Elias In Love

by Grace Burrowes

  “Over by Baltimore?”

  The company of goats must have addled the poor man. “Scotland. I’ll be in the front yard if you need anything. The house is open. As far as I know, nobody has lived here for at least the past 90 days.”

  Marvin’s gaze took in the house, the barn, the fields spreading off to the south. “Pretty place you got here, Mr. Brodie. You’re the owner?”

  Hadn’t they established as much? “I have that honor.” For now.

  “But you don’t know how long the place has been sitting empty?”

  “I travel a great deal, mostly in Europe.” Mostly in first class, mostly in the company of people who’d never known a goat by name, much less a hen.

  “If I had a place like this, I’d sure as hell be living here. Know what I mean? That is one sweet view, and the wife loves her a nice big garden. The kids aren’t so keen on the vegetables, but they like playing in the dirt.”

  Elias did not mistake Marvin for a fool—the view was lovely—but tradesmen worked by the hour, and time was money.

  “I hope the view will be enjoyed by the subsequent owners, and I’ll leave you to the electrical repairs.”

  Marvin turned over a page on his clipboard and stuck his pen behind his ear. “Aberdeen, you say. In Scotland. The wife will want to hear about this. Do you know that Jamie fellah from the TV show?”

  “I have been introduced.” At a very successful charity gathering to benefit testicular cancer.

  “Now that is a right marvel. You don’t say. Small world. Let me see if I can at least make it a small world with a few more lights on when the sun goes down, Mr. Brodie.”

  Marvin peered at the fuse box, and Elias left him to work his magic. The front of the house looked marginally more presentable for the morning’s labors, but half of the north wall of the barn was still covered in green vines growing to nearly fifteen feet.

  Stone walls that had withstood centuries of Viking raids could be brought down by vigorous ivy, given enough time, and Violet would never forgive Elias for neglecting his barn.

  But then, Violet might not ever forgive him on general principles. Elias picked up shears and a rake, pulled on gloves, and prepared to do battle with Maryland’s vegetation anyway.

  * * *

  James Knightley had come by Violet’s farm the previous evening, wagons in tow behind his tractor. Violet had explained that her hay had all been put up, and James had insisted on helping her unload the last wagon. She’d broached the topic of a buy-out when the last bale had been tucked in place, and James had given her an hour of his time to discuss it.

  The problem, of course, was cash. Buy-outs worked best if there was cash on hand to do the buying with.

  Lots of cash. Violet had spent half the morning playing with the numbers, trading emails with the state’s agricultural conservancy office, and trying not to stare across the road.

  Elias’s farm was beautiful in so many regards. The eight hundred acres encompassed pastures, hayfields, cropland, woods, streams, and that gorgeous stone barn. Soon, all of it would be contoured, paved, cut up, and turned into cul-de-sacs if Max Maitland had his way.

  “And Max Maitland usually gets his way,” Violet muttered.

  The blue compact hybrid pulled in, and Violet went back to answering comments on the week’s blog. The topic, as it happened, once again dealt with the conservancy easement Maryland farmers could apply for if they were willing to keep their land permanently out of development. Nearly 300,000 acres of farmland had been protected since the program had started in the late 1970s, but that was millions of acres too few in Violet’s estimation.

  Elias was in his jeans again, and his T-shirt was blue. He took an old-fashioned wooden tool box from the back of the car and was soon attacking the flower beds at the front of the house.

  “What are you staring at?” Violet asked Bruno. The dogs were at her feet, Bruno had migrated from the porch railing to the arm of the glide-a-rocker Violet occupied. “One of these summers I’m going to shear you when we do the sheep. You’ll be a lot happier.”

  Talking to domestic animals was probably a sign of some mental aberration. Violet tried to focus on her blog comments, but Elias….

  He was thorough, leaving each bed chopped, weeded, tidied, and ready for mulch. A pile of yard trash was growing on the walk as he worked his way across the front of the house.

  “He’d better have brought water with him. Heat exhaustion is cumulative.”

