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The Secret of Emerald Cottage

By Julie Lessman

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Prologue

Lake Loon, Georgia, Early Spring

She’s going to die …
Sucking in a harsh breath, Molly Stewart shot straight up in bed from a deep sleep, chest heaving in panic like always when she had one of those dreams. The kind that were more of a curse than a blessing.
Because they usually came true.
Sweat beaded her forehead as she stared unblinking in the dark, eyes dry sockets of shock. All she could hear was her own wheezing while she gasped for air, almost drowning out the violent throbbing of blood in her ears.
Drowning.
Oh, God, no, please …
“Miss Lilly tends to go outside when she walks in her sleep,” Chase Griffin had warned when he’d hired Molly as a temporary caretaker and companion for his elderly landlady, “so it’s best to crack your door to hear her if she does.”
“No!” Hurling the covers aside, Molly vaulted from her bed, crying out as she stubbed her toe on her way to the door, the nightmare far too real to be ignored. “God, please, let her be safe …” Fingers quivering, she lashed the door all the way open so hard, it banged against the wall as she bolted through, her breathing as jagged as her nerves. Shooting down the hallway to Miss Lilly’s room, her body seized at the sight of Miss Lilly’s open door.
A door she always kept closed at night.
Molly’s stomach bottomed out when she saw the empty bed.“Nooooo!” Her groan followed her as she flew down the steps, her wide-eyed gaze darting to the sliding doors that led to the lake.
“Now, where in sweet glory are you a-rushin’ off to, young lady?”
Molly froze on the bottom step, heart banging against her ribs as she peered into the dark kitchen lit only by a nightlight. A shaft of moonlight glinted off little circles bobby-pinned all over a small white head. Expelling a long, wavering breath, Molly put a shaky hand to her chest to calm her racing heart, her ribcage still heaving. A knowing smile hovered over Miss Lilly’s pursed lips while she nonchalantly nibbled a cookie, the eighty-eight-year-old, silver-haired imp sitting in the dark drinking from a teacup like it was noon instead of midnight.
“I … uh … heard a noise,” Molly managed after a hard swallow that slid into a shaky, if not sheepish, smile. “Thought you might be sleepwalking again,” she said, forcing a light tone while she pulled out a chair. She shook off the fear that had gripped her heart, unwilling to divulge the nightmare that had sent her bounding into the night. A shiver rattled her spine.
Nightmares that were often omens of doom.
Sinking into the spindle-back chair like her bones were made of mush, she figured it was more likely for her to have a stroke or heart attack than the patient she’d been hired to care for. The edge of her smile hitched up. Or a sprained ankle.
“She sprained her left ankle a few months back while sleepwalking,” Chase had explained, “tripping over gardening tools while on the back deck. So when she sprained her other ankle last week missing the last step in the middle of the night, we knew she needed live-in help.”
He’d smiled that little-boy smile that said he wanted a big, big favor. The same smile she’d never been able to resist when they were good friends in the military. And the one that made her wish he wasn’t both her associate pastor and married. To a girl named Cat, who had quickly become one of Molly’s best friends since she’d moved back to Savannah.
“And,” he continued with a wiggle of brows, “since you need someplace to stay other than your parents while you look for a place of your own and you’re a nurse to boot, well”—he shrugged—“Cat and I both thought this arrangement would be ideal.”
Ideal. Yep. That pretty much fit. Especially since Molly’s fiancé—a police detective she worked with at the Charleston P.D.—had cheated on her with her roommate.
Three stinkin’ months before the wedding.
The moment she’d walked in on them making out—on the couch in her own apartment, no less—she knew life would never be the same. Returning unexpectedly from a weekend trip to her folk’s house in Savannah, she’d been stunned and wounded, deciding right then and there—despite their pleas and apologies—to leave everything behind.
The city.
The job.
The fiancé.
So she’d headed back to Savannah and her family for a fresh start, desperate to find an apartment as soon as humanly possible.
Because her parents were driving her crazy.
After all, it was no secret why she and her two sisters had moved away after college. Not that her parents weren’t great—they were. Great marriage. Great home. Great support.
If one could overlook parental kissy-face, that is, between two adults who acted more like teenagers than parents. Then there were their mother’s matchmaking tendencies, which drove her and her sisters up the wall. From endless awkward fixups and nonstop probing about their love-lives, to not-so-subtle commentary about her longing for grandchildren, her mother couldn’t seem to help herself.
