I slunk back into the house, avoiding the broken floorboard.

I also avoided the backyard, although I watched from the windows in one of the guest rooms upstairs. I watched Hank move across the yard, feeding the horses and watering the chickens, which squawked gratefully. As I worried the cameo around my neck, I observed the cowboy in his natural element. He liked to work with no shirt on, which seemed so perfectly right and not at all beefcake. I mean, it was warm this morning, almost seventy degrees . . .

Once he left in his truck, a great manly beast of a thing, clouds rolling in great waves of lusty dust in his wake, I went to work. I wasn’t quite sure how to tackle all the junk. It was a bit sad, actually.

Maude had grown up in this house, where she’d lived her entire life. The house had been in the family for more than a hundred years. When the first generation of my family to branch off the Philadelphia trunk had traveled here so many years ago, what would become the town of Mendocino was still a small settlement. It was composed mostly of families from New England, so the style of homes reflected what these pioneers brought with them: Cape Cod, Victorian, picket fences, and cottage rosebushes everywhere.

She’d lived here when her mother died, and had never left to create her own household. Families had visited over the years; aunts and uncles and cousins and their children had filled this house with laughter and tears, suppers and tea parties. But in her last years, Aunt Maude had withdrawn.

As I began to sort through the clutter in one of the spare bedrooms, I discovered a trove of Maude’s paintings. Mendocino had once been an artist colony, and she’d signed and dated every one, starting back in the fifties. I knew I’d get lost if I started looking through them with any kind of order at this point, so I tucked them back into the closet until I could spend more time examining them.

Maude had been an artist. Interesting. My fingers held a phantom brush, noticing the natural light pouring into the room and knowing instantly that this would be a great room to paint in. An inspection of the floor revealed an occasional paint splatter here and there, something I hadn’t noticed anywhere else in the house. So she’d also found the light in here irresistible. Feeling a sudden kinship with her, I smiled.

I spent the morning cleaning out the bedroom with the best view of the ocean. Wiping a thick layer of sea salt and grime from the windowpanes, I continued to hum the theme to Bad Boys as I worked. Once the blue of the Pacific sparkled through once more, I searched for more clean rags in the linen closet in the hallway and was thrilled to find a fairly new set of sheets. Buoyed by the thought of sleeping in an actual bed tonight, I headed for the basement to see if the washing machine still worked.

Opening the basement door for the first time, I realized two things. One, the lightbulb was burned out. Two, the motherfucking lightbulb was burned out. Sighing loudly, I threw back my shoulders and bravely tromped down the steps. Into the dark basement of a hundred-plus-year-old house, with nothing but old sheets to protect me.

So there’s stupid, and then there’s stupid. I’ve had picnics in cemeteries. I went on a tour of the underground catacombs when I lived in Paris. I was always the last one standing when we played Bloody Mary at slumber parties. But by the time I made it to the bottom of those basement stairs, I was shaking like a horrified leaf. Basement danger, the worst kind.

The sun shone dimly through one dirty window. If I remembered correctly, the washer was on the other side, by the furnace. Turning away from the light, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the washer . . . next to a pile of heads.

Sheets dropped, mouth opened in a silent scream, my entire body went on lockdown as my brain tried to catch up to what I was seeing. By the time I processed the Halloween label on the box and realized they were just masks, it was too late. Forever in my head, they’d be heads.

You have never seen someone start a load of laundry as quickly as I did. Whistling a happy tune to distract myself, I covered the heads with a big trash bag. Between the dolls and the Halloween props, I was beginning to understand why people can go a little funny when left on their own too long.

I thought about all this afterward up in the kitchen, the basement door firmly latched behind me, and I shivered when I realized I’d have to go back down there to put the sheets into the dryer.

Then I heard a knock at the front door. Would it be Hank? Returning for another round of witty banter?

Wiping my face on the inside of my T-shirt, I realized that I was disgusting and badly needed a shower. Oh well. Resigning myself to it, I headed out into the foyer. Peering through the lace at the window I saw a man, but the profile was leaner than Hunky Hank’s. Soccer player vs. football player. Breathing a sigh of relief that I’d have more time to prepare myself for our next meeting, I opened the door.

Brown hair. Brown eyes behind dusty-looking eyeglasses. White button-down. Tweed jacket with . . . elbow patches? He was tall, carried a briefcase, and looked exactly like Tom, Dick, and Harry. I could handle this. Hell, I’d just defeated an entire legion of heads.

“Hiya,” I announced, surprising him. Pushing his glasses up onto his nose, he glanced down at me. I was dressed for cleaning in a tank top that I’d sweated through, denim cutoffs that showed most of my legs, and a headband, and he took me in with an appreciative glance. Amused, I let him look, and when he finally met my eyes again, I let him know with my look that I’d caught him peeking.

A blush colored his cheeks, and he pushed his glasses up once more.

“Vivian Franklin?” he asked, his voice deeper than I thought it’d be.

“It’s Viv. Who’s asking?”

“Vivian, my name is Clark Barrow. I heard you were looking to make some changes to Seaside Cottage?”

“Hell yes, probably starting with this porch. It’s a death trap, Clark,” I affirmed, thumping on the column, which wobbled. “You should see the cut I got on my leg yesterday when I went through the plank.” I propped my leg up on the railing just to the right of him, running my hand down to highlight the bandage.

His eyes followed my hand. “That looks like a doozy of a cut,” he agreed, his gaze on my skin.

I cleared my throat.

He still stared.

“So, Clark, you’re here to put in a bid?”

“A bid?” he asked, looking up.

“Yeah, you said you heard I was looking to get some work done, right? I don’t know for sure if I’m staying, but if I’m even going to consider it I’ll need to have an idea of what kind of money I’d be shelling out to make this house livable, know what I’m saying? I’m thinking we’ll start with the front porch; all these rotten boards are going to need to be torn off. The roof’s leaking, so that’s obviously the first thing we’ll need to start on, and when I was trying to get to sleep last night, before the rain started that is, I could have sworn I heard something scuffling around behind the walls. I’d hate to have to rip out that plaster, but I’m not going to have anything furry surprise me some night so—”