As Holly put on lipstick (the third shade she’d tried), she halted. The problem with trying to remember every moment of her summer with Lorrie was that Nick Taggert’s face kept coming into her mind.
“Adulthood!” Holly said in disgust, applied the lipstick, looked at it, then wiped it off.
The problem was that now that she was an adult, it was difficult to sustain a sense of desire for a boy she’d done no more with than work. Every time she thought of Lorrie, Nick’s face popped up. When she remembered her fear of the snake, and the way she’d held absolutely still, and the way Lorrie looked behind the rifle, she saw Nick’s face. In her mind’s eye, she saw Nick shoot the snake, then she saw herself fall on him in gratitude, and she saw them making love on the mown grass near the dairy.
For the last three days she’d rarely been home. Instead, she’d been in Edenton going from one beauty appointment to another. Taylor had always been the hedonist while Holly had been the worker. If the vegetable patch needed weeding, Holly would weed it. Taylor wouldn’t have noticed, but if she had, she wouldn’t have messed up her perfect manicure to pull weeds.
To get ready to see Lorrie again, Holly had massages, had subtle streaks of color put in her hair, had a facial, most of her body waxed, and a manicure and a pedicure.
By the end of three days she didn’t know when she’d ever been so exhausted. She was dying to get this first meeting over. As she was under the dryer, hot lights beating down on the foil on her head, she hoped Lorrie would take one look at her, ask her to marry him, and then elope with her so she could start work on Belle Chere within a week. When the manicurist gouged her with a nail file, Holly changed the week to four days.
“Ready?” Taylor asked as she walked through the bathroom into Holly’s bedroom.
“I think so,” Holly said, standing up. She was wearing black hose and a black lace teddy.
Taylor eyed her stepsister critically from head to toe. “You do look great.”
“You sound as though you wish I didn’t,” Holly said, smiling, but Taylor didn’t laugh.
“You have everything,” Taylor said softly.
As always, Holly immediately felt guilty. She put her arm around Taylor’s shoulders. “You don’t have to worry. You won’t end up living in a cold-water flat.” Holly tried to make a joke but it fell flat. Taylor’s biggest fear in life was that she’d end up like her mother had been: single and broke. Holly suspected that the main reason Taylor was marrying Charles was for the security his old name and his wealth would give her.
When Holly turned twenty-one and had come into her inheritance, the first thing she’d done was set up trusts for the people she loved. For all that her father was well known, he had no real income, nor did his wife. Holly had provided lifetime incomes for the three of them. Even if Marguerite divorced Holly’s father she’d still have an income as long as she lived. And if Taylor ran off with the lawnmower boy and James disowned her (a distinct possibility), she’d still be able to live well. Not lavishly, but comfortably.
However, Holly still felt guilty whenever Taylor made a reference to the fact that Holly had it all: beauty, wealth, and her father’s illustrious name.
Holly wanted to lighten the moment. She went to the armoire (no closets in her bedroom) and pulled out her black silk dress. “So tell me, after one of these one-night stands, how long does it take before you stop seeing the man’s face everywhere?”
“Face?” Taylor asked. “They have faces?”
Holly laughed as she stepped into her dress. Her hair had been moussed and sprayed into a perfectly arranged helmet that she didn’t dare mess up. “No, really. You must have liked at least one of them.”
Taylor sat down on the edge of Holly’s bed (built in 1792 and restored by Holly) and stared at her stepsister. “So tell me everything about this man.”
“You mean…?” Holly trailed off.
“I’m not interested in your sex life. I have my own very active sex life.”
“Really?” Holly asked, turning so Taylor could zip her dress up. “With Charles, I assume.”
When Taylor snorted as though to say she couldn’t believe Holly could be so naïve, Holly looked at her sharply. “But—who? Taylor, you can’t be serious. Charles is—”
“Dear little sister, join the twenty-first century. There are people who need more than an old house to give them an orgasm.”
