“Indeed, Fran is the heart and soul of the gardens,” Miss Trudi agreed. “Without her vision and dedication, there would be no gardens.”
“That’s not true, Miss Trudi. Suz had the idea to restore the gardens and your ancestor had the vision for the design.”
“Ideas and designs are all well and good, but you have expanded upon them and implemented them beautifully.”
“Oh, I’m not saying I haven’t done anything—I’m not that modest,” Fran said with a laugh. “But I know my limitations.”
“It has been my experience that what an individual considers her limitations are, in fact, brakes she applies when she could be gathering momentum.”
Fran appeared slightly taken aback by Miss Trudi’s declaration, but Zach didn’t have time to observe her for more than a second before his distant relative pulled in a breath and turned to him.
“Regardless of the level of credit Fran deserves for this enterprise, it is fortuitous that you have returned at this moment to help her. Your return at any time would, of course, be celebrated. This adds a fillip to the delight.”
His mouth twisted. “I suspect the rest of the Corbetts won’t be celebrating with you or experiencing any fillips of delight.”
“Nonsense. Your whereabouts and welfare have never been far from anyone’s mind.”
“Yeah? Well, now that they know I’m alive, I suspect they’d prefer I returned to where I came from.”
“Ah. And where is it that you came from, Zach?”
“Virginia.”
“Virginia?” Fran said. “Really? You went west that day, and I suppose I envisioned you in the west.”
“I was there awhile. You could say I’ve been working my way around the world and I’ve gotten as far as Virginia.”
Miss Trudi beamed. “But now you’re home.”
“I told you, this isn’t a permanent situation, Miss Trudi. I was going to stop by and…” And what? He hadn’t known what he’d intended to do. He created a grin. “Say hello.”
“Yet you have decided to remain for a time that requires you to stay with our Fran and to pay your way. Why?”
He flashed a look at Fran. Did Miss Trudi not know…? But Fran’s head was bent in apparent fascinated study of her shoes. The beat-up walking shoes weren’t worth that much interest.
“Family complications,” he said, repeating the phrase he’d used on the phone when he’d called Taz from Fran’s guest room earlier.
His urban search-and-rescue-team supervisor had said, “I told you before, take a month. You’ve got that time and more coming.”
Miss Trudi said, “Ah, you refer to Nell.”
“Not sure I follow, Miss Trudi.”
She slapped him on his arm with her gardening gloves. The woman didn’t know her strength. Instead of a mild reprimand, it stung, as well as leaving a streak of dirt on his shirt. Since he’d packed for only a couple days away, he couldn’t afford extracurricular dirt.
“Do not prevaricate, young man. You most certainly do follow. You are Nell’s biological father. And since Steve and Annette told her the truth of her birth, she is aware of that fact.”
“Okay, so Nell confided in you—”
“Oh, my dear Zach.” She smiled with warm indulgence. “I have known from the time that Lily’s condition became apparent.”
“How could you?”
“That is irrelevant now, is it not? Yes, I was certain you would agree. The only issue that matters is what you are going to do now that you know.”
She waited, as if she expected him to spout off a detailed plan. Hell, even when you trained and planned and practiced, you could come up against situations where you had to improvise. For this situation he didn’t have any of that—not tools, not training, not plans. Nothing.
“I’m going to assess the setup and then…and then we’ll see.”
At the house, Zach excused himself to make a phone call upstairs while Fran checked the heating-pad setting that kept the whelping box warm enough for the puppies.
Chester was still focused primarily on her puppies, born almost two weeks earlier. But Fran could see her starting to venture away a little. Chester even came to her and nudged her hand to be petted.
But when Zach returned fifteen minutes later, Chester positioned herself between him and the puppies.
“Zach, there’s something I’d like to ask you.”
“Shoot.”
“You do realize that it will come out—about you and Lily and Nell. A story like that can’t be kept quiet in Tobias, not when it has to do with the Corbetts.”
He sat in the old wicker chair. It creaked under his weight.
“So what’s new?” A bleakness showed beneath his cocky grin.
“And,” she continued relentlessly, “many will assume you left town eight years ago because you knew you’d gotten Lily pregnant.”
His grin hardened into a grimace and the bleakness spread. But only for a moment, and then he hid it. Completely and coldly.
“What about you, Fran? Do you think I left town because I knew Lily was pregnant?”
“No.”
His blue eyes examined her. “What about before I came back? Did you think it before you witnessed me being pole-axed by Nell?”
“No,” she said. “I never thought you left because Lily was pregnant.”
His grin resurfaced. “Ah, but then, you always had a crush on me.”
“No.” She gave that all the firmness it deserved. “I never had a crush on you. I thought you were a jerk. Possibly redeemable, but definitely a jerk.”
He laughed, and this time it was the throw-back-his-head-and-let-it-all-out laugh she remembered from a young Zach. The older he’d grown, the less she’d heard it.
She was glad he’d recaptured it in the west or Virginia or wherever he’d been.
Fran awakened early.
Earlier than she had to. Was there anything worse?