“Is it a crime to want my daughters to be as happy as we are?” she’d always ask, and it took everything within Molly not to scream, YES! Because after chronic bad relationships endured by she and her sisters over the years—including the breakup with Tyler—she feared the bar was just too high. The last thing she wanted was to face day in and day out the fear that she’d never have what her parents did.
And Chase knew it. Reverting to puppy-dog eyes, he’d apparently taken her silence for a negative response. “Come on, Mol, this will give you a break before you look for a job and an apartment. Plus, it would be a really Christian thing to do for a fragile little old lady in need, your devoted pastor, and an old buddy from the Navy. Besides,” he’d said with a crook of his brow, “living with Miss Lilly will give you lots of time to curl up on a comfy chaise in front of the lake to indulge in your secret obsession—reading all those cozy mysteries you love and maybe even writing your own like you’ve always wanted to do.”
Her eyes had narrowed. She’d give him one thing—he had the arm-twisting thing down real good. She’d stifled a grunt. Probably Chapter Three in the Pastor Manual.
“Magnesium.” Miss Lilly popped up from her chair with a whole lot more energy than Molly at 12:15 a.m., the old woman’s spry movement and gravelly voice disrupting Molly’s reverie.
“What?” Molly blinked as she watched her patient—who’d become more like a grandmother over the last month—snatch a cup from her cupboard and fill it with hot water from her tea kettle. Steam rose as she steeped the tea infuser up and down in the cup before bustling back to the table.
“Magnesium, I said.” Clunk. Miss Lilly set the cup down none too gently, promptly retrieving a cookie for Molly from her famous pig cookie jar. “The way you were just a-starin’ off into space, missy, I thought you might be the one sleepwalkin’.”
She delivered a wink as she sat back down, grinning like a pixie over the rim of her cup. “And for your information, young lady, I haven’t sleepwalked since Doc put me on magnesium. Flat-out alarmed at how low I was, he said, claiming that can trigger a body roaming at night in their PJ’s.”
Her eyes twinkled as she took a sip of her tea, looking like a tiny leprechaun for all her emerald-green satin duster and wrinkled grin. Which certainly fit. Despite her backwoods air, Miss Lilly was as Irish as the Blarney Stone itself, according to Chase, married to a full-blood Irishman, no less. And not just any Irishman, apparently, but the only grandson from a prominent Irish family in Savannah. A family that had not only owned the lake and all the rental cabins around it, but almost a thousand acres of prime Georgia land as well, which now belonged to Miss Lilly.
Molly blew out a weary sigh and bit into her cookie, pretty sure she needed way more than magnesium. She bit back a grunt as she pushed her tea away with a sad smile. Like sleep. “Thanks for the cookie, Miss Lilly, but I’ll pass on the tea. Haven’t been sleeping all that well, so the last thing I need is caffeine.”
The twinkle in the old woman’s eyes softened with sympathy. “Still frettin’ over that two-timin’ polecat, sweetheart?”
Tyler.
The polecat who stole her heart.
Her smile took a tilt. Otherwise known as the “womanizing skunk lower than a snake belly in a wagon rut,” according to Miss Lilly. Nope, at least it wasn’t about Tyler tonight like it’d been the first few months she’d moved back to Savannah. “No, just restless, I guess.”
“Then dunk that tea ball real good and drink up, missy, because that there is my own magic potion for sleepin’ like a baby.”
“Really?” Molly leaned to sniff at the tea. “What’s in it?”
“All natural things from God’s green earth, don’t you know. Chamomile, lavender, magnolia bark, blackberry leaves and what not.”
Molly dunked the tea ball up and down several times before she finally took a sip, the warm taste of spearmint soothing her nerves. “Mmm, it’s good. ‘Whatnot’ must be spearmint.”
“Yes, ma’am, and blue skullcap.”
Molly blinked, the tea pooling in her mouth. She swallowed it in a hard gulp. “Skullcap?” she said weakly, the name immediately conjuring images of death, which did not bode well for her peace of mind. Not after the dream she’d just had.
“Yessiree,” Miss Lilly said, “calms a body down and quells that restless spirit so you can rest in peace.”
Taking another healthy glug of the tea, Molly figured she needed a little quellin’ right about now.
