Flirting With Pete: A Novel Read online

  “Please leave,” she said, because it struck her that it wasn’t too late. The man by the chestnut tree might simply have backed into the woods. If he saw Dudley walking away, he might come out again.

  “You can help them understand what it’s like,” Dudley insisted.

  “No one can understand,” she snapped, though she knew it was a waste of breath to try to talk to him. Nothing Dudley Wright said or did or wrote could change the facts of her life.

  She slipped off the rail.

  “Are you saying it’s very bad?” he asked.

  She turned and began to walk down the porch.

  “I’ll pay you, MaryBeth.”

  She didn’t know whether to spit in his eye or pray for a hole to open and swallow her up. Everyone on the whole long porch was watching her.

  “Don’t you owe it to the town?” he called.

  Head held high, jaw set, she dared those watching to speak as she swung around the stair post and ran down the steps. Crossing the yard and the driveway, she went straight to her tree. Its back side was familiar and dark. She leaned against it until her anger waned, then longer, because anger wasn’t her only problem. There was embarrassment, too. She shouldn’t have run off, not in front of everyone. That made it harder to go back.

  But she had to. There wouldn’t be another night like this one before Darden returned. It was her last chance. She had to go inside again.

  She pushed away from the tree and looked back at the porch. The music had changed several times, so the crowd there was different now from the one that had witnessed her flight. Dudley was nowhere in sight.

  Lips blotted together. A hand to her hair. Fingerpads to her freckles. Damp palms smoothing her dress.

  She took a breath, thought of her dreams, and returned to the dance.

  *

  Two hours passed. Jenny watched the goings-on from the left side of the hall, from the right side of the hall, from the refreshment table, from the steps near the stage. She smiled. She nodded to the beat. She tried to look approachable.

  The only one who looked at her was Dan O’Keefe in his watchful way, and the only one who approached was Miriam as she breathlessly Hully-Gullied her way by. “Are your feet okay?” the woman asked in one go-round, and in another, “Why aren’t you dancing?” In the last, it was, “Are we on for tomorrow morning at ten?” She was swept past by the line before Jenny could answer.

  As the evening wound down, the music slowed to mostly cheek-to-cheek numbers. With each family that called it a night, each group of friends, each couple, Jenny felt more frightened. This was supposed to have been her night. She was running out of time.

  She stayed until the very last song had been played, until Reverend Putty had clapped for the band himself and said, “Thank you, good night, and God bless you all,” until the last of the dancers filed out the door, and the dance committee was stashing trash in bags, wiping down tables, and folding up chairs. Only then did she leave.

  The porch was empty. Just a handful of cars remained in the parking lot. She went down the steps and stood for a minute in the drive, staring sadly at the chestnut tree. Then she started down the road.

  The night was moonless and dark as pitch. Fog hovered in the treetops, a heavy curtain waiting to fall and end the show. Do it already, Jenny cried. As she walked toward home, she told herself that tonight’s failure wasn’t the end of the world. But her heart wasn’t buying it; it felt heavy as lead.

  So much for new dresses. So much for makeup and mousse. So much for borrowing Miriam’s shoes and enduring hours of crunched-up toes just because the shoes finished the look.

  Stopping, she removed the shoes and continued in her stockinged feet. The freedom felt so good that, moments later, she stopped and peeled off her pantyhose. She tossed them into the woods and walked on. Seconds later, she tore apart her French braid.

  Her stride became long and defiant. She indulged her feet by walking in the cool grass for a bit, then left the grass for the middle of the road, and there she stayed. She had nothing to lose, nothing at all.

  A car came from behind and honked. She took her time moving over, and then she didn’t go far. The car passed by riding on the shoulder of the road, and the driver pelted her with a hail of shouted insults. Seconds later it was sucked into the thickening mist.

  Dan O’Keefe neither honked nor shouted insults. He pulled up ahead of her and waited for her to reach him. “Climb in.”

