As always, thanks has to go to the unparalleled group of people behind the scenes who help make my books the best they can be. Thanks to Keren Reed, for your invaluable insight. To Hope and Jess at Flat Earth, I love how much you love these guys and how you give your everything to get it right. To Dianne at Lyrical Lines, thank you for your eagle eyes, especially catching that one horrible mistake that proves everyone, even a native New Yorker, can really mess up.
A special thank you to my cover artist and dear friend, Reese Dante who knows my vision for my characters better than I do and always gives me a cover that is head and shoulders above what I could have imagined.
And always to the readers, I couldn’t do what I loved if you didn’t give me all the encouragement. Thank you for making the dream possible.
Chapter One
It all started with a letter he’d almost thrown away.
“We represent the estate of Miss Lucy Muir, and it has come to our attention that you may be one of her heirs. Please contact our office so that we may discuss this matter further.”
Several confusing as hell legal meetings and one DNA test later, Charlie Muir sat in the Court Street law offices of Norse, Bynes, and Trumble, facing a man he didn’t know, who’d changed his life with a simple sentence.
“Repeat that to me again, please?”
The lawyer, Roger Norse, a thin, gray-haired older man, peered over his reading glasses. His kindly smile set Charlie’s heart beating faster. “You heard me right, Mr. Muir. The DNA test was a match. You’re the only surviving relative of Lucy Muir. She is your great-great-aunt, and the house on Willow Place is yours.”
The top hat Charlie had worn for the formal occasion sat heavily on his head, and he removed it to wipe at the sweat that had gathered. For the occasion, he’d dressed formally, in an Edwardian frock coat, ruffled shirt and slim-fitting jeans tucked into high-polished boots, all perks of working in a vintage clothing store. His fifty percent discount was the best. That and having first crack at trying on all the clothes when they came in.
It was only early May, but, of course, the weather hadn’t cooperated, and New York City was experiencing one of those freakishly hot days where the temperature hit over eighty degrees and humidity nearly suffocated him on his walk home from work. Charlie couldn’t wait to get out of his clothes.
“How can that be? I didn’t even know I had a great-great-aunt.” Or a mother, for that matter, he thought to himself. He could’ve used one, instead of being shuffled back and forth from foster home to foster home while growing up.
“Our client, Miss Muir, was, to put it bluntly, very rich. She earmarked money in her estate for us to hire a private investigator. We’ve been searching for over two years, hoping to discover any living relatives. She was very clear in her instructions that we were to look for her brother’s granddaughter—your mother—and if she could not be found, then we were to continue searching for the next in line, and the house was to be theirs. Not only that, but a trust is established to pay the taxes and expenses, so you don’t have to worry about anything. We chased down a lot of leads, but all roads led to you, Mr. Muir. The DNA doesn’t lie. You were the only match we found.”
“Me.” Having zero grasp of the legal system, except for ways to keep his nose clean, Charlie still found it difficult to believe that he, a twenty-seven-year-old guy working in a vintage clothing store during the day, while halfheartedly attempting to write the great American novel at night, was now the owner of a house. Half the time, he was lucky if he remembered where he put the keys to his roach-infested apartment. How was he going to take care of a house?
“Do you know what happened to my mother? I was put in foster care when I was young, and I only have a vague recollection.” Perhaps it was his stubborn pride, but Charlie had never once tried to look for his mother. If she didn’t want him, and would have rather had him be raised by strangers, he had no use for her.
But late at night sometimes, he’d swear he could smell the scent of a familiar perfume, or recall a husky laugh and the