Over keeping Miss Lilly safe.
Over finding a job.
And over a nightmare about drowning that felt way too real …
Rest in peace. Eyes slamming closed, she upended her tea in one jerky bottoms-up, hoping and praying that it related to Molly and a good night’s sleep.
And not to Miss Lilly.
 


It is He who reveals the profound and hidden things;
He knows what is in the darkness,
And the light dwells with Him.
—Daniel 2:22


Chapter One
Savannah, Georgia, Late Spring

“I was a fool, Molly. Forgive me? Please?”
Forgive him? Body numb, Molly Stewart stood rooted at Miss Lilly’s front door, staring at the man who had broken both her heart and her trust, and wondered if she actually could.
Today was to have been their wedding day at a pretty little church in Charleston. Instead here Tyler stood on the wraparound front porch of Miss Lilly’s secluded cottage on Lake Loon, more handsome than a louse had a right to be. Those piercing gray eyes were as repentant—and deadly—as she’d ever seen.
Hands plunged deep in the pockets of his favorite Rock Revival jeans, he offered an awkward shrug, his rolled-sleeved, buttoned-down shirt emphasizing broad shoulders and a well-defined torso. “These last six months without you have been awful, babe, convincing me I made the biggest and most brainless mistake of my life.”
Yeah, me too. Cocking her hip, Molly slapped her arms into an impatient fold, not about to let Tyler Madsen disarm her again. “Well, I certainly concur with brainless.” Her eyes narrowed to slits, as thin as her patience. “What do you want, Tyler?”
That hard-sculpted jaw tensed as he threaded a hand through wheat-colored hair shorn on the sides. His Adam’s apple ducked twice, a sure sign she’d rattled his confidence, which wasn’t easy to do. “I rather hoped it would be obvious,” he whispered, catching her off-guard when he reached to caress her face with tender fingers. “I want ‘us’ back.”
She jerked away, arms glued to her waist in self-defense as she took a step back, warning bells going off in her head over the warm shiver he’d produced. She’d been head over heels for a solid year, ready to spend the rest of her life with him, so naturally his touch still affected her. Her mouth compressed in resolve. But she was also ready to spend the rest of her life forgetting him, too, and had a six-month head start, thank God. “There is no ‘us,’ Tyler. I wonder if there ever was.”
“There was and you know it, Molly,” he said quietly, gently tugging one of her hands free to draw her close. “Because despite my asinine mistake, we still love each other.”
“Loved!” she hissed, breaking free to thump him hard on a chest that felt like rock. “Past tense, buster, so you can just take your seductive song and dance and—”
Her gasp was silenced when his mouth took hers, melting her to the door with a kiss that reminded her of all she had lost.
A friend.
A husband.
A love for a lifetime.
“Forgive me, Molly—please?” He gently touched his forehead to hers. “Give me another chance, and I swear I will do everything in my power to make it up to you.”
“Ty …” She felt herself weakening, memories of their last year resurrecting the faintest glimmers of love and hope that she’d worked so hard to bury beneath a mountain of hurt. “I don’t think—”
Her resistance was swallowed up in another dangerous kiss so possessive, all her walls came tumbling down when he pulled away. Suddenly, his handsome face dissolved into a haze, disappearing into the same nightmare she’d lived for the last half year. A groan trailed from her lips as her head thrashed back and forth in her bed. “No, don’t leave again, please,” she murmured in her sleep, “just kiss me, please …”
Her body finally relaxed when he did—gently, softly—vaguely aware it had to be a dream because the scent was all wrong—not the vanilla musk scent of Ty’s Stronger With You cologne she’d given him for Christmas. No, this was more of a peppery scent with a hint of lilac and lavender, confirming it wasn’t Ty she was kissing at all, but someone else.
Lost somewhere between semi-consciousness and a slumber induced by a bleary-headed cold and a 2:00 a.m. dose of Nyquil Severe Cold & Flu, she burrowed deeper into the downy softness of her bed, never wanting the kiss to end. Definitely had to be a dream because Ty was her past, and yet this tender brush of lips against hers felt so real! So right.
Breathing in the heady scent of pine trees that surrounded both Miss Lilly’s Emerald Cottage and the glimmering glacial lake outside her open window, she allowed her subconscious to fade back into sleep, desperate to return to Prince Charming.