  Jenny noticed the way the Jeep’s headlights speared the fog, and thought of Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber. “I’m okay.”

  “A chill’s coming along with the fog. You’ll get sick, and I’ll have to answer to Darden for it. Come on, Jenny. I’ll drive you home.”

  But she wasn’t ready to be home yet. Once there, the disappointment of the night would close in. She wasn’t ready for that.

  “You sure?” the deputy asked.

  “Yes.”

  He sighed, rubbed his shoulder, waited. When she didn’t budge, he said, “Well, I offered.” Shifting into gear, he drove off.

  Jenny watched the fog eat his taillights. Then she sat down in the middle of the road and dared another car to come.

  None did. And sitting there, just sitting there with everything bare but what was covered by her dress— and that not very thick— she did feel the damp and the chill. So she pushed herself to her feet, found a strip of softer, warmer dirt on the shoulder of the road, and set off.

  She hadn’t gone far when a motorcycle broke through the mist from behind and passed her, then quickly downshifted and slowed. Coming to a full stop, it idled at the edge of a cotton-batting arc of light. Its driver balanced a booted foot on the road and looked back. After a minute, he took off his helmet.

  Jenny barely breathed.

  Chapter Seven

  Boston

  “Jenny barely breathed.”

  Casey read the line again, then grabbed the manila envelope and reached inside for more pages. When she felt nothing, she opened it wide and looked. The envelope was empty— no cover letter, no business card, no little memo that might give her a hint of what the story she had just read was and why it was there, no directive at all, just the scrawled letter “C” on the front that could have been C for Casey, C for Cornelius, or C for a mediocre grade on an English paper.

  Casey would have given the paper an A. What it might have lacked in sophistication of prose, it more than made up for in content. She had surely been drawn in. Sitting here now, she most urgently wanted to know whether the guy on the motorcycle was good or bad, whether he would take Jenny away before her father returned and, if not, what was going to happen to Jenny— and that was before she began listing questions she had about Jenny and her father. The therapist in her had sensed despair; she wondered whether Connie had, too— whether Jenny was perhaps a client of his, which led Casey to a whole other set of questions. Totally aside from content, she wanted to know who had written these pages, what they were doing in Connie’s desk when everything else remotely sensitive had been removed, and whether they had been deliberately put there for her to find.

  But there were no answers. She was left high and dry on all counts.

  Annoyed, she pushed back in the chair and pulled the center desk drawer out as far as it would go. There was nothing else way back there, no random sheets of paper or half-used pads. The drawer was empty except for the pens and pencils in the tray at the front, and this manila envelope that had been behind that.

  C was for Casey. She felt it in her gut.

  Or maybe she just wanted to feel it.

  Dismissing that thought, she began to hunt for more of the story. She groped in the far back of the other drawers in the desk to make sure that she hadn’t missed another envelope the first time around. When she found nothing, she turned around and systematically searched the cabinets built in under the bookshelves behind her. She had simply assumed they were empty when she and her friends had dropped in her files. Now she pulled out
each drawer, and checked under and behind the folders.

  Finding nothing, she tried the cabinets they hadn’t touched.

  Empty.

  Standing back, she scanned the bookshelves one by one for an envelope sticking up behind or between books. Frustrated, she turned to study other spots in the office where a journal might be hidden.

  In passing, her eye caught on the garden. It was filled with morning light now, a lime glow on greenery that suggested another warm June day. Needing to be a part of it, she opened the French doors and was immediately lured outside by the scent of the woods. She was about to push back the screen when a movement at the back of the garden stopped her. It was the iron latch on the door, rising.

  The door opened, and a man slipped inside. He was tall, with shoulders that looked absurdly wide— until Casey realized that he was carrying something. He had reached the potting shed when she identified the “something” as a case of flower flats.

  The gardener.

  Casey didn’t move.

