She’d been on hold then, too.
“Turned in the rental, got this one used,” he’d said when he’d come in and placed a key on the counter before getting a drink of water. “Here’s a spare key in case you need it.”
“You bought a car?”
“More economical than renting one for any length of time. You were the one who said I might be here awhile.”
Just then the phone line clicked and a voice spoke. Zach waved his understanding of the situation and went back outside.
But she was far from understanding Zach.
Even as she’d confirmed the arrival date of the main order of tulip bulbs, questions had piled up in her head.
Who would have believed somebody would just go out and buy a car? Especially somebody who hadn’t even been sure that he would knock on his mother’s door yesterday. And yet that didn’t surprise her half as much as what Zach Corbett had bought. A sedan with a reputation for reliability and not a single pretension to hotness. He must not have much money or he’d never own something like that.
She’d completed the tulip call and dialed again. She’d tried for more than a week to reach the man who’d promised to move the donated trees. This time, at least, she got as far as having someone tell her to hold for him. It was sad when being put on hold was a sign of progress.
She looked out the window now and was caught short once again by the sight of the car Zach had bought.
Even with no money to burn, surely he’d had a choice of color, and this was not what she would have expected. The car was red—technically. But it was a deep, mellow maroon, not fiery salsa.
For some reason that reminded her of the phone conversation with her brother earlier today.
She’d fended off Rob’s questions about who was staying at the house until he’d started down the absurd track of it being someone of romantic interest to her. She’d stopped that by telling him it was Zach.
My God, he’s alive?
Very much so.
Good Lord, what about Nell?
That’s why he’s staying here.
Lana wouldn’t—? No, of course she wouldn’t. God— Steve’s got to be going nuts—after all these years of being afraid Zach was dead. But Nell… How the hell are they going to work this out?
It’s going to take time.
If Zach relinquishes any claim to Nell…. Will he?
I don’t know.
Where the hell has he been? What’s he been doing?
That one had stopped her.
She’d been spared answering, though, because Rob had realized the time and had to go. He hadn’t even given her his usual big-brotherly be-careful line.
Maybe that was because he knew Zach Corbett was no danger to her—not to her virtue and not to her heart. The latter because she’d never fallen for the Tobias heartthrob as a kid, so why should she at this point? The former because Zach had liked girls who were as loud and brash and showy as that motorcycle of his.
Her gaze still on the sedate sedan, Fran shifted in her chair.
Steve came out of his garage, glanced toward his brother, then began digging in the flower bed alongside the driveway. It wasn’t unheard of for Steve to come home for lunch, but it was strange to see him digging in the garden wearing work clothes. Annette’s car was there and so was Nell’s bike, so the whole family had had lunch together.
Zach took two large bags emblazoned with a discount store’s logo out of the sedan’s trunk, setting them aside. Next he took out a smaller bag and began stowing things from it around the driver’s seat.
That roused her curiosity. When he moved to the passenger side, he leaned in the open door, apparently working at something on the hump between the front seats—and giving her a fine view of worn jeans stretched over a rear end that roused…well, yes, curiosity, but also other responses.
Fran jerked her gaze away. Nell emerged from the garage on her bike, her school books in the basket. Fran couldn’t hear the words, but she’d heard Steve’s usual message to Nell many times—reminding her to be careful, to work hard, and wishing her a good afternoon at school.
Steve watched Nell, but from his angle he wouldn’t be able to see the way her gaze zoomed to Zach, still leaning inside the car.
Steve watched his daughter out of sight, then turned and looked at Zach. Zach, straightening out of the passenger door, looked back. Fran suspected he’d been watching Nell’s departure through the car windows.
Steve dropped the shovel, pivoted and went inside, leaving the garage door open.
Zach stood with his hands on his narrow hips, staring at his brother’s house. He dropped his head a moment, then straightened and strode across the street.
Fran let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.
