Read Online Someone to Love by Jude Deveraux - Free Book Online

reason I know about the fruit is because my mother started it all.”
    “And how is Mr. Hatch involved?” Jace asked.
    “His youngest sister is in it,” Emma said.
    “‘Young’ is a relative term. She has to be eighty if she’s a day,” the pub owner said.
    For a moment a look of love and such intimacy flashed between them that Jace wanted to grab the bottle of whiskey and drain it. He thought he’d had that with Stacy, but it seemed that he hadn’t. “Yes, I’ve heard of your wife,” Jace said before he thought, then realized he couldn’t tell them where he’d heard of Emma Carew.
    But the bartender just grinned proudly. “So you’ve already read the book.”
    “Yes, of course I did,” Jace said, but Emma was watching him. He felt sure she knew he was lying. He wanted to open his notebook and write, “Find book. Read about Emma.”
    “Mr. Montgomery—” Emma began.
    “Jace,” he said quickly.
    “Jace.” She smiled at him in a way that made him feel good. “How about a beer and some of your American chicken wings?”
    “Who made the beer?” Jace asked fearfully.
    “Don’t tell me you drank some of ol’ Hatch’s beer?” George asked.
    “A pint of it.”
    “And you’re still alive?”
    “And I had two cups of his wine in the same day.”
    “It’s a wonder you aren’t blind.”
    “No wonder you slept through dinner last night,” Emma said, then laughed at Jace’s expression. “Daisy told her mother, she told my mum, who told me. You’re the major topic of conversation around here. Big, gorgeous thing like you all alone in that giant house. It’s the general opinion around here that you need a wife. In fact, there are quite a few unattached women who are dusting off their high heels right now.”
    “Who needs a wife? Other than me, that is?” came a voice from the doorway.
    Jace turned to see a young man, late twenties, blond, blue-eyed, and strongly built. He was in a policeman’s uniform and Jace intuitively knew he was the man who had opened the door and found Stacy.
    He took a seat on a stool by Jace and ordered a lemonade. “On duty,” he said. “Clive Sefton. So why did you buy the house?”
    Jace didn’t crack a smile. “Loved the beauty of it.”
    The three of them groaned.
    “Mrs. Browne’s cooking? The gardens?”
    They groaned more.
    Jace took a drink of his beer, a nice, light-colored American-style beer, ate one of Emma’s fiery-hot chicken wings, and pushed the plate toward Clive to share. “Okay, so I made a little money from some good investments and I wanted a place to live so I bought a house.”
    “Why that house?” Clive persisted.
    “To write a book about the ghost, of course.”
    “You and everyone else,” George said.
    “Sorry, dear,” Emma said to Jace, “but you won’t last there. Too bad.”
    “Tell me,” Jace said, “exactly what does the ghost do?”
    “It’s all over town that you saw her in the garden this morning.”
    “What I saw were two girls stealing my raspberries. Mrs. Browne took it from there.” It wasn’t really a lie, but it also wasn’t the truth.
    Emma looked at Clive. “So tell him what you’ve been told.”
    Clive finished his fourth chicken wing. “The last owner told me he saw the outline of a woman sitting around his seven-year-old son. The boy was inside the ghost and they were playing Xbox together.”
    “Xbox?” Jace asked.
    “Xbox. She reads over people’s shoulders and when they go too slow, she turns the pages. The eldest son of two owners back said he heard her ride a horse up the stairs, but I think that kid smoked things he shouldn’t.”
    “What about ‘her’ tree?” Jace asked.
    “That’s from long ago,” Clive continued. “It’s said that she hanged a man there. He betrayed her, so she ordered her men to hang him. Get Mr. Hatch to show you the place where the rope used to be. The rope was kept there until about ten years ago, when the owner before last cut it