“Wake up, Princess.” A husky voice with a hint of a brogue breathed into her ear, accompanied by a hint of that delicious peppery scent, and she literally groaned out loud, unwilling for the magic to end. Rolling on her side, she yanked the cover sheet over her head, longing to slip away once again …
“Uh, excuse me, Goldilocks, but I think you’re sleeping in my bed.”
Her eyes snapped open beneath the sheet while she gasped, frozen for a split second before she jerked her Glock 36 from under her pillow. Launching from her bed, her limbs shook like Jell-O as she stood there in her ratty tank top and penguin shorts, arms extended. “Who are y-you?” she rasped, heart pummeling her ribcage while she trembled, taking shaky aim at a man in a sculpted T-shirt and jeans who made Prince Charming look like a frog.
Light blue eyes flared in surprise as he raised massive palms in the air, a lazy smile easing across lips way too full and sensuous for a man. “Whoa, take it easy, lass. I’m Miss Lilly’s great nephew, Brec McGill, but you can call me Papa Bear if you like.”
“How did you get in?” she demanded, snatching her cell phone from the nightstand before backing toward the door, punching 9-1-1 in just to be ready. Hands quivering, she tucked the phone into her shorts, rattled that a Greek god had entered her room and she’d never even heard him come in.
With an impressive bulge of a bicep, he casually scratched the back of his head, his smile patient as he tossed a set of keys in the air. He slipped them into the pocket of jeans so snug, they bordered on indecent. “A key. From Aunt Lilly. A long time ago.”
“Wait a minute.” She swallowed hard as she wiped her lips, gaze narrowing when the memory of her dream came back. “Did you … kiss me?”
“Depends.” One edge of his mouth tilted up as he tipped his head, flashing the deepest, most dangerous dimples she’d ever seen. “Did you like it?”
Stance stiff, she jerked the gun higher, satisfied when it wiped the smile right off his face.
Taking a quick step back, he thumped a taut chest with a blunt thumb while he stared her down. “Look, Goldilocks, this is my room, and you were sleeping in my bed, so suppose you tell me who you are, aye?”
Her chin jutted up. “I am Miss Lilly’s temporary caretaker and companion, Nurse Molly Stewart. The one who left umpteen voicemail messages and a telegram that you never bothered to answer, I might add.”
He actually winced, which gave some small comfort that there may be a shred of concern somewhere deep down in this great nephew who hadn’t visited his aunt in years.
He cuffed the back of his neck. “About that,” he said with a sheepish look, “I’ve had a bit of bother lately with the press, so I’ve been off the grid, so to speak.” He gave an awkward shrug. “New cell phone, new apartment, dodged voicemail, you know?”
Expelling a silent sigh, Molly slowly lowered her gun. Yes, she knew. Miss Lilly had already filled her in on her notorious great nephew, the infamous Irish soccer star embroiled in a nasty scandal. The same nephew Miss Lilly’d been praying for since he went astray after college—both from her and from the faith she’d tried so hard to instill.
“But I finally got the telegram,” he continued in a rush, a definite apology lacing his tone as he buried his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans. Those broad shoulders lifted briefly. “So, here I am.” His thick, dark brows tented in concern as he pinned Molly with a pointed gaze that held a hint of vulnerability. “How is she?” he whispered.
“Better.” Rolling her neck, Molly felt the tension slowly seep from her body. “She’s out of the coma and resting comfortably—”
“Coma?” His voice cracked as his golden tan bleached to pale. “She was in a coma? The telegram just said she’d fallen and was in the hospital, for criminy’s sake.”
Molly arched a brow, her manner cool. “She did fall, Mr. McGill—into the lake, as a matter of fact. Which resulted in a coma when she almost drowned. But she came out of it before I sent the telegram—which was a last resort, mind you, after all the phone calls.”
A groan rattled from his throat as he tunneled thick fingers through short curly hair—almost black—appearing as if he actually cared or at least putting on a pretty good act. He glanced at his watch. “Where is she? I want to see her right now. And I want to know everything.”
“All in good time, Striker Boy,” Molly said as she waved the gun toward the door, adding her own twist to his team nickname of “Striker Man” since he was his team’s primary scoring threat. “It’s barely six a.m. and we’re not going anywhere till I’ve had a shower and a cup of coffee, so don’t be in such a hurry.”
