Holly

  “Where have you been?” Taylor hissed, but didn’t give Holly a chance to answer. “You look horrible. Go to the powder room and do what you can with yourself.”

  “But it’s late and—”

  “Lorrie is sitting in the living room. He wants to see you. He came back from his trip early just to see you. Now go on, do something with yourself.”

  Holly scurried into the powder room.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL,” LORRIE SAID, SMILING at her.

  They were in an old-fashioned wooden canoe, Lorrie rowing them slowly down the river leading to Belle Chere. Taylor had supervised Holly’s dressing that morning so she was wearing a narrow cotton-lace skirt that kept wrapping around her legs. Twice Lorrie had had to catch her before she fell.

  Last night when he’d invited her out for today, she hadn’t been able to say that she had a previous engagement with the gardener, so she’d accepted.

  The next day, Taylor took so much time in dressing Holly she’d not been able to slip out to tell Nick in person that she wouldn’t see him that day. Instead, she’d seen him in the kitchen, talking to her father, and she’d loudly reiterated her plans for the day. Nick had listened but made no comment.

  “Now try on this blouse. Lorrie will love it.”

  Holly wasn’t sure how Taylor thought she knew what Lorrie would like, but she allowed herself to be dressed in linen and lace, all of it white and easily dirtied. There’d be no hiking in the swamp looking for tree-covered cave entrances.

  Promptly at ten, Lorrie had picked her up, and immediately, Holly had started questioning him about Arthur and Jason and Julia.

  Lorrie laughed in a pleasant way. “I seem to have unleashed a flood. Holly dearest, I know no more than I told you. I’m afraid that over the years that story has become merely a dinner party entertainment. Told only to a select few, of course.”

  “Oh,” Holly said, disappointed, then told herself to grow up. Not everyone was fascinated with history, even if it involved injustice and a lost treasure. She made herself relax against the leather of Lorrie’s BMW and told herself she had to make conversation. Since she was usually with other preservationists and academics, it was a long time since she’d had a simple chat. On the other hand, she never seemed to have trouble talking to Nick. But what did they talk about? The word “sex” came to her mind.

  At that thought her face turned red and she looked out the side window. When Lorrie took her hand, she looked back.

  “A penny…” he said.

  “I was just thinking that it had been a long time since I’d talked about anything except work.”

  “Me, either,” he said. “Shall we ban talk of work for the day? Yours and mine.” He gave her a sideways look. “And Belle Chere.”

  Holly wrinkled her brow. “No work? No Belle Chere? What else is there?”

  They laughed together, then Lorrie spoke. “Tell me every word of everything you’ve done since you were thirteen.”

  “Okay, so there’s fifteen minutes of the day gone, then what?”

  “That I don’t believe. A beautiful woman like you?” He lifted her hand and kissed the palm. “You must have had a million proposals of marriage by now.”

  She started to say she hadn’t, but changed her mind. “Only eight hundred and twelve thousand, give or take one or two.”

  “No more? Surely…?”

  Again, they laughed together. Holly leaned back in the seat and smiled. This is going to work out well, she thought.

  However, two hours later, she was bored. It was one thing to see romantic photos of a lady in white being rowed down the river by a handsome man, but quite another to experience it. The truth was, she’d like to take off her clothes and go skinny-dipping.

  But not with Lorrie. With Nick.

  She took a deep breath and told herself to stop that. “So tell me about your marriage.” That question should liven things up!

  “What do you think about air-conditioning Belle Chere?” Lorrie asked, his eyes laughing.

  “Oh! So I’m to confess all, but you’re to tell me nothing?”

  “Might I point out that you’ve told me nothing whatever about yourself.”

  “What should I tell you? That the summer I spent with you at Belle Chere changed my life?”

  “That’s a good start. Go on.”

  Briefly, she told him how she’d kept the love of old houses that he’d instilled in her, and that all she needed now was to complete her Ph.D. She trailed her hand in the water. “And since you asked me to help you find the treasure…”

  When Lorrie grunted, she looked at him. “My darling Hollander,” he said softly, “I fear that that treasure is a myth. Truthfully, I had completely dishonorable intentions in telling that story.”

