First Impressions

  Slowly, Eden went down the stairs to stand beside McBride. She was too astonished to move.

  Not so Jared. He stepped into the little truck, turned the key, and started the engine. “Look at this,” he said, then flipped a switch and the bed moved upward. “It’s a dump truck.”

  Shovels, rakes, a gardening fork, a three-pronged bulb planter, a soil aerator, and at least a dozen hand tools went tumbling out the back to the ground. “Look what you’ve done,” Eden cried as she began to pick up the tools.

  Jared turned off the engine, stepped out of the truck, and looked at her. “So what do you think of all this?”

  “I think Braddon Granville is the most wonderful man in the world,” she said softly as she put the tools against the big cypress tree. She went to the perennials to read the labels. Astilbe. For shade, she thought. Under the pecan trees. Heuchera and agastache.

  “You think it was Granville who sent you all this?” Jared asked.

  “Of course. Who else would do this?”

  “Ah, yes, who else could it be?” he said.

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Are you going to accept gifts from a man you barely know?” Jared had his hands in his pockets and, for once, he wasn’t wearing his isn’t-life-funny look.

  Eden looked at the plants, the truck, and the tools, then back at McBride. “Since I was eighteen years old, I’ve tried to set an example for my daughter. When a man liked me and offered me a gift, I didn’t take it because I didn’t want my daughter to grow up thinking that if a man gave her something she owed him something.”

  “Hard life to live.”

  “Yes, it was sometimes. I think I wanted to prove to myself and the world that even though I’d had a child when I was a child, I could still be a good mother.”

  Jared, with his hands still in his pockets, nodded toward all the things around them. “But now you have nothing to prove, so you’re going to accept the gifts.”

  She put her hand on the fender of the little red truck. “I’d rather have these things than an engagement ring.”

  “Engagement ring?! So now you’re engaged to Granville? When did this happen?”

  “It hasn’t, but a woman knows, and I know that I will be asked.”

  “Why not? You have nothing to lose,” Jared muttered.

  “Is that supposed to mean something?”

  “Nothing. It means nothing,” he said. “I’m sure that you and Granville will make a great couple. You can live together in your old houses, one week in his and one week in yours. You’ll be the leading couple in town, and everyone will want to go to your parties. Young girls will make their husbands’ lives hell if they aren’t invited to your parties. In one generation you’ll have gone from being a pregnant kid with nothing, to being Mrs. Astor of Arundel. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. Don’t leave your property and you’ll be safe.”

  Eden watched him go into the house, then sat down on the seat of the little truck. What a day! she thought. First Melissa and now McBride. She saw the thick stack of papers in the little cubbyhole to the right of the steering wheel and took them out. It was the instruction manual. As she opened the booklet, she told herself that she was going to enjoy the day no matter what anyone did to her.

  Easier said than done. All of the hundreds of plants needed to be put into the ground, and something that usually relaxed her now seemed to be a monumental task. Her mind wouldn’t stop working. Had she been horrible to her daughter? Should she have been more understanding? Should she have said that she’d known all along that Stuart was no good? Should she have jumped in her new car and driven to New York to be with her pregnant daughter?

  That she’d done none of those things worried Eden, ate at her. She even wondered if she was jealous of her daughter. Melissa had everything while she was pregnant, but Eden had had so very little. As McBride said, Eden had worked herself half to death while she was pregnant. She’d climbed stairs carrying heavy boxes and stayed up late to read what was inside the boxes. Her only time “off” was when she was in the kitchen, trying to figure out how to cook something that Mrs. Farrington would like.

  Brad had said that Mrs. Farrington was “cantankerous” and Eden had defended the woman. It was true that Mrs. Farrington had treated Eden and Melissa well, but Eden had had to earn that good treatment. Before Melissa was born Mrs. Farrington had demanded a great deal of work. After the child was born, it had been better, but that Eden should sit down and rest were words that were never spoken.

  Eden picked up her new hand shovel and looked at it. Damn McBride, she thought. He was as bad as those snakes that had been put into her bedroom. He was always spreading poison. The truth was that he had presented her with a picture of her future with Brad that she didn’t like. And a truth that she didn’t want to hear.

  Was it possible that part of her attraction to Brad was that his family was so very prominent? Arundel, North Carolina, wasn’t New York or Palm Beach, but, well…As Brad’s wife, Eden would be accepted into social circles that had always been outside her world. When Mrs. Farrington had parties, Eden served drinks.

  Eden knew from having lived with Mrs. Farrington that some of the families of Arundel were accepted in those “old money” worlds. Compared to the rest of the world, the United States was very young and had no aristocracy. By default, any family that had had money for over two hundred years was considered upper class. A Granville would be welcome anywhere.

  Eden turned a bulb planter over in her hand. How much of her attraction to Brad was the man himself and how much was his name?

  “Can’t decide where to begin?” Jared asked from above her.

  She didn’t look up. “Get over your sulk?”

  “I wasn’t sulking,” he said to the top of her head. “I was in a fury of jealousy.”

  “Oh?” she said, her head still down, but she was smiling. “Happen to you often?”

