Free The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True by Eileen Goudge Page A

about the middle, his curly silver hair blowing in the wind. Martin had always been happiest at sea. Their marriage, she thought, was just another version—with her the terra firma to his flights of fancy, the one who put the brakes on when things threatened to spin out of control. When he died she hadn’t been utterly lost like many widows because all those years it had been her , not Martin, managing the household and paying the bills.
    Sam tugged on her robe with something close to defiance. This room was her answer to all those years of excess. A few months after Martin’s death, she’d had the carpet and wallpaper ripped out; she’d sold the ornate walnut bed and dresser and brought down from the attic her childhood bureau and bed frame, which she’d stripped to their original oak finish. Now the white stucco walls and polished heart-of-pine floor—accented by a simple Kazakh rug, a few framed watercolors, a vintage mica floor lamp—seemed to glow with an austere beauty.
    Making her way downstairs, she could hear the faint clatter of her housekeeper in the kitchen. Lupe, no doubt rearranging things to her liking. Sam shook her head in exasperation. How many times had she urged the woman to slow down? She was in her seventies, after all, and not getting any younger.
    Sam walked in to find Lupe teetering on tiptoe, trying to push a platter onto the top shelf of the old oak china cupboard. She darted over to help. “Here, let me.” Taller than Lupe by at least eight inches, she had no trouble sliding it into place.
    “Gracias, mi hija.” Lupe sank onto her heels with a sigh, casting Sam a look of mild reproach. “ Dios mio, what are you doing up at this hour? Did you forget it was Sunday?”
    “I could ask the same of you.” Sam glanced about, frowning. “What’s all this?” She gestured at the serving bowls and platters spread over the counter. “I thought everything was put away last night.”
    “It was.” The stern lines of disapproval in Lupe’s face confirmed what Sam had already guessed: that the catering crew’s cleanup hadn’t been to her housekeeper’s satisfaction. “Men,” she scoffed. “What do they know about kitchens? It’s a miracle nothing was broken.”
    “And even more of a miracle you aren’t flat on your back,” Sam chided. “Do me a favor, please, and take the rest of the day off.”
    Lupe dismissed her concerns with a snort. “I’d rather die on my feet than on my back.” She gathered up an armload of bowls, a pint-sized woman in jeans and a red-checkered shirt, her face as brown and wrinkled as a walnut, her charcoal hair wound about her head in a tightly braided coronet.
    Lupe’s hair, only lightly threaded with gray, was her pride and joy. She washed it with special oils and dried it in the sun. Once, a few years back, Sam had come across her basking in the sunlight with her head in her husband’s lap. Guillermo had only been combing her wet hair, but Sam had felt as if she’d stumbled upon something deeply intimate. Fifty years of marriage hadn’t wiped away the small smile on Lupe’s lips as she lay with her eyes closed and head tipped back, her hair spilling into her husband’s knotted brown hands like a gift.
    Sam caught the scent of something baking. “Do I smell corn bread?”
    Lupe bent to stow the bowls and straightened. “Since you’re up, it won’t hurt you to eat something.”
    Sam groaned. “I’m still stuffed from yesterday.”
    “Men like meat on a woman’s bones.”
    Sam reached for the coffeemaker by the stove, filling her favorite mug—one Laura had given her some years back, on which was printed THE WORLD’S GREATEST MOM . “I’m not looking for a man.” This past year it had become a familiar refrain; Lupe wasn’t going to give up until she remarried.
    “A woman alone is no good to anyone. Now sit.”
    Lupe slid a skillet from the oven—corn bread, lightly golden on top and crispy around the edges. Sam surprised herself by