Read Online The Heart of a Hero by Janet Chapman - Free Book Online

emergency, while still being far enough away to afford him plenty of privacy. He also hoped it was too far for his cats to want to make the trek to the restaurant’s kitchen twice a day for gourmet handouts.
    “Nicholas.”
    “Hmm?” he murmured.
    “I said,” Olivia drawled as he pulled up next to Vern Campbell’s pickup and shut off the engine, “that we’ll let you know if we need you to carry any heavy stuff to the truck. We should only be about an hour.”
    “Take your time,” he said, getting out and looking around, his gaze stopping on Julia as she walked up the porch steps and disappeared inside. She was definitely a lovely-looking lady, he decided as he slid his hands in his pockets and wandered toward what he assumed was the cedar mill set behind the house. She was also quite fearless, although maybe to the point of recklessness. And his size didn’t seem to be an issue for her, although she hadn’t seen him naked . . . yet. She definitely wasn’t chatty, she appeared to have an excess of energy, and she was smart, resourceful, and obviously determined to get herself and her sister settled into new lives.
    She did seem to have a powerful pride, though. But he didn’t consider that a bad thing, as he rather liked a woman who was a bit abrasive, since he admittedly had a few rough edges that could use some polishing. She was also on the thin side, but then, his cats hadn’t exactly been butterballs when they’d each first come to him, so he figured it wouldn’t take him any time to have Julia . . . well, no longer able to sleep on her belly.
    Nicholas stopped and peered inside the building at what he decided was the shingle manufacturing section of the mill, considering the strange-looking saw nearly buried in sawdust and the pallets of shingles stacked against the far wall. He continued on to another door, stepping inside to study the variety of lathes surrounded by curled shavings, and he realized the Campbells also made cedar rail fencing. He skirted the ancient-looking machinery to reach the open back wall of the building and looked around the muddy yard stacked with cedar logs.
    Spotting the rusty metal wagon half-filled with pinecones sitting in front of another small building, Nicholas headed down the well-worn path through the trees toward it. He wrestled open the door and peered inside, and grinned at the realization he’d found Julia’s workshop. He glanced back to see the mill was blocking his view of the house, then took off his sunglasses and stepped inside.
    The first thing he saw was a large chopping block with two hatchets driven into its center and two smaller blocks on either side of it serving as seats. He grinned again, picturing Julia and Trisha chatting away as they split the short cedar log ends stacked nearby into kindling. He continued snooping and saw some sacks full of pinecones—which were excellent fire-starters for the resort’s fireplaces—leaning against the back wall. He then turned to the bench that ran the length of another wall and dipped his fingers into a bowl of evergreen needles. He held up his hand and sniffed, then brushed the needles back into the bowl and picked up one of the small burlap pillows already filled and sewn closed. He set it down, picked up an even smaller pouch made of a more colorful material, and slid its contents into his hand with a frown.
    Soap, he guessed as he ran his thumb across the tree-shaped cake. He held it to his nose to find it also smelled of balsam, which he liked well enough to slip it in his pocket before he plucked a different colored tree from a nearby box. Finding it smelled of lavender, he tossed it back into the box and picked up another one, which smelled like roses. Another one smelled . . . hell, it could be any one of a dozen plants, because what did he know about scents? It had been centuries since he’d stopped to smell the flowers.
    He set down the soap and looked around again, only to realize that