Flirting With Disaster

“You won’t have to worry about them,” Dinah assured him. “I’ll make sure they’re kept busy and out of your way.”

“And the mother?”

“She’ll do whatever you need her to do, the same as the rest of us,” Dinah promised. “And we’ve already rounded up a lot more volunteers. You’ll have plenty of help.”

“I don’t suppose any of these volunteers will actually know what they’re doing,” Josh said, resigned to his fate.

“We’ll bring in professionals for the plumbing and electrical,” Cord promised him.

Josh sighed. “Great. The house might fall down, but at least the toilets and lights will work.”

“It’s up to you to see that the house doesn’t fall down,” Cord chided. “So, is it a deal?”

“Do I have a choice?” Josh retorted wryly.

“You can always go off and look for another renovation project to fill the time till our deal comes through in Atlanta,” Cord said.

Unfortunately, Josh knew that high-end historic renovation projects were few and far between. He also knew that Cord was better at them than anyone else he’d ever met. He didn’t want to work on some half-baked job for an idiot who barely knew one end of a hammer from the other. He owed Cord for making him foreman of the Atlanta project when a lot of contractors would have turned their backs on a man who’d wandered from place to place as much as he had. Cord had trusted him to stick around and see the job through.

Josh had done that, and now would be the perfect opportunity for him to move on, the way he usually did. But he was damn tired of staking out new turf for a few months, then leaving it behind just when he started to feel comfortable. He’d worked in Atlanta and Charleston for Cord, so he knew his way around in both places. It wasn’t as if he was going to be putting down any roots if he stuck around awhile longer. Nobody in his right mind would put down roots if this dump of a motel room was what he came home to at night.

As long as neither Dinah or Cord had any ulterior motives, Josh couldn’t see much of a downside to staying. Maybe one good deed would make up for some of the miserable stunts he’d pulled in his life. Maybe he’d start to feel better about who he was if he gave something back, instead of living in the lonely isolation that had become a habit as far back as he could remember. People who were always on the run had few genuine friends. Maybe that was what had made Nadine latch on so desperately to anyone who showed her the least bit of kindness.

He gave Dinah a hard look, because she was the one he suspected of not being entirely truthful about her motivations. “This is just about the house, right?”

She beamed at him. “Of course. What else could it possibly be about?”

In Josh’s humble opinion, she sounded just a bit too cheerful. “You tell me,” he pushed. “You don’t have any ideas about me and this single mom, do you?”

“Absolutely not,” she said. “I haven’t even met Amanda yet. That’s her name. Amanda O’Leary. We wanted to get everything in place before we told her what was going on. We didn’t want to get her excited and then have to let her down if we couldn’t make it happen. I’m sure she’s still grieving the loss of her husband, so I seriously doubt she’s looking for a new relationship.”

Josh stared Dinah down, but she never so much as blinked. He turned his gaze on Cord. “Is she telling the truth?”

“Dinah’s a journalist,” Cord said. “She always tells the truth.”

“We’ll see about that,” Josh said, still skeptical.

“You’re saying yes?” Dinah asked eagerly.

“Sure,” Josh said without enthusiasm. “Like Cord said, I’ve got time on my hands. I might as well do something productive with it.”

“You’re an angel,” Dinah declared.

Josh chuckled. “Not even close, darlin’. Not even close.”

Now that she was back in Charleston, Maggie knew she had no choice but to drop in to see her mother. If Juliette Forsythe heard from someone else that her daughter had returned, Maggie would never hear the end of it. It would be added to her already lengthy list of sins.

The Forsythe mansion faced Charleston Harbor, its stately elegance protected by a high wrought-iron fence. The front lawn was perfectly manicured, and in spring azaleas spilled a profusion of pink, white and gaudy magenta blossoms over the landscape. But in July, as it was now, everything was unrelentingly green. Juliette didn’t believe in “tawdry” annuals along the walkways or hanging in pots from the porch ceiling. One brave gardener had edged the walkway with cheerful red geraniums and been fired on the spot for his audacity.

