by Nancy Warren
“They weren’t the right people for the home.”
“And the Fergusons?”
“Whoever heard of a little kid being terrified of raccoons?”
“And then as soon as you find that out you inform the kid that raccoons love to nest in the trees. And you had one that used to climb up to your bedroom window and you’d feed it.”
“It was true.”
“She made her mother take her back to the car and wouldn’t come back into the house.”
“I don’t want anybody buying this house and not being happy here.”
“It seems like everyone who’s been interested hasn’t been right for Bellamy House.”
He scowled. “I want the right people, that’s all.”
She glanced over at him. He looked as though he weren’t sleeping well. He barely glanced at her. She supposed it wasn’t hard to figure out why.
They never should have slept together.
She’d never, ever fired a client, and with a listing as juicy as this one, she’d have a hard time doing it now, but the truth was, Rob was making her job difficult.
She sighed. “You know how you threatened to fire me?”
“I was never going to fire you.” Their gazes connected and she felt a dangerous tenderness for him well up inside her.
“I think I might have to quit.”
“Look,” he said, “I’m having a bad day. Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to drive me. I—I don’t know how to do this. With you.”
She sighed. “No. I’m sorry. Normally I’d offer to drive you to your physio. I really don’t mind. It’s just— I’m just—” She turned to him. Their gazes connected and everything she hadn’t been able to say was right there. Between them.
She pulled up in front of the physiotherapy clinic. He didn’t make a move to get out of the car.
She looked at him. He seemed to feel as lost as she did. It was all she could do not to reach over, cup his face in her hands and tell him she’d be here when he got out of his appointment. That she’d take him home to her apartment or take herself back to his place. Already her foolish heart was trying to attach to a man who didn’t want commitment.
The silence stretched and then they both spoke at the same time.
“You know, I have this problem...” she began.
“I don’t know what to do with my grandmother’s ashes.”
“I beg your pardon?” she asked.
“What?” he echoed.
It was so ridiculous she had to laugh. “You go first.”
“I said, ‘I don’t know what to do with my grandmother’s ashes.’”
She glanced at him. “Where are they now?”
“On my desk. In the house. I can’t leave them there permanently obviously. I don’t know where to put them.”
She’d had the same problem when her father had died. Where did you put the ashes of a man who’d never belonged anywhere? In the end, she’d thrown them in the ocean at the junction of several currents in the Salish Sea. She thought that’s what would have made him happiest, spreading himself all over the world.
Agnes Neeson, however, was a different person altogether.
“You know, I never knew your grandmother. Was there a place she really loved?”
He wrinkled his brow. “I can’t think of any place special. That’s the trouble. She was usually at the house or pottering in the backyard. That garden was a real showplace in its day.
“We used to go on holidays when I was a kid but that was for my benefit. She did most of her traveling vicariously through me.”
“Rob, I think we both know where your grandmother would want her ashes to be buried. In the garden of Bellamy House.”
He didn’t argue. Hailey was right. It was so obvious. “She used to tell me how she and my grandfather had planned the garden, and she knew every tree. Every flower. They planted the mountain ash in the backyard because they wanted the berries to attract birds.”
“Don’t you think that’s the perfect spot for her final resting place?”
“But people think the mountain ash is a garbage tree. They might chop it down. Pave over the whole backyard and churn my grandmother into tarmac. Then how would I feel? The new owners might pull down the old place and put up some big new McMansion.”
“All you can do is your best, Rob.”
“I guess. I’ll think about it.” He turned to her. “What were you going to say? Something about a problem?”
“I— Oh, I feel stupid now.”
“More stupid than me asking what to do with a dead woman’s ashes?”
“Right. Okay. Well, here’s the thing. I have this problem. I think I’ve had it for a long time. Because we moved around so much, I became really good at fitting in.” She fiddled with the key ring hanging from her ignition. It was a diamond slipper, given to her by Julia for her last birthday. “That’s why I’m good at sales. I learned how to connect with strangers really fast. It’s how I survived.”
He nodded.
“The secret of being able to move when you’ve barely settled and start one more time in one more new school in one more new town is not to attach too securely.” She glanced at him, “Does this make sense?”
He nodded.
“I made friends with so many girls along the way. Girls I didn’t keep in contact with. Girls I probably wouldn’t recognize if they walked past me on the street. I left one place and had to put all my energies in surviving in the next town. I couldn’t waste energy on the past.”
“Sure. Makes sense. You know, your voice, it goes higher when you talk about this stuff.”
She touched her throat. Went “ahem” a couple of times to clear the constriction.
“It’s hard for you to talk about. That’s why your voice rises.”
She nodded. Surprised he’d know something she’d needed a therapist to explain. As an interviewer he’d be acute to things like voice and tone. He could probably tell her that her shoulders were up a little higher than normal, too. She forced herself to relax.
