Somewhere to Call Home (Love Inspired Historical) Read Online Free

her to have Violet here. She could use some joy.
    Becca’s sudden disappearance after she’d moved to New York City three years earlier had changed their lives forever. It’d been the catalyst for selling their home in Ashland, moving here and starting the boardinghouse. Thankfully, his father had provided for his mother well so that they could fulfill her wishes. She wanted to give safe haven to the people who lived under her roof, especially the young women. She wanted them to have a place they felt was home even while missing their own. And she wanted to make sure that their families would never have to hear that their loved one was missing, never to be heard from again.
    Michael had been trained as a private investigator by the best. He’d worked for Pinkerton before opening his own detective agency, and now he made it his life’s work to try to help his clients who had heard those same words—or others similar to them—and to follow each and every lead that might turn up about his sister.
    That Violet was the daughter of his mother’s best friend and their next-door neighbor was enough to make him want to watch her as closely as he would Becca, if she were here. Becca was several years older than Violet and while one wouldn’t have called them best friends, he’d always considered them friends and had teased Violet as much as he had his own sister. He knew that if anything happened to Violet, his mother would blame herself, and Michael couldn’t let that happen.
    He stood and rubbed the back of his neck before heading down the hall to the front parlor. Their boarders were a good group for the most part, but after what his mother had told him about Violet, he wanted to be there to try to put her at ease among strangers.
    “Why, Michael, how nice of you to join us early tonight!” Lila Miller, a young woman who’d been with them for nearly a year, left the side of Luke Patterson and headed in his direction as soon as he entered the parlor.
    “Good evening, Miss Miller, everyone,” he said, trying to make eye contact with each person in the room.
    “To what do we owe this honor, Michael?” Lila asked. “You’ve barely been on time for meals the last few weeks.”
    He’d like to tell her that it was her company he’d been trying to avoid lately, but that was out of the question, of course. Michael didn’t want to offend her. He just didn’t like the way she fawned over him.
    “I thought I’d greet our new boarder when she comes down.”
    “Oh?” Lila raised a narrow brown eyebrow. “She’s here then?”
    “She arrived this afternoon.”
    “And she’s here now.” Elizabeth Anderson, one of his mother’s favorite boarders, entered the room just ahead of Violet. “Everyone, meet Violet Burton. I met her at the landing. She seemed a bit hesitant to come down, but I promised her that we’d all be on our best behavior. At least until we get to know her better.”
    The young woman who’d followed Elizabeth into the room smiled at everyone and said, “I took her at her word.”
    That brought chuckles from the boarders gathering around her, and Michael quickly crossed the room to her side. “Violet, I hope you’ve been able to get some rest?”
    His mother was right. This was not the Violet he remembered. That one had been a young girl and, while pretty and sweet, this Violet was a fully grown woman and a lovely one at that. Her black hair was swept up on top of her head, and when her gaze settled on him, he was struck by how brilliantly blue her eyes were.
    “I did, thank you, Mr. Heaton.”
    She hadn’t called him Mr. Heaton back home. It’d only been Michael...and that in an exasperated tone when he’d been teasing her and Becca. He chuckled at the memory. Perhaps she was only doing it now because of the boarders, but he didn’t like it. “Oh, come now, Violet. Surely as long as we’ve known each other, we can dispense with the formalities, can’t we?”
    She looked up at him and her