It wasn’t so easy to shut away the memory of the afternoon before.

If she closed her eyes, Laurel could still feel Alec’s arms around her, feel the disturbing moment when she had pressed against the hard warmth of his body. It had been like standing at the center of a lightning strike, caught in the flare of white-hot heat, blinding light and searing power. Nothing had prepared her for the conflagration, or for the rush of need that poured through her in response. She had been stunned, held immobile by feelings so long repressed, she had forgotten they had existed. If she had ever known them.

She wasn’t sure she had. Even in the days when she was first married, when loving was so strange and new, she had not felt so fervid or so uncertain of her own responses, her own will.

No. She wouldn’t think about it. She would forget she had ever touched Alec Stanton. And she would pray to high heaven that he did the same.

“Full of passion, secrets, taboos and fear, Garden of Scandal will pull you in from the start as you work to unwind the treachery and experience the sizzle.”

—Romantic Times

GARDEN OF SCANDAL
JENNIFER BLAKE

For my husband, Jerry, with loving appreciation

for the man who, at our home known as

Sweet Briar, constructed the real garden of antique

roses that provided the inspiration for this book.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

1

She tore out of the lighted house like a banshee. Screaming in a shatteringly clear soprano above the growling of the great black German shepherd, she skimmed across the front porch. She was halfway down the high steps before the ancient wooden screen door slammed shut after her.

Part harridan, part avenging Valkyrie, she raced toward him wearing a nightgown with light streaming through it from behind. Her long hair shifted and whipped around her, shimmering silver-gold in the moonlight. Her feet barely touched the ground. Fleet, slender, with the pure lines of her face twisted in concern, she was the most fascinating thing Alec Stanton had ever laid eyes on.

“Sticks! Here, boy!” she called out as she ducked under the low-hanging limb of a magnolia, dodged the rambling branches of a spirea. Her gaze was riveted on the dog standing ferocious guard on the mossy brick walk.

The German shepherd growled, a ragged warning that resonated deep in his massive chest. His eyes never left Alec. He lifted his ruff, baring his teeth in challenge. As the woman came nearer, the animal moved protectively to block her path with his body.

“What is it, boy? What have you got cornered?” Her voice was anxious but not fearful as she slowed her pace. Then she saw Alec.

She stopped so quickly that her hair swirled forward, covering her arms like a cape of captured moonbeams. Her hands clenched into fists. Her eyes widened. She squared her shoulders, then stood so motionless she might have been turned into pale, warm marble.

The dog ceased to exist for Alec. And he forgot why he was there amid the tangled briers, vines and overgrown shrubbery that were the front garden of the Steamboat Gothic mansion known as Ivywild. Moving like a man in a daze, he stepped forward out of the night.

The German shepherd launched off his haunches in attack. Eighty pounds of hard muscle and death, he sprang straight for Alec’s throat.

“Down! Down, Sticks!” The woman’s shout mingled with the dog’s snarl. Yet there was no hope the animal would, or could, obey.

Alec’s instinct and training kicked in. He spun away as the dog hit him, moving with the force of the assault, flowing with it to lessen the impact even as he snatched the dog’s huge black head in an iron grip. Finding the pressure points, Alec drove his thumbs against them. He sank to his knees, still turning, flexing hard muscles as he came about in a full circle.

It was over in a moment. When Alec rose, the animal was stretched out, limp and barely breathing, on the walk between him and the woman.

She moaned and dropped to the ground, gathering the lolling head of her guard dog into her lap. Holding tight, she rocked back and forth.

“He’ll be all right,” Alec said with stringent softness.

She made no reply. Then he heard the catch in her breathing as the dog stirred, whimpered.

Abruptly, she looked up with the wetness of tears glittering in her eyes. “You might have killed him!”

“If I’d wanted to kill him he’d be dead. I just put him out for a few minutes while we get things cleared up here.” Alec could have pointed out that her precious Sticks might have crushed his throat, but it didn’t seem worth the effort.

Her fingers sank into the dog’s coat, holding him closer. “You’re on private property. I want you off in the next two seconds or I call the police. Is that clear enough for you?”

This was not the way things were supposed to go. He had meant to knock politely, then stand outside on the porch while he spoke his piece. He hadn’t expected to feel his heart squeezed in a breath-catching vise at the sight of a woman’s form in a whisper-thin nightgown. He had never dreamed it could happen—not to him, and especially not here with this woman. It was too unexpected for comfort, much less acceptance.

Putting her pet out cold was not a good start, no matter what he had in mind. “I’m sorry if I hurt your dog,” he said.

“Oh, yes, I can tell!” The look she gave him was scathing.

“He shouldn’t have attacked.”

“He was just—He thought I needed protecting.”

It was entirely possible the dog had been right. Wary and off-balance, Alec tried again, looking for some kind of stable ground. “You’re Mrs. Bancroft, Laurel Bancroft?”

“What of it?”

“I…wanted to talk to you.” That had been his original purpose. Things had changed. For what good it would do him.

She didn’t give an inch. “I can’t imagine we have anything to discuss.”

“The lady who keeps house for you, Maisie Warfield, is a good friend of my grandmother’s. She said you need help clearing this jungle of a garden, that it had more or less gotten away from you since your husband died.” His grandmother had said a great deal more. He should have paid attention, he thought, as he added, “I have a little experience with that kind of work.”

She watched him for several seconds, her expression intently appraising. Then she said in disbelief, “You’re Miss Callie’s grandson?”

Stung by the amazement in her tone, he made his agreement short.

“You’re no gardener!”

He shook his head. “Engineer. But I worked as a yardman to put myself through school.” He gave the words a hint of an edge to let her know he didn’t care to be prejudged.

“I can’t afford an engineer,” she said baldly.

He considered telling her she could have his services for free—any service she wanted, any time. But that wouldn’t work, and he still had sense enough, just, to know it. “Manual labor at the going rate is what I’m offering.”

“Why?”

The single word hung between them for a moment as Sticks lifted his head and shook himself before turning to lie on his belly. The dog looked up at Alec, then away again, as if embarrassed. Whining, he crawled forward a few inches to lick his mistress’s hand in apology.

Watching the animal with a hot sensation very like envy, or even jealousy, pervading his skull, Alec said, “A lot of reasons, but let’s just say I need the money.”

“You can get a better job anywhere else.”

“I need to hang loose, not be too tied down.”

Her gaze was concentrated as she smoothed her hand over the dog’s head in a gesture of comfort, then got to her feet. “Because you don’t like wearing a suit? Or is it your brother?”

“Both.”

She knew all about him and Gregory; he might have guessed. That was one of the glories of small towns. Also their major pain in the backside.

He allowed his eyes to glide over her, then away. But he could still see the slim moon-silvered shape of her burning in his mind like a candle flame. He swallowed hard.

“If you expect me to be sympathetic—” she began.

“No.” He made an abrupt, slicing gesture. “Sympathy is something we don’t need. Either of us.”

She stiffened. “My situation has nothing to do with you!”

He looked back at her, speaking gently as he tilted his head. “I meant my brother and myself. Though I guess it would be safe to include you in it, too.”

She didn’t answer; only stood staring up at him. The moonlight washed across her features, highlighting the scrubbed freshness of her skin that was so translucent it responded to every shift of emotion beneath its surface. He could see the blue of her eyes, wine-dark as the Aegean Sea, yet clear, as if she knew more than she wanted to about people. Particularly men and their baser urges.

His were the basest of the base.

She had just come from a shower, he thought; he could smell the fresh soap and clean-woman scent of her. It was as potent an aphrodisiac as any he had ever imagined. He ached with it, hardening beyond comprehension from no more than sharing the same warm night air.

She seemed fragile, yet there was inner strength in the way she stood up to him, a stranger in the dark. She was real—a little shy, but self-possessed to the point of being regal. She wasn’t perfect; there were fine lines at the corners of her eyes, and her upper lip was not quite as full as the lower. She was almost perfect, though, so close to beautiful that it was nearly impossible to look away from her.

It wouldn’t do. She’d never have anything to do with Callie Stanton’s California-hippie grandson. To her, he must look like a kid with more brawn than brains. It was downright funny, if you thought about it. Only he wasn’t laughing.

Laurel shivered a little under the impact of Alec Stanton’s gaze. His eyes were so black, the pupils expanding, driving out all color, leaving still, dark pools of consideration. He was tall and broad, a solid presence holding back the night that crowded around them. She knew instinctively he would be more than able to protect her from whatever might be lurking in the darkness. Yet she did not feel safe.

He was too big, too strong, too fast. The defense he had made against poor Sticks was some dangerously competent form of martial arts; she knew enough to recognize that much even if she didn’t know what to call it. Beyond these things, he was far too exotic with his long black hair tied back in a ponytail with a leather thong, the dark ambush of his thick brows and lashes in the strong square of his face, and the silver slash of an earring shaped like a lightning bolt that was fastened in his left ear.

He was dressed entirely in black: boots, jeans, and a sleeveless T-shirt that emphasized the sculpted muscles of his torso. The skimpy shirt also exposed the multicolored stain of an intricate tattoo on his left shoulder, dimly recognizable as a dragon winding across his pectoral and around his upper arm.

As she avoided his black gaze, her eyes flickered over the tattoo, then back again. Her fingers tingled, and she curled them tighter into her palm against the sudden impulse to touch the dragon, stroke the warmth and smoothness of its—his—skin and feel the power of the muscles that glided beneath the painted design. If she tried, she might be able to span the beast with her spread hand, feeling its heartbeat under her palm where the pumping heart of the man lay beneath the wall of his chest.

She drew a sharp breath, snatching her mind from that image as if backing away from a hot stove. She must be crazy. At just over forty-one, she was at least ten years older than he was, maybe a little more.

She had been alone too long, that much was plain. She had grown so used to her solitude and isolation here at Ivywild that she had come flying out of the house in nothing more than her nightgown. Worse than that, she was having wild fantasies simply because she was alone with an attractive man. Definitely, she was losing it.

The warm spring night pressed against her, as if driving her toward the man in front of her. She could smell the wafting fragrance of magnolia blossoms from the tree that loomed above them. The chorus of night insects was a quiet and endless appassionato, an echo of the feelings that sang through her.

At her feet, Sticks struggled upright, then stepped forward to press against her knee. The movement was a welcome release from the curious constraint that held her.

“Look,” she said abruptly, her voice more husky than she intended. “All I had in mind was hiring some older man to cut down a few trees, hack back the brush, maybe dig a rose bed or two—”

He cut across her words in incisive tones. “I can do twice as much in half the time.”

“I’m sure you could, but the point is—”

“The point is you’re afraid of me. I don’t suit the notions of backward, provincial Hillsboro, Louisiana, about how a man should look. I’m not your average redneck—crew-cut and squeaky clean, with nothing on his mind except fishing, hunting and drinking beer. Or at least, nothing he can share with a woman. I don’t fit.” His voice softened. “But then neither do you, Laurel Bancroft.”

Her lips tightened before she opened them to speak. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?”

The smile that accompanied his inquiry lasted only an instant. Yet the brief movement of his mouth altered the hard planes and angles of his face, giving him the devastating attraction of a dark angel. There was piercing sweetness in it, and limitless understanding. It saluted her independence even as it deplored it, applauded her courage in spite of her intransigence. It plumbed her loneliness, offered comfort, promised surcease.

Then it was gone. She fought the chill depression that moved over her in its wake. And lost.

On a deep breath, she said, “That isn’t it—or at least I’d like to think I’m not so petty. But I don’t need any more problems right now.”

“You need help and I need money. We’re a natural.” His words were even, an explanation rather than an appeal.

She flung out a hand in exasperation. “It isn’t that simple!”

“Not quite. My brother has cancer in the final stages. Did you know that? I took unpaid leave from the firm where I work in L.A. to come visit Grannie Callie with him. Now he wants to stay. Good home-cooked food and quiet living may help or may not, but at least it’s worth the chance. Still, I’ll be damned if I’ll live off my grandmother’s charity. I could get a more permanent—not to mention better paying—job, yes. But I’d have to be away all day, and that’s not what I need. Your place is close, the work shouldn’t be too confining. I’m a fast worker, I get the job done and I’m not too proud to follow orders. I know a rose from a rutabaga, and I can lay brick, pipe water, whatever it takes. What more do you want?”

What more, indeed? Nothing, except to listen, endlessly, to the deep, steady timbre of his voice. Which was reason enough to be wary.

“It’s just a small project,” she said. “I might install a little fountain in the middle of the roses after things are cleared away, but it’s not really worth your time, much less your skill.”

His smile came again, warming her, enticing her against her will. “Neither are worth all that much just now. They’ll be worth even less if you turn me down.”

“I don’t think…”

“Tell you what,” he said, easing forward. “I’ll work the first day for free. If you decide I’m no use to you, that’s the end of it. If you like what I’ve done, we’ll take it from there.”

“I can’t let you do that,” she said in protest.

“A fair trial, that’s all I ask. Starting at eight in the morning. What do you say?”

She was definitely crazy, because the whole thing was beginning to sound almost reasonable. What was the difference between hiring him or old man Pender down the road, or even young Randy Nott who did odd jobs for her mother-in-law? This man would be hired help, a strong back and pair of able arms. Probably more than able, but she wouldn’t think about that. A couple of days, maybe a week, and then he would be gone.

