“Jillian Matlock,” she said, looking down at what had happened to her perfectly manicured, executive businesswoman’s hands. Destroyed. She pulled her hand back and wiped it on her jeans. “Whose house is it then?” she asked.

“The town’s. Hope left the house, land and her trust to the town.”

“Ah, that’s right! I was here last fall. I came to the estate sale and someone told me about that. So what’s going to happen to it?”

He stuck his hands in his pockets, rolled back on his heels and looked skyward. “Been a lot of talk about that. They could make it a museum, an inn, a town hall. Or just sit on it awhile. Or sell it—but with the economy down, it probably won’t pull a good sale price just now.”

“So no one really owns it?” Jillian asked.

“The town does. The guy in charge is Jack Sheridan. He has a bar in town.”

“No new owner?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Gee, I’d love to see what you did inside.”

He grinned. “And gee, I’d love for you to, but you’re a mess!”

She looked down at herself. “Yeah. I lost my head. Got a little caught up in clearing her garden and getting it ready. For what, God knows.”

“It’s not locked,” Paul said. “But I’d consider it a personal favor if you’d wipe your feet before going in.”

She was shocked; her eyes were round and amazed. “Not locked?”

“Nope,” he said with a shrug.

“So…no Realtor has the listing yet?” Jill asked.

“Not as far as I know, but then I barely finished with the redo. Jack would be the one to talk to.”

“Tell you what, this will make you happy. I’m going to go home…. Um, I’m staying in a cabin out by the river….”

“Riordans’,” he said with a smile.

Boy, this was a tight group, she thought. “Right. If it’s all right with you, I’ll come back out here tomorrow morning and give myself a little tour. I’ll be all clean and won’t track dirt in your house.”

His grin was huge. “And I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I painted and waxed those floors.” Then he blushed a little. “Well, I got it done.”

She smiled right back at him. “I know what a general contractor does. So, what does a place like this usually go for?”

“Who knows?” he said. “Put it in Fortuna, maybe seven hundred and fifty thousand. Restored, maybe a million. Lot of rooms in that house but only a couple of baths—I added one small one with a shower to make it three. Put it in a place like Menlo Park or San Jose—three million. Problem with real estate right now—it’s worth whatever you can get.”

“I hear that,” she said. “Listen, I’m going to take off.” She looked at the handkerchief. “I’ll, um, launder this for you.”

“Not to worry. I have a few.”

“I’m going to clean up and come back tomorrow, look through the house, if you’re sure it’s okay.”

“It’s okay. Half the town’s been through the house. They’re real nice about not leaving marks or tracks and that’s appreciated.”

“Gotcha,” she said with a laugh.

“Maybe I’ll swing by, in case you have questions,” he said. “About what time you want to do that?”

She lifted her eyebrows in question. “Nine?”

“Works for me,” he said. “I thought I’d stop by Jack’s Bar and get some eggs out of Preacher first.”

“Oh yeah, I remember him. He’s the cook! Maybe I’ll join you for breakfast.”

“You’d be more than welcome.”

The next morning Jillian got up and put on some of her city clothes, as opposed to the new jeans and sweats she’d been wearing for her days on the river. Even she had to admit the difference, sans mud and tears, was pretty remarkable. She chose pleated slacks, silk tee and linen jacket along with some low heels. From what she knew of this little town, it wasn’t necessary to dress up, but she primped anyway.

And a part of her, a large part, couldn’t wait to get back to work where looking good was as much a part of the job as performing well. She smiled at her reflection and thought, Not bad. Not bad at all.

Over breakfast Paul explained to her that there were still a few things to finish in Hope’s old house, but it had come a long way in the past six months. “We found it stacked to the ceiling with junk and collectibles, but it was in amazingly sound condition for its age. It didn’t take too much restoration—mostly cosmetic work. That’s one big house. Wish I’d had stock in the paint company.”

“What’s your interest in that old house?” Jack asked as he refilled their coffee cups. “Wanna open a bed-and-breakfast?”

“God, no!” she said with a laugh. “Clean up after people? Cook for them? Nah, never! I’m just kind of curious. I grew up in an old house with a big garden out back—though the house was much smaller. But it had porches, a big yard, big kitchen…. When my great-grandmother died my sister and I sold it. It wasn’t near where either of us lived and worked. It made absolutely no sense to keep it, but I always regretted that it was gone. My great-grand-mother had lived in that house since she was a teenager who was brought from France to marry a man she’d never met! She was half-French, half-Russian, and that was the way things were done then. Then she and her husband—who died long before I was born—lived there. It was her one-and-only home in this country and she nurtured it.”

They chatted for a few more minutes and then when it was time to leave, Jack decided he wanted to tag along; he hadn’t checked on the house in a good week.

Even though the house was immense from the outside, it didn’t quite prepare Jillian for the inside, which was huge and beautiful. This was the second time she’d actually been in the house; for the first time it was void of furniture and people.

