Garden Of Scandal

Garden Of Scandal
Jennifer Blake

Laurel Bancroft has lived for years as a recluse, isolating herself from a town that has branded her a murderer.But now, convinced people have finally forgotten, she is ready to resume her life. Then Laurel meets Alec Stanton. Hired to help redesign her garden, Alec is a stranger with a mysterious past. Though more than ten years younger, Alec is exactly what Laurel needs: intelligent, talented, passionate.But as their relationship grows, so does a dangerous threat against them. Someone wants Laurel to return to her seclusion and give up her younger lover–someone who hasn't forgotten that night so many years ago.

It wasn’t so easy to shut away the memory of the afternoon before.

If she closed her eyes, Laurel could still feel Alec’s arms around her, feel the disturbing moment when she had pressed against the hard warmth of his body. It had been like standing at the center of a lightning strike, caught in the flare of white-hot heat, blinding light and searing power. Nothing had prepared her for the conflagration, or for the rush of need that poured through her in response. She had been stunned, held immobile by feelings so long repressed, she had forgotten they had existed. If she had ever known them.

She wasn’t sure she had. Even in the days when she was first married, when loving was so strange and new, she had not felt so fervid or so uncertain of her own responses, her own will.

No. She wouldn’t think about it. She would forget she had ever touched Alec Stanton. And she would pray to high heaven that he did the same.

“Full of passion, secrets, taboos and fear, Garden of Scandal will pull you in from the start as you work to unwind the treachery and experience the sizzle.”

—Romantic Times

GARDEN OF SCANDAL

JENNIFER BLAKE

For my husband, Jerry, with loving appreciation

for the man who, at our home known as

Sweet Briar, constructed the real garden of antique

roses that provided the inspiration for this book.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

1

She tore out of the lighted house like a banshee. Screaming in a shatteringly clear soprano above the growling of the great black German shepherd, she skimmed across the front porch. She was halfway down the high steps before the ancient wooden screen door slammed shut after her.

Part harridan, part avenging Valkyrie, she raced toward him wearing a nightgown with light streaming through it from behind. Her long hair shifted and whipped around her, shimmering silver-gold in the moonlight. Her feet barely touched the ground. Fleet, slender, with the pure lines of her face twisted in concern, she was the most fascinating thing Alec Stanton had ever laid eyes on.

“Sticks! Here, boy!” she called out as she ducked under the low-hanging limb of a magnolia, dodged the rambling branches of a spirea. Her gaze was riveted on the dog standing ferocious guard on the mossy brick walk.

The German shepherd growled, a ragged warning that resonated deep in his massive chest. His eyes never left Alec. He lifted his ruff, baring his teeth in challenge. As the woman came nearer, the animal moved protectively to block her path with his body.

“What is it, boy? What have you got cornered?” Her voice was anxious but not fearful as she slowed her pace. Then she saw Alec.

She stopped so quickly that her hair swirled forward, covering her arms like a cape of captured moonbeams. Her hands clenched into fists. Her eyes widened. She squared her shoulders, then stood so motionless she might have been turned into pale, warm marble.

The dog ceased to exist for Alec. And he forgot why he was there amid the tangled briers, vines and overgrown shrubbery that were the front garden of the Steamboat Gothic mansion known as Ivywild. Moving like a man in a daze, he stepped forward out of the night.

The German shepherd launched off his haunches in attack. Eighty pounds of hard muscle and death, he sprang straight for Alec’s throat.

“Down! Down, Sticks!” The woman’s shout mingled with the dog’s snarl. Yet there was no hope the animal would, or could, obey.

Alec’s instinct and training kicked in. He spun away as the dog hit him, moving with the force of the assault, flowing with it to lessen the impact even as he snatched the dog’s huge black head in an iron grip. Finding the pressure points, Alec drove his thumbs against them. He sank to his knees, still turning, flexing hard muscles as he came about in a full circle.

It was over in a moment. When Alec rose, the animal was stretched out, limp and barely breathing, on the walk between him and the woman.

She moaned and dropped to the ground, gathering the lolling head of her guard dog into her lap. Holding tight, she rocked back and forth.