“Kind of spooky, isn’t it? Besides being beautiful.”
She drew him over to the concrete bench off to one side and they sat down. Crickets chirped in the distance and an owl hooted, but the world was almost still.
“What kind of flowers are these?” he asked. “Are they some special variety?”
“Not really. Mostly just white flowers. Geraniums. Sea Foam roses. Petunias. That vine on the arbor is a moonflower, It opens at dusk and closes at dawn.”
They sat for a long moment, drinking in the peace and serenity. August and September were the best time for the garden and she was glad she was able to share it with him.
“Your dad didn’t have this here when we were kids, did he?”
“No, I put it in. It was one of the first things I did when I came back from New York.”
She took a slow breath, then rushed ahead into things than she’d never said aloud before. “It’s hard to explain, but I hated so much of what I did in New York. Everything was focused on some superficial idea of beauty, and everyone was chasing it. Or sure they possessed it. Or sure they knew what the next idea of beauty would be. I needed some way to cleanse my soul when I got home.”
“Yet it sounds like you did well in New York,” he said.
She shrugged and looked off at the moonflower, its large trumpet-shaped flowers swaying gently in the breeze. “I earned enough money to come back and get the nursery out of hock,” she said. “The reason I went there in the first place.”
She could feel his surprise. “I didn’t know the place had been having financial troubles. When did they start?”
She laughed, the sound coming out soft and gentle, but then her anger over the nursery affairs had been long gone. “When wasn’t it in the red? I can remember Dad talking about second mortgages and installment plans way before you worked here.”
“I had no idea.” His voice was regretful, as if he had been to blame somehow.
“How would you?”
Sitting here in her magical garden with him, sharing her secrets, suddenly seemed too intimate. It was a crazy feeling, considering that they had made love, but she couldn’t explain it. Making love had been sharing their souls, but this seemed to be giving up the last hidden piece of herself. And even as it made her feel wonderful, it scared her.
She got up and walked slowly down the path among the flowers, stopping to finger the soft petals or pull off a spent blossom. He followed her, but his eyes and attention seemed to stay on her.
It made her more nervous. No, more aware maybe. Aware of him in oh, so many ways.
“You were a great worker,” she told him. “You really gave us our money’s worth and more. I don’t think Dad noticed but you worked longer hours than you ever marked down on your time card.” She bit her lip to keep from saying that she used to correct it for him.
“I liked working here.”
And she had liked having him here. She still liked having him here. But that was a road she had vowed not to go down. She stepped off the path to straighten the rusted metal frog statue.
“Isn’t this a fun statue?” she asked. “This catalog has all sorts of them—frogs and lizards and even a gargoyle. I’d like to get more to mix into the various gardens.”
Brad seemed to ignore her attempt to change the subject. “So, you went off to New York to model in order to save the nursery. How did your dad feel about it?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure.” Well, she was the one who brought this all up; she might as well finish the discussion. She bent down to nip the buds off the chrysanthemum. “I think he was amazed at how well I did, but then I don’t think he ever realized just how shaky the situation was here.”
“And did he live to see you come back?”
She shook her head and stood up. The night seemed darker all of a sudden, and cooler. “No. I had just a few commitments to finish up. A month’s worth of assignments, then I was coming home. He went to a national daylily association meeting in Florida and was killed in an automobile accident down there.”
“So, he never knew you had saved the place.”
“But I don’t think he ever thought it needed saving, so it’s not like he died worrying about it.”
She walked farther down the path, feeling the soft moss beneath her feet, and then ended up back by the bushes and the way to the house. She wasn’t sure why she had brought him out here, and she wasn’t sure if she’d accomplished anything. Her job discussion certainly hadn’t gone anywhere.
They started back to the house, his arm around her waist as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“You know what I find ironic?” he said. “Your father had a wall full of degrees in botany and agriculture and almost lost the nursery. His daughter, who has never thought she was even half-smart, comes in and saves it.”
“It wasn’t that hard,” she protested, but couldn’t deny the warmth his words gave her.
“Then why didn’t your father do it?”
“He would have when he had realized there was a problem.”
Brad stopped walking and pulled her to a halt with him. With soft hands on her shoulders, he turned her to face him. “But that’s just it,” he argued. “By the time he realized it, it would have been too late. He wasn’t smart enough to see that. Only you were.”
“It wasn’t intelligence, it was common sense,” she said.
“But that’s a form of intelligence and one you are blessed with in abundance. You have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to apologize for. Nothing to feel you come second in.”
He stopped talking just in time to take her lips with his. It was a hard kiss, an almost angry one, but it melted into something much sweeter before she could even get her arms around his neck. It was the magic of the moon garden, but all hot and fiery. It was the mystery of the shadows, but filled with promise and wonder.
They pulled apart slowly, still tasting the magic and splendor. Then, hand in hand, they walked back toward the house.
“Want to hear something funny?” she said. “I was really worried when you came back.”
“Why?”
She shrugged and laid her head on his shoulder. “Remember when you left? You promised you’d come back someday and make us all sorry.”
