by Jo Leigh
His skin felt damp and hot under her clutching fingers as he collapsed onto her in a spent heap. Her bed folded them both into its soft embrace.
This man is made for you.
Maybe. Maybe not. But one thing was for sure.
The people at CATL-TV couldn’t possibly be right about him. No one could make love like this and have an ulterior motive.
No one.
14
ONCE WAS NOT ENOUGH.
Or twice, because it hadn’t even been an hour and he wanted her again. Maybe making love to Eve three times a day would satisfy him.
Mitch watched her strap herself into the Lexus and swallowed. She’d kept her promise, and the only question was how long he could control himself before someone caught him staring-or worse, touching.
He must have been crazy to ask her to do this.
She wore cargo pants that came just below her knee and rode low on her hips. A little strip of bare skin showed between the waistband and her top, not enough to be vulgar but just enough to draw the eye and tease.
And talk about teasing. She hadn’t worn the red gauze number, because his eyes and his brain would have fried within a block. But she wore a cotton camisole that looked like it had come out of some Victorian lady’s wardrobe. It fastened down the front with tiny pearl buttons, and scooped low in the neckline, a narrow lace ruffle framing cleavage that was truly spectacular.
He was a goner.
And if he caught any other guys staring at her, he’d bite off their heads.
“So. Where to?” He pulled out of her driveway and headed for I-20, which was one of the reference roads he’d memorized. In every city he scouted in, he scoped out the two main freeways. That way, he never felt lost, which meant he never felt out of control.
As for being alone in a lot of strange places, he’d gotten used to it. Came with the territory.
Eve pulled a piece of paper out of her sleek leather backpack. He caught a glimpse of a sun hat and a digital camera tucked away in there, as though she’d come prepared for an excursion. An adventure.
“I printed a map before I left the office last night,” she said. “Head east and turn south at Social Circle. The plantation is about fifteen miles south and then east again.”
Following her map, it didn’t take long before the Lexus slowed to a stop at a wrought-iron sign that swung next to the country road.
“Mirabel,” Eve read. “Est. 1858. Property of the Ashmere Trust. That’s the same people who organized the benefit we went to last week.”
“I have fond memories of that benefit,” he said. “Personal reasons aside, they seem to do good work.”
He pulled into a driveway that was more like a lane, winding off into a tangle of trees and some kind of voracious ivy that covered the ground. Eve sat forward in her seat, gazing intently out the window.
“Recognize anything?” he asked. “Any ancestral memory?”
With a flash of a smile, she said, “I’m interested in everything, that’s all. It’s a shame we’re too late for the rhododendrons.”
He was a desert rat, transplanted to the concrete jungle. All the trees and shrubs looked pretty much the same to him, but if she said those tall bushes with the dark leaves were rhododendrons, he’d take her word for it.
And then he forgot about the plants. He was too busy watching Eve’s face from the corner of his eye as the house came into view.
“Wow,” she breathed.
It wasn’t your standard Old South icon, with marble pillars and tall windows. Mirabel had been a working farm, and its spreading, clapboard lines showed it. But still, its two stories and eight front windows looked welcoming, as did the wide verandah, where Mitch had no doubt some previous generations of Bests had taken an afternoon whiskey and played games.
As they got out of the car in the parking lot, the front door opened and a petite woman of about seventy stepped out. “Are you folks here for the eleven o’clock tour?” she called.
Eve exchanged a glance with Mitch. “Uh, no, but we’d love to take it,” she said.
“Come right this way. My name is Adele Pierce and I’m a volunteer docent at Mirabel.”
They shook hands and Adele ushered them into the front hall. Then she looked Eve full in the face. “Pardon me for saying this, but you look terribly familiar. Have we met before?”
Eve smiled, and Mitch realized she probably got that same question every time she went to the grocery store. Look what had happened at the mall last weekend.
“I have a show on CATL-TV called Just Between Us. Do you watch it?”
The woman shook her head, eyeing Eve as much as politeness would allow. “No, I don’t have a television. My husband tells people I was born late…by about a hundred years. He was in the computer business, but I’ve never even turned one on. Never mind. It will come to me. It always does.”
Mitch waited for Eve to tell the docent that she was a member of the Best family, but when Adele showed them into a room that she explained was one of the parlors and Eve still said nothing, he concluded she didn’t want to go public about her interest in her family.
When Adele led the way across the hall to what was obviously a formal dining room, Mitch leaned in and whispered, “Not going to out yourself to our guide?”
Eve shook her head. “How weird would it look? I mean, what old-line Southerner doesn’t know everything about their family heritage, right down to the last twig on the family tree? Nana told me some stuff about my mom and dad’s generation when she was alive. And yes, I got the tour of Uncle Roy’s family photos, but as far as the family that lived here, I know next to nothing.”
“So you’re a tourist in your own backyard, huh?”
“Literally.”
