Long afternoons curled up on a hammock in the garden, just the two of them rocking as she read him a girlie story . . . why did that sound appealing?
But it did.
His little liar offered him a world he had previously scorned, and made him want it almost as much as he wanted her.
For the first time he realized she was more than a challenge and a distraction—she was dangerous.
A third voice intruded, a man’s laughing, charming, aristocratic voice. “How touching. The sweet girl’s going to read a children’s book to the big, mean developer.”
With a thump Devlin stepped ankle-deep into a pile of reality. He turned to find a blond, well-dressed, and far too familiar figure standing behind him, glass in hand. Shit. Not him. Not now. “Four. I told you to go away and stay away.”
“So you did.” Four swung his leg over the bench and sat next to Meadow.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I live here.”
11
“Or I used to.” Taking Meadow’s hand, Four raised it to his lips.
“I’m Bradley Benjamin the fourth. I’m handsome, kind, generous, trustworthy, and irresistible.”
Meadow grinned at his insouciance. “I can see that.”
“In other words, the exact opposite of stodgy old Devlin over there.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She was still half-aroused with the pleasure of Devlin’s description of the Secret Garden. “I think Devlin’s incredibly charming.” Although he didn’t look charming right now. He sat with his arms crossed over his chest. His mouth was grim, his teeth clenched.
“Devlin? Devlin Fitzwilliam?” Four stared at Devlin with bug-eyed disbelief. “Not this Devlin Fitzwilliam, the meanest son of a bitch—begging your pardon, ma’am—ever to walk the streets of Charleston?”
“The very one.”
“You have a smiley-face bandage on your forehead.” Four touched it lightly. “Tell me the truth. You fell and knocked all the sense out of yourself.”
His guess was close enough to the actual events to frighten Meadow into flashing Devlin a questioning glance.
“Where did you hear that story?” Devlin asked.
“I didn’t hear anything. But that’s the only explanation I can imagine for her bad judgment.” Four took a biscuit. “Never allow Devlin’s temporary attempts at civilized behavior to fool you. The milk of human kindness has curdled in his veins.”
She studied Four as he slathered the biscuit with butter and jam and ate it in two bites. He seemed sincere enough, but . . . “Devlin seems indestructible.”
Four snorted. “He hides everything. His feelings, his thoughts . . . then, wham! He hits you with a broadside and knocks you catawampus.” He lifted the half-eaten biscuit. “But his cook is far superior to Father’s.”
“Yes.” Devlin didn’t waste time with graciousness.
“And your liquor cabinet is stocked with the best.” Four saluted Devlin with his sweating glass.
“Help yourself.” Like a stubborn case of athlete’s foot, Four irritated Devlin.
Meadow could see why. Devlin appeared rugged, like a mountain man who had gotten lost and stumbled into this soft, warm, humid environment where the birds chirped and the sun trickled through the thick leaves.
Four was very different. He had a look about him, one she’d seen in her grandmother’s black-and-white Fred Astaire movies—whipcord thin, world-weary, well dressed, and wealthy. Very, very wealthy. He wasn’t tall, only about five-nine, but his blue polo shirt stretched across muscular shoulders, and his gray slacks were belted tightly around a trim waist. His hair was expertly cut—and thinning. She’d swear someone armed with an airbrush had sprayed on his tan. He smelled of stale cigarettes and expensive cologne, and he sounded eloquent and nobly Southern. But most important, he oozed charisma from every pore, a kind of jaded, old-world dissipation.
She didn’t imagine he was anything like his father.
He took a drink from the glass he’d placed on the table. It was the same kind of glass from which she sipped iced tea. The liquid was brown like tea. But a few green leaves floated among the ice cubes, and the sweet odor of bourbon wafted through the air.
It was barely eleven in the morning. “I’m Meadow.”
“Meadow. That’s beautiful, and so appropriate. You’re as fresh as a mountain meadow. But I didn’t catch your last name.” Four’s hazel eyes danced with amusement as he observed Devlin’s impatience.
