Jude Deveraux (25 page)

Where
would we live? she thought, smiling. Here or his house? Here, of course, she
thought. Who would want a Victorian house when they could have the eighteenth
century? Yes, no question about it, they'd live here. Brad could let his
daughter and her husband live in the oversize Granville house, and Minnie could
move into the vacant overseer's house down the road. Yes, that was how it would
be, and maybe her life would be perfect. Smiling, she imagined holding a cold
drink as she and Brad showed guests around the garden.

By the
time Eden got out of the shower, she was well over McBride's fifteen-minute
limit, but she knew he'd only been kidding. Everything McBride said was a joke,
wasn't it? He joked when he was a prisoner in a cellar, joked about death and
about everything else. All the world was a joke to him.

As she
dressed (this time blow-drying the curlers in her hair so she could take them
out) she was glad that she didn't have to start seeing clients today. It seemed
that ever since she'd arrived in Arundel, she'd been on a roller coaster. As
she put in earrings (tiny frogs) she smiled at the thought of her daughter's
reaction if she'd told Melissa the truth about why she hadn't called since
she'd been here.

You
see, dear, I'm under investigation by the FBI because some spy swallowed my
name. In fact, I have a terribly good-looking agent living with me, and another
man, or men, I don't know which, wander around my garden 24/7. No,
dear,    I'm    not   
having    an    affair    with   
the good-looking agent, but I am trying to have an affair with the good-looking
lawyer Mrs. Farrington hired. But, you know how it is, with FBI cameras
watching your every move, it inhibits you, although Braddon — that's the lawyer
— and I have managed a few kisses. No, no, dear, I know that to you I'm old,
but these men don't seem to think so, so don't worry about me. And, by the way,
Mr. McBride — he's the FBI agent — didn't press charges when I beat him up, so
there'll be no assault and battery charges on my record to embarrass my
grandchild. I think Stuart will appreciate that. And, oh, yes, the FBI cleaned
up the house after those criminals nearly destroyed it. No, dearest, I don't
know what they wanted and neither does the FBI. But we — that's McBride, Brad,
and I — think it has to do with the multimillion-dollar necklace that we found
last night. That's why I was sleeping so late this morning. The excitement and
all. No, dear, I haven't gone senile on you. It's been a very eventful few
days. Yes, very exciting, but also exhausting. That's why Mr. McBride is
insisting that I stay home today and not start the new job of designing
eighteenth-century-style gardens for Brad's new subdivision. Oh? Didn't I tell
you about my new job? No, sorry, that's right, dear, I didn't call you, but,
yes, I have a new job. But I don't know if I'm going to take it, because last
night McBride looked at the will and said I do own the necklace. We were going
to talk about that, but we started watching
Fawlty Towers
and — What's
that? Oh, it's only an old English TV series. John Cleese and very funny.
Anyway, it was nearly three A.M. before McBride went to his room — No, dear, I
am
not
sleeping with the FBI agent. Or the lawyer, for that matter.
Anyway, McBride asked me what I was going to do now that I'm going to be a
multimillionaire, you know, rather like I won the lottery, and I said I have no
idea. So today I think I'm going to work in the garden and think about what I
want to do with my life. Things have been happening so fast in the last few
days that I haven't had time to figure out anything. But then, I'll tell you a
little secret. I'm not sure, but I think the necklace is a fake. No, I'm not
qualified to make such a judgment. I can tell that it's old, but I'm not sure
if the stones are real or not. But don't worry. I'm sure the FBI has people who
can tell a real jewel from a fake one. Uh-oh, dear, I have to go. Mr. McBride
is calling me to breakfast. Or, by now, I guess it's lunch. See you when I can.
Kiss the baby bump for me. Bye.

By the
time Eden had finished the little play running through her mind, she was
downstairs. McBride was standing by the stove and watching her.

'You
don't get a bite until you tell me what's making you laugh. I could hear you
chuckling all the way down the stairs.'

'Nothing.
I was just thinking of what I
should
have told my daughter.'

'And?'

