by Nora Roberts
“Regardless, I said yes, and all I get’s a punch in the arm and I won’t regret it.”
“You’re right. You are completely right. You deserve better. I can do better.”
She threw her arms around his neck—that was unexpected—and did much better with a long, hard kiss, one she put a little punch into.
Enough of a punch to rock him back on his heels, to have his hands gripping her hips before he could stop them.
Then she pulled back, grinned at him. “There now. I’ve got to get back to work—and stop to buy subs for the crew on the way. But I’ll be in touch.”
He held on just another moment. “You are hot.”
She laughed, kissed him again—light and friendly this time. “Told ya.”
She pivoted to her truck, hopped in, then leaned out the window. “I’m still not paying you a million dollars.”
With that, she started the truck, pulled out. She circled back toward town, and when she was well out of sight, pulled the truck over.
“Holy crap.” Inhaling, exhaling slowly, she rubbed her hand over her jumping heart. “Holy double crap.”
As if getting the job—the whole thing—wasn’t thrilling enough? She’d whacked herself silly with an impulsive kiss on the side of the road.
Anyone would need a minute to settle down.
Keep it light, she told herself. Keep it light, or try to. Who knew better the consequences of impulsive mistakes?
“Okay then, all good.” She breathed out one more time, then ordered up her phone, the number for her stone company. Asked for her rep.
“Hi, Kevin, Darby McCray, High Country Landscaping. You can put that order through. How about we go over it, make sure we’ve got it right?”
By the time she parked at Emily’s, she had her first deliveries confirmed. She hauled out the bag of subs and chips, stood studying the now completed shrubbery.
Perfect.
The foundation plantings, also perfect. And with the new stonework, the fresh paint, the clematis climbing up the new lamppost, the house had some serious curb appeal.
She had some great planters in mind for that fabulous wraparound porch. And since Emily actually cooked, there’d be a couple of tomato plants, plenty of herbs.
She walked around the back to where Roy and Hallie tested another section of irrigation.
She beamed at both of them. “We’re going to need a bigger crew.”
* * *
The following week, Graham Bigelow walked out of prison after eighteen years. His hair, shorn short, was steel gray with hints of white at the temples. Deep lines carved into his prison pale face, around his mouth, his eyes, in his cheeks, his forehead. He wore khakis and a pale blue golf shirt over a body, a bit thicker in the middle than it had been, but one he’d kept fit in the prison gym.
Eliza waited for him outside the gate. She wore a sundress in emerald green. Her hair, freshly colored and styled, swept dark around a face she’d spent a full hour perfecting.
Legs shaking, she walked to him, wrapped her arms around him, felt his wrap around her. She fought back tears as she lifted her face, and for the first time is nearly two decades, felt his mouth on hers.
He turned her to the car, the black Mercedes he’d approved her to purchase. Though his hands balled into fists for an instant—he had no license to drive—he opened the driver’s door for her, walked around to take the passenger seat.
His eyes held hard on the prison gate, the prison walls, the prison guards, all that had kept him locked away and humiliated. Still shaking, Eliza drove away.
“Graham. Oh, Graham.”
“Just drive, Eliza. I need to get away from here.”
“Everything’s ready for you, my darling. Your new clothes, your favorite foods. I sold the house like you said, rented the one you wanted in another neighborhood. The lawyer said we have to stay in North Carolina, but we can apply to move from Raleigh. I thought Charlotte. We can start fresh there.”
The cars whizzed by, too fast. Too many. Too much sound, too much open, too much sky.
“Don’t worry.” She laid a hand over his. “Don’t worry, Graham. You’re free now. We’re free, and we’re together. We’ll be home soon.”
Finally, she pulled into the drive of a two-story brick home—smaller, much smaller than the one he’d left so long ago. But the old neighborhood with its cracked sidewalks meant room between houses, trees and fences forming borders and separation.