  Infatuation was apparently cumulative too. Saying good-bye, and meaning it, apparently did nothing to stop the heart from aching, or the imagination from speculating. An agricultural buyer for eight hundred acres was a long shot, and Elias’s problems back home were mounting.

  “A swing and a miss, cat,” Violet said.

  A white van pulled in with Tri-County Electrician’s logo on the side, and Elias and the electrician soon disappeared around the back of the house.

  “I will miss Elias Brodie for the rest of my damned life.” Which made no sense. He was a skilled lover, attractive, and honorable in his way, the kind of guy who made hooking up look mighty tempting.

  “But a hook up has to come unhooked in the morning.”

  Elias emerged from the back of the house, pulled on gloves—must he look so sexy simply pulling on gloves?—and picked up a set of long-handled pruning shears and a rake. Violet sensed his intention between one heartbeat and the next, and came off the porch at a dead run.

  * * *

  “Elias, stop! Stop right now, just please—what in the Sam Damned Hill do you think—will you please stop!”

  Violet Hughes had pelted across the road, yelling all the way, while Elias watched, his gloved hands full of greenery. The vines had been growing long enough to develop thick branches near the barn’s foundation and a secure hold on the barn wall.

  “Violet. Hello.”

  “Drop that stuff, Elias,” she panted. “Are you out of your stubborn Scottish mind?”

  She was upset—he apparently had the knack of upsetting her. “I am attempting to tidy up my property in anticipation of sale. Dunstan and Jane work at home on Tuesdays, which I believe is a euphemism for activities generally considered normal between the newly married. I had to wait here for the electrician, so I’ve kept busy as best—”

  “That is poison ivy,” Violet yelled.

  “I don’t intend to eat it.”

  “Elias, that plant will give you the mother of all rashes, and make you itch within an inch of your sanity. Go over to my house. Get your clothes off and leave them in a heap on the floor. Scrub off your arms using the rubbing alcohol that’s under the bathroom sink, and then take a cool shower—cool, not hot. Use the soft soap on anything the ivy might have touched. Any part of the plant—the leaves, the roots, the stems—can cause a reaction and the oil can get on your clothes as well as your skin.”

  Elias dropped the bundle of vines he was holding, and yet he was torn by conflicting urges. The first was to stay and argue with Violet, because arguing was a form of conversation and he’d resigned himself to never conversing with her again.

  “I’m not prone to allergies, Violet. I’ve only started on the wall five minutes past.”

  And she’d been tearing across the yard almost immediately.

  “Go,” she said, shoving at his shoulder. “You pulled down enough poison ivy in two minutes to keep you itching for three weeks, Elias. Go, and I’ll deal with your electrician.”

  He went, pausing to snag his backpack. He jogged across the road, up Violet’s drive, and straight into her house, the dogs woofing him a greeting as he passed them on the porch. He was in the shower off Violet’s bedroom a few minutes later—cool, not hot, which felt wonderful—and then using his spare toothbrush and comb to make himself presentable.

  “Elias Brodie you had better get in that shower in the next—” Violet came to a halt in the doorway to the bedroom.

  Elias set his comb on the dresser. “You were saying?”
>
  “I’ll put your clothes in the wash.”

  “My clothes, all of which have been dutifully left in a heap on your floor, thus explaining my current state of complete undress.”

  Violet’s expression was an exquisite blend of yearning, appreciation, and frustration. After staring at Elias for the space of three slow heartbeats, she whipped around, giving him her back.

  “You seem to carry a change of clothes with you everywhere,” she said.

  Elias sauntered up behind her. “My state of undress is a matter of practicalities. My state of arousal is a function of proximity to present company, and the memories made in that bed. I am attracted to you, Violet. I’ll not apologize for that.”

  Violet was passionate, complicated, determined, and many other things, but she was not a hypocrite or a prude. She was, undeniably, the inspiration for his arousal, and she was clearly determined to keep her back to him.

  “You are meeting with Maxwell Maitland tomorrow,” she said, hands fisting at her sides. “Elias, it won’t help to go to bed with you. We did that already.”

  Not nearly enough, they hadn’t. He yanked his board shorts out of his pack and stepped into them.