In sudden decision, she said, “Make it seven, to get as much done as possible before it gets too hot.”

“You’re the boss.”

Somehow, she didn’t feel like it.

He nodded once, then moved away, melting into the darkness along the overgrown path toward the drive. After a moment, Laurel heard the low rumble of a motorcycle being kicked into life. Then he zoomed off in a blast of power. The noise faded and the night was still again.

A shiver moved over her in spite of the warmth of the evening. She clasped her arms around her, holding tight. Sticks looked up, whining, as he picked up on her disturbance.

“What do you think, boy?” she asked, the words barely above a whisper. “Did I make a mistake?”

The dog gave a halfhearted wag of his tail as he stared in the direction Alec Stanton had gone.

She sighed and closed her eyes. “I thought so.”

Her new hired hand was on time the next morning—Laurel had to give him that much. She had barely pulled on her old jeans and faded yellow T-shirt when she heard his bike turn in at the drive.

Maisie Warfield, her housekeeper, hadn’t arrived yet, since she always had to get her “old man”—as she called her husband who was nearing retirement age—off to work before she could show up. Rather than waiting for Alec Stanton to come to the door and twist the old-fashioned doorbell, Laurel picked up her sneakers and moved in her sock feet toward the side entrance. At least she didn’t have to worry about Sticks. He had spent the night on the screened back veranda and was still shut up out there.

Alec Stanton was not on the drive where his bright red Harley-Davidson leaned, looking as out of place in front of the old, late-Victorian house as a ladybug on the hem of an ancient lace dress. Nor was he in the tangled front garden. However, a ripping, shredding sound led her to the side of the house. He was already at work there, tearing a clinging green curtain of smilax and Virginia creeper away from the overlap siding.

He looked around at her approach. His nod of greeting was brief before he spoke. “The whole place needs painting, though I can see at least a dozen boards that should be replaced first. You’ll lose more if you don’t protect them soon.”

“I know,” she said shortly.

“I could—”

“I can take care of it,” she said, cutting off the offer he was about to make. “You’re here for the garden.”

He yanked down a long streamer of smilax and let it fall, leaving it to be dug up by the roots later. Stripping off his gloves, he tucked them into the waistband of his jeans. He ran a critical eye over the house, which loomed above them, with its balustraded verandas that were rounded on each end in the style of a steamboat, its gingerbread work attached to the slender columns like ice-covered spiderwebs, and the conical tower set into the roofline. “It’s a grand old place,” he said. “It would be a shame to let it fall into ruin.”

“I don’t intend to,” she answered tartly. “Now, if you’ll…”

“Your husband’s old family home, I think Grannie said. How did you wind up with it?”

“Nobody else wanted it.”

That was the exact truth, she thought. The place had been the next thing to abandoned when she first saw it. Her husband’s mother, Sadie Bancroft, had moved out not long after her husband left her back in the sixties. His sister Zelda had no interest in it; she’d had more than enough of the big barn of a place as a child and couldn’t comprehend why Laurel had begged to buy it from the family after she and Howard were married. Even Howard had grumbled about the upkeep and often talked of trading it in for a small, neat ranch-style house during the fifteen years they were married. But that was all it had been—talk.

“It’s mighty big for one person.”

“I like big,” Laurel said and felt a sudden flush sweep over her face for no reason that made any sense. Or she hoped that it didn’t, although that seemed doubtful, considering the ghost of a smile hovering at one corner of Alec Stanton’s mouth.

“Where shall I start?”

“What?”

He tilted his head. “You were going to tell me where to start to work.”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” she said and spun around, leading the way toward the front garden.

She had meant to help him, in part to be on hand to point out what she wanted to keep and what needed to go. She soon saw that it was unnecessary. He knew his plants and shrubs; his time as a yardman had been put to good use. He was also efficient. He didn’t start work until he had checked out the tools in the shed behind the detached garage, then oiled and sharpened them.

“You could use a new pair of hedge shears,” he suggested as he ran a callused thumb along the edge of a wide blade. “It would make your job around here a lot easier.”

He was right, and she knew it. “I’ll tell Maisie to pick them up next time she goes into town.”

“You’re also out of gas for the lawn mower.”

“She can get that, too.”

He studied her for a moment, his eyes as dark and fathomless as obsidian. “You know you have a flat on your car? And the rest of the tires are so dry-rotted you’d be lucky to get out of the driveway on them.”

“I don’t go out much,” she said, avoiding his gaze.

“You don’t go at all, to hear Grannie tell it—haven’t left this place in ages. All you do is read and make clay pots in the shed out behind the garage. Why is that?”

“No reason. I just prefer my own company.” She gave him a cool look before she turned away. “I’ll be in the house if you need anything.”

To retreat was instinctive self-protection, that was all. She didn’t have to explain herself. Certainly it was none of this man’s business whether she went out or stayed home, worked with her pottery or flew to the moon on a broomstick. Nor did she need someone watching her, giving unasked-for advice, prying into her life. She would pay him for what he did today, regardless of what he had said, then send him on his way. She had gotten along without Alec Stanton before he came, and she could get along without him when he was gone.

As the day advanced, however, it could not be denied that he was making progress. He cut away dozens of pine and sassafras saplings from the old fence enclosure, exposing the unpainted pickets almost all the way across the front of the garden. He rescued and pruned the Russell’s Cottage Rose in the corner, tearing out a head-high pile of honeysuckle vines in the process. An arbor and garden bench of weathered cypress were unearthed from a covering of wild grapevines. And the debris from his efforts was thrown into a pile that made a slow-burning green bonfire. The gray pall of smoke rose high enough to cross the face of the noonday sun.

Laurel tried not to watch him. Yet against her best intentions it seemed everything she did took her near the front windows of the house. It was only natural to look out. A perfectly ordinary impulse. That was all.

He had removed his shirt in the middle of the morning. A sheen of perspiration gilded the sun-bronzed expanse of his back, shimmering with his movements, while dust and bits of dried leaves stuck to the corded muscles of his arms. The soft hair on his chest glinted like damp velvet, making a conduit for the trickling sweat that crept down the washboard-like ridges of his abdomen to dampen the waist of his jeans. He was hot and sweaty and dirty and magnificent. And she disliked him intensely for making her aware of it.

The last thing she wanted was to think about a man—any man. She had gotten along fine without being reminded of the male race; had hardly thought of love or sex since her husband had died. To be forced to return to all that now would not be helpful. She wouldn’t do it, she wouldn’t.

“I’ve got cold roast chicken and fruit salad for lunch,” Maisie said from behind her. “You want I should serve it for you and Alec out on the veranda?”

Laurel swung to face the housekeeper with guilty color flooding her face. Maisie Warfield, rotund and white-haired, stood in the doorway that led from the dining room to the parlor. She wiped her wet hands on a dish towel as she studied Laurel. There was a shrewd look in the snapping blue of her eyes, and faint amusement crinkled the tanned skin around them into shallow wrinkles.

“No. No, I don’t think so,” Laurel replied. “You—can take him a sandwich and a cold drink.”

Maisie’s smile faded and she set her hamlike fist that held the dishcloth on a padded hip. “Why? You got something against Alec?”

“Of course not. I just prefer my privacy.” Laurel turned back to the window, ignoring the other woman’s stern gaze.

“He’s not going to bite.”

A wry smile curled Laurel’s lips. “How do you know?”

“What?”

She turned to give her housekeeper a straight glance. “I said, yes, I know. But I still don’t intend to eat with him. Or anything else.”

“You’d rather stay shut up in this house instead of keeping him company.”

“That’s about it.”

The housekeeper shrugged. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

Laurel made no reply. She was too afraid Maisie might be right.

2

Alec worked like a man possessed, slashing and hacking and piling brush without letting up. The sun burned down on his head. Sweat poured off him in streams. He tied a bandana around his forehead and kept working. His shirt grew soaked, clinging to him, confining his movements. He stripped it off and kept working. He could feel the sting of long scratches on his arms from his bout with forty-foot runners from an ancient dog rose. He ignored them and kept working.

He didn’t care about any of it. It was good to use his muscles, to feel them heat up until they glided and contracted in endless rhythm, responding effortlessly to his need. He liked the heat of the sun on his back, enjoyed the smells of cut stems, disturbed earth and smoke. It gave him a sense of accomplishment to rescue antique shrubs and perennials, to watch some semblance of order emerge from what had been a confused mess.

He had to prove himself to make sure he got this job, but there was more to it than that. He needed to show Laurel Bancroft that he was as good as any redneck at achieving what she needed done.

He had thought from the way she was dressed this morning that she might work with him. He had been looking forward to the prospect. But she had gone inside the house and shut the door. He hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of her since.

She was good at closing herself off, from all accounts. Grannie Callie had said she’d hardly left this old place since her husband had died. People seemed to think she had gone a little peculiar. Not crazy, exactly, but not your average grocery-shopping, soaps-watching, club-and-tennis young matron, either.

The kind of work he was doing didn’t take a great deal of concentration, and his mind had a tendency to wander. If he let himself, he could see Laurel Bancroft as some kind of enchanted princess under a spell; she had that fragile look about her. She was trapped in her castle of an old house, drugged and sleeping while life passed her by. And he was a knight-of-old come to hack his way through the thorns and briers to save her.

Jeez, he must be losing it.

Some knight. No armor, for one thing. A pair of hedge clippers in his hands instead of a sword. Hardly perfect, either. And he was definitely not pure.

A screen door slammed at the side of the house. Maisie rounded the corner and leaned over the railing.

“Lunchtime, boy,” she called. “Sandwiches up here on the veranda. You want water or tea?”

He stopped, wiping sweat from his eyes with his forearm before he frowned up at her. “‘Boy’?”

She gave him a grin that put a thousand wrinkles in her face and made him feel good inside. “You don’t like that? I could have called you dummy for being out in this sun without a hat. Water or tea?”

“Water.” He should have known better than to try intimidating a woman who claimed she had changed his diaper when he was a kid. “Where’s Mrs. Bancroft?”

The elderly housekeeper’s gaze slid away from his. “She don’t eat lunch. You want to wash up, there’s a bathroom off the kitchen.”

It looked as if Laurel Bancroft was avoiding him. He didn’t know whether that was good, because it was a sign that he disturbed her, or bad, because it meant she couldn’t stand him. Either way, he was going to have to do something about it.

At least Maisie didn’t desert him. She brought her chicken salad and tea out to the table on the shady front veranda. While he ate, he teased her about her diet fare and how much her old man was going to miss her curves when they were gone. After a while, he got around to what he really wanted to say.

“So what is it with the lady of the house? Is she a recluse or just stuck-up?” He leaned back in his chair, rubbing the condensation from the sides of his water glass with his thumb while he tried to look bored and a little disgusted.

Maisie gave him a narrow look. “She doesn’t have too much for people, is all.”

“How’s that?”

“Her husband died, you know that?”

He nodded as he massaged the biceps in his right arm that had begun to tighten on him.

“Did you know she killed him?” she asked.

Shock brought him upright. “You’re bullsh—I mean, there’s no way!”

“She did it, God’s truth,” Maisie said with a shake of her head. “Not that she meant to. He stepped behind her car as she was backing out of the garage. But there were folks who claimed it was on purpose. The mother-in-law, for one.”

“Nobody else believed it, though, right? I mean, just look at her. How could they?”

“Some people will believe anything. Anyway, seems Laurel and Howard had been having problems. Then there was a big life-insurance policy.”

“But nothing came of it?”

“Nothing official, no investigation. Sadie Bancroft, the husband’s mother, said it was on account of Sheriff Tanning being Laurel’s old boyfriend. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. Anyway, it blew over.”

“Except for the gossip?”

“Yeah, well, there’s always that part.”

He tilted his head. “So she’s hiding out. But why, if she really didn’t mean to do it?”

“You want to know that, you’ll have to ask her.”

Maisie was avoiding his gaze. Alec wondered why. “Think she’ll tell me?”

“Might.” The older woman stood and began stacking dishes. “Depends maybe on how you go about it and why you want to know.” She walked off with her load, leaving him to himself.

Alec sat on for a few minutes, drinking water as the ice melted in his glass, and gazing out over the garden at what he had done and what he still needed to do. From up here, he could see the outlines, barely, of what had been a typical front yard in the old days. It had been fenced with white pickets to keep out the cows that ranged freely back then, with a gate accessing the driveway, which passed in front of the house, then made a sharp right turn into the garage that was separate from the house. A straight brick sidewalk cut from the front gate to the steps, and curving walkways followed the oval ends of the house around toward the back.

Planting had apparently been haphazard, except for the great treelike camellias and Cape jasmine at the fence corners and the roses along the pickets and over the arbors above the gates. He had found evidence of bulbs of all kinds everywhere, from daffodils and iris to licoris. Originally, the soil between the plantings would have been swept clean of every blade of grass and raked in patterns. Sometime in the forties or fifties, probably, Saint Augustine grass had been planted in the open spots. There were still patches of the thick sod here and there, although the rest was choked with weeds and briers and enough saplings to stock a small forest.

And he had to get after it. He drained his glass, picked up his sweat-damp gloves and went back to work.

Maisie left in the middle of the afternoon, flipping him a quick wave as she drove off in her old boat of a car. He dug up the tough tubers of a mass of saw briers that were trying to climb a column while he allowed a little time to pass. When he thought it might not look too much like he had waited for the housekeeper to leave before storming the house, he pulled his discarded shirt back on, then went and gave the antique brass doorbell a quick twist.