  “Not even once before, I’m happy to say. Not even my wife—”

  She looked at him. “You were married?”

  “Long ago. And stop looking at me like that. The divorce wasn’t any great traumatic thing that broke my heart.”

  When Eden just kept looking at him, he shrugged. “I was young, and marriage seemed like the thing to do, so we did it. Three years later I came home to find a note saying she’d left me. To tell you the truth, I was so tired that night that I was more angry that there was no beer in the refrigerator and that she’d taken the TV with her than I was that she’d left me. We didn’t know each other very well and had never spent much time together, so I never really missed her.”

  Eden kept looking at him. “So how bad are you lying?” she asked softly.

  Jared gave a laugh. “A hundred percent. I was mad about her, and I thought I was going to go crazy after she left me. The guy she ran off with came up to my shoulder and was bald at twenty-six. But he was home every night, they went to church on Sunday, and he coached Little League.”

  “Children?”

  “Three. All of them smart, polite, and great athletes.”

  When he glanced back at her, Eden meant to give him a look of sympathy, but instead she laughed. “We’re a pair, aren’t we? School of Hard Knocks. So why don’t you get a shovel and help me plant these trees?”

  Jared looked aghast. “I’ve never planted anything in my life.”

  “Dig a hole, stick it in. It’s not—”

  “Yeah, I know, rocket science.” His words were sarcastic, but he was grinning as he picked up a shovel. “So Granville sent you all of this?”

  “Who else? The FBI? Maybe it’s a new technique. Maybe instead of threatening people to make them talk, they’re going to start using bribery. By the way, after you drugged me to sleep last night, did they do any more searching in my house? Tell me they didn’t take the pictures apart.”

  “First of all, I didn’t drug you. Is this shovel big enough?” he asked, holding up what could be used as a snow sh
ovel.

  “It’s big enough to plant six trees. You should—” Eden started to explain about gardening equipment, but when she looked at him and saw that his eyes were twinkling, she knew he was teasing her. She had an idea that he knew more about gardening than he was letting on. “Could you open these boxes? We need to get the trees out, then we’re going to the orchard to plant them.”

  He pulled a Swiss army knife out of his pocket and slit the plastic bands around the boxes. As they began to pull damp, shredded newspaper off the bareroot trees, she said, “So how did you get into the FBI?”

  “I thought that was the way to save the world and that I could do it single-handedly. Great! A peach tree. My favorite.”

  “Why do I sense disappointment? Did you find out that you’re not helping?”

  Jared shrugged as he untangled three trees from one another. “I guess I’ve done some good, but the day-to-day bad you see gets you down. Sometimes things happen to make me realize that the average American man doesn’t spend his days dealing with the lowlifes that I know. Drugs. Murder. Women with slashed faces. I once worked on a case where three women—” Cutting himself off, he looked at her quickly, then away. “I wish there really was a little machine that could make me forget what I’ve seen.”

  “Oh. You mean a machine like in Men in Black?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So how many grown cockroaches have you had to deal with?”

  “Hundreds.”

  Eden laughed. “So what’s the future hold for you?”

  “I have no idea. Retire and settle down, maybe. Or I could get out of the field and take a desk job, but that appeals to me about as much as…”

  “As what?”

  “As having a desk job, I guess.”

  Smiling, Eden looked toward the back of her property. She could see the orchard—or what was left of it. Toddy and she had set the posts, and together they’d put in the three-rail fence. It had weathered to a beautiful gray, and by now her orchard should have been beautiful. But nearly all the trees were dead, or so overgrown that they looked as though they wished they were dead, and part of the fence had fallen down.

  Jared followed her glance. “Bad, huh?”

  “Very bad.” She looked at him. “But thanks to the trees Brad sent, I can revive the orchard.” She looked him up and down. “Are you up to some work? Real work? And you can’t shoot anything.”

  “Not even Granvilles?” Jared asked without cracking a smile.

  “Most certainly not Granvilles.”

  “I think I can handle it. But I have a bum leg and a couple of old wounds that—”

  “Yeah, well, I had a baby. You want to compare pain?” Eden said as she turned toward the Mule. She needed to start making a plan of the whole garden, and what better way to survey her land than in the little truck?

  Jared started to get into the driver’s seat, but Eden glared at him, and, with a mock bow, he handed her the key. It took a minute for her to get the hang of starting it and keeping it started (choke out, neutral gear, choke off, brake off, forward gear), but once she got it going, she set off across the lawn. There was no windshield, and as the air ran cool and fast across her face, she felt young and free. She glanced at McBride and saw that he was enjoying it too. On impulse, Eden turned the wheel sharply, and since the truck was so small, it turned in a circle hardly bigger than an embroidery hoop. She headed toward the unplanted fields next to her house. There didn’t seem to be any shock absorbers in the little truck because they could feel every bounce of the rough field. Again, she glanced at McBride and saw that he was smiling.

