Garden of Dreams

by Patricia Rice

  The next stop on her list was the post office. Nina almost turned around and walked out with Joe Bob’s greeting. “Heard you’re building a theme park out at your place, Nina!”

  She supposed, if it had been any other person but herself, she would have felt the same excitement and curiosity about the rumors. She just couldn’t find the patience for them right now. Too many bombshells were exploding around her head, and it wasn’t even the Fourth of July yet.

  “No theme park, no garden, no nothing but a couple of kids with overexcited imaginations. Hattie wanted a botanical garden to draw tourists, but there’s no money for it. I’ll be sure and let everyone know if I win the lottery, however.” She handed him a manila envelope containing her home-study test answers. “If any strangers ask for directions to my place, I’d appreciate it if you’d not give them any. I’ve had some persistent telephone salesmen after me, and I’m afraid they’ll show up out here one of these days.”

  “Sure, Nina. I usually don’t give out that information unless I know there’s an honest reason. A woman living alone needs protection. You ought to get yourself a big dog.”

  Nina grinned in spite of herself. “I’ve got one. His name is Smith.”

  Job Bob looked a little startled, but she left money for her postage on the counter and walked away.

  Humming to herself, she delivered a vase of roses to one of Hattie’s old friends, sat and chatted awhile, then moved on to the pharmacy to pick up a few items she hadn’t the nerve to purchase with JD hanging around. As she stepped from the frigid air-conditioning of the poorly lighted pharmacy into the glaring heat of the noonday sun, she stopped and let her eyes adjust.

  The sun’s glare reflected off the sidewalk, shimmering the air with heat waves. Nina took a deep breath and nearly choked on the stench of hot asphalt. Country in the summer, she mused wryly, turning toward the Toyota.

  The figure hovering under the bank awning nearly stopped her in her tracks.

  It couldn’t be. The heat was playing tricks with her mind. The loose flowered dress and white straw hat belonged in another era. She had spent too long in front of the television last night. She hadn’t had enough sleep.

  Imagination was a terrible thing. Her mother couldn’t have returned from the dead to haunt her. She’d been gone twenty years. As far as Nina was concerned, she could stay gone another two hundred. She wouldn’t recognize her mother if she saw her in any case.

  Jerking her gaze back to the Toyota, Nina hurriedly opened the door and climbed in. A nice cold shower would straighten her head out. She would never watch old TV movies again, she vowed.

  Turning the key in the ignition, she pulled away without looking back.

  She turned down the highway toward Hattie’s Lane and looked in the rearview mirror.

  The Mercedes followed behind her.

  Chapter 15

  “Oh, shit. Oh, double shit.” Nina hit the accelerator and continued on the highway toward the interstate instead of taking the turnoff toward Hattie’s Lane. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. She should stop the car right here and wait for the Mercedes to slow down, then get out and demand to know what he thought he was doing.

  But caution wouldn’t allow it. She could only handle so much rebellion in a morning. If she had any more shocks to her system, she might go into overload and explode, but right now, caution prevailed.

  She didn’t watch enough TV to know how one went about shaking a tail, as she thought they called it in detective stories. Quaint term. Four cylinders certainly couldn’t outrun eight. She’d just have to count on her knowledge of the territory and hope his lack thereof would be his downfall. Whoever that “he” might be.

  She was quite certain it was a man, even though the other car stayed well behind her. The windows were too heavily tinted to see inside, but the shadow she’d seen through the windshield definitely looked masculine. Maybe she should just pull up to Sheriff Hoyt’s and ask him to take a look.

  And have him think she definitely had gone around the bend? No sirree, Bob. She wasn’t dealing with any more men who thought she’d dried out and gone to seed. Not on your life.

  With a tiny feeling of glee, Nina hit the interstate. She couldn’t roar into the traffic and blend in with the crowd, not in this car. For one thing, it didn’t roar anywhere. It just kind of trundled into the biggest gap she could find. The Mercedes almost caught up while she looked for an opening. And for another thing, a brown hatchback Toyota with rusted fenders didn’t blend anywhere. Toyota hadn’t made hatchbacks in ten years or more. She probably had the last one on the road. For a brief moment, she wished she had one of those anonymous white Tauruses or something. Just for a moment. Then she remembered her plan, and she smiled again.

