by Peggy Webb
“As a matter of fact, oranges are my favorite fruit.”
That smile again. Lord, why didn’t he smile more often? It transformed him.
“There’s so much you can do with oranges,” she added, and when he said, “I agree,” she was as pleased as if he’d proposed something romantic and slightly naughty.
“I used oranges in a book of mine once,” Lucy said, and Matt got a funny look on his face. “I used them in the proposal scene.”
“This is hardly a proposal,” Matt said.
“I should hope not. You haven’t even courted her properly yet,” Lucy said, and Sandi giggled.
Matt gave them both an aggrieved look. “If you two will excuse me, I have work to do.”
Sandi couldn’t bear to see him leave thinking he’d failed at romance.
“Matt, wait.” She put her oranges on the table and touched his arm. “Thank you. The oranges are a beautiful gift.”
“The bowl belongs in the library,” he said. “I borrowed it.”
Sandi squelched a smile. “All right. I’ll put it back.”
“No, no. Just keep the oranges in it till you’re finished.”
Good grief. Matt Coltrane was actually flushed. What in the world was going on?
“Well, thank you again.”
She’d already started back toward her art supplies, when he said, “I’ll bet you haven’t seen the rose garden.”
“Only from my window and from the courtyard in the dark.”
“I’ll show it to you.”
“That will be lovely.”
“All right, then. Come on.”
She glanced at her art supplies, and Lucy made shooing motions with her hand. “Have fun,” she said, and Sandi took the arm Matt offered.
He was rather proud of himself. His foray into romance had cheered his mother, and if the smile on Sandi’s face was any indication, he hadn’t done too badly with her, either. Not that he wanted to impress her, but he certainly didn’t want her thinking he was a man of less than sterling talents anywhere he chose to apply them.
For the time being, that would be in the foreign arena of romance.
“I decided you were right,” he told Sandi. “About granting Mother her last wish.”
“So that’s what the oranges were all about.”
“Yes.” Remembering his recent success, he smiled. “The tour of roses, too. Mother can see the garden from her window, and if my guess is right, she’ll be all eyes while I romance you in the garden.”
“She did seem perkier today.”
“If thinking we’re falling in love will make her last days happier, then I’ll do my part.”
Actually, he was glad for a chance to make his mother happy. Now that he thought about it, he’d focused on his work for so long he hadn’t paid much attention to anything else.
“And I’ll do mine.”
“Thank you. You’re a generous woman.”
“Don’t pin any medals on me. Maybe I have ulterior motives.”
“You don’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a lawyer,” was all he said. Never reveal your hand to your opponent. It was a credo he lived by. The fact was, he’d truly wanted to believe the worst of Sandi Wentworth, but in spite of his best intentions to prove her evil, she’d turned out to be a decent woman.
That should make this faux courtship easier. Or harder. Depending on the viewpoint.
Matt wasn’t fixing to explore the latter viewpoint. He’d put on an act to make his mother happy, and when it was all over, he would go about his business as usual.
The rose garden lay just ahead. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a shadow at his mother’s window.
“She’s watching,” he said.
“Good.”
“The first rose you see is an old French bourbon, cultivated in l828. Its perfume is musky and not at all subtle, as you might expect of the French.”
“It’s magnificent,” Sandi replied.
“The yellow rose on the left is sunsprite. Aunt Kitty planted it near the courtyard because of its cinnamon-like fragrance.”
“Oh, I love yellow. It’s so cheerful, don’t you think?”
“Cheerful?”
“Yes, like the sun.”
“I suppose.”
“Have you ever noticed that you can be blue, and all of a sudden the sun will come out and you start feeling better for no other reason?”
“No. I never noticed. I don’t believe in mood swings…. The pink rose is a grandiflora called Tournament of Roses. Its blooms are larger than…”
“Matt…”
“Yes?”
“All this history of the rose garden is really interesting…”
“Good. I’m glad you like it.” Matt congratulated himself on his second romantic success of the day.
“I do. But I think your mother is going to be looking for something more.”
“It’s too early in the make-believe courtship for clenches in the garden.”
“Yes, but don’t you think we should at least hold hands?”
He could handle that. No problem at all. Matt reached for her hand and felt gut-punched. Good God, it was a conspiracy. A bunch of female angels must have ganged up on the Almighty and said, “Look, you’ve got to make women’s hands soft and fragile feeling so men will lose their minds.”
Well, he wasn’t fixing to lose his mind. He would just run his thumb around her palm to check out the size and give her tender knuckles a caress or two in case Lucy was looking, and then he would…
Lose his mind.
And that just from holding her hand. What would happen when he kissed her?
No sense losing sleep over it.
He cupped her face and tipped it up to the sun, and every sane thought flew out of his head. All because of her eyes. And the dewy softness of her skin. And the way her lips parted, pink and damp and delicious-looking.
He leaned over and took a taste. Then another. And another.
Something wonderful and awful and glorious and terrible happened. She was in his arms and he was holding her so close he could feel her heart beating next to his and he didn’t want to quit kissing her. Not ever.
