It wasn’t the only good-luck bouquet Clancey had received, but it was certainly the biggest and the brightest, and it piqued her curiosity. She managed to find a moment between boxing up a doll and guiding a young mother to the audio books to tear open the envelope that nestled between a brilliant red carnation and a huge yellow mum.
“Good luck in your new location,” the printed card said. That was standard enough, but in red ink across the bottom was neatly written, “I look forward to doing this again in January.”
There was no name, of course, but who needed one? The red ink alone would have told Clancey all she had to know — of course an accountant would have plenty of that on hand.
She carried a dollhouse kit out to a car for the customer who’d bought it — for herself, the woman confided, not for her grandchildren — and seized the opportunity to get a breath of air. Pine Street was still so busy that she began to wonder if there would be enough parking at peak times.
Then Clancey laughed. What a problem, she chided herself. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t have it for long.
In a slightly chastened mood, she turned back toward the store and stopped to let a group of customers pass. Otherwise she might not have noticed the woman coming slowly down the sidewalk.
She was about Clancey’s age, with a long champagne-blond braid down her back and an infant in a sling on her chest. She stopped directly in front of the house and stared up at it with a tiny frown between her eyebrows.
The look on the woman’s face startled Clancey. She couldn’t quite identify it. It couldn’t be confusion about Small World, she thought. With the big sign on the porch and people coming and going there could be no doubt about where the entrance was. It didn’t seem to be annoyance, either, as it might have been if a neighbor was upset with this sudden increase in traffic. It certainly wasn’t anything as strong as anger. And simple puzzlement made no sense....
In any case, it didn’t matter, and Clancey settled for smiling pleasantly at the woman. The moment she was back inside Eileen threw her a harassed look, and feeling guilty, Clancey plunged into the parlor again and began trying to help customers two and three at a time. The blonde on the sidewalk was forgotten.
It was perhaps twenty minutes later when a woman caught Clancey’s arm. “You’re the owner?” she asked. “I live next door. Glad to see someone in the place again.”
Hoping the neighbor would take the hint, Clancey briefly smiled her thanks and looked over the woman’s shoulder to the next customer. It was the blonde, and she was standing in the double doorway of the sun porch, looking at mobiles to hang above a baby’s crib.
But the neighbor’s hand was firm on Clancey’s elbow. “Lots of work to be done here, isn’t there?” Her voice might have been meant to be confidential, but it carried above the buzz of talk in the parlor. “I heard the argument you had with your workman yesterday.”
“Oh, did you?” Clancey asked repressively.
The woman grinned. “I was covering my roses, you see,” she confided. “I couldn’t help but hear, the way you were both yelling. It’s hard to get good help these days, isn’t it?”
“It certainly is,” Clancey agreed. “Now if you’ll excuse me...”
She noticed a smile tugging at the corner of the blonde’s mouth, and told herself that it was unreasonable to be annoyed simply because the woman seemed to find her amusing. And letting annoyance stand in the way of serving the customer wasn’t good business, either.
Clancey took a deep breath. “That’s a very popular mobile. There are different sets of toys to hang from it, too, so the baby doesn’t get bored with looking at it.”
The blonde nodded and handed over the box. “That’s a good recommendation,” she murmured. “Though at the moment it seems impossible that this little boy will ever manage to stay awake long enough to be bored.”
Clancey stole a glance at the infant in the sling. The small face was perfectly bland, wiped clean of expression by the soundness of his sleep. His soft skin still had the peculiar bluish transparency of the newborn, particularly around his eyelids. Clancey’s fingers itched to touch the soft fuzz of dark hair, but she restrained herself. “How old is he?” she asked as she rang up the sale.
“Six days. This is his first official outing, and look at him — he’s missing it all.” The blonde tugged a wallet from the diaper bag hanging from her shoulder.
“Be sure to put your name in the barrel. The prize is a handmade wooden rocking horse, and this little guy will be needing one before you can imagine.” While the blonde was filling out the entry slip to drop in the barrel, Clancey took a quick look at her check, automatically noting that it was drawn on a local bank. It wasn’t until she read the name that she got the shock; neat block letters printed on the green slip of paper announced that the blonde’s last name was McKenna.
Well, Clancey thought, some things would be obvious if she had the slightest powers of observation.
The blonde had been standing on the sidewalk staring at the house. Once inside, she’d probably been looking not only at mobiles but at the sun porch itself. And that baby boy she was carrying certainly hadn’t gotten his fuzz of dark hair from his mother.
No wonder the woman had been amused; she must have found the idea of Rowan as an ordinary workman hysterically funny. Clancey glanced at the check again. Kaye McKenna. The name had a nice rhythm to it.