The harsh, discordant sound rang through the house, and from around back, Laurel’s German shepherd, smart dog that he was, started barking immediately. Earlier, Alec had seen Sticks shut up on the porch. The two of them had eyed each other through the screen. Leaning against the doorjamb now, Alec wondered whether Laurel Bancroft was protecting him from the dog or the dog from him.

Laurel didn’t want to answer the door. She felt threatened, almost beleaguered inside her own house. She wished she had never mentioned the garden to Maisie, then this Alec Stanton would never have shown up. She could have gone on as she had been for nearly five years, in comfortable solitude with little contact with the outside world beyond her housekeeper, her grown children, and the man who drove the brown truck that brought her mail-order purchases.

Catalogs had become her lifelines to the world. It was a catalog of antique roses from a place in Texas that had started her thinking about the garden again after all this time. Now look where it had gotten her.

It was a strange blend of fear and irritation that made her snatch open the front door after the third ring. Her voice sounding distinctly tight and unwelcoming, she said, “Yes?”

“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” the dark-haired man who leaned on the doorjamb said, “but I needed to ask a couple of questions.”

He wasn’t sorry at all; she could see that. What she couldn’t see was why he couldn’t have come to the door before Maisie left. The urge to slam it in his face was so strong, a tremor ran down her arm. The main thing stopping her was the suspicion that he might prevent it if she tried.

Through compressed lips, she asked, “What is it?”

“I wondered if you could show me where you want your fountain? And it would help if I had some idea how you’d like to lay out the rose beds you mentioned. Plus, I’m not exactly sure what to save and what to get rid of.”

She glanced at the yard beyond him with a doubtful frown. “Surely you haven’t got as far as all that? I thought you were just clearing and cleaning.”

He smiled, a lazy movement of sensuously molded lips that made her breath catch in her throat. “It always helps to have a plan. Would you mind stepping out here just a minute to tell me a couple of things?”

How could she refuse such a polite and reasonable request? It was obviously impossible. In any case, she was intrigued by the clear line of sight he had created by fighting back the growth along the sidewalk from the steps to the gate. It had seemed a great distance between the two points before, when trees and brush had choked the passage and obscured the view. Now it appeared to be only a few yards.

Before she knew it, she had moved across the porch and down onto the brick path. Alec was talking, pointing out dying jonquil foliage along the walk, asking if she wanted to leave the yellow jasmine vine that had woven its way through a huge spirea near the side gate, and a dozen other questions.

She answered, yet she was painfully aware of being outside in the afternoon sun, exposed and vulnerable to another human being. At the same time, she felt a rising excitement. She could almost see the garden she had envisioned emerging from the shambles around her. In a single day, this man had laid bare the form of the front yard so she could tell how things used to be and how she wanted them again.

Roses. She wanted roses. Not the stiff, formal, near-perfect hybrid blooms everyone thought of when they heard the word, but rather the old Chinas, teas, Bourbons and Gallicas of years gone by. They were survivors, those roses. They had been rescued from cemeteries and around the foundations of deserted houses where they’d been growing, neglected, for countless years. Tough, hardy, they clung to life. Then in early spring, and even through the searing heat of summer and into fall, they unfurled blooms of intricate, fragile beauty, pouring their sweet perfume into the air as if sharing their souls.

Standing in the center of the front garden, Laurel said, “I’d like the fountain here, with the path running around it on either side, then on to the steps. I thought maybe an edging of low boxwood of the kind they have in French gardens would be good, with a few perennials like Bath’s pinks, blue Salvia and Shasta daisies. Beyond that, just roses and more roses.”

She glanced at Alec, half afraid she might have spoken too extravagantly. He was watching her with consideration in the midnight darkness of his eyes and a faint smile hovering at one corner of his mouth. For long moments, he made no answer. Then, as if suddenly becoming aware of her gaze, he gave a quick nod. “I can do that.”

“You think it will work?”

“I think it will be perfect.”

He sounded sincere, but she could hardly take it on trust. “You’re only saying that because you can see it will take weeks of work.”

His smile faded. “I wouldn’t do that. Actually, what I am is relieved. I was afraid you were going to want big maintenance-free beds of junipers all neatened up with chunky bark mulch.”

She made a quick face. “Too West Coast subdivision.”

“Exactly,” he agreed, his eyes warm and steady.

For a fleeting instant, she felt such a strong rapport with the man beside her that she was amazed. They were nothing alike, had little in common as far as background, yet they seemed in that moment to be operating on the same wavelength.

Perhaps this would work, after all. Just so long, of course, as they kept it simple and businesslike. She not only wanted this garden, she needed it. She had come to think, lately, that without it she might go into her house one day and never come out again.

“Let me show you something around here,” Alec said, intruding on her thoughts. Turning, he led the way toward the back of the house where the old outdoor kitchen had been before it was moved inside just before World War II. Her footsteps slowed as she saw where he was headed.

He kicked aside a tangle of brier and weeds, which he had apparently hacked down earlier at the house corner. Underneath was a low brick curbing covered by a large concrete cap. Moving with quick efficiency and lithe strength, he bent and lifted the heavy concrete cover. It made a harsh grating noise as he shoved it from the curbing.

“Don’t!” she cried, stepping back.

He straightened, putting his fists on his hips. “You know what this is?”

“A cistern, of course,” she answered, incensed. “But my husband never—That is, he always said it was extremely dangerous. No one ever goes near it.”

Alec frowned. “It’s just a brick-lined hole in the ground. There’s not even any water in it anymore.”

“Howard was always afraid somebody, one of the kids, would fall in.”

“Then he should have filled it in. But it could be used now as a reflecting pool, if you wanted. It wouldn’t take much to seal the brick lining, make it watertight.”

“It would be so deep,” she protested.

“So’s a swimming pool,” he offered with a shrug, “but that doesn’t stop people from having them. Anyway, it’s not as if there are any kids toddling around to fall in.”

She shook her head, suppressing a shiver. “I’d rather not.”

“Suit yourself. It was just an idea.”

He was disappointed, she thought. The enthusiasm had died out of his face and his movements were stiff as he replaced the heavy concrete cap. Abruptly, she asked, “Did you see the creek?”

“I saw where one crosses the road below here. That it?”

Nodding, she led him toward the winding waterway that ran behind Ivywild, gliding among tall beeches, sweet bay trees and glades of ferns. She was halfway there before it came home to her what she was doing. She had actually left the fenced-in yard. She was moving farther away from the safety and comfort it represented with every step. How long had it been since she had done that so easily?

A shiver moved over her and the skin on the back of her neck prickled. She felt naked, as if she had deliberately abandoned her protective covering. Panic rose inside her, but she choked it down, breathing slowly in and out.

She would be all right—she would. The wide shoulders and hard body of the man at her side spelled protection. He was solid, like a wall or fence that stood between her and whatever danger might lie around her. She had felt it the night before, felt it even more strongly now.

Not that there was really anything out here, of course. Any jeopardy was all in her head, and she needed to get rid of it. She knew that and was determined to keep telling herself so until she believed it. Anyway, she would not be away from her house for long—only for the time it took to show Alec Stanton the small stream.

As she pushed on, moving ahead of him down the tree- and brush-covered slope, following a winding animal trail, she was hyperaware of the warmth and solidity of him beside her. He moved so quietly, with the natural grace of an Indian. In the dusky tree shadows, she thought she could see a copper tint in the deep bronze of his skin.

The awkwardness between them lingered, but it had a different quality from before. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been quite so aware of another human being. Nor could she recall the last time she had cared how any male felt other than her teenage son.

Alec was impressed with the creek. Standing knee-deep in the ferns that edged it, with his hair trailing in its damp ponytail down his back and leaf shadows making a tracery of gray dimness and golden light on his brown skin, he turned to her with a heart-stopping smile. Voice deep and reflective, he said, “This has possibilities.”

“I know,” she said and caught her breath, suddenly more afraid of those possibilities than she had been of anything in five long years.

He tilted his head, the darkness of his eyes as meltingly warm and sweet as chocolate. “Does this mean I get the job?”

He had done so much in so short a time. He could clear all the choking debris from Ivywild. He could make her rose garden for her. If she had not ventured out to see what he had done—what he could do—if she had not seen the promise, she might have answered differently. Now there was only one reply possible.

“Yes, I…suppose it must.”

Pleasure flared across his face in sudden brightness. “Good,” he said softly. “In fact, that’s great.”

Laurel wasn’t so sure.

She was even less certain when night closed in and Alec finally roared away down the drive on his Harley. She had grown used to being alone, and yet tonight she really felt it for the first time in ages. It was a warm evening, but she was chilled. Wrapping her arms around herself, she wondered what it would be like to have a man’s warm arms to hold her, or a firm chest to support her as she pressed close against it. It had been so long.

Of course, Howard had never been particularly good at simple affection. Whenever she’d tried to cuddle in his arms, she had usually gotten sex. That part of their marriage had been all right; not especially inspiring but no disaster, either. They had talked—mostly practical conversations of the kind necessary between husband and wife, about plumbing repairs, the children’s progress in school, what was for dinner. Sometimes they had gone out to eat or visited friends, driving home in companionable silence. Now and then, Howard had taken her hand. But no, he’d had no gift for gentle caresses, no interest in the passionless need to hold and absorb the essence of another person. It was foolish, perhaps, to miss what you had never had.

She was lonely, that was it. The night stretched empty and still and dreary ahead of her. There was nothing on television she wanted to watch, and she had read everything of interest on her bookshelves. She wasn’t sleepy, wasn’t even tired.

She couldn’t stop thinking of Alec Stanton. The way he looked at her, the way his smile started at one corner of his mouth and spread across his lips in slow glory. The deep set of his eyes under his brows, and the planes of his face that swept down from the high ridges of his cheekbones, giving him the predatory look of some ancient warrior. The easy way he moved, his deceptive strength. The gleam of his skin with its gilding of perspiration, the rippling glide of the dragon on his upper chest as his pectoral muscles contracted and relaxed.

How stupid, to indulge in sophomoric mooning over a hired hand, a young hired hand. It was even more stupid to allow herself the twinges of such a ridiculous attraction. If she could just be objective about it, she might laugh at the trick her mind had played on her, getting her worked up over such an unsuitable partner, like a canary eyeing the iridescent magnificence of a pheasant.

It was only hormones run amok, that was all. Nothing would come of it. Alec Stanton would do his job, then he would be gone and everything would be the same again. Everything, except she would have a new rose garden.

She would have to be satisfied with that.

It had been a mistake to leave her house, perhaps. There was more than one kind of safety, more than one kind of danger. Still, if she stayed inside now until after Alec had finished her garden, then she couldn’t get hurt.

Could she?

3

Laurel Bancroft was keeping an eye on him from the windows; Alec knew this because he had caught her at it.

He didn’t like it, didn’t appreciate being made to feel like a criminal she needed to stay away from at all costs. Or worse, that maybe he wasn’t good enough to associate with her. It had been going on for three days. He’d about had a bellyful of it.

He didn’t care if she was a widow, didn’t give a rat’s behind if she’d actually killed her husband and had good reason to shut herself away. It didn’t even matter that she didn’t see another soul beside Maisie. He wanted her out of that house. He wanted her to talk to him.

The anger that simmered inside him while he dug and chopped and ripped weeds from the ground was strange, in a way. What people thought and how they acted toward him had ceased to bother him years ago. But Laurel Bancroft had opened old wounds. She’d made him as self-conscious as a teenager again. She’d made him care, which was something else he held against her.

What it was about her, he didn’t know. It wasn’t just that she was an attractive woman, because there were jillions of those in California, and he had known his share. Nor was it, as his brother sometimes claimed, that he had a weakness for problem females. He might feel the need to lend a hand to those who seemed to be struggling, but that had nothing to do with the woman who owned Ivywild.

There she was again, behind the draperies that covered the window on the end of the house. She was standing well back and barely shifting the drape, but he had learned to watch for the shadowy movement.

That did it.

He dropped the shovel he was wielding, then stripped off his gloves and crammed them into his back pocket. He was not going to be spied on any longer. Either she was coming out or he was going in.

Maisie answered his knock. Her gray brows climbed toward her hairline as she saw the grim look on his face. Wiping her damp hands on her apron, she asked, “Something the matter?”

Alec gave a short nod. “I’d like to talk to Mrs. Bancroft a minute.”

“She’s busy,” the older woman answered, not budging an inch. “What do you need?”

“Answers,” he said. “Could you get her for me?”

Maisie considered him, her faded gaze holding a hint of acknowledgment of the human capacity for dealing misery. Finally, she nodded. “Wait here a minute.”

Alec put his hands on his hipbones as he watched the housekeeper move off into the house. Wait here, she’d said. Like a good boy. Or the hired help. His lips tightened.

After a few seconds, he heard the murmur of voices, then a silence followed by the returning shuffle of the house slippers Maisie wore. She spoke while still some distance down the hall.

“She says find out what you want.”

“I want,” he replied with stringent softness, “to talk to her.”

“Well, she don’t want to talk to you, so don’t push it.”

“What if I do? You going to stop me? Or will you just tell Grannie Callie on me?” He stepped forward into the long hallway.

“You’ll get yourself fired,” Maisie warned, even as she backed up a few steps.

“Fine. I’ll be fired.”

