by Nora Roberts
“It’s all right with me. I wondered if she’d show herself to one of us, since we started looking into it. Try to point us in the right direction.”
“I had a dream.” Since it made her feel silly to talk about it, Stella topped off her glass of champagne. “A kind of continuation of one I had a few weeks ago. Neither of them was very clear—or the details of them go foggy on me. But I know it—they—have to do with a garden I’ve planted, and a blue dahlia.”
“Do dahlias come in blue?” Hayley wondered.
“They do. They’re not common,” Roz explained, “but you can hybridize them in shades of blue.”
“This was like nothing I’ve ever seen. It was ... electric, intense. This wildly vivid blue, and huge. And she was in the dream. I didn’t see her, but I felt her.”
“Hey!” Hayley pushed herself forward. “Maybe her name was Dahlia.”
“That’s a good thought,” Roz commented. “If we’re researching ghosts, it’s not a stretch to consider that a dream’s connected in some way.”
“Maybe.” Frowning, Stella sipped again. “I could hear her, but I couldn’t see her. Even more, I could feel her, and there was something dark about it, something frightening. She wanted me to get rid of it. She was insistent, angry, and, I don’t know how to explain it, but she was there. How could she be in a dream?”
“I don’t know,” Roz replied. “But I don’t care for it.”
“Neither do I. It’s too ... intimate. Hearing her inside my head that way, whispering.” Even now, she shivered. “When I woke up, I knew she’d been there, in the room, just as she’d been there, in the dream.”
“It’s scary,” Hayley agreed. “Dreams are supposed to be personal, just for ourselves, unless we want to share them. Do you think the flower had something to do with her? I don’t get why she wants you to get rid of it.”
“I wish I knew. It could’ve been symbolic. Of the gardens here, or the nursery. I don’t know. But dahlias are a particular favorite of mine, and she wanted it gone.”
“Something else to put in the mix.” Roz took a long sip of champagne. “Let’s give it a rest tonight, before we spook ourselves completely. We can try to carve out some time this week to look for names.”
“Ah, I’ve made some tentative plans for Wednesday after work. If you wouldn’t mind watching the boys for a couple of hours.”
“I think between us we can manage them,” Roz agreed.
“Another date with Mr. Hunky?”
With a laugh, Roz ate more caviar. “I assume that would be Logan.”
“According to Hayley,” Stella stated. “I was going to go by and see his place. I’d like a firsthand look at how he’s landscaping it.” She downed more champagne. “And while that’s perfectly true, the main reason I’m going is to have sex with him. Probably. Unless I change my mind. Or he changes his. So.” She set down her empty glass. “There it is.”
“I’m not sure what you’d like us to say,” Roz said after a moment.
“Have fun?” Hayley suggested. Then looked down at her belly. “And play safe.”
“I’m only telling you because you’d know anyway, or suspect, or wonder. It seems better not to dance around it. And it doesn’t seem right for me to ask you to watch my kids while I’m off ... while I’m off without being honest about it.”
“It is your life, Stella,” Roz pointed out.
“Yeah.” Hayley took the last delicious sip of her champagne. “Not that I wouldn’t be willing to hear the details. I think hearing about sex is as close as I’m getting to it for a long time. So if you want to share ...”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Now I’d better go down and round up my boys. Thanks for the celebration, Roz.”
“We earned it.”
As Stella walked away, she heard Roz’s questioning “Mr. Hunky?” And the dual peals of female laughter.
fourteen
GUILT TUGGED AT STELLA AS SHE BUZZED HOME TO clean up before her date with Logan. No, not date, she corrected as she jumped into the shower. It wasn’t a date unless there were plans. This was a drop-by.
So now they’d had an outing, a date, and a drop-by. It was the strangest relationship she’d ever had.
But whatever she called it, she felt guilty. She wasn’t the one giving her kids their evening meal and listening to their day’s adventures while they ate.
It wasn’t that she had to be with them every free moment, she thought as she jumped back out of the shower again. That sort of thing wasn’t good for them—or for her. It wasn’t as if they’d starve if she wasn’t the one to put food in front of them.
But still, it seemed awfully selfish of her to give them over to someone else’s care just so she could be with a man.
Be intimate with a man, if things went as she expected.
Sorry, kids, Mom can’t have dinner with you tonight. She’s going to go have some hot, sweaty sex.
God.
She slathered on cream as she struggled between anticipation and guilt.
Maybe she should put it off. Unquestionably she was rushing this step, and that wasn’t like her. When she did things that weren’t like her, it was usually a mistake.
She was thirty-three years old, and entitled to a physical relationship with a man she liked, a man who stirred her up, a man, who it turned out, she had considerable in common with.
Thirty-three. Thirty-four in August, she reminded herself and winced. Thirty-four wasn’t early thirties anymore. It was mid-thirties. Shit.
Okay, she wasn’t going to think about that. Forget the numbers. She’d just say she was a grown woman. That was better.
Grown woman, she thought, and tugged on her robe so she could work on her face. Grown, single woman. Grown, single man. Mutual interests between them, reasonable sense of companionship. Intense sexual tension.
