Free The Carpenter & the Queen by Michelle Lashier Page A

top of a hill
overlooking the golf course and the lake. A wide cement patio ran
from the left side all the way across to circle toward the back
right. Only three stories tall, the castle sprawled to cover two
housing lots, unlike a true German castle which would have been
small at its base and shot up five or six stories into the air. The
castle walls were a faded cream color with peeling blue roof tiles
and window accents. The place needed some work and wasn’t truly
European, but Claire fell in love with it.
    After staring at it from the parking lot at
the bottom of the hill, she drove closer. When they crested the top
of the hill, the castle driveway veered off directly to the right,
leading just 30 yards away to a three-car garage. The blustery
weather and middle-of-the-workday hour meant no one was there.
    “Sam, come look at the castle with me.”
    He pouted. “I wanna go home.”
    “Fine. Stay in the car. I’ll just be a
minute.”
    She pulled the keys out of the ignition and
closed the door, confident the car would remain warm long enough
for her to walk around and look in the windows. From what she could
see, the entire bottom floor appeared to be a large banquet hall
with a stage and kitchen. There were two more floors above this.
Claire could just see the banisters from the second story that
looked down onto the banquet hall. The place was rather ordinary
inside, which disappointed her a little. The castle’s allure rested
on its architecture and location. Anyone who had been to a real
European castle knew this wasn’t even close. But it was the closest
she had been to any kind of castle in a long time.
    She stood on the long balcony overlooking
the lake below and imagined herself the queen of this domain. She
wished Paul had brought her here. It would have been a good date.
But he hadn’t offered, only given her the information. Her female
radar had detected some spark of attraction between them, but she
must have been mistaken given the way he kept her at arms’
length.
    She was destined to be alone. On most days
Claire was fine with this, but today, the reality stung. She
thought of the painting she would start on this evening, of the
woman collapsing in grief, and realized the autobiographical
details went deeper than she had previously understood.
    Without a doubt, she was the grieving woman
in her sketch. But the dead knight on the altar was more than just
Will . . . it was hope.

10
     
    Paul heard from his customer for the custom
Maid Marian piece the following day. Pleased with the sketch, the
man approved Paul’s estimate and said he would wait as long as it
took for Paul to finish it.
    Over the next week, Paul went to the post
office three times. Each time he hoped he would pass Claire coming
in or out of the library, but he never did. He could go in, maybe
read the paper or thumb through a magazine. But he didn’t. He was a
pawn of his own cowardice.
    Fate finally stepped in one evening at the
grocery store. He had just turned into the canned goods aisle when
he saw Claire and Sam at the other end. Claire wore a brown skirt
and black leather jacket with a long pink scarf wrapped around her
neck. She was in the middle of a conversation with another woman
Paul didn’t know. Claire carried herself with a poise that reminded
Paul of news clips he had seen of Princess Diana. What was she
doing in this town? She didn’t belong next to the woman in the
denim skirt and faded red sweater.
    Sam paced back in forth of his mother’s
cart, looking more bored by the minute. Paul pretended to be
engrossed in the kidney beans, all the while watching the scene.
The other woman discussed something about soybeans, while Claire
smiled and nodded at the appropriate places. When this went on
longer than Sam could handle, the boy began swinging his jacket,
hitting the cart, the plastic Campbell’s Soup dispensers, and then
his mother’s legs. She gave him the evil eye, but that only seemed
to fuel the boy’s