To make matters worse, she was making satisfied little cat’s-in-the-cream sounds. Spurred like a stallion in the Kentucky Derby, he deepened the kiss, plunged his tongue inside her mouth and nearly crossed the finish line.
Alarmed, Matt broke the kiss and stepped back. Sandi glowed. That’s the only way he could describe the way she looked. It was terrible and awful and absolutely the most amazing thing that had ever happened to Matthew Coltrane. Nobody had ever glowed because of him.
He silently congratulated himself on having the foresight to read one of his mother’s books. Tonight he might read another.
“Ohhh,” Sandi said. “That was perfect.”
“Yes.”
Suspended, they stared at each other and merely breathed. Air had never tasted so sweet.
“It was absolutely the most wonderful kiss—”
“Yes.”
She blushed. “For your mother’s sake, I mean.”
“Of course. Naturally, it was all for her benefit.”
“Well, obviously.”
“You were right. We have to make our romance look authentic.”
“Oh, I agree. Absolutely.”
He lifted her fragile hand to his lips and planted a soft kiss there. For his mother’s sake.
Sandi sighed in a delightful “ohhhhing” kind of way that warmed Matt in places he hadn’t even known were cold.
“I think we should do it again,” he said, “in case she wasn’t looking the first time.”
“Ohhh, yesss!”
She tilted her face to his, and he discovered that kissing her was something he didn’t have to train for by reading a book. It came naturally.
The force of his desire shocked him, and he stepped back from her immediately.
There was no need to
take their playacting further. No spying eyes would follow them into the bedroom. Separate bedrooms. With the connecting door locked.
Matt planned to keep it that way, and so he launched into the rose tour with feverish intent.
“The next rose is in a class called—”
“I have to be going,” she said.
“Going?”
“Back inside.”
“Oh, back inside.” Relief made him weak-kneed.
“Yes. To…to do some sketching. Of your mother. Before…”
“Yes, yes. I understand. We’ve done enough for today.”
“Have we?”
“Well, maybe not for the entire day. Perhaps tonight…”
“Tonight?”
He suddenly had visions of Sandi spread upon his bed. He was speechless. She touched her lips. The extremely soft, infinitely desirable, utterly irresistible lips he’d so recently kissed.
“I see.” She smiled. “See you tonight.”
He stood with his feet taking root in the garden soil until Sandi was out of sight. Then he sat down in the nearby gazebo and dreamed of tonight.
For the sake of his mother, of course.
In the safety of her bedroom, Sandi leaned against the wall with her hand pressed over her runaway heart. “What have I done?”
The wall was the only thing holding her up. This simply couldn’t be happening. Not again. She had to stop thinking that man plus kiss plus rapidly beating heart equals love.
“It was all make-believe,” she said.
And with that, she held a cool cloth to her flushed face, combed her hair and went to find Lucy.
Lucy sat in a chaise beside the window looking youthful and healthy.
“You look flushed, my dear,” she said.
Sandi automatically said, “The sun,” then flushed even deeper.
“Ah, yes, the sun.” Lucy patted the chaise. “Come, dear, sit by me and tell me if my son’s any good at kissing.”
“What?”
“I saw you from the window.”
Of course she had. Wasn’t that the whole point? Sandi realized she could tell Lucy exactly how she felt and get the benefit of advice from a wise woman who was an expert at romance, while at the same time granting Lucy’s fondest wish.
“I know my son’s a stick-in-the-mud, but it did look to me as if the two of you were lost in each other.”
“We were. I was.”
“Matt, in love at last. You don’t know how happy that makes me.”
“I can’t speak for Matt, and I’m confused about my own feelings. I’ve never felt anything like that. Ever. But I’ve been in love so many times, I’m just not sure anymore.”
“Those teenage crushes never amount to much.”
“I’ve been engaged several times, and each time one of them left I thought I’d be brokenhearted. But I wasn’t. Not once. Just miffed and a little ego-bruised.”
“I never would have dreamed…”
Sandi blushed. “Please don’t think I’m loose. Phoebe taught me never to give myself unless I was certain the man would treasure the gift.”
“Ah, yes. Beautiful Phoebe. Everybody loved her.”
“So did I. She was like a mother to me.”
“She was right, you know. And so you thought these men treasured you?”
“No. Not really. Everything always happened so fast…. Oh, but I’m tiring you out with my problems.”
“Nonsense, dear. I’m healthy as a horse… I mean, I was healthy as a horse before the heart attack.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You’re one of the good things that has come from this misfortune.”
“I feel the same way about you. I really love you and this fabulous old house—”
“And Matt.”
“I don’t know, and I don’t know how to tell.”
Lucy got a dreaming look on her face. “I was in love once,” she said. “But I made a terrible mistake. He wanted to wait and I wanted instant gratification and so when Henry Coltrane came along and promised me the moon, I said yes.”
Lucy gave Sandi a piercing look. “Don’t ever make that mistake, dear. Always follow your heart.”
“I’m not sure I know how. I used to believe I was following my heart, but now that I look back, I’m not so sure.”
