Michelle Celmer - Demanding His Brother's Heirs

“Jeremy and I spent every summer here as kids with our mom and grandparents. Our dad came up on weekends when he could get away from work.”

She couldn’t imagine a more ideal setting to spend her summers. Or her winters. Or springs and falls, as well. “So you live here year round now?”

“I do.”

“Are you close to the lake?”

“About as close as you can get without living in a house boat.”

She blinked with surprise. “You live on the lake?”

“Straight across from town.”

She peered out the car window across the lake. She could barely make out the silhouette of homes tucked back against the thick forest bordering the shore; at this distance she could see very little detail. Among them, nearly hidden behind a row of towering pine trees, stood what appeared to be some sort of enormous and rustic-looking wood structure. Maybe a hotel or hunting lodge. It was too huge to be someone’s home.

“Can you see your house from here?” she asked him, as they passed the Trapper Drugstore and The Trapper Inn. Beside that sat the Trapper Tavern.

“Barely,” he said. “I’ll point it out to you the next time we’re in town.”

He left Main Street and the town behind and turned onto a densely wooded two-lane road that circled the lake. Mottled sunshine danced across the windshield through breaks in the trees, and every so often she could see snippets of clear blue lake. The earthy scents of the forest filled the car. It was so dark and quiet and peaceful. She closed her eyes and breathed in deep, and like magic she could feel the knots in her muscles releasing, her frayed nerves mending. For the first time since Jeremy died she was giving herself permission to relax.

It felt strange, but in a good way.

After several minutes Jason steered the vehicle down a long and bumpy dirt road. “There’s something you don’t see in the city,” Jason said, pointing to a family of deer foraging just off the road. They were almost close enough to reach out the car window and touch.

The trees opened up to a small clearing, and towering over them stood what she had assumed was a lodge, so deeply tucked into the surrounding forest, the dark wood exterior seemed to blend in with the vegetation. But as they pulled up to the front entrance, she could see that this was no lodge. This was a house. A really huge house.

She took a deep breath and willed herself not to freak out. She should have known. Most people of modest means did not spend their summers at the lake house. That in itself should have been her first clue that Jason’s family was well-to-do. But she never would have guessed that they had done this well.

The summers that Jeremy had claimed he’d spent living on the street, begging for food, he’d actually been here, in a mansion ?

Holly felt sick all the way to her bones. Any lingering traces of love or respect for her dead husband fizzled away. She had never been more deeply saddened or utterly disappointed in anyone.

Jason parked close to the door, cut the engine and turned to her, watching expectantly when he said, “Home sweet home.”

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