“The guest room is fine.” I wouldn’t be here long. Plus it felt wrong to invade Evelyn’s personal space.
Beck stepped toward one of the closed doors off the sitting area. “The rooms were all renovated with private baths about ten years ago. Noah brought up your stuff.”
He opened the door and stepped back to let me enter the room first.
I sucked in a breath as I stepped into a pink sanctuary, soft light glowing from pleated ivory shades on the bedside lamps.
It was huge, three walls painted in my favorite rose-gold, one papered in a quaint pink-and-white landscape toile.
The tufted velvet headboard climbed almost halfway to the ceiling, curving gently at the top. It was a bed fit for a princess, piled high with linens and a duvet that made me want to tip into it, feel the down inside fluff up all around me.
The nightstands were mirrored, silvering with age, and the room was big enough that there was plenty of room even with a dresser, armoire, and the small sofa in the sitting area tucked into the octagonal nook under a big window that looked out over the grounds.
The ceilings were as high here as they were on the first floor, and a chandelier dripping crystals glimmered overhead even though it wasn’t on.
I couldn’t have designed a more perfect, beautiful room for myself.
“This is…” I turned around, caught sight of the door leading to the bathroom. “This is so beautiful.”
“I think Evelyn made it for you,” Beck said softly.
I turned to look at him and had to catch my breath. He was leaning against the doorframe like he was afraid to step into the room, his T-shirt stretched taut over his chest and shoulders. His jeans were sexy-loose, just loose enough for my imagination to run wild, and his dark hair fell over his forehead, partially obscuring one brown eye.
I tried to focus on the conversation instead of the fact that I wanted to pull Beck on top of me on the fluffy duvet, slip my hands into all that dark hair.
“But… I haven’t been here since I was a kid.”
“I know,” Beck said. “But Evelyn started doing things before she died. Giving things away, getting her will in order, finishing projects around the house.”
“You think she knew she was going to die?” Irving Norwood had told me that Evelyn died peacefully in her sleep.
Beck shrugged, and I never knew a shrug could look so darn sexy.
“Maybe not consciously, but they say sometimes people have a subconscious urge to put their affairs in order before they pass,” he said.
I looked around the room and felt a pang of sadness. I hadn’t talked to Aunt Evelyn in years and she’d still made me this beautiful room, had still left me this beautiful house.
“Was she… happy?” I asked him.
I wanted to ask if she was lonely but it felt like too sad a question.
He nodded. “I think so. Everyone here loved her. She had friends, a busy schedule, the house. And…”
“What?” I prompted when he paused.
“Well, she had us. I mean I know we weren’t technically family, but she was amazing. We all loved her.”
I heard the sadness in his voice and knew he was speaking the truth.
“I’m glad.” I hesitated. “Who was he? The man in the gazebo?”
I’d needed the milk-and-cookies break, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that I’d found a dead body on the property forever.
“Harold Pembroke,” Beck said. “Town councilman.”
“A town councilman?” I tried to process this new information. “Any idea why someone would want to kill him?”
“I’m not as plugged into the town as Evelyn was, but as far as I knew, everyone liked him. He was fighting to keep a gated community from being built on the lake.”