  “But Nick said it was real,” she blurted, then closed her mouth firmly.

  “And who is Nick?”

  Looking away, Holly said, “He works for us.”

  “The gardener?” Lorrie asked in disbelief. “You’re quoting the gardener?”

  “He’s a nice guy,” Holly said defensively.

  “I’m sure he is. However, I can’t see how he’d have any insight into my family’s history.” Lorrie chuckled. “Unless he’s psychic, of course.”

  Again, Holly looked away, her face even redder, and she thought how silly it had been for her to believe Nick. A clairvoyant! she thought. A cave with a tree planted over it. How absurd. “I really would like to know about your marriage,” she said to distract Lorrie.

  As he rowed, he began to tell her of his former marriage. As far as Holly could tell, Lorrie had married the older woman out of pity. Her husband had always taken care of her and after the man died, as her lawyer, Lorrie had had to spend masses of time with her as he sorted through her husband’s many businesses.

  “She was lonely,” Lorrie said, “and for the first time since she was nineteen she had no man to take care of her. When she was going to cancel attending a charity ball because she had no escort, I volunteered to go with her. After that, one thing led to another, and…” He looked at Holly with sad eyes. “I’m ashamed to say that I was dazzled by her. She was a very beautiful and very wealthy woman. There were yacht parties and summer cottages with a dozen bedrooms. Being with her was like living in a past time. A time”—he lowered his voice—“such as when Belle Chere was at its peak. She made me feel like my ancestors must have felt when they gave parties for three hundred people.”

  He stopped rowing. “Can you forgive me?”

  “Forgive you?” she asked. “For what?”

  “For being too young and foolish to have seen what was right under my nose when I first met you.”

  “I forgive you,” she said. “And I was just a kid that summer.”

  “Yeah, and I’d sworn off women for the entire summer.”

  She’d always wanted to hear his side of why he’d given up a social life with kids his own age. “So tell me everything,” she said, and he talked some more.

  By four o’clock, Holly felt much better than she had earlier. All in all, she and Lorrie had had a lovely day. He was a wonderful raconteur, and he’d told story after story about his family, past and present, and about his law practice. There were a couple of times when she thought he was being a bit indiscreet, but his confidences only made her feel as though he trusted her—and that he planned to keep her in his future life.

  By 4:30, they were at Belle Chere and all the lethargy of the day fell away as they walked through the gardens and inspected every inch of the plantation. In daylight, Holly saw much more deterioration than she’d seen at night. Roofs were in bad shape; walls sagged. Rats were gnawing at floorboards. Owls were nesting. And the weeds! Vines grew up through floors and out windows.

  Holly said little but she saw a lot. At this rate, in about fifteen years, Belle Chere would be in ruins. All that would be left would be piles of rotting wood. People would say, “There used to a cotton gin over there
.”

  It was all she could do not to beg Lorrie to allow her to pay for restoring the place, but he’d told her that when he and his wealthy wife had divorced his pride had allowed him to take nothing from her. She was sure that a man of such pride would never allow someone else to pay his expenses. In fact, he said he’d used all his savings to prevent his former wife from taking Belle Chere in the property settlement.

  “But how could she have taken it?” Holly asked, shocked. “It was yours before you married.”

  “Her attorneys said that she’d paid millions to renovate Belle Chere so it belonged to her as much as to me. I didn’t delve into what falsehoods she’d told her accountants.”

  “Didn’t anyone come out here to look at this place?” She twirled around. “There’s been no money put into Belle Chere for many years. It’s falling down.”

  “That bad, huh?” Lorrie was smiling at her.