“Why is that a problem? You seem fine now. You and Julia are obviously close.”
She smiled. “Julia’s the best friend I’ve ever had. Yet she had to work with me to get me there. She was the one who suggested counseling.” Then she fell serious again. “That’s not the problem. The issue I have is that somehow in my strange upbringing—or maybe I’m just hardwired this way—I can’t do that with men.”
He seemed confused. “What do you mean, exactly?”
“I attach. Weirdly and way too fast.” She touched her chest. “I have to be so careful with my heart.”
He felt a funny sensation in his own chest, a cross between a pain and an itch. He’d never had such a feeling in his life.
He also felt as though his collar was too tight. And he wasn’t wearing a collar. That feeling he’d had plenty. He edged closer to the door. “Are you saying...”
She shook her head, a wry smile on her face. “That I’m in love with you? No. What I’m saying is that I have to be very careful or I will be.” She sighed. “And that can’t end well for me.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Pondered. “Is that why you have that crazy-ass notion that you have to get your career going now and settle down later?”
“Mostly I just say that to protect myself. The truth is, if a local man was interested in me and he was a settling-down kind of guy, then I’d be interested.”
“Like that guy looking at my house?”
She licked her lips. “Theoretically.”
“He’s asked you out, hasn’t he?”
Damn, he was good. Those shrewd blue eyes didn’t miss much. “Yep.”
“Hunh. You’re right. That is a problem.”
15
ROB WENT THROUGH the photos he’d snapped of Dennis Thurgood, aka Mr. Slick, then uploaded several choice images to his computer.
The man had done nothing more sinister than act edgy around a cop car.
An
d ask Hailey out.
Maybe he’d have let it go except the man was coming back for another look at the house, which meant he’d be spending more time alone with Hailey. When she’d let slip that he wouldn’t be needing a mortgage, Rob’s suspicions had intensified.
Rob had no proof of anything. Yet...something about the guy was off.
Okay, he might be making a fool of himself. If his grandmother could speak to him from inside that box, he knew what she’d say. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
He called his editor in New York.
It wasn’t jealousy, he told himself, as he studied the images again. Listening to his gut instincts had saved lives, and not only his own.
Gary took the call right away. “Rob, good to hear from you. How’s the leg?”
“Not bad. Healing.”
“You running six-minute miles yet?”
“Funny. I’m in physiotherapy. She says she’ll have me running in a week. Two tops.”
“That’s great. I could use you in the field.”
“Yeah. I know. I follow the news.”
Gary was one of the busiest people Rob knew so he didn’t waste any more time in idle conversation. “Gary, I need a favor.”
“What is it?” His tone sharpened. Rob could picture his boss pulling a notepad toward him, clicking open his ballpoint.
“I want you to run a check on someone.”
“You’re on sick leave. What the hell are you doing?” he said, sounding frustrated.
“I swear I didn’t do anything. And I could be completely mistaken, but there’s this guy who wants to buy my grandmother’s house. I think something’s shady about him.”
He described the incident with the cop car.
Gary didn’t sound impressed. “He could have unpaid parking tickets. Come on. You’re not used to living in suburbia. You’re bored. You’re seeing things.”
“I hope you’re right. I really do. Could you do this for me? As a friend? For the guy who’d take a bullet to get you the hottest news.”
“That is a low blow, even for you. What do you care who buys your house? So long as he’s got the cash?”
There was a pause. Rob might bend the truth a little now and then, but he never lied to Gary. “There’s a woman involved.”
“Ah.”
“I can’t explain it. I think she could be in danger from this guy.”
A long-suffering sigh traveled the miles between them. “What have you got?”
“Photos. And a name and occupation that may or may not be false.”
“Send me what you’ve got. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m making no promises. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Got it.”
He emailed the photos and as much information about Mr. Slick as he’d been able to pry out of Hailey. It wasn’t much but Gary had connections like nobody else. He never revealed how he got the information he did, and Rob never asked. All he could do was hope Gary would take him seriously.
And that—for once—his famous instincts were wrong.
He needed activity. He could go to the gym and do the workout his physiotherapist had created for him but he needed to be outdoors. The day was warm for September, short-sleeves-and-sunglasses nice.
He looked at his grandmother’s remains and made a second call.
“Hi, Rob,” Hailey said when she answered.
“Thanks for taking my call. I want to ask you something.”
“What is it?”
“Would you come over and help me bury my grandmother? I feel like it should be special somehow. You’re the only person I want to be there.”
There was a silence and he felt all the things they couldn’t say. How he wished he could be different for her. How she wished the same.
“Of course I’ll come. I’m honored to be asked.”
“Thank you.”
She showed up an hour later with a bag from a local garden store. In it were spring bulbs and a small metal plaque with the gardener’s prayer engraved on it.