But the air she pulled in to replace it didn’t bring any satisfaction. What was happening between the brothers? Would Zach get his answers? At least the ones Steve could provide. Did Zach have any inkling that most of his answers could only come from inside him?
Would Zach and Steve be able to resurrect the connection they’d once had? As different as they had always been, everyone with eyes knew the Corbett brothers were bound by loyalty, pride and, yes, love. But had Zach broken those ties when he’d left, not letting Steve even know he was alive?
Fran tried not to imagine what they were saying, tried not to worry how relationships and lives might be changing.
“Hello, Ms. Dalton?” The voice in her ear made her jump, and she almost lost the phone.
“Yes. Yes, Mr. Buchell. I’m calling to confirm the schedule we talked about.”
And then Fran saw Lana Corbett walking across the street toward Steve’s house—a house she had never been inside to Fran’s knowledge—and for Fran there was no question of not worrying.
Steve opened the back door before Zach could knock. Without a word he stepped back, clearing the way.
As Zach walked past his older brother he caught a motion from the corner of his eye. He turned and found Steve eyeing him, specifically the top of his head.
Steve used to have more than an inch of height on him. Now Zach had the advantage.
“I grew after I left,” he said. In more ways than one.
“Did you?”
The skeptical edge to that comment would have cut through the minimal control the younger Zach had had over his temper, and Steve knew it. The younger Steve wouldn’t have wielded that sort of edge.
If Zach hadn’t gotten the message already it was clear now—Steve would use any weapon if he felt it necessary in any matter concerning Nell.
But Zach’s control wasn’t held by a thread anymore.
“Would you like something to drink, Zach?” Annette stood on the far side of the counter that separated the entryway from the working area of the kitchen.
“No—” His scan of the room stopped on three wipe-off calendars labeled This Month, Next Month and The Month After. Underneath the headings were a dizzying array of multicolored appointments, deadlines and reminders. The life of a family. He forced himself to add, “Thank you.”
“I hear you think you’re going to stay in Tobias and work on the gardens.” Steve moved around him and stood beside Annette, his hands jammed in the pockets of his slacks.
Steve wore a white dress shirt, a subtle blue tie and quality leather shoes. He looked like what he was, a contented, prosperous, hardworking official. Zach wore jeans, a black T-shirt and running shoes. So he looked like what he was, too.
“I am staying and helping out Fran at Bliss House while this gets sorted out. As I’m sure Fran told you.”
“There’s nothing to sort—”
Annette talked over her husband. “Zach, you must have forgotten how Tobias operates if you think we didn’t hear about your plans from a dozen sources by now. And none of them was Fran.”
“You can’t just come back here and pick up like you never left,” Steve said, calmer now.
Zach pulled out a stool from under
the counter and sat. As a symbol that he wasn’t going anywhere just yet it was obvious, but he also needed to sit because his muscles suddenly wanted to jump and twitch. His legs hadn’t felt like that since… No, damn it, he was not going to think about that now.
“I thought you wanted me back,” he said. “Fran said you’d put ads in papers looking for me.”
“Yes, I did. And you never responded. Did you see them?”
“I saw…a few. I wasn’t ready to come back.”
Steve’s face twisted. Zach didn’t know if it was from anger or pain or both. Annette slipped her hand around his arm, slid it down to where his hand disappeared into his slacks pocket.
“I had private detectives looking for you,” Steve said.
“You did. I thought…” He’d thought the ads and detectives were Lana’s efforts to reel in the wayward Corbett. “Well, I wouldn’t recommend you hire either of them again. The guy from Milwaukee stuck strictly to the paper trail and it wasn’t hard to throw him off. The one from Beloit was better. But he tipped his hand, so when he showed up I already had a buddy who looks nothing like me ready to stand in for me. Only took a couple of days to persuade the guy he’d followed a false trail.”
“We thought you could be dead and you thought it was a game?” Steve demanded, his anger clear.
