Free Fatal Inheritance by Sandra Orchard

more than a day when they visited Gran and Gramps, leaving them time alone with Mom.
    Before long, Gran had invited her and Sarah to visit without their parents, which had suited Becki just fine. Poor Gran must have grieved all over again when Mom moved halfway across the country and stopped sending them, too, with her default “it’s for the best” excuse.
    Becki traced Gramps’s smiling face. Becki wants to live here always. Is that why they’d left her the place?
    She’d loved everything about her grandparents’ home, from sliding down the banister to swinging on the big oak tree out back. She’d loved that Gran never lamented how impossible it was to pull the comb through Becki’s tangle of curls. She’d loved that Gramps never complained how many dishes she’d broken with her butterfingers.
    When she would return from playing in the woods, covered from head to toe in mud, they would chuckle instead of scold. And she hadn’t minded at all that Gran hosed her down outside with the icy well water before allowing her to step foot in the bathroom.
    Becki smiled at the memory of Josh getting a blast of that same water a time or two.
    Stop thinking about him already! She slammed the photo album shut and clicked off the light.
    Somewhere between the frogs winding down their concert and her snuggling deeper under the comforter, thoughts of Josh must have turned to dreams, because the next thing she knew, a ping on the window jolted her awake.
    She blinked at the bright sunlight beaming through the sheers.
    “Hey, sleepyhead. You still in bed?” Josh’s amused voice filtered through her fuzzy brain.
    Terrific. He wasn’t helping. How was she supposed to keep her mind off him if he showed up at her window, jolting her awake as if fifteen years had evaporated overnight and they’d sneak in an early-morning fishing trip before church?
    Then again, maybe they could just skip church. She pulled on her bathrobe. He’d simply taken for granted that she’d attend. She swept aside the curtains. “Don’t you know it’s bad manners to—” The rest of Becki’s thought flew from her head at the sight of Josh looking up at her second-story window wearing a handsome blazer, a crisply pressed shirt and tie, and a grin that turned her inside out.

FIVE
    J osh whistled as he waited for Bec to come downstairs with Tripod. He’d hated to wake her so early after the night she’d had, but if the dog didn’t get outside soon, she’d hate him more.
    Tossing pebbles at her bedroom window had felt like old times. Good times. Times when summers were carefree and the worst they could imagine happening was falling from a tree.
    The instant her kitchen door opened and Tripod dashed out, Josh stepped up with the tray of coffee and bagels he’d brought with him. “Not as fancy as my sister’s breakfast, but after the trouble you had sleeping, I figured you could use a jolt of caf—”
    The sight of her soft, sleep-rumpled face swept the words clean out of his head.
    She pushed the door wider and motioned him inside. “Thanks.”
    Struggling to ignore what the crackly, early-morning texture of her voice did to him, he carried the tray into the kitchen and helped himself to a mug of coffee. “Uh...” He hadn’t been able to really see her up at the bedroom window, and now that he could...
    He finished his coffee in three burning gulps and set it back on the tray. “I’d better wait for you outside.”
    Her brow creased. Then she swiped at the lines crisscrossing her cheeks from where she’d slept and scrunched together the neck flaps of her white terry robe.
    He dropped his gaze to the floor, feeling bad that he’d made her self-conscious.
    Her bare toes, with their hot-pink polish, wiggled.
    The fact she painted her usually hidden toenails and yet didn’t seem to wear makeup sparked even more curiosity about this utterly grown-up version of the cute kid he used to rescue from the old oak tree.
    She cleared her throat,