Carolina Mist (34 page)

“We found Meri, and she appears to be fine,” Abby yelled. “Now all we have to do is find a way out of here and
…
oops!”

Abby’s hand accidentally found the way out. The thick wall she leaned on opened suddenly, spilling her into the morning room, where the dog flew out of her arms and into Belle’s.

“Oh, my dear little pup!” Belle crooned. “Oh, Abigail, you found her! Oh, Meri, I’ve missed you.”

Belle fell back into her chair, her legs wobbly from emotion and tired from the strain of it all.

Sam and Meredy immediately poked their heads into the passage.

“Oh, no you don’t.” Naomi wagged a finger at them. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Mommy, you have webby things in your hair,” Meredy told her.

“I don’t.” Naomi cringed and peered into the mirror over the mantel. ‘Oh, Lordy, don’t I, though. You’re even worse than I am, Abby. Look at yourself.”

Abby took a peek at herself and shrugged. A car door slammed outside, and Abby went to the front hall to look through the window.

“Colin’s here,” she told Naomi as she opened the front door and called across the street. “Colin! We’re all over here. Come see what we found!”

“Abby, what happened to you?” Cohn frowned as he took
in her appearance, dirty clothes and cobwebs in her hair.
“Naomi! What in the world…
?”

“Colin, we found Miz Matthews’s dog!” Naomi’s eyes danced as she grabbed her husband by the arm and pulled him into the room where Belle sat with her dog on her lap.

“Hi, Daddy.” Meredy came in from the kitchen carrying a pot of water, which she set on the floor next to Belle’s chair, just as Belle had instructed her to do. “Mommy and Abby brought Meri out of the wall.”

Colin’s gaze followed Meredy’s pointing finger.

He whistled long and low, then walked over and peered into the dark chamber beyond the room.
“How did you find this?”

“From our house,” Naomi told him.

“What do you mean, from our house?” Colin frowned.

“Miz Matthews remembered a secret panel in our back hall closet that opened up and led to a passage that cam
e over here…”

“Whoa, back up there, sweetheart.”

“There’s an old passage from the Underground Railroad days that links this house with the carriage house and goes under Cove Road to your house,” Abby explained.

Colin took the flashlight from his wife’s hand and entered the darkness, instructing the others to stay behind, telling them, “You never know what’s down here.”

“Oh, we have a pretty good idea.” Naomi giggled.

Within twenty minutes, Colin appeared at the back door. “There’s a trap door in the stable which leads to the tunnel which leads to the house.” He shook his head. “I cannot believe you two were foolish enough to go down there alone.”

“You weak woman,” Naomi grunted. “Me macho man.”

“Knock it off, Naomi.” Colin scowled. “
I
have never played that game with you, and you know it.”

“Well, Abby and I did just fine.”

“I think you and Abby were damned lucky that whoever used the tunnel to come in here on Sunday wasn’t down there today when you decided to go exploring. I wish you had waited for me.”

“We tried to. At least, we thought about it. But you were taking too long getting here, and the wall opened up, and we just had to go in.”

Colin kissed the top of his wife’s head. “Okay, let’s go on home, and you can show me where it starts. Abby, you stay here and watch that the kids don’t go down into the wall.”

“And that no one unexpected comes out,” Belle called over her shoulder.

38

“
I
t sounds as if you had quite a week.” Alex leaned back against the wooden garden bench where he and Abby had cozied up after breakfast. He pulled Abby back with him, so that they rested against each other on the rustic settee which Susannah had found in the carriage house. Sunny had painted it a gleaming white to surprise Abby, who had found it to be the perfect spot to sip
her second cup of morning coff
ee and watch the birds.

“Umm,” she murmured, snuggling back against his chest, her arms around his to sink closer into him, still wrapped in the early-morning glow of having Alex awaken her at dawn to love her into a new day.

“And I do agree with Colin, that you and Gran should not be here alone,” he continued. “As soon as this trial is over, I will take a few weeks off and come stay with you. That is, of course, if you’ll have me.”

“As often as possible.” She grinned in reply.

“Ah, yes, just one of the fringe benefits of playing security guard.” He laughed and gave her a squeeze.

“I feel like I’m playing hooky,” she told him with a sigh. “I should be upstairs working on the wainscot in the small bathroom.”

“I think you can safely take an hour off here and there to relax. And what is the point of having done all this”—he
waved his arm to take in the entire backyard area—“if you never sit and just enjoy the view?”

“It does look pretty good, doesn’t it?” She sat up slightly so that she could see the full expanse of garden she and Sunny had worked on over the past few weeks.

“It looks wonderful,” he assured her.

