“You suggest it, and I’ll work on him.” Ida wiped down the counter with a damp dish towel and asked casually, “How are things at the hospital?”

Harper went on alert. Her mother didn’t do casual. She wasn’t a big talker, unlike her father, who could carry on a conversation with anyone, including strangers in the market, about any topic for seemingly endless lengths of time. Her mother was direct, perceptive, and the power to be reckoned with at home.

“Fine, as far as I know,” Harper said. “Is there something I don’t know about that I should?”

Ida turned and rested her slender hips against the counter in front of the five-foot-long cast-iron country sink. She and Harper were built the same, tall and lanky, slender in the hips and long in the leg. Even their hair color was the same, a brown so dark it looked black in low light. Harper’s hands were like hers too, long slim strong fingers. Right now Harper’s fingers were clenched around the steaming white porcelain mug. Her mother’s blue eyes, almost indigo like Harper’s, shimmered with…worry?

Harper’s shoulders tightened. Her mother was never wrong about something being wrong. Her mother had known when Harper’s sister Kate had been ill, even when no one, including Harper’s father and all his colleagues, could pin down why she suddenly wasn’t eating and was losing weight. And when the leukemia had finally surfaced, there’d been no way to stop it. Harper shook off the memory of saying good-bye to Kate in the bedroom next to hers. “What?”

“Your father.”

Stomach in free fall, Harper pushed the chair back and sat up straight. “What, is he sick? He hasn’t said anything to me.”

Ida waved a hand. “He’s healthy as a horse. But something’s worrying at him. He’s been pacing at night, doesn’t sleep even when he has the chance, and he’s had a couple phone calls that have clearly upset him, but he isn’t talking about it.”

“Is it money?”

“Not unless he’s suddenly taken up gambling.”

Harper snorted. Her father had two interests in life—medicine and his family. He didn’t have time for anything else and had never shown any inclination to change that. She admired him for his dedication to both and hoped that one day she would do as well, heading both the hospital, after her father retired as chief of staff, and a family, when she met the right woman to settle down with.

“Things are busy,” Harper said. “ER traffic has picked up now that the weather has broken, and we’re getting more tourists coming into the area. Other than that, I don’t know of anything at the hospital that might be bothering him.”

“Well then,” her mother said as tires crunched on the gravel outside, “whatever it is, I suspect we’ll know soon enough.”

Harper listened to the familiar sound of her father’s footsteps returning home, uneasiness settling in her middle. Her mother was never wrong about something being wrong.

*

Presley grabbed her roller bag off the carousel and pushed her way through the sparse pack of fellow travelers toward the airport exit. Three men in off-the-rack suits, white shirts, and dark ties held cardboard placards in front of them. One, a sandy-haired, florid-faced man in his early forties, held one with her name scrawled in black marker across it. She walked to him and he greeted her with a broad smile.

“Ms. Worth?”

“Yes.” She barely managed not to snarl. There’d been no first-class cabin, and the plane had been small and cramped and the service nonexistent. She’d managed a cup of coffee that tasted like lukewarm instant and a bag of nuts for breakfast. “How far is it?”

“About forty-five minutes.” He took the handle of her bag and headed for the exit. “Not much traffic out that way, so we’ll make good time.”

“Fine.” She followed along beside him into a sunlit morning. The air was crisp and a good twenty degrees cooler than she was used to at this hour of the morning. That was a bonus, of sorts, and about the only positive thing she’d noticed thus far. The airport was ridiculously small, which explained why she’d had to take two flights to get here. Really. Could she get any farther from civilization?

He led her to a black town car. While he took care of her bag, she climbed into the back and immediately checked her phone. Hopefully he wouldn’t want to chat once he saw she was busy. She scrolled through her several business email addresses and then her personal, sending instructions to her admin on several matters that had come up since the last time she’d checked. Thank God Carrie would be arriving the next day. Between the two of them, they ought to be able to wrap this up quickly.

The sooner they set the groundwork for a transition team to take over, the faster she could do what needed to be done and get out of here. The familiar anger at her brother and his maneuvering surged through her, and she tamped it down. Some battles were not worth fighting, and since he had the support of the board behind him, she’d had no ammunition with which to fight back. So here she was, pushed out of sight for the time being. The sooner she finished off the takeover, the better. Preston was mistaken, though, if he expected her to let him campaign for the CEO position while she was exiled in the ass-end of nowhere.

