In the Garden Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  “Figured you’d be more comfortable in here.” He set the flowers on a sand-colored granite counter and just leaned back to let her look.

  It was his mark on the kitchen, she had no doubt. It was essentially male and strongly done. The sand tones of the counters were echoed in the tiles on the floor and offset by a deeper taupe on the walls. Cabinets were a dark, rich wood with pebbled-glass doors. There were herbs growing in small terra-cotta pots on the wide sill over the double sinks, and a small stone hearth in the corner.

  Plenty of workspace on the long L of the counter, she calculated, plenty of eating space in the diagonal run of the counter that separated the kitchen area from a big, airy sitting space where he’d plopped down a black leather couch and a couple of oversized chairs.

  And best of all, he’d opened the back wall with glass. You would sit there, Stella thought, and be a part of the gardens he was creating outside. Step through to the flagstone terrace and wander into flowers and trees.

  “This is wonderful. Wonderful. Did you do it yourself?”

  Right at the moment, seeing that dreamy look on her face, he wanted to tell her he’d gathered the sand to make the glass. “Some. Work slows down in the winter, so I can deal with the inside of the place when I get the urge. I know people who do good work. I hire, or I barter. Want a drink?”

  “Hmm. Yes. Thanks. The other room has to be your formal dining room, for when you entertain, or have people over for dinner. Of course, everyone’s going to end up in here. It’s irresistible.”

  She wandered back into the kitchen and took the glass of wine he offered. “It’s going to be fabulous when you’re done. Unique, beautiful, and welcoming. I love the colors you’ve picked in here.”

  “Last woman I had in here said they seemed dull.”

  “What did she know?” Stella sipped and shook her head. “No, they’re earthy, natural—which suits you and the space.”

  She glanced toward the counter, where there were vegetables on a cutting board. “And obviously you cook, so the space needs to suit you. Maybe I can get a quick tour along with this wine, then I’ll let you get to your dinner.”

  “Not hungry? I got some yellowfin tuna’s going to go to waste, then.”

  “Oh.” Her stomach gave a little bounce. “I didn’t intend to invite myself to dinner. I just thought ...”

  “You like grilled tuna?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “Fine. You want to eat before or after?”

  She felt the blood rush to her cheeks, then drain out again. “Ah ...”

  “Before or after I show you around?”

  There was enough humor in his voice to tell her he knew just where her mind had gone. “After.” She took a bracing sip of wine. “After. Maybe we could start outside, before we lose the light.”

  He took her out on the terrace, and her nerves eased back again as they talked about the lay of his land, his plans for it.

  She studied the ground he’d tilled and nodded as he spoke of kitchen gardens, rock gardens, water gardens. And her heart yearned.

  “I’m getting these old clinker bricks,” he told her. “There’s a mason I know. I’m having him build a three-sided wall here, about twenty square feet inside it.”

  “You’re doing a walled garden? God, I am going to cry. I always wanted one. The house in Michigan just didn’t work for one. I promised myself when I found a new place I’d put one in. With a little pool, and stone benches and secret corners.”

  She took a slow turn. A lot of hard, sweaty work had already gone into this place, she knew. And a lot of hard, sweaty work was still to come. A man who could do this, would do it, wanted to do this, was worth knowing.

  “I envy you—and admire you—every inch of this. If you need some extra hands, give me a call. I miss gardening for the pleasure of it.”

  “You want to come by sometime, bring those hands and the kids, I’ll put them to work.” When she just lifted her eyebrows, he added. “Kids don’t bother me, if that’s what you’re thinking. And there’s no point planning a yard space where kids aren’t welcome.”

  “Why don’t you have any? Kids?”

  “Figured I would by now.” He reached out to touch her hair, pleased that she hadn’t bothered with pins. “Things don’t always work out like you figure.”

  She walked with him back toward the house. “People often say divorce is like death.”

