Read Online Harmony by Stef Ann Holm - Free Book Online Page A

Considering the expanse of the floorboards, the naked eye shouldn’t have been able to tell anything was amiss. If he looked long and hard enough at the white chalk, he might detect the line was one foot in her favor. She, of course, had noticed the discrepancy immediately. But she had been pointedly looking for the difference.
    Edwina straightened, then with tiny, even strokes, used up the paint on her brush. Dipping it into the nearly full can once again, she readied to smooth the bristles against the rim, when that odious bloodhound trotted up to her. Heedless of her painting sheets nicely draped over the ground, he trudged across them, leaving a track of mud prints and ruffling them away from the wall.
    â€œGet away from here!” she shouted, forgetting that she held a wet brush in her hand. As she waved her arm at the dog, yellow splattered across the window. Horrified, she gazed at the globs of paint marring the freshwhite sashes and clean panes. In a slow drip, they began to run down the glass squares. “Look at what you made me do!”
    A face other than her own reflected in the window. Tom Wolcott looked out from the inside with arms folded across his chest and a grin on his mouth that she wanted to slather with number two-oh-six.
    â€œMr. Wolcott,” she said loudly. “Your dog is out here.”
    The grin turned into a comfortable curve. “He usually is.” Then the man had the audacity to walk away.
    Twenty minutes later, she still fumed at him and at Barkly, who kept running through the surrounding leaves at a breakneck speed, chasing after squirrels and making a hideous baying sound. She hadn’t thought a dog of his size could move so fast. At one point, he tried to climb a tree. She’d smiled to herself, thinking her precious Honey Tiger superior to him. Her beloved kitty could scale the branches with no problem. All Barkly managed to do was stir up the leaves. Then he rolled in their crispiness until that got tiring, too. Finally, he sprawled out, tongue lopped to the side, and began to gnaw on acorns.
    Up until the slack-skinned dog had come along, she’d prided herself on not making a single drip on the cloths or getting one fleck of paint on herself. Now her fingers were jaundiced from all the turpentine and rags she’d used to clean the windowpanes.
    Ready for a cup of hot chocolate before she picked up the paintbrush again, Edwina went to the front of the building. Mr. Wolcott had left a short time ago, but Mr. Trussel was just finishing hammering the door’s hinge pins into place. He then laid the key into her palm.
    â€œI’ll lock it from the inside, Miss Huntington. You try the key.”
    Her fingers curled over the cool brass. A strong sense of independence was her guide as she inserted the key, then turned. The door opened to her touch on the knob.
    â€œYou’re safe and sound now,” Mr. Trussel decreed.
    â€œBut still exposed, so to speak, until the wall is completed.” She gave him a knowing gaze. One he didn’t return; instead, his eyes purposefully—and more than a little nervously—averted themselves from hers. Too late, she realized her imprudence at making even a cryptic mention of the wall. “Forgive me, Mr. Trussel. I shan’t mention ‘it’ again. You have my utmost discretion,” she whispered.
    â€œI’ve got to head home to the shop and get some other tools.”
    â€œBy all means,” she said, pouring a cup of hot chocolate. With his departure, she sat on a hammock chair. She and Marvel-Anne had brought two such folding picnic chairs over that morning. The housekeeper had stayed a time and painted the front of the warehouse while Edwina worked on the side, but then Marvel-Anne had to return to the house to finish some mending she said needed her attention.
    Edwina counted her blessings. Marvel-Anne was lending a hand above and beyond her duties, and without being asked. She