  Holly stopped twirling and looked at her hands. “It does need some work.” Maybe it was because they’d met when she was still a child, but sometimes Lorrie seemed very old to her. Which, of course, was ridiculous. The truth was, he was only twenty-seven. And Nick had told her he was twenty-nine. But it was Lorrie who seemed old. No, she corrected herself, Lorrie seemed mature. Sophisticated. He’d been through a lot in his short life and it showed in his eyes and manners.

  Reaching out his hand, he caressed her cheek. “You have a way of looking at me that makes me feel as though I could lasso the moon.”

  She kept her eyes down, but she was pleased by his words. When he took a step closer to her, she held her breath.

  “I don’t think I realized how much a pair of velvet eyes have haunted me all these years. It’s true that that summer you were a kid and I was nursing a broken heart over…” Pausing, he chuckled. “Over a fellow student, so all I wanted to do was work and forget. But, later, I thought about you often.”

  He put his hand under her chin and lifted her eyes to look at him. “Did you ever think about me in all those years? Not as the owner of all this, but as a man?”

  “Now and then,” she said, trying not to bat her lashes too hard, but he was making her feel very coquettish.

  “If I hadn’t been so distracted that summer…” He bent his head as he leaned down, his lips moving close to hers.

  But he didn’t kiss her because suddenly the sound of a motorcycle made them both look up.

  Nick, wearing a dark helmet, sunglasses, T-shirt, jeans, and tall black boots, came roaring toward them on an enormous motorcycle that looked as though it had served in a couple of wars.

  He skidded to a stop so close to them that Holly jumped back, but Lorrie held his ground, refusing to move an inch. Lorrie had an odd expression on his face that Holly couldn’t read.

  Nick yelled at Holly over the blare of the big machine, but she could only make out the words “father” and “home.”

  “What?!” she yelled back at him.

  “Your father—” Nick shouted then turned the accelerator so the giant motorcycle emitted more noise and a lot of smoke. “Home!” Nick finished.

  Lorrie reached out and killed the motor of the bike and the resulting silence was thunderous.

  “Why’d you do that?” Nick asked. “It takes forever to get this thing started again.” He looked at Holly. “Your father wants you home now.”

  “Is something wrong?” Her hand went to her throat. Since her father’s heart attack, she’d worried about him every minute.

  Nick shrugged. “I’m just the gardener. He told me he needed you now so here I am. But the last time I saw him he looked and sounded healthy.”

  “I will take Miss Latham home,” Lorrie said, still looking quite strange.

  “In that?” Nick asked, nodding toward Lorrie’s BMW. “It has a flat. Probably a nail in the tire. Holly better go back with me. If I can get this thing started again, that is.”

  She looked at Lorrie. “I’d better go with him,” she said, putting on the passenger helmet. “My father may need me.”

  “Of course,” Lorrie said graciously as he put his hands on her shoulders.

  She knew he meant to kiss her on the lips as he’d done the last time he’d been confronted by Nick, but she turned away. For one thing, she’d bent toward him three times that day, making it easy for him to kiss her, but he hadn’t. In the second place, since she planned to get on a motorcycle that Nick was driving, she didn’t want him angry.

  “I’ll see you…tomorrow?” she asked Lorrie as she backed away from him.

  “Yes, please do stop by,” he said stiffly.

  “No, I mean in the morning. For research. For my doctorate.”

  “Ah, yes, of course,” Lorrie said, then smiled. “Yes, do come early. For breakfast. And since I’ll be here you won’t need a chaperone.” He looked pointedly at Nick. “We can—” He said no more as Nick kick-started the big motorcycle and drowned out all conversation.

  Shrugging, Holly stepped toward the bike, but the long skirt she was wearing prevented her from straddling the back. In the next second, Lorrie picked her up by the waist and sat her sidesaddle on the back of the motorcycle, her skirt hiked up uncomfortably.

  Lorrie stepped back, kissed his fingertips, and blew her a kiss. Holly knew Nick was watching so she returned the gesture—then had to grab Nick when he sent the bike flying down the driveway.

  She wasn’t in the least surprised when he went past Spring Hill’s driveway and headed toward Edenton. Surprised, no, but angry, yes. He was assuming too much! She yelled into his ear that she wanted him to stop.