  “I don’t think so.” He shook his head, taking his time on the walk back. “It’s like an end. You make a mistake, you fix it, end it, start over from there. It was her mistake as well as mine. We just didn’t figure that out until we were already married.”

  “Most men, given the opportunity, will cheerfully trash an ex.”

  “Waste of energy. We stopped loving each other, then we stopped liking each other. That’s the part I’m sorry about,” he added, then opened the wide glass door to the kitchen. “Then we stopped being married, which was the best thing for both of us. She stayed where she wanted to be, I came back to where I wanted to be. It was a couple years out of our lives, and it wasn’t all bad.”

  “Sensible.” But marriage was a serious business, she thought. Maybe the most serious. The ending of it should leave some scars, shouldn’t it?

  He poured more wine into their glasses, then took her hand. “I’ll show you the rest of the house.”

  Their footsteps echoed as they moved through empty spaces. “I’m thinking of making a kind of library here, with work space. I could do my designs here.”

  “Where do you do them now?”

  “Out of the bedroom mostly, or in the kitchen. Whatever’s handiest. Powder room over there, needs a complete overhaul, eventually. Stairs are sturdy, but need to be sanded and buffed up.”

  He led her up, and she imagined paint on the walls, some sort of technique, she decided, that blended earthy colors and brought out the tones of wood.

  “I’d have files and lists and clippings and dozens of pictures cut out of magazines.” She slanted him a look. “I don’t imagine you do.”

  “I’ve got thoughts, and I don’t mind giving them time to stew a while. I grew up on a farm, remember? Farm’s got a farmhouse, and my mama loved to buy old furniture and fix it up. Place was packed with tables—she had a weakness for tables. For now, I’m enjoying having nothing much but space around.”

  “What did she do with all of it when they moved? Ah, someone mentioned your parents moved to Montana,” she added when he stopped to give her a speculative look.

  “Yeah, got a nice little place in Helena. My daddy goes fly-fishing nearly every damn day, according to my mama, anyway. And she took her favorite pieces with her, filled a frigging moving van with stuff. She sold some, gave some to my sister, dumped some on me. I got it stored. Gotta get around to going through it one of these days, see what I can use.”

  “If you went through it, you’d be able to decide how you want to paint, decorate, arrange your rooms. You’d have some focal points.”

  “Focal points.” He leaned against the wall, just grinned at her.

  “Landscaping and home decorating have the same basic core of using space, focal points, design—and you know that very well or you couldn’t have done what you did with your kitchen. So I’ll shut up now.”

  “Don’t mind hearing you talk.”

  “Well, I’m done now, so what’s the next stop on the tour?”

  “Guess this would be. I’m sort of using this as an office.” He gestured to a door. “And I don’t think you want to look in there.”

  “I can take it.”

  “I’m not sure I can.” He tugged her away, moved on to another door. “You’ll get all steamed up about filing systems and in and out boxes or whatever, and it’ll screw up the rhythm. No point in using the grounds as foreplay if I’m going to break the mood by showing you something that’ll insult your sensibilities.”

  “The grounds are foreplay?”

  He just smiled and drew
her through a door.

  It was his bedroom and, like the kitchen, had been finished in a style that mirrored him. Simple, spacious, and male, with the outdoors blending with the in. The deck she’d seen was outside atrium doors, and beyond it the spring green of trees dominated the view. The walls were a dull, muted yellow, set off by warm wood tones in trim, in floor, in the pitched angles of the ceiling, where a trio of skylights let in the evening glow.

  His bed was wide. A man of his size would want room there, she concluded. For sleeping, and for sex. Black iron head- and footboards and a chocolate-brown spread.

  There were framed pencil drawings on the walls, gardens in black and white. And when she moved closer, she saw the scrawled signature at the lower corner. “You did these? They’re wonderful.”

  “I like to get a visual of projects, and sometimes I sketch them up. Sometimes the sketches aren’t half bad.”

