Garden Of Scandal

Not that there was really anything out here, of course. Any jeopardy was all in her head, and she needed to get rid of it. She knew that and was determined to keep telling herself so until she believed it. Anyway, she would not be away from her house for long—only for the time it took to show Alec Stanton the small stream.

As she pushed on, moving ahead of him down the tree- and brush-covered slope, following a winding animal trail, she was hyperaware of the warmth and solidity of him beside her. He moved so quietly, with the natural grace of an Indian. In the dusky tree shadows, she thought she could see a copper tint in the deep bronze of his skin.

The awkwardness between them lingered, but it had a different quality from before. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been quite so aware of another human being. Nor could she recall the last time she had cared how any male felt other than her teenage son.

Alec was impressed with the creek. Standing knee-deep in the ferns that edged it, with his hair trailing in its damp ponytail down his back and leaf shadows making a tracery of gray dimness and golden light on his brown skin, he turned to her with a heart-stopping smile. Voice deep and reflective, he said, “This has possibilities.”

“I know,” she said and caught her breath, suddenly more afraid of those possibilities than she had been of anything in five long years.

He tilted his head, the darkness of his eyes as meltingly warm and sweet as chocolate. “Does this mean I get the job?”

He had done so much in so short a time. He could clear all the choking debris from Ivywild. He could make her rose garden for her. If she had not ventured out to see what he had done—what he could do—if she had not seen the promise, she might have answered differently. Now there was only one reply possible.

“Yes, I…suppose it must.”

Pleasure flared across his face in sudden brightness. “Good,” he said softly. “In fact, that’s great.”

Laurel wasn’t so sure.

She was even less certain when night closed in and Alec finally roared away down the drive on his Harley. She had grown used to being alone, and yet tonight she really felt it for the first time in ages. It was a warm evening, but she was chilled. Wrapping her arms around herself, she wondered what it would be like to have a man’s warm arms to hold her, or a firm chest to support her as she pressed close against it. It had been so long.

Of course, Howard had never been particularly good at simple affection. Whenever she’d tried to cuddle in his arms, she had usually gotten sex. That part of their marriage had been all right; not especially inspiring but no disaster, either. They had talked—mostly practical conversations of the kind necessary between husband and wife, about plumbing repairs, the children’s progress in school, what was for dinner. Sometimes they had gone out to eat or visited friends, driving home in companionable silence. Now and then, Howard had taken her hand. But no, he’d had no gift for gentle caresses, no interest in the passionless need to hold and absorb the essence of another person. It was foolish, perhaps, to miss what you had never had.

She was lonely, that was it. The night stretched empty and still and dreary ahead of her. There was nothing on television she wanted to watch, and she had read everything of interest on her bookshelves. She wasn’t sleepy, wasn’t even tired.

She couldn’t stop thinking of Alec Stanton. The way he looked at her, the way his smile started at one corner of his mouth and spread across his lips in slow glory. The deep set of his eyes under his brows, and the planes of his face that swept down from the high ridges of his cheekbones, giving him the predatory look of some ancient warrior. The easy way he moved, his deceptive strength. The gleam of his skin with its gilding of perspiration, the rippling glide of the dragon on his upper chest as his pectoral muscles contracted and relaxed.

How stupid, to indulge in sophomoric mooning over a hired hand, a young hired hand. It was even more stupid to allow herself the twinges of such a ridiculous attraction. If she could just be objective about it, she might laugh at the trick her mind had played on her, getting her worked up over such an unsuitable partner, like a canary eyeing the iridescent magnificence of a pheasant.

It was only hormones run amok, that was all. Nothing would come of it. Alec Stanton would do his job, then he would be gone and everything would be the same again. Everything, except she would have a new rose garden.

She would have to be satisfied with that.

It had been a mistake to leave her house, perhaps. There was more than one kind of safety, more than one kind of danger. Still, if she stayed inside now until after Alec had finished her garden, then she couldn’t get hurt.

Could she?

3

Laurel Bancroft was keeping an eye on him from the windows; Alec knew this because he had caught her at it.

