Free In Firefly Valley by Amanda Cabot Page A

he sensed depths to her that she let few see. He hadn’t missed the way she’d avoided looking north on Live Oak, and it hadn’t been his imagination that something about the Macduff conversation had bothered her. Watching the interaction between Marisa and her mother might reveal new clues to the mystery of the beautiful woman with the pain-filled eyes.
    Carmen grabbed a bowl of tossed salad with one hand and a covered basket whose distinctive aroma told Blake it contained garlic bread with the other. “You’re saving me a trip; that’s all the help I need.” As she switched off the lights in Rainbow’s End’s industrial-sized kitchen, Marisa’s mother shrugged. “We have a kitchen in the cabin, but it can’t compare to this, so I do all my cooking here.”
    Though Blake had no aspirations of becoming a chef, he also had no trouble understanding why this was Carmen’s preferred work space. She was in her element here, just as he’d once been in his element in his office, surrounded by all the tools he needed to make Cliff Pearson’s adventures come to life. Unfortunately, writer’s block had ended that.
    As they walked toward the front of the building, Carmen knocked on the next door before opening it. “Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes,” she called to her daughter.
    Marisa looked up from her desk, the furrows between her eyes telling Blake she had been trying to concentrate. “Thanks,” she said, sounding more than a little distracted. “I have one more thing to check.”
    â€œThere’s spumoni in the freezer. Bring it when you come.” When Marisa nodded and returned her attention to the papers that covered the desk, Carmen shook her head. “She’ll forget. When she starts working, she forgets the rest of the world exists.”
    It had always been like that for Blake when he was writing. Though he doubted anyone who wasn’t a writer would understand, he had felt as if he were transported to another world. He’d forget to eat and drink. He’d forget everything except the story that was taking shape in his mind. While his fingers flew across the keyboard, it was almost as if he became Cliff Pearson.
    But Blake would not tell Carmen that. Other than Greg and now Kate, no one at Rainbow’s End knew that he was Ken Blake, and he intended to keep it that way. Instead he said, “I can’t speak for Kate, but at least when he owned his software company, Greg was a workaholic. He’ll appreciate Marisa’s work ethic.”
    As Blake held the outside door open for Carmen, she scowled. “He’d better not take advantage of her the way her last bosses did.”
    Blake knew he shouldn’t pry, but Carmen had given him an opening. “What happened?”
    Carmen’s scowl deepened. “They were happy enough when she worked night and day to get hundreds of tax returns done, but thenthey laid her off on April 16. They didn’t even give her her bonus.” Carmen muttered a few Spanish phrases that left Blake no doubt of her anger and that if Marisa’s former bosses were within earshot, she would give them a piece of her mind.
    â€œThat doesn’t seem fair,” he said, wondering if the abrupt and apparently unpleasant end of Marisa’s job was the reason for the occasional flashes of pain he’d seen.
    As Carmen led the way up the steps to her cabin, she nodded. “It wasn’t, but one good thing came out of it. I got my daughter back.”
    She switched on lights, then put the lasagna and garlic bread into the oven to keep them warm. “It probably seems silly, carrying everything over here when we have a table in the kitchen and a perfectly good dining room right next to it.”
    Blake thought he understood Carmen’s motives. “This is your home. You’re comfortable here.”
    She nodded vigorously. “You