Holly

  “Yes, sir, I do,” Nick said. And I know where to scratch your daughter’s itch, he wanted to say.

  The “sir” seemed to mollify him. “How soon can you be here?”

  “About nine hours,” Nick said.

  “Then do it. The lawnmower is in the shed by the garage. Your house is the white one by the water. I like employees in direct proportion to how little attention I have to pay to them. Do your job, stay out of my sight, give me no problems, and I’ll frequently raise your salary. Understand me?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll—” Nick said no more because Ambassador Latham had hung up on him.

  For a moment Nick stared at the phone. Was he sure he wanted to do this? It wasn’t as though he was in love with Miss Hollander Latham. Just because he’d spent two fabulous days with her and now he could think of nothing else in the world was no reason to subject himself to a summer of lawn mowing. And boat maintenance. And chiggers. And more fabulous sex.

  Smiling, Nick looked at his watch. He could be at Spring Hill in eight hours. He’d given himself an extra hour to go to a local store and buy a wardrobe of T-shirts and jeans.

  Chapter Six

  “HOLLY, DARLING,” MARGUERITE LATHAM SAID from across the dining table, “you look exhausted. Aren’t you sleeping well?”

  Holly caught herself before her chin fell into her soup. It might be canned tomato soup, but it was served in Wedgwood china, on Irish linen, and an eighteenth-century mahogany table.

  “What’s wrong with you?” her father asked from around his newspaper.

  “Nothing, sir,” Holly said. “I was up late…studying.” She swallowed because she wasn’t good at lying.

  “So who have you met?” Taylor, across from her, asked.

  Holly tried to kick her stepsister under the table, but Taylor moved her long, slim legs out of the way. Growing up, Taylor had been Holly’s closest friend. Together they’d been shuffled from one school to another, moved from one country to another. Taylor had been ten years old when her mother had married James Latham. She’d lived a life of poverty and deprivation, but she’d adjusted to being an ambassador’s daughter in an amazingly short time. “I always knew I didn’t belong in a fourth-floor walk-up,” she’d told Holly when Holly was still a kid and Taylor was a gorgeous, elegant, sought-after young woman.

  Because they knew each other well, Taylor knew Holly was lying, and from the look on Taylor’s face, she meant to find out why Holly was nearly falling asleep at the table.

  But Holly also knew Taylor. She turned to her stepmother. “Didn’t you say you planned to use gardenias in the centerpieces at the wedding? I read that gardenias are so very ‘last season.’ ”

  “Last season!” Taylor exclaimed. “What idiot wrote that? Gardenias are always in fashion. They denote old-world culture, southern charm. Charles’s family is nothing if they aren’t southern. They epitomize—”

  “How a turncoat can flourish,” James said, putting down his paper. He’d had a minion do some research and found out that when the American Revolutionary War started, Charles Maitland’s ancestors had been on both sides, English and American. They’d waited until they saw who won before settling on the American side. They’d stood back and watched the newly formed American government confiscate hundreds of thousands of acres from families that had remained loyal to the king, but the Maitlands kept their land. Not that they still owned their ancestral land, but they still had the name—and money made from cotton and peanuts.

  “Father,” Taylor said in a voice of exasperation, “that was hundreds of years ago. Before Charles was born. I think it’s time to forget, even if you can’t forgive. I think—”

  As Holly bent her head over the soup, she could feel her stepsister’s eyes bearing down on her, willing Holly to lift her head and look at her.

  But Holly didn’t look up because she was afraid the guilt would show in her eyes. It was, of course, absurd, but she was afraid her family would see in her eyes where she’d spent her last days.

  She well knew that Taylor had indulged in more than one weekend with some man she’d never see again, but Holly hadn’t. She had—

  The overpowering noise of a lawnmower just outside the window made her look up.

  “Damnation!” James Latham said, pushing back his chair and going to the door. “Turn that thing off!” he bellowed. There were few people on earth who could be heard above a powerful lawnmower, but the ambassador was one of them. Instantly, the noise stopped and Mr. Latham went back to his chair, then looked at his BLT sandwich with disdain. “When does the cook arrive?”

