When You Look at Me (A Pleasant Gap Romance Book 2) Read online

  Her dad sniffed the air and nodded. “I can see that for sure. It’s built real good but the place still needs some work before it goes to another owner.” He whistled. “Lots of work, if you ask me. Millie was a packrat.”

  Julia paused in the doorway of the music room, trying to ignore her dad’s gray-fringed realism. A granite fireplace graced the opposite wall, the rich-colored rugs her aunt likely purchased abroad covered the hardwood floor, and, of course, the elegant grand piano sat in the center of a crescent of floor-to-ceiling windows. Morning light bathed the instrument in such a mysterious glow that Julia could almost hear her aunt’s ivory peal of Bach in the air.

  Her chest compressed with the familiar pangs of loss. Julia twisted her simple silver chain necklace between her fingers and turned toward the doorway where her father stood, his broad shoulders taking up most of the space between the music room and the entry hall. “She provided funds for that, Dad, and I’ve already scheduled the workers.” Julia grinned. “I can’t think of a time she didn’t prepare to perfection.”

  “Ain’t that the truth. But…she was a weird one, holed up here in this house all by herself.”

  The scrutiny in her dad’s voice echoed the rumors swirling outside these walls about Aunt Millie, but after spending years with the woman, Julia couldn’t shake the idea of some horrible tragedy that propelled Millie into a self-imposed exile, of sorts. The far-off gazes seemed less of an aged mind and more of a longing heart, but no matter how hard Julia had tried to learn more about Millie’s past, the woman kept her history of untold stories as silent as a grave.

  Only a few times had Amelia slipped from her privacy into unveiling pieces of memories, and each time she’d spoken of two people. Rosalyn and Lucas.

  Julia’s gaze fixed to a gilt-framed portrait of a little girl with caramel-colored curls dancing around her cherub face. Rosalyn. Amelia’s daughter who’d died much too soon.

  “I wonder what these walls would tell us if they could speak, Daddy.”

  He grunted as he toted his toolbox down the long hallway toward the kitchen. “They’d say they was bored from not havin’ enough to see.” His low whistle echoed off the tall ceiling, oak floors, and empty space. “I hope you get a good price on this place. I ain’t a fan of fancy houses, but it sure does have some excellent woodworking. It’d be a shame to sell it to someone who wouldn’t appreciate the craftmanship.”

  “Millie spared no expense. These frills show it. Clearly, she had money from somewhere.” She followed her dad, lingering at each doorway to peek inside. Despite the general bossiness, a healthy dose of protectiveness and love bounced off his grimace. “And you’ll be glad to know that neither potential buyer balked at my offer. I did my research.”

  Her dad crinkled up his face. “What?” He shook his head and sat his toolbox on one of the long counters lining the massive kitchen, a work-worn hand braced on one hip of his dusty jeans. “Well, don’t let him steal this place from you, girl. You’re soft when it comes to a sob story or two.”

  She stared down her dad and rested her crossed arms on her extended abdomen. “I’ve run a successful bakery for three years while attending community college, Daddy. I can bring on the thick skin when I need to.”

  Though he’d turned away from Julia as she made her claim, his snort still reached her ears. “Just because your cupcakes have won over the whole town and you’ve aced me as a rifleman, doesn’t mean you’re thick skinned.” He grinned at her over his shoulder with equal shares of mischief and pride crinkling the corners of his eyes.

  Her smile replied, and she nodded toward the sink. “I’ll leave you to fix that leak, and I’ll go…” She hesitated to say she would investigate the one room she probably needed to explore the most. “… I’ll start in Aunt Millie’s office. Sissy told me she left some papers for me on the desk.”

  “Well, if anybody knew Millie, it was Sissy. The woman had been with her for ages, far as I know.”

  “Then I’ll come back downstairs and use my shrewd judgment on the furnishings in the music room. I hope to have the house empty before this baby comes, and Mr. Greer says he and his moving crew have some days set aside for me in a few weeks.”

