“Are you trying to kill me?” Tris didn’t speak for a moment. “Now I’ll never get to sleep! But that aside, I called for a purpose.”
“Which is?” She was smiling broadly. It felt good to be desired by this man.
“I want to ask you to do another favor for me.”
“More lists?”
“No. Would you check on my house while I’m away?”
“Of course,” she said. “I’d be glad to.” While he told her where he had a key hidden, she thought how she liked the idea of seeing inside his house. And she loved the thought of seeing the playhouse where they’d had one of their moonless nights together.
“Hey! You wouldn’t like to help Nell and me come up with colors to paint the playhouse, would you?”
“I can resist anything but colors. Any preferences?”
“None.”
“Won’t Nell have some if it’s her playhouse?”
“Good idea,” he said. “I’ll tell her about you, and you two can discuss it tomorrow.”
“You want me to talk to her?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
Jecca couldn’t think of a reason not to, but she was already wondering how to talk to a child she’d never met.
“So what are you really wearing?” he asked.
“A surgical gown.”
“I love those things! No backs to them.”
She laughed. “You’re horrible, you know that?”
“Sometimes I am. I better go to bed. My plane leaves very early. Will you miss me?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I will.”
“Anything I can bring you back from Miami?”
“How about one of those muscle guys from the beach?”
“How about if I buy you a new bikini and you model it for me?”
“That’s possible. Can I swim in your pond?”
“You can swim in my bathtub. With me.”
Jecca laughed. “Good night, Cupid.”
“Good night, Psyche.”
Smiling, she clicked off her phone and snuggled down under the covers. Yes, she was going to miss him.
Jecca awoke early the next morning and she felt full of energy. She told herself it was because she was at last going to get to work on her watercolors, but what was in her mind was seeing Tristan’s house, and the playhouse.
She didn’t want Mrs. Wingate and Lucy to be suspicious, so she kept herself calm during breakfast. She scrambled eggs with green peppers while Lucy cooked sausages. Mrs. Wingate made toast and set the table.
Jecca didn’t want to appear to be in a hurry, but the meal seemed to go on forever. When she got out the door, her portable art kit under her arm, she practically ran to the path to Tristan’s house.
It wasn’t difficult to find the playhouse. The path to it had been wo st hdiv heighrn down by generations of Aldredges, and Jecca hurried down it.
Her first sight of the playhouse was a mixture of delight and horror. The delight was from the beautiful design of the building. It was like a miniature Victorian house, with carved posts on the tiny porch, cutout trim along the steep roof. There was no mistaking that the little house came from a different era.
Her horror came because she was Joe Layton’s daughter. When she was little, she would go with her father to construction sites to deliver loads of lumber and supplies. She’d followed her dad, her hands full of crayons and an old toy bunny rabbit, and listen to the men go over whatever was wrong with a building. By the time Jecca was nine, she could look at a house and tell what needed to be repaired.
Right now she saw that the pretty little playhouse was in desperate need of renovation. A gutter was loose, roof tiles were cracked, windows needed caulking, the door hinges were about to come out. And unless she missed her guess, there was dry rot in a couple of places.
Besides the work that needed to be done, the paint was cracked and peeling. It was down to the bare wood in places.
“Not good,” she said as she turned the knob of the front door and ducked to go in.
She was glad to see that the inside was much better than the outside, but it still needed work. Long ago, the interior walls had been painted a lovely cream color, but they now showed the marks of years of use. There were a few pieces of child-size furniture, all of it homemade, with faded, worn slipcovers that someone inexperienced had run up on a sewing machine. “Lucy could do better,” she said.
For a moment, Jecca stood just inside the door, looking at the place and remembering how Tristan had led her through it in the darkness.
When she glanced around, she saw a couple of lamps. Turning, she saw a light switch beside the door, and she laughed. If he’d wanted to, Tris could have lit up the place for their meeting.
Jecca was glad he hadn’t.
To the right was a doorway. Again she ducked before entering a small room that had a child-size bed built into an offset in the wall. It was like a large window seat and covered with a spread that was threadbare from years of use and washing.
For a moment all Jecca could think about were the hours she’d spent snuggled up with Tristan on that bed. Such sweet memories!
She went back outside to walk around the playhouse. It really did need quite a bit of work before it could be painted. Even then, the old layers would have to be removed, scraped, and sanded, before new paint could be applied.
Jecca opened her art box, removed her camera, and began to take photos. She took some long shots of the building, but she also made many close-ups of places that needed work done.
“Dad would have a fit,” she said aloud. To him, this would be an historical building and he’d feel that to let it rot like this was an injustice. She could imagine his saying the owner should be put in jail. Her dad was serious about historic preservation!
She put the camera away and got out her sketch pad. She needed to make drawings of the building from different angles so she could try a variety sry thatof colorways. When she met Nell, Jecca planned to show her several possibilities for painting the little house. She could see using colors of the forest, greens and rust browns. Or she could use earth colors of sand and cream. Children’s primary colors could also work.
