refreshed her smile like she was noticing him for the first time. She put her hand on Theo’s arm.
“Well, hello, neighbor. What do you think of the new and improved backyard? I felt so stimulated by the hard work you were pouring into your own home, and then was so inspired by that natural beautification article in the Beyond Off-the-Grid magazine that popped up at our front door. It got me thinking.”
She looked over her shoulder to Evie. “We should seek to . . . revitalize our world with the raw, simple materials of nature’s bounty. Isn’t that how it goes, Evie?”
Evie nodded and gave two thumbs up.
Bree turned her grin back to him. “So when Theo thought of his quaint family Christmas tree farm in Damascus, and all those lonely oversized Fraser firs too big to get cut down and stocked for Christmas—”
“Actually,” Theo interrupted, “I believe you were the one to bring up the farm—”
“I just knew we had the perfect opportunity to give them a new home,” Bree continued. “Wasn’t it generous of Theo’s family to donate them to our cause? And aren’t they just divine?”
Her profile shifted toward them, a picture of innocent happiness. “I could just stare at them all day. Couldn’t you?”
“Andy, I’m gonna have to call you back,” Chip said and dropped the phone from his ear.
His eyes shifted from her to the hideous trees.
In that moment, things changed.
The woman had gone too far.
* * *
Saturday night Ashleigh stood at her usual spot beside the door while Chip got ready for their dinner date. The pile of magazines on the floor beside the door—no doubt just a fraction of the ones to come—however, was anything but usual.
“Chip? Are you having any . . . health troubles?” she said, eyeing the magazine with the headline, “Witch Hazel! The Magical Homeopathic Way to Clear Up Hemorrhoids.”
“My back has been killing me since that fall on my bike last week,” Chip called over his shoulder as he worked on his tie in the mirror of the open bathroom.
Through the reflection, he saw her nudging the magazine with her shoe to reveal the one underneath. Her eyes widened like one of those anime cartoon characters, her cheeks flushing a rosy pink. “And . . . do you know, I happened to pop into Jared jewelry store the other day with Gracie—”
His brow furrowed. “Jared? Isn’t that out in Knoxville?”
She waved a hand. “She was getting her ring cleaned—”
“She had to drive to Knoxville to get her ring cleaned?”
“Anyway, I saw this stunning French-set halo diamond ring. I was actually so surprised it was in store at such a value . . .”
His fingers paused on the tie, and he swiveled around to look at her. Then the magazine at her feet. Ah. The Diamond Nexus catalog.
He turned back around.
“You know, I just really, really like that”—she enunciated each word—“French. Set. Diamond. Halo. Style.” She started nudging the stack with her toe again. “Of course all the bands are beautiful, and it’s the sentiment that counts, but if I were so lucky as to pick a ring, I would go with the—Chip?”
She stopped. Her tone was higher than usual, which was truly saying something. “Chip? Is there something we need to discuss? Any . . . area of your life that is out of control?”
Terrific. He knew what she’d seen. His fingers finished up his tie.
“No,” he called over his shoulder. “I do not have an addiction to eating chalk.” He turned and gestured to the special-edition psychology magazine for people struggling to overcome all addictions. The one in bold scribbled chalk across the front was “Pica Addiction: Your Nasty Secret.”
“I believe that one belongs to my neighbor.”
“Really?” She nudged the magazine halfway covering it aside. “It has your address.”
“It was a mistake.”
“It says right here, Chippy the Chipmunk McBride.” She paused, her perfectly formed eyebrows tweaking up. “That’s odd.”
“Believe me, Ashleigh, I can spell my own name. And I don’t make jokes better suited for third graders. But if you’d prefer to investigate the house and pull together an intervention group . . .”
It took several more minutes of defending himself and declaring he had not ordered the magazines before she let the matter go. Still, as they drove into town and walked across the sidewalk and into Rain, he couldn’t help noticing Ashleigh rubbing the ring finger of her left hand with her thumb and casting a few wistful looks down. Good grief. The woman was