Social Graces

by Dixie Browning

  There, that hadn’t been so hard. At least they were conversing comfortably again.

  Sending her a curious look, he came on inside the room. “You planning on it?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Here? I mean, in this particular house?”

  “Why not? It’s mine. Marian called it a fixer-upper, but why bother to fix it up if I’m not going to live here?”

  “You could rent it. The whole house, I mean, not just the back part.”

  “Then I’d have to find another place to live. It would probably end up costing me all the rent I received, so what’s the advantage?”

  Wearing baggy cargo pants that still managed to hug his narrow hips, he lowered himself onto the sofa, leaned forward and rested his arms on his knees. She could feel her face flushing as she wondered if he was thinking about that kiss.

  Obviously, he wasn’t. “What would you do?” he asked.

  “With my time, you mean? Well, first of all I’d have to find a job. As for leisure time, I don’t surf, I don’t fish, but there’re all sorts of opportunities for volunteers. I might even paint my house, maybe a pale shade of yellow with black shutters. Or maybe classic white again, with dark green. I’ll have to think about it. And landscaping. I have some definite ideas there.”

  He looked at her as if he were trying to picture her as a permanent resident, or maybe a house painter. Actually, she couldn’t quite bring it into focus yet either, but the more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea of living here. Roots had to count for something.

  “Okay, the painting can wait another year, but maybe I can get started planting a few things. Seeds don’t cost much.”

  He looked at her and said nothing. “Well, everyone has to live somewhere,” she reasoned. “I’m already here and settled in.”

  He toyed with a screwdriver, twirling the business end against the palm of his hand. One curt nod, and then, “What kind of job?”

  “Cleaning cottages,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t laugh.

  He didn’t have to. The look he sent her spoke volumes, none of it particularly flattering. Lines from an old musical popped into her mind. “Anything you can do, I can do better.” She couldn’t remember who the singer had been—Ethel Merman? Debbie Reynolds?—but the rebuttal had been, “No, you can’t,” followed promptly by, “Yes, I can.”

  My sentiments exactly, Val thought, feeling oddly let down when he got up and left without a word.

  By the time she’d finished going through her junk mail, the sun was sparkling like diamonds on the whole outside world. Stiff from sitting in one place too long, she rose, stretched and wandered to the door for a better look. The outside air had been cool earlier. Now it felt almost balmy. She considered opening a few windows to let the warm breeze blow through the house, and then thought of all the work of taking down and stapling up the plastic again.

  Back to the drawing board. Or in this case, the coffee table. Once she finished with the flyers and catalogs she turned back to the files. The first one she picked up was filled with property-tax-related correspondence, most of it bearing her father’s enigmatic notations. Oddly enough, in the middle of his personal medical records she came across several insurance-related letters addressed to Ms. Mitty Stoddard, dated over a period of four years. Why would her father have had access to those? As an employee, she’d been eligible for the standard company benefits package.

  There were several more items pertaining to Mitty L. Stoddard, most of them form letters that should have been thrown away. Instead, they’d been squeezed into the middle of other folders. Mitty L. Stoddard. Matilda Lyford? That name had shown up on several documents. Could they possibly be one and the same?

  Val was astonished at how much she had taken for granted about people she’d known half her life. Her father might have intended to start a Miss Mitty file like the ones he’d kept for Charlie and Belinda—although why he should, she couldn’t imagine. Even Charlie and Belinda were insured under the company’s umbrella.

  Whatever his intent had been, she only hoped Miss Mitty had taken her full retirement package with her when she’d left. Back in August of last year that shouldn’t have been a problem, as the trouble hadn’t even shown up until a few months later.

  More confused than ever, Val tossed the file she’d been examining back in the box, flexed her shoulders and yawned. She needed an oxygen break. Briefly she considered seeing if Mac needed a hand with whatever he was doing, then thought better of it. She’d missed Marian this morning, but it was now after one. If nothing else, it was a valid excuse to enjoy a midwinter spring day while it lasted.

  She was still wearing the ivory suede slacks she’d put on this morning. They were creased, but she decided against changing. Instead of the thick, Peruvian knit sweater though, she changed into a peasant top that was fresh off the catwalk, but casual enough to have come from a discount store. Amused, she wondered if there was such a thing as a reverse snob.

  On her way out, she found Mac up on the ladder, poking gobs of rotted leaves out of the gutter with a stick. “I’m going out. Do you need anything?”

  “Dozen eggs,” he said, looking down from his shaky Mount Olympus. His feet were braced on either side of the rung. The view from where she stood was spectacular, to put it mildly.

  “They’ll ruin your heart.”

  “I’ll drink an extra beer to make up for it.”

  “Fine, Dr. MacBride, you just do that.” They’d both read the article in a recent Virginian Pilot on drinking and its relationship to heart health.

  He grinned down at her. She flipped him a wave and crossed the soggy lawn to her car, thankful that they were back on the old standing. Something more, perhaps, than before, but still within safe limitations. Nothing she couldn’t handle.

  Marian was in, and so was her daughter Tracy, a five-year-old with her mother’s beautiful smile, minus a few teeth.