  “You only got a month?” Dad wiped his brow with the back of his hand and opened the cabinet door beneath the sink. “Then what you doin’ jawin’ with me instead of workin’, girl?” He dismissed her with a wave of his thick hands. “Git on with it.”

  She shook her head with a laugh and took the stairs. She could count on one hand the times she’d stepped inside the sanctuary of her aunt’s office. It wasn’t so much that Aunt Millie forbade the entrance, but there was something private about the elegant woman’s equally elegant space that kept Julia from entering.

  Dust swirled in the air at Julia’s entry, waking the sleeping room.

  The cornflower scent gave off a stronger aroma here, almost as if it permeated the azure-and-white floral wallpaper. It was a French-styled room, with ornate white crown molding, rounded-top windows, and a patterned ceiling with almost a renaissance-look.

  A grand oak desk embossed with faint hints of gold as trim stood against the far wall, framed in by windows.

  Papers and photographs Julia didn’t remember seeing before littered the desk in a haphazard manner.

  Had Aunt Millie been sitting in this room the night before she died? Looking through these papers? Preparing for the end?

  Julia tugged her sweater closer around her shoulders at the slight chill wafting over her arms. Millie had died in her sleep of a heart attack, according to her doctor. There had been barely a hint of any developing weakness, but Julia had noted a marked change in her aunt’s behavior in the weeks leading up to her death: A distance. A quiet. Longer daydreams. The housekeeper, Aunt Millie’s faithful companion for over thirty-five years, had found Millie upon arriving for her morning duties. Gone as quietly as she’d lived.

  Julia fingered a golden-framed photo—one of her aunt, much younger, sitting in front of a grand piano on stage, fingers pressed against the keys and eyes closed. Was this particular one from her time as the world-renowned pianist Amelia Dawn Rippey? Julia had seen a few other photos of her aunt during that era, but only briefly and without much commentary from the subject.

  Next to that photo waited a sweet picture of a young Amelia with a beautiful little girl. The brush-painted color of the era highlighted their shared wealth of dark hair and unusual gray-green eyes.

  Rosalyn. Probably not too long before her death.

  Julia’s palm swept over her stomach in a protective way.

  At the desk’s center stood the most curious of all photos. Aunt Millie, quite young and dressed in an elegant evening gown, stood beside a dashing man whose arm was wrapped around her waist in affectionate familiarity. He had a tousle of wavy brown hair and a crooked smile that almost lit up his eyes with some inner beam. Her grin tipped in response. Was this a photo of the mysterious Lucas? The name her aunt had mentioned in quiet reverence. The man she’d loved who no one in the family knew anything about?

  A recent, more colorful photo diverted Julia’s attention to the corner of the desk and encouraged a sting of tears. It had been taken last summer as Julia and her aunt sat in their favorite spot: the grand gazebo at the top of the mountain behind Millie’s house that overlooked a view of the Blue Ridge and the Cascades. A place Julia had no intention of selling.

  The house and the three acres surrounding it, yes. But the additional twenty acres spanning the mountainside? The place with a tiny cottage where she and her mother and sisters went every year for a girls’ weekend? No. She’d hold to that keepsake while funds allowed.

  Her aunt’s face had aged over the span of these photographs, and the light in her eyes dimmed with the passing of each one. She’d told Julia once that her heart belonged more in heaven than on earth now, since the two people she’d loved the most in the world waited to meet her there. Julia pulled her gaze away from the faces in the photos,
lingering another second on Lucas’s face. Just out of the periphery of the frame, an envelope with her name on the front paused Julia’s breath.

  She set down the photo and with careful fingers peeled back the envelope’s opening. A small key slipped out followed by a single page written in her aunt’s beautiful hand—a letter.

  My dearest Julia…

  Chapter Six

  T he mountains carried their own song. A melody beginning with soft brass, perhaps a stray violin solo or—even more accurate to the history of these hills— an Irish flute, grew in his thoughts to a full orchestral explosion as vast as the blue horizon. Henry could feel the music stirring to existence with every new discovery of this Appalachian world. Each view, each conversation with a native, every hint of the raw talent in the mountain musicians tempted the tune in his head closer to becoming a reality on his fingertips.