Maggie had timed her visit carefully. Juliette had a standing hair and manicure appointment at 10:30 a.m. Thursdays, so that she would be looking her absolute best when she met her friends for lunch and shopping in the historic district. By arriving at nine forty-five, Maggie knew she would only have to endure a twenty-minute grilling before being dismissed. No one kept Madame Monique waiting, not even Juliette. In fact, the hairdresser was the only person in all of Charleston that Maggie had ever seen intimidate her imperious mother.

“It’s about time you came to see me,” Juliette declared when Maggie walked into her upstairs sitting room, where she was drinking her morning coffee and finishing her raspberry croissant. She was already dressed in a stylish knit suit. A pair of one-carat diamond studs winked at her ears. Her makeup was flawless. Every highlighted blond hair on her head was in place, which seemed to mock the need for the impending salon appointment.

Juliette was fifty-seven, but looked ten years younger, the result of obsessive control of her diet and enough skin-care products to stock a spa gift shop. Her self-absorption might annoy Maggie, but it was simply the way Juliette had been raised. Her duty was to be an asset to her wealthy husband and a doting mother to her children. Unfortunately, there had been only Maggie upon whom to lavish all that attention. Maybe if there had been sons or another daughter to distract Juliette, Maggie wouldn’t have been the focus of so many maternal rules and regulations and would never have felt the need to rebel.

Now Juliette did a disapproving survey of Maggie’s simple red dress and sandals, then sighed before adding, “I thought you’d vanished.”

“Obviously you weren’t too concerned or you’d have hired a search party,” Maggie replied, bending down to give her mother a dutiful peck on the cheek. “How are you? You’re looking well.”

“I’m humiliated, that’s how I am,” Juliette declared. “I can barely hold my head up as a result of that debacle with your wedding.”

“You should be in my shoes,” Maggie retorted, though it was clear the sarcasm went right over her mother’s head. Everything was always about Juliette, how events affected her. By the time Maggie had hit her teens, she’d given up expecting a sympathetic ear.

“You still haven’t said why you haven’t been by,” Juliette complained.

“I’ve been away,” Maggie said, regretting that she’d bothered to rush right over, since it was evident her mother hadn’t been especially worried about her absence.

Juliette looked momentarily startled. “Away? Where? You never said anything about going away.”

“I rented a house on Sullivan’s Island. I’ve been out there for nearly a month now.”

“My heavens, why would you do a thing like that? What if your father and I had needed you in an emergency? Do you ever think of anyone other than yourself, Magnolia?”

“If you’d needed me, I would have known about it,” she said. “I checked my phone messages every day. Since there weren’t any from you, obviously there were no emergencies, so don’t make a big to-do about it now, Mother.”

Juliette regarded her with a familiar expression of dismay. “Sometimes I just don’t know what to make of you.”

Maggie bit back a grin. “Now there’s a news flash,” she muttered under her breath.

Her mother frowned. “What did you say?”

“Nothing important,” Maggie said. “I should run along now. I know you need to get to your appointment and I have to go to the gallery and check on things there. I just wanted you to know I was back.”

Her mother glanced at her watch, obviously torn. “I do need to go, but we really must talk soon, Magnolia.”

“About?”

“This fiasco with Warren.”

“The fiasco with Warren is over. It’s not open for discussion.”

“But I’m sure you could mend fences if you put your mind to it,” Juliette persisted. “He’s a reasonable man. I’m sure he’ll forgive you for whatever you did to upset him.”

“He’ll forgive me?” Maggie said incredulously. “Are you kidding, Mother? I didn’t do anything. He’s the one who called off the wedding. If there’s any groveling to be done, let Warren do it.”

“There it is again,” her mother said accusingly. “That stubborn streak of yours. It’s always been your downfall, Magnolia. If you don’t reconcile with Warren, what will you do?”

“I’ll survive, Mother. In fact, I’ve already gotten involved in an exciting new project that will take up a lot of my time for the rest of the summer. I’ll tell you about it next time I see you. Now, we both really need to get moving.” She leaned down for another quick kiss. “Love you.”