Passionate Bid Read Online Free Page B

think, this time, we should leave Dolly home.”
    “Noooo! She”ll be sad without me.” Sam hugged her doll as if it were a lifeline before smoothing the braided cotton hair. “Uh-huh, she”s gonna be sad. Right Dolly?”
    Joanie wasn”t in the mood to argue with her three-year-old daughter. Not today, not with her feet screaming for a good rub. “Fine. But you will be sad if you lose her.”
    “I won”t lose her, Mama. Promise.”
    We shall see.
    Dana, her best friend, said a walk in the woods would be good for Sam”s spirit. And she was right. Joanie had noticed that in the woods, Sam”s attention always focused on things adults never paid attention to. Like how a leaf resembled a wing of a dragon or how mud sticks to the sole of her slippers.
    Watching Sam run around the spacious property with her net catching butterflies and harmless bugs, giggling, her eyes shiny from laughter eased her pain a bit, and she was sure Sam”s loneliness as well. The woods, like a therapeutic medicine, helped relieve their pain. Not to mention the fresh air helped Sam”s lungs as well. As long as they had the backpack with them, she felt comfortable letting Sam spend time in her woods.
    Sam”s Woods.
    Nauseating despair enveloped Joanie”s whole body like a thick, heavy cloak smothering her. The small property wouldn”t be Sam”s for long. What would she tell her when the new owner started building up a fence around the property?
    Just like the housing market, divorce lawyers and every business around the country, she too suffered from the worldwide economic meltdown. Her Garden Gate Studio took a nosedive, and she couldn”t afford to pay for the rent anymore.
    A day after she buried her father, she had to close her gallery. There was nothing more terrifying than the thought of not having food or shelter for her daughter. And worse, no business meant no insurance. So last week, she had made a decision—put up the property for sale. The money she”d make would pay for Sam”s medication and the loan her father had taken from the bank. She could pay off the credit card company, too.
    With the power of the Internet, more than a handful of interested buyers called. Two days ago, one showed sincere interest in buying the property. A horse trainer. It was amazing how ads spread like fire over the world wide net. Maybe she should take photos of her paintings and post them on the Internet. She might sell them quicker that way.
    Carmen Smith, a Windermere Agent with raven dark hair piled high like the singer Amy Winehouse”s hair, came by again yesterday and took additional pictures of the property. She said her client was in Dublin closing another deal. It would take five days before he could come and look at the property in person. But he liked the property and agreed with the offer based on the digital pictures. He would finalize his decision this week. Once he signed the papers, he wanted to remove the barbwire fence and replaced it with concrete walls, so Joanie would have to rush to remove whatever she had stored in the property.
    Her dad had had his old truck parked in the woods, but he had given it to his friend, a mechanic, who had hauled it to his shop and gutted it. Her dad had said he wanted the woods clean for Sam.
    Carmen”s news should have sent her into a state of extreme happiness, but she felt the opposite. Losing the woods would be like losing Dolly to Sam. But she had to sell it. They needed food more than a place to catch butterflies.
    Joanie opened the front door and let Sam in first. “Go get your net.”
    “Yippee!” Sam took off, her little feet making slapping sounds on the floor.
    If she could only find a way to keep the woods…God, she knew how important that place was for her daughter, but she didn”t have a choice. They needed the money as badly as she needed air to breathe.
    Stepping into the house, she made an assessment. As soon as the buyer cut the check, she”d call Paul, the neighborhood