  Wes had brought Henry to a historical frontier reenactment site near the filming area, and some local musicians played the blue grass Henry had been studying for the past few weeks. Just what he needed to further his exploration of Appalachia’s musical culture.

  Its sound carried a similar genre to the tunes of his Irish kin—a mixture of lively and melancholy. A local luthier allowed Henry to examine some of his handcrafted instruments: a violin—referred to as a fiddle in Appalachia—a guitar with lower tones, a mandolin with higher-pitched tension, a bass, and a beautifully crafted stringed instrument that looked something like a lyre, but the luthier called a dulcimer. Henry proceeded to purchase one straight away then watched the instrumentalists play through four or five pieces, fixing the technique to memory before Wes pulled him back into the car to make their appointment with the producer and filming crew on the movie set.

  After Henry had a long talk with one of the Appalachian historians followed by several other conversations related to the expectations of the movie, he’d reached his peopling limit. The quiet called to his weariness, and the forest promised an answer.

  A lonely trail split between heavy trees and drew him up the hillside and into the wealth of wooded shadows. The scent of pine engulfed his senses as birdsong serenaded the pine-needled path. Voices in conversation and the tick, tick of a hammer on set-design faded behind him as tall oaks, pines, and maples—woods used to create those homespun instruments—drew him deeper into their home. The path rose gradually before him, almost like an earth-woven carpet of anticipation for what lay ahead. He turned his headset to the bluegrass soundtrack the producer had recommended—a unique mingling of string instruments and tight harmonies as earthy and lush as the spring world blooming around him. The cool air against his face filled his lungs with a promise of discovery.

  He took the challenge.

  On he climbed, adjusting his pace to the rhythm of the music, allowing the melodies and ballads to pour through the creative recesses of his mind. He’d been with Wes during the creation of the script—a story of clashing cultures and the hardships of a life etched in this wilderness. Yet two similar hearts found commonalities in their faith, love of stories, and mutual compassion. It was a tale of two worlds and a common theme.

  Love made the impossible…possible.

  The music he composed for this movie had to convey the many-layered story as well as celebrate the culture and history of a rustically beautiful landscape. He continued farther up the trail, waking the forest with his footsteps, and grinned as a couple of squirrels at his feet scattered beneath an unusual bush with rubbery-like dark green leaves hanging low.

  The clean smell of earth and the rush of a good walk held similarities to his excursions in Derbyshire, but something different stirred the air of these mountains—an untouched, almost mysterious, sense of anticipation as elusive as the sweet yet unknown scent surrounding him. He took a deep breath but couldn’t regain the aroma. Perhaps it was a fragrance only found in Appalachia that rewarded travelers along the way.

  He adjusted his pace to the incline as the path steepened. Traces of an azure-hued view played peekaboo with him through the healthy growth of spring forest, promising a reward if he persevered to the top of the hill.

  The mandolin and violin in his ears tinged in surging duet toward the pinnacle of Henry’s walk. He pushed through a cave of bush and brambles onto a rocky ledge as the music reached its climax and the earth fell away into an endless vista of sky and mountains.

  This moment could only be defined by music.

  His knees weakened at the expansive panorama that spread before him in rolling layers of every shade of blue, from cobalt fading to a smoky-periwinkle just above the ridgelines. He lowered to his knees, breathing in the sight, the scents, the music, until every other thought disappeared from his being. Only then, with the story replaying in his head, could he find the melody for this soundtrack—this new challenge of unfamiliar music and culture.

  His heart wrung with a sense of wonder, a need to praise. What a majestic masterpiece from the Supreme Artist!

  He waited for the initial strains of a tune to emerge in his mind, tentative and quiet, before he finally took his leave.

  Silence remained predominant during the drive back to the apartment. After years of friendship, Wes recognized Henry’s need for quiet to piece together his research and experience with music—composing then obliterating then recomposing —and finally ending in a breakthrough fitting for the project. He needed to capture the infant melody on a piece of sheet music and the strings of his violin before the sounds of the world returned to steal this fresh inspiration.