It was a name that Clancey supposed she ought to have expected to hear, sooner or later. If Rowan hadn’t seen the house, then his wife probably hadn’t, either. She’d be just as curious about it as he had been, and just as likely to take an opportunity to get a look, even if she had to buy a toy in the room she’d hoped to be arranging her furniture in by now.
“If you’d like to take a look around the house,” Clancey said, “feel free, Mrs. McKenna.”
There was a momentary gleam of surprise in the blonde’s eyes, as if she’d expected to be thrown bodily out rather than invited to stay. Then she said, “Thank you. I’d love to see it. But surely some other day would be better for a tour, when you’re not so busy?” She smiled and gathered up her purchase and the diaper bag, slipping out the front door before Clancey could say another word.
Clancey was absolutely dumbfounded. Why had the woman turned down the opportunity to wander around?
Eileen reached over her shoulder to ring up a sale and growled, “What’s gotten into you? Give one person a tour and everybody will want one.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Clancey managed to say. But Kaye McKenna must have. It was the only possible explanation for her turning down the offer — that it was likely to cause difficulty for Clancey.
The woman has class, she found herself thinking.
There was no reason on earth why that simple fact should upset Clancey. But it certainly did.
CHAPTER FOUR
Long after Kaye McKenna and her son had left Small World, Clancey found herself thinking about them. So her intuition about Rowan’s buying the panda had been right, after all. That precious baby boy, six days old, was the new owner of the toy Clancey had liked so much — or was he?
It didn’t really make sense, when she stopped to think about it. Surely such a tiny infant, so sweetly oblivious of everything about him, couldn’t have prompted anything like the peacekeeping mission Rowan had referred to. Perhaps Rowan had been referring to Kaye herself, and her undoubted disappointment — but in that case a panda seemed an unlikely apology.
Perhaps there was another child — one who was old enough to reason with, and old enough to feel cheated and angry. Just because there was a baby didn’t mean there couldn’t be another child. A girl, perhaps, old enough to be in school.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, Clancey told herself helplessly. How many kids Rowan McKenna might have — or their respective states of mind — was certainly none of her business. She needed a little catch-up sleep and a whole lot of common sense, that was all.
But the grand opening mea
nt no time for either. The heavy work of moving boxes and crates had left her stiff and sore. The cruel hours she’d been keeping had drained her stamina. Worst of all, the blow of finding that her dream was to be only a fleeting illusion slashed away the hope and joy that had made the hard work and the hours bearable.
But at least she’d finally found the missing rail of her brass bed, so — short as the night had been — she’d managed her first decent sleep in a week. Still, it was no wonder she groaned when the sun came over the horizon. She had to think of caffeine in large doses in order to make herself get up.
Clancey was sitting at the kitchen table, a coffee mug clutched between her hands, gathering her strength to deal with customers again in an hour, when Rowan knocked on the back door.
She wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t shown up in nearly forty-eight hours, and his absence had been too good to be true.
“I expected you’d still be back here,” he said with a self-congratulatory note in his voice.
“Great.” Clancey sighed. “Yours is just the lovely smiling face I was longing to see this morning.”
“Really?” He appeared to be rather flattered at the idea.
She glared at him. “All right, I admit it’s too early in the morning for sarcasm. So what do you want today?”
Rowan shrugged and moved into the kitchen. He was wearing jeans even older than the ones he’d worn to crawl around on the porch roof, and he was carrying a very large container of coffee. “Have you had a chance to sign the lease?”
“Not yet.” She looked him over suspiciously. “Why insist on a lease, anyway, for just a couple of months? Why isn’t a handshake good enough? Don’t you trust me?”
“Not as far as I could—” he began, and then shook his head a little and grinned. “I like to have things tidy, that’s all.”
“I’ll just bet that’s all it is,” Clancey muttered. “So I plan to study that lease of yours very thoroughly. Who knows what you’ve hidden in the fine print?”
Rowan shrugged again. “Let Hank read it. I don’t care.”
“That’s what frightens me. Whatever it is must be very well hidden if you think Hank can’t find it. I suppose I should thank you for the flowers, by the way.”
“Don’t mention it. I understand it’s customary for the landlord to send a bouquet on important occasions — openings, closings—”
“Don’t waste your money in January,” Clancey recommended dryly. “I’ve already got the message.”
“But it will be my pleasure.” His eyes brightened. “Unless you sell everything during the grand opening and want to go ahead and move out sooner. If that’s why you’d rather not sign the lease, I’d be happy to amend it to let you leave earlier.”
“Don’t bet on it happening.”
Rowan sighed, and the gleam faded from his eyes. “I’m not. I never was lucky at gambling.”
There was a bang against the side of the house that sent Clancey six inches into the air. Rowan strolled over to the window. “Oh, here’s my crew.”
“The roofers?” she said. “Already?”