  On impulse, Eden pushed the gas pedal to the floor and McBride almost fell out the open side. He grabbed the handle on the steel rod overhead, stuck his long legs under the dashboard, and held on. Eden raced across the bumpy fields, her teeth jarring and her breasts bouncing until they hurt. The air was cold on her face and blew her hair straight out, but the freedom of the ride felt wonderful. When she saw a leftover peanut bale, she hit it at full speed. When peanut stems flew up, she ducked her head, and McBride put up his arm to protect his face.

  “All right!” he yelled joyously.

  Eden turned the wheel sharply so they went in a circle, then she ran it toward another old peanut bale. When she hit it, the truck bounced them to the overhead canopy. Her head only touched it, but Jared yelled in pain—which made Eden throw back her head and laugh. Looking at her, he joined in the laughter.

  It was on the fourth bale that they got stuck. The engine died and they stopped moving. Eden started the motor again, but the truck wouldn’t move. She turned off the engine and looked at McBride expectantly. Someone was going to have to push.

  Jared threw a long leg out—and promptly sunk down to the middle of his calf. “What the—” he said.

  “Swamp,” Eden said succinctly, nodding toward the great barrier of trees at the end of the field. “Precisely, it’s the Great Dismal Swamp. Did you know that George Washington surveyed the place?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. And he stayed in your house.”

  Eden scooted to his side of the truck and looked over. The more McBride tried to get out, the deeper he became stuck. “Maybe. There’s a bathtub that—”

  “Could you stop with the history lessons and give me a hand here?”

  When Eden raised her hands as though to clap, he narrowed his eyes at her.

  “Come on,” she said, teasing, “you’re a big-deal FBI agent. What would you do if I were a drug dealer and about to escape?”

  In the flash of an eye, Jared fell forward so that he landed on top of her. His feet and half of one leg were still buried in the mud, but the upper half of him was inside the truck and holding her down.

  “Would you mind!” Eden said, looking up at him, utterly still beneath him.

  “No, I don’t mind at all,” he said happily.

  “The gearshift is sticking me and it hurts.”

  “Good try. The gearshift is on the side. So if you were dealing drugs, how would you get away from an FBI agent who is handicapped with his legs pinned down?”

  She glared up at him. “I’d get my gun out of the glove box and shoot you in the head.”

  “Try it.”

  Eden started to reach for the little black plastic glove box by her head, but she knew that if she moved, he’d love it. “Get off of me.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “I mean it. Get off of me!”

  “No,” he said, looking away, as though remembering. “I don’t remember anybody saying that to me. I think they knew I’d not obey that command.”

  She squinted at him and didn’t care that she was making wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “If you don’t get off of me, I’ll go back to the house, stand in front of a camera, and tell whoever is watching that you are becoming emotionally involved with me.”

  Jared blinked at her a couple of times, then stood upright in the mud. “You sure know how to play dirty, don’t you?”

  “I’ve learned a lot since I was seventeen.” Solemnly, she sat upright and turned the key in the engine. It started, but the truck wouldn’t move in the deep mud. She looked at McBride. “Could you give me a push?”

  Just before he moved, he had a glint in his eyes that made her eyes widen.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” she managed to say just before he gave her a push that sent her flying out the side of the truck to land on her fanny in the mud. She pulled her hands out and tried to stand up, but fell back down. She looked up to see McBride, thick mud on him from the knee down, sitting behind the steering wheel of her brand-new Mule.

  “You’re getting it dirty,” she wailed.

  “A dirty machine to match the mind of its owner,” he said as he started the engine, then tried to reverse it.

  Eden grabbed a handful of mud and threw it at him. Her aim was perfect, and she hit him on the side of the face. When he turned to her, wiping mud out of his eyes, she grinned at him.

  “
I’ll get you for that,” he said, then leaped out of the truck.

  She rolled, and he landed facedown. Eden let out a howl of laughter, and when he lifted his face and she saw the mud, she laughed more.

  “You—” Jared began and made a grab for her ankle.

  Eden tried to get away, but the mud was too deep and too slippery. Her head went back and the side of her face hit the mud. “Yuck!” she said as she scraped off two inches of it. Mud was crawling down the back of her neck to the inside of her shirt. “You are—”

  She didn’t finish telling him what he was because just then the sound of a helicopter came to them, and they both looked up. Eden knew without a doubt who the ’copter belonged to and where it was going to land. She also knew that she was going to have to meet whoever was inside while she was plastered in mud.

  “At least it’s not Brad,” she muttered in disgust. She’d rather face the president of the United States like this than the man she was beginning to like so much.

  When McBride removed enough mud off his face to give her a wicked grin, he pointed, and Eden didn’t have to look to see what he was looking at. He was pointing toward the driveway, and she could hear gravel crunching.

  “A car?” she asked over the noise of the helicopter.

  McBride nodded vigorously.

  “Brad?”

  He nodded with such energy and enthusiasm that Eden wanted to hit him—if she could find her hand, that is.

  “Girl in the car,” he yelled. “Looks like you.”

  “Like me?” Twisting as best she could, Eden looked at the car that had stopped in the driveway. It was Brad’s car, and he was driving. Beside him sat Melissa.

  Eden thought maybe there were tears in her eyes under the mud, but she wasn’t sure. She turned back to McBride. What other horrible, rotten, humiliating thing could happen to her?