“I don’t—” Holly began but stopped. The truth was, she didn’t want to hear about whatever Taylor was up to. She was afraid that if she knew, the next time she saw Charles her red face would tell too much.
“Did he make you laugh?” Taylor asked.
“Charles?” Holly asked. “Not—Oh, you mean him.” She looked away. The views outside her window were beautiful. She looked over the top of fruit trees to the river beyond. “Yes, he made me laugh. And he got me access into some old houses that—”
“Oh, Lord!” Taylor said. “Call the caterer and book the church. If he got you inside a bunch of old houses, then he found the key to your heart.” She got up and went to stand in front of her stepsister. “Were any of those houses as good as Belle Chere?”
“Not hardly,” Holly said, smiling.
“So go for the big prize, not the little one. Use all your feminine wiles on Lorrie tonight, make him fall madly in love with you, and you’ll get to remodel a whole bunch of old buildings.”
“Renovate, not remodel,” Holly said without thinking.
“Whatever. Now are you ready to go?”
Holly took a deep breath. “I think so. Wish me luck.”
“With your face and body and that dress, you don’t need luck. I was thinking. Maybe I should get breast implants.”
“Sure,” Holly said. “Double Ds at least.”
Laughing, they went downstairs.
Spring Hill, built in 1790, had a center hall floor plan. Upstairs and down, a wide center hall went from front to back, with four rooms on each floor leading off the hall. Downstairs was a kitchen, dining room, a sitting room, and a library. A powder room had been stuck under the stairs.
Upstairs, on the right of the hall was the master suite, which consisted of two bedrooms with a connecting door, and two bathrooms. “My own bath helps me keep a sense of mystery,” Marguerite had once said.
Across the center hall was one bedroom that shared a bath, a laundry room, and a small sitting room.
It was a simple house with large, gracious rooms. The downstairs rooms had wainscoting on the walls, and deep molding around the doors and ceiling.
Downstairs, James Latham admired his two daughters, offered each his arm, and walked them to the big double front doors. “Had I known there were two such beautiful young women under all that dreadful denim, I’d have stayed home and kept you to myself.”
As many times as she’d heard the joke, Holly still smiled. This was the father she knew and loved. He knew how to make women feel beautiful. Growing up, Holly had rarely seen the “other” James Latham, the man who was known as the “hard-nosed negotiator.” Since his heart attack, his family was seeing that man more and more often.
Laughing, Holly hugged her father’s arm and smiled across his deep chest at Taylor. All was right with the world! She was going to see the man she’d dreamed about for eleven long years. And she was again going to see Belle Chere, beautiful, breathtaking, unpolluted Belle Chere.
Still smiling, looking up at her father, she saw Taylor’s face change when the doors were opened. Taylor’s eyes darkened, her lashes lowered, and her nostrils flared.
Holly chuckled to herself. Only a man could make a woman look like that and it was no doubt the new gardener who was doing it. Her father no longer had a full-time valet or a dedicated driver, so the two male employees he did have did double duty. Taylor had mentioned that the gardener would be driving them to Belle Chere.
Smiling, Holly turned—and looked into the dark blue eyes of Nick Taggert.
She froze. She stood planted w
here she was, unable to move forward.
Her father looked at her in puzzlement. “I thought you’d seen the new car,” he said. “It isn’t a limo. It’s a—” He looked at Taylor in question.
“It’s an SUV,” she said loudly, her eyes on Nick, who was looking at James, carefully not looking at either woman.
“Oh, yes,” James said. “An SUV. Holly, it has a television inside it. Come on, let me show you.”
Leaving the women behind, he went forward to his newest toy, and Nick opened a sliding door for him.
Holly was still rooted in place, still staring.
“I told you,” Taylor whispered. “Isn’t he divine?”
Holly tried to breathe. “You’re sleeping with him?”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it. He’s to be my last fling before I settle into wifehood and joining the garden club.” She laughed. “He’s going to be my gardener.” She went forward to get into the car beside her stepfather, and Marguerite followed.
When the three of them were in the big vehicle, they turned to look at Holly, who hadn’t moved an inch from the doorway.
