In a few minutes, they were driving away, the tarp and Jones’s DNA sample both bagged and tagged. He closed the door, wincing at the metallic shriek, then started toward the house. The tarp’s discovery didn’t change the fact that he had a lot of work to do.
He was mixing concrete in a wheelbarrow with a hoe when Reece came out the front door. The instant he saw her, some of the tension left his shoulders and jaw, and a smile came automatically. She wore the same clothes as the afternoon before, with smears of dirt, sweat and mortar on both shirt and shorts.
“I didn’t bring any real work clothes with me,” she commented as she approached, “so I’m already stinky and dirty.”
And beautiful.
“How did it go with the detective?”
“It is human blood, and taking the tarp without a warrant means anything they find is inadmissible in court.”
She made an obnoxious sound. “Like that matters in this case.”
“How did it go with Miss Willa?”
“She confirmed that Valerie was in rehab those months. She also said I was hysterical, melodramatic and unwanted when I was here then, and that I had worn out my welcome now and should consider leaving. Of course, being a proper Howard, she won’t throw me out. Not just yet, at least.”
Jones stared at her, then took her hand, but she wouldn’t let him tug her around the wheelbarrow so he could hold her. Her eyes bright with tears, her fingers holding tightly to his, she forced a smile. “It’s nice to know where one stands, isn’t it?”
So much for preserving some kind of relationship between them, he thought bitterly. “You don’t need her.”
“I know.” She shrugged. “I never really had her in my life. Just the possibility that someday… But it’s okay.” She sounded as if she meant it. There was disappointment in her voice, but acceptance, too. Not resignation—that would have been painful for both of them—but simple acceptance.
“Families suck sometimes, don’t they?”
She laughed. “Yeah, they do. That’s why God gives us the chance to make or pick our own.”
They finished the last course of bricks on the south bed, then moved to the bed north of the steps. The sun was warm, the air smelling of the river and the pines that edged the yard but lacking the crisp scent of fall Jones had become accustomed to on many of his jobs farther north. Sometimes he missed the change of seasons, but not enough to move someplace where the months brought drastic weather.
In fact, he might be willing to consider relocating farther south instead, where the biggest seasonal difference was warm versus hot, damp versus suffocatingly damp.
New Orleans would do nicely.
If he had the proper incentive.
Around eleven, Miss Willa drove past in the big old Caddy, never glancing in their direction. Jones watched Reece’s expression, but saw nothing more than momentary curiosity. Soon after, the housekeeper brought out a tray of chicken-salad sandwiches along with two dainty dishes of salad and a pitcher of iced tea. “I fixed the food before Ma’am told me about her appointment with Robbie Calloway,” she announced, “and she won’t eat leftovers, so I’m not letting it go to waste.”
Reece didn’t say anything, so Jones thanked the woman. After she returned inside, they gave their hands a cursory wash with the hose, then sat on the porch steps, the tray between them.
“Robbie Calloway is her lawyer,” Reece said before picking up a sandwich half. “Either you’re getting your contract at last, or I’m getting officially disinherited, if I wasn’t already.”
“I don’t know if I still want the contract.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever actually wanted the project. His work had been a way to gain access to Fair Winds, to find answers about Glen. If that tarp provided at least some of those answers, and he had this knot in his gut that said it would, would he want to stay around for months on end, working for the widow of his brother’s murderer?
Even if he didn’t get answers, his opinion of Miss Willa had taken a serious hit today. He wanted to pursue this thing with Reece. How much trouble would it cause if he was working for the grandmother who’d deliberately caused her such needless pain to restore the place that gave her such nightmares?
“Maybe someone who works for you could oversee it,” Reece remarked. Then she shook her head. “Strike that. Grandmother isn’t the sort to settle for the number-two guy. She’d want your attention twenty-four hours a day until the job was done to her satisfaction.”
“Yeah. Some of my clients think a contract with my company entitles them to that.” He grinned. “I charge them a little extra for attitude.”
She finished her sandwich, then picked up the delicate crystal plate and heavy silver fork, both elaborately monogrammed with an
H.