  He pulled off the road and into the parking lot of a closed antiques shop, and parked in the shade. “You want to tell me what that was all about?” she demanded as she got off the bike and removed the helmet.

  He took off his helmet and ran his hand through his sweaty hair.

  “Would you please answer me?” she snapped. “And how dare you use my father’s name in a lie!”

  “We’re friends, remember?” Nick said, unperturbed. “So how do you like my new bike?”

  “New? That thing was probably used in a Marlon Brando movie.”

  “Yeah,” he said, grinning. “That’s what I thought, too. Maybe I should buy a leather jacket and one of those flat-topped motorcycle caps. How do you think I’d look?”

  She glared at him.

  “Okay, okay, keep your shirt on. On the other hand…”

  Holly glared at him harder.

  “Two things. You spent too much time with him on the first date.”

  “Are you crazy?! I slept with you on the first date.”

  “Actually, I’m not sure you’d classify any of our time together as a ‘date.’ And since you’re not planning to marry me it doesn’t matter what you do with me. But ol’ Lorrie—”

  “He’s two years younger than you are.”

  “But he seems older, don’t you think? Or maybe it’s the button-down shirt and the creased slacks and the penny loafers. Didn’t they go out of style in about 1952? Speaking of clothes, what do you have on? Under that, I mean?” He reached toward her.

  When she took a step back, he stopped. “Sorry,” he murmured.

  “Could we start again?” she asked. “Why did you pick me up at Lorrie’s? And did you give his car a flat?”

  He removed a blue bandanna from his back pocket and began to polish the chrome gas tank—which was useless since the chrome was pitted with corrosion. When he spoke, his voice was no longer joking. “Yesterday you said we were friends so I was trying to help you. Guys like Lorrie—”

  “Please refrain from stereotyping him,” she said stiffly.

  “Okay, sorry again.” He pushed the bandanna back into his pocket, then leaned against the motorcycle, his arms folded across his chest. “I can see you won’t believe me, but I was trying to help you. You need to play a little bit hard to get. No man appreciates what comes too easily. It’s the caveman thing. We like the hunt.”

  “So I guess s
ince I came to you, that makes me—”

  “You! You’re kidding, aren’t you? You’re not just hard to get, you’re impossible. Oh, sure, I can have your body anytime I want it. All I have to do is—” When she gave him a warning look, he stopped. “Okay, so that’s not the point. I am not the point. The point is that friends, just as you said we are, help each other. Isn’t that a song?”

  “Nick, so help me, if you—”

  “Okay, as I was saying, you can’t go on a first date with a guy and spend—what was it? six hours with him. You need to make him want more. In six hours you probably told him everything about yourself, including how you’ve dreamed about his house for eleven years.”

  “Him, not Belle Chere. I dreamed about him. The house is a bonus.”

  “I see. Like Lorrie’s the job and the paycheck is the bonus. One’s good and one’s bad.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “Okay, sorry yet again, but can you blame me? I lost and he won. Not because he’s a better man than I am, but because he…. Tell me again why he’s winning and I’m not.”

  Holly stepped toward the motorcycle, ready to demand that Nick return her to Spring Hill.

  “Before I showed up today, had he said anything about date number two? Before you asked him out, that is?”

  Holly didn’t answer, but she halted and turned back to look at him.

  “So let me ask you this,” Nick continued. “Today, what did you two talk about? Your life or his?”

  She didn’t want to answer that question because they’d talked almost totally about Lorrie’s life. Of course, Holly had insisted that they do so. Every time her life had come up, she’d been the one to change the subject. However, Nick’s words made her think. He had always drawn her out. As he’d said, he was a good listener.

  “You’re a wicked man, Nick Taggert.”

  “No, I’m a man who likes you. In fact, I like you too much, so I’m going to try to keep you from making mistakes. You’re never going to win the man and the mansion if you dress up like that and give him six hours of your time on the first date.”