She suddenly remembered the brazen pass he’d made by kissing her while she was sleeping, and both her ire—and her gun—rose to new heights. “Oh, wait—you weren’t in a hurry, were you? Since you just arrived a week after the fact.”
Those blue eyes thinned to slits of sapphire. “It’s ‘Striker Man,’ for your information, Goldilocks,” he said in a gravelly voice as tight as hers, “and I detest guns, so stop waving that thing at me. I took the redeye as soon as I got the blinkin’ telegram, so don’t act like I don’t care about my aunt.”
Eyes wide, Molly feigned surprise as she placed a hand to her cheek. “Oh, forgive me, please, but I didn’t realize seeing your aunt once every ten years qualified as ‘caring.’”
Too late she saw the flicker of pain in his eyes, pools of regret and guilt that shamed her before he quickly looked away, shoulders slumping while he gouged the bridge of his nose. “It was twice,” he said quietly, the weariness of his manner reminding her he’d just flown twelve hours on a cramped plane in the middle of the night. “But I’m here now, Miss Stewart, and I would very much like to see my aunt.”
Oh, way to welcome the prodigal home, Molly, she thought with a pinch in her chest, heat warming the back of her neck over kicking a man when he was down. She was the Christian here, after all, and he was not, a point that caused Miss Lilly great pain whenever they’d discussed her wayward great nephew.
The same wayward nephew who’d just kissed me while I was asleep, for pity’s sake!
For pity’s sake, indeed. And Brec McGill’s, apparently. Because if Molly knew one thing for sure about Miss Lilly, it was that no matter how infrequently she saw her nephew, she longed to see him healthy and whole, both spiritually and emotionally. "Deep down he’s a good boy,” she’d often say with that faraway look that told Molly he was her number-one priority before she went home to her Savior—that the nephew she loved would return to his, restoring the faith she’d worked so hard to instill.
And that sure wouldn’t happen if Molly didn’t reflect the love of the merciful God she also espoused, forgiving this lost soul for abandoning the aunt who loved him all of these years.
Unleashing a heavy sigh of regret that mirrored that in his eyes, Molly placed her gun on the nightstand and gave a side nod toward the door. “Visiting hours are at ten, so you can either catch a few winks in the guest room before we leave, or you can wait for me in the kitchen. Where,” she said with a quirk of her brow, “I will happily whip up breakfast—something fast, hearty, and nutritious—plus coffee while I fill you in on the state of Miss Lilly and her affairs.”
A sense of peace settled over his features like a truce, making him appear all the more fatigued. Offering a tired smile, he nodded to the novel splayed open on her bed, her favorite Agatha Christie cozy mystery that she’d been reading before nodding off. He tilted his head to read the title. “Sparkling Cyanide?” he said with a scrunch of his nose.
“Research,” she said with a slight heft of her chin, “for a book I plan to write.”
He gave a slow nod with a twitch of a smile. “And hopefully nothing to do with breakfast, I trust?”
Head tipped, she crossed her arms with a shadow of a smile. “The jury’s still out, Soccer Boy.”
He gave another slow nod, mouth sliding into a smile that instantly slid into a yawn. “No wonder you were out cold, then. Cozy mysteries are better than a sleeping pill in my opinion—too sweet for my tastes. I like a lot more action, so I’m a Steven King fan myself.”
She angled a brow. “Makes perfect sense. And your favorite is Misery, is it?”
He paused on his way to the door to shoot a wry smile over his shoulder. “Hilarious, Goldie.” Hand on the knob, he turned, his weariness belied by a twitch of a smile that reminded her all over again just how handsome he was. And dangerous to a woman’s emotional health per the tabloids she’d read.
“Breakfast would be absolutely grand, lass,” he said in a husky tone that held more than a hint of tease. “And if you’re willing to forgive me for both my abominable lack of attention to Aunt Lilly and stealing a kiss?”—he had the audacity to give her a wink—“I’ll forgive you for stealing my room.”
“Forgiven,” she said with a pert lift of her chin, matching his trace of a smile with one of her own. “The lack of attention to Miss Lilly, that is, Strike-Out Boy. But the sheer annoyance from the other?” She wrinkled her nose as she crossed her arms in a taut fold, dismissing him with a nod of her head to close the door. “Something tells me I’ll need that for self-defense.”

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