“No. I knew it was my life.” For a single beat of his pulse Zach saw an understanding in Steve’s eyes, then it was gone. “I can’t say it would have made a difference if I’d known it was you looking for me. I couldn’t have come back then.”
“But now you can?” Steve looked at him with the penetrating stare Zach used to think could see his every thought.
“Yeah, now I can,” he said. Though it wasn’t the truth. He hadn’t had a choice. “Steve, tell me what happened. We don’t have to solve everything now, but why did—”
The back door opened and Lana Corbett stalked in.
“Mother?” Steve and Annette stared at her as if she might be an apparition.
“You are discussing the future of the Corbetts. You cannot shut me out of that. You must have DNA tests.”
The clipped pronouncements and the focus on the vaunted name Corbett were exactly how Zach remembered his mother. A string of responses rose up. But her last edict blocked them all in his throat.
“Lily lied from beginning to end,” Lana continued, “so we have no assurance that she didn’t lie about Nell’s father, as well. Why you insisted on accepting her word for everything, Steven, I never will understand. Only through a DNA test will we know for certain. As I told you at the start, there is every possibility that Zachary is not the father, so—”
“She’s mine.”
Two words. They could change a life. Zach hadn’t known he was going to speak them. He’d thought he’d broken that habit years ago. But here he was, back in Tobias, facing his mother, and words were coming out before he considered them.
At least these had been the right words.
“Nell is my daughter.” Zach said it again.
“You can’t possibly know—”
He met Lana’s cold certainty with deeper certainty. “I know. Lily wasn’t sleeping with anyone else.”
She’d wanted to land a Corbett from the time she was a high-school junior angling for Steve. Steve had broken it off before he left for college and then he started dating Annette. Zach knew damn well Lily had come on to him in hopes of making Steve jealous and winning him back from Annette.
It was when Zach had realized that Lily had given up on that hope and turned her attention to securing him—second-best Corbett, but still a Corbett—that he’d broken up with her. When she was using him, that was one thing. But to let her think he’d marry her…no.
But even when he’d been as blunt as he could be, she hadn’t given up hope. She certainly wouldn’t have jeopardized her ambitions to become the next Lana Corbett by having sex with anyone else.
“Besides,” Zach drawled, “take another look at the family album, Lana. The pictures of Father as a boy. He and Nell could be twins.”
The phone rang. It seemed to come from a distance, though Zach knew it was right here in the kitchen. Annette answered it.
“It wouldn’t matter if Nell didn’t have a drop of Corbett blood, Mother. She’s my daughter, and nothing—” Steve gave Zach a long look “—is going to change that.”
Lana pursed her mouth. “My point is—”
Annette’s urgent voice cut across her mother-in-law’s. Zach saw she’d already hung up. “Steve, Zach, Nell’s on her way back. She must have forgotten something. Unless…”
A look passed between Annette and Steve that piled layers on layers. The only one Zach caught was concern.
“She’ll come in the back. Go out the front, Zach,” Steve ordered.
“I won’t creep out like some—”
“The hell you won’t. This is my house and if I have to—”
“Stop it!” Annette’s demand silenced them both. Zach was aware that she looked from her husband to him and back, but most of his attention was focused straight ahead—meeting Steve’s glare. “Nell is the one who’s important. And she will not walk into this house to find you two arguing.”
Steve broke the look, turning to Annette.
“I’ll go,” Zach said. “For now. But I’m not going away. I—”
“If that’s a threat—”
“Steve,” Annette warned.
“I’m not threatening,” Zach said. “I’m making a promise. I’m not going anywhere until…until I know.”
“Know what?” Lana demanded.
“Know what I need to know.”
Zach found Fran standing beside the overloaded table writing a note, which she slid into the thickest folder.
“So what’s the plan?”
She looked up at his abrupt entry and equally abrupt question.
“I’m happy to tell you the plan for the garden, but that isn’t the plan you should be thinking about now.”