'Nothing,'
she said, looking away. The kitchen door was open. It was cooler than she liked,
but it was great gardening weather. She could almost feel the soil in her
hands. Too bad she had nothing to plant. Spring made her lust to dump plants
out of pots and put them in the ground.

'Strawberry
muffins, omelets with onions and green peppers, milk, coffee, tea, cranberry
juice with no gin in it. But not one bite until you tell me what was making you
laugh.'

'Okay,'
Eden said, smiling, then she proceeded to run through the entire minidrama for
him. She even held an imaginary telephone to her ear and pantomimed emotions.

As
always, Jared was a good audience, and the more he listened, the more he
laughed, so the more outrageous she got. By the end he was laughing with his
mouth open, showing his strong, straight teeth. At the end, though, his face
stilled.

'What?'
he whispered when she'd finished.

For a
moment, Eden blinked, realizing what she'd seen while she was on the phone to
her daughter. At the time, Melissa's complaints had so distracted Eden that she
hadn't fully registered what she was thinking. And since then, her thoughts had
been on her daughter, not the necklace.

'Where
is it?'

'Windowsill,'
Eden said, turning toward the stairs.

'You
eat, I'll get the necklace, and I'll get someone out here as fast as they can
to look at it.'

Eden,
starving, grabbed a muffin from under its cloth covering. 'No helicopters,' she
called after him. 'Everyone in Arundel will come out here to see what's going
on if a helicopter lands in the fields.' She went to the stove and lifted the
lid to the skillet. 'Helicopters,' she muttered. 'Two weeks ago I would never
have thought of helicopters.'

She
slid the omelet onto the plate that Jared had placed on the counter and sat
down to eat. What next? was her only thought. What monumental, dramatic thing
could happen next?

When
she heard the hydraulic brakes of a truck pulling into her driveway, she wasn't
even surprised.

'What's
that?' McBride asked from the doorway, the necklace in his hand.

'A SWAT
team?' she asked, her mouth full.

Someone
knocked on the door and Jared went to open it. Eden heard him exchange a few
words with the driver, then they both went outside. She heard sounds of the
truck door opening but didn't get up to look. By the time McBride came back
into the room, she had finished eating.

'I
think you better come look at this,' he said.

'Is it
good or bad?'

'Come
and see what you think.'

She put
down her napkin, drained the last of her tea, and followed him to the front
door.

All she
could do was stare. Her mouth gaped open, and her eyes blinked several times,
but she still couldn't believe what she was seeing.

On the
oval lawn in front of the house was a little red truck, a Kawasaki Mule, cute
beyond describing. It had a wide seat in front and a truck bed in back that was
full of what looked to be top-of-the-line Spear and Jackson gardening tools
from England. Behind the truck, on the ground, were hundreds of black plastic
pots full of perennials. In front of them were annuals, and in back were boxes
that bore the words LIVE TREES INSIDE OPEN IMMEDIATELY.

Slowly,
Eden went down the stairs to stand beside McBride. She was too astonished to
move.

Not so
Jared. He stepped into the little truck, turned the key, and started the
engine. 'Look at this,' he said, then flipped a switch and the bed moved
upward. 'It's a dump truck.'

Shovels,
rakes, a gardening fork, a three-pronged bulb planter, a soil aerator, and at
least a dozen hand tools went tumbling out the back to the ground. 'Look what
you've done,' Eden cried as she began to pick up the tools.

Jared
turned off the engine, stepped out of the truck, and looked at her. 'So what do
you think of all this?'

'I   
think   Braddon    Granville  
is   the   most wonderful man in the world,' she said
softly as she put the tools against the big cypress tree. She went to the
perennials to read the labels. Astilbe. For shade, she thought. Under the pecan
trees. Heuchera and agastache.

'You
think it was Granville who sent you all this?' Jared asked.

'Of
course. Who else would do this?'

'Ah,
yes, who else could it be?' he said.

'And
what is that supposed to mean?'

'Are
you going to accept gifts from a man you barely know?' Jared had his hands in
his pockets and, for once, he wasn't wearing his isn't-life-funny look.