And it did. The old paths had been painstakingly uncovered and the bricks dug up and reset, the perennial beds cleaned up, and the herb garden restored. The first of the roses were in bud and early bloom along the fence, several long-armed branches reaching up and over the arbor where the white roses would soon bloom in concert with the red as they had so long ago. All in all, Abby thought, some of the old magic had returned, and it filled her with pride. Aunt Leila would have been pleased.

“What do you hear from Drew?” Alex asked casually.

Abby frowned. “Actually, nothing. I haven’t heard from him since last weekend. He still doesn’t even know about the break-in.”

Alex leaned back against the hard bench and sighed, debating whether or not to tell Abby that, in trying to track Drew down to see if he could check in on her and Belle this past week, Alex had found no hotel in Williamsburg that was hosting a sales meeting for an athletic equipment company. And in checking with the colleges Drew claimed to have as clients, he discovered that no one had ever heard of a Drew Cassidy.

Maybe, Alex thought, while Abby was painting inside and he was painting the front porch, he’d slip on over across the street and ask Colin to do a little background check on old Drew. Just a precaution, Alex told himself, trying to beat down the uneasy feeling that had begun to spread. Maybe Colin could track him down and there’d be a logical explanation. For Abby’s sake, Alex wanted Drew to be everything that Abby believed him to be.

But even beyond wanting to confirm Abby’s faith, there was something more. Alex had, as Abby had predicted, liked Drew. While there did appear to be something guarded about the man, there was also something intrinsically decent about him. Alex found himself wanting to solve this little mystery, hoping that his earlier suspicions would be proved false.

“Well.” Abby patted his arm gently before standing up and stretching. “I really do need to get to work.”

Alex sighed. He liked just sitting with her, smelling the early-morning scents of honeysuckle and roses and lavender and feeling Abby’s softness. He wanted to hold on to the moment, and he wanted to hold on to her. He could have stayed right there for the rest of the day and been damned happy to do so.

“Okay.” He reluctantly let her go. “Help me up, and I’ll get started on the front porch. But, you know, that will only take another weekend or so. If I spend a few weeks here, all of the work will be done by the end of next month.”

“Most likely.”

“What will you do then?”

“Contact a Realtor.” Abby shrugged. “I guess that’s the next logical step.”

They walked in silence the rest of the way to the house, holding hands, neither one of them wanting to think about the next logical step, both of them wondering just what, after all, logic had to do with what was going on between them. They both sighed at the same time, as each considered first the other’s personal agenda, then his or her own.

“I think I’ll cut some flowers for the hallway,” Abby said unexpectedly as they reached the back porch, and she sought out the small clippers she had left in a small basket for just such a purpose.

Knowing this was his chance to sneak a call to Colin, Alex leaned down and kissed the back of her neck. “I’ll get started with that front porch railing. See you at lunch.” Alex began to dial Colin’s number but was distracted by the sight of Abby strolling leisurely, basket in one hand, clippers in the other, as she followed the path into the garden. He hung up the phone without completing the number and went to the window for a better view. Mesmerized, he stared.

In old jeans and a dark green T-shirt, Abby’s lithe body
moved between the rows with all the grace of a tiny dancer, the cobbled walk her stage and he her only audience. A surge of unexpected emotion flooded him to the core, and he knew with crystal certainty the most elemental of facts, the only real truth of his life. His only true agenda stood in the damp grass in bare feet, snipping stalks of butter-yellow forsythia.

Oh, he could protest as much as he wanted that the law was his love and a senior partnership his goal, but it was meaningless when taken in the context of the truth he had so recently discovered about his life.

Abby was his life, and his life was here in Primrose.

Once he accepted what he had so long ago suspected, he knew the only thing that lay between him and a lifetime of happiness was convincing Abby that this town, this house—and this man—were her destiny just as they, and she, were his.

He hoped it wouldn’t take too long.

“
A
re you sure there isn’t something you want to tell me, Abby?” Naomi arched her eyebrows and batted her eyes, all innocence and naivete.

“I guess if I thought I could hide something from you, I was delusional at the time.” Abby laughed. “Where would you like me to start?”

The two women stood in Naomi’s backyard, surrounded by the flats of herbs, vegetables, and annual flowers that Naomi had started from seed in her little greenhouse. Abby had volunteered to assist in the planting, and, with the work on her own house almost completed, she was happy to have time to help her friend.

“A simple ‘You were right all along’ would suffice. For now, anyway.”

“Ah, is that a smirk or a gloating grin I see on your face?”

“Oh, perhaps a touch of both. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am for you both. I knew it was merely a matter of time before you realized that you were hopelessly in love and couldn’t live without each other. I knew that ten years ago. I’m just happy that you found each other at last.”

Naomi, ever the romantic, sighed. “And now you can live happily ever after.”

“Well, I don’t know about that part.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Alex has his law practice
…
”

“Abby, he could commute if he had to, you know. It’s not like Hampton is hours away.”