She drove into the one-car garage. And he felt a terrible relief at the sound of the garage door closing.
Inside again, away from too much open, noise, prying eyes. Inside with no bars, no locks.
They had sex first, fast and hard. Driving himself into her, feeling the bite of her nails, the rush of her breath, he began to feel like a man again.
They showered together.
She heated up the meal she’d hired a caterer to cook so it would be perfect, and set the table with candles, poured champagne.
They ate and drank together, went back to bed together, more gently this time.
They slept together and woke together, snuggled in bed with coffee together.
Began a new life together.
It took him nearly forty-eight hours to strike her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As spring rolled toward summer, Darby hired Ralph Perkins as a part-time laborer. The squat barrel of a man with a mass of gray hair and bifocals came with experience as a stonemason and could operate the heavy machinery. What he knew about trees and plants wouldn’t fill a bucket, but she wanted an experienced hand to help with Zane’s hardscaping.
And to Darby’s thinking, anyone could be taught to plant, from an oak to a petunia.
Ralph didn’t use two words if a grunt would do, drank Dr Pepper like water, and had a delicate touch with the mini excavator Darby had invested in.
He’d also taken a shine to Gabe, and patiently taught the boy the art of building a retaining wall.
Zane watched the lower terrace take shape, move from a steep, rocky slope to a wide ledge formed from the bite of the excavator’s claw.
He’d lost count of the number of times he’d stood on his bedroom terrace, drinking his morning coffee, and worried that damn machine would slide right over the edge.
But Darby appeared to know what she was doing, and so did the new guy. So disaster was averted.
He shot them a wave each morning as he headed to his office. Most days they’d knocked off before he returned. But he’d see little bits of progress—mostly bigger, wider holes.
One day he drove home and found trees lining the steep road, and the foundation or footers or whatever they called it for the front-facing wall.
As the wall began to take shape, actual stone rising, he’d catch himself slowing, even stopping on the drive up. He thought, every time, how it should have always been there.
He thought of Darby and her crew like elves who labored away when no one could see, then vanished like mists.
It surprised him to find her there one evening when he pulled up. Almost as much as it surprised him to see the spread of foundation plants along his veranda. Darby, in cargo shorts and boots, a T-shirt and cap, was on her hands and knees spreading mulch.
She stood as he parked, waited for him to walk over.
“What do you think?”
“It looks great. Scary great. Like ‘I have to learn stuff’ great, which isn’t great.”
“Low, slow growers, easy care.”
“Those don’t look easy. What are they?”
“Mophead hydrangeas, and they are easy. I love that variety with the intense green and blue, the touch of pink on each petal. Unique. The flowers grow on the old wood, so you don’t want to prune at the wrong time of year. So don’t prune. They’re going to give you color until well into the fall. And you’ve got evergreens for structure year-round, more bloomers, good texture.”
She dusted her work gloves against each other. “The wall’s comin
g along, so I put Roy and Hallie on this to give you a nice little bang when you got home. You’ve been really patient, Walker, and deserved a splash.”
“It’s a splash. Seriously, it’s beautiful. You’re an artist.”
“That’s a lift to the end of my day. Thanks.”
She had damn good legs, he mused. Long, toned arms. She smelled like cedar chips and grass.
“I haven’t talked to you except by email since you were in the office.”
“You give good email.”
“So do you. Want a half a beer?”
“Absolutely.”
“Come on in.”
“Ah, grungy,” she pointed out, spread her arms. “I’m not going to track through your house.”
“We’ll sit out here. I’ll bring it out.”
When he went in, she brushed herself off, stowed her gloves. After climbing up to the veranda, she settled into one of the deep, wide chairs with the thick navy cushions he’d chosen, let out a long, end-of-day sigh.
It felt damn good to just sit. Even better to just sit, admire the view, smell the fresh mulch.
When he came out, handed her a glass, she tapped it to his bottle. “You did good on the furniture out here. Comfortable, casual class.”
