Key of Light (Key 1)

Chapter One

THE storm ripped over the mountains, gushing torrents of rain that struck the ground with the sharp ring of metal on stone. Lightning strikes spat down, angry artillery fire that slammed against the cannon roar of thunder.

There was a gleeful kind of mean in the air, a sizzle of temper and spite that boiled with power.

It suited Malory Price’s mood perfectly.

Hadn’t she asked herself what else could go wrong? Now in answer to that weary, and completely rhetorical, question, nature—in all her maternal wrath—was showing her just how bad things could get.

There was an ominous rattling somewhere in the dash of her sweet little Mazda, and she still had nineteen payments to go on it. In order to make those payments, she had to keep her job.

She hated her job.

That wasn’t part of the Malory Price Life Plan, which she had begun to outline at the age of eight. Twenty years later, that outline had become a detailed and organized checklist, complete with headings, subheadings, and cross-references. She revised it meticulously on the first day of each year.

She was supposed to love her job. It said so, quite clearly, under the heading of CAREER.

She’d worked at The Gallery for seven years, the last three of those as manager, which was right on schedule. And she had loved it—being surrounded by art, having an almost free hand in the displaying, the acquiring, the promotion, and the setup for showings and events.

The fact was, she’d begun to think of The Gallery as hers, and knew full well that the rest of the staff, the clients, the artists and craftsmen felt very much the same.

James P. Horace might have owned the smart little gallery, but he never questioned Malory’s decisions, and on his increasingly rare visits he complimented her, always, on the acquisitions, the ambience, the sales.

It had been perfect, which was exactly what Malory intended her life to be. After all, if it wasn’t perfect, what was the point?

Everything had changed when James ditched fifty-three years of comfortable bachelorhood and acquired himself a young, sexy wife. A wife, Malory thought with her blue-steel eyes narrowing in resentment, who’d decided to make The Gallery her personal pet.

It didn’t matter that the new Mrs. Horace knew next to nothing about art, about business, about public relations, or about managing employees. James doted on his Pamela, and Malory’s dream job had become a daily nightmare.

But she’d been dealing with it, Malory thought as she scowled through her dark, drenched windshield. She had determined her strategy: she would simply wait Pamela out. She would remain calm and self-possessed until this nasty little bump was past and the road smoothed out again.

Now that excellent strategy was out the window. She’d lost her temper when Pamela countermanded her orders on a display of art glass and turned the perfectly and beautifully organized gallery upside down with clutter and ugly fabrics.

There were some things she could tolerate, Malory told herself, but being slapped in the face with hideous taste in her own space wasn’t one of them.

Then again, blowing up at the owner’s wife was not the path to job security. Particularly when the words myopic, plebeian bimbo were employed.

Lightning split the sky over the rise ahead, and Malory winced as much in memory of her temper as from the flash. A very bad move on her part, which only showed what happened when you gave in to temper and impulse.

To top it off, she’d spilled latte on Pamela’s Escada suit. But that had been an accident.

Almost.

However fond James was of her, Malory knew her livelihood was hanging by a very slim thread. And when the thread broke, she would be sunk. Art galleries weren’t a dime a dozen in a pretty, picturesque town like Pleasant Valley. She would either have to find another area of work as a stopgap or relocate.

Neither option put a smile on her face.

She loved Pleasant Valley, loved being surrounded by the mountains of western Pennsylvania. She loved the small-town feel, the mix of quaint and sophisticated that drew the tourists, and the getaway crowds that spilled out of neighboring Pittsburgh for impulsive weekends.

Even when she was a child growing up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pleasant Valley was exactly the sort of place she’d imagined living in. She craved the hills, with their shadows and textures, and the tidy streets of a valley town, the simplicity of the pace, the friendliness of neighbors.

The decision to someday fold herself into the fabric of Pleasant Valley had been made when she was fourteen and spent a long holiday weekend there with her parents.

Just as she’d decided, when she wandered through The Gallery that long-ago autumn, that she would one day be part of that space.