“Did I?” he asked with a laugh and pulled her closer to his side. “Kids sure say some dumb things, don’t they?”
Chapter Twelve
“That should just about do it.” Penny turned the chain saw off and stepped back from the bush.
“Looks much better,” Brad agreed. “Now make sure you send a bill for this.”
She pushed her safety goggles up onto her forehead. “Oh, come on. It only took an hour.”
“I mean it. The estate will pay for it.”
She could see the mulish look in his eyes and the stubborn tensing of his jaw. She was dancing too close to the man’s pride, so she nodded. “Sure. I’ll send a bill.”
“I’ll be watching for it.”
She just made a face at him as she carried the chain saw over to the porch and sat down on the top step. Brad followed. It was another doozy of a day, hot and humid with storms hovering on the horizon. The kind of storms that never cooled things off, but only made them worse. She just hoped they wouldn’t leave a lot of damage in their wake. The extra income it brought her was never worth the heartache of others.
“Dorothy called just before you came,” Brad said. “Somebody’s coming to look at the house tonight.”
“Already?” Her heart sank. “That’s fast.”
“She doesn’t know who it is, but he sounded serious when he made the appointment with Nancy.”
“Great.” She hoped her voice sounded more excited than she felt and thought it was time to send her feelings on vacation. “Oh, I think I’ve finally convinced Gran to let me get her some office help. I’m going to look for somebody parttime, and then hopefully have them take over completely. Let her work some if she wants, but only if she wants.”
&n
bsp; “She should enjoy that,” Brad said. “It’ll give her time to work full-time on her private investigating.”
Penny lay back on her elbows with a groan. “That’s all that I need.”
“It’s a harmless hobby,” he said.
“That could land her in jail one of these days.”
“I doubt it. She’s not going to do something dumb.”
But how did one define dumb? Maybe letting her heart wander into wherever it wanted this past week was dumb.
As if to defy her own troubling thoughts, she reached over to lightly caress Brad’s hand. Their eyes met, his darkened, then he leaned forward to brush her lips with his.
It was just a light touch, a teasing caress, but the fires seemed to take hold of them both and burn them with a scorching flame. Supporting herself with one elbow, she wrapped her other arm around him to hold him close. But it was not nearly close enough. Even as his lips took hers, devouring them with his hunger, the yearning within her grew and grew until she was all too conscious of that big empty house behind them. That—
He pulled away from her with a frown. “What’s that?”
She heard it then. Her cell phone was ringing. One part of her wanted to just let it ring, the other part knew she had to answer. What if it was Gran?
She pulled completely away from Brad and walked over to get the phone from her tool pack. “Penny Donnelly,” she said into it.
“Ms. Donnelly?” A vaguely familiar voice was at the other end. “This is Jane Danvers, calling from the Smithsonian. I spoke to you earlier in the week about the Oz seminar.”
“Yes?” Penny felt her stomach turn to lead. Something in the woman’s voice scared her.
“I’m afraid that there’s been a mistake,” she said. “We are going to have to withdraw our invitation to speak at the seminar.”
Penny’s stomach fell, all hollow and empty, and her heart ached. Somehow she had known it was too good to be true. Somehow she had known they would realize she wasn’t what they thought or wanted.
“I see,” Penny said slowly. Brad frowned in concern, and Penny reached for his hand. This felt worse than she could have possibly imagined—to have her dream snatched away like this! “Can you tell me what happened?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say more,” the woman said. “I really am sorry if this caused you any inconvenience.”
Inconvenience? This wasn’t about inconvenience, it was about a broken heart. “Was it my abstract?” she asked. “I can redo it.”
“Really, I am not at liberty—” The woman sighed. “I shouldn’t be saying anything more, but it had nothing to do with any abstract.”
“Then why?”
There was a long pause, then the woman spoke again. “Look, someone tried to buy you an invitation to speak at the conference. The committee is working very hard to make this a respected academic event and even that attempt at impropriety was enough to make them back off.”
The more the woman spoke, the more confused Penny was getting. “But who did that?” she asked.
“I’ve said more than I should have,” the woman told her. “I’m sorry about it. I really am. But I cannot say more.” The connection was broken.
Penny slowly brought her arm down, feeling stunned. She couldn’t believe this had happened. To go from her ecstasy at being asked to the reality of rejection.
“Penny?”
She looked at Brad, his blue eyes so concerned and caring. For ever so short a time, they had radiated pride, but that was turning out to be a distant dream.
“They withdrew the invitation to speak at the conference,” she told him.
“What!”
His shock matched her own. No, maybe it was greater. Deep down, she had always marveled that she had been asked, had never quite believed it could be happening. Somehow he had never doubted.
She squeezed his hand. “Looks like Gran’s not going to be able to brag about me,” she told him. “They don’t want me after all.”
“What happened?”
She shrugged, fighting back the tears of shame. It would have been better not to have been asked, than to have them take it back. “I don’t know. Somebody tried to buy me my spot.”
“But they had already asked you,” he said.
“I don’t know.” She sank back down to the porch step, letting the tears slowly trickle down her cheeks. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. Who would try to buy me a spot, anyway?”