  “I am not in the habit of having intimate relations with women on the verge of hating me,” he said. “In the very near future, I will likely commit an unpardonable act of ecological treason in your eyes. I understand that. You can turn around now.”

  Violet turned, slowly. “If I went to bed with you, I’d regret it. I can give myself a pass for Saturday night, because I didn’t... because it was a hook up.”

  “No, it was not,” Elias said, stepping closer. “I’ve done my share of hooking up, Violet, more than my share, and whatever else is true, we did not hook up.”

  She smelled of lavender, and Elias wanted to touch her so badly, the aches from yesterday’s exertions were nothing compared to the longing he battled. He’d load ten wagons of hay in the broiling heat every day for a week if she’d only take his hand.

  Instead, she patted his chest. “We didna huke opp. You are almost unintelligible when you’re fierce. I like it, which proves I’m losing my damned mind. You muddle me something awful, which I do not like. How about we take this discussion somewhere without a bed?”

  Elias could probably coax, wheedle, kiss, and cuddle her onto the bed. He was good—princesses, billionaire heiresses, and one fiancée, had told him so, as had any number of casual partners in graduate school and elsewhere.

  “I muddle you?”

  Elias didn’t see the kiss coming. One moment, he was trying to content himself with a sop to his dignity—he muddled her—and the next, Violet was in his arms, a winsome, fiendish lover whose kisses sent hope skittering well south of Elias’s heart.

  She made her point thoroughly, reminding him how well their bodies fit together, how luscious her kisses were, how generous and passionate her loving.

  Then she stepped back, walked around him, and patted his bum. She stuffed his comb in his backpack, and handed the pack to him, all the while ignoring an erection that should have come equipped with a complimentary windsock.

  “You haunt my dreams, Elias Brodie. Someday, I might forgive you for wrecking my valley, but for haunting my dreams… I’ll never forgive you for that.”

  She patted his chest again and walked out.

  * * *

  “Are those for me?” Bonnie asked.

  Max shifted the flowers and for once found his admin smiling at him. “No, but you’re welcome to put some of them on your desk.”

  He’d chosen flowers that consisted of a series of blossoms all in the same bright color on one long stem. They’d been on sale, and looked office-chic to him—not like damned daisies.

  “So, you just stopped and bought yourself a gladiolus bouquet because the Grinch’s heart periodically grows to the size of ten men plus two?”

  Gladiolus. Max made a note of the name, in case Elias Brodie liked flowers. The internet described Brodie as newly wealthy, connected to all the right charities, and frequently in the company of gorgeous, rich women. A guy like that might know one flower from another, but he certainly did not need ownership of a chunk of the Maryland countryside complicating his busy schedule.

  “This office is a dump,” Max said. “It’s a historic dump, but it doesn’t need to be an ugly dump.”

  Bonnie came around her desk and took the flowers from him. “Our office is quaint, and I keep it presentable. You got these for tomorrow’s meeting, didn’t you?”

  Bonnie was petite, and the flowers dwarfed her.

  “Do you think they’re too much?” The colors were bold—magenta, lemon, scarlet—but to somebody with sophisticated tastes, they might be gaudy. “I thought an orchid would be overdoing it.”

  “You don’t have the patience for orchids,” Bonnie said, laying the flowers on her blotter. “Are you nervous?”

  Max was desperate, not the same thing as nervous. “This project has the potential to… Development moves in waves, Bonnie, and both D.C. and Baltimore are ready for another wave. For both cities, the buildout can go either north or west, and if it goes west of Baltimore and north of D.C., then Damson Valley sits at the end of two rainbows.”

  Bonnie took the stems one by one, held them over the trash can, and snipped off several inches, always cutting at an angle. Her movements, like everything else about her, were competent and economical.

  “So you’ll be set up for life, right? One sale, and you become the Maryland development czar. Is that what you want?”

  “Why do you cut them like that?” At the same sharp angle, stem after stem.

  “So they can drink as much water as they need, and you should—what am I saying? I’ll trim them up regularly so they last as long as possible. A lot of people around here won’t like to see Damson Valley turned into a bedroom community.”