  Kneeling by the potting shed, he eased the case of flats to the ground. Rising again, he uncoiled the green garden hose that was hooked on the side of the shed and connected it to a sprinkler. Once a light spray was arcing toward the prettiest of the flowers, he went back out the door. She caught glimpses of him pulling and tugging at the open hatchback of a dusty Jeep. He reappeared with two bags of loam on his shoulder and yet another under an arm. Setting all three against the shed, he went inside.

  The gardener.

  The gorgeous gardener, Casey amended when the man emerged laden with tools, because he was definitely that. He had dark hair, broad shoulders even without the flats, a tapering torso, and long legs. He wore a black tee shirt with a rip on one sleeve, jeans that were faded at strategic spots and spattered with dirt at others, and work boots that were barely laced in a cocky show of neglect. His forearms were bare and ropy, his hands strong. She guessed that he was a year or two older than she was.

  Go out and introduce yourself, Casey thought. You’re the new lady of the manor, and he is one of your staff.

  Still she didn’t move— or thought she didn’t, but something tipped him off. He looked up with wide-set eyes, seeming alarmed at first, remaining startled even after many seconds had passed. She had time to note the dark shadow of a beard before he acknowledged her with a brief nod and returned to his work.

  Casey had never been a shrinking violet where men were concerned. Sliding the screen open, she walked blithely up the garden path— through the first tier, up the railroad-tie step, halfway through the less-manicured middle tier— before she paused to wonder if it was wise. Barefoot and wearing not a stitch under the robe, she looked as if she had just tumbled out of bed. It wasn’t the best way to greet a stranger, much less a disreputable-looking one who was also in your employ.

  But she couldn’t turn back. He was watching her again. And, besides, she loved disreputable-looking men.

  “Hi,” she said as she crossed the third and last tier. “I’m Casey Ellis. You must be Jordan.”

  He was even more compelling close up. As deep brown as his eyes, his hair was short enough to show flat ears, long enough— and mussed enough— to look as if he had just rolled out of bed himself. His skin around that beard shadow had the start of a tan, a reddish-bronze on his nose and cheeks. Fine lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes.

  Those lines made her rethink his age. If she was thirty-four, she guessed that he was nearing forty, and it wasn’t only the crow’s-feet. Those brown eyes were wise. They had a startling clarity and depth. Fixed on her as they were, their touch was almost a physical thing.

  “I’m Dr. Unger’s daughter,” she announced.

  He nodded.

  “I’ve inherited this place.”

  “The lawyer told me that,” he said in a deep voice. “I didn’t expect the resemblance.”

  “Do you really see it?”

  He nodded again. His eyes scanned her face for a minute, then fell along the lapel of the robe all the way down to her bare feet. “I didn’t know you’d moved in.”

  “I haven’t. I just fell asleep here last night and never made it home. I have to go back soon to change clothes. I’m seeing a client at eleven.” She looked at the flowers he was about to plant. Some were pink, some were purple, some were white. All were small. “Are those begonias?”

  “Impatiens.”

  “They look a little…”

  “Sparse? They won’t be in a couple of weeks. Impatiens grow quickly.”

  “Ah. That tells you how much I know about plants. What’re the ones out front?”

  “Sweet William in the boxes. Myrtle on the ground. The trees are dogwood.”

  She grinned, recalling the guesses she’d made. “Not bad. I was two for three. Impatiens I just don’t know.”

  “Then you don’t care where I put them?”

  Care? He could plant them in the kitchen sink, as long as she could watch. “Put them where they’ll grow best.”

  He pointed the trowel toward the middle tier. “Impatiens like shade. We usually put them down there by the trees.”

  “We?”

  “Dr. Unger and I.”

  “Did he garden?” she asked. Realizing how odd the question probably sounded, she explained, “I didn’t know him.” Flippantly she added, “I was the product of a one-night stand.”

  The gardener held her gaze with eyes that were male and very aware.

