Love Thy Neighbor by Kathy Lynn Emerson

Author:Kathy Lynn Emerson [Emerson, Kathy Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 1997-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Bargain Bob’s Pre-Owned Treasures was a disreputable old shack on the main road. The building was at least as run down as Linnea’s house had been before she started fixing things up, but like the Old Dennison Place, Bargain Bob’s had its own brand of charm. Constructed from old barn boards and extended by a canvas awning off to one side, it appeared to be crammed full of anything and everything.

Bargain Bob himself was Austin’s Crossing’s village character. White-haired, stooped and nearing, so Marsh informed her, his eighty-fifth birthday, he still looked pretty spry to her.

“You must be the Dennison girl,” he said after nodding a greeting to Marsh.

“Bryan,” Linnea corrected him, “but my mother was Denise Dennison.”

“Same difference.” Bob fished in his shirt pocket for his pouch of pipe tobacco. “I’m in perfect health,” he insisted when he caught Linnea wrinkling her nose at him in distaste. He continued to fill the bowl with loose, aromatic tobacco. “If smoking a pipe ain’t killed me yet, ‘tisn’t likely to.”

Linnea wasn’t about to argue with him, no matter what her personal feelings on the subject. “I’ve come to you to ask about my grandfather,” she said.

Bob nodded slowly. “I knew him. Also know why Denise run off.”

Linnea was aware that Marsh had gone very still beside her, but she kept her attention on Bob. “She and her father didn’t get along.”

“She couldn’t stand the old coot. Soon as she had enough money saved to skedaddle, she skedid.” Chortling at his own humor, Bob winked at Marsh, who stared stolidly back.

“Did they quarrel?”

“All the time,” Bob said.

Linnea thought that if her mother and grandfather clashed the way she and Denise did, it was no wonder her mother had left.

“She couldn’ta been mor’n eighteen. Went up to Portland or somewheres first. Left on the back of a motorcycle with some wild boy she met at the diner over to New Portsmouth.”

He referred to the town as if it were hundreds of miles away instead of just down the road, making Linnea wonder how far Bob himself had ever been from home.

“She marry that biker, girl?”

For just a moment, Linnea wondered if she had. Then she shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Thought maybe he mighta been your daddy.”

She smiled at that. “If he was, both he and the motorcycle were long gone before I was old enough to take an interest.”

“You never knew your father?” Marsh sounded shocked.

Linnea wondered why he should be, but this was not the time to ask. She concentrated on Bob instead.

“I know as much as I need to about my mother,” she told him, “but I’m very interested in finding out more about my grandfather.”

Bob tamped the tobacco into his briar pipe, performing the whole ritual of lighting and sucking and tamping some more before he was ready to tell Linnea what she wanted to know. “Great one for crazy ideas, Howdy Dennison was.”

Howdy? Linnea had to fight a grin. Her grandfather had been called Howdy! She supposed it was

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