Free Lucas by Kelli Ann Morgan Page A

of one of the cupboards. He shook his hand as if
he’d hurt himself in the process.
    “Are you all right?” Lucy
found her feet and made her way over to him, stopping to gather the stray
papers and letters that had scattered on the floor. She quickly picked them up
and shoved them into one of the slots on the desk.
    “Fine. It just smarted
a little.” One by one, he took the boxes from on top and set them on the ground
until the worn, brown trunk was exposed. He carefully pulled it from its
resting spot and set it on a small end table next to a torn fainting couch and
sat down.
    “I imagine there are a
lot of things up here that belonged to your father,” Lucy said, scanning the
rest of the items that had been stored. Several looked promising, but she
feared her curiosity would get the better of her and they would spend the rest
of the day looking through these old things.
    “What of your father? How did you come to be at Whisper Ridge?” Lucas asked as he fiddled with
the latch on the trunk.
    “My father is a very busy
businessman in New York, increasingly so since my mother passed a few years
ago.”
    “I’m sorry for your
loss.”
    “Me too. She was a
wonderful, kind, and very beautiful woman.”
    “Like her daughter.”
Lucas smiled and warmth spread throughout Lucy’s body.
    “Once my father
remarried, I spent much of my time looking after his new wife’s three darling children.” She was careful to keep the sarcasm from seeping into her voice. Truth
was, the children had been quite a challenge for her and while she’d yearned
for her father’s affections, it had soon become apparent that what love he’d
once had for her had died along with her mother. She’d become nothing more to
him than a nanny for his new children.
    The latch gave way and
Lucas carefully lifted the lid to the trunk.
    “And you decided the
fresh Montana air would do you some good?” He pulled her from her unfortunate
memories.
    “That’s a story for
another day.” She didn’t want to tell him how she’d travelled across the
country as a hopeful bride, only to be rejected and stranded in a new place at
the mercy of his grandfather with nothing more than a trunk full of unrealized
dreams. She nodded toward the open case.
    Lucas pulled out a
small, cinched leather bag with an ‘L’ carved into one side. He ran his fingers
over the engraving.
    “My marbles,” he
whispered, closing his fist over the pouch. He pulled out a slingshot, a wooden
stagecoach, and a bilbo catcher. “Granddad kept all of these things?” His voice
was quiet and a sense of nostalgia immediately filled every corner of the room.
    “Who is this?” Lucy
reached into the trunk and pulled out a photograph. “She’s very pretty.”
    “On the outside maybe,”
Lucas scoffed as he continued to dig through the other items in the trunk. “I
don’t believe it.”
    Lucy returned the
photograph to the trunk, but couldn’t help wonder if it was his mother—the one
who’d abandoned her husband and small children.
    “What?”
    He held up an almost
new copy of Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo .
    “It was Henry’s,” his
said as he flipped through the pages. “Look, he’s even made notes in some of
the margins.” He opened to a page where pencil scribbles dictated the thoughts
of its reader. “Do you think Granddad would mind if I kept this?”
    “I think Liam would be
happy you found it.”
    He closed the trunk and
stood up.
    “I hope so. Henry would
have liked that we found it.” He placed the book in the back band of his
trousers beneath his belt. “Now, I believe we had some boxes to collect.”

Chapter Eleven

     
    Lucy pointed to the
empty crates in the corner, but as she passed the desk, her eye was drawn to one
of the letters she had picked up from the ground, sitting cockeyed from the
rest. She reached out and pulled the yellowed envelope from the disheveled stack
and a photograph slipped out. As she bent down to pick it up, she turned