He felt a rush of emotion fill him. “It’s from a poem by Dorothy Gurney. My grandmother loved it.” He felt such a connection between these two women. He’d made the right choice in asking Hailey to be part of this small ceremony to mark his grandmother’s burial.
He dug the hole with a dirt-encrusted shovel he found in the shed. Neither of them said anything as he emptied the box of ashes into the hole. He wasn’t a praying man but he felt an enormous sense of rightness in putting her ashes under the shade of the mountain ash.
Hailey helped him plant the tulip and daffodil bulbs. Then he covered over the hole and pushed the stake holding the plaque into the freshly dug earth.
He read aloud, hoping that somewhere his grandmother could hear him:
The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
* * *
WHEN THE SIMPLE BURIAL was done, he turned to Hailey. She was wearing a flowered dress and he suspected she’d changed in order to wear the perfect outfit to say goodbye to a woman she’d never even met.
Rob had never felt more bereft.
“Don’t go,” he said.
She shook her head. Her eyes were luminous and he felt that she belonged here as surely as his grandmother did.
He walked to her, took her in his arms. She didn’t resist.
Without a word, they walked into the house through the back door and, hand in hand, made their way upstairs.
This time he didn’t hesitate. He took Hailey to the room he now thought of as his.
The big four-poster looked as solid as his grandparents’ marriage had been. And Hailey’s hand in his felt as solid, as true and lasting.
He wasn’t sure he had it in him to give her what she wanted. What she deserved. Still he turned her to him, kissed her slowly and softly said, “I can’t promise—”
He didn’t finish. She laid a finger across his lips. “I know,” she said. “It’s okay.”
He kissed that finger. Slid his own fingers along her palm and opened them so he could kiss her open palm, then her wrist where a pulse beat rapidly against his lips. The heat coming off her skin, the scent that was hers alone, intoxicated him.
As he undid the buttons at the front of her dress, he kissed the top of each breast following the lacy edge of her bra with his lips, making her sigh with quiet pleasure. When he had all the buttons undone, he eased the dress off her shoulders and it slid to the floor, resembling a pool of flowers.
Kneeling before her, he kissed down her belly, down to panties that were as lacy and erotic as that bra. When he slipped his thumbs into the sides and slid them down her legs she shivered. He could feel a trembling in her limbs, felt her arousal, mirroring his. He was so hard he felt he might explode. Knowing they’d end up making love on the floor if he continued doing what he wanted to, he rose, unhooked her bra, let himself enjoy the sight of her bare breasts, then pulled back the covers on the big bed and laid her down. It seemed to him as though the bed welcomed them with open arms.
“I want you naked,” she informed him in a sultry tone.
She watched as he stripped for her, which he did in record time, and then he knelt between her legs and loved her with his mouth. Her hands tangled in his hair as he took her up, feeling her excitement build, tasting it on his tongue.
When she reached her first peak, she cried out, bucking against him, and then to his delight, she yanked on his hair. “I need you inside me,” she moaned.
He managed to hold on to enough sanity to mumble, “Condom,” and race to the bathroom. He brought out a handful and sheathed himself with fumbling hands. He’d never wanted anything as much as he wanted to be inside this woman.
He looked into her eyes, and, as his body entered hers, he let her see all the emotions he couldn’t find another way to express.
16
“I DON’T EVEN WANT to go home,” John said. He and Julia were trying a new Thai place that had received good reviews. It was the second time this week they’d grabbed dinner. “My wife did all the decorating. I’m living in a box with beige walls and the furniture my ex didn’t want.”
“How bad is it?” Julia had to ask.
“Pretty bad.”
He’d been good to her. So the online dating thing hadn’t turned up much in the way of dates; she’d found a friend. And it was nice to have a man to go to a movie with and hang out with.
“I’d be happy to come over and give you some ideas.”
“Really? Because I was totally hinting.”
She chuckled. “I got that.”
“Would tomorrow afternoon work? You could give me some ideas and then we could go for dinner somewhere.”
“No hot dates?” she teased.
“Not hardly. You?”
“I’ll be at your place at two o’clock.”
“Great.”
When she arrived at his house a little after two-thirty, she quickly realized he hadn’t exaggerated. The place he’d bought was a standard bungalow with every interior wall painted the same shade of beige.
The place had definite possibilities though.
The rooms were a good size, the original oak floors had been refinished and large picture windows let in a ton of light.
The furniture, however, was pitiful. The kind of bad rec-room stuff you banish to the basement until you have the money to upgrade. Seemed like he and his wife had never got around to upgrading.
His bedroom furniture consisted of a queen-size mattress on the floor.
After ten minutes of walking through the house, she said, “I need a budget.’
“Already?”
“Yup. I need to know what you’re prepared to spend.” She took out her computer tablet. “There are emergency items, essentials and nice to have. We’ll prioritize.”