Adele stopped next to the fireplace, where a massive mantelpiece was held up by a pair of Art Nouveau nymphs. “The house has had a number of renovations,” she explained, “the most extensive of which took place in 1910 after Artimas Best made a killing on the stock market.” She ran an affectionate hand over the lines of a nymph’s flowing tunic. “This mantel, which even I have to admit looks completely out of place in a structure that was essentially a farmhouse, was imported from England. And over it you’ll see the wedding portrait of Artimas and Evalyne Best. Evalyne was one of the Eden sisters, who were the belles of their generation. She married Artimas in 1903.”
Dutifully, Mitch looked up at the black-and-white photo, which was a little blurred with age.
And he blinked. Looked from Evalyne to her…what? Great-great-granddaughter? And back again. There was the sensual mouth and the wide-set eyes. Evalyne’s hair was pulled up and poufed out in Gibson girl style, but it was dark like Eve’s, and while she was nearly lost to sight in a cascade of ruffles, there was no mistaking the corseted hourglass figure.
He couldn’t tell if Eve was having the same sense of déjà vu. She stood on the Turkey-red carpet, gazing silently at her ancestors as if they were a puzzle she’d figure out if they just gave her long enough.
Mitch glanced at Adele, who had obviously made the same discovery he had.
“Miss, if you don’t mind me saying so, I now know why you seem so familiar. I’ve been looking at your face for about nine months, that’s why.”
Eve turned to her. “My face?”
The older woman gestured at the portrait. “You’re a dead ringer for Evalyne Best. Are you a member of the family, by any chance?”
Mitch waited for Eve to fib and end the odd moment with a suggestion that they move on with the tour.
“I am,” she said instead. “My name is Eve Best.”
Adele put a hand on her heart. “Mercy sakes. You don’t say.”
“And from what I can figure out, that lady up there is my great-great-great-grandmother.”
“Great…Let’s see now.” Adele did some figuring in her head. “Artimas and Evalyne had a boy and two g
irls. The girls married men from Savannah-brothers, they were-and moved away, but the boy stayed on to run the family business, which was a savings and loan outfit until the crash of twenty-nine. He had two boys, Cecil and Merlon.”
“My grandpa was called Cecil.”
“Well, there you go. Cecil had two boys, as well. Your dad must have been Gibson, because your Uncle Roy is on the board of the Ashmere Trust and I know both his girls.” Eve nodded. “I was so sorry about your parents, dear. Such a tragedy.”
“It happened a long time ago. But thank you.”
“When you’re as old as me, ‘a long time ago’ is relative,” Adele said with some asperity. Then her voice softened. “So you’ve come back to Atlanta and have a television show, do you? I’m glad to hear it. Your aunt and uncle will be glad you’re home, too.”
“They are. Do you know them well?”
“Roy and my husband did some business together. A start-up, I think you call it. I never pay much attention to that kind of thing. It’s much more interesting to learn about lace-making patterns and how to preserve quilts, in my opinion.”
Eve laughed. “My aunt might agree with you. She tried to teach me to sew when I was a kid, but I was never very good at it.”
“Your mother wasn’t, either, poor thing. But lands, she was a beautiful woman. Talk about the belle of her generation. The family had fallen on hard times by the time she married into it. Your grandpa had to give up this property and they moved to a place in town when your dad and uncle were boys. In fact, I babysat them when I was a teenager. Now, that was a long time ago.”
Mitch had to smile at her truthful but self-deprecating humor. Then she took Eve’s elbow and led her to the main staircase in the hall.
“I really shouldn’t do this, but since you’re a member of the family, I’d say you have the right. There are some pictures and things upstairs that you might be interested in.”
As they followed her up the staircase to the second floor, Mitch asked, “There are family pictures still here? Didn’t they go when the family moved away?”
“The originals did.” Adele waved a hand at the open rooms they passed. “These are the children’s bedrooms. The photos are in the master bedroom, here at the end. When the trust took this place over, Roy Best gave permission to make copies of some of the portraits. The walls were bare, you see.”
She led them into a huge room with ten-foot ceilings and narrow windows that had to be six feet high. A canopied bed occupied one end, and a fireplace the facing wall. On the wall to the left of the door, more portraits hung in a cluster. Some of them, Mitch was sure, had to have been taken right after the invention of the camera.
“Here’s Evalyne and the children,” Adele said, pointing. “That’s Cecil and his bride in the forties, just before he went off to England to fight in the war. And Eve, here’s your mother and dad and your Uncle Roy. This was taken in the early seventies, I think.”
“Belle of her generation is right,” Mitch murmured to Eve. “I see where you get your looks.”
“Not really.” Eve studied the picture. “I might have her chin, but not much else. I’m surprised how much I look like Evalyne, though. My niece Emily does, too. She’s fourteen.”
“Roy’s daughter?” Adele asked. “She does, now you mention it. It’s the mouth and the eyes. Very distinctive. Evalyne was said to be a woman of, shall we say, a very firm character, too.”
“That definitely describes my niece,” Eve said with a smile. “Much to her mom’s dismay.”
“You, too,” Mitch put in. “Not every woman could step onto a set and have a couple of hundred people in the palm of her hand within a few minutes.”
Eve shrugged modestly, then turned to Adele. “I don’t suppose there’s a copy of this picture, is there? I would love to have one. I don’t have many photos of my parents, and I’ve never even seen this one.”