  “I came about that job,” Val said after greetings and introductions. “If it’s still available, I’ll take it, but you’ll have to tell me what’s expected. Believe it or not, I’m pretty good at following written instructions.”

  “I believe it. I meant to stop in a time or two to see how you were getting along, but now that we’re into February things are starting to heat up, reservation-wise. So…how’ve you been doing?”

  “Great. Much better since you sent me my handyman. He’s a genius.”

  Without looking away from Val, Marian handed Tracy a yellow crayon. “What handyman?”

  Seven

  Twenty-five minutes later Val wheeled in off the highway, skidded on the wet grass and parked under the live oak tree. The ladder was gone. There was no sign of MacBride.

  Damn him, who was he? Why had he lied to her? His car was still here. She’d half expected him to have fled.

  Drumming on the steering wheel, she rehearsed the questions she intended to ask—no, to demand answers to. It didn’t help when she noticed that her last two unbroken fingernails had been nibbled to the quick.

  She hated this! They had just been getting to know each other. Talking, exploring—feeling their way. As for the kiss, she dismissed it as an impulse. Tried to, anyway.

  All right, so maybe talking wasn’t all she was interested in, but he’d lied to her, and that she could not forgive. Social lies—small lies intended to spare someone’s feelings—those were occasionally necessary, but the intent of MacBride’s lie had clearly been to deceive. There was never an excuse for that.

  Feeling raw and shaky, she got out, closed the car door quietly behind her and strode toward the house, chin held high, back stiff as a palace guard. This was her house, she reminded herself. She could kick him out first, or she could demand an explanation and then kick him out.

  Just as she swung the front door wide, Mac came in through the back, holding a length of black hose in one hand. “Notice how easy the door is to open?” The stubble on his lower face did nothing to min
imize the effect of his smile.

  She glared at him.

  His smile faded. He lifted one eyebrow. Nodding to the hose he still held, he said, “Found your culprit.” His eyes narrowed as he took in her frozen expression. “Hey, I was just kidding about the beer, you didn’t have to make a special trip just for that.”

  She wasn’t carrying any beer. It was a wonder she’d even remembered to retrieve her purse from Marian’s desk. “Would you mind telling me who the devil you are and what you’re doing in my house?” She tried for cool composure and missed by a country mile.

  He took a step back, eyeing her the way he might some exotic reptile he’d found coiled in his bed. “John Leo MacBride? Checking out your leaky washer?” He turned both statements into questions, as if wondering how much of his story she would buy.

  She’d already bought far more than she could afford. “Marian at Seaview never heard of you. She didn’t send you. How did you know I needed a handyman?”

  “You told me.”

  Her mouth fell open. “I told you. And just when did I do that?”

  “Six days—maybe a week ago? You took down the calendar, how’m I supposed to keep up with what day it is?”

  Nice try, but she wasn’t buying it. He had a perfectly good watch that told him everything he needed to know, probably including the Dow Jones futures. Besides, the actual date had nothing to do with the big, fat lie he’d told her. “It was last year’s calendar. Try again.”

  Without even glancing at the hose that appeared to have been mended with tape on the curved end, he hung it over the doorknob. “When I saw your sign and came to the door to inquire about the room for rent.”

  Her brain did a quick double take. Damn, damn, damn! The sign she’d meant to take down and had never gotten around to. She hated being caught in the wrong, especially when she was certain she was right. Basically right, anyway.

  Desperately, she tried to recall everything she’d said that first day, as well as what his responses had been, but too much time had elapsed. It seemed more like weeks, or even months than mere days.

  She narrowed a look at the man who had settled so comfortably into her house, carving out a place for himself in her life. At the rate they’d been progressing, she was lucky he hadn’t already claimed a place in her bed. She’d like to think she had better sense, but the way she’d been acting lately, all bets were off.

  What now? Miss Manners didn’t cover this kind of situation. Taking a slow, calming breath, she said, “You’re claiming it was a simple misunderstanding?”

  He shrugged. “What else? I happened to be in the area, I needed a place to stay, I saw your sign.”

  It was just barely plausible. “And decided to apply for a job as handyman?” The need for one was certainly obvious enough, even if she hadn’t launched on a list of all that needed doing.

  “You needed help. I happened to be available.”

  She gnawed her lip, uncertain where to go from here. No matter what he claimed, he was no simple handyman. A reporter would have asked more questions. He hadn’t mentioned Greenwich, much less BFC, which was hardly worth a journalist’s time anyway at this point.

  He stood patiently while she looked him over from the tips of his top-quality, but well-worn deck shoes to the crown of his shaggy, sun-bleached hair. A federal agent? Hardly. Every government agent she’d ever met wore dark, nondescript suits and bad ties. Besides, why bother? “All right,” she said finally, trying to sound as if she had everything under control.

  She had nothing under control. Not long ago she had cleaned out her bank account, signed dozens of documents, left the keys to her father’s house with her personal banker and headed south in a secondhand car filled with impractical clothes, sentimental trinkets and stolen files. She’d had the misguided notion that getting away from the scene of so many painful memories would give her the objectivity she needed to get to the bottom of the mystery and restore her father’s reputation.