“I thought you wanted this job.”

“Where is she?” He strode deeper into the house while Maisie turned and trotted along behind him.

“In her bedroom,” the older woman answered a bit breathlessly. “You can’t go in there.”

“I think maybe I can,” he said, heading for the door Maisie had glanced at as she spoke.

“It’s on your own head, then.”

The warning in the housekeeper’s voice as she came to a halt was fretted with something that might have been grudging approval. He didn’t stay to analyze it, but turned the knob of the bedroom door and pushed inside.

The widow Bancroft was sitting on a chaise longue with pillows propped behind her back, her feet curled to one side and a book in her hands. Her gaze widened and a tint of soft rose crept into her face as she stared at him. Her lips parted as if she had drawn a quick breath and forgotten to release it.

The bedroom was like her, Alec thought—a medley of cream, blue and coral-pink; of substantial Victorian furniture and fragile, sensuous fabrics. It was a retreat and he had breached it. More than that, he had caught her unawares, before she could raise her defenses. She was barefoot and almost certainly braless under an oversize and much-washed T-shirt worn with a pair of white shorts. Her hair spilled over her left shoulder, shimmering with the beat of her heart, and she wore not the first smidgen of makeup to obscure her clear skin or the soft coral of her lips. She was the most enticing sight he had ever come across in his life.

In the flicker of an eyelid, she recovered her outward aplomb. Setting her book aside, she uncurled from the chaise and got to her feet. As she spoke, her voice was edgy. “What is it? Do you have a problem?”

“You might say so. I want to know why you’re afraid of me.” He hadn’t meant it to come out just like that, but he let it stand anyway.

“I’m not,” she said in immediate denial.

“You could have fooled me. Unless you have some other reason for hiding in here?”

She stared at him an instant too long before she spoke. “Who said I was hiding? Just because I don’t feel the need to oversee everything you do—”

“You’re letting me make this garden on my own, and you know it. When I get through, it won’t be yours but mine.”

She shrugged briefly. “So I’ll make it mine when you’re gone.”

“There’s no need. I can make sure that it reflects what you want right now. You won’t have to lift a finger except to point. You can tell me what you want moved and what stays as is, what you want pruned to size and what you prefer to be left natural. I’ve gotten rid of the briers and vines and everything else that obviously doesn’t belong, but now it’s decision time.”

“You decide, then,” she said through compressed lips. “You seem to know more about it than I do, anyway.”

“I don’t know what you like or what you want.” The words were simple and he meant them, but the emphasis he put on them in his own mind turned his ears hot.

“Do whatever you like!”

He stared at her, then gave himself a mental shake. She was talking about flowers and shrubs, that was all. “Suppose I clear off everything,” he said, “take it down to the bare…ground.”

“You can’t!”

“I could,” he growled with absolute conviction. “Nothing easier.”

“But there are camellias out there over eighty years old, and one big sweet olive that—” She stopped, her eyes narrowing. “But you know that.”

“I know what’s there,” he said. “I just don’t know what you care about.”

“I can tell you—”

“Show me.” He cut across what she had intended to say without compunction.

Her lips firmed. “I don’t think—”

“Unless it’s me,” he said softly. “Since you’re not afraid, then you must not like the company.”

Surprise and dismay flashed in the rich blue of her eyes. “That isn’t it at all.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Nothing!”

“I don’t think so.”

Her lashes flickered. “At least it’s nothing to do with you, nothing to you. I can’t imagine why you’re so concerned.”

“Call me perverse. I like to know where I stand.”

“Where you don’t belong, actually. In my bedroom.” She flashed him a look of irritation before she turned away again.

“Level with me and I’m gone,” he stated with precision.

Her lips tightened, and she crossed her arms over her chest as she sighed. “It’s not you, all right? If you must know, it’s me. I don’t deal well with people.”

“That right?” he said with a raised brow. “You don’t have to deal with me, just talk to me. I’m not complicated and I don’t bite, but I hate being ignored.”

“I’m not ignoring you!”

“Maybe you just have no use for me, then.”

“That isn’t it at all. I don’t know what to say!”

His smile was slow but sure as he turned to the door and stood holding it open, waiting for her. “Then there’s no excuse left, since I can talk for both of us, and I don’t mind your company.”

The look she gave him was fulminating yet resigned. He had her and she knew it. She was not the kind of woman who could be cruel just to protect herself, no matter the provocation. He had suspected it, even counted on it. Which didn’t say much for him as a person, but it said even less for all the other idiots stupid enough to think she could commit murder. He watched her closely as she pushed her feet into her sandals, which sat beside the chaise, then moved ahead of him down the dim hallway.

Yeah, he had her number. He had Laurel Bancroft out of her bedroom, out of her house again. Now where was he going from here?

It was a good question—one he pondered often during the next week. He might be guilty of arrogance, thinking he knew what was best for her, but he didn’t intend to let that stop him. He was nothing if not high-handed.

At least he’d managed to coax her into the garden every morning. It had taken a lot of thought and energy, not to mention dozens of asinine questions that he could have answered himself without half trying. But on the sixth day, just yesterday, he’d kept her outside long enough to get her straight little nose pink from the sun, and dirt under the nails of her long, aristocratic fingers. As his reward, she had come out of the house this morning with her gloves in her hands and a straw hat on her head.

Working beside her was both a pleasure and a royal pain. She wanted to save everything recognizable, which was going to make her garden one unholy jumble. Not that he cared. Or had any right to complain.

She also had a reverence for living things that caused her to jump in and save every turtle, frog, lizard or even snake that came anywhere near the ax or shovel he might be wielding. This morning, she had spent an hour chasing a half-grown rabbit up and down the garden to be sure it found its way outside the fence.

As compensation for his tried patience, he could stand downwind from her while she worked and catch the incredible scent of roses and jasmine and warm female that drifted from her skin. He got to take his orders directly from her, which she always couched as courteous requests. He was permitted to admire the view when she bent over in close-fitting cutoff jeans to plait dying bulb foliage or to turn over a few shovelfuls of soil. He got to talk to her whenever he pleased. And sometimes, when he least expected it, he was rewarded for some quip or comment by her rare smile.

She was the kind of woman he might have laid down his life for in another place and time. As it was, he meant to drag her out of her self-imposed exile and see to it that she began to live again. He wasn’t quite sure why he was so bent on it except that he maybe needed something to distract himself, occupy his mind. Or maybe he just hated waste.

Yes, and maybe he was an idiot to think it was that simple. Denial had never been one of his problems before.

They were eating their lunch on the veranda. He was having trouble choking down Maisie’s homemade hamburger, although it was fine eating. His throat kept closing when he turned his head to look at Laurel sitting so naturally beside him. She was hot and tired, and her T-shirt was damp with perspiration so it clung in all the right places. Her hair was coming loose from the long braid down her back, and a piece of trash was caught on her gold-tipped lashes. He thought he had never seen anything so gorgeous in his life.

“Hold still,” he said, reaching out to touch her cheek, gently closing her eyelid with his thumb before sliding the offending bit of dried leaf from her lashes with two fingers.

She blinked experimentally as he took it away, then grinned at him. “Thanks.”

Incredible, how a single word could make him feel ten feet tall. Ready to leap tall buildings. Save the world. Or do lascivious-type things on the table between them that would get him booted off the property before he could turn around.

She was watching him, her gaze faintly inquiring. He suspected his face might be flushed, considering how cool the breeze felt that wandered down the long length of the veranda. Blowing the piece of trash from his fingers, he picked up his water glass and drank deeply.

“You don’t eat much, do you?” she said in tones of mild censure. “At least, not compared to how hard you work.”

“I eat enough.” The words were short. The last thing he wanted from her was motherly concern.

She frowned a little. “I only wondered if it was on purpose, some kind of California health-food thing.”

“I guess you could call it that,” he allowed finally. “The old man I used to work with thought overeating caused all sorts of problems. Fat rats die young, he used to say. He was Chinese, laughed at the American diet while he stirred up ungodly mixtures of rice and vegetables. But he was eighty-six and going strong last time I saw him.”

“You did yard work with him?”

Alec gave a quick nod, pleased that she had remembered something of what he’d told her that first night. “Mr. Wu was a gardener. He taught me what I know about plants, and a great deal more, besides.”

Her smile was whimsical. “The wisdom of the venerable ancients?”

“You’ve been watching too many old Charlie Chan movies,” he answered with a grin. “Mr. Wu was big on Zen meditation and martial arts, but I never heard him quote Confucius.”

“Martial arts? Did he teach you that, too?”

He shrugged. “Only as a form of exercise—something else Mr. Wu was big on.”

“I’d have thought gardening would give you more than enough of that.” The words were dry as she flexed her neck muscles.

“That was my idea, too,” he replied with a faint laugh of remembrance. His gaze skimmed the softness of her breasts that were lifted into prominence as she turned her head and arched her back to relieve strain. “Mr. Wu had a way of changing a person’s mind.”

“You miss California, I expect. I mean, it must seem so different here.”

“I did miss it,” he replied with a slow shake of his head as he watched her. “But not anymore.”

She avoided eye contact. Relaxing, she used a fingertip to pick up a sesame seed that had fallen from her hamburger bun. “You’ll be going back, though, I guess?”

Would he? He had certainly thought so, once. Now he wasn’t so sure. With his brain feeling tight in his skull as he watched her place the sesame seed on the pink surface of her tongue, he said, “Not anytime soon.”

“Because your brother isn’t well enough? Or is it that he just doesn’t want to go?”

She was avoiding the issue of what he himself wanted, which seemed to indicate that she understood him a little better than he had figured. Although that might be wishful thinking on his part. After a moment, he said, “Gregory’s happy here, or happy enough. I’m not sure he’ll ever…leave.”

“That’s good, then. There must be something about it he likes.”

He gave her a straight look. “Yes, but that’s not what I was getting at.”

“Oh.” Her head came up. “You don’t mean…”

He gave a slow nod as he turned his head to squint at a blue jay just landing on a fence picket. Voice low, he said, “He isn’t going to make it.”

In the sudden quiet, the sound of a jay’s call was loud. After a moment, she said softly, “He knows?”

Alec nodded, since he didn’t quite trust himself to speak.

“How old…”

“Thirty-five in October, four years older than I am.” He was laying the age thing on the line between them. The way she had hesitated over the question made him think it might be what she wanted.

“Does he—That is, is he…all right about it?”

“No,” Alec said deliberately, “I don’t think you can say that.” Far from it, in fact. Gregory wasn’t taking it well at all, and who could blame him?

“He’s lucky to have you with him.”

It was the last thing he expected her to say—so unexpected that he laughed. “I’m not sure he would agree.”

“Maisie says your grandmother told her that you’re up with him all hours of the night.”

“Somebody has to check on him, give him his medication. Grannie fusses over him during the day, but she needs her rest.” He was surprised Laurel had spoken to Maisie about him. His brow quirked into an arch as he wondered why.

She colored slightly under his regard. “I saw you taking a nap after lunch that first day. Maisie told me you probably needed it, and why. You haven’t done it again, so I just wanted to say that I don’t mind, if you…feel the need.”

The need he felt had little to do with sleeping, though a great deal to do with lying down. Or not. “I appreciate the thought,” he said carefully, “but I’ve been managing a catnap in the evening while Grannie Callie cooks supper. I’ll get by.”

“It’s up to you.” She lifted one shoulder.

“You suggesting I’m too out of shape to do without it?” he asked in a weak effort to lighten the mood, change the subject.

Her gaze skated over his chest where he had left his shirt unbuttoned for coolness. Her mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Hardly.”

He held his lips clamped shut—it was the only way he could keep from grinning. He hadn’t been fishing for compliments, but he wasn’t immune to them, either.

He pushed his plate aside and leaned back in his chair. His wandering attention was caught by the scaling paint along the edge of the porch, and he grasped at the subject like a lifeline.

“When was the last time this house was painted?”

She shrugged. “Six years, seven maybe. I know it needs it, but…”

“As I said before, it would be a shame to let it go too far. It’s such a grand old place.”

“I know,” she said unhappily. “It’s just that it’s such a hassle.”

“I also told you I could do it.”

“You’d be here forever.”

Exactly, he thought. Instead he said, “Not quite. It’s amazing how fast you can cover ground with a few cans of paint and an air compressor.”

“Spray it, you mean?”

He lifted a brow. “It’s not a new concept.”

“No, but Howard always did it the hard way, with a brush.”

“Your husband, right?”

She nodded, her gaze on her plate. She put what was left of her hamburger down as if she were no longer hungry. Alec thought she looked a little pale. Remembering what Maisie had told him, he couldn’t blame her too much. “It isn’t your fault he died,” he said, his voice gravelly. “Don’t let it get to you.”

“You don’t know anything about it.” Her eyes flashed blue fire as she looked at him.

“Nothing except what I’ve been told. But even I have sense enough to know a woman who won’t hurt a turtle would never kill a man.” There it was, out in the open. He waited for her to tell him to get lost.

She looked away, swallowed hard. “One thing doesn’t necessarily cancel out the other.”

“You saying you really did run him down?”

“I might have.” Her face was flushed and a groove appeared between her brows.

“Sure. Pull the other one.” He caught himself waiting for the blowup, the show of temper in defense of her innocence. Where was it?

“Maybe I saw him coming up behind me before I backed out of the garage. Maybe I could have slammed on the brakes—but I didn’t.”