He didn’t like it, didn’t appreciate being made to feel like a criminal she needed to stay away from at all costs. Or worse, that maybe he wasn’t good enough to associate with her. It had been going on for three days. He’d about had a bellyful of it.

He didn’t care if she was a widow, didn’t give a rat’s behind if she’d actually killed her husband and had good reason to shut herself away. It didn’t even matter that she didn’t see another soul beside Maisie. He wanted her out of that house. He wanted her to talk to him.

The anger that simmered inside him while he dug and chopped and ripped weeds from the ground was strange, in a way. What people thought and how they acted toward him had ceased to bother him years ago. But Laurel Bancroft had opened old wounds. She’d made him as self-conscious as a teenager again. She’d made him care, which was something else he held against her.

What it was about her, he didn’t know. It wasn’t just that she was an attractive woman, because there were jillions of those in California, and he had known his share. Nor was it, as his brother sometimes claimed, that he had a weakness for problem females. He might feel the need to lend a hand to those who seemed to be struggling, but that had nothing to do with the woman who owned Ivywild.

There she was again, behind the draperies that covered the window on the end of the house. She was standing well back and barely shifting the drape, but he had learned to watch for the shadowy movement.

That did it.

He dropped the shovel he was wielding, then stripped off his gloves and crammed them into his back pocket. He was not going to be spied on any longer. Either she was coming out or he was going in.

Maisie answered his knock. Her gray brows climbed toward her hairline as she saw the grim look on his face. Wiping her damp hands on her apron, she asked, “Something the matter?”

Alec gave a short nod. “I’d like to talk to Mrs. Bancroft a minute.”

“She’s busy,” the older woman answered, not budging an inch. “What do you need?”

“Answers,” he said. “Could you get her for me?”

Maisie considered him, her faded gaze holding a hint of acknowledgment of the human capacity for dealing misery. Finally, she nodded. “Wait here a minute.”

Alec put his hands on his hipbones as he watched the housekeeper move off into the house. Wait here, she’d said. Like a good boy. Or the hired help. His lips tightened.

After a few seconds, he heard the murmur of voices, then a silence followed by the returning shuffle of the house slippers Maisie wore. She spoke while still some distance down the hall.

“She says find out what you want.”

“I want,” he replied with stringent softness, “to talk to her.”

“Well, she don’t want to talk to you, so don’t push it.”

“What if I do? You going to stop me? Or will you just tell Grannie Callie on me?” He stepped forward into the long hallway.

“You’ll get yourself fired,” Maisie warned, even as she backed up a few steps.

“Fine. I’ll be fired.”

“I thought you wanted this job.”

“Where is she?” He strode deeper into the house while Maisie turned and trotted along behind him.

“In her bedroom,” the older woman answered a bit breathlessly. “You can’t go in there.”

“I think maybe I can,” he said, heading for the door Maisie had glanced at as she spoke.

“It’s on your own head, then.”

The warning in the housekeeper’s voice as she came to a halt was fretted with something that might have been grudging approval. He didn’t stay to analyze it, but turned the knob of the bedroom door and pushed inside.

The widow Bancroft was sitting on a chaise longue with pillows propped behind her back, her feet curled to one side and a book in her hands. Her gaze widened and a tint of soft rose crept into her face as she stared at him. Her lips parted as if she had drawn a quick breath and forgotten to release it.

The bedroom was like her, Alec thought—a medley of cream, blue and coral-pink; of substantial Victorian furniture and fragile, sensuous fabrics. It was a retreat and he had breached it. More than that, he had caught her unawares, before she could raise her defenses. She was barefoot and almost certainly braless under an oversize and much-washed T-shirt worn with a pair of white shorts. Her hair spilled over her left shoulder, shimmering with the beat of her heart, and she wore not the first smidgen of makeup to obscure her clear skin or the soft coral of her lips. She was the most enticing sight he had ever come across in his life.

In the flicker of an eyelid, she recovered her outward aplomb. Setting her book aside, she uncurled from the chaise and got to her feet. As she spoke, her voice was edgy. “What is it? Do you have a problem?”