She’d been a business owner for only nine months.
Her rib cage cradled her pounding heart as though it were a baby bird needing protection.
What if—?
Audrey, stop. Just stop. Gray’s playing games, messing with your head, but you don’t have to let him.
She left the greenhouse and locked it behind her, wishing she could coat the building in steel to protect her babies from the likes of Grayson Turner.
She strode to her car, morning dew moistening her feet through the peekaboo holes in the toes of her shoes. She glanced back over her shoulder. Sunlight glimmered from the many panes of her greenhouses, igniting shimmering golden jewels in the middle of emerald fields—and a fire in her to burst Gray’s arrogant bubble.
No, she didn’t have to buy into his intimidation tactics. She was strong.
CHAPTER TWO
AUDREY’S HEADY PERFUME followed Gray out the door, trailing him like a scarf that wrapped itself around his shoulders with comforting hands. Nuts.
Nothing about Audrey said comfort. Words that came to mind were sexy and strange and disconcerting, but comforting? Never.
The black eyeliner slanting up at the corners of her violet eyes made them exotic. In the middle of her pure, clear-skinned face, the effect was violently erotic.
Unnerved to feel anything good about the woman, he ordered himself to snap out of it.
She had the power to hurt his family, and he wouldn’t stand for it.
Babies. Gray laughed. She’d called her plants her “babies.” Nutbar. Defeating this woman was going to be a piece of cake.
At least in grilling Audrey, he’d calmed down enough to see his father without confrontation.
Gray drove to his parents’ home. At thirty-six, he shouldn’t be living with his mom and dad, but they were getting on in age, and he felt better being around in case something happened to one of them.
Set apart from town on its private cul-de-sac, the gray stone house with the white trim and black lacquered front door spoke of well-bred money, of discreet, respectful living.
He’d had a good upbringing. So why was he screwed up these days? Why so neurotic?
The garage door was open and Dad was inside. Good. There were things that needed to be said.
“Dad?” he called.
Dad had his head buried inside a deep box. “Aha!” He stood, triumph and a childlike joy lighting his face. “Here they are.”
“We need to talk—”
“Remember these?” He held an old snorkel set of Gray’s in his hands, the rubber of the ancient flippers dry and cracked.
“Yes, I remember. I must have been nine or ten when you bought them for me.” He didn’t have time for this. They had issues to settle. Huge issues.
Dad wore an old cardigan, ratty around the edges from years of use. White hair curled over the collar of the sweater. Disgraceful. Dad used to be particular about his grooming.
“What happened to you, Dad? Something’s changed.” The words were out of his mouth before good manners could stop them, a sign of how bad Gray’s nerves were. Dad’s aging, the slow crumbling of a once-powerful man, affected Gray, left him sad and a little lost. Left him somehow smaller, at a time when he was already vulnerable with residual grief. Marnie was dead.
Stop. Concentrate on the here and now, on business.
“I turned eighty last year.” For all of Gray’s recent worries about Dad’s state of mind, especially given the shaky business dealings lately, Dad had understood his question perfectly.
Gray waited for more explanation. When it didn’t come, he prompted, “And...?”
“And you try turning eighty and looking back on your life and realizing how much time you spent indoors in a stuffy old office when you could have been out doing things.” He pulled out a plastic oar belonging to an old dinghy that had been relegated to the dump years ago. “Look!” His chuckle held a strange glee that Gray had never heard before, not sinister, just, again, childlike.
Gray couldn’t get past his surprise. Dad had regrets? “But...”
“But what?”
“But you loved the business.”
“Past tense. I’m tired. I want to enjoy what’s left of my life. I want peace.”
How had Gray missed Dad’s transformation from a savvy businessman to a reluctant one? Gray had tried to visit as often as possible, but given that he’d taken after his father with twelve-hour days and a demanding, if loved, girlfriend, it had been hard. Obviously, he hadn’t come home often enough.
“You’re here now,” Dad asserted. “You take care of the business.”
Speaking of which...
“Did you sell a piece of land to Audrey Stone in the winter?”
“Jeff Stone’s daughter?” Dad looked up from the box he was still rummaging through. A fine fuzz of white stubble dusted his unshaven chin. Dad shaved every day. Apparently not today.
The gray eyes that Gray had inherited still seemed sharp, but his glance shifted away from Gray’s. What was he hiding? Over and over, Gray had had to find out things about the company from Hilary or the accountant. While Dad seemed to welcome Gray into the business, he also stonewalled him at too many turns. Something strange was up with his father.
He said he was tired. He said you take care of the business. His actions spoke a different language. Dad couldn’t let go of the reins.
“Yes,” Dad replied. “I sold land to Audrey. Why?”
“It’s in the heart of the land I want to sell to Farm-Green Industries.”
“Hmm. Too bad.”
Dad had become a master of understatement. Gray gritted his teeth. “Why did you sell?”
“Jeff is sick.”
