Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3) Read Online Free Page B

Coast photographer who neither understood her nor the community she cared about. She belonged in Tyler. It was her home, and if it was Byron Sanders’s idea of hell, then so be it.
    He was a cretin anyway.
    Coincidence or not, Cliff Forrester’s own Rhode Island origins had gotten her thinking about the rake who’d almost ruined her life. For two days running now. She couldn’t make herself stop.
    Well, she had to. Rhode Island might be a small state, but the chances of Tyler’s town recluse and a sneaky photographer having any knowledge of each other were remote. And Byron Sanders wasn’t from any “mucky-muck” East Coast family.
    He also knew to keep his size elevens out of Tyler, Wisconsin.
    But he’d been her one love, and he remained her one secret. No one knew they’d been lovers. Not even Tisha Olsen over at the Hair Affair, who knew everything thatwent on in Tyler, or the quilting ladies, whose combined knowledge of the town’s social history went all the way back to its founding during the great German immigration to Wisconsin 140 years ago. As far as everyone in Tyler was concerned, Nora was just like her great-aunt, the memorable Ellie Gates.
    Only she wasn’t. And she knew it.
    So did Byron Sanders.
    She was so preoccupied that she arrived at the doorstep of her 1920s house before she even realized she’d come to her tree-lined street. She’d inherited the house from Aunt Ellie. They’d lived together from the death of Nora’s parents in a boating accident on Lake Superior when she was thirteen until Aunt Ellie’s death three years ago, not long after Byron Sanders had moved on. In the house’s quiet rooms and in Aunt Ellie’s quiet life, Nora had found peace and stability and hope.
    She’d had the wide clapboards repainted last summer in the same cream color Aunt Ellie had chosen back in 1926. The trim was pure white. It was almost Halloween, but the porch swing was still out, the flower boxes planted with bright yellow mums.
    With the house having been shut up all day, Nora left the front door open to catch the afternoon breeze while she went back to the kitchen. It was still thirty minutes before her first student arrived. Time enough for a cup of tea.
    She’d made a few changes to the interior of the house, softening some of Aunt Ellie’s relentless formality. She’d covered the furniture in pale neutrals and had added cotton throw rugs, Depression glass, quilted pastel wall hangings. There were two small bedrooms upstairs, one downstairs, a small library, a living room and a dining room that she’d converted into a music room, shoving the gateleg table up against the wall to make room for a new baby grand.
    Nora, however, hadn’t changed a thing in the kitchen. Its white cabinets, pale gray-blue walls and yellow accents didn’t need changing so far as she could see. Her friends said she should get a microwave, but she hadn’t yet succumbed. Before she died, Aunt Ellie had purchased a toaster oven. It still worked fine.
    After putting on the kettle for tea, Nora sat at the kitchen table and looked out at her darkening yard. The bright leaves of the sugar maple had already fallen to the ground. Lately, birds had taken to fattening themselves at her bird feeders. Soon it would be completely dark. Winter wasn’t far off.
    She sighed. She loved autumn; she even loved winter. So why was she hovering on the edge of depression?
    She fixed a proper tea: Earl Grey tea leaves, her English porcelain pot, her matching cup and saucer, milk in a tiny milk glass pitcher. A sterling silver spoon. Homemade butter cookies from her favorite bakery. She put everything on a teak tray, which she carried out to the music room.
    And nearly dropped it all on the floor.
    Moving with the speed and silence of a panther, Cliff Forrester took the tray from her and set it one-handed on the gateleg table. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.
    In his five years in Tyler, those were the first words Nora