  “Eisley should be here soon to take me putt-putting with the children.” Wes kept his voice low as they approached the back entry to the bakery.

  Henry’s brow furrowed, emerging from his creative fog in an attempt to decipher Wes’s words.

  His friend must have noted Henry’s confusion.

  “It’s miniature golf, but they refer to it as putt-putting.”

  Henry nodded, a hint of a smile crinkling through his concentration at the joy in Wes’s expression.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll join me?”

  Henry almost grinned at the slight humor in his friend’s voice. “Not today, thank you.” His fingers tingled with anticipation, almost making out the position of some of the notes he knew fit into this melody.

  “The composer at work.” Wes took the steps onto the porch, but as he opened the door, an unexpected piano melody crashed in against the budding composition in Henry’s mind.

  He put one hand to his head, attempting to make sense of the collision of sound and expectation.

  “It seems someone else has music on their mind today too.” Wes grinned and gestured toward the beautiful strains spreading from the hallway to meet them. “It may be a good time to talk to her about the engagement party music, seeing as she’s already at the piano.”

  Henry’s feet froze to the ground, the clash of two desires keeping him in place. “I…can’t. I must get this melody down.”

  Wes shrugged a shoulder and took the stairs. “Then perhaps once you’ve done so?”

  Henry forced his steps away from the music room and followed Wes. “Today?”

  His best mate’s smile held no mercy whatsoever. “As good a time as any, isn’t it? I’m rather keen to make Miss Barrett my bride, and you have less than two weeks now.”

  Henry shot a grimace to Wes then glanced toward the hallway before completing his walk up the stairs as one of Brahms’s piano concertos pursued him. He’d barely made it over the threshold of the apartment door, when the piano music shifted. What was it? The harmonic structure certainly wasn’t classical.

  Wes disappeared into his room, most likely to freshen up to meet Eisley, and Henry placed his things on the desk by the door, still trying to decipher the tune Julia was playing. His grin spread as melody met recognition and his feet moved of their own volition, pulling him toward the unique and complex melody.

  She was playing a complex improvisation of the jazz standard Stardust. A violin ac
companiment soared to life in his head, blending with the beauty of the piece. Her notes continually shifted in unexpected directions, keeping his attention and feeding his love for intelligent chord progressions.

  Oh, she was very good. Excellent, even.

  He halted in the doorway of the music room, hesitant to interrupt yet unable to turn back. Julia sat at the piano, eyes closed, fingers moving over the keys like a caress. Her golden hair hung low down her back with a few threads spilling across her shoulders. A glow of sunlight escaped the curtain’s barrier and fell like a halo over her head, almost as if she were a God-sent vision for his eyes alone. Henry stilled, entranced. The melody outside of him dampened beneath the surging symphony within.

  She’d become the music.

  Her eyes opened to reveal layers of cobalt blue blended with sapphire and brightened by the joy of music. He couldn’t move, could barely breathe, and for a moment it appeared she hadn’t fully registered his presence.

  Yes, she’d become lost in the melody too. He knew that otherworldly draw, the magic.

  She took her fingers from the keys, ending the music—well, the audible music, at any rate—and stared at him almost as if she too were unsure of what to do next.

  Despite the usual compulsion to retreat during uncomfortable situations, the music between them somehow acted as a bridge, coaxing him into conversation. He cleared his throat and stepped into the room, gesturing toward the piano. “I see you’re back from your aunt’s house.”

  He pinched his eyes closed and nearly groaned. Idiot. Was that the best he could do after her immaculate performance? You played exquisitely. Your technique is impeccable. Where did you learn to improvise with such delicate and effective style? But no. I see you’re back? Brilliant, old chap. Positively brilliant.

  Her lips shifted almost imperceptibly, as if she’d read his floundering thoughts but didn’t want him to notice her doing so. She turned her attention back to the piano. “I only returned about an hour ago. Millie’s house encourages the…need for music.” She looked up, the smile falling from her eyes. “Did my playing bother you?”