“Come on, dear, we’ll be late,” Marguerite said.
Holly couldn’t take her eyes off Nick, but he hadn’t looked at her. As though he were a robot, he stood by the sliding door, ready to close it after Holly got inside.
“Wait a minute,” James said, looking at Nick. “My daughter becomes ill if she sits in the back. Let her sit in the front with you.”
Obediently, Nick slid the door shut, then opened the front passenger door. But Holly still didn’t move.
Taylor leaned across her mother and shouted, “Old house! Falling down! Needs rescue!”
They all laughed when the words acted like a dash of cold water on Holly. She shook her head, then slowly walked across the porch and down the steps. When she stood in front of Nick, he still didn’t meet her eyes. It was as though he’d never seen her before and was just doing his job.
Maybe he’s a look-alike, she thought. Maybe he’s like one of those actors who look like famous people and—“Eeek!” Holly squealed because, as she stepped up into the passenger seat, Nick had run a caressing hand over the curve of her behind.
“Are you all right?” Marguerite asked as Nick walked to the other side of the big car.
“Yes,” Holly said, swallowing. “I, uh, twisted my ankle.”
She looked straight ahead as Nick took the driver’s seat and slowly drove down the long gravel drive to the paved road. By water, Belle Chere was very close, but by road, it was about four miles.
Holly desperately wanted to talk to Nick. No, she wanted to scream at him, to demand to know what he thought he was doing there. She wanted to plead with him to leave, and to reason with him by saying that his presence could mess up her entire future. Her maybe future, that is.
The drive to Belle Chere seemed to go on forever. They seemed to pass houses so slowly she began to count windowpanes. She noticed every door frame, every porch post.
“Why are you here?” she hissed at Nick when she heard laughter in the back.
Nick glanced in the rearview mirror and didn’t answer. When Holly looked back, Taylor was staring at him.
Holly looked back out the window and tried to calm down. Okay, she could handle this. She was an adult. She just first had to find out what he wanted from her.
When they passed a truck with Hollander Tools printed on the side, she gasped. Had he found out about her inheritance? Was he here to blackmail her?
Blackmail her to whom? If he told her father about them, James would say, “I’m disappointed in your taste in men, Hollander,” but he wouldn’t really be angry.
Did Nick have photos? Who would care if they were printed? Before her father’s retirement, photos of a naked daughter might have caused problems, but not now.
Holly glanced at Nick, but she could read nothing from his profile. What did he want from her? To tell Lorrie of their tryst? To prevent her from possibly dating Lorrie?
Or was he just a stalker? An old-fashioned psycho who had somehow found out where Holly was living and was now out to…to…. She didn’t want to remember any of the horrible things she’d read of what deranged people had done.
She wanted to think more, but Nick turned into the magnificent drive down to Belle Chere. Over a hundred years ago, a double row of oak tress had been planted along the long drive. This had once been common in grand houses, but most of the avenues were now gone. Trees had been cut for their lumber, and trees had been removed when gardens had been plowed to be used for farmland.
Because Belle Chere had been owned by the same family for generations, these oaks had been cared for. When one died, it had been replaced, so that now the avenue was as beautiful as it had been a hundred years ago.
“Oh,” Holly said, leaning forward to see upward through the windshield.
Without a word, Nick opened the big sunroof. With a smile, Holly stood up, sticking her head up through the skylight to look and feel the beautiful drive to the house.
When Belle Chere came into view, Nick stopped the car and Holly stood there for a moment looking at the house. “Faded glory” and “majestic lady” were words that came to her.
The house was three stories with wide, double porches across the front. It wasn’t that the house was unique; there were still many plantation houses like it. It was that the house was so untouched. In the 1920s one of Lorrie’s father’s ancestors had converted the smaller parlor in the back into a kitchen. Two full baths and a powder room had been added to the house.
But paneling, carved fireplace surrounds, wall murals, and in some places even wallpaper hadn’t been touched in a hundred years.