“What does that have to do with the land?”
“His daughter needs to take care of him.”
Gray bore the frustration of dealing with Dad like this, but only barely. Conversation was like pulling freaking teeth out of his head one by one. Without anesthetic. Where was the man who used to be open about everything?
“Dad, what does that have to do with our land?”
“She needed a place to grow plants and flowers for her floral shop. She needs to support herself and help her father. We stopped using those greenhouses years ago. Shame to see them go to waste.”
“But we’ve spent months hammering out this deal with Farm-Green. They aren’t going to take it with a huge hunk of land missing from the middle.”
“I never wanted to sell to them anyway. When they first started sniffing around two or three years ago, I told you that.”
God, give me strength. “We’ve gone over this a hundred times. You need to look at the big picture. Look outside of Accord. The economy isn’t what it used to be. The whole country is suffering. The lumberyard isn’t bringing in a fraction of the money it used to. We need that money to pay your employees.” Let alone take care of all of the other dubious decisions Dad had made lately.
“So, find a different solution. Something else that will work. If one thing doesn’t, find another.”
“There won’t be another company who’ll pay what Farm-Green was willing to so quickly. It could take a year to find someone else who’s interested, and then months more of negotiations. I’m turning myself inside out to come up with creative solutions to our problems.”
Dad shrugged. “When one door closes, another opens.”
One of Dad’s empty pronouncements. He thought they were nuggets of wisdom. Not even close. New-age gobbledygook.
“Did you at least get a good price?” Gray wouldn’t put it past his father to give the land away for sentiment’s sake.
Judging by Dad’s annoyed frown, he’d asked the wrong question. “Of course I did. I spent sixty years working as a successful busin
essman.”
Yes, Gray knew that, but Dad had lost his grip on reality. He was eighty years old and changing, reverting to childhood, or something. He should have retired twenty years ago, but what would he have done instead? Retirement would probably have killed him, but in the past months that Gray had been home, he’d finally had to accept that Dad needed to step away from the business altogether before he sent the whole thing down the drain. Dad was still too sharp for this to be Alzheimer’s. This wasn’t a failing, wasn’t even dementia, just a change. But why?
“Isn’t Jeff Stone the one you pay a salary to even though he’s off work?”
“I pay him a reduced salary. An early retirement.”
“Even though he was short of fulfilling his requirements?”
“He’s going blind.” Gray flinched at Dad’s harsh tone. “Jeff worked for me for twenty-nine years. His macular degeneration precluded him from working his final year.”
“He would qualify for disability. Why make the company bear the financial burden of his care?”
“He would make a pittance on disability. He has medical bills. He needs an operation that will cost a fortune. He’s middle class, not a millionaire.” Dad pulled the second oar out of the box but threw it onto a growing rubbish heap when he discovered it was broken. “Paying Jeff is no burden. He worked hard for me and, by extension, since you enjoyed the secure childhood and higher education the business bought, for you. The least we can do is show our appreciation.”
Dad was too softhearted to run a successful company in today’s environment. Disability was designed for this situation, for people like Jeff.
Gray opened his mouth to argue further, but Dad forestalled him. “Selling those greenhouses to Audrey was the right thing to do. Give it some thought and you’ll agree.”
Before he said something too harsh, Gray left the garage. For sixty years, his dad had done everything right, but in the past year, it seemed he’d been getting it all wrong. Or maybe longer. The further Gray dug into records and finances, the more he realized that Dad had been making risky investments and dubious decisions for a while.
Also, he’d caught him lying more than once. No, that wasn’t fair. They weren’t lies, just convenient half-truths so that Gray had to double-check everything Dad told him to find the truth for himself.
His stomach burned.
Did Mom have antacid tablets in the house? He could use a couple. Or the whole bottle.
Inside, he found her sitting in the living room. Where Dad’s grooming was suffering with age, Mom still looked perfect.
Dressed to the nines even this early in the morning, she wore a silk blouse with a soft pastel print and a tweed skirt, her still slim legs encased in stockings and her feet in stylish black heels.
She sat on the sofa reading a romance novel. She had just turned seventy-five, for Pete’s sake. He didn’t need to catch her holding a book with a photograph of a half-naked man clutching a busty woman on the cover.
Even so, when she peeked at him over the rims of her reading glasses, her once-vivid blue eyes faded now, his heart swelled. A cloud of white hair framed a tiny face. Her welcoming smile warmed him. This amazing woman had given him everything, the absolute best childhood.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked, and he meant anything. For his parents, especially Mom, he would do whatever was asked of him. “A cup of tea?” Mom loved her tea.
“I’m fine,” she answered. “I’ve already had four cups this morning.”
“Mom,” he said, hesitating because he didn’t want to offend, but needing to know. “What’s happening with Dad?”
She didn’t seem surprised by the question. “He’s tired. He’s had a lot of weight on his shoulders for a long time. He needs to let go and relax.”
