Page 13 of Love Songs (Harmony Lake #3)
AFTER GETTING MY ginger tea at Mabel’s Bistro—and signing an autograph for the star-struck barista who thought the stage fire was part of the show—I sipped the hot, soothing liquid, letting it work its magic on my throat as I walked down the street to the real estate office.
A bell jingled over the door as I entered, and a man wearing a burgundy polo shirt and tan chinos rose from his desk. He was about my age with short brown hair and sported round, red eyeglasses.
“Hi. I’m Nolan Kaslo,” he greeted with a friendly smile, extending his hand. “How can I help you today?”
“Nice to meet you, Nolan. I’m Dallas.” I shook his hand. “I was hoping to take a look at that lakeside property you have listed in the window.”
Nolan frowned, his gaze sliding toward the window and back.
“On Harmony Drive?” Disbelief rang clear in the raised pitch of his voice. I guessed few people asked about that property, opting for one of the turnkey offerings.
“Yes,” I said, dragging the word out and capping it with a slight inflection.
I knew from the lack of photos that the house would need work, but now I wondered if there was more to it. Was there a house at all? Did a murder happen there? I suppressed a shudder.
“You should know,” Nolan said, eying me dubiously, as if he thought I might be playing with him.
“The property is beautiful, but the house has sat abandoned and neglected for over a decade. It’s in serious disrepair and will need a lot of work.
Or raze it and build a new home.” He waved toward a wall opposite his desk, papered with a dozen listings.
Most were duplicates of the ones I’d seen in the window.
“We have some beautiful homes I can show you that are move-in ready.”
“I understand, but I’d still like to see that one,” I said, undeterred. I’m not sure what it was about the lakeside property, but even with only seeing a photo of the sagging dock, I had a good feeling about it. “Is it possible to see it today?”
Nolan studied me for a second, maybe gauging if I was serious, or waiting to see if I would come to my senses, but I wasn’t going to change my mind.
“Sure. Okay,” he said, still with a wary note in his voice but accepting there was no punchline. He adjusted his glasses higher on his nose. “We can go have a look now, if you’d like.”
“That would be fantastic.” I smiled, raising my to-go cup of tea like giving a toast. “Thank you.”
After gathering his keys and paperwork, we climbed into a copper-colored compact SUV and headed toward Harmony Lake.
The property was on the other side of the lake, opposite the inn where I was staying.
Once we cleared the few streets that made up downtown Caldwell Crossing, Nolan turned onto Harmony Drive, a winding tree-lined road with glimpses of the lake and homes tucked behind a shield of maples, oaks, and pines.
“You look familiar,” Nolan said as he drove. “But I know you’re not from around here.”
“No, I’m not. You might have heard of my band,” I said, bracing myself for more comments about the fire. “The Dallas Blade Band.”
Nolan frowned and shook his head. “No, that’s not it.”
Okaay . . . I fought back a chuckle. More and more, I found it refreshing meeting local townsfolk who didn’t know who I was, or did but didn’t care.
“Oh, I know!” Nolan smacked his palm on the steering wheel, his teeth flashing as he guffawed loudly. “You’re the guy who won Conor Holliston at the charity bachelor auction for twenty-five-hundred bucks.”
“Yes.” The laughter I’d been holding back escaped, entertained that he seemed to have no idea who I was. Only that I was the big bidder from out of town. “That was me.”
Nolan whistled. “Nobody’s ever bid much over a couple hundred bucks, for as long as they’ve been running the bachelor auction.”
“Yeah, well.” I shrugged and rubbed the back of my neck. “It was for a good cause, and I felt bad for setting the stage on fire on Founders Day.”
Nolan whipped his head around and stared at me, his eyes comically wide. “You did what now?”
For a town that seemed to know everything about everyone, I wondered how it was possible for him to have missed that. Apparently, it was a pretty big thing. Having gone viral online, and all.
“Never mind,” I said with a grin. “It was small, and Conor put it out fast.”
“So . . . Did you fall instantly in love with our little town and decide to move here?” Fire forgotten, thankfully, Nolan glanced at me with bright humor in his dark eyes and a wry grin on his face. “Or did a certain firefighter you’ve been seen around town with sway you?”
I didn’t know why the gossip tree in this little town charmed me, when in the tabloids it annoyed me. Maybe because the people here cared about each other and everyone felt supportive—like we were all in this together. Whereas the tabloids were a bunch of money-grubbing pariahs.