She glanced out the window at the city, or what there was of one, and discovered it had disappeared. Rolling hills and broad fields bordered the two-lane road. Farmhouses, white or yellow seemed to be the common color, sat along the road or back a distance on narrow dirt drives, the houses generally dwarfed by larger blood-red barns, silos, and a jumble of other buildings. No one had close neighbors. The landscape couldn’t be more different than Phoenix, where the starkly beautiful desert stretched for miles to the foot of the craggy mountain faces. Here, color exploded everywhere: greens in every shade and hue, deep yellows and rich earthy browns, purple-and-white flowers—lilacs, at least she thought they were lilacs—and other plants and flowers she could not name. The dizzying riot of bold colors was annoyingly distracting, and she turned back to her iPhone.

She opened a news app and after a second realized she had no signal. She stared at her phone. Was it possible? Really? No cell service? Where in God’s name was she?

Clutching her phone as if it were a lifeline to civilization, she leaned back and closed her eyes. The transition was projected to take six months. She’d give it three. Any longer than that and she was likely to lose her mind. Damn Preston and his maneuvering.

The vehicle slowed, and Presley sat up. A dented red mailbox with peeling reflective numbers perched atop a gray wooden post at the mouth of a dirt driveway. The car turned in and passed between fields of what Presley presumed was grass stretching as far as she could see on either side. Surely this was a mistake. “Are you certain this is the right address?”

“Says 246 on the mailbox, ma’am. And this is County Road 64.”

“Yes, but there’s nothing out here.”

“Well, there’s a house right up ahead past those trees. Isn’t that what you were expecting?”

“I was told a house had been rented for me, but I didn’t expect it to be—” She gritted her teeth. “Let’s just see what we see, shall we?”

The car bumped along a lane as long as two city blocks and barely as wide as an alley. The house was a neat wood-sided square structure—yellow, of course—with a broad porch running the full length of the front, the requisite red barn—not as big as some she had seen—fifty yards away, and a clothesline strung from the rear corner of the house to a big oak tree loaded down with sheets flapping in the breeze.

“Obviously, we have the wrong place. Someone lives here,” Presley said. Someone else, thank God.

The front door opened and a middle-aged woman in pale blue pants, a blue-and-white checkered shirt, and a flowered apron around her waist came down the porch and approached the car. Her graying blond hair was pulled back in a loose twist. Her smile was wide and welcoming.

Presley rolled down the window. “I’m very sorry to disturb you, I think we are in the wrong—”

“Would you be Ms. Worth?”

For a moment, Presley was almost too surprised to answer. “Yes. Who are you?”

“I’m Lila Phelps. The housekeeper.”

“The housekeeper.” Presley heard her voice rise at that. “I didn’t know the house came with a keeper.”

Lila laughed. “Well, I don’t live here, but the rental agency said you’d be needing a housekeeper, and I’m right up the road. My cousin Sue works for the agent and she called me, and I can use the extra with my youngest about to go off to community college in the fall. The house needed airing out and I just finished washing all the linens. Of course, if you don’t need me—”

“Do you cook by any chance?”

The woman beamed. “Does it rain in April?”

“Not where I come from,” Presley muttered. She pushed open the door and stepped out. “Breakfast at six a.m., dinner at seven thirty.”

“I can leave you something warming in the oven for your supper, but I’ll be needing to be home come four or so to see to the family’s meal.”

“Fine. Just leave instructions with it.”

“I can manage that. And do the wash and keep the place tidy and do the grocery shopping.”

“Excellent. I’ll give you a list of my preferences. I work in the morning over breakfast, so no radio.”

“Don’t like the noise myself.”

Presley nodded briskly. “We’ll get along fine, then.”

“I expect we will.”

Presley paid the driver, and he carried her suitcase up to the front porch. With her hands on her hips, she turned and surveyed her new home. All she could see were hills and fields and cows. There were a great many cows right up the road, and if she hadn’t been able to see or hear them, she could definitely smell them. She was going to make her brother pay for this.