“He may not be in Hampton for all that long. He may be transferred to another office.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Alex expects to be made partner. And, from what he said, that could happen anytime. Once he makes partner, he could be given his own office to open up in another city.”

“Then you just have to make him understand that he belongs here.”

“I can’t do that, Naomi,” Abby said. “Alex has to decide for himself what he wants.”

“And you would stand by and let him walk out of your life again?” Naomi’s eyes widened with horror. “Girl, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking Alex has to choose.”

“I’m thinking you have lost your mind if you believe for one minute that either of you would ever be happy without the other. I’m thinking if you let him go, it will be the biggest mistake of your life.”

“I’ll deal with it when it happens,” Abby told her. “It may not be an issue for a long time yet. Right now, it’s still all very new, and I’m happy, and Alex seems happy, and that’s what matters to me.”

“Please do not bury your head in the sand for too long. I would hate to have to help you put that heart of yours back together when I know and you know and even Alex knows you belong together.”

“Sometimes things don’t work out the way they should.” Abby concentrated on smoothing the soft dirt around the seedlings she placed in the ground.

“Sometimes they do,” Naomi replied pointedly. “You can’t always leave things to fate, Abby.”

“I’ll worry about it later.” Abby dismissed the matter with the wave of one hand, smiling as if to assure Naomi that she did, in fact, have everything under control. “Right now, let’s just concentrate on getting your garden in so that I have time to take a shower before dinner. Alex and I are taking Belle to the new mall out there off the interstate. Having your old wheelchair is a real blessing, Naomi. Thanks for the loan.”

“Thanks to Drew for thinking of it.”

There was a long pause before Abby confided, “We still haven’t heard from him, Naomi.”

“Drew?”

Abby nodded.

“He’ll pop up.”

“I guess so. He must have had a business trip this week.” Abby shrugged.

Naomi was silent. How to tell Abby what she and Colin had learned from Alex? Or what Colin himself had determined through his law enforcement connections: that he could find no trace of the man’s existence, that Drew was not, after all, who he said he was.

Abby glanced across the row and saw the tightness in the line of Naomi’s mouth. She watched for several minutes while some tension played in her friend’s eyes, then said, “Okay, spill it.”

“Spill what?” Naomi did not look up.

“I want to know whatever it is about Drew that you know.”

“What makes you think I know anything?”

“Naomi, you are absolutely the world’s worst liar. Look me in the eye, and tell me that you don’t know anything about Drew.”

“I don’t know anything about Drew.” Naomi continued to stare into the dirt.

“I said, look m
e in the eye, and…”

“All right, all right,” Naomi muttered. “Alex didn’t want to say anything at all to you until we had exhausted all the possibilities.”

“ ‘We’?”

“Colin is trying to track him, Abby. Some prints that Colin picked up when he dusted your house didn’t match any of us, not you or me or Sunny or Belle or Alex. So Colin sent them to a friend of his in D.C. to put through the computer system, which, unfortunately, Primrose isn’t hooked into. Not yet, anyway.”

“And nothing came back?”

“Not as of this morning.”

“What a
bout the colleges where he…
”

“He doesn’t.” Naomi held up a hand to stop Abby from completing the sentence. “He doesn’t work for any company that deals with any of the colleges he told us he sold to.”

“Well, just when was someone going to tell me?” Abby’s eyes crackled with the anger that was rapidly building inside her. “You could have told me what you were doing.” She flung a handful of deep brown soil in Alex’s direction as he approached with Colin from the driveway.

Alex flashed an inquiring look in Naomi’s direction. Naomi merely shrugged and said, “What can I say? Abby asked me point-blank, and I could not lie. And, besides, you should have told her yourself.”

“You are absolutely right.” Alex nodded as he eased himself onto the ground next to the row of green beans Abby was planting. “And I apologize to you for not telling you sooner. But I really wanted to clear it up before you even had to know. I know how you feel about Drew. Hell, I was even starting to like him myself.”

“But, of course, now you can’t like him anymore be
cause you think he somehow…
” Abby struggled with her thoughts, reluctant to put words to any of them.

“He’s a liar, Abby. He lied to all of us.” Alex’s jaw squared.

“And I guess you feel pretty smug about that, don’t you? Go ahead and say ‘I told you so’ and get it over with.”

“Abby, I didn’t want it to be true any more than you did. Yes, I admit that in the beginning I had reservations—I was suspicious about him showing up out of the blue the way he did. But there’s something about Drew that is very likable once you get to know him. He was kind to Gran and very
sweet to Lilly, and I really do believe he cared very much for all of you.”

“I absolutely agree.” Naomi struggled momentarily to rise, shifting her stiff leg slightly. “There is no question that he was growing close to you. There are some things you just can’t fake, Abby.”