“I’m not your maid, although it looks like you could use one.” She tossed a dirty shirt off the sofa and sat down. “I’m here on business. I’ve got a really good business deal for you.”

He leaned against the refrigerator door and waited.

“Well?” she said.

“I’m listenin’.”

“Half interest in the Magnolia Inn is up for sale. It’s the place where Melanie and I—”

He threw up a hand. “I know that y’all had a senior tea there. She told me all about it. Why’s only half interest for sale?”

“Sugar and Jasper, the owners, left the place to her only niece, Jolene, and his only nephew, Reuben. Jolene wants to keep it. Reuben wants to sell. Reuben has authorized me to act on his behalf. You interested?”

“Are you kiddin’ me? Half ownership? No, thank you,” he said. “I don’t share. It hurts too bad when . . .” He let the sentence drop and swallowed the lump in his throat. “You should know that. I don’t usually even hire a helper when I do work on your houses. Besides, come on, Belinda—half ownership with a woman? Melanie would haunt me for sure.”

“It’s business, not love. I’ve been in the Magnolia Inn lots of times. There are two big bedrooms on the ground floor and six that Sugar and Jasper rented on the second level. You can choose your room, do some repairs, and make a nice profit every year. It’s a full-time job for you until spring. After you get the renovations done, you can come back, live back in this ratty trailer, and just rake in the money,” Belinda told him. “Or, if you want, you can stay on and help Jolene run the place.”

He raked his hand through his dark hair. “I don’t cook.”

“Surely Jolene does if she’s plannin’ to run a bed-and-breakfast,” Belinda said.

Tucker ran a hand down over his square jaw, which sported two days of dark growth. “I’ll think about it.”

“I’ve got another buyer who’d like to invest in the place, so you’ve got twenty-four hours,” Belinda said.

“I’ll let you know tomorrow. Call you at the office?”

“I’ll be there from nine to five.”

The noise of a car stopping too quick on gravel took his attention to the door. “I hear my pizza delivery kid. Want to stay? I’ve got an extra beer.”

Belinda glanced over at Melanie’s picture. “I’m serious, Tucker. She would want you to move on, and I can’t stay for pizza and beer. Ray and the kids are waiting for me to come home and make our traditional New Year’s supper. You better eat black-eyed peas and something green if you want yours to be prosperous.” She stood, crammed her hat onto her head, and wrapped her scarf around her neck. “This is a good deal for you, and it’ll get you out of this sorry excuse for a home. I hope you don’t let it pass you by.”

“I said I’d think about it,” Tucker answered.

Belinda pushed the door open and disappeared out into the cold night air. She and Melanie had been best friends since they were in the church nursery together, but they looked nothing alike. Melanie had been a tall, slim-built brunette with green eyes. Belinda—a short dark-haired lady—had gained weight with every one of her three kids.

He picked up his deceased wife’s picture and ran a finger down the edge of her face. “Don’t listen to her, darlin’. We’ve got an understanding that she don’t know jack crap about.”

Someone rapped on the door. “Got a delivery for Tucker Malone.”

The kid handed him the pizza, and Tucker gave him a ten-dollar bill and a five. “Keep the change.”

“Thanks.” The kid turned around and jogged back to his car.

Tucker set the pizza on the cabinet, and Sassy immediately opened her eyes. She jumped from the sofa arm to the cabinet and tried to open the box with her claws.

“Go get back on the sofa and we’ll share. There’s plenty,” he said.

The cat glared at him.

“Okay, okay, I’ll get your fancy plate down and cut up a piece in bite-size chunks.” He picked the black olives, onions, and peppers off her slice. “Peppers are green and olives aren’t too far from the color of black-eyed peas, so that takes care of the silly southern superstition, right?”

Sassy purred in agreement until he set the bone-china plate on her favorite place on the cabinet, and then she set about eating. He stacked up four slices of pizza on a paper plate for himself and got out a beer. He carried it to the sofa and watched the rest of the movie as he ate. When it ended, he stared at Melanie’s picture sitting on the tiny table at the end of the sofa.

“What should I do, darlin’? I’ve got all that insurance money, more than enough to buy half the Magnolia Inn and to remodel it. But it’s your money and I’m not sure you’d want me to use it to buy half interest in a place where a woman owns the other half. I remember how jealous you were. So tell me what to do. I can’t make this decision to spend the money from your death without a sign from you,” he said.