How could a woman think straight when she kept imagining what it would be like to have a man’s hands—
“Mom!”
She stared at her partially made-up face in the mirror. “Yes?”
The knocking was like machine-gun fire on the bathroom door.
“Mom! Can I come in? Can I? Mom!”
She pulled open the door herself to see Luke, rosy with rage, his fists bunched at his side. “What’s the matter?”
“He’s looking at me.”
“Oh, Luke.”
“With the face, Mom. With ... the ... face.”
She knew the face well. It was the squinty-eyed, smirky sneer that Gavin had designed to torment his brother. She knew damn well he practiced it in the mirror.
“Just don’t look back at him.”
“Then he makes the noise.”
The noise was a hissing puff, which Gavin could keep up for hours if called for. Stella was certain that even the most hardened CIA agent would crack under its brutal power.
“All right.” How the hell was she supposed to gear herself up for sex when she had to referee? She swung out of the bath, through the boys’ room and into the sitting room across the hall, where she’d hoped her sons could spend the twenty minutes it took her to get dressed companion-ably watching cartoons.
Foolish woman, she thought. Foolish, foolish woman.
Gavin looked up from his sprawl on the floor when she came in. His face was the picture of innocence under his mop of sunny hair.
Haircuts next week, she decided, and noted it in her mental files.
He held a Matchbox car and was absently spinning its wheels while cartoons rampaged on the screen. There were several other cars piled up, lying on their sides or backs as if there’d been a horrendous traffic accident. Unfortunately the miniature ambulance and police car appeared to have had a nasty head-on collision.
Help was not on the way.
“Mom, your face looks crooked.”
“Yes, I know. Gavin, I want you to stop it.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
She felt, actually felt, the sharp edges of the shrill scream
razor up her throat. Choke it back, she ordered herself. Choke it back. She would not scream at her kids the way her mother had screamed at her.
“Maybe you’d like to not do anything in your room, alone, for the rest of the evening.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Gavin!” She cut off the denial before it dragged that scream out of her throat. Instead her voice was full of weight and aggravation. “Don’t look at your brother. Don’t hiss at your brother. You know it annoys him, which is exactly why you do it, and I want you to stop.”
Innocence turned into a scowl as Gavin rammed the last car into the tangle of disabled vehicles. “How come I always get in trouble?”
“Yes, how come?” Stella shot back, with equal exasperation.
“He’s just being a baby.”
“I’m not a baby. You’re a dickhead.”
“Luke!” Torn between laughter and shock, Stella rounded on Luke. “Where did you hear that word?”
“Somewhere. Is it a swear?”
“Yes, and I don’t want you to say it again.” Even when it’s apt, she thought as she caught Gavin making the face.
“Gavin, I can cancel my plans for this evening. Would you like me to do that, and stay home?” She spoke in calm, almost sweet tones. “We can spend your play hour cleaning your room.”
“No.” Outgunned, he poked at the pileup. “I won’t look at him anymore.”
“Then if it’s all right with you, I’ll go finish getting ready.”
She heard Luke whisper, “What’s a dickhead?” to Gavin as she walked out. Rolling her eyes to the ceiling, she kept going.
“THEY’RE AT EACH OTHER TONIGHT,” STELLA WARNED Roz.
“Wouldn’t be brothers if they weren’t at each other now and then.” She looked over to where the boys, the dog, and Hayley romped in the yard. “They seem all right now.”
“It’s brewing, under the surface, like a volcano. One of them’s just waiting for the right moment to spew over the other.”
“We’ll see if we can distract them. If not, and they get out of hand, I’ll just chain them in separate corners until you get back. I kept the shackles I used on my boys. Sentimental.”
Stella laughed, and felt completely reassured. “Okay. But you’ll call me if they decide to be horrible brats. I’ll be home in time to put them to bed.”
“Go, enjoy yourself. And if you’re not back, we can manage it.”
“You make it too easy,” Stella told her.
“No need for it to be hard. You know how to get there now?”
“Yes. That’s the easy part.”
She got in her car, gave a little toot of the horn and a wave. They’d be fine, she thought, watching in the rearview as her boys tumbled onto the ground with Parker. She couldn’t have driven away if she wasn’t sure of that.
It was tougher to be sure she’d be fine.
She could enjoy the drive. The early-spring breeze sang through the windows to play across her face. Tender green leaves hazed the trees, and the redbuds and wild dogwoods teased out blooms to add flashes of color.
She drove past the nursery and felt the quick zip of pride and satisfaction because she was a part of it now.
Spring had come to Tennessee, and she was here to experience it. With her windows down and the wind streaming over her, she thought she could smell the river. Just a hint of something great and powerful, contrasting with the sweet perfume of magnolia.
Contrasts, she supposed, were the order of the day now. The dreamy elegance and underlying strength of the place that was now her home, the warm air that beat the calendar to spring while the world she’d left behind still shoveled snow.
Herself, a careful, practical-natured woman driving to the bed of a man she didn’t fully understand.
Nothing seemed completely aligned any longer. Blue dahlias, she decided. Her life, like her dreams, had big blue dahlias cropping up to change the design.