Yes, waking with Zach Corbett’s voice repeating a trio of sentences over and over in her head.
Led astray by an older man, huh? Bet that never happened to you again. So you should thank me.
She could get a few more minutes of sleep. But that would delay her making phone calls to the tree mover, to nurseries to check shipments, to the seed supplier about packets to be given away at the opening. Delaying the phone calls would delay getting to Bliss House. She should get up.
God, she hated getting up in the morning. It was so comfortable and cozy in her bed….
Except for when she had a voice dunning in her head.
Led astray by an older man, huh? Bet that never happened to you again. You should thank me.
That’s why she’d awakened so darn early this morning, because of this sense of another presence in the house—Zach Corbett, of all the people in the world—and because of the knowledge that she held full responsibility for putting him here.
Taking on one more thing, Rob would say with that concerned look.
And her brother was right. He was even right about what he hadn’t said, at least not yet—that all these things were tying her to Tobias, to this house and to this life alone.
She knew he felt guilty that she’d been the one to come home to be with their dying father. That’s why he kept saying the house was hers alone, even though the will clearly left it to both of them.
What he didn’t understand was the reward. Yes, she’d missed some things left behind when she’d moved back to Tobias from Madison. But she couldn’t have been anywhere else that last year of Daddy’s life.
And, yes, maybe she had gotten tied into Tobias’s daily life. But, really, Rob didn’t need to worry about her. She could say no. She just seldom wanted to. When the gardens were done, though, she would seriously look at her life and what to do with it.
She rolled over, gazing out the back window that faced Steve and Annette’s house.
She wondered how they were doing this morning. And Nell?
She sniffed, dre
aming of coffee. Then she flopped onto her back. Coffee had to be made, not dreamed.
After Annette became involved with Steve again this spring, she’d asked Fran flat out if Nell was at her house too much. Fran had assured her that she loved having Nell around. She’d looked after Nell during their honeymoon.
She sat up in bed. That was coffee she smelled.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed. The day would be warm, but the room still held the night’s chill. She slid her feet into her slippers and pulled on her robe.
Fran had great faith in Nell, and especially in the family Steve, Annette and Nell had become. But Nell was not yet eight. And it had been a jolt when Steve had told her earlier this year that he was not her biological father. A jolt she hadn’t fully absorbed before she was hit with the new one of her biological father showing up.
Fran looked back at her cozy bed, where she could sleep without thinking about any of this, before closing the door.
She headed down the stairs to face the man who’d brewed the delicious-smelling coffee and who had said: Led astray by an older man, huh? Bet that never happened to you again. You should thank me.
But he couldn’t see into her head to know the response that had formed before she was awake enough to stop it this morning: No, it wasn’t an older man who led me astray. It was one my age who made a fool of me. And it will never happen again.
First thing Zach knew of Fran’s presence was when he turned from the sink, where he’d been making orange juice, to grab the phone before it rang a second time and found it already in her hand.
She listened a moment, staring into space.
“No comment,” she said, firm and unemotional.
He heard a voice still coming through the receiver as she hung up. She shuffled toward the coffeemaker.
“What was that about, Fran?”
“Some business of Rob’s.”
She poured herself a cup of coffee, clearly having no intention of telling him more.
He’d awakened well before dawn, knowing sleep wouldn’t return. Sometimes that happened when his body was still on a different time zone or a different shift. That wasn’t the reason this time.
He’d pulled on sweats, slipped out of the house and run through dark streets. Just like he used to.
Despite the changes in town, he’d found his way off the height where Corbett House sat. The only other spot close to being that high was the hilltop that held Bliss House.
At the lakeside he’d turned and looked up at the two darkened lumps that were all he could see of Corbett House and Bliss House, the two very different houses built by descendants of the town’s founder, Tobias Corbett. He’d always considered it an accident of birth that he hadn’t been born to the eccentric side of the family. He’d have fit in over there at Bliss House.
Accident of birth…like Nell?
Zach tried to shut his mind down from thoughts of what had brought him back to Tobias and what he’d found here.
He pushed his body to make the full circuit around the lake, knowing it wasn’t the safest thing to run in the dark. But he’d done it before, and he’d survived. And there wasn’t much more traffic than there’d been nine years ago. He scared the hell out of a deer and got a shock himself at the sight of the old resort on the far side of the lake, spruced up and its parking lot full.
He’d pounded back up Corbett Hill with glimpses of newspaper-delivery trucks poking along the side streets and a stray light or two pinpointing early risers.
For half a second after he rounded the corner onto Kelly Street muscle memory almost led him to the back entry of Corbett House.
Instead, he slowed, looking diagonally across the street to the house Steve lived in with his wife and daughter.
Chester gave a warning growl when Zach entered the porch. He talked, letting her remember that Fran had said he was okay.
His shower was hot and long, but not long enough.
With more dark to get through without letting the thoughts free, he’d headed to the kitchen, fixing coffee, checking supplies.
As she watched him now, Fran showed no sign of recognizing that the coffee had been brewed for some time or that he had a list going on the counter.