  “Totally irrelevant,” she hastened to add, “but it does stop the rest of the questions. So I have some for you. How often do you come?”

  He didn’t blink. There might have been a tiny movement at the corner of his mouth. Before she could react— she hadn’t intended a double entendre and was slow to find words, much less recover from the meaning in those eyes— he said a mild, “Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”

  She nodded and struggled to think of a follow-up. “Always at this time of day?” she finally asked.

  “Either early or late.”

  She knew what early was. “What’s late?”

  “Five or six in the evening. Watering’s best done away from the noon sun. When I’m planting, like today, I need three hours. Once the planting’s done, two suffice. In winter, one hour twice a week is enough.”

  “What’s to do out here in winter?”

  “Not much,” he said, “but the plants inside still need tending.”

  She nodded again and smiled. Absently, she held the neck of her robe together. “They’re all beautiful. He must have liked plants.”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re in every room.”

  “Except the office. He didn’t want to risk my barging in there when he was with a client.”

  Neither would Casey. She would lose her concentration entirely.

  “So tell me when I shouldn’t go in the house,” Jordan said.

  “Oh, it isn’t a problem. I can work around you.”

  “Then you’re not seeing clients here?”

  “I am.” She paused. Apparently, he knew more about her than just the fact of her inheriting the townhouse from Connie. “Did the lawyer say I was a therapist?”

  Again, the gardener held her gaze without blinking. “Your father mentioned it once.”

  “He did?” That was interesting. “Did he say anything else?”

  “No. Should he have?”

  She smiled. “Of course not.” She didn’t say anything more about Connie. It would have been inappropriate to involve the gardener in personal issues. Not that he looked like a gardener, with those wise eyes, and he also didn’t talk like a local. Despite the roughness of his looks, he was nothing like the hired hands her mother had used around the barn.

  She rocked back on her heels and hitched her chin toward the carpet of green leaves under the chestnut tree. “What’re those plants?”

  “Pachysandra.”

  “And the ones climbing the shed here?”

  “Clematis. Anothe
r couple weeks, and it’ll bloom. The flowers are pink.”

  “Ah.” She shifted her gaze to the shrubs near the hemlocks. “What’re those?”

  “The broad ones are junipers. The taller ones are yews.”

  Looking down a tier, she focused on pretty white flowers nestling among green leaves under the oak. “And those?”

  “Trillium. It’s a spring blooming bulb. Does well under deciduous trees.”

  Lips pressed together, she nodded and glanced at the house. Seconds later, she looked back at Jordan, who was still— disconcertingly— looking at her. “Do you have the time?” she inquired politely.

  He checked his watch. It was a sports watch on a ratty black band. “Seven thirty-five.”

  She was impressed. He had picked up flats of impatiens, along with who knew what else for other clients, and was already at work. “You’re an early riser.”

  “There’s nothing keeping me in bed.” He held her gaze for a final few seconds before returning to the impatiens.

  Not so much dismissed as simply finding herself without a comeback, Casey headed off, back down the path. The stones were cool against her feet. She walked faster the closer she got to the house, trotting the last few steps. Once inside the office, she pulled the screen closed.

  She did not look back at the gardener. Intending to go upstairs for more coffee and then to dress, she crossed the office. At the door, though, she did an about-face and returned to the desk. If the gardener had free rein of the house— and it was an alluring idea— a measure of prudence was in order. Gathering the typed sheets of the journal, she replaced the binder clip and was in the process of slipping them into their manila envelope when something stopped her. Pulling them back out, she set them on the desk, facedown this time so that what had stopped her could be seen. On the back of the last sheet, written in pencil, almost light enough to be missed, was Connie’s scrawled note. It was brief but pointed: How to help? She’s kin.

  *

  That changed everything. If Jenny was “kin,” it didn’t matter whether C was for Connie or for Casey. Anyone who was kin to Connie was kin to Casey.