“I didn’t give it,” she said.
At the same time, Devlin said, “Fitzwilliam.”
“You’re romancing your cousin?” Four guessed. “Isn’t that a little traditionally Southern for you, Devlin?”
“She’s not my cousin,” Devlin said.
She studied her hands in her lap and wished she could stuff her napkin down Devlin’s throat.
Four studied them, then reached the inevitable conclusion. “She’s not your . . . wife? ” He choked on the liquor. He coughed until tears sprang to his eyes. Until she hit him on the back to clear his air passage. He waved her away and croaked at Devlin, “You’re married? To her? You’re pulling my leg. Since when? Don’t tell me—you married in Majorca !”
So he’d heard at least some of the tale Devlin had spun for her. His eavesdropping made her uncomfortable and a little disgruntled. The fantasy was her story, a present from Devlin, and she didn’t like sharing it with anyone. Most certainly she didn’t want Four asking questions about a ceremony that had never occurred.
“Actually, Four, this is such bad timing.” Devlin’s sympathetic tone was at odds with his glee. “My wife and I are on our way into town. So go away.”
“We are?” It was the first Meadow had heard of it.
“We need to pick up your prescription,” Devlin said.
Her head ached, but not much, yet when she started to say so she encountered a warning glance from Devlin.
All right. They were going to town. “We can pick up a copy of The Secret Garden while we’re there.”
“Another good reason to go into Amelia Shores,” he said with almost indiscernible exasperation.
“Great!” Four said. “I’ll go with you.”
“No, you won’t.” Devlin was firm. “We’re taking the Jeep. There’s no room for you. There’s no backseat.”
“Devlin, that tone will never work! You can’t tantalize with the news of your marriage, then get rid of me! I have a reputation as a gossipmonger to maintain. I drove out here. I’ll drive back into town.” Four laughed lightly and took another drink, more carefully this time. “While we’re there, you can give me all the juicy details of the romance of the century.”
“You don’t take a hint, do you?” Meadow admired the man’s impervious nature.
“My dear, if a person listened to all of Devlin’s rejections he’d think he wasn’t liked. In fact, I’m his best friend.”
Devlin snorted.
“If I’m not, who is?” Four challenged him.
“My wife,” Devlin said.
“That is so romantic,” Four began.
But Meadow wasn’t prepared to make up any stories about meeting on the beach and exchanging a kiss before they exchanged a word, and she certainly couldn’t imagine expanding on the preposterous imagery of lying among the shrubs in a secret garden behind a crumbling house and making love . . . not until she was alone, anyway. “So your family used to own Waldemar.”
“For over a hundred years.” Four’s pride unfurled like a flag. “It’s the foremost estate near Amelia Shores, and Amelia Shores is the last and most important refuge for the hidebound and stinking rich of Charleston. My family—the most hidebound and stinking—held this place for a hundred years, through the Great Depression and every kind of tax. And we had to sell it to the most famous blue-blood bastard—pardon me, ma’am—illegitimate son who ever lived.”
“It wasn’t so much a sale”—Devlin locked gazes with Four—“as a surrender.”
“Wow.” Meadow looked between them, saw Four’s clenched jaw and Devlin’s insolent smile. Their malice acted like acid to corrode her pleasure in the morning.
But she was a fighter. If they were going to piss on each other’s shoes, she was at least going to know why. “You guys get nasty fast. What happened? Did you have a fight in prep school?”
Four turned to her in surprise, then laughed and relaxed. “I’m older than he is, and too smart to pick a fight with little Devlin and his bony fists. He had a reputation for making the other guy bleed, no matter what the odds.”
“Really?” That was the Devlin she saw in his unguarded moments—mean as a junkyard dog, overwhelming as an earthquake.
“But then, the whole Fitzwilliam family has been trying to destroy my family and its pride for two centuries.” Four’s grin turned malicious. “With no success.”