  She didn’t need to rent boats to shake a tail. She still had all her wits, despite any apparitions of her mother she thought she’d seen. Maybe the stress of admitting Hattie no longer could handle her affairs had ticked something off in her brain, bringing back images of her mother. Hell, maybe she was losing it. Senility was probably inherited. It didn’t matter. She knew precisely what she was doing now.

  Nina checked the rearview mirror. The Mercedes was just far enough behind her to be barely visible. Smiling at the exit sign ahead, Nina hit the accelerator, swerved down the ramp, and immediately turned into the truck stop on the right. Sandwiching the Camry between two semis, she watched as the Mercedes glided down the ramp, hesitated, and turned right, the driver apparently figuring he could see her if he traveled down the road a little farther.

  As soon as he disappeared into the dip down the road, Nina hit the gas, pulled out of the truck stop, and took the entrance ramp toward home. Let the damned man find her now. She hoped he enjoyed the scenic view of the gravel pits.

  The triumph carried her as far as Hattie’s Lane. By the time Nina turned up the gravel road, the elation had faded.

  She would take a nice cold shower and not leave the house for the rest of the summer. Except to visit Hattie. Maybe the Mercedes driver would like visiting Hattie. She could invite him in, and they could share lukewarm coffee and listen to her aunt talk about people neither of them knew.

  Not even bothering to park the car in the damned shed, Nina pulled it up beside the house, slammed the door, and stalked in through the kitchen. She’d led a sedate life, a boring one if anyone wanted to know, and she liked it that way. She didn’t like surprises. She didn’t like her routine disturbed.

  And the minute she saw JD standing at the kitchen sink, she knew she lied. She couldn’t think of anything more disturbing than having a tall, long-haired stranger standing at her kitchen sink, regarding her with quizzical dark eyes as if he had every right to know all her secrets. She liked the disturbance all too well.

  He didn’t just look through her, discarding her as a dried-up old teacher. He looked at her, sizing up her mood, giving her one of those admiring glances that curled her toes, watching her patiently while she flung her purse on the counter and kicked off her shoes. She really, really liked knowing he wanted to hear anything she had to say. At the same time, she could almost feel the heat of his look as it traveled up her legs. Damn, but that was unsettling.

  “What do you want?” she asked with irritation, refusing to let him know how he disturbed her.

  “Your mother called,” he said, sipping from the glass of water in his hand.

  Just that small announcement knocked her into an out-of- control tailspin.

  Panic exploded, panic and nausea. It was one thing seeing ghosts—hearing from them blew out her already frayed wiring. Motorcycle bums who made her heart race, fancy cars, cloak-and-dagger intrigue, Aunt Hattie and the phone company, all combined to short-circuit what remained of her nervous system. She simply couldn’t deal with one more thing.

  Certain she would crash and burn, tears stinging her eyes, hands shaking, Nina aimed blindly for the door.

  “I don’t have a mother!” she yelled, stalking out of the kitchen be
fore she collapsed in front of him.

  “Well, pardon me then,” JD shouted back. “I thought all women liked talking to their mothers!”

  Showed what a fat lot he knew about women. Running up the stairs, Nina escaped into her room, slamming the door so hard the hinges rattled.

  The slamming door shook the whole house. JD stared over his head, amazed that the ceiling didn’t fall in. From the cracks in it, he was surprised the house remained intact at all.

  What in hell had he said? Was he supposed to ignore the ringing phone? He hadn’t done anything to deserve that reception. Except admire her legs a little too obviously. She had damned fine legs. Most women would want legs like that appreciated. But not the irritating Miss Nina Toon.

  He slammed his glass down, fully intending to return to his computer. Machines appreciated him, even if women didn’t.