  “Tomorrow, dear,” Marguerite said. Perhaps because she was waitressing when she met her second husband, she refused to make anything more than canned soup and simple sandwiches—although both girls knew she was quite an accomplished cook. Once, she’d told the girls, “If your father found out I can cook, he’d put yet another responsibility on my shoulders and I have quite enough already, thank you.” She was right. James Latham believed his job was to sort out the world and his wife was to take care of everything else. Now that he was retired, he saw no reason to change.

  “So, Dad,” Taylor said, “who is the gorgeous hunk you hired to mow the grass?” Taylor loved to antagonize her stepfather. Whereas Holly was half-afraid of him, Taylor loved to push the man to the point of rage.

  “Taylor, I don’t think—” Marguerite began, always the peacemaker.

  “Have you seen him?” Taylor asked Holly.

  “No,” Holly said sleepily. Yesterday the movers had shown up at 6:00 A.M. and, probably to get her back for standing them up, they’d had a thousand questions an hour—all on different floors. She’d spent the day running up and down stairs. But as exhausted as she was, that night she’d not been able to sleep. All she’d thought about was Nick. She thought of his arms, of his face nuzzling her neck. She thought of the way he’d run soapy hands over her body. At 3:00 A.M. she got up, got into her car, and drove to his house. There was no answer to her knock. Feeling as though he’d rejected her, she’d returned to the summer house, packed her clothes, and started the drive to her parents’ house. Yet again, she’d had another night of no sleep.

  “I can tell you that if I didn’t have Charles, I’d—”

  “Run off with the lawnmower boy?” Marguerite asked, horror in her voice. The only time she was a snob was when the life partners of her daughters came into consideration.

  “Maybe I’d just spend a weekend or two—or six—with him,” Taylor said, obviously trying to provoke her stepfather, but he was ignoring her.

  Eating his sandwich with a knife and fork (James Latham did not touch food with his hands), he looked at his wife and said, “So what invitations do we have?”

  “The usual. The Edenton Historical Society wants your endorsement, and there are a few teas.”

  “Humph! Little old ladies who think they should wear hats when they meet me. What else?”

  “All the churches. One has asked you to give the sermon.”

  “Possible,” he said. “Possible. Perhaps I—Now what?!” Outside came the noise of a weedwhacker. Tossing his napkin onto the table, he got up, went to the door, and bellowed again, “Turn that thing off!” When it was silent, he said, “Bother me with that noise again and you’re fired.” He paused as the new gardener seemed to be talking. “Then do it by hand!” was Ambassador Latham’s answer.

  “Machinery!” he said, sitting down once again. “Now, where were we? Oh yes, invitations.”

  “Some dinner parties.”

  “Any of them interesting?”

  “No. Oh yes. Remember that nice young man who lived down the river? He had an unusual first name. Something from Little Women.”

  “Jo?” Taylor asked.

  With each word her stepmother spoke, Holly’s sleepiness fell away. Lorrie’s mother had loved the book Little Women and it was she who called her son “Lorrie” instead of “Larry.”

  “Lorrie,” Holly said, trying to so
und unconnected to the name.

  “Yes, that’s it. Didn’t you two spend time together that summer when you were eleven?”

  “Thirteen,” Holly said, her head bent low over her plate.

  “Yes, I guess so,” Marguerite said. “Anyway, he’s back here for the summer and he’s invited us to…” She trailed off.

  When Holly looked up, her family was staring at her and she grinned. They knew her passion for old houses and they assumed she’d remembered Lorrie’s name because of his house. “Belle Chere,” Holly said. “A plantation that hasn’t been remodeled and is perfectly preserved. When I saw it when I was thirteen, the blacksmith’s tools were still in the shop. Even the icehouse was still standing. Do you know how difficult it is to find an icehouse that hasn’t collapsed? And the—”

  “Yes, dear,” Marguerite said loudly. “Shall I accept his invitation for dinner at Belle Chere on Saturday night?”