“The problem is not your pride, but the lack of reason for it.” While Four was growing angry, Devlin was growing cold.
Fascinated, she looked between the two of them. “Is this a real live family feud?”
“Rooted in tradition,” Four said.
“For generations,” Devlin added.
“What started it?” she asked.
Both men shrugged and looked away. They knew, but they weren’t talking. Whatever rivalry prompted the sharp exchange was old and acrimonious.
“Slander? Robbery? Murder?” She searched her mind for something that would really upset these guys so much. “Lynching?”
Four took a drink of his bourbon. “Broken betrothal,” he muttered.
Meadow sat there, waiting for the rest of the story. When nothing more was forthcoming, she asked, “That’s it? Your families have been fighting for . . . for—”
“Two hundred and fifty years,” Devlin told her.
“Two hundred and fifty years over a broken betrothal ?”
The two men nodded.
She burst into laughter. “How girlie of you!”
They were not amused.
“In early America, a broken betrothal was a huge point of honor,” Four said stiffly. “When John Benjamin, who was a wealthy planter, did the honor of offering for the hand of Anne Fitzwilliam, who was his housemaid, she accepted, then decided she couldn’t stand to marry him and left him at the altar.”
“Thus showing that the Fitzwilliams have a long history of good sense,” Devlin said.
“She was probably in love with someone else.” Still smiling, Meadow watched the two men snipe over an old romance gone bad. A really old romance.
“She died a spinster,” Four said.
“The ultimate insult.” An offensive smile played around Devlin’s mouth. “If she’d married someone else, the Benjamins could claim she’d lost her mind for love. Instead, she preferred to work as her brother’s housekeeper—by all accounts, a thankless job—while he made his fortune shipping cotton to Britain.”
“He made his fortune in trade,” Four sneered.
“Yes, and the only difference between him and you is that he did it well.”
Four stood up, knocking over his glass.
Ice clattered across the table. Brown liquid rushed toward Devlin.
Devlin scrambled to his feet, but not fast enough to avoid a lap full of bourbon.
Meadow would have sworn he was ready to leap across the table and beat Four.
Then Four laughed.
The sound of that insolent amusement acted on Devlin as the ice cubes had not. His flush faded and his expression cooled. “How clumsy of you, Four.”
He wasn’t talking about the spilled drink.
“Okay!” Meadow stood up, too.
Four ran his gaze up her legs. “Nice.”
“Thank you.” Exasperated at the way he used her to get at Devlin, she used Four’s pride to get back at him. “And what a gentlemanly way of saying I look attractive.”
He flushed. “Point taken.”
“Make sure that it is.”
Devlin slid his hand around Meadow’s waist. “Let’s go change now, darling, and we’ll be on our way.”
“Of course, darling.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. He didn’t seem nearly as smug about her outrageous outfit now. Apparently it was one thing for him to appreciate her figure, and quite another for Four, with his lascivious smile and his handsome face, to enjoy it. “After we clean up this mess.”
“I’ll call for a crew.” Devlin took the walkie-talkie off his belt.
“We can do it.” Meadow stacked the glasses onto the plate.
Devlin ignored her, giving orders to the housekeeper on the other end. When he finished, he gestured at the wet spot on his pants and said to her, “Let’s go.”
“You don’t need me to help you.” She did not want to go into that bedroom with him again. Not while he removed his pants. As Sharon always said, it was easier to shun temptation than to fight it.
“He’s not going to let you stay here alone with me. I might decide to avenge the insult to my ancestor by seducing Devlin’s wife.” Four thrust his hands in his pockets and grinned.
“What a jackass you are,” she said cordially.
“What did I say?” Four glanced at Devlin in honest bewilderment.
Devlin’s satisfaction couldn’t be denied. “I believe my wife just said she wouldn’t be seduced by a pretty face and a big ego.”
“You almost got it right.” Meadow pinched Devlin’s chin and smiled deliberately into his face. “I won’t be seduced at all.”
