Page 2 of The Secret of Emerald Cottage

If one could overlook parental kissy-face, that is, between two adults who acted more like teenagers than parents. Then there were their mother’s matchmaking tendencies, which drove her and her sisters up the wall. From endless awkward fixups and nonstop probing about their love-lives, to not-so-subtle commentary about her longing for grandchildren, her mother couldn’t seem to help herself. “Is it a crime to want my daughters to be as happy as we are?” she’d always ask, and it took everything within Molly not to scream, YES! Because after chronic bad relationships endured by she and her sisters over the years—including the breakup with Tyler—she feared the bar was just too high. The last thing she wanted was to face day in and day out the fear that she’d never have what her parents did.

And Chase knew it. Reverting to puppy-dog eyes, he’d apparently taken her silence for a negative response. “Come on, Mol, this will give you a break before you look for a job and an apartment. Plus, it would be a really Christian thing to do for a fragile little old lady in need, your devoted pastor, and an old buddy from the Navy. Besides,” he’d said with a crook of his brow, “living with Miss Lilly will give you lots of time to curl up on a comfy chaise in front of the lake to indulge in your secret obsession—reading all those cozy mysteries you love and maybe even writing your own like you’ve always wanted to do.”

Her eyes had narrowed. She’d give him one thing—he had the arm-twisting thing down real good. She’d stifled a grunt. Probably Chapter Three in the Pastor Manual.

“Magnesium.” Miss Lilly popped up from her chair with a whole lot more energy than Molly at 12:15 a.m., the old woman’s spry movement and gravelly voice disrupting Molly’s reverie.

“What?” Molly blinked as she watched her patient—who’d become more like a grandmother over the last month—snatch a cup from her cupboard and fill it with hot water from her tea kettle. Steam rose as she steeped the tea infuser up and down in the cup before bustling back to the table.

“Magnesium, I said.” Clunk. Miss Lilly set the cup down none too gently, promptly retrieving a cookie for Molly from her famous pig cookie jar. “The way you were just a-starin’ off into space, missy, I thought you might be the one sleepwalkin’.”

She delivered a wink as she sat back down, grinning like a pixie over the rim of her cup. “And for your information, young lady, I haven’t sleepwalked since Doc put me on magnesium. Flat-out alarmed at how low I was, he said, claiming that can trigger a body roaming at night in their PJ’s.”

Her eyes twinkled as she took a sip of her tea, looking like a tiny leprechaun for all her emerald-green satin duster and wrinkled grin. Which certainly fit. Despite her backwoods air, Miss Lilly was as Irish as the Blarney Stone itself, according to Chase, married to a full-blood Irishman, no less. And not just any Irishman, apparently, but the only grandson from a prominent Irish family in Savannah. A family that had not only owned the lake and all the rental cabins around it, but almost a thousand acres of prime Georgia land as well, which now belonged to Miss Lilly.

Molly blew out a weary sigh and bit into her cookie, pretty sure she needed way more than magnesium. She bit back a grunt as she pushed her tea away with a sad smile. Like sleep. “Thanks for the cookie, Miss Lilly, but I’ll pass on the tea. Haven’t been sleeping all that well, so the last thing I need is caffeine.”

The twinkle in the old woman’s eyes softened with sympathy. “Still frettin’ over that two-timin’ polecat, sweetheart?”

Tyler. The polecat who stole her heart. Her smile took a tilt. Otherwise known as the “womanizing skunk lower than a snake belly in a wagon rut,” according to Miss Lilly. Nope, at least it wasn’t about Tyler tonight like it’d been the first few months she’d moved back to Savannah. “No, just restless, I guess.”

“Then dunk that tea ball real good and drink up, missy, because that there is my own magic potion for sleepin’ like a baby.”

“Really?” Molly leaned to sniff at the tea. “What’s in it?”

“All natural things from God’s green earth, don’t you know. Chamomile, lavender, magnolia bark, blackberry leaves, and what not.”

Molly dunked the tea ball up and down several times before she finally took a sip, the warm taste of spearmint soothing her nerves. “Mmm, it’s good. ‘Whatnot’ must be spearmint.”

“Yes, ma’am, and blue skullcap.”

Molly blinked, the tea pooling in her mouth. She swallowed it in a hard gulp. “Skullcap?” she said weakly, the name immediately conjuring images of death, which did not bode well for her peace of mind. Not after the dream she’d just had.

“Yessiree,” Miss Lilly said, “calms a body down and quells that restless spirit so you can rest in peace.”

Taking another healthy glug of the tea, Molly figured she needed a little quellin’ right about now.

Over keeping Miss Lilly safe.

Over finding a job.

And over a nightmare about drowning that felt way too real …

Rest in peace. Eyes slamming closed, she upended her tea in one jerky bottoms-up, hoping and praying that it related to Molly and a good night’s sleep.

And not to Miss Lilly.