After his shower, he’d put on a T-shirt and workout shorts as a nod to modesty. But to meet her standards he should have worn a three-piece suit.
Her robe covered her from neck to the slippers that revealed only the tips of her toes. Not only covered her, but provided a double layer down the front, where the robe overlapped because it was too big for her.
Like the clothes she’d had on yesterday—way too big for her, verging on the sloppy oversize style some teenagers affected. Somehow he didn’t think Fran suffered from a slavish devotion to fashion trends, however. Besides, the knot where the robe’s tie cinched her waist spoke more of security than fashion.
No way did she recognize that pulling the tie so tight only emphasized her waist, as well as the intriguing curves above and below it, curves hidden by those drapes of clothing she’d worn yesterday…except for when a cooperative breeze came along.
“What are you smiling at?” she demanded over her coffee cup.
“Still not a morning person, huh, Fran?”
“What makes you think I’m not a morning person?”
“Memory. I spent enough mornings in this kitchen to know.”
She scowled. “I don’t remember you here in the mornings.”
He laughed. “That’s because you were asleep—which was my point. You’d sleep until the last possible moment to still get to school on time. Your mom used to fret about you not getting breakfast.”
Her brief huff acknowledged the truth of his memory. “Scrambled eggs okay?”
“Great. But you don’t have to—”
“I’m cooking for myself, might as well make you some, too.” She turned on the burner, retrieved a pan, the eggs and seasonings, sprayed the pan with olive oil and cracked eggs into a bowl with the mindless ease of routine.
When the phone rang again he made one move toward it, but she said quickly, “I’ll get it.”
Her caution eased with the first word she heard, and he relaxed, too. It wasn’t the same caller. But he didn’t stop watching her.
“Tell her Chester and the puppies are great…. Of course. You don’t have to ask—this is your home…. Yes, of course Kay can stay on if that’s what you think is best. Now or whenever….”
She gave a slight smile—less with her mouth than with a shifting at the corners of her eyes.
“No, Rob, that won’t bother me. But maybe not your old room. You’ll want more space and, uh…” She glanced toward Zach but her gaze bounced away before connecting. “Someone else is staying here for a while, so your room might not be the best…. We can talk about it later…. No…. Yes…. Rob— Don’t be ridiculous, Rob. It’s Zach. Zach Corbett…. Very much so…. That’s why he’s staying here…. It’s going to take time…. I don’t know.”
While she said farewells, Zach opened a drawer and found place mats and napkins where they used to be kept.
“That was Rob,” she said.
“Figured that out.”
“He and his fiancée, Kay, are coming for the weekend.”
“If I’m going to be in the way—”
“No. There’s plenty of room.”
He nodded. “It’ll be good to see Rob.”
She stepped aside as he zeroed in on the silverware drawer.
“What were you doing in our kitchen as a kid while I was sleeping in?” she asked his back as he set places in front of stools at the counter.
“Talking. Having some breakfast.”
“Why?” she asked bluntly. “You always had great cooks at Corbett House.”
“Never liked cold breakfasts,” he murmured, facing her. Her lips parted to dispute that Lana Corbett’s cooks had served cold meals, then he saw the understanding in her eyes that he wasn’t talking about food, and her frown cleared.
He kept talking then so she couldn’t serve up any sympathy, a dish he’d never cared for, hot or cold. “I started tagging along with Steve when he came to meet Rob to walk to school when they were in grade school. I kept coming until…”
She turned her back to him, removing the eggs from the pan with a spatula, but her voice was steady. “Until my mom got sick.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s something Nell and I have talked about.” She poured juice, put the glasses on the end of the counter for him to retrieve. “Something we have in common.”
He wouldn’t have introduced the topic, but she was probing, and he wouldn’t step back from it, either. Not entirely, anyway.
“But you still had a dad.”
“So does Nell. And now she has Annette, too.”
“You’re saying I should disappear? Butt out of the girl’s life?”
“No.” She placed a plate of eggs in front of him. “Not without some resolution. That would be the worst possible thing for Nell.”
She topped off their coffee mugs, then sat.
“So I’m supposed to sit here and wait for her to work out if she wants to see me?”
She paused with a forkful of fluffy eggs on its way to her mouth. Then she nodded. As calm as ever. “Yes, you are. Also talk to Steve and Annette about the situation.” She chewed the eggs thoughtfully before adding with a glint in her eyes, “And bust your butt working on the Bliss House gardens.”
“Great, just great.” Sarcasm snapped the words, but for some reason he felt a tug of a grin as he dove into the eggs.
Both plates were nearly empty when she spoke again.
“You might also consider mending fences with your mother.”
“When hell freezes over.”
Chapter Four
From her command post at the table, with most of today’s calls checked off and her stomach reminding her it was past lunchtime, Fran looked out the window, waiting on hold yet again.
She’d told Zach that she needed to make phone calls this morning, leaving him free. He had left before she came downstairs from getting dressed and returned a short while ago with a different car.
Baby Blues and Wedding Bells Page 5