“No, they don’t work on weekends. This is the painters.”
“You’re going to paint today?” Her voice was a bit shrill.
He smiled kindly. “Yes—isn’t it a lovely day? The paint will dry in no time.”
“It’s my grand opening,” she said through gritted teeth.
“I seem to remember you telling me that. Don’t worry, the inside is still all yours, and we’ll try to stay out of your way. But I had to take them when I could get them, you see.”
“On Saturday?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. All my friends are pitching in to help me now that I need a hand. We’re amateurs when it comes to paint, of course, but it’s a rather large crew, so we should be done in only a couple of weekends.”
He looked very proud of himself. Clancey knew better than to think she could maneuver fast enough to stop him. He’d simply point out that he certainly couldn’t paint in January when he got full possession of the house, and how could she argue about that? Nor could she say the house didn’t need the attention; she’d be laughed off the block if she tried to defend its present condition and faded, peeling, mustard-yellow facade.
“What color is it going to be?” she asked finally. Her voice didn’t sound quite normal.
He obviously recognized she was surrendering, but it didn’t seem to matter to him. “Sort of pink and blue. Kaye picked the colors, because she’s much better at it than I am.”
No doubt, Clancey thought, but she said, “That will be a nice touch for my business. Very appropriate.”
The emerald sparkle she was beginning to recognize came back into his eyes as he said solemnly, “I promise we’ll all be very careful not to drip on your customers.”
Clancey released a small strangled noise. Then she jumped up, dumped the dregs of her coffee and put the cup in the sink. On the chipped old porcelain drain board lay yesterday’s mail and the bill the locksmith had handed her after he’d managed to unjam the front door. She’d been planning to pay it herself rather than make waves with an unwilling landlord, but if the man was going to make a nuisance of himself like this, he might as well learn to pay the piper.
Sheer annoyance made her pick up the bill and thrust it at Rowan. “Since you’re so eager to fix everything that’s wrong with the outside of this house, this obviously belongs to you, too.”
He glanced at it and looked at her thoughtfully. “Ah, yes. Thank you. I’ll take care of my share, of course.”
Clancey’s jaw dropped. “What do you mean, your share?”
“My half.”
“Half? You’re the landlord. That makes you responsible for the physical surroundings.”
“I wouldn’t dare interfere with the inside. That’s yours. And precisely half of the door is on the inside.” He started toward the back porch.
“Now wait a minute.” Clancey was beginning to steam. “You’re not getting out of this as easily as that. There are rules—” She bit her tongue, too late. If she kept it up, he’d probably swear that she’d encouraged him to start tearing out the walls and the plumbing.
“Really?” He sounded interested. “I’m so new to this landlord business, you see, that I haven’t any idea how the rules work. Now that you mention it, I believe the matter of who pays the bills when something breaks is covered in the lease — but of course since you haven’t signed it...”
“And since, at this rate, I’m not going to,” Clancey muttered, “you might as well give me back the damned bill. Forget I ever mentioned it, all right?”
“Oh, no,” Rowan said with an air of scrupulous fairness. “I’ll certainly take care of my share.” He folded the paper, tucked it into his hip pocket and went outside.
A few minutes later she heard the first scratch of a paint scraper by the kitchen window. She supposed that as soon as the shop opened, he’d move his ladder to the front door.
“Just what I needed,” she muttered. “As if I didn’t already have a headache.”
*****
Rowan hadn’t been kidding about having a sizable crew. At mid-afternoon Clancey finished helping a customer strap a playhouse-sized kitchen set atop his compact car and turned back toward the house without a thought for anything but the people waiting inside. The changed appearance of the house made her blink in surprise; the entire front wall had already been washed with new color.
Sort of pink and blue, indeed, she thought. Wasn’t that just like a man? It was fortunate he’d left the choice of paint colors to someone else, that was certain.
Most of the siding was now the soft creamy blue of an Impressionist landscape, but the shingles covering the second story were warm mauve. A darker blue picked out the delicate tracery around the windows, and here and there a touch of off-white accented a detail. Around both corners of the house she could see ladders planted against the side walls and painters going up and down, agile as monk
eys and seemingly never getting in each other’s way.
Rowan came around the corner with a big bucket and set it in the back of a pickup truck. He saw her, Clancey was certain of that, but he made no comment, just started to get behind the wheel.
She almost kept silent, too, then told herself that sometimes simple decency paid off in the long run. There couldn’t be anything wrong with paying a sincere compliment, could there? So she called across the lawn to him, “It looks great. At this rate it won’t take a couple of weekends, surely.”
Rowan shrugged. “So far, it’s moving along well, but of course it will slow down when we have to stop and haul water for the cleanup tonight.”
The Unexpected Landlord Page 5