She was dead serious. Incredible as it seemed, she really believed she might have killed her husband on purpose. “Right, and maybe you figured he was bright enough not to walk behind a moving vehicle. Hell, anybody would.”

“But not everybody.”

“Forget them. Get on with your life.”

“That’s easy to say, but I can’t—” She stopped, took a deep breath as she lifted both hands to her face, wiping them down it as if she were smoothing away the remnants of horror. “Never mind. I don’t know how we got onto this, anyway. I—We were talking about painting. If you really want to fool with it, you can get what you need at the hardware store in town and charge it to me.”

“I could, or we might run into town now and you can pick out the paint colors.” The words were deliberate. He waited for the answer with more than casual interest.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary. White will do.”

“With green shutters, I guess.” His tone was sarcastic, a measure of his disappointment.

“What’s wrong with that? It’s traditional, the way it’s always been.”

“It’s boring.”

“I guess you would like to fancy it up like some San Francisco Painted Lady?”

Her annoyance was more like it—it made her sound feisty and full of life. She was right about his taste, too. In self-defense, he said, “The Victorians liked things colorful.”

“Not around here, they didn’t. Whitewash was all anybody could afford after the Civil War, you know. Later on, everyone figured that if it was good enough for their grandparents, it was good enough for them. And it’s also good enough for me.”

“Well, heaven forbid we should go against tradition. Do you want antique white or bright white?”

“Antique.”

“I should have known.”

She was silent for a moment, staring at him. Then she got to her feet. “Fine. If that’s settled, I think it’s time we got back to work.”

It served him right.

The afternoon went quickly, at least for Laurel. One moment the sun was high; the next time she looked up it was spreading long blue shadows along the ground. She was fighting with a honeysuckle vine that had snaked its way through a baby’s-breath spirea. She had decided the only way to get rid of it was to cut both plants down to the ground when she heard a faint noise directly behind her. She swung with the hedge clippers wide open in her hands.

Alec sidestepped, lashed out with one hand. The next instant, the clippers were on the ground and her wrists were numb inside her gloves. She caught her left hand in her right, holding it as she stared at him.

He cursed softly as he stepped closer to take her wrists, then stripped off her gloves, which he dropped to the ground. Turning her hands with the palms up, he moved the bones, watching her face for signs of pain. Some of the tightness went out of his features as he saw no evidence of injury. Voice low, he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was just a reflex action.”

“I know,” she replied, controlling a shiver at the feel of his warm, suntanned hands on hers. “You didn’t hurt me. I was only surprised.”

He flicked her a quick, assessing look. “Yeah, well, so was I. I didn’t know you were armed and dangerous.”

She could make something out of that, or leave it alone. She chose to bypass it. “You wanted something?”

His grasp on her arms tightened before he let her go with an abrupt, openhanded gesture. “As a matter of fact, yes. I was going to ask if you’ll show me where the headwaters of your creek are located. I’d like to know what kind of floodplain drains into it from north of here.”

“You have a reason, I suppose?” Realizing she was still rubbing her wrist where the feeling was returning, she made an effort to stop.

His eyes were jet-black and his smile a little forced as he inclined his head. “I was thinking of diverting water from the creek for your fountain.”

“But why?” She gave him a quick frown. “They have those kits that recirculate the water. Wouldn’t that work?”

“You have to keep adding more water, plus the fountain goes stagnant after a while.” He summoned a grin. “Besides, I have a passion for water projects, and what’s the point in being an engineer if you’re going to take the easy way out?”

“I don’t think you want to go tromping through the woods to follow the creek. It’s nothing but a thicket back in there, and the snakes are already crawling.”

“You mean you don’t want to do it, I think,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. You point me down the right roads, and I can get enough of an idea from the back of my bike.”

“If you mean you want me to lead you in my car—”

The quick shake of his head cut her off. “What I had in mind was you riding with me.”

“I don’t think so!” She hovered between amazement, doubt and anger, and was uncertain which was uppermost in her mind.

“Why? Afraid I’ll overturn you?”

“No, but—”

“There’re no buts about it. Either you trust me or you don’t. What’s the big deal?”

“You don’t understand,” she said a little desperately.

He didn’t budge an inch. “So make me.”

“I don’t like motorcycles.” She glanced away, past his shoulder, as she spoke.

“You don’t have to like them. Just ride on one.”

Her lips tightened. “This is ridiculous. I don’t have to give you a reason. I’m just not going.”

“You’re chicken,” he said softly.

She snapped her gaze back to his. “You have no right to say such a thing. You don’t know what it’s like when I leave here. You just don’t know!”

“What makes you so sure? You’re not the only one with problems,” he said with a swift gesture of one hand. “At least I know one thing, which is that you have some kind of phobia about your Ivywild. If you don’t get out of it, you’re going to wind up locked inside with no way to leave. Ever.”

She bit the side of her lip. In a voice almost too low to hear, she asked, “Would that be so bad?”

“It would be criminal,” he answered without hesitation. “You have too much living left in you. Will you let it all slip away? Will you let fear dictate what you can and can’t do?”

It was a novel thought. She wasn’t sure she had any life—or courage—left, not that it made any difference. “Look,” she began.

“No, you look,” he countered, setting his fists on his hipbones. “It’s just a little bike ride. All you have to do is hold on. I won’t go fast, I won’t overturn you, and you can choose the route. What more do you want?”

“To be left alone?” she said sweetly.

“Not a chance,” he replied with a grim smile. “Not if you want that fountain.”

She stared at him, wondering if she had imagined the threat behind his words. Could he really mean that he wouldn’t tackle the fountain project if she didn’t help him with this part of it? It was just possible he could be that stubborn, that determined to have his way.

She didn’t want to put it to the test, and that was both irritating and depressing. “Oh, all right,” she told him, bending to snatch up her gloves he had dropped. “When do you want to go?”

“Now?” he said promptly.

He obviously thought she would back out if they waited. It was possible he was right, although the last thing she would do was admit it. “Let me tell Maisie, then.”

“I already told her,” he said and had the nerve to grin. Turning, he walked away toward where his Harley stood in the driveway.

She watched him go; watched the easy, confident swing of his long legs, the way his jeans clung to the tight, lean lines of his backside, the natural way he moved his arms as if he were comfortable with his body, comfortable in it. He expected her to follow, was supremely certain she would.

Of all the conceited, know-it-all, macho schemers she had ever seen, he took the prize. She would be damned if she would trot along behind him like some blushing Indian maiden, all hot and bothered because he wanted her company.

He turned, his smile warm, almost caressing, a little challenging as he held out his hand. “Coming?”

She went. She didn’t know why, but she did. It was better than being called chicken.

Alec didn’t give Laurel a chance to balk, but led her straight to the bike. He swung his leg over it, then held it steady with his feet on the ground either side while he helped her climb on behind. As she settled in place, he put her hand at his waist as a suggestion. She took it away the minute he released it, and he had to duck his head to hide his disappointment.

“It’s bigger than I thought,” she said, her voice a little breathless.

“You’ve never done this before?” he asked, grinning a little to himself at the private double entendre.

“Never.”

“First time for everything. Ready to get it on—the road?”

“Just do it and stop talking about it,” she said through her teeth.

He flung her a quick glance over his shoulder, wondering if she could possibly tell what was going on in his head. But no, her face was tight and she certainly wasn’t laughing. He turned the key, let the bike roar, then put it in gear.

She was holding on to the seat, but it wasn’t enough to keep her steady for his fast takeoff. With a small yelp, she grabbed for his waist, wrapping her arms around him and meshing her fingers over his solar plexus. He could feel her breasts pressed to his backbone—a lovely, warm softness. Her cheek fit between his shoulder blades. Perfect, he thought, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. Just perfect.

He settled back a little and decreased his speed. His passenger would like it better, no doubt. Besides, it would make for a longer ride. After a moment, he turned his head to yell, “Am I going too fast for you?”

“No, it’s fine,” she replied above the engine noise, but she didn’t sound too sure.

Still, he was good, the soul of restraint. He spun along the blacktop roads, took the turn onto the dirt-and-gravel track she indicated without a murmur or hesitation. He didn’t show off, held the bike dead straight. The only time he stopped was to look at the creek where it passed through culverts or under bridges in its winding passage toward Ivywild.

It was a decent-size stream, fed along its route by a number of springs, which kept the water fresh and clean. Several dry washes fed into it, which, he guessed, must run fairly high during spring and winter rains. It also carried the runoff from a series of low ridges that twisted and turned for quite a few miles. Dams had been built along its course for a pond or two, but they hadn’t slowed it down a great deal.

The creek would be fine for his purpose; he saw that much in short order. Tapping it for a fountain should not cause a problem with either landowners or environmentalists. And it certainly wasn’t as if Louisiana had any shortage of water. If the state could only find some way to pump it out west, it would be rich.

“I’ve seen enough,” he said as they idled beside a rusting iron culvert. “What shall we do now?”

“Go home,” she replied, the words definite.

He gave a slow nod. “Right. But first, I’d like to see where this road comes out.”

She said something in protest, he thought, but just then he gunned the bike into motion so he didn’t quite catch it.

It was a dirt road, a hard-beaten, sandy track that meandered through the woods. There were a few big old trees standing on nearly every rise, as if it had once been lined with houses. All this land had been farms back before the turn of the century, with pastures and fields stretching over the rolling hills as far as the eye could see. That was according to Grannie Callie, anyway. She could still remember a lot of the family names, could tell him who gave up and moved to town to work in the mill, who took off to Texas, who went away to the big war, World War II, and never came back. It was strange to think about all those people living and working, having children and dying here, and leaving nothing behind except the trees that had sheltered their lives.

“Turn around!” Laurel yelled into his ear. “We’ve got to go back!”

He nodded his understanding, but didn’t do it. Zipping around the tight curves of the unimproved road, passing from bright sun to dark tree shadow and into the sun again, he felt free and happy and lucky to be alive. He wouldn’t mind riding on forever. He couldn’t think when was the last time he had enjoyed anything so much as roaring along this back road with Laurel Bancroft clinging to him, bouncing against him as they hit the ruts, tethered together now and then by a long strand of her hair that wrapped around his arm like a fine, silken rope.

“Stop!” she shouted, shaking him so hard with her locked arms that the bike swerved. “This road cuts through to the main highway. We’re getting too close to town!”

She was right. There was an intersection ahead of them as they rounded the bend—one with a red octagonal stop sign. He could hit the brake right here and throw them into a skidding stop, or he could coast to a halt within spitting distance of the road where cars whizzed past. It wasn’t much of a choice with Laurel behind him. He coasted.

She was trembling; he could feel the tremors running through her and into his own body as he pulled up beside the stop sign. This fear of hers must have been coming on since they’d left her house. It was not a reasonable thing—not something she could control at will—or she would be doing just that instead of letting him know it. He grimaced, mouthing a soundless curse for his misjudgment.

“Which shall it be?” he asked over his shoulder in quiet concern. “A fast trip back to the house on the main road, or a slower one the way we came?”

There were cars passing in both directions in front of them. The occupants turned their heads to stare as they sat there. Laurel hid her face against his back. “The way we came,” she answered, her voice uneven. “Please. Right now.”

“You got it.” Swinging in a wide circle, he headed back.

She was okay by the time they pulled up in front of the house. At least she had stopped shaking. Regardless, she didn’t say a word, only jumped off the bike and stalked away. Cutting through the garden, she ran up the steps. The door slammed behind her.

Alec cursed softly as he struck the handlebar of his bike with a knotted fist. He was such an idiot. Why couldn’t he have paid attention? Why did he have to keep on when she’d said turn back? Things had been going so well.

He hadn’t realized. Even when he’d accused her of having a phobia, he hadn’t really believed it ran that deep. He had drawn her outside easily enough; somehow he had thought getting her to go the rest of the way would be the same.

But he recognized, as he sat staring at the garden in front of Ivywild, that the yard was fenced in, a small enclosed space almost like an extension of the house. She could only take that much, or so it seemed.

Seen in that light, the fact that she had gone with him on his bike at all was a near miracle. She’d trusted him more than he knew, had depended on him to take care of her, keep her hidden, secure.

He had let her down.

After today, he would be lucky if he ever got her out of that house again. Hell, he would be lucky if he still had a job.

Dear God, but he couldn’t stand it. He had been so close. Now he would have to start all over.

But he would do it. He would. His heart and mind left him no other choice.

4

Laurel stood grasping the handle of the front door, staring out the sidelight panes that surrounded it. Her husband’s mother was coming up the walk. Overweight and shaped like a pear, the older woman was graying to a color best described as “dirty mouse.” Her dress was a polyester tent, her shoes were too small for her wide feet, and she carried her mock alligator purse from the crook of her arm. She was searching the garden with darting glances. Her pale, formless lips were drawn into a tight line and mottled color lay across the grooved skin of her face.

Laurel’s heart throbbed at a suffocating tempo. Why, she wasn’t sure; it wasn’t as if the visit was unexpected. She was only surprised that her mother-in-law had waited until Maisie and Alec had gone for the day. It wasn’t like Sadie Bancroft to waste breath when there was no audience.

At that moment, Sticks came hurtling around from the back of the house, barking and growling as if at a sworn enemy. He very nearly was, since he had taken a dislike to Mother Bancroft as a puppy, after she’d kicked him for trying to chew the toes of her new shoes. There was little danger he would actually attack her, of course, but the older woman never saw it that way. She always squealed and ran from him as she was doing now, which naturally brought out the worst in the dog.