“I don’t see the point of salads like this,” she remarked. “A small serving of mixed greens, one slice of cucumber, two cherry tomatoes and raspberry vinaigrette. I like plain old lettuce, and I want lots of stuff on it, all topped with rich, thick blue-cheese dressing. You know, a salad of substance.”
“The difference between you and Miss Willa. She’s superficial. You’re about substance.”
“Thank you,” she said with a wry smile. “Right now I’m about embracing the differences. It’s hard to imagine that my dad came from these people.”
“Because he made a conscious decision to leave here. To leave them.”
“Like you did with your family.”
It was the perfect opening to tell her about his family, both good and bad. He’d rehearsed different openings in his head, ways to tell her his background without making his family seem nearly as bad as hers, because they weren’t, honest to God. But the opening came and went without a single word making it from his mouth before she returned to the subject of the contract.
“What happens if you decide you don’t want a project? You’ve got a lot of time in here—these beds, the research, the sketches, all the preliminary work. You just write that off and move on?”
He grinned. “I don’t know. I’ve never turned down a job of this size and significance.”
She gazed into the distance a long time, then abruptly said, “I think you should do it. You and Grandmother both said the gardens here were historically significant. Even if you don’t need it on your résumé, who could turn down the chance to bring history back to life?”
“And to thwart Arthur in the process?”
Her smile was sunny. “Well, yeah, there’s that, too.”
“Pursuing it could bring disaster into Miss Willa’s life. Gl—whoever’s blood is on that tarp might not have been your grandfather’s only victim. Once we start digging out here—” His words broke off as ice rushed through his veins, appropriately chilling to the image of mounds of dirt and piles of bones.
As she looked across the expanse of yard, her gaze darkened. Imagining how many bodies could be buried there? Wondering if her grandfather could have been that kind of monster?
After a moment, her hand unsteady, she gestured toward the two new beds. “At least we haven’t uncovered any bodies so far.”
He met her weak smile with his own, choosing not to point out that so far, the digging had been relatively shallow. If Arthur were burying a body permanently, surely he’d dug deeper than two feet, as the heavy equipment would. “It would shake Miss Willa’s world to its foundations, having to face the truth about her husband.”
“That’s on Grandfather, not you. If he really did kill someone—maybe multiple someones—those families have the right to know. The world has a right to know what he was.” Sounding less certain, she added, “Grandmother would deal with it. She’s a Howard. Besides, I could be wrong. That could be Grandfather’s blood, or Mark’s, from an injury they suffered while out hunting or working.”
Jones didn’t repeat Marnie Robinson’s comment about the blood loss being incompatible with life.
“It was August,” Reece remarked.
His gaze jerked toward hers. “What?”
“The day I surprised Grandfather in the garage. It was August. And the truck was in the garage, not the shed.”
Glen had disappeared in August. What were the odds that someone else had disappeared from the area at the same time and not been missed?
Not good.
Leaning his head against the pillar, Jones closed his eyes, easily calling his brother’s image to mind. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, Glen had usually been smiling, often laughing, always feeling whatever he felt with passion. Jones had wanted a different life, but it had been Glen who first suggested actually trying for it. He and Siobhan were in love, but they’d both been promised to someone else since they were kids. They’d decided on the runaway plan, and Jones had jumped at the chance to join in.
If they had changed their minds, if Jones had warned their parents, if
anything
had happened differently…
Things happen as they’re meant to.
Granny’s voice echoed in his head.
Opening his eyes, he looked at Reece. “Do you believe in fate?”
She wasn’t quick to answer. She finished her tea, then stood and walked to the bottom of the steps before facing him again. “I do most of the time, but sometimes I wonder. Was it fate that Daddy died so young? That Valerie wasn’t the best mother? That I wound up here that summer?” She shrugged, an easy, graceful movement. “I do believe things happen for a reason, that good comes out of bad, but I also believe we have influence, too. We can make decisions that can alter our fate. Though then, Martine asks, how do you know you weren’t fated to make that decision?” She smiled faintly.