He laid his forehead in the palm of his calloused hand and shut his eyes. The distant roll of thunder brought him to full alert, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe that was a sign from his beloved Melanie. Sassy hopped up on the sofa beside him, licked her paws, and curled up on her favorite throw pillow. Not a sign by any stretch of the word.

“Guess you’ll be sleepin’ on Melanie’s pillow tonight—that sounds like rain comin’ on,” he said.

Sassy meowed once and sighed.

“That’s not a sign, either.” Tucker finished off the pizza and went to bed.

He didn’t dream that night and awoke in a bad mood. All he’d asked for was a little indication that he should even consider buying that run-down place. Melanie could have visited him in his sleep like she often did—but nothing, nada, zilch.

He jerked on a pair of possibly clean jeans and pulled on a stained, mustard-colored work coat over a long-sleeved knit shirt frayed at the wrists. Covering his eyes against the bright sunshine, he hurried out to his truck, climbed inside, and flipped the visor down to get his sunglasses. Once he had them on, he shut the door and started the engine. He grabbed a bag of sausage biscuits at a drive-through window and then drove north toward Jefferson. Maybe something would hit him and tell him whether or not to buy the place—or at least half of it.

When he turned down the lane toward the Magnolia Inn, he braked and turned off the engine. He opened the sack and removed a sausage biscuit. He’d never been inside the inn, but Melanie had talked about going there for a tea that the Chamber of Commerce had put on for the girls when she was a high school senior. She’d gotten a dreamy look in her eyes the first time she pointed it out to him from the highway. He smiled as he remembered their conversation that day.

“Someday we’re going to have a house like that, and a dozen little Malone boys will slide down the banister from the second floor to the first one,” she’d said.

“And what if we have a dozen little Malone girls?” he’d asked.

“Then they will sit on the porch in fancy dresses and you can polish up your shotgun and wait on the swing to scare off the boys,” she’d giggled.

A picture of three or four teenage girls on the porch and a couple of boys playing football in the front yard popped into his mind. But that would never happen, because if he bought the house, it would be to run the place as a bed-and-breakfast. Melanie had been his soul mate, and he’d had five wonderful years with her. It was insane to think that a man ever got two chances like that in a lifetime.

“You could help me out here, Melanie,” he said.

He’d barely gotten the words out when Sassy crawled out from under the passenger seat and stuck her head into the sack of biscuits. She cocked her head to one side and then the other before she turned to meow at him.

He’d had to tranquilize the stupid cat to move her from Dallas to Marshall, and even then she’d awakened before they arrived. He could still hear her moaning and groaning from the carrier in the back seat of his club-cab truck. So why was she hitching a ride when she was supposed to be staying at the trailer?

“How did you get in here?” he asked.

Then he remembered putting on his sunglasses and his gloves before he shut the door that morning. But still, she should have been throwing a fit by now.

“Is this my sign, Melanie?” he finally whispered.

A bird flew down from the pine trees and landed on the hood of his truck, and Sassy made a noise in her throat as she tried to tease it into coming closer. She’d love it out here in the country, maybe as much as Melanie had thought she would when she’d talked about living in a place like this.

“Okay, I hear you,” Tucker said as he pulled his phone from his hip pocket and dialed Belinda’s number.

“What’s he askin’?” he said when she answered.

“Hello to you, too,” Belinda said. “There’s a house in Jefferson about that size that’s up for two hundred and fifty thousand. But it’s in pristine condition, so I’ve already told him there’s no way he’ll get but maybe a quarter of that amount for the Magnolia, since it needs a complete overhaul. You seen the inside yet?”

“Nope. Tell him I’ll go seventy-five thousand for half of it,” Tucker said. “Cash, so we can make it happen sooner than if I had to go through the bank for a loan.”

“He’s pretty anxious to sell.” Belinda drew out the words.

“Then tell him sixty-five,” Tucker laughed.

“I’ll relay your message. Should have a counteroffer within an hour or two. You should go inside to get a look at what all it needs before you make a second offer,” Belinda said.

“I’m looking at it right now from where I turned down the lane. I don’t need to see any more than this right now.” Tucker hit the “End” button on the phone, laid it aside, and ran a hand over Sassy’s fur. “So you didn’t want to leave Dallas, yet you want to move here. Whoever said that you own a dog but feed a cat sure knew what they were talking about.”