Laurel pulled the front door open and called off Sticks, then waited while her portly mother-in-law scurried up the steps and inside. As Sticks came loping up onto the veranda behind her, Laurel blocked his entrance, but gave him a reassuring scratch behind the ears to show she was not upset with him.

“Vicious animal,” Sadie Bancroft snapped from the safety of the long hallway. “I can’t imagine why you don’t have him put down!”

Laurel ignored the suggestion. Closing the door, she said as agreeably as she was able, “ How are you, Mother Bancroft? It’s been a while since you were here.”

“Too long, from the looks of things. What on God’s green earth have you been doing to the place?”

“Just a little clearing. You’ll have to admit things had gotten out of hand.”

“That’s no excuse for butchering everything,” the older woman said. “And don’t tell me you’ve been doing it yourself, either. I know very well that’s not so.”

She knew about Alec, then; Laurel had thought as much. At the same time, her mother-in-law couldn’t resist getting in a barb to suggest that Laurel was lazy, though it was one so old and often repeated, it no longer had the power to sting. Sadie had always resented the fact that Laurel had kept Maisie on after her two children were out of diapers. The older woman didn’t have household help, and saw no earthly reason Laurel should need any. Of course, she conveniently forgot that she herself had moved away from Ivywild, her husband’s old family home—with its huge rooms, hardwood floors that needed constant waxing and polishing, and antiques that collected dust—the minute it was clear he had deserted her and was never coming back.

The place had stood empty for years, until Laurel and Howard married. Mother Bancroft had been ecstatic that Laurel actually wanted to take on responsibility for the old barn of a building, though she naturally maintained a proprietary interest. Since this took the form of inspecting the premises and pointing out any laxity in upkeep with more accuracy than tact, she had never been a particularly welcome guest, even before Howard’s death.

“I wouldn’t dream of telling you anything,” Laurel muttered under her breath as she closed the door.

The other woman swung around. “What was that?”

“I said, would you like anything to drink? Coffee? Juice? Iced tea?”

“I never drink coffee or tea this late in the day, you know that. I don’t suppose you have any Perrier?”

“I don’t believe so,” Laurel said dryly.

“Forget it, then.” Mother Bancroft turned and marched into the parlor. She seated herself in an upright chair, crossed her thick ankles, then set her purse in her lap and closed her hands on it as if she thought someone might take it. “I can’t stay long,” she went on as if Laurel was pressing hospitality on her. “I only came because I feel it’s my duty to talk to you about this young man you have doing all this yard work.”

“You mean Alec Stanton?”

“Who else would I mean? You don’t have other young men hanging around, I hope?”

“No,” Laurel said simply. She had thought they’d slide easily into the inevitable discussion, but now she dropped down onto the overstuffed couch and waited to see how Howard’s mother meant to handle the subject.

“He’s got to go.”

That was certainly short and sweet. “I suppose you have a reason?”

“Several of them,” the other woman replied in tones of grim condemnation. “To begin with, it can’t be good for your reputation to have someone like him making free of the place.”

“I don’t think you can call it ‘making free’ when all he does is work.”

“He comes and goes as he pleases, riding that outlandish motorcycle like some kind of Hell’s Angel. Which is another thing. He’s not our kind at all.”

“And just what kind is he?” Laurel crossed her arms over her chest as she leaned back against the couch.

“You have to ask, when it’s as plain as day? Just look at all that long hair and earrings.”

“One earring. A lot of men wear them these days.”

Her mother-in-law dismissed that without a pause. “If that’s not bad enough, there’s that disgusting tattoo he flashes for everybody to see!”

“Yes, and he’s from California, too,” Laurel said in dulcet and entirely false agreement.

“Exactly! Full of weird ideas of all kinds, I don’t doubt. Politics, religion—”

“Sex?” Laurel supplied helpfully. The word, she knew, was one her mother-in-law always had trouble saying.

Mother Bancroft’s indrawn breath was perfectly audible. “What do you know about that? What have the two of you been up to out here? I can just imagine it’s nothing good, with you being a widow and him a—I don’t know what!”

It had been so long since Laurel had felt the almost-painful anger that threaded through her veins. Voice taut, she said, “A nice-looking young man?”

Disgust squirmed across the other woman’s wrinkled features. “He has been up to something! I knew it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Laurel said sharply. “Nothing whatever is going on except that I’m reclaiming the front garden and planting it with roses, and Alec is giving me a hand with the heavy work. Well, he’s also going to paint the house, but—”

“There! You see?” the other woman exclaimed in triumph. “He’s moving in on you. He’ll find more and more to do around here until you won’t be able to get rid of him. The man’s a hustler, Laurel.”

“Oh, come on, that’s crazy.”

“Can’t you see it? Are you so naive you can’t tell from the way he acts and talks to you?”

“Apparently not. How is it that you know when you haven’t even met him?”

Sadie Bancroft breathed heavily through her bulbous nose, kneading her purse with fat, white fingers. “He’s got you under his spell, I can tell. This is awful. He’ll be climbing into your bed, if he hasn’t already. Then he’ll start asking for money. He’ll take every penny you’ve got.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Laurel snapped as the heat of indignation rose in her face.

“He will! He’s a gigolo, can’t you see it? He preys on lonely older women. You may not be as old as some he’s taken, but you keep to yourself out here, don’t have any friends, so you’re fair game. He’ll smile and pay you all sorts of compliments, but then he’ll screw you unless you get rid of him first.”

Laurel was startled her husband’s mother would use such a word, though not especially surprised she would think it. She was the kind of woman who kept the tabloid press in business; it was her favorite entertainment next to listening to television preachers and joining right-wing conservative letter-writing campaigns. For all her discomfort with talking about normal sex, she reveled in the salacious and bizarre, loved knowing people’s secrets, and positively enjoyed believing the worst about the best of people.

Her voice tight, Laurel retorted, “There’s not a word of truth to anything you’ve said. You just want to be sure I don’t change anything here at Ivywild, including myself. You would like to keep me from ever looking at another man.”

“Laurel!”

“It’s true. I’m supposed to bury myself here because Howard is dead.”

“Oh!” Mother Bancroft fell back with a hand to her chest. “How can you say such a thing to me?”

“Because it’s the way it is. You think I don’t know how you feel? You think I don’t realize that you want me shut up here as a punishment for causing Howard’s death? I’ve always known!”

“You’re getting hysterical, saying things you don’t mean—”

Was she? If so, it felt good. “I’m saying what should have been said a long time ago. You think I killed Howard on purpose and have been telling people so for years. You feel I should have gone to jail, that maybe I still should. Ivywild is a substitute, and you don’t care who you hurt so long as you keep me shut up here where I belong.”

The older woman came slowly erect. Eyes narrowing, she said, “All right, then, since you brought it up yourself. I know you murdered my Howard. You never were the right wife for him, not from the first. You thought you were better than my son—smarter, sharper—and you even made him believe it. You were always idle, always dreamy-eyed and artistic, reading or playing with that disgusting pottery mud out in the shed. What’s more, you were no proper mother to his children. I dread to think what Marcia and Evan will say when they hear what you’re up to now.”

“And you’ll make certain they do.” The pain in Laurel’s chest was sharp as she thought of her son and daughter hearing the ugly things coming from her mother-in-law’s mouth.

“They have a right to know,” the woman said, compressing her lips. “But you were never smarter than my Howard. And you’re sure not so smart now if you can’t see this Alec person for what he is.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know Alec or anything about him.”

“Any fool can figure it out. All you have to do is listen to the things his brother is saying all over town.”

Alec’s brother. Dread for what might be coming moved along Laurel’s nerves, though she refused to let Mother Bancroft see it. “And what is that?”

“Gregory Stanton told Zelda herself, down at the beauty shop, that this Alec of yours lived with an older woman out in San Francisco. Seems he started as her gardener, but wound up a lot more than that before it was over. She even married him, the silly fool. And when she died, she left him all her money.”

“No,” Laurel whispered. The protest lacked conviction. Howard’s sister, Zelda, was always the first to hear everything.

“Yes, indeed. Ask him if you don’t believe it. Just you ask him!”

There was gloating triumph in the other woman’s face. Laurel turned away from it since she couldn’t deny the rumors. How could she, when they had come from Alec’s brother, his brother who was dying?

When her mother-in-law had gone, Laurel wandered around the house, too disturbed to think of dinner, unable to settle anywhere. She didn’t want to believe what had been said about Alec, yet it made a terrible kind of sense. Why else would he appear out of nowhere to help her? What other reason could he have for slaving so hard? People didn’t do something for nothing—that had been one of Howard’s maxims. More often than not, it had turned out to be depressingly true.

She thought of Alec’s concern for her, and the appreciation she had seen in his eyes. Fake. Why should he feel such things for someone her age? No reason unless it was because he wanted something from her.

Laurel crossed her arms over her chest as she paced. She had almost believed him, almost let him get to her. She felt like such a stupid, sentimental fool.

He was gone, then. History. She would pay him for what he had done so far and send him on his way.

Yet that didn’t seem enough somehow. She wanted to pay him back for the ache of betrayal inside her, for making her feel things she didn’t want to feel, had never wanted to feel again.

Not that she was in love with him, or anything like that. How could she be? She hardly knew him.

But he had gotten to her. For him, she had taken a small step out of her protective isolation. She had almost been willing to risk a bigger one.

She was so angry. She could feel the rage simmering, circulating through her like a poison in her blood. How long had it been since she had felt that strongly about anything? She had almost forgotten what it was like. In a strange way, it felt good, as if she were really alive.

So much life inside her. Alec had said that. But he had been an old woman’s darling, a gigolo.

A gigolo. Was it really possible?

It must be, had to be. There was no other explanation.

She reached up to remove the elasticized cloth band that held her hair, dragging it free of the length and stuffing the band into her jeans pockets. She ran her fingers through the heavy strands as if that would help cool her temper. No, she wasn’t going to fire Alec Stanton. That wasn’t good enough. It wouldn’t help her feelings one iota.

It would be much better if she let him work like a dog, doing all the things Ivywild required, then gave him nothing in return except his hard-earned wages. Let him charm and cajole; it would get him nowhere. Let him waste his time, thinking he had another gasping, panting older woman ready to fall into his arms. Then, when he was done, she would smile politely and send him on his way.

Fall into his arms. God, but what a thought. Was that really what he wanted of her? Maybe she could lead him on, just a little, just enough to…

No. How stupid could she get?

Still, it would make him think he had won, wouldn’t it? When she got rid of him later, he might feel as used and as enraged as she felt now.

Could she do it? Did she dare?

Probably not, but it was a fascinating thought. Entirely too fascinating. That should tell her something, but she wasn’t sure just what.

As she passed through the dining room, she caught sight of her reflection in the tall windows beyond the heavy mahogany table and chairs. It had grown dark outside without her noticing, turning the window into a mirror. In it, she looked pale and wild with her hair flying around her. Maybe it was a good thing her mother-in-law had come while Alec was not there, after all. If he saw her like this, he would think she was crazy.

Yes, and maybe he would be right. Moving to the window, she put her hand on her reflection, staring into her own glittering eyes. Then she lowered her lashes and bent her neck to let her forehead rest against the cool glass.

She didn’t want to feel like this, caught once more in pain and guilt and, yes, despair. She had gotten over all that, had been comfortable, almost, in her numbness.

Of course, she had not felt a great deal before Howard died, either. Hers had been a jailbreak marriage right out of high school; she had needed to get away from home, where her mother drank and screamed at her and her father. The irony was that her parents had died in a car wreck just seven weeks after the wedding.

Howard. Her heart felt heavy as she thought of him. He had loved her with silent, dogged devotion, and she had been grateful. Affection and compassion had kept her with him. Sometimes she had wondered about the grand, death-defying passion she read about in books but didn’t think she was capable of feeling.

If she closed her eyes, she could remember the last quarrel with her husband. It had been no great thing, though it had seemed important at the time. Howard had wanted to buy his son a pickup truck, since his own father had bought him one when he was fifteen. He didn’t see anything wrong with letting Evan drive up and down the back roads before he had his license. But Laurel had known Evan wouldn’t be satisfied with that. He was immature, spoiled by his grandmother who always gave him anything he wanted. Evan would be speeding up and down the main highway before the truck was a week old. He would kill himself, or maybe someone else.

Instead it was Howard who had died. Laurel had killed him, then withdrawn into guilty solitude. The reason, she knew, was not because she had cared so much, but because she hadn’t cared enough.

She was so tired. Tears rose, burning like acid as they squeezed from her eyes. She didn’t try to stop them.

What the hell was going on?

Alec slammed the lid on a paint can and hammered it down as he asked himself that question for at least the thousandth time.

He had expected to start over with Laurel, using all sorts of strategies to get her back out of the house. It hadn’t been necessary. She had greeted him with a bright smile when he showed up again, given him a list of about a million things to do, and disappeared into a shed at the back of the house. Emerging now and then, she pointed out any errors he had made or problems he needed to solve, then went away again.

She didn’t eat her lunch with him on the veranda, but showed up there to check on his progress as if he might not get anything done if she didn’t keep after him. She was polite but firm—the lady of the house—but any special courtesy or consideration was gone. She gave orders and expected him to obey. She didn’t look at him at all.