Adele’s forehead creased as she thought. “I’m not sure. Let me check in the office, all right? Feel free to ramble around. I’ll come and find you.”
Mitch waited until he heard Adele’s footsteps on the stairs before he spoke. “I hope she finds a copy for you. If she doesn’t, maybe you can ask your relatives for one.”
“Nana didn’t have it in her belongings when she died.” Eve’s voice sounded puzzled. “I hardly have any pictures of my family. It’s strange, don’t you think?”
He considered this. “Maybe they were all sent to your uncle when your folks passed away.”
“Not even when I was a kid,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “You’d have expected my parents to talk about the family like Adele does. All proud, with tons of detail that would bore to tears anyone who wasn’t related. But they never did. And the only pictures I remember seeing were Nana’s wedding photo and the ones I got of myself at school.”
“Some people just aren’t pack rats.” What was she getting at? And what was with that odd, tense look around her mouth, as though she’d turned over a rock and found something ugly under there? “I wouldn’t upset yourself over it.”
“I’m not upset. I’m confused. This isn’t the first time I’ve wished I could ask my mother questions about her life. Like this picture, for instance.”
He looked at it again. Three people. Two guys in lightweight suits with shaggy hair, a young woman with long hair parted in the middle, wearing platform shoes and a miniskirt.
“What about it?”
She pointed at one of the men. “That’s my dad, the blond guy.” Her finger moved to the other man, the one with his arm around the young woman. “And that’s my Uncle Roy.”
“Okay.” He let his voice rise a bit, giving her room to go on.
“So why does my Uncle Roy and not my dad have his arm around my mom?”
Why did anybody do anything? “Maybe they were goofing around for the camera. Maybe Uncle Roy was trying to get your dad’s goat or something. I have friends like that. Everything’s a competition, a contest to see who can one-up the other.”
“They look like they’re together, don’t they?”
“Huh?” Mitch blinked at the picture.
“Look how he’s holding her. How his hand is on her waist, how she’s snuggled up against him. A Southern girl from a good family, even in the seventies, would only let a boy hold her like that if they were serious about one another. Engaged, even. And look at my dad. He isn’t smiling, but the other two are.”
“And this means…?”
Her shoulders drooped. “I don’t know what it means. All I know is that I’ve never seen this picture before, and there isn’t one like it at my uncle’s place.”
“It could be packed away. My mom has boxes of old family pictures in albums, stacked in the closet under the stairs.”
She glanced at him. “You probably noticed that all the family pride missing in my folks came out in my Uncle Roy in spades. If it was there, I’d have seen it, trust me.”
Mitch heard Adele coming up the stairs, slower than she’d gone down them. A lady would have to be in good shape to act as docent around this place. No elevators.
“I still think you’re reading something into it that isn’t there.”
She would have answered, but Adele came in holding a photograph in a plastic sleeve. “Well, this is a funny thing. Good for you, Eve, but funny all the same.”
Eve took the photo and turned it over. “Oh?”
There was nothing written on the back.
“This is the original,” Adele said. “It must be a mistake. Roy said that all the photos he donated to the trust were copies, except Artimas and Evalyne’s wedding picture. That one’s the real thing.”
“Adele, did you know Roy and my dad? When they were teenagers, I mean. Like in this picture.”
Adele, who up until now had been a fountain of facts and knowledge, dried up like the arroyos of Mitch’s childhood in the summer. She cocked h
er head.
“Oh, there they are now, dears. The tour group that was supposed to have been here at eleven.” She patted Eve’s arm and ushered them out into the gallery. “You keep that photo, Eve. And you might want to check with your uncle and let him know we’ve returned an original. Feel free to poke around the grounds. I’d better hustle, or I’ll never get them rounded up. People always think they can treat these houses the way they do their own.”
Her voice faded as she clattered down the stairs, and in a moment they heard her greeting the group. The buzz of a busload of people filtered up through the floor.
“Ready to go?” he asked. “Or do you want to look around?”
“No, I’m ready.” Her voice was flat. Preoccupied. “But I’ll be back. That woman was hiding something, and I’m going to find out what it is.”
15
MAYBE MITCH WAS RIGHT. Maybe she was making too much out of a silly photograph. So two teenagers were cuddling. What did that mean? Teenagers cuddled all the time. It was the seventies, for heaven’s sake. Just because her mom was cuddling with the wrong boy…
Wrong in whose opinion? Yours?
Maybe she’d dated Roy at one time and then decided that Gibson was The One after she’d graduated from college. Then why had Adele changed the subject so fast?
Eve hadn’t been coaxing secrets out of guests four days a week, nine months a year for three years for nothing. She could spot a diversionary tactic a mile away-especially from a person who wasn’t used to lying.
Eve pulled out her phone while Mitch stood in the eerie blue light in front of the windows of the dolphin tank at the aquarium. He was lost in a completely appealing, childlike wonder at the swooping and darting of the creatures.
“Dylan,” she said when he answered, “I need you to do something for me on the qt.”
He didn’t even remind her that it was Saturday and he would have been completely within his rights to ignore her number on his digital display. “Sure. What’s up?”