  All Holly could do was nod. Yes, oh yes, oh yes, she wanted to shout. Smiling, she looked at her father and Taylor, saw that their eyes were glazed over in anticipation of one of Holly’s speeches on the incomparable beauty of some derelict old house.

  After a moment, Taylor leaned across the table and said, “So why did you decide to spend the summer here?”

  For a moment Holly didn’t know what she meant, but then the three of them laughed and she turned away in embarrassment—and triumph. They thought she’d returned for a house, not a man. Good! Beyond anything, she didn’t want anyone to think that she was after a man. If it got back to Lorrie that she was after him, his pride would make him turn the other way. The only chance she had of winning Lorrie Beaumont was to get him to pursue her.

  Shouldn’t be too difficult, she thought. She’d managed to get the handsome Nick Taggert to want her. Of course, when she’d met him she’d been naked and inside a pit and—

  She broke off her thoughts because outside the dining room window she saw the back of a man’s head. He was hidden from view from the neck down, but from the back he…he looked like Nick.

  “That’s him,” Taylor said in a loud whisper, as though she didn’t want her stepfather to hear. “Divine, isn’t he?”

  “Taylor, if you must show your origins, kindly keep them from my daughter.” He was referring to the fact that Taylor’s biological father had been a good-looking hoodlum.

  Taylor was unperturbed. She knew that what her stepfather hated most on earth was a coward. He believed a person should stand up for himself whether he was right or wrong—wrong being whatever didn’t agree with James Latham. “From Hollander?” Taylor asked innocently, batting her lashes at the ambassador. Socially, her father and Holly’s mother had been the same.

  James Latham pushed his chair away from the table. “Accept everything,” he said to his wife. “Especially the sermon. Perhaps I’ll change careers and become a man of the cloth. Holly, my dear, might I suggest that you prepare an outline of your dissertation and I’ll go over it with you. And, Taylor,” he said with a sigh, “stay away from the lawnmower boy. He needs the job. And you,” he said, looking at his wife, “you—”

  “James,” she said forcibly, “I can organize my own time.”

  “Yes, just so,” he said, then picked up his newspaper and went up the stairs to his study where the three women knew that he’d take a nap.

  Once the ambassador was out of the room, the three women leaned back in their chairs in relief.

  “How long has he been like this?” Taylor asked.

  “Since his heart attack,” Marguerite answered. “He’s tried to make Phyllis, Roger, and me into his entire staff. The first gardener quit after just two days. I can’t imagine why he stayed that long. After today I assume this one will leave. Do either of you know how to mow a lawn?”

  “No idea,” Taylor said with a shudder. “Oh no, look at the time. I have a fitting in an hour. Holly, when are you going to get fitted for your bridesmaid dress?”

  “Taylor, that dress isn’t really lavender chiffon, is it?”

  “And what’s wrong with that?”

  “Unlike you, I have hips. I have breasts,” Holly said. “I’ll look like one of those pillow dolls from the twenties.”

  “And who knows what that looks like?” Taylor said.

  “Anyone want some ice cream?” Marguerite asked.

  Holly said no; Taylor said yes. As soon as they were alone, Taylor lowered her voice. “So why did you miss the movers?”

  “I told you, I fell into a pit and I had a difficult time getting out.”

  “Mmmm-hmmm. Sure. So why did the police call here and ask if you’d been kidnapped?”

  “A misunderstanding,” Holly said, looking away. “I think maybe I’ll take a nap. I’m sure there’ll be some wonderful social event tonight that’ll keep me out late and—”

  “You look great, you know that?”

  “Thanks,” Holly said, smiling in appreciation of the compliment.

  “No, really, you look the best I’ve ever seen you look.”

  “I lost a few pounds and toned up a bit, so—”

  “No. Not that. It’s something else. There’s a glow around you. Who’s the man?”

  Holly thought she’d better stop this right now. She looked toward the kitchen, then back. “It’s anticipation. I’m going to try to get this man, Lorrie Beaumont, to allow me to research Belle Chere so I can write about it. My dissertation will be the history of one house.”