  So far, she hadn’t found one blasted thing relating to BFC and the supposedly missing money. She couldn’t even swear the money was missing, although if not, someone had an awful lot to answer for.

  For all she knew, some minor accountant in the throes of a mid-life crisis had dreamed up the whole thing. Or maybe a computer virus was responsible. If viruses could make everything on a computer disappear, hiding millions of dollars should be easy. Either that or Robin Hood had cleaned out the coffers and donated everything to the United Fund.

  Oh, Lord, she was no longer certain of anything except that Mac was waiting for some sort of a response and her brain had turned to vichyssoise.

  “Valerie?”

  “All right,” she said firmly in an effort to regain the upper hand. “Honesty compels me to accept part of the blame. I should never have hired you without asking for references, I just wasn’t thinking clearly that day.”

  “Next time, ask for references and a deposit.”

  “You’re lecturing me?”

  “Only offering a suggestion. Now…do you want a brief biography? Character references? I think we’re square on the deposit for now. A week’s work in exchange for a week’s rent.”

  He knew exactly how long it had been, which was more than she did.

  She moved into the kitchen and he followed her there. She pulled out a chair and sat. He remained standing. She said, “The other day when you were sharpening the weed whacker—I asked you about your sweatshirt, remember?”

  He nodded warily.

  “Instead of answering a simple question we ended up talking about history, of all things.” She should have known then that he was something more than he appeared to be, although what he appeared to be was impressive enough.

  “Here? Right here? But what about the Pilgrims?” she remembered asking.

  “Not that batch, the ones that came before.”

  She’d pointed to the ground beside her sheepskin-lined boots. “You’re telling me they landed right where we’re standing right now?” History happened to be one of her weaker subjects, but at that point, if he’d wanted to discuss Martian invaders, she probably would have listened avidly as long as she could watch the muscles in his bared forearms tense and relax with each stroke of the sharpening tool.

  “Close. Advance guard stopped off a few miles up the beach to ask directions of a few friendly natives. Ended up settling a few miles northwest of here on Roanoke Island. Hand me that hatchet, will you? Might as well sharpen that, too, while I’m at it.”

  “But I thought—what about the Pilgrims? The Mayflower?”

  He’d grinned that slow-burner grin of his and said, “Sorry to disillusion you, but we Yankees wrote the textbooks, so we got to slant history our way. Doesn’t necessarily mean it happened that way.”

  “You’re saying truth is relative?”

  “Now you’re getting into philosophy,” he’d dismissed with another contagious grin. “That was never my strong suit. I guess what I’m saying is that truth is what actually takes place. How you interpret it depends on where you happen to be standing.”

  Was it her imagination, or had he studied her face intently at that point, almost as if he were waiting for a particular reaction? A few moments later he’d shrugged and gone on sharpening the rusty old tools he’d found under layers of junk in her cluttered shed, leaving her wondering more than ever what he was doing working as a handyman.

  All right, she thought now, so the truth was relative. She’d settle for a single particle of truth about John Leo MacBride, just one. Up until today he’d been simply a fascinating, increasingly tempting, surprisingly complex man who seemed informed on a number of topics. One who could kiss like a dream and then back away, leaving a woman hungry for more, she reminded herself. What was it they always labeled boxes of dynamite with—XXX? Or was that sugar?

  He was triple-X doubled, on both counts.

  Leaning against a counter, he grinned. “Know what this reminds me of? Remember that old movie, Showdo
wn at the O.K. Coral?”

  She purposefully kept her expression blank. She’d happened to mention enjoying old movies one night recently when he’d brought up the absence of a TV.

  “You know the one,” he prompted, as cheerfully as if his employment weren’t hanging by a thread. “Couple of gunfighters facing off in the middle of the main drag while the townspeople huddle behind saloon doors?”

  “It was Gunfight, not Showdown,” she said tightly.

  He didn’t crack a smile, but his eyes sparkled like wet amber.

  Outside the kitchen window a flock of cedar wax-wings swarmed into a yaupon tree, then took flight again. Momentarily distracted, she followed their movement before looking back. He was still leaning against the counter, arms crossed over his chest, one foot propped over the other, as if this were just another casual conversation.

  “Yes, well,” she said. “To get back to what we were discussing, I might have jumped to the wrong conclusion, but you didn’t do one thing to set me straight.” Had she even given him time to explain who he was before launching into a litany of what needed doing first? Probably not—she’d been tired, desperate and totally out of her depth at the time.

  “I can leave now if you’d like,” he said quietly.

  She was half tempted to take him up on it. Probably be better off if she did. “Give me a minute, let me think about it.”

  For all the good thinking did. There was simply no rational way to explain the effect he had on her. This one man among all the other men she’d ever met, including the one she had almost married.

  In desperation, she latched onto the least important part of their relationship. One more day and he would have started paying rent. Aside from everything else, she needed that money. Even if she threw him out and advertised for another tenant, who was to say the next one would be any better?

  Well…he could hardly be better. The trouble was, the next tenant might be a whole lot worse.