“What good came out of your father’s death, your mother’s deficiencies and your summer here?”
Again she smiled, but this time it was the real thing, the kind that involved her entire face and affected him like a punch to the gut. “I met you.” She turned, tossing a look back at him over her shoulder, as she sashayed—no other word fit that sassy, sexy sway of her hips—to the work site.
Warmth spread through him, easing doubts and guilts and fears in its path, and for the first time in a very long time, he realized, he was falling for a woman. It was too hard and too fast, at least if a man wasn’t prepared for it.
But his subconscious had been preparing for it even if his conscious mind hadn’t. All that talk about long-distance relationships, all that wanting—needing—to take care of her, all that thought about relocating to New Orleans… Oh, yeah. Some part of him had been headed this way without his even realizing it.
It was a realization he was very comfortable with.
With the brick border finished on the second bed, they returned to the first one, using spades and rakes to work amendments into the soil. By the time they were ready to plant, the wind had come up and the northwest sky had turned dark. Thunder reverberated slowly across the ground, a low, threatening rumble.
“Great,” Jones muttered. If they went ahead and planted before the storm broke and it was a hard rain, it could damage the new plants. If they didn’t plant and get the mulch down, the rain would pound the soft soil into mud, complete with rivers and gullies. At least there would be no loss if they didn’t plant, just more work for them when the ground dried out.
With the wind whipping into a frenzy, they put away the tools, then, as the first rain fell, took cover on the broad porch. Reece stomped the dirt from her shoe soles on the top step. “Watching thunderstorms was the only thing I liked doing here. A couple times, when we were here, Daddy and I snuggled up in that chair—” she pointed to a wicker rocker “—and we’d count the seconds between the thunder and lightning. Once he told me the scientific reasons for storms, but usually he’d have some silly story about giants bowling or lightning bugs getting refills of light so we could chase them at night.”
Jones sat down in the chair she’d indicated and held out his hand. She didn’t hesitate at all, but curled immediately, trustingly, in his lap.
Trustingly. When she didn’t know some of the most important things about him.
He held her loosely, his hands resting on her hip, and quietly said, “I was here that summer, Reece.”
Reece’s brows drew together, and her stomach muscles clenched. Surely she’d misunderstood. If he’d been at Fair Winds fifteen years ago, why would he wait until now to say so? Why would he listen to all her angst over not remembering without telling her?
Why would she have trusted him?
His arms tightened around her, and he said, “Wait, Reece, hear me out,” before she realized she’d made an effort to stand. She pushed at his hands and he let go, leaving her free to move away, and immediately she felt the loss of his embrace, his warmth, the sense of security he’d always given her.
Security?
From a liar?
Folding her arms across her middle, she stalked to the nearest column, then faced him. “You forgot to mention that until now?” Her tone was snide, sarcastic, reminding her of both Grandmother and Mark. Maybe she really was a Howard, after all.
“When we met, I didn’t know if you just didn’t remember me, if Glen and I weren’t important enough to have registered with you or if you knew who I was and were pretending not to. I thought it would be better if I waited until I did know to say anything.”
“I told you Tuesday night that I didn’t remember,” she said heatedly, then chilled just as quickly. “You didn’t believe me.”
He pushed out of the chair with enough force to set it rocking and paced to the end of the porch. “I wasn’t sure. I wanted…I needed to be sure.”
Borne on the force of the wind, rain splattered her back, but she didn’t move deeper into the porch’s cover. “What do you mean, you were here? You weren’t staying at the house. Grandmother would have mentioned—Mark would have mentioned it.”
“I never saw your grandmother back then, and Mark had good reason to keep his mouth shut.”
She waited, but when he didn’t go on, she flung both arms out. “What reason?”
It was obvious in every line of his body, in his eyes, in the rigid set of his jaw, that he didn’t want to answer, but he would. If she had to strangle the truth from him, she would, by God. She even took a step toward him, but stopped when he spoke.
“Your fear of water. Mark tried to drown you that summer. Glen and I stopped him.”