“The heart whispers in our ear, but we often don’t hear because the ego is screaming so loudly we mistake the cacophony for wisdom and common sense and rational thinking. Don’t ignore your heart whispers, my dear.”
“I’ll try not to. Are you up to my sketching a bit?”
“Absolutely.” Lucy struck a pose, and Sandi squelched her laughter.
“Just be yourself. I’ll do a series of sketches, then we’ll discuss which one you want me to paint on canvas.”
“I want to look young.”
“You do.”
“And beautiful.”
“You are.”
“And sexy.”
Sandi started laughing and Lucy joined her. That’s the way it went all afternoon, sketching and talking and laughing until finally Kitty joined them with a platter of cookies.
“If we’re going to have a party, we need food.” She winked at Lucy. “Low fat, on account of your heart.”
Dolly came in trailing an ostrich-plume boa and Kitty said, “Good grief, Dolly, you look like you’re molting.”
“I probably am. Birds deprived of sex start losing their feathers.”
“I never heard that,” Kitty said, and Lucy told her, “That’s because she made it up.”
“Don’t pay them any mind,” Dolly told Sandi. “There’re just a couple of old fuddy-duddies.”
Lucy said, “If I weren’t dying—” and the three women all started laughing again.
Sandi had never seen anything as brave. She’d heard laughter through tears was cathartic, but this was her first time to witness it. She wished she didn’t ever have to leave this house and the company of these women…and Matt.
He appeared as suddenly as if she’d thought him up.
“What’s going on in here?” Spying cookies, he whisked the platter off the table. “Mother, you know you’re not supposed to eat these.”
Lucy looked chagrined, and Dolly said, “Party pooper.”
“That’s right. Party’s over. Mother, you should be resting.” He turned a fierce look on Kitty and Dolly. “And you two should be ashamed.”
“We’re not,” Dolly said.
“As for you, young lady…” Matt turned his intense scrutiny on Sandi, and she wondered if she should bow, raise her right hand and swear to tell the truth or giggle. “I’m taking you out of here before these three think up any more mischief.”
She felt a blooming in her spirit. “Where?” she asked, not that it really mattered. Anywhere would be great as long as it was with him.
“To the lake. We’ll go sailing so you can see the sunset.”
“That’s very romantic, Matt,” Lucy said. “I think I wrote a scene like that once in—”
“This is not a scene in one of your books, Mother. We’re just going sailing.”
Chapter Five
Not that he was any expert on the subject, but Matt believed he could tell a lot about a woman by observing the way she watched a sunset. Sandi didn’t merely watch a sunset, she participated in it. Leaning on her elbows, she hung over the edge of the sailboat with her face turned toward the west while the evening sun gilded her gold and pink and vermilion. A hint of a smile played around her lips and every now and then she made a satisfied little sound, as if hummingbirds were trapped in her throat.
“Look at that sky,” she said. “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?”
“No,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at the sky.
“I wish I could duplicate those colors.”
He didn’t hear a word Sandi said because he was lost somewhere between desire and wonder. She turned around and touched him on the shoulder.
“M
att, are you okay?”
She was close and soft and sweet-smelling, and he didn’t need any crash courses in romance to guide him. The minute his lips touched hers, she yielded. Heart to heart, they kissed while the sun dropped over the horizon, leaving ribbons of color streaked across the sky and reflected in the water.
When they finally separated, Sandi murmured, “It’s getting too dark for your mother to see.”
“Of course,” he said, not that he’d given his mother a passing thought. In fact, even if she were searching the lake with binoculars, she couldn’t see them because he’d sailed around the bend, and a copse of oak and pine and cedar blocked her view. Thankfully, Sandi pretended not to notice.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, and loved the way she stared at him when she said, “Hmm, yes.”
“I stopped by the kitchen and Kitty packed us a picnic dinner.”
“Oh, good.”
“With oranges.”
“Delicious.”
Matt wondered if she’d read the same romance he’d read.
“Matt, what’s in the picnic basket…besides oranges?”
“Let’s see…” To his utter amazement, he realized he didn’t know. The only thing he’d wanted in that basket was oranges, though he had absolutely no intention of using them for any purpose except what the good Lord intended, as Aunt Kitty would say. Certainly he wasn’t about to indulge in the erotic sort of fantasies his mother wrote.
“Do you like surprises, Sandi?”
“Oh, I do.”
“Then why don’t we open the basket and surprise you?”
Kitty had packed fried chicken, potato salad, rolls and key lime pie, but Matt had eyes only for the oranges…and for Sandi, exclaiming over every item as if she were unloading the crown jewels.
“It doesn’t take much to please you, does it?” he said to Sandi, and she simply smiled and shook her head, no.
Matt thought that was a wonderful trait in a woman—loving the simple pleasures of life. That’s one of the traits he would be looking for if he were looking. Which, of course, he wasn’t.
“Oh, look, Kitty even put in a white linen tablecloth.”
Sandi shook it out and it billowed on the deck like an invitation for a night of forbidden delights. Fortunately she spread nothing except food on the beckoning cloth, and his sanity partially returned.