  But despite all his best intentions, JD followed his feet up the stairs. Maybe he didn’t know a lot about women, but he knew enough about this one to realize she didn’t readily explode. Her look when she came in hadn’t been her usual absentminded one. Something had happened. The thought of the Mercedes spurred him on.

  If that sucker had returned and tried to harm her, he’d find the bastard and personally strangle him with his bare hands. People didn’t mess with what was his. And Nina was his.

  Now that was definitely irrational. Slamming his fist against the closed bedroom door, JD ignored the mutterings of his logical mind, focusing on the fury of his illogical one.

  At Nina’s weepy “Go away,” he tried the knob. As he’d suspected, the effort of locating the key for the old-fashioned lock had eluded her. The door swung open.

  A pillow hit him square in the face. JD batted it aside and towered over the prostrate form on the bed. “What happened?” he demanded.

  Or maybe he yelled. She reached for another pillow and swung it smack against his crotch.

  Jerking the pillow from Nina’s hands, JD took an upholstered armchair against the wall. With interest, he gazed around her bedroom, avoiding the juxtaposition of his hostess and a bed.

  He didn’t know much about antiques, but he figured the room was full of them. They appeared to be a thousand years old and brooded over the high-ceilinged space like dark giants frozen in time. The headboard of the bed alone rose at least eight feet and sprawled unrelentingly across half the wall, looking more like an out-of-place sleigh than any bed he’d ever seen. An old- fashioned armoire filled most of another wall. If it hadn’t been for the corner windows, the room would resemble a black hole. He couldn’t imagine a child growing up in here. He couldn’t imagine the sprite who loved flowers surviving in this oppressive darkness. His gaze slid to Nina.

  She’d turned her back on him as if he weren’t there. Her silence didn’t fool him. His insides clenched at the sight of her slender shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. He’d generally found it easiest to walk out on weeping women. For some damned reason, he just couldn’t bring himself to leave this one.

  “What happened, Nina?” he asked firmly. Maybe if he handled her as he did Jackie, he could get some answers.

  “Go away,” she sobbed into her pillow. “Get out!”

  JD’s temper rose again. It didn’t make sense, but nothing he felt around this capricious female made sense. “Not until you tell me what’s wrong!” he shouted back.

  “Nothing’s wrong! Everything’s wrong. Just go away. I’m tired.”

  “Did that lawyer give you a hard time?” he asked. He could straighten out lawyers well enough.

  “Matt Home thinks I’m an addlepated female. But I’m not. So get out of here.” She didn’t turn around, but she sat up with her back turned toward him, clutching a pillow to her middle as if to keep from throwing it. “I’m perfectly fine. Women are entitled to bouts of PMS,” she informed him haughtily, her tone defying him to back out on that one.

  JD didn’t buy it. “Bullshit. If you are, so am I. Once a month I lose my cool and blow up. I’m about to do that right now. What in hell did that lawyer say?”

  “Matt Home is a jerk. He didn’t say anything. He has nothing to do with anything. Go ahead and blow up; just don’t do it in here. Go shoot a computer or something.”

  He should. He really should. But looking at the slim line of her back on that god-awful bed had him bleeding in places he didn’t know he could bleed. She wore another of those dainty slip kind of dresses that hung all over her, with a tight ribbed shirt underneath. He couldn’t figure out if she looked like some avant-garde form of his grandmother or a twelve-year-old. In either case, it made him one sick pervert because he couldn’t tear his gaze away.

  “If that wasn’t your mother on the phone, then who was it?”

  “A ghost. How in hell do I know? Maybe your imaginary villains have found imaginary playmates. I don’t have a mother.”

  “Right. Your aunt found you under a cabbage leaf. A veritable gardening genius. Have you had this miracle written up in Scientific American yet?”

  She twisted, flinging the pillow hard and accurately, hitting him in the face again. Had she been anyone else, he’d have lifted her off that bed and either pounded her against the wall or against himself. The latter seemed more likely, so he stayed where he was.

  “My mother died in a fiery car crash off the lake bridge,” she said angrily. “Want to know all the gory details?”

