The Aura Answer by Patricia Rice

Author:Patricia Rice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book View Cafe

Seventeen

With Christmas music blaring, baking aromas filling the air, and the children bouncing like crickets, Gracie gave up on writing. Joining in the holiday spirit, she helped Loretta swathe the staircase with fake evergreen boughs they found in the attic. Aster and the twins “helped” by pulling off old tinsel and relocating it to the Christmas tree.

“Is this the lead kind of tinsel?” Loretta whispered as shiny shreds fell on the stairs and the hall below.

“Lead? There’s lead in tinsel?” Alarmed, Gracie studied the mess they were making. “Is that why they quit making it?”

Loretta nodded solemnly. “This is really old garland.”

“Like everything else in here.” With a sigh, she began scooping up the threads and pulling them off before the kids could make any more depredations. “Our parents survived lead tinsel. . . Although maybe they’d have been a lot smarter if they hadn’t inhaled the dust.”

Pris appeared in the hallway below. “Soup’s on. Someone want to take some out to that poor idiot freezing in the garage?”

Nick had been out there framing sketches all morning. Gracie didn’t know what to make of the man, but he’d already carried the requested picture down to her mother’s Psychic Solutions shop. She thought Reuben had printed business cards for him so he could install one in the frame. She wasn’t certain why he’d do that.

For now, she assumed he was avoiding the high octane excitement building in the house as presents grew under the tree, and the kids shrieked and bounced off walls.

“I’ll do it,” she offered, not out of generosity, but because she wanted something. That made it all right, didn’t it? She wasn’t interested in him or anything, except as a partner in crime. He seemed to understand her need to help.

She untangled Alex, Nan, and Aster from the tree, helped them clean up, and led them into the kitchen where Loretta was already presiding over the breakfast nook. Pris had Dante pounding out his frustration on bread dough. The archeologist was almost healed and stewing in frustration at his inability to start the dig on the twins’ newly inherited farm. Apparently permits and grants and legal whatnot were needed before he could proceed.

Leaving the children in their hands, Gracie carried a giant soup cup and fresh bread out the back and over to the garage.

The Brit had hooked up an electric heater near his workbench, where several old frames leaned in various stages of renovation. Cheap gilding had been stripped off the more ornate ones. Several deep-set frames had been sanded and repainted, and he already had a print matted in one of them.

“You work fast.” She set the tray down on the bench. “Wouldn’t you rather come in and warm up?”

“Not cold.” He was wearing only an open flannel shirt over a turtleneck, with a wool scarf dangling down his. . . nicely sculpted. . . chest. He stepped back to admire his work. “What do you think?”

“They look like real art instead of Bertie’s scribbling,” she admitted, admiring the result.

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