“He said it started when he turned eighty.”
She set her glasses down on top of her book. “Oh, it started well before that. He’s been tired for years.”
Startled, Gray asked, “Why didn’t he tell me? I would have come home sooner.”
Those faded blue eyes studied him shrewdly. “Would you have?”
His mind flew to an image of Marnie with her hands on her hips, obstinate in battle with him. “Yes,” he said, but he’d taken too long to answer.
“Truly?”
Gray slumped into the armchair. “I don’t know. Marnie didn’t want to live here. She loved Boston.”
“You would have had to have made a choice. Your parents or your fiancée. I understood that, Gray, so I didn’t tell you about your dad’s state.”
Gray leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Mom, I love you and Dad. I would have worked out something.”
“What could you have done? You loved Marnie, too, and Boston is not within commuting distance. Would you have lived six months here and the other half of the year there? Like a child in joint custody? What kind of life would that have been, especially once you had children?”
“I don’t know. I would have come up with a solution.”
Mom closed her book and put it on the side table, giving him her full attention. “Why did it take so long for you and Marnie to set a wedding date? You were engaged for five years.”
Mom had always been too perceptive. Getting away with anything in his adolescent years had taken real skill and subterfuge on Gray’s part. “There were things we couldn’t agree on.”
“Like where to live?”
A heavy sigh gusted out of him, and he admitted, “Like where to live. That was the biggest obstacle.”
“So, even though your father and I tried to protect you, you were caught up in our drama anyway.”
“You were aging. There’s nothing anyone can do to prevent that. You’re my responsibility, Mom.”
“Such a shame that we had only one child.”
“What else could you have done? I came along so late.” He was a surprise for his parents after they had long given up hope of conceiving.
Mom smiled, and her eyes got misty. “Yes. We were lucky to have you.”
The conversation had become too maudlin for Gray. He didn’t want to think about feeling alone as a child, about how much he missed Marnie, or about how old his parents were.
“What do you know about Audrey Stone?” he asked.
Mother perked up. “She’s the most interesting thing to happen to this town in years. I’m so glad she came back home to live. Have you seen her?”
He’d run out on breakfast, so he explained what the emergency had been.
“What was she wearing?” Mother asked, clearly excited.
“Wearing?” She’d thrown him. He’d just told her that Audrey had the means to scuttle a huge deal for the family and Mother wanted to know what the woman was wearing?
He rubbed his hands over his face. As dear as his aging parents were, he didn’t have time for their eccentricities.
“Well?” Mom persevered.
Gray pointed to a large illustrated hardcover on the coffee table. In a full-page photo on the cover, Jackie Kennedy wore the pink suit she’d had on the day her husband was assassinated.
“She wore a suit like that, but it was gray with white trim.”
His mother caught her breath. “A vintage Chanel? I always knew Audrey had class.”
He thought of the full curves shaping the suit. Class? Yes, but also a whole lot more.
“No hat?”
He mentioned the red hat that had matched her lipstick and her nail polish and the glimpse of her toenails he’d seen through her open-toed black suede pumps, which looked as though they’d come straight out of the forties.
“Describe the hat.”
When he finished, Mother nodded her approval. “A pillbox. You don’t see those anymore. Was she wearing gloves?”
; Thinking of those bright red nails, he shook his head.
“Ah, well,” she said, “I guess times have changed. Too bad she hadn’t really completed the outfit, though, if you know what I mean.”
He didn’t have a clue.
“Have you thought anymore about what we discussed last night?” she asked.
What they’d discussed many nights since he’d moved back home had been his getting married and having children. His parents wanted to meet their grandchildren before they died. Gray still had to produce those grandchildren. First he needed a partner. It should be the least he could do, but he thought of Marnie and held his breath until the pain passed.
“I’m thinking about it.”
Mother smiled. Honestly, he lived to make her happy, but how did a man snap his fingers and, poof, there would be a wife, ready and willing to bear his children?
He headed upstairs to his bedroom. He needed to change his shirt. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock in the morning and the day not yet hot, but under his business jacket, he’d been sweating like a linebacker. Since the car accident, his body had been betraying him in strange ways. A giant rodent gnawed gaping holes in the cool, collected persona he’d cultivated in business, and he didn’t have a clue how to boot the offending creature from his body.
He picked up a letter that had arrived yesterday, addressed to his father, but Gray handled all of his parents’ correspondence these days. They’d relinquished that responsibility happily, and thank God for that. What if Mother had opened this instead of him?
The thought sent a shiver through him. Mom would have been devastated. He had to protect her at all costs.
He read it yet again with a creepy fascination, as though rubbernecking at a traffic accident.
I have three children to support. Their father is dead. My oldest son has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. I can’t pay for his therapy. He needs a wheelchair. I need money. I’m desperate. I’ll go to the newspapers.
Shelly Harper
Because of Audrey Page 3