  He couldn’t imagine anyone stupid enough to pretend they were her mother if the woman had died so spectacularly. Everyone in half the state would know about it.

  “That was quite a feat of engineering,” he replied laconically after thinking about it. “Did she smash the car through the concrete or fit it between the girders? And was the lake on fire at the time? I didn’t think there was enough oil in there to produce quite that effect.”

  “Get out!” she screamed. “Just get out, will you?”

  “What do I tell the ghost when she calls back?” He shouldn’t egg her on like that. He had seen the tears streaking her cheeks. She was in pain, and he didn’t know how to handle it. He despised feeling helpless.

  “Tell her I don’t live here anymore. Tell her I died and went to hell. Tell her anything. What in hell does it matter? She’s dead anyway.”

  “How dead is she?” JD asked with interest, finding this conversation so perverse he could almost get into it.

  “Over twenty years’ worth of dead. Not a birthday card, not a call. Maybe she slit her wrists and Hattie didn’t tell me about it. She’s gone. It’s just some jokester having a little fun.”

  Twenty years. That would have made her about nine years old as far as he could determine. He’d lost his mother about then, too, but she was definitely dead. JD would never forget the blank, wide- eyed expression on her frozen face when he’d come home from school that day.

  “My mother killed herself when I was ten,” he mentioned conversationally. “Be glad yours had the decency to just disappear.”

  She stared at him in horror, and JD remembered why he hadn’t offered that particular tidbit to a female before. Revealing any kind of vulnerability invested them with a power he didn’t like.

  “How?” she demanded. “Did you find her?”

  “Drugs and alcohol, and yes, I did. So don’t give me any more of your sorry little tales about being abandoned. I can top anything you can tell. At least you had a family to take you in.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  She looked at him in disbelief, more interested in his disclosure than her own. Well, to hell with that little turnaround. This was her day for disclosure, not his. “That’s not the topic under discussion. You had Aunt Hattie. What about your father?”

  She shrugged, crossing her legs beneath her as she faced him. At least she wasn’t crying anymore. JD gave silent thanks for that.

  “I don’t know who he is.”

  JD squinted at her suspiciously. “Is this another of those fiery-car-crash tales?”

  She shook her head, and the
spiky tendrils of ash-blond hair danced. “No. Not unless Hattie made it up. She said my mother didn’t know who my father was. My mother married some guy when she was pregnant with me, but he left us when I was eight. Hattie said they were both too young when they married. Stupid excuse if you ask me.”

  “It happens. I only have to look at Jackie to know how. Didn’t you ever fool around when you were a kid?”

  She looked properly appalled. “With that kind of example to follow? Are you kidding? I’m not that dumb. I followed my aunt and got a college education instead.”

  Wow, that opened a whole new can of worms. JD wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. “How come it was your aunt who took you in and not your grandmother or somebody?” That seemed a neutral path to take.

  Nina rubbed the back of her hand across her face, scrubbing away the tear tracks. “Family history. My grandfather died in World War II, so my grandmother moved back here when my mother was little. This was my great-grandfather’s house, so my grandmother shared it with her sister, my aunt Hattie. But they got along like cats and dogs. Hattie taught school, and my grandmother thought she should farm. My grandmother was a housewife, cleaning and cooking and all that, but when Hattie refused to farm the acres, my grandmother decided to do it herself. She turned the tractor over on herself on that hill out there.” She nodded toward the window overlooking the fields.

  JD shook his head in disbelief. “Are there no men in this picture at all?”

  Nina gave a weak smile. “Just enough to father women. This was my grandmother’s room. Jackie’s sleeping in my mother’s. I don’t know much about my great-grandparents, except they had two daughters and raised them here. What about you?”

  JD didn’t want to get into all that right now. It made a piss- poor story anyway. He shrugged. “Family of men. My father raised me. When he died, Uncle Harry stepped in. Now there’s Jackie. Don’t think any of us have learned from our experiences. Now will you tell me what happened in town today?”