She was there and she didn’t plan to leave, so all that was left was to unpack. She rolled her luggage down the hallway toward the master bedroom, but she couldn’t make herself go into the room. She’d known he’d had other women, but did he bring them here? Did he have sex with them in her honeymoon bed? There was no way in hell she could sleep in that room. The therapist would call it love-hate, what she experienced as she stood there, her feet glued to the floor. She’d loved him. He’d tricked her. She hated him. All those feelings finally hit home and rolled up into a hard ball in the middle of her chest. They did not make for the happy, peaceful feeling she’d hoped for.
She crossed the hall to a second bedroom and noticed a furry paw sticking out from under the bed. Startled, her first reaction was to run until she realized it wasn’t a mouse but a stuffed animal. She crossed the room and raised the bed skirt to find a little toy bunny no bigger than the palm of her hand and a Barbie doll wearing a bathing suit. The doll’s black hair was frayed, giving testimony that it had seen lots of time in the bathtub. No doubt about it, Conrad had brought his daughter and her mother here.
Kate made her way to the second guest room. Judging by the dust on the dresser, no one had been in this room in years. Evidently the wife with the little girl only dusted and took care of the part of the house that they used.
Which makes this room perfect.
She set her briefcase at the end of the dresser and parked her suitcases in the middle of the floor, went back to the car, and rolled in a case with her laptop and printer/fax machine. She took it straight to the room and parked it beside the dresser. A queen-size bed with a split rail–type headboard, flanked on both sides with nightstands and lamps fashioned from horseshoes, a six-drawer dresser with a mirror above it, and a nice-size empty closet waited for her. A gold velvet rocking chair had been shoved into a corner. It looked comfortable and well worn, as if someone had used it a lot in the past.
“No bad auras here,” she mumbled.
That room, with its rustic charm, felt right. She stripped down the bed, carried the sheets and the quilt to the utility room, and shoved as much as she could into the washer. She found a dust cloth and a can of spray cleaner in the cabinets over the washer and dryer and returned to the bedroom. While she was dusting, she thought she heard the squeaky hinges on the front door but attributed the noise to the washer and kept right on cleaning her new bedroom. She’d come to the cabin to get away from everyone, and no one even knew she was there.
“Hello?” a thin voice yelled.
Kate stepped out of the room to find a wide-eyed Amanda standing in the hallway not five feet from her.
Amanda tucked her chin and glared. “What are you doing here?”
“I own this place. What are you doing here?” Kate asked.
Before Amanda could answer, another voice called out, “Who’s here? Show yourself.”
Kate recognized wife number two—Jamie, was it? Amanda whipped around as fast as her big belly would allow and stomped into the living room with Kate right behind her.
“Get out! Both of you, get out! This is my cabin,” Amanda shouted and waved her arms around. “Conrad told me when he brought me here for my honeymoon that he was leaving it to me in his will. So get off my property and don’t ever set foot on it again.”
Jamie took a step around the suitcases in the middle of the floor. “And he promised me and Gracie the same thing. You can leave. I’m staying right here the rest of the summer and there’s not a damn thing either of you can do about it.”
“Just for the record, I’m the first wife and this property is mine unless there is a will. So far there’s nothing filed in Fort Worth or the surrounding counties,” Kate said.
“He’s only been dead”—Amanda winced at the word—“nine days. Give it time and it will turn up, just like his divorces from both of you, and when it does, you are both leaving my house.”
Jamie crossed her arms over her chest. “And if it’s my house, then you two can get out of it. How long will it take to figure this out?” She frowned at Kate.
“I have no idea,” Kate answered. “Why would either of you even want to stay here?”
“It’s where Conrad brought me last December on our honeymoon. We started off the new year right here on the deck and watched the fireworks display out on the lake,” Amanda answered.
Jamie drew her eyebrows down in a frown. “And I suppose he said he’d bring you back here for a week out of every summer?”
Amanda nodded. “We were supposed to arrive tomorrow, and now”—she sniffled—“I’ll have to just imagine that he is here with me.”
Gracie tugged on her mother’s shirttail. “Mommy, are they really going to live with us?”
“Looks like it, because we aren’t leaving.” Jamie grabbed the handles of two suitcases and rolled them down the hallway.
Kate wrapped her arms around her body in a hug, but it didn’t help. Her blood still ran cold through her veins. Conrad had been a smart con. He kept his stories straight by keeping them the same, starting with her. Or did he? Was there another wife out there who was even older than Kate?
A week in the same house with those two was not the peaceful time she’d been looking forward to, but there was no way she was backing down from the challenge. Whether she wanted to be or not, she was the real wife at the time of his death. She’d paid for his funeral, and it would cost her a lot of money to get all this crap cleared up, so she was staying right here.