It took Jecca a couple of hours to make the sketches. They were simple but they showed the house from different angles. She needed to photocopy her drawings so she could color them in different ways. Lucy had a copier in her apartment, but to use it would give away what she was doing.
Jecca glanced to the left and thought how close Tristan’s house was. In her fascination with the playhouse she’d nearly forgotten her promise to look after his home. She found the key he’d spoken of in the pretty little corner cabinet in the living room of the playhouse.
She packed up her art kit and started down the path that she’d traveled only at night. A few branches had fallen, and she moved them. Tris had said that with his arm in a cast he couldn’t keep the area clean.
When she reached the house, she paused to look at it. To her left was a truly splendid lake: the water a dark blue-green, very calm, with ducks floating on the surface.
She took a couple of steps and saw that farther down was a little island that came close to the mainland. Connecting them was one of those bowed bridges that curved upward and was reflected in the water below.
The artist in Jecca was so transfixed by the beauty of it that for a moment she couldn’t move. If she lived here, she’d have a small gazebo built on the island, a place where she could go to paint or to just be quiet. She could see all of it in her mind.
It was a while before she could look away, and she saw two big stone pots where she and Tristan had picnicked. Contrary to what he’d said, there were two of them, which meant that it hadn’t been necessary for her to lean against him. But she was glad she had.
She couldn’t refrain from her habit of looking at the house as a builder would. There were some places that sagged, but all that she could see was in much better shape than the playhouse was.
If she hadn
’t seen so many old houses in her life she would have had difficulty finding the door. The front, looking out onto the lake, had huge expanses of glass, and none of them opened from the outside.
The house was L-shaped and in the crook of the L was the door. She used the key to unlock it to enter a hallway. Since it was fully enclosed, the hallway was dark, and she switched on the lights—which didn’t help much. It looked like it had been a while since the electrical system had been updated.
Before her was a staircase and to the left was a door. It opened to reveal a little medical exam room that was furnished in 1950s white enameled furniture. There were a couple of old matchbooks stuck under the foot of one of the tall cabinets.
Shaking her head, Jecca shut the door and went through to the living room. The kitchen, dining, and living areas were all one long room—and they all needed to be brought into the twenty-first century.
She walked to one end of the room and thought that if it were her house—which of course it would never be—the only thing she wouldn’t touch was the fireplace. On one side was a little wo ss a="1em">oden plaque on which had been carved a picture of Tristan. Or his ancestor, she thought, since the carving looked quite old. She spent several minutes admiring the talent of whoever had sculpted it.
There was another room on the other side of the hall, a sort of family room. It too was in need of updating, as the only thing new in it was the big TV.
She went upstairs and peeked into two bedrooms that looked as though they’d been decorated many years before and not touched since. One of the bedspreads was half faded, half bright. It looked like the sun had been shining on that cover in the same way for a long time.
Jecca went down a short hallway and opened a door to what she was sure was Tristan’s bedroom.
Like the rest of the house, his room looked as though it hadn’t been renovated in a generation or two. But still, there was a feeling about it that it was a room that was loved.
A king-size bed with a plain brown spread was facing her. To her left was a closet and to her right were big glass doors leading onto a balcony. She flipped the lock and went out. The view across the lake was breathtaking. She could see it all with its little island and the pretty bridge across to it. The lake was teardrop shaped, with the narrow end leading into what looked to be a stream. She longed to walk along it and follow the water wherever it led.
She looked back at the room. It was very clean and tidy, and she wondered if that was his nature or if he’d straightened up for her.
A small bookcase was filled with medical texts and the bedside table held technical journals. “No Playboys?” she said aloud, smiling.
She sat down on the edge of his bed, then couldn’t resist the urge to lie down on it. She spread out her arms, closed her eyes, and wondered what it would be like to be here with Tristan. They could sit out on the balcony and eat croissants and raspberries. They could make love on the big bed and fall off of it onto the carpeted floor.
As she lay there, her creative mind thinking of all they could do, she noticed a little spot on the ceiling. Was it a crack? Maybe it had been caused by a leaking roof. When had the roof last been replaced?
The more she thought, the more she wanted to know what had caused that spot. She stood up on the bed but couldn’t reach it. It took some acrobatics, but when she stood on the stacked pillows, put one foot on the top of the headboard, and stretched as far as she could, her fingertips barely reached it. It wasn’t a spot but a tiny piece of paper, and at her touch it fluttered down to the bed.
Jecca’s mind filled with ways a piece of paper had come to be stuck to the ceiling. The most prominent one was of Tris having sex with someone and . . . What? she wondered. Paper went flying?
She sat down on the bed, cross-legged, and picked up the scrap of paper. The writing on it was so small she could barely read it.
J, I miss you too. T
Jecca couldn’t help smiling. It was embarrassing that he’d known she would snoop through his house, even into his bedroom, but at the same time it made her laugh. She stuck the paper inside her bra and decided to have a look inside Tristan̵ s Tr hei7;s closet.
He had a sparse wardrobe, all of it good quality. He seemed to have only one good suit—and a tuxedo. She was impressed with that. If she ever got her own one-woman-show in New York, maybe Tristan could wear the tux.