Devlin understood. He understood very well, but he didn’t accede. He stared back, answering her challenge.
Neither of them backed down. Nothing broke the silence.
Until the cleanup crew clattered out of the door and started toward them.
At the sign of discord between them, Four beamed. He opened his mouth to speak.
Meadow looked at him. Just looked at him.
He shut his mouth.
She approved Four’s common sense with a simple, “Good man.” To Devlin, she asked sarcastically, “Which of my flowered sundresses do you want me to wear?”
“Put on jeans,” Devlin directed.
“Jeans. What a good idea.” She’d won! She’d won! “I wish I’d thought of getting some jeans.”
Or had she won? If jeans were already in her room, he’d ordered them when he’d thrown away her burglar outfit, and all that talk about only flowered sundresses was simply nonsense.
She didn’t understand what drove Devlin—what he wanted with her, why he lied to Four, what he intended with his elaborate charade. She knew while she donned her outfit only that whatever it was she decided to wear, she would lock the door.
It was simply safer.
12
Amelia Shores was a town of four thousand in the off-season and twelve thousand during the tourist season. Right now, in the spring, the bed-and-breakfasts had been freshly painted, Wendy’s and Mc-Donald’s were hiring smiling faces, and the restaurants along Waterfront Row rolled out their striped canopies to cover their outdoor tables.
A few tourists were already there.
The hordes were coming.
As they wandered along the sidewalk, the Atlantic on one side and the street on the other, Four told Meadow, “The shops are gearing up for the high season, so before the tourists get here the regulars come down to D’Anna’s for lunch and stay for a leisurely dessert, coffee, and gossip.”
“Who are the regulars?” Her head swiveled between the beach and the shore. She’d never visited the East Coast, but no matter their location, coastal towns shared common sights and smells. Waves curled, and sunbathers wiped sand off their lotion-damp skin. Shops advertised with bright bikinis and intricate kites hung in the windows. Tourists traipsed along Waterfront Row in cover-ups donned too late to protect against the sunburn that seared their shoulders.
She didn’t fit in; in a fit of rebellion against Devlin she had donned a silk flowered sundress and strappy yellow sandals, and now the
breeze played with the edge of her skirt, and she had to use her hand to keep her wide-brimmed straw hat on her head.
“The regulars are people who live here.” Four waved at a shop-keeper. “The people who work here.”
“The regulars are the old farts who used to own the whole town and still control the city council.” Devlin walked behind them, and his words were so at odds with his unemotional tone that Meadow turned and walked backward to stare at him.
He wore faded jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He looked like a construction worker—except for his darkly sardonic eyes, which watched her with such intensity.
Could he see through her sundress? But no; the halter and skirt were lined, the hem reached midcalf, and he might not have been happy that she defied his instructions about the jeans, but he openly appreciated the smooth line of her shoulders and throat.
“You don’t like the old farts,” she said.
“They want to halt the march of time,” he answered.
“And you are the march of time,” she guessed.
“He’s like an army battalion tromping through a flower garden. He leaves nothing in his path.” She heard a sour note in Four’s voice. “You’re going to trip.” Four caught her arm and turned her forward.
“If you didn’t want to sell Waldemar to Devlin, why did you do it?” she asked.
Four did trip on a crack on the sidewalk, and when he righted himself she saw that some of his charm had eroded like gold vermeil off well-worn silver.
“Four didn’t sell the house to me,” Devlin said. “His father did.”
“Over my objections.” Four looked toward the restaurant perched on the highest spot on the street. There uniformed waiters moved among the outdoor tables carrying bottles of sparkling water, and the fringe on the large round umbrellas fluttered in the breeze.
“He had no choice.” Devlin continued his barrage on Four’s dignity. “I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
“Are you the Godfather?” Meadow laughed, then realized that Four’s cheeks were ruddy with fury and Devlin was smiling that hateful smile. They were ready to come to blows again.
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