Eden
looked at the plants, the truck, and the tools, then back at McBride. 'Since I
was eighteen years old, I've tried to set an example for my daughter. When a
man liked me and offered me a gift, I didn't take it because I didn't want my
daughter to grow up thinking that if a man gave her something she owed him
something.'

'Hard
life to live.'

'Yes,
it was sometimes. I think I wanted to prove to myself and the world that even
though I'd had a child when I was a child, I could still be a good mother.'

Jared,
with his hands still in his pockets, nodded toward all the things around them.
'But now you have nothing to prove, so you're going to accept the gifts.'

She put
her hand on the fender of the little red truck. 'I'd rather have these things
than an engagement ring.'

'Engagement
ring?! So now you're
engaged
to Granville? When did this happen?'

'It
hasn't, but a woman knows, and I know that I will be asked.'

'Why
not? You have nothing to lose,' Jared muttered.

'Is
that supposed to mean something?'

'Nothing.
It means nothing,' he said. 'I'm sure that you and Granville will make a great
couple. You can live together in your old houses, one week in his and one week
in yours. You'll be the leading couple in town, and everyone will want to go to
your parties. Young girls will make their husbands' lives hell if they aren't
invited to
your
parties. In one generation you'll have gone from being a
pregnant kid with nothing, to being Mrs. Astor of Arundel. Now, if you'll
excuse me, I have work to do. Don't leave your property and you'll be safe.'

Eden
watched him go into the house, then sat down on the seat of the little truck.
What a day! she thought. First Melissa and now McBride. She saw the thick stack
of papers in the little cubbyhole to the right of the steering wheel and took
them out. It was the instruction manual. As she opened the booklet, she told
herself that she was going to enjoy the day no matter what anyone did to her.

Easier
said than done. All of the hundreds of plants needed to be put into the ground,
and something that usually relaxed her now seemed to be a monumental task. Her
mind wouldn't stop working.
Had
she been horrible to her
daughter?     Should    
she     have    
been     more understanding? Should she have said that
she'd known all along that Stuart was no good? Should she have jumped in her
new car and driven to New York to be with her pregnant daughter?

That
she'd done none of those things worried Eden, ate at her. She even wondered if
she was jealous of her daughter. Melissa had everything while she was pregnant,
but Eden had had so very little. As McBride said, Eden had worked herself half
to death while she was pregnant. She'd climbed stairs carrying heavy boxes and
stayed up late to read what was inside the boxes. Her only time 'off was when
she was in the kitchen, trying to figure out how to cook something that Mrs.
Farrington would like.

Brad
had said that Mrs. Farrington was 'cantankerous' and Eden had defended the
woman. It was true that Mrs. Farrington had treated Eden and Melissa well, but
Eden had had to earn that good treatment. Before Melissa was born Mrs.
Farrington had demanded a great deal of work. After the child was born, it had
been better, but that Eden should sit down and rest were words that were never
spoken.

Eden
picked up her new hand shovel and looked at it. Damn McBride, she thought. He
was as bad as those snakes that had been put into her bedroom. He was always
spreading poison. The truth was that he had presented her with a picture of her
future with Brad that she didn't like. And a truth that she didn't want to
hear.

Was
it
possible that part of her attraction to Brad was that his family was so very
prominent? Arundel, North Carolina, wasn't New York or Palm Beach, but, well
... As Brad's wife, Eden would be accepted into social circles that had always
been outside her world. When Mrs. Farrington had parties, Eden served drinks.

Eden
knew from having lived with Mrs. Farrington that some of the families of
Arundel were accepted in those 'old money' worlds. Compared to the rest of the
world, the United States was very young and had no aristocracy. By default, any
family that had had money for over two hundred years was considered upper
class. A Granville would be welcome anywhere.

Eden
turned a bulb planter over in her hand. How much of her attraction to Brad was
the man himself and how much was his name?

'Can't
decide where to begin?' Jared asked from above her.

She
didn't look up. 'Get over your sulk?'

'I
wasn't sulking,' he said to the top of her head. 'I was in a fury of jealousy.'

'Oh?'
she said, her head still down, but she was smiling. 'Happen to you often?'