Holly didn’t know how long she stood there, but Taylor tugged on her dress and she looked down.
“Some of us are hungry for more than an old house,” Taylor said.
Holly knew this was meant to be an inside joke between her and her stepsister, but when Holly looked down she saw the top of Nick’s head. With all her heart she wanted to tell him to stand beside her and look at the house. But Taylor was making jokes about being hungry for Nick…
Sitting down, Holly murmured an apology to her family for taking their time.
Nick parked the van at the side of the house, then silently and perfectly, as though he’d always done it, opened the door and helped everyone out. When it was Holly’s turn her heart began to pound rapidly. If she hadn’t had on a long dress and high heels she would have leaped to the ground, but when she tried to get out on her own, her heel caught in her hem.
The next thing she knew, Nick’s hands were on her waist and she was being lifted from the seat and swung through the air. He stood her on the ground, still never meeting her eyes, then went back to close the car doors.
“I’ll have to try that next time,” Taylor whispered.
James said, “That boy is a better driver than a gardener.”
Holly said nothing. She kept her shoulders back and her eyes straight ahead as her father banged the big brass knocker. She was about to see Lorrie again!
Chapter Eight
FROM THE FIRST SECOND SHE LOOKED AT LORRIE, Holly knew she’d done the right thing in manipulating her family so she could be near him and Belle Chere.
He was tall, handsome, with dark blond, wavy hair and beautiful brown eyes. He was dressed in a dark suit, proper evening attire, and he was charming.
“Hollander,” he said softly, taking her shoulders in his hands, “you grew up.” With sparkling eyes, he looked at her family. “Did she tell you of our summer together?”
“Not a word,” Taylor said. “But we’d love to hear all about it.”
Yes, Holly thought, so would I. How had he seen their summer together?
“She was the best buddy a boy could have,” Lorrie said, smiling and showing the perfect teeth she remembered so well.
“Buddy?” Taylor said under her breath, making Holly frown.
“Would you li
ke to see the house?” Lorrie asked. “And perhaps Holly would like to lead the tour since she knows it so well.”
“No!” James, Marguerite, and Taylor said in unison.
Lorrie looked at Holly with a questioning look and in spite of her low-cut dress that showed too much of her ample bosom, she felt as though she were again thirteen years old. “I tend to get too technical,” she said.
“My daughter’s love of old houses makes her verbose,” James said, then glanced toward an open doorway to the left. “If you don’t mind, young man, I’ll forego the tour for a little single malt.”
“I’d kill for a glass of wine,” Taylor said.
“You wouldn’t have any sherry, would you?” Marguerite asked.
Lorrie gave Holly a shrug, as though to say, What am I to do? then ushered her family into the sitting room. He blocked Holly’s entrance.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said softly, his voice quiet so only she could hear him, “you really did grow up.” He pointedly looked down her dress. “Did you know how, uh, difficult that summer was for me? You were one cute little kid.”
Holly’s joy at hearing those words nearly made her swoon on her feet. Ask me to marry you and I’ll take the front bedroom, she wanted to yell. But she said nothing.
Lorrie glanced over his shoulder at the three people helping themselves to the drinks table, then put his hand up to tuck a curl behind Holly’s ear. But thanks to three kinds of “superhold” concoctions, he couldn’t bend her hair. For a second, he looked fascinated by this and Holly thought he might be going to use both hands on her stiffened hair.
When she stepped back, he dropped his hand, but he still kept looking at her hair in puzzlement.
“I know you want to see the house, so go ahead. I’ll cover for you.”
Holly didn’t even consider being polite. One second she was in the hall and the next she was halfway up the central stairs, heading toward the bedrooms. What had been done in eleven years? Any changes made?
She got to the top of the landing and halted. Before her were five closed doorways that led into the bedrooms. How much had been changed since she last saw them? Two bathrooms used to have pull-chain toilets. Had that changed? Half the window frames had been rotten eleven years ago. Had they been replaced? How bad was the plasterwork ceiling in the big blue bedroom?