Right inside the front door was what they used to refer to as a front room. Past it was the dining room; to the left a staircase and farther left on the other side of the staircase, a sitting room. The walls were textured and painted pale yellow, trimmed in white. Upstairs were three bedrooms, a large bathroom with claw-foot tub and pedestal sink, and a sunroom that stretched the length of the house over the back porch. On the third floor, two bedrooms, one medium-sized bath and what would now be referred to as a loft—a big open space between the bedrooms at the top of the stairs.

“This area was the attic and the two bedrooms were partially finished—walls up, but that’s it. It didn’t take much to finish them,” Paul said. The bedrooms on the third floor had window seats in the turrets and there was a metal spiral staircase that led to the roof and a widow’s walk. The widow’s walk was accessed through a door that pushed open easily and stood ajar. The walk was large, probably twelve feet long, but only six feet wide.

“A widow’s walk in a forest?” Jillian asked.

“I don’t know where old Percival came from—he was Hope’s husband—but I bet there was an ocean nearby. This is a sea captain’s house, complete with widow’s walk. And the view is amazing.”

Indeed, Jillian could see over the tops of the trees, down into the valley where there were vineyards. Way out west she could see what had to be sea fog; on the other side of the house she could see a couple of farms, some roads and a piece of the Virgin River. “How much of this land was hers?” Jillian asked.

“Most of the town property belonged to Percival but after he died Hope sold it off. She only kept ten acres,” Jack said. “She said when she was younger she had a couple of vegetable patches that were so big she was a legitimate farmer. When I moved to town and Hope was already in her eighties, she was still gardening in that big plot behind the house.”

Jillian looked down, and sure enough, saw a great big backyard almost completely taken up with the garden, along with a thick copse of trees that included a few tall pines, but also spruce, hemlock, maple and cedar. There were also lots of thick bushes and ferns. This long, thick copse of forest separated the backyard from another large meadow that could be easily transformed into a second huge garden, but there was no visible way to get to it except through the trees. There didn’t seem to be a path or road.

“How do you get back there?” Jill asked Jack, pointing. “To that big meadow behind the trees?”

“Drive all the way around,” he said. “Through town, past farms and vineyards. Hope gave up that second garden and let trees and brush grow over the access drive. Those trees are likely thirty years old and fully grown. I imagine she planned to sell that back meadow off, but either didn’t get around to it or had no takers.”

“This is amazing. This house should be an inn. Or maybe a commune. Or a house for a very large family. And one little old lady lived here all alone.”

“For fifty years,” Jack said. “Percival married himself a sixteen-year-old girl when he was near fifty. I bet he was hoping for a big family.”

“I wonder if they were in love,” Jillian idly commented as they headed downstairs.

“As far as I can tell they were together till he died, but no one knows much about them—at least about their personal lives. No one around here remembers Percival McCrea and there’s no question, he pretty well founded the town. He was the original landowner here and if he hadn’t left everything to his widow, and she hadn’t doled it out to friends and neighbors, there wouldn’t be a Virgin River.”

Something seemed odd about the house and Jillian wasn’t sure what it was until they arrived in the spacious kitchen. She noticed that not only were there no appliances, there weren’t any plumbing fixtures! She gasped suddenly and said, “You don’t leave the place unlocked because it’s so safe around here, but because there’s nothing in here to steal!”

Paul shrugged. “I didn’t want a door kicked in or window broken so someone could look around for something to steal. Unless they can figure out a way to get that claw-foot tub down the stairs, there isn’t anything to take. I guess they could steal the doorknobs, but that’s a real enterprising thief. I have a better front door with a leaded glass window stored in my garage for once the place is inhabited. Leaded glass is expensive. I have all the plumbing fixtures to install later. It is pretty safe around here, though. I mean, I never lock my door but Valenzuela, our town cop, says there’s the odd crime here and there and a person with a brain would just lock the damn door.”

Jillian just turned around and around in the great big kitchen while the guys talked. In addition to a lot of cupboard space and countertop, there was room for a double subzero fridge and an industrial-size stove top, two double ovens, a couple of dishwashers….

“And I love this,” Paul said, pulling open a couple of bottom drawers in the work island. “My idea. Extra refrigeration, probably useful for fresh produce or marinating meat. On the other side—warming trays.”

At the nonworking end of the kitchen was a very large dining area, large enough for a long table that would seat twelve. Over by the back door was a large brick hearth. The entire back wall was all windows that looked out onto the porch and the yard beyond. Below the windows were built-in drawers and cupboards. On one side of the dining area was a beautiful built-in desktop.

Continuing the tour, Paul said, “We’ve got one small bedroom here and we added a small bath, which was easy to do since we had access to the kitchen plumbing. I think this was set up to be the maid’s quarters. But near as we could tell, Hope lived in this small area of the kitchen for at least the last several years. It’s where she kept a big recliner, her filing cabinets, her TV and computer. Furnace works just fine, but I think she kept warm in front of the fire and, as we know, she chopped her own wood. If I owned the house, I’d trade that wood fireplace in for a gas—”