Chapter One 

The news strewn across the front porch looked as stale as the egg congealing on a toast crumbled plate left unattended on a table of wilted roses. India Stone was out of there. Yep, she picked up her purse, threw a few duds and some cosmetics in an “old kit bag” and took a powder—well in today’s terms, she was headed for the powdery white snow slopes of Nottingham Ski Lodge high up in the Colorado Mountains; someplace she had begged Bram to take her for years.

In retrospect, India probably shouldn’t have left without a word to anyone, she reflected, settling into the last seat in the mid-section, of a very crowded jet headed for what she suspected would be just another waste of money; like the new house Bram convinced her to buy-with a big chunk of her inheritance, just because he wanted his own greenhouse. “I was happy with the little roof garden he put together at the comfy, primitive styled loft we shared,”she muttered under her breath, dabbing a stoic tear before it dribbled down her flushed cheeks. Well he got his greenhouse didn’t he? And, I got nothing but a broken heart from that lowdown dirty horticulturist and his little “Mary, Mary Quite Contrary How Does Your Garden Grow” Harlot next door! There is only one word for him and that’s, “BUM!”She said the word so loud that a little old lady sitting nearby stretched her neck and cupped her ear in case she missed something.