Free Lavender Morning by Jude Deveraux

knew the woman’s family needed the money, so she was kept on, and Luke did the work. He kept the
    house in repair, and when the furniture arrived, it was Luke who saw to its placement. One Saturday with cousins
    and beer and pizza got the larger pieces up the stairs.
    Except for the tenants, in essence, the house had been Luke’s for the past few years. He was the one who
    repaired the roof and got the dead pigeon out of the wall. And he rebuilt the top of the chimney when it was hit
    by lightning.
    When he was told that Miss Edi had died and left the house to some girl who’d never seen the place, Luke
    had an urge to burn it down. Better that than let someone who didn’t appreciate it have it.
    “Maybe she’s a historian,” Ramsey said. “Or maybe she’s an architect—or even a building contractor. We
    don’t know what she is.”
    Luke didn’t like the way his cousin was defending this unknown woman who was going to take over what
    most people thought of as the heart of Edilean. All his life he’d heard people say that if Edilean Manor was
    destroyed, the town wouldn’t live a year.
    But Ramsey had been so happy about the new inheritor that Luke knew he was up to something. One day
    after work he went to Tess. She answered his knock but didn’t invite him in. “What’s he up to about this new
    owner?” Luke asked, not bothering with preliminaries. And there was no need to explain who “he” was.
    Tess was a woman of few words. “Edilean Harcourt sent him a photo of her. In a bikini.”
    Luke understood immediately. If he knew his cousin, Rams planned to make a play for her. He loved
    Edilean Manor almost as much as Luke did. “Got it,” Luke said.
    Tess stepped to the side and opened the screen door wider. “You want a beer?”
    “Love one.”
    Now, “she” had arrived, and Luke watched her as she sat and talked with Sara. She was pretty, but not
    strikingly so. She was a little above average height, and her hair looked like the girls’ used to get in the summer.
    It would turn from brown to sun-streaked over the months, and he wondered if hers was natural or if she spent
    hours in a salon.
    She was dressed as old-fashioned as Sara, and that made him smile. Sara loved to wear dresses with long
    sleeves even in the heat of summer. But then she knew they looked good on her. She was as pretty and as
    delicate as a flower, and when she wore something like a bright red tank top and jeans she looked almost odd.
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    Luke thought that if he had a camera with him he would have taken their photo. There was Sara in her prim
    little dress, her sewing on her lap, and across from her was this new woman wearing something like in an
    illustration in Alice in Wonderland. He thought the headband was an especially perfect touch.
    A priss and a prude, he thought. That’s who Miss Edi had left the house to. A woman heading toward
    spinsterhood who would probably dedicate her entire life to the house. No doubt she’d work hard to find
    furniture of exactly the right time period and within a few months she’d make Edilean Manor into a museum.
    He’d made up his mind about her within minutes of first seeing her, and if it hadn’t been for his mother, he
    would have told her he quit. Let Ramsey have her, he thought. Let him ooze charm all over her and have her fall
    for him. Of course he’d probably do what he always did and find some little thing wrong with her, then dump her.
    But maybe it would backfire and she’d be so heartbroken she’d put the house up for sale.
    Yeah, he thought, smiling to himself. Maybe she’d sell the place.
    But his mother’s voice was in his head, so he stayed where he was in the old stables and watched Sara and
    the new owner.
    He knew something was up when his mother appeared at his door at six this morning with a covered plate
    of blueberry pancakes. Luke smiled. “So what’s Dad