“They didn’t say?”
Shaking her head, she stared off down the street. “It can only have been one person,” she said slowly.
“Oh?” He sounded hesitant, as if he couldn’t think of anybody.
“Alex,” she stated. “Who else? We had this deal. He was going to help me and I would cut down his elm tree.”
“He did this to get you to cut down a tree?”
It did sound fantastic. “No. It probably was just because he knew how important this was to me. He must have known I couldn’t do it on my own and tried to use his influence to get me in.”
“You think he has that kind of influence?”
She got to her feet with a bitter laugh. “Apparently not, since they got mad at his attempt.” She picked up the chain saw. “I’m going to go down and have a talk with him.”
“Maybe you should leave the chain saw here.”
She looked at it in her hand, and then over at him. She laughed, a real laugh this time. “I’m not going to use it on him,” she said. “It was a stupid dream. One I should have known I had no chance of reaching. I just wish he hadn’t interfered.”
“Don’t talk that way, Penny. It was a good dream.”
She said nothing, just carried her chain saw to the truck while he brought her tool pack. She tossed the chain saw into the back, then her tools.
“I’ll see you later,” she said.
He grabbed her hand as she turned. “Pen, I’m so sorry.”
His voice tore at something inside her, his regret was so real. All she could do was nod or she’d start crying again. She got in the truck and turned toward Alex’s house.
Damn. Damn. Damn. What in the world had happened?
Brad went into the house, slamming the door behind him. All he could think about was Penny’s words last night. How she’d been afraid he had come back to make them all sorry. That hadn’t been his intent, but it sure had been the result.
He got the cell phone and dialed his lawyer in L.A. George must have screwed up. Normally he handled Brad’s negotiations just fine, but maybe these had been more delicate. Maybe he’d bullied when he should have groveled. No matter now, Brad would find out what happened and then fix it. He was not going to spoil things for her.
His lawyer came on the line in about a half second. “Hey, Brad.”
Brad found the cheery tone more than a little aggravating, but swallowed his annoyance. “I want to talk about this Wizard of Oz conference. What the hell did you do?”
“What do you mean, what did I do? I did what you told me to. I contacted some people and offered the deal. The last I heard, they had tentatively agreed.”
“Yeah? Well, whoever agreed got overruled. Penny got asked a few days ago and then just got a call that they dumped her.”
“How can they do that? Somebody’s jerking us around.”
Brad sighed. “Just tell me what you did and who you talked to.”
“Well, you called early Tuesday morning and I had Edna track down the program committee. Late Tuesday morning, I called the chair and when I couldn’t reach him, I called the next in line. And got a tentative okay.”
“Well, I guess the chair disagreed because—” Brad stopped. Damn. “Late Tuesday morning, Pacific time?”
“Yeah, Pacific time.”
“Penny got the call Tuesday around noon. Indiana time. That would have been about an hour before you talked to anybody.”
“So?”
“So she had gotten in on her own and I blew it for her.”
“Hell.”
Brad would have put it a bit stronger, but it wasn’t wortharguing right now.
“Let me make some calls,” George said. “I’ll blame it on moonbeams. Or a bad batch of tofu. You know, some California nut thing.”
As tempting as that was, Brad knew he couldn’t do it. “No. It’s my fault and I need to make the call. I need to apologize. Just give me the names of the people on the committee.”
George offered a few more words of argument, but in the end, he just gave Brad the name of the committee chair—a retired professor of English at an elite university out East. Brad dialed the man.
He answered on the second ring. “Hello.” The tone was old and formal. Even though his name was Michael, Brad would’ve bet he was never called Mike.
“Dr. Bennett? My name is Brad Corrigan. I’m calling about the Oz seminar and a Ms. Penny Donnelly.”
There was a long, tense silence on the line. “I know who you are, Mr. Corrigan.” Brad could hear the icicles crackle on the line. “And about your attempt to corrupt this committee. The situation is closed.”
“Wait a minute. I’m the one that screwed up, not Penny. It’s not fair to punish her.”
“I will not have coercion attached to this seminar, Mr. Corrigan. Not the slightest hint of it.”
He wanted to call the guy names, to tell him he was acting like an idiot No one had treated Brad this way since he was a kid, not with his money and power. Yet for Penny’s sake, he held his temper. “Look, I really am sorry. I was completely wrong and—”
“The matter is closed. Please do not call me again.” The dial tone filled the silence.
Brad slowly hung up. He had screwed up royally. All he’d wanted was to make Penny’s dreams come true, and he’d spoiled everything for her.
No, he had made her dream come true. Her dream that he’d come and they’d all be sorry. Damn.
It was time to face the music. Time to take the blame.
“Why are you denying it?” Penny cried as she paced Alex’s living room.
She ached all over—her eyes stung from fighting back the tears, her throat was so tight it hurt to breathe and her stomach was a solid rock of nerves. She just wanted to know why Alex had interfered, but all she’d gotten out of him was denials.
If I Only Had A...Husband (The Bridal Circle #1) Page 20