  “These are a lot better than half bad, and you know it.” She couldn’t imagine those big, hard hands drawing anything so elegant, so lovely and fresh. “You’re a constant surprise to me, Logan. A study of contrasts. I was thinking about contrasts on the way over here tonight, about how things aren’t lined up the way I thought they would be. Should be.”

  She turned back to him, gestured toward his sketches. “These are another blue dahlia.”

  “Sorry—not following you. Like the one in your dream?”

  “Dreams. I’ve had two now, and neither was entirely comfortable. In fact, they’re getting downright scary. But the thing is the dahlia, it’s so bold and beautiful, so unexpected. But it’s not what I planned. Not what I imagined. Neither is this.”

  “Planned, imagined, or not, I wanted you here.”

  She took another sip of wine. “And here I am.” She breathed slow in and out. “Maybe we should talk about ... what we expect and how we’ll—”

  He moved in, pulled her against him. “Why don’t we plant another blue dahlia and just see what happens.”

  Or we could try that, she thought when his mouth was on hers. The low tickle in her belly spread, and the needy part of her whispered, Thank God, inside her head.

  She rose on her toes, all the way up, like a dancer on point, to meet him. And angling her body more truly to his, let him take the glass out of her hand.

  Then his hands were in her hair, fingers streaming through it, clutching at it, and her arms were locked around him.

  “I feel dizzy,” she whispered. “Something about you makes me dizzy.”

  His blood fired, blasting a bubbling charge of lust straight to his belly. “Then you should get off your feet.” In one quick move he scooped her up in his arms. She was, he thought, the sort of woman a man wanted to scoop up. Feminine and slight and curvy and soft. Holding her made him feel impossibly strong, uncommonly tender.

  “I want to touch you everywhere. Then start right back at the beginning and touch you everywhere again.” When he carried her to the bed, he felt sexy little tremors run through her. “Even when you annoy me, I want my hands on you.”

  “You must want them on me all the time, then.”

  “Truer words. Your hair drives me half crazy.” He buried his face in it as he lowered the two of them to the bed.

  “Me too.” Her skin sprang to life with a thousand nerves as his lips wandered down to her throat. “But probably for different reasons.”

  He bit that sensitive skin, lightly, like a man helping himself to a sample. And the sensation rippled through her in one long, sweet stream. “We’re grown-ups,” she began.

  “Thank God.”

  A shaky laugh escaped. “What I mean is we ...” His teeth explored the flesh just above her collarbone in that same testing nibble, and had a lovely fog settling over her brain. “Never mind.”

  He touched, just as he’d told her he wanted to. A long, smooth stroke from her shoulders down to her fingertips. A lazy pass over her hips, her thigh, as if he were sampling her shape as he’d sampled her flavor.

  Then his mouth was on hers again, hot and greedy. Those nerve endings exploded, electric jolts as his hands, his lips ran over her as if he were starved now for each separate taste. Hard hands, rough at the palms, rushed over her with both skill and desperation.

  Just as she’d imagined. Just as she’d wanted.

  Desires she’d ruthlessly buried broke the surface and screamed into life. Riding on the thrill, she dragged at his shirt until her hands found the hot, bare skin and dug in.

  Man and muscle.

  He found her breast, had her arching in delicious pleasure as his teeth nipped over shirt and bra to tantalize the flesh beneath, to stir the blood beneath into feverish, pulsing life. Everything inside her went full, and ripe, and ready.

  As senses awakened, slashing one against the other in an edgy tangle of needs, she gave herself over to them, to him. And she yearned for him, for that promise of release, in a way she hadn’t yearned for in so long. She wanted, craved, the heat that washed through her as the possessive stroke of those labor-scarred hands, the demanding crush of those insatiable lips, electrified her body.

  She wanted, craved, all these quivering aches, these madly churning needs and the freedom to meet them.

  She rose with him, body to body, moved with him, flesh to flesh. And drove him toward delirium with that creamy skin, those lovely curves. In the softening light, she looked beyond exquisite lying against the dark spread—that bright hair tumbled, those summer-blue eyes clouded with pleasure.