Her tone added meaning to the words. Fran must have seen him scuttle out the front door of Steve’s house as Nell went in the back. He’d heard their questions and answers—why wasn’t she at school, a forgotten paper—and then he’d quick-timed it across the street to Fran’s house like some fleeing felon.
“What’s the plan at the gardens today?” He met Fran’s gaze.
“Zach—”
“The gardens.”
She sighed.
“We’ll be working the soil in the section of the Grandmother’s Garden where the Garden Club ladies will be planting tomorrow.” Her tone changed at the end, and he knew she was watching Steve back his SUV out of his driveway with Nell in the passenger seat. Presumably heading off to take the girl to school. Probably also to ensure she had no contact with Zach. “Zach, you have to be—”
“Patient. I know. Ready to go?”
She nodded, picked up her purse, then opened her mouth again. Before she could say anything, he held the door for her to go out, then got his question in.
“What are the Garden Club ladies going to plant?”
“Tomorrow will be mostly tiger lilies for next year and pansies to add color for the opening. When the bulbs arrive, they’ll put in the daffodils and hyacinths—but only after a snowball, a white lilac and another peony are in place. Plus the tulips in several areas. Next spring, the Grandmother’s Garden will get a shot of color with phlox, Canterbury bells, sweet William, cottage pinks, rose campion—that’s a lychnis.” She caught herself. “But you’re not interested in that. The important thing is the soil needs to be worked in those areas. And carefully, to avoid disturbing existing plants.”
He’d known that question was the way to get her off the topic of his family. Her enthusiasm even eased some of the sourness in his mood.
“What’s your idea of working the soil?”
“Dig at least a foot, break it up, add plenty of humus. If there’s time before dark I’d love to work the soil for the kitche
n garden, too. We can add humus, mulch and let that work in over the winter. Perhaps set up fences for the vining vegetables… Well, we’ll see about that.”
“What kind of vegetables are you planning?”
“Asparagus, pepper, lettuce, salsify—the Victorians loved that, called it the oyster plant—beans, beets, carrots, onions, cucumber, tomato, cabbage. Lots of herbs.” She was so lost in delight she hardly seemed to notice he’d steered her to her car. “Oh, and rhubarb. Muriel Henderson—she’s in the Garden Club and is one of the craftspeople—has a great rhubarb crumble recipe we can serve in the tearoom.”
He opened the driver’s door before circling to the passenger side.
“And we’ll have flowers from the cutting garden—a border all around the kitchen garden.”
“Why not cut flowers from the other gardens?”
“Because that would deplete them.”
“Hard to believe a chain saw could deplete them the way you’re going,” he said over the top of her car.
She clicked her tongue, but her eyes creased. She started to get in.
“Fran.” She straightened, looking at him over the top of the car. “We didn’t settle a damned thing.”
Fran craned her neck to examine a trio of peonies near the construction.
“Still there, Fran. Just like I promised. Though I won’t take the rap if that cat of Miss Trudi’s has done something to them.”
She jumped at the amused voice behind her. She turned to Max Trevetti, Annette’s older brother and the man behind the renovations of Bliss House. Walking with him toward the southwest corner of the house where she and Zach stood were Suz Grant and Miss Trudi. Fran had been showing Zach what needed to be done before they went to the shed for tools.
“Max, I wasn’t…” Fran gave up the protest, because she had been checking up. “Thank you for taking care of them. Max, I don’t know if you remember Zach—Zach Corbett, Steve’s brother. He’s going to help me with the gardens for, uh, now.”
“Zach,” Max said neutrally. From his expression he already knew about Zach’s arrival and his relationship to Nell. Max had practically raised Annette, and he was fond of Nell and Steve. So maybe neutral was the best anyone could hope for in his dealings with Zach. “Don’t know that we’ve ever been introduced officially.”
Baby Blues and Wedding Bells Page 6