“I like it.” He sat in the chair beside hers, gestured to the view. “Now I’m king of all I survey.”
“Damn right. How’s the lawyering business?”
“Chugging along.”
And satisfying, he mused. More satisfying than he’d expected.
“I’ve got myself an intern for the summer, and she’s working out. She’s smart. I don’t have to ask you how business is going. I’m in the middle of it. You were right about the wall.”
“Yeah, I was.”
He just shook his head. “Not just the aesthetics, which have yet to be fully realized, but from the relief on my sister’s face when they all came up for a cookout and she saw what was going in.”
“Good. And how’d that go? The cookout?”
“All I had to do was provide the burgers, dogs, drinks. Since Emily and Britt made everything else, it went just fine. So, the ex-husband.”
Brows lifted, Darby glanced over. “That’s some segue.”
“Inside my head, it was. What’s the story, or is it off-limits?”
“If it was off-limits, I’d have said a line drive broke my nose.” She shrugged. “Okay. I’ve just finished college, and there he is. Great-looking guy, a friend of a friend of a friend I meet at a party. Trent Willoughby.”
“Willoughby. Sense and Sensibility.”
“Points for you knowing Austen.”
“Big readers in my family,” he told her.
“Yeah, mine, too. So Willoughby—and he’s just that handsome and charming and romantic. Trust-fund kid, but I don’t hold that against him. He’s started up his own advertising firm with two of his college buddies. We talk, some sparks, and since he’s a friend of a friend of a friend, I figured sure, we can exchange numbers.”
“I guess he called.”
“The very next day. He hadn’t moved on me at the party, kept it easy. So he says his family has a box at Camden Yards, and the O’s are playing at home, would I like to go? I go, because who wouldn’t? If you’ve never watched a game from a box, you’re missing something. I also discovered he knew next to nothing about baseball, but I found that endearing, right? He’d made the date to please me. Sweet.
“One thing led to another, blah, blah, blah. I met his family, he met my mother. Everything was smooth. We dated for six months, and all I saw was this terrific guy, considerate, interesting, crazy about me, romantic. He takes me to Paris—I mean freaking Paris—for a long weekend.”
With a half laugh, she sipped more beer. “I’d never been out of the country, never, in fact, been west of the fricking Mississippi, and now I’m in Paris. It’s dazzling. And he proposes to me on the banks of the Seine, with the moonlight, and Jesus, I wasn’t thinking about marriage—not yet, down the road—but Paris, moonlight. So, I said yes.”
She took a moment and studied her beer. “I didn’t really want a big, splashy wedding, but it got out of hand—or out of my hands. You could say his family sort of took over, and I got swept up. If I tried to throttle it back, he’d say how it would hurt their feelings. Anyway, more blah, blah, blah. I can say, looking back I can now see there were signs. But that’s hindsight. Was he demanding, possessive, domineering? Yes, to all, but so subtle, and offset by that crazy-about-me, the romance, the little sweet things.
“I was stupid,” she murmured. “And he was just so good at it.”
“It doesn’t take being stupid to get taken in,” Zane corrected.
“Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, right before the wedding, he drove me out to this fancy gated community, pulled up to this monster house in a maze of monster houses. Our house, he told me. And I’m ‘but—but.’ His parents put down the deposit as a wedding gift. Done deal, not once consulting me. But he rolled over that. Surprise! Ten days before the wedding, and I’m a little sick. I don’t want this monster house in Stepford Land, one that’s a solid forty minutes from my mother, from our business.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Tried. Not hard enough. I let him manipulate me, no question there. I thought, Well, I can make it work. I can landscape the yard, make it mine. I can just get up earlier to get to work. I loved him, didn’t I? The important thing is we were starting our lives together.
“So we did. We had the big, splashy wedding his family somehow pulled off in six months because I should be a spring bride. Even though that’s our busiest season. We had a honeymoon in Paris, where he started pushing for me to go off birth control so we could start a family.”