For tonight at least, she was going to let it bloom.
She followed the curve of the road, occupying her mind with how they would handle the weekend rush at the nursery.
Though “rush,” she admitted, wasn’t precisely the word. No one, staff or customer, seemed to rush—unless she counted herself.
They came, they meandered, browsed, conversed, ambled some more. They were served, with unhurried graciousness and a lot more conversation.
The slower pace sometimes made her want to grab something and just get the job done. But the fact that it often took twice as long to ring up an order than it should—in her opinion—didn’t bother anyone.
She had to remind herself that part of her duties as manager was to blend efficiency with the culture of the business she managed.
One more contrast.
In any case, the work schedule she’d set would ensure that there were enough hands and feet to serve the customers. She and Roz had already poured another dozen concrete planters, and would dress them tomorrow. She could have Hayley do a few. The girl had a good eye.
Her father and Jolene were going to take the boys on Saturday, and that she couldn’t feel guilty about, as all involved were thrilled with the arrangement.
She needed to check on the supply of plastic trays and carrying boxes, oh, and take a look at the field plants, and ...
Her thoughts trailed off when she saw the house. She couldn’t say what she’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this.
It was gorgeous.
A little run-down, perhaps, a little tired around the edges, but beautiful. Bursting with potential.
Two stories of silvered cedar stood on a terraced rise, the weathered wood broken by generous windows. On the wide, covered porch—she supposed it might be called a veranda—were an old rocker, a porch swing, a high-backed bench. Pots and baskets of flowers were arranged among them.
On the side, a deck jutted out, and she could see a short span of steps leading from it to a pretty patio.
More chairs there, more pots—oh, she was falling in love—then the land took over again and spread out to a lovely grove of trees.
He was doing shrubberies in the terraces—Japanese andromeda with its urn-shaped flowers already in bud, glossy-leaved bay laurels, the fountaining old-fashioned weigela, and a sumptuous range of azalea just waiting to explode into bloom.
And clever, she thought, creeping the car forward, clever and creative to put phlox and candytuft and ground junipers on the lowest terrace to base the shrubs and spill over the wall.
He’d planted more above in the yard—a magnolia, still tender with youth, and a dogwood blooming Easter pink. On the far side was a young weeping cherry.
Some of these were the very trees he’d hammered her over moving the first time they’d met. Just what did it say about her feelings for him that it made her smile to remember that?
She pulled into the drive beside his truck and studied the land.
There were stakes, with thin rope riding them in a kind of meandering pattern from drive to porch. Yes, she saw what he had in mind. A lazy walkway to the porch, which he would probably anchor with other shrubs or dwarf trees. Lovely. She spotted a pile of rocks and thought he must be planning to build a rock garden. There, just at the edge of the trees, would be perfect.
The house needed its trim painted, and the fieldstone that rose from its foundation repointed. A cutting garden over there, she thought as she stepped out, naturalized daffodils just inside the trees. And along the road, she’d do ground cover and shrubs, and plant daylilies, maybe some iris.
The porch swing should be painted, too, and there should be a table there—and there. A garden bench near the weeping cherry, maybe another path leading from there to around the back. Flagstone, perhaps. Or pretty stepping-stones with moss or creeping thyme growing between them.
She stopped herself as she stepped onto the porch. He’d have his own plans, she reminded herself. His house, his plans. No matter how much the place called to her, it wasn’t hers.
&n
bsp; She still had to find hers.
She took a breath, fluffed a hand through her hair, and knocked.
It was a long wait, or it seemed so to her while she twisted her watchband around her finger. Nerves began to tap-dance in her belly as she stood there in the early-evening breeze.
When he opened the door, she had to paint an easy smile on her face. He looked so male. The long, muscled length of him clad in faded jeans and a white T-shirt. His hair was mussed; she’d never seen it any other way. There was too much of it, she thought, to be tidy. And tidy would never suit him.
She held out the pot of dahlias she’d put together. “I’ve had dahlias on the mind,” she told him. “I hope you can use them.”
“I’m sure I can. Thanks. Come on in.”
“I love the house,” she began, “and what you’re doing with it. I caught myself mentally planting—”
She stopped. The door led directly into what she supposed was a living room, or family room. Whatever it was, it was completely empty. The space consisted of bare dry-wall, scarred floors, and a smoke-stained brick fireplace with no mantel.
“You were saying?”
“Great views.” It was all she could think of, and true enough. Those generous windows brought the outdoors in. It was too bad in was so sad.
“I’m not using this space right now.”
“Obviously.”
“I’ve got plans for it down the road, when I get the time, and the inclination. Why don’t you come on back before you start crying or something.”
“Was it like this, when you bought it?”
“Inside?” He shrugged a shoulder as he walked back through a doorway into what might have been a dining room. It, too, was empty, its walls covered with faded, peeling wallpaper. She could see brighter squares on it where pictures must have hung.
“Wall-to-wall carpet over these oak floors,” he told her. “Leak upstairs had water stains all over the ceiling. And there was some termite damage. Tore out the walls last winter.”
“What’s this space?”
“Haven’t decided yet.”
He went through another door, and Stella let out a whistle of breath.