  Bonnie among them, based on her expression.

  “They’ll like the growth they see in their businesses, they’ll like having a larger tax base for the schools and infrastructure, they’ll like having a place to live that’s convenient, pretty, safe, and affordable. I build the American dream, Bonnie, not the crap houses put up by half the outfits around the Beltway.”

  Pete Sutherland would have cheerfully built crap and had in the past. Max suspected Pete wanted to build crap again, because in a shaky economy, cut corners and fudged specs could generate most of a project’s profits.

  “You’re the white knight of Maryland’s dual-income families,” Bonnie said, gathering up the flowers. “Though don’t turn your back on my brother-in-law or his herd of Holstein heifers. If your tires ever end up slashed, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  No smile, no wink. Was she warning him?

  “Let’s put half of those in the conference room, three of them in my office and a couple in Derek’s,” Max said. “If you wouldn’t mind tidying up Derek’s desk, I’d appreciate it.”

  “I do not touch His Majesty’s desk, Max. I’ve taken to putting my phone on record every time I walk into his office, because he accuses me regularly of not remembering his instructions, not hearing him correctly, or confusing what he’s told me.”

  Well, crap. “He’s getting worse?”

  “He was awful to begin with. Divorce and a falling out with his father have only revealed Derek’s true, utterly disgusting colors. I’ll make sure his office door is closed tomorrow morning.”

  Bonnie marched off toward the kitchen, flowers in hand. Max had the unpleasant thought that she could find another job at any point, though it might mean commuting to either D.C. or Baltimore.

  “Hey, Bonnie?”

  She disappeared into the kitchen. “I’m busy.”

  And she was his admin, not his mother, so Max followed her into the kitchen. “Don’t bother putting any of those flowers in Derek’s office. Half in the conference room, three for me, and three for you.”

  She hunkered down to open the cupboard under the sink. “Sure, a
nd an assortment of pastries, and fresh coffee. I know the drill. Plenty of napkins, conference room tidy, but a few convincingly legal references scattered artfully around the room.”

  Artfully? “Where do you get pastries around here?”

  “Never mind. Pastries are carbs, and they might sweeten your disposition. You’re better off not knowing.”

  He was being dismissed, and he wasn’t sure why. “Brodie is supposed to be here at 9:30 a.m., and he didn’t mention bringing anybody else. The flowers are gladiolus, right?”

  Bonnie set a tall green vase on the counter with a definite thunk. “The plural is either gladioli or gladioluses, depending on how hifalutin you want to sound. The flowers are pretty, Max, and you are hopeless. How about we leave it at that?”

  He brought flowers to the office, and the result was a pissed off administrative assistant. “Does Derek have court tomorrow morning?”

  “You’re in luck. Two DUIs, and they’re both contested. Spring break did him some favors this year. Or maybe he met them at AA.”

  Derek attended AA meetings, not because he had a drinking problem, though he probably did, but because he trolled for business while impersonating an alcoholic—DUIs, divorces, landlord tenant problems, disorderly conduct, all manner of miseries congregated at Bill W’s house. The behavior was despicable, of course, but when Max had consulted the bar association’s ethics hotline, expert counsel had been unable to find a requirement that Max report Derek for it.

  “You’ll keep the meeting quiet?” Max asked as Bonnie set a blue vase next to the green one.

  “Yes, Max, I will keep your important, super-intense, deal-of-a-lifetime meeting quiet. Don’t you have some spreadsheets to tweak?”

  As a matter of fact, he did. “Where did we get those vases?”

  “You are an idiot. I work for idiots. What does that make me?”

  “It makes you employed and solvent. Solvent is good, Bonnie.”

  She set a third vase on the counter, a slender tube of curving raspberry-colored glass. “My friends send me flowers, Max. On my birthday, on Willie Nelson’s birthday, when the Terps win, for the hell of it, or when I’ve introduced them to somebody they take a shine to. That’s what flowers are for, not for impressing some Scottish playboy who’ll trash half the valley so he can afford the maintenance on his private jet.”