Read Online The Smoky Mountain Mist by Paula Graves - Free Book Online

she was driving down to Alabama for a business meeting,” Rachel told Seth after he’d assured the paramedics he’d have his sister keep an eye on him.
    Well, hell. He’d just have to keep an eye on himself.
    “You could stay with me tonight.” Rachel’s blue eyes locked with his, but her expression was impossible to read.
    “That’s kind of you—”
    “I’m not sure it’s kind,” she said, the left corner of her mouth quirking upward. “I could use another set of eyes and ears in the house. I’m not inclined to stay there alone after all of this.”
    So when Antoine finally agreed to let them leave, Seth called a wrecker service to take the Charger to the local garage and got into the passenger seat of Rachel’s car.
    “You don’t have to do this,” he told her as she buckled herself in behind the steering wheel. “I’ll be okay.”
    “I was serious. I don’t want to be alone. I’m not sure I’m safe alone with everything that’s going on.”
    She probably wasn’t, he realized. “I’m sorry about Davis. I hope I’m wrong about what happened to him.”
    Her lips tightened. “I wish I believed you were.”
    “Do you know why he was here?”
    “He must have come to the funeral.” She looked close to collapse, he realized, so he didn’t ask anything else until they reached the sprawling two-story farmhouse on the eastern edge of Bitterwood, a few miles south of Copperhead Ridge and light years away from the hardscrabble life Seth had lived growing up on Smoky Ridge.
    Until her father’s cancer diagnosis, Rachel had kept her own apartment in Maryville, living off her earnings as a public librarian. But everything had changed when a series of doctors confirmed the initial diagnosis—inoperable, terminal liver cancer. Too late for a transplant to help. They’d given him four months to live. Chemo, radiation and a series of holistic treatments had prolonged his life by a few more months, but shortly before his death, George had said, “No more,” and spent the remainder of his time on earth preparing his daughter to run the trucking company he’d built.
    Seth knew all these intimate details about Rachel’s life because Davenport Trucking was like any business that maintained a family atmosphere—everybody knew everybody else’s business. Few secrets lasted long in such a place.
    But he didn’t know what Rachel thought about the drastic change in her life. Did she regret leaving the library behind? From what he knew of her work at Davenport, she had a deft hand with personnel management and seemed to have a natural affinity for the finance end of the business. People who’d grumbled about her selection as her father’s successor had stopped complaining when it became clear that the company wouldn’t suffer under her guidance.
    But nobody seemed to know what Rachel herself thought about the job. Did the benefit of fulfilling her father’s dying wish outweigh the loss of a career she’d chosen for herself?
    “This house is too big for just one person,” Rachel commented as she unlocked the front door and let them inside. “I don’t think Diane plans to come back here. Too much of my mother here for her tastes.”
    The front door opened into a narrow hallway that stretched all the way to a door in the back. Off the hallway, either archways or doors led into rooms on either side. To the immediate right, a set of stairs rose to the second floor, flanked by an oak banister polished smooth from years of wear. “Did you ever slide down that banister?” he asked Rachel.
    “Maybe.” A whisper of a smile touched her lips. “Think you can make it up the stairs? The bedrooms are on the second floor.”
    He dragged himself up the steps behind her, glad he was feeling less light-headed than he had back at the bed-and-breakfast. Rachel showed him into a simple, homey room on the left nearest the stairs. “I’ll make up the bed for you. Why don’t you go take a shower? The bathroom’s the