Alec had never worked so hard in his life, but he couldn’t seem to please her, no matter how he tried. He was tired of it, so tired.

At least the house was nearly painted. He had one more wall to do, then he could clean the sprayer and take down the paper covering the windows. After that, he was going to have a talk with Mrs. Bancroft.

He found her in the shed. The building, standing back behind the garage, dated from the same time period, as it was built from identical lumber. Construction was probably in the late twenties or early thirties, when whichever set of Bancrofts that owned Ivywild at the time had bought their first Model T. Lined with small-paned windows on three sides, floored with unpainted pine boards, it was fairly large.

The front wall supported a woodworking bench that was cluttered with carpenter’s tools, which must have belonged to her husband. The back wall was lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves crowded with bags and boxes of supplies. A big black ovenlike kiln occupied one corner. In the center was a potter’s wheel, over which Laurel was hovering with her hands deep in swirling clay.

As he appeared in the doorway, Sticks, lying beside her, lifted his massive head from his front legs and began to growl low in his throat. Alec stopped. It was the first time he had seen the dog in several days. Laurel must have been keeping him close again.

She looked up, staring at him as he lounged in the open doorway. Ordinarily, she called the dog off when he arrived. Sticks had learned to tolerate him as long as he was given an early-morning assurance that Alec was acceptable. This time Laurel didn’t open her mouth.

Sticks rose to his feet. With his ruff raised, he looked twice his normal size. He padded forward with his neck outstretched, snarling like a crosscut saw.

Alec held his ground. He had no particular fear of the dog, though he didn’t want to hurt him again while Laurel watched. Neither did he intend letting himself be mauled to protect her tender sensibilities.

Sticks came on, showing his canines, but easing lower. He stopped a few feet away, half crouching as his growl slowed. Alec held the dog’s gaze without moving. The dog growled once more, then looked away. He whimpered and dropped to the ground.

Alec hunkered down and put out his hand, letting the dog lick it. “Good boy,” he murmured, leaning to dig his fingers into the thick ruff and shake it before smoothing the fur down. “Good dog.”

The clay Laurel was forming collapsed abruptly. She squashed it onto the wheel with both hands, squeezing the slick, malleable mass with unnecessary force. In a chill voice she asked, “You wanted something?”

There were a lot of answers he could make, but he didn’t trust himself to keep them civil. He settled for neutrality. “I didn’t know you were a potter.”

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

“I’m learning.” That was too true. “What are you making?”

“A pot.”

That told him exactly nothing. He watched her for a long moment, his eyes on the expressive clarity of her face. What he saw there, he was fairly sure, was contempt.

“Okay,” he said on a tight breath as he rose to his feet and braced a hand on the doorjamb. “What did I do wrong?”

Her rich blue gaze was steady. “Nothing that I know of. Can you think of anything?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t turn the bike around when you asked me. I didn’t understand. Now I do, all right?”

Her smile was cool and brief, a meaningless movement of the lips. “Certainly. Don’t think of it again.”

Fat chance. “I didn’t mean to upset you or make you do anything you didn’t want.”

“You didn’t make me do a thing, Alec. I know my own mind.”

He should be happy that she had used his name. Instead, it made him feel like the hired help. Which was exactly what he was, he supposed. Voice grim, he said, “If everything is all right, then why did you stop working with me?”

“I had other things I would rather do.”

He had no right to complain; that was what galled him. He wanted the right. But if this was the way she preferred it, he could do that, too.

“I’ve finished the painting. Unless you have other ideas, I’d like to get started on the fountain.”

Without looking at him, she said, “I think the big pine next to the fence shades the garden too much for roses. You could cut it. That’s if you know how to do it without letting it fall on the house.”

She expected him to refuse. He wouldn’t give her that satisfaction. “No problem. I’ll need to take out the big limbs, then top it, so will have to have climbing gear.”

“My husband’s belt and spikes are around somewhere.”

“He worked in the woods?”

Her hands stilled, buried in the clay she was molding with quick, hard movements. “He was a lineman for the utility company—a good one.”

He’d had to ask, he thought with resignation. Changing the subject slightly, he inquired, “If he had the equipment, why didn’t he take the tree down?”

“He liked it there.” The look she gave him was brief. “You’ll have to ask Maisie about a saw. I think her husband keeps one for cutting firewood.”

Maisie’s old man was a mechanic, kept tools of all kinds, if he remembered right. “I’ll check it out. In the meantime, I can start gathering supplies for the fountain. I’ve run up quite a bill at the hardware already, but I’ll need plastic pipe, fittings, and so on. And I should lease a ditchdigger, or contract somebody to do the work.”

She squashed the clay flat again. “You’re asking if I have the money?”

Her tone set his teeth on edge. In taut control, he replied, “I’m asking if I have the authority to spend it.”

“So long as I see a copy of the bills. Otherwise, you needn’t concern yourself with my finances.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded, his brows meshing in a frown at her scathing tone.

She looked at him, her gaze steady. “Did I say something that struck a nerve?”

She knew. He didn’t know how she knew, but he would bet on it. Jesus. He thought he’d left all that behind him; but no, he was dragging it along like a piece of toilet paper stuck to his shoe. Not that it made any difference. He had beaten the odds before. He could do it again.

“For the record,” he said deliberately as he pushed off the door frame and started walking away, “it isn’t your money that interests me.”

It was the next morning that the opportunity came for Alec to talk to Maisie. Laurel had just gone back into the house after instructing him to prune the paint-spotted leaves on the shrubs around the base of the house. As if he couldn’t see for himself that it needed doing. She hadn’t said a word about the paint job, either. He didn’t expect compliments, exactly, and it annoyed him that he still wanted her approval, but she could have made some comment. For two cents, he would tell her to find herself another man to cut down her pine tree.

“What is it with her?” he asked the white-haired housekeeper in frustration when she brought him a glass of water. “Why is it I can’t get the time of day from her?”

A shrewd look came into Maisie’s fine old eyes. “She gets like this sometimes, usually when her mama-in-law has been around, or Zelda—that’s the sister-in-law, you know.”

“They get on her nerves?”

“You could say so. Mostly, they pick at her. Pickiest, most negative people I ever saw. Never a good thing to say about anything or anybody.”

Alec turned his water glass in a circle. “You think they’ve been talking? About me?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised. Not that they got a lot of room for it. Zelda Bancroft is no better than she has to be. Never was. But she likes making trouble. The mama-in-law, now, she just has it in for Laurel.”

“Because of how Howard died?”

Maisie nodded. “Did her best to have Laurel arrested, called everybody she knew, pulled every string she could get hold of. Didn’t do her any good, mainly because of the sheriff. Tanning’s always been sweet on Laurel. Said any fool could see she couldn’t bring herself to hurt a flea if it was having her for supper.”

“She thinks she may have. You know that?”

Maisie nodded. “Have to say I’m amazed she told you, though. She didn’t say anything about her kids, did she?”

“Not much.”

“Something else she don’t talk about—guess it hurts too much. They think she did it, too. Got the idea from that mama-in-law of hers.” The housekeeper paused with distant consideration in her eyes. “Well, and maybe from the way Laurel acted at the time. She never said she didn’t mean it, you know. Never could say exactly how it came about.”

“Rough.” The comment didn’t seem adequate but was all he could manage.

“You got that right,” the older woman said and heaved a gusting sigh. “Strange, but she couldn’t make herself leave him while he was alive, still can’t leave him now since he’s dead.”

“You think she wanted to? Leave him, I mean?” He was much too eager for the answer, but he couldn’t help it.

“Lot of women would have left. Howard was a moody sort, not what you might call a barrel of laughs. Sort of tormented like, you know? What matters, though, is that he thought she might. That’s why he ran out after her that day.”

“She tell you that?”

“Lord, boy, she didn’t have to. I was there.”

He gave her a hard look. “You saw what happened?”

“Saw him take off after her, saw the look on his face. The rest I just heard.” She shook her white head. “They’d been arguing, something about their boy Evan and what Howard wanted to do for him, though it ran into all sorts of other things as fights will between husbands and wives, like what Laurel could and couldn’t do in the yard. Howard was hollering like a crazy man when he stepped behind that car, telling her he’d do anything if she’d stay. Pitiful, really.”

Alec was quiet as he tried to imagine how he would feel if he thought he was losing Laurel. Of course, he had to imagine having her first. Neither one was easy.

He drew a deep breath and let it out. Deliberately, he said, “Laurel wants that big pine over next to the fence, there, taken down. She says you might have a saw.”

5

It was Grannie Callie’s idea for Alec to take Gregory to Ivywild. Gregory should get out of the house, she said. He needed something else to think about besides himself and the symptoms and progress of his illness. Alec thought his grandmother probably needed to get out for a while, as well, but didn’t want to leave Gregory alone.

She had been more than generous about letting his brother and him stay, but she had her own life and routine, which they had interrupted, her own friends she was neglecting while she looked after them. Alec had done everything he could think of to make it easier for her. They couldn’t expect her to devote all her waking hours to the invalid.

Not that Gregory was bedridden. He got around well enough, though his energy level was low. He could handle dressing and undressing himself and was able to take his pain medication when it was set out for him. The main problem was seeing that he didn’t take too much of it, and that he ate regular meals and got some fresh air and sunshine to keep his spirits up. Another good reason for taking him out on the job.

Gregory seemed to appreciate being out and about. He walked slowly around Laurel’s garden, stopping now and then to smell a flower or finger a leaf. He even tried to help a little, picking up a hoe to tackle a patch of nut grass.

Alec watched his brother for a moment to be sure he was all right, then turned back to the ditch he was working on with a shovel. It was for the water line to feed the fountain. The garden space inside the fence was too confined, too filled with plants, for him to bring in the ditchdigger he had rented. Once he had the piping finished to the other side of the fence, he would climb on the digger, but for now he was it, since he had to be sure nothing was torn up that Laurel wanted saved.

In the midst of his concentration, he heard the screen door slam and Laurel scream his name. He whipped around, saw Gregory starting to fall, crumpling like a scarecrow with the stuffing spilling out. Dropping his shovel, he lunged for him in a full, desperate stretch. He barely caught him.

“Up here,” Laurel called from the steps. “In the shade on the veranda.”

Alec was grateful beyond words for the offer. He should have known better than to let Gregory do anything strenuous, should have watched him more closely. The trouble was, Gregory didn’t like being watched over like a kid; definitely didn’t like being told what he should and shouldn’t do. He was proud and touchy, which was a fine and necessary thing, but still made it hard to decide when it was best to let things ride and when to knock him flat for his own good.

Gregory’s moment of weakness lasted only a second. He roused himself in plenty of time to curse Alec for refusing to let him make his own way to the big wicker swing that hung at the rounded oval end of the veranda. Laurel, recognizing correctly that his brother didn’t like her seeing him being carried, moved back into the house. She returned with a glass of ice water when Gregory was settled.

For a second, Alec was aware of a flash of jealousy; Laurel had never brought him a glass of water, never looked so concerned for his health. Of course, he had never collapsed in her front yard, either.

Watching Gregory drink the water, studying the haggard paleness of his thin face with its straggly beard, Alec said to him in abrupt decision, “I should have known this was too much. Rest a minute, then I’ll take you back home.”

“Don’t worry about me, little brother,” Gregory answered irritably. “I’ll be fine right here. You just get on with your job.”

“It’s my job to worry. It’s what I’m here for.” Alec kept the words patient, but implacable. “It will only take a few minutes to run you back.”

“I said I’m fine. I’ll just sit here and watch you flex your muscles. Maybe the nice lady will keep me company.”

Alec was afraid she might at that, which was one reason he was determined to get Gregory away. Without looking at Laurel, he said, “Mrs. Bancroft is busy. Come on, now.”

“I’m not that busy,” she corrected him in clear tones. “I’ll be glad to sit down for a little while.”

“You don’t have to,” he said, the words stark as he finally allowed his gaze to move over the cool, lovely planes of her face, the sunbeam sheen of her hair, the long, flowing skirt of lavender cotton she wore with a cool sleeveless blouse.

She gave a brief smile without quite meeting his gaze as she answered, “I know that.”

Gregory glanced from one to the other, as if becoming aware of the undercurrents between them. “See?” he said with satisfaction as he waved a hand vaguely toward Alec. “Run along. We don’t need you.”

Alec felt his stomach muscles tighten as if in anticipation of a blow, but there was nothing he could do. He turned on his heel and went back out into the hot sun.

Laurel, watching Alec go, thought he was upset. He was concerned about his brother, and who could blame him? He was also mad at her for going against him. That was too bad. As Maisie would put it, he could get glad in the same britches. Laurel wanted to talk to Gregory.

Looking around, she caught the arm of a rocking chair and dragged it closer to the swing. As she sat down, she said easily, “It’s been so hot and humid these last few days, it could get to anyone who isn’t used to it. I really don’t know how Alec stands it out there all day.”

Gregory glanced at his brother with a brooding look in his eyes. “He’s strong as a bull elephant, can stand anything.”

“Most of the time he doesn’t even wear a shirt.”

He looked at her, the expression in his brandy-colored eyes bland. “Sun doesn’t affect him quite the same as you and me. He has Native American blood.”

When it appeared he was not going to elaborate, she said, “You mean your father was a Native American?”