“You didn’t talk about kids before?”
“We did, and we’d agreed to wait a little. So I pushed back there, I want a year with him first before we talk kids. Hell, I was only twenty-three, I had plenty of time.
“We’re barely home when he gets back on that again. He wants to make a baby with me, start our family. Don’t I want to have his children? Then it’s that I work too much, too hard. I’m coming home too late, and too tired. Owning a business should mean I don’t have to work.”
At Zane’s quick laugh, she had to smile.
“Right? Owning means you work the hardest, but he didn’t get it. And I’d already seen he didn’t exactly put in tons of time and effort in his own firm. So it’s around and around, up and down.”
She paused, stared out at the view, the boats gliding on the lake. He waited, saying nothing.
“Six weeks and two days after I said ‘I do,’ I come home from a long, sweaty day that ended with me fighting ugly traffic, and he’s sitting there, drinking a gin and tonic.”
She had to stop again, let out a little breath. “He’s laying down the law. Look at me, exhausted, filthy, and he’s coming home to an empty house. A house he provided for me. I’m to sell the business and start behaving like a wife.
“I was so tired. It wasn’t the work, you know, I loved the work. It was that horrible commute. I said no, I wasn’t selling the business, and I wasn’t going to talk about it because I needed a shower. The next thing I knew I was on the floor.”
She shook her head. “In the year I’d known him he’d never shown any signs of violence. None. He could be demanding, yes, pushy, single-minded, and yeah, he could strike out with words. But that backhand shocked the hell out of me. It seemed to shock him, too. He was immediately contrite, appalled at himself. He cried. He made excuses—he’d had a terrible day, too much to drink, he’d been so worried about me, and more. He begged for forgiveness. I’d been married six weeks, and now the man I’d married was on his knees, weeping.”
Zane said nothing. He already saw the end.
“I told him he had one chance, only one. If he ever hit me again, we were finished. Not only that, I’d file charges.”
“How long did it take him?”
“Thre
e weeks. By then I’d realized it wasn’t going to work, that I fell for the man I thought he was, not the man he actually was. I’d been freaking Marianne Dashwood, and that was just mortifying.”
He couldn’t help himself, and put a hand over hers. “She turned out just fine.”
“Yeah, it took her a while. Me, too. The man I had married was so damn needy and … just not altogether right. If I spent time outside of work with my mother or a friend, I was taking time from him. If I disagreed about the smallest thing, I was attacking him. Didn’t love him enough. Any time, effort, affection I gave to anything or anyone else was stealing it from him.”
Stupid, she thought again. She’d been incredibly stupid.
“I came home from work, and he went right at me. Verbally first. He even accused me of having an affair with one of the crew—a guy I’d known forever who was happily married with two kids. My mistake was to laugh at that one. Then he went at me physically.”
She paused for a moment, studied the view until she felt settled again, able to finish.
“No backhand this time. The first punch broke my nose, and he was raging, pounding. You can’t think when someone’s beating you like that. You just try to get away, make it stop. Basically, he beat the crap out of me, tearing at my clothes, screaming all the time, and I couldn’t make it stop, I couldn’t get away. At some point we must’ve knocked a lamp over because I got my hand on it and hit him with it, hard enough to stun him. I ran outside. There were neighbors out in their yards, thank God. I just ran screaming for help. I couldn’t even see where I was running. People came over to help me, even when he came charging out of the house, they helped me. Somebody called the cops, and they helped me. Even when he tried to spin it that I’d attacked him—that didn’t fly.
“I filed charges, I filed for divorce, and moved back in with my mother. She was a brick, an absolute brick. He got a really good lawyer, but I had the medical records, the police report, the witness statements. He got three to five.”
“Should’ve been more.”
“Well, really good lawyer. He got out in three. I had a restraining order, but come on.”
