Free Find My Way Home (Harmony Homecomings) by Michele Summers

home?” she asked, palming the keys. Cal lived farther outside the city limits.
    “Don’t worry ab—”
    “Cal, you almost done?”
    Bertie glanced across the bar to the office door where Angie, one of the gals who worked downtown, leaned against the doorframe with a sulky look on her face. Apparently, she’d been kept waiting by Cal the Casanova.
    “Geez, Cal,” Bertie muttered under her breath. “Are you actually dating her?” Cal pulled the front door open. “She isn’t going to go quietly when you dump her, you know.”
    Cal gave her an extra shove. “You’re the one with the problem. Now get moving. You have a lot of ranting, raving, and hair pulling to do.” He shut the door in her face and turned the deadbolt. Bertie trudged over to Cal’s SUV parked in the side lot. She drove the three miles to her home on the near empty streets of Harmony, wondering what the heck she was going to do. Not that she was even considering taking Mr. Perfectly Rude’s offer to leave town for three hundred thousand dollars. The nerve. As if she could be bought like that. Okay, maybe she could, but not from him and not like that. After Keith had insulted her with his outrageous offer, he apologized, glimpsing her horrified expression. Once the outrage over what he suggested had dissipated, Bertie had told him in a calm voice to enjoy the rest of his meal and then stormed away from the booth.
    To stay in Harmony would be professional suicide, but to go would be suicide on a whole other personal level. She could do a lot with the money she’d make on Keith’s job, like finishing renovations on her home and helping with some of the maintenance at the Dog, and that didn’t include the outrageous bonus of one hundred and fifty smackers from Aunt Franny. Bertie unlocked her kitchen door, tossing her handbag on the antique bench by the back door, and retrieved a bottle of water from the refrigerator. As she pressed the refrigerator door closed, her eye caught the two pictures stuck under sparkly shoe and handbag magnets. Bertie slipped the picture down of four-year-old Jorge Bianco, smiling and clutching a rusted John Deere toy tractor to his small chest in front of a small, brand-new yellow-painted house—a home she and Gary had helped to build through the charity organization Dwelling Place. Bertie had spent endless days and nights raising money through pancake breakfasts, school carnivals, karaoke contests at the Dog, and countless other fund-raisers. They had managed to help complete two houses for the charity and give homes to families like Jorge’s who couldn’t afford decent housing on migrant workers’ pay. Bertie enjoyed working on those two homes with their low budgets and tight spaces almost as much as the elaborate designs of her prominent clients. Dwelling Place could always use funds, especially now, when there were so many migrant families in need outside of Harmony. Bertie slid the snapshot back under the magnet and pulled out her cell phone, pressing a name under favorites.
    “Do you have any idea what time it is?” a sleepy voice answered.
    “I’ve been thinking,” Bertie said, tapping her fingernails against her countertop.
    “Not again,” Gary moaned.
    ***
    The pounding inside Keith’s head caused his groggy eyes to open. As he lay on his rumpled mattress, blinking at the lazy, lopsided circles of the white ceiling fan, he realized it wasn’t his head pounding. The sound was coming from outside. More specifically, the side of his house. Keith bolted out of bed and stomped to the back door in his bare feet. He flung the door open and stepped out on the porch, unmindful that he wore only pajama bottoms and a good case of bedhead.
    He blinked at the sight of construction workers crawling all over his lawn. Carpenters were ripping off old, rotten shutters, and painters were sanding and stripping paint. But the biggest shocker had to be Bertie, standing in the middle of his backyard, gesturing with one