  Passion radiated from her, meeting and matching his own. And so he wanted to give her more, and take more, and simply drown himself in what they brought to each other. The scent of her filled him like breath.

  He murmured her name, savoring and exploiting as they explored each other. And there was more, he discovered, more than he’d expected.

  Her heart lurched as those rugged hands guided her up, over, through the steep rise of desire. The crest rolled through her, a long, endless swell of sultry heat. She arched up again, crying out as she clamped her arms around him, pulses galloping.

  Her mouth took his in a kind of ravenous madness, even as her mind screamed—Again!

  He held on, held strong while she rode the peak, and the thrill her response brought him made him tremble. He ached, heart, mind, loins, ached to the point of pain.

  And when he could bear it no longer, he drove into her.

  She cried out once more, a sound of both shock and triumph. And she was already moving with him, a quick piston of hips, as her hands came up to frame his face.

  She watched him, those blue eyes swimming, those lush lips trembling with each breath as they rose and fell together.

  In the whole of his life, he’d never seen such beauty bloom.

  When those eyes went blind, when they closed on a sobbing moan, he let himself go.

  HE WAS HEAVY. VERY HEAVY. STELLA LAY STILL beneath Logan and pondered the wonder of being pinned, helplessly, under a man. She felt loose and sleepy and utterly relaxed. She imagined there was probably a nice pink light beaming quietly out of her fingers and toes.

  His heart was thundering still. What woman wouldn’t feel smug and satisfied knowing she’d caused a big, strong man to lose his breath?

  Cat-content, she stroked her hands over his back.

  He grunted, and rolled off of her.

  She felt immediately exposed and self-conscious. Reaching out, she started to give the spread a little tug, to cover herself at least partially. Then he did something that froze her in place, and had her heart teetering.

  He took her hand and kissed her fingers.

  He said nothing, nothing at all, and she stayed very still while she tried to swallow her heart back into place.

  “Guess I’d better feed you now,” he said at length.

  “Ah, I should call and make sure the boys are all right.”

  “Go ahead.” He sat up, patting her naked thigh before he rolled out of bed and reached for his jeans. “I’ll go get things
started in the kitchen.”

  He didn’t bother with his shirt, but started out. Then he stopped, turned and looked at her.

  “What?” She lifted an arm, casually, she hoped, over her breasts.

  “I just like the way you look there. All mussed and flushed. Makes me want to muss and flush you some more, first chance I get.”

  “Oh.” She tried to formulate a response, but he was already sauntering off. And whistling.

  fifteen

  THE MAN COULD COOK. WITH LITTLE HELP FROM Stella, Logan put together a meal of delicately grilled tuna, herbed-up brown rice, and chunks of sautéed peppers and mushrooms. He was the sort of cook who dashed and dumped ingredients in by eye, or impulse, and seemed to enjoy it.

  The results were marvelous.

  She was an adequate cook, a competent one. She measured everything and considered cooking just one of her daily chores.

  It was probably a good analogy for who they were, she decided. And another reason why it made little sense for her to be eating in his kitchen or being naked in his bed.

  The sex had been ... incredible. No point in being less than honest about it. And after good, healthy sex she should’ve been feeling relaxed and loose and comfortable. Instead she felt tense and tight and awkward.

  It had been so intense, then he’d just rolled out of bed and started dinner. They might just as easily have finished a rousing match of tennis.

  Except he’d kissed her fingers, and that sweet, affectionate gesture had arrowed straight to her heart.

  Her problem, her problem, she reminded herself. Over-analyzing, over-compensating, over-something. But if she didn’t analyze something how did she know what it was?

  “Dinner okay?”

  She broke out of her internal debate to see him watching her steadily, with those strong jungle-cat eyes. “It’s terrific.”

  “You’re not eating much.”

  Deliberately she forked off more tuna. “I’ve never understood people who cook like you, like they do on some of the cooking shows. Tossing things together, shaking a little of this in, pinches of that. How do you know it’s right?”