  “And the thought of a summer spent digging through two hundred-year-old papers is making your cheeks glow and your eyes sparkle?”

  “Yes, of course,” Holly said, trying hard not to blink at the lie.

  “Try again.”

  “That and two days of the most divine sex ever experienced on earth,” Holly said at last, feeling the necklace Nick had given her tucked into her bra.

  Taylor leaned back in her chair and smiled. “Good for you. So who was he? Anyone you can bring home to Mommy and Daddy?”

  “Far, far from it,” Holly said, sighing. “Think motorcycles and racing trucks and Hollander Tools.”

  “Are you going to give him an employee discount?”

  “I’m never going to see him again. Over. Done with. I’m now going to turn my head to my studies and an appropriate man. Does Charles have a brother?”

  “Charles is an only child, as you well know. Sole inheritor of the family fortune. So tell me about this Lorrie, who owns this old house you’re so ga-ga about.”

  Against her will, Holly felt her face turn red. She cleared her throat.

  “Still have a crush on him?”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” Holly said stiffly.

  Taylor glanced toward the door and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Come on, Holly, do you think no one knew where you were that whole summer?”

  Holly could only blink at her stepsister.

  “I remember that summer because that’s when I first met Charles. He was married then, but I knew as soon as I saw him that someday he’d be mine. You were young, but I wanted to tell you that I’d met the man I was going to marry, but when I tried to talk to you, you heard nothing.”

  “So you snooped?” Holly said, beginning to feel angry. All these years she’d thought that her summer with Lorrie had been her own secret.

  “Just taking care of my little sister. Don’t worry, the parents know nothing about anything.” Taylor leaned back in her chair. “Look, count your blessings. At least they’ll approve of this Lorrie. With me, Mom adores Charles and his illustrious ancestors, but Dad says that being a turncoat is in his blood. I think he expects Charles to leave me at the altar.”

  Holly said nothing, but she didn’t care for Taylor’s fiancé. When they’d met, he’d been thirty and married, while Taylor had only been twenty years old. Taylor had never said, but Holly was sure they’d been lovers. Now it was eleven years later and it wasn’t as though Taylor had waited for him, but part of Holly felt she had. Was Charles going to prove worth
the wait?

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Taylor said. “Don’t put that look of pity on your face. ‘Poor Taylor. All the men she’s turned down while she’s waited for Charles’s crazy old wife to die.’ As you well know, I’ve just never liked any other man as well as I’ve liked Charles.”

  “You’ve never given any man a chance. What’s your record? Four months? As soon as a man starts getting serious about you, you run away.”

  “My problem is that I regress. I tend to like men like my father.”

  Holly knew what that meant: big, gorgeous daredevils with no education, no money. Taylor liked men who wore tool belts and carried chain saws. But they weren’t the kind of men she could bring home, and she too well remembered her life of poverty before her mother married James Latham.

  “Speaking of hunks,” Holly said, “I need to look my best for Saturday. I have a dress, but I need—” She touched her hair, then held up her hands in surrender.

  “Come upstairs with me and we’ll make some appointments. I’ll show you what can be done in three days.”

  Chapter Seven

  HOLLY SAT AT THE DRESSING TABLE (EDWARDIAN, inlaid walnut) in her bedroom and tried to still her nervous stomach. In less than an hour she was going to see Lorrie again. Had he changed much, she wondered?

  Closing her eyes for a moment, she tried to remember that summer, remember the way she felt. Never since had she admired a person as much as she admired Lorrie that summer. What sixteen-year-old boy would give up a summer of play to repair an old house? Day after day, he’d worked beside Holly as they scraped and repainted. He’d helped her up ladders, had showed her how to carry one end of heavy beams. When she’d pulled back weeds around the dairy and surprised a cottonmouth snake, it had been Lorrie who’d run to the house, got his .22 rifle, and killed the snake. Holly had used the moment to briefly clasp Lorrie about the waist and express her eternal gratitude.