“Not mine, just Alec’s.” His smile was thin, as if he had expected some reaction from her that he had not received. “Actually, I think the guy was a half-breed, though who knows? He didn’t stay around long enough for anybody to find out too much about him.”

“I see,” Laurel said. The main thing she understood was that Gregory was trying to shock her, though she didn’t intend to provide amusement for him by allowing it. Features composed, she glanced from him to his brother. She had thought Gregory’s illness accounted for his slighter frame and lighter skin coloring, but it appeared she was wrong, at least in part. At the same time, she didn’t believe Alec was immune to the sun’s effects.

Gregory’s gaze was tinged with black humor as he studied her face. “No, we’re not much alike, are we, Alec and I? My dad was your typical WASP, some kind of traveling salesman from the West Coast who took our dear mother away from all this.” He waved his hand in a vague gesture that took in Hillsboro and the state of Louisiana as well as the woods around them. “Our younger sister Mita, now, was fathered by an Asian. Being your typical sixties and seventies woman, Mom was determined to prove her lack of prejudice. Besides, she liked having her own variety pack of kids, or so she said. She bought into the whole earth-mother, single-parent bit. Didn’t care whether the fathers stayed around or not.”

“She must be an unusual woman.”

His lip curled. “She was in her way. She died trying to have a Latino baby. At least we think that was the nationality, but only she knew for sure. Anyway, something went wrong and neither she nor the baby made it. I guess she was getting a little old for it since I was eighteen at the time.”

“I’m…sorry,” Laurel said, not sure whether she meant for his loss or for her urge to pry that had led her into so private a history.

He looked away. “I don’t suppose it matters. It was a long time ago.”

She thought it did matter—possibly always had, always would—to him and Alec both, but she couldn’t say so. Instead she said, “You were young to take on so much responsibility.”

“Me? Responsible?” He laughed, a harsh yet hollow sound. “You’ve got the wrong guy.”

“But, well, I assumed there was no other man around to take over.”

“There wasn’t, except for Alec.”

She leaned her head against the high seat-back, rocking a little as she frowned in thought. “But he must have been, what? Only thirteen? Fourteen?”

“Something like that. Our little man, though, he was always big and tough for his age.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.” She stopped rocking.

“You wouldn’t,” he answered with an edge of rudeness as he looked around at Ivywild. “You’ve always been respectable, I would imagine. I bet you’ve never been hungry, really hungry, a day in your life. You’ve always known exactly who you are, where you came from, and where you belong. No doubts, no wild guesses, no looking for yourself in the bottom of a bottle or in the white dust of some drug with a name you can’t pronounce….”

He trailed off, but she did finally understand. Gregory had been a drug user at eighteen, and so Alec had taken over, fending for himself and his little sister.

“Surely some government agency could have helped out?” she asked.

“Oh, right. Helped Alec and Mita right into separate foster homes, is what they would have done. No way, not on your life. Alec fooled them when they came around. He may be a bastard, but he’s a smart one. Of course, he had old lady Chadwick by then.”

A chill moved over Laurel. In her compassion for Alec—for them all, really—she had almost forgotten the point of her questions. Lips stiff, she said, “Old lady Chadwick? Who was she?”

“Our landlady, after Alec moved us all out of the slum apartment where we’d been staying.” Gregory grimaced. “She owned this big estate—swimming pool, tennis courts, golfing green, guesthouse, groundskeeper’s cottage, the whole nine yards, complete with a chauffeur and even a Chinese gardener.”

“Mr. Wu,” she said in quiet discovery.

“Alec mentioned him, huh? Figures. The old guy was his idol, lived down the street from our apartment on the edge of Chinatown before we moved—preferred it to living on the estate. I think he admired Alec’s gumption. Anyway, Mr. Wu used to pay him a little something for helping out at the old lady’s house after school, whenever Alec could thumb a ride to get there.”

Laurel, watching Alec’s stiff movements as he wielded his shovel, thought he knew they were talking about him even if he couldn’t make out the words. She couldn’t help that. Sunlight moved back and forth along the filaments of his hair that were as dark and gleaming as the feathers on a raven’s wing. Indian black and shiny. It made sense.

Aware, suddenly, that Gregory was looking at her with a malicious grin for her preoccupation with his brother, she collected her scattered thoughts. As if the question had her entire concentration, she asked, “Mr. Wu wasn’t, by any chance, related to Mita?”

“Her father, you mean? Lord, no. I mean he was ancient, white hair and beard down to here.” He leveled a hand near his navel. “He did have a soft spot for her, though, and I wondered once or twice about his eldest son. Anyway, after Mom died Alec had the nerve to ask old lady Chadwick if we could stay in the groundskeeper’s cottage at the back of the property since Mr. Wu wasn’t using it.”

“You moved to avoid the child welfare authorities,” she said, clarifying the situation in her own mind.

He gave a nod. “Alec said nobody would think to bother us there. Turned out he was right. Of course, he only told the old lady that Mom was sick in the hospital. She believed him for three months or more—time enough.”

Laurel didn’t even try to disguise her sharpened curiosity. “Time enough for what?”

“To win her over. Our Alec has a way about him, or haven’t you noticed?” He watched her, a faint smile playing over his thin features and a suggestive look in his eyes.

“I thought you said he was thirteen?”

“He was.”

“This woman, then…”

“She seemed old at the time,” he said whimsically, “though I don’t imagine she was more than, oh, about your age now.”

Old enough to be Alec’s mother, almost thirty years older than he had been then. Laurel scowled. The Chadwick woman couldn’t be the one he had married. Could she?

“You’ve heard the story already, haven’t you?” Gregory guessed. “That’s not like Alec. He’s usually too embarrassed to talk about it.”

She gave him a straight look. “But you aren’t?”

He shook his head. “No, but I’ve got no manners and no shame, you know. Mrs. Chadwick never had much time for me even when I was around, which wasn’t often. Mita, now, she treated her like a doll, dressing her up, showing her off. But Alec was her darling.”

“You make it sound as if there was something wrong with that.” She couldn’t quite put the thought in plain words.

“I do, don’t I? And there was, in a way. He isn’t perfect any more than I am. He makes mistakes. And like me, he pays for them. With interest.”

She heard the bitterness lining his words. Still, her preoccupation with Alec’s life story was too intense to spare his feelings more than a glancing thought. “What exactly was his mistake?”

“He said yes when our landlady asked him to marry her.”

So it was true. More than that, it was worse than she had thought. A woman old enough to be his mother. Dear heaven.

She hadn’t believed it; she recognized that, as she felt the sick acceptance move over her. Somehow, she had thought talking to Gregory Stanton would prove Mother Bancroft had lied, or else that she had embellished some less damaging story to suit herself.

Wrong. All wrong.

“I suppose,” Laurel said quietly, “that we all make our mistakes.”

“Some more than others,” Gregory said on a huffing sigh.

She wanted to be absolutely fair. With great care, she said, “Alec doesn’t seem to have benefited a great deal from this odd marriage.”

“Depends on how you look at it. He became an engineer thanks to Chadwick money. Mita was able to zip through eight years of training for her Ph.D., and is interning now in pediatrics. Me, well, I didn’t have to worry about eating or a place to sleep for ages, only about supporting my habit.”

“You lived on him.” She spoke before she thought, then wished immediately she hadn’t.

“Yeah,” he answered, looking away. “I lived on him.”

That explained a lot—not that it was any of her business. “But I have to say it doesn’t sound like very much return in exchange for his freedom, especially considering the size of the estate you mentioned.”

He shrugged. “There were a few problems with the old lady’s heirs after she died, though Alec still took care of everybody. Now—” Gregory stopped.

Now Alec was still taking care of him, she finished silently for him, because Gregory was dying in slow stages. “You resent him for it,” Laurel said in sudden comprehension. “You would rather he had taken the money and used it for himself. You’d rather he wasn’t here with you.”

“Nobody asked him to be so almighty noble,” Gregory said with a tight snarl. “I don’t need him to look after me. I don’t need him for anything.”

Oh, but he did, Laurel saw, and his bitterness was in direct proportion to his need. Did Alec realize that? Yes, he must, since Gregory made no effort to hide it. Regardless, Alec stayed with him. He was lending his brother his strength because he had more than enough to spare. He was helping him live because he was so alive himself.

She didn’t want to think like that, didn’t want to feel any sympathy or admiration for Alec. It wouldn’t make it any easier for her to do what she must.

But do it she would. She was no gullible older woman ready to fall for hard brown muscles and practiced charm. Already, she could see how it could happen. To become dependent on him, to look to him for strength and comfort, to learn to watch for his smile and teasing comments, would be fatally easy. Because he was so vital, yes, and she longed for some of that living warmth to ease the coldness inside her. In some strange way she didn’t quite understand, she needed desperately to touch the passionate enjoyment of being on this earth that she could sense burning inside him.

Impossible. She didn’t know how much longer she could stay aloof from him and still have him around. Such a short time, so few days, they had worked together on the garden, yet she missed talking to him, missed the stimulation of his constant nearness. There was no pleasure in setting him at a distance, giving him orders and watching him work until his jeans were so wet with sweat that they dripped as he walked. In fact, it made her feel vindictive and ashamed.

In the silence that had fallen, Gregory said wearily, “I think maybe it’s time I went home, after all. I’m so…tired. I guess you should tell Alec.”

“Home being your grandmother’s, not California?” Laurel asked, unwilling to summon the man in the garden again so soon after sending him away.

Gregory’s glance was bleak. “The three or four visits to Grannie Callie’s house were the best times I ever had as a kid. Mom used to come back home to Louisiana when she was down on her luck, usually when she had a new baby. One time she left all of us with Grannie Callie for a whole long summer. Too bad she ever found her way back again.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“You don’t think so?” The corner of his mouth curled. “I’d have been a redneck Southerner, driving around in a pickup truck and pitching beer cans into the back, instead of a washed-out druggie on his last legs. And Alec would be—” He stopped, dragged air deep into his lungs. “Call him for me, will you, if you don’t mind?”

He wanted her to do this little chore for him. Why? So he need not look as if he were backing down, so it would seem like her idea? Or did he think that Alec might not like having to answer to her in front of him? Was it one more snide dig at his brother?

Rising, she walked to the railing. Lifting her voice in clear appeal, she called, “Alec?”

At the first sound of her voice, he looked up from the ditch he was digging, his dark eyes flashing like obsidian caught by the sun. He lifted a brow in inquiry.

“I believe your brother would appreciate it if you could take him home now.”

He met her gaze for a long moment before he gave a slow nod. It might have been no more than an acknowledgment, but it felt like an instant of intense communication. The two of them, she thought, understood each other very well. Possibly too well.

She heard Gregory’s curse from behind her, but she didn’t care.

It was later, after Alec had returned from seeing his brother home, when she noticed the low rumble of thunder. She looked up from the catalog in front of her where she was reading about Monsieur Tillier, an old-fashioned red tea rose she thought she might like to order for her garden. The rumble came again—closer now, and louder, as if it meant business. From the corner of her eye, she caught the flicker of lightning through the lace curtains over the windows. She counted only to five before thunder rolled again. The lightning strike was close, at least according to country wisdom.

Was Alec still working in the front garden? Maybe he should take shelter on the veranda. Or he could step into the safety of the garage if he was in the side yard.

She might have to let him in the house if the wind got too high. He would get wet on the veranda since the rain sometimes swept in under the overhanging roof, wetting the floor all the way to the inner wall. The garage, of course, was tight enough and perfectly safe, if he only had the sense to head in that direction.

On the other hand, being brought up in California he might not realize what a late-spring storm could be like in Louisiana. It was possible he didn’t know how quickly it could blow up, or how strong it could become. She hesitated, flipping her pen between her fingers in a nervous gesture, as she considered checking on him.

He was a grown man, for pity’s sake; surely he could take care of himself! He didn’t need her to baby him. Or did he?

Wasn’t that what some younger men were supposed to want when they sought out an older woman? He could be a classic case since he had lost his mother while still young, and had been forced to nurture others instead of being nurtured himself.

Yes. And just maybe she was attracted to him as a substitute for the son and daughter Mother Bancroft had virtually taken away—or some such psychological claptrap. It made about as much sense, didn’t it?

She could hear the first drops of rain rattling in the hard glossy leaves of the magnolia outside her window. Pushing back her chair in sudden decision, she walked quickly toward the front door.

Alec wasn’t in the front garden. She stood for an instant, absorbing the moist coolness of the rain, listening to its patter on the roof and breathing in the wet-earth smell of it. The wind lifted her hair and swirled under her skirt, cooling her in places she hadn’t even known were warm. Then, in the distance, she heard the hissing advance of a stronger downpour as it marched over the woods toward the house. Glancing toward the sound, she saw the heavy, dragging curtain of dense rain.

She swung toward the steps, hastening down them, ducking her head against the rain splattering from the roof. Turning right at the bottom, she followed the curving steps around to the side yard. At the gate, she leaned to stare into the garage.

It was empty. Alec wasn’t there.

She swung back the way she had come, taking the path to the other side of the house. There was no gate here to block the brick walkway that rounded the curving end of the veranda and continued to the back. As the rain increased, she started to run.

Then she saw him. She stopped dead still.

He was sitting on top of the cistern, balanced on its concrete cap with his feet folded and hands resting on his bent knees in what she recognized vaguely as the lotus position. His fingers were lightly cupped, his eyes closed, his face perfectly still and upturned to the rain.

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