mysteries on his own and with a small team of professionals and avid amateurs. He had never sought financial gain for himself. Prowling the world for lost treasures had been his passion more than a source of income. He’d just enjoyed the adventure.
In the months since his father’s death, Dylan hadn’t dug through the contents of the trunk. He and his father had had a contentious yet solid relationship, but first the NHL and then NAK, Inc., kept Dylan’s schedule jam-packed, allowing little time to try to understand why Duncan McCaffrey had made the choices he had, or to figure out what treasure hunts he had left unfinished. Dylan didn’t need the money. Money was one thing he had in abundance, and how could anything in the trunk bring him closer to his father now that he was gone?
Dylan couldn’t imagine how long it would take him to properly sort through all the files, boxes, envelopes and scrapbooks stuffed haphazardly in the trunk. Hours and hours, and even if he had the time, he didn’t have the patience.
And there was no guarantee he would find one word about Knights Bridge.
He could send Loretta to Massachusetts to deal with the house and its offending yard, and with Olivia Frost.
He lifted out a tattered stack of a half-dozen manila folders, held together with a thick rubber band. He shook his head. “Leave it to you, Pop, to complicate my life.”
The rubber band was so dry and brittle it broke when Dylan tried to remove it.
He welcomed the distraction when his landline rang. He rolled to his feet and picked up.
“Check your email,” Loretta said. “I sent you some preliminary info on the woman who wrote to you.”
“Are she and Grace Webster friends?”
“Maybe, but Olivia Frost isn’t old. I can tell you that much.”
Loretta was chuckling when she hung up.
Dylan checked his email on his BlackBerry. Loretta had produced a photograph of his tidy-minded neighbor. It was taken at a formal dinner in Boston and showed Olivia Frost accepting an award. Apparently the owner of The Farm at Carriage Hill and artist of chives was also a successful, accomplished graphic designer.
The picture was too small to see in any detail on his BlackBerry. He went back downstairs and fired up his laptop on the kitchen table.
Olivia Frost had long, shining, very dark hair, porcelain skin and a bright smile as she held her gold statue and accepted her award. He couldn’t make out the color of her eyes. Green, maybe. She wore a sleek, rather businesslike black dress that came to just above her knees.
In another picture that Loretta had found on Facebook, Olivia was more casual, dressed in a denim jacket as she stood in front of an old sawmill. Loretta’s email explained that the Frost family owned and operated Frost Millworks, a small, profitable company that did high-end custom work.
She provided a link. Olivia Frost had designed their website.
Dylan called Loretta back. Before he even had a chance to say hello, she broke in, “I can keep digging if you want.”
“I’ll take it from here. Thanks, Loretta. What’s on the internet about me?”
“You beat up that Montreal defenseman—”
“It was a clean check. He should have gotten an Oscar for that fall.”
“What about the ten stitches?”
Dylan hung up. He didn’t care what was on the internet about him. He wondered if Olivia Frost had looked him up by