“I can’t lie. Lieutenant Holliston is highly attractive.
” I couldn’t deny that Conor might be a factor in my interest in possibly making Caldwell Crossing home, but he was the cherry on top.
My desire to plant roots for Jaylin was the primary driving factor.
My priorities in life had taken a sharp turn when she entered my world.
“But this town has a genuine appeal to it. I love the easy-going, open, and friendly vibe here, and when I saw the photo for this property, something in my gut said I had to look at it.”
“The town and its people are very charming, and this is a beautiful piece of property,” Nolan agreed, but he chewed on his lower lip as though debating saying more.
“But don’t get too excited about it yet.
The house isn’t legally habitable. Making it worse is some kids in town who think it’s haunted and dare each other to go inside.
Conor and the CCFD are forever getting called out there. ”
“It’s not haunted though, right?” My voice cracked and rose embarrassingly, but I didn’t care. As drawn as I felt to the place already, I wasn’t sure I could get past living in a murder house full of traumatized ghosts.
I took a few sips of my tea to ease the tickle in my throat, finishing it as Nolan flipped his turn signal on. I dropped the empty cup into one of the center console drink holders.
“No, it’s not haunted,” Nolan laughed. “And no one ever died in there, but I wouldn’t trust the stairs to hold you or the light switches not to shock you.”
I puffed out a relieved breath. “Good to know.”
Nolan turned into a gravel driveway and stopped in front of a derelict wooden gate. Tall trees and overgrown bushes blocked the view of whatever lay ahead. A weathered FOR SALE sign stood at an angle near the edge of the quiet, two-lane road.
The gate creaked as Nolan lifted rather than pushed it open, and I made a mental note to put that at the top of the list to replace when I bought the property. I shook my head. There I was getting ahead of myself, already making plans and I’d yet to see the house.
The gravel drive was bumpy, with potholes and weeds nearly as tall as the vehicle’s hood ran down the middle of the two tracks. At one point we had to stop and move some large branches out of the way so we could pass—and I still couldn’t see anything but forest.
“How long is this driveway?”
“Little over six hundred feet,” Nolan said, wincing when branches scraped along the side of his car.
Finally, the trees gave way to reveal the house, a detached garage, and the lake behind it. Two things crossed my mind in that moment: one, it did look haunted; and two, I was going to buy it.
“What style is this?”
“This is a colonial revival built in 1904,” Nolan said as he shut off the engine and we exited the car. “There are four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a little over two-thousand square feet.”
I stood there for a second to take in the atmosphere.
Birds of all kinds chirped and chittered merrily as they darted about.
A light breeze ruffled through the leaves on the mature trees, and sunlight dappled the ground like a million tiny spotlights.
Ducks quacked and splashed in the lake. The air smelled clean and fresh, nothing like New York City, and carried with it a sweet note that reminded me of my auction date with Conor at the Stonebridge Maple Farm.
The peaceful chorus of nature sang to my soul and said, this is your home .
I didn’t have to try hard at all to imagine living here with Jaylin. A different life than the one I’d led to this point, for sure, but one I knew I wanted from now on.
“Shall we?” Nolan asked with what sounded like forced eagerness. I knew he’d rather be showing me any house other than this one, but he didn’t yet know that he’d already made the sale.
I gazed up at the house. It had two storeys plus an attic.
Most of the paint had peeled off the wood siding, leaving me to guess what color it had been.
Yellow, maybe? The bottom floor windows were all boarded up, and the cracked and peeling window casings on the second and attic floors would need to be replaced.
The diamond-pane glass in the second-floor bay windows looked worth keeping.
Hopefully, the same glass was still under the boards on the ground floor bay window.
Four steps led to a large, covered porch that stretched the width of the house, where I could see Jaylin and I sitting on a warm afternoon sipping iced tea.
The portico sheltered a faded yellow front door, with a glass pane in its upper half.
Or I assumed the glass was still there because someone had boarded it over.
“Yeah,” Nolan said, correctly gauging my train of thought. “We’ve had to cover the windows and the glass in the door because people have broken them too many times.”
Set back and to the right of the house, the detached garage looked large enough for two cars—or a recording studio—but the roof had caved in, and one door hung cockeyed off the hinges. The interior hid in shadow.