But then she reminded herself that it would be well in the future and by then Tris would probably be married to some hometown girl and have a couple of kids.
The thought made her frown.
She looked around the room until she found some index cards and tore one of them into six pieces. On each one she wrote some little ditty, nothing important, just meant to make Tristan smile.
T and J sittin’ in a tree . . .
T J T
When all six had something on them, she slipped them into the pockets of his clean and pressed jeans. She saved the one with the hearts on it for the inside pocket of his tux.
Smiling, she went downstairs to look for his orchids. She hadn’t seen them on the first time around.
There was an old-fashioned conservatory off the living room. Whereas the room at Mrs. Wingate’s house was beautiful, it was also very orderly, meant to be enjoyed. There were pretty chairs so people could sit surrounded by Tris’s beautiful plants.
But his home greenhouse was more natural—and the orchids looked as though they’d come straight from a jungle. Some of the flowers had long stems trailing off the bottom, and some looked more like insects than plants. And the colors varied from pristine white to purples that were almost creepy.
As Jecca turned around, trying to look at all of them, she thought she could almost hear jungle drums. And her fingers itched to try to reproduce those colors in paint. Tris had been right when he’d said that she’d find what she needed for Kim’s ads among the orchids in his house. What did he call them? Species orchids. Not hybrids but straight out of the jungle.
By lunchtime, Jecca had come up with so much work to do that she didn’t know where to begin. But at the head of her list was to call Kim. It was time to tell her about Tristan.
“Jecca!” Kim said as soon as she picked up. “I was just going to call you. I have to go to Texas. Please ask me why.”
“I’ll bite. Why?”
“Neiman Marcus wants to talk to me about showing some of my jewelry in their stores.”
“That’s great!” Jecca said. “I’m truly impressed. When do you leave?”
“As soon as I can get on a plane. The meeting is tomorrow afternoon. My secretary is going with me, and we’re packing up now.”
“Then go!” Jecca said.
“I will but . . .” Kim hesitated. “I know I’m the one who put you in the country, but now I worry about you out there with just two older women for company. No one’s so oknow seen you in town, so you must be bored out of your mind. Or are you working constantly?”
“I’m not bored by any means,” Jecca said. “Kim, when you get back, you and I need to talk.”
“About Tristan?”
Jecca drew in her breath. Sometimes Kim was almost psychic. “Yes, about Tris.”
Kim took her time answering. “Jecca, I don’t want to see either of you two hurt. I love both of you, but I need to warn you about him.”
The hairs on Jecca’s neck stood up. “Warn me?”
“Yes. Tristan is the nicest person in the world. His wonderful bedside manner is the real him.”
“So where’s the bad in that?”
“The bad is that he’s so sweet to people, especially pretty women, that they think he’s in love with them.”
Jecca had felt exactly what Kim was describing. “But he’s not in love?”
“No,” Kim said. “I guess he could be, but I’m not sure he’s ever been even close.”
Jecca thought of what Tris had told her about the married woman he’d almost fallen for. Was Jecca the consolation prize? He couldn’t have her,
so he took the next new-girl-in-town? She tried to clear that thought out of her mind. “Kim,” Jecca said, “Tris knows I’m leaving at the end of the summer. We’re just . . . friends.” She didn’t add that they were “kissing friends.”
“Okay,” Kim said. “I know you’re smart enough to do what’s right, but Tristan is very seductive.”
Jecca hesitated. “I guess what you’re saying means he always invites people to go with him and his niece to Rowan’s cabin.”
“Rowan?” Kim asked. “You mean our cousin Roan?”
“Right. That’s the name.”
“You’re going with Nell?”
“Yes. Kim, you’re making me nervous. Is there something wrong with this invitation? Should I turn it down?”
“No,” Kim said. “It’s just that I’ve never heard of Tristan letting any woman near his precious niece. He keeps his dating life separate from his family.”
“That’s because his family—” Jecca broke off. “Do you think it’s good or bad for me to go?” She valued her friend’s opinion very much.
“I don’t know,” Kim said. “Tris has been different since his arm was broken. Sometimes I think he changed when Gemma came to town.”
“Gemma?” Jecca asked.
“She came to Edilean to do some research, and she ended up marrying Colin Frazier, but she spent a lot of time with Tris. Poor Colin was so jealous everybody in town thought he and Tris were going to fight—whic sht&em">“h wouldn’t have been good, since Colin is about a hundred pounds heavier than Tris.”
Jecca was afraid to say anything for fear she’d give away what Tris had told her in confidence. She heard someone yell Kim’s name.
“I have to go or I’ll miss my plane. Jecca, whatever you decide to do, I’m with you. You know that, don’t you?”
“Always,” Jecca said. “And I also know that we’ve been through too much together not to give our opinions.”
“You haven’t been taken in by the look of Tristan, have you?” Kim asked.
Jecca couldn’t help the laugh she gave. “I haven’t seen him. I’ve kissed him and we’ve held hands so much that I could draw his, but I’ve never seen his face.”