'Not
even once before, I'm happy to say. Not even my wife — '

She
looked at him. 'You were married?'

'Long ago.
And stop looking at me like that. The divorce wasn't any great traumatic thing
that at broke my heart.'

When
Eden just kept looking at him, he shrugged. 'I was young, and marriage seemed
like the thing to do, so we did it. Three years later I came home to find a
note saying she'd left me. To tell you the truth, I was so tired that night
that I was more angry that there was no beer in the refrigerator and that she'd
taken the TV with her than I was that she'd left me. We didn't know each other
very well and had never spent much time together, so I never really missed
her.'

Eden
kept looking at him. 'So how bad are you lying?' she asked softly.

Jared
gave a laugh. 'A hundred percent. I was mad about her, and I thought I was
going to go crazy after she left me. The guy she ran off with came up to my
shoulder and was bald at twenty-six. But he was home every night, they went to
church on Sunday, and he coached Little League.'

'Children?'

'Three.
All of them smart, polite, and great athletes.'

When he
glanced back at her, Eden meant to give him a look of sympathy, but instead she
laughed. 'We're a pair, aren't we? School of Hard Knocks. So why don't you get
a shovel and help me plant these trees?'

Jared
looked aghast. 'I've never planted anything in my life.'

'Dig a
hole, stick it in. It's not — '

'Yeah,
I know, rocket science.' His words were sarcastic, but he was grinning as he
picked up a shovel. 'So Granville sent you all of this?'

'Who
else? The FBI? Maybe it's a new technique. Maybe instead of threatening people
to make them talk, they're going to start using bribery. By the way, after you
drugged me to sleep last night, did they do any more searching in my house?
Tell me they didn't take the pictures apart.'

'First
of all, I didn't drug you. Is this shovel big enough?' he asked, holding up
what could be used as a snow shovel.

'It's
big enough to plant six trees. You should — ' Eden started to explain about
gardening equipment, but when she looked at him and saw that his eyes were
twinkling, she knew he was teasing her. She had an idea that he knew more about
gardening than he was letting on. 'Could you open these boxes? We need to get
the trees out, then we're going to the orchard to plant them.'

He
pulled a Swiss army knife out of his pocket and slit the plastic bands around
the boxes. As they began to pull damp, shredded newspaper off the bareroot
trees, she said, 'So how did you get into the FBI?'

'I
thought that was the way to save the world and that I could do it
single-handedly. Great! A peach tree. My favorite.'

'Why do
I sense disappointment? Did you find out that you're not helping?'

Jared
shrugged as he untangled three trees from one another. 'I guess I've done some
good, but the day-to-day bad you see gets you down. Sometimes things happen to
make me realize that the average American man doesn't spend his days dealing
with the lowlifes that I know. Drugs. Murder. Women with slashed faces. I once
worked on a case where three women — ' Cutting himself off, he looked at her
quickly, then   away.   'I   wish  
there   really   was   a   little
machine that could make me forget what I've seen.'

'Oh.
You mean a machine like in
Men in Black?'

'Exactly.'

'So how
many grown cockroaches have you had to deal with?'

'Hundreds.'

Eden
laughed. 'So what's the future hold for you?'

'I have
no idea. Retire and settle down, maybe. Or I could get out of the field and
take a desk job, but that appeals to me about as much as ... '

'As
what?'

'As
having a desk job, I guess.'

Smiling,
Eden looked toward the back of her property. She could see the orchard — or
what was left of it. Toddy and she had set the posts, and together they'd put
in the three-rail fence. It had weathered to a beautiful gray, and by now her
orchard should have been beautiful. But nearly all the trees were dead, or so
overgrown that they looked as though they wished they were dead, and part of
the fence had fallen down.

Jared
followed her glance. 'Bad, huh?'

'Very
bad.' She looked at him. 'But thanks to the trees Brad sent, I can revive the orchard.'
She looked him up and down. 'Are you up to some work?
Real
work? And you
can't shoot anything.'

'Not
even Granvilles?' Jared asked without cracking a smile.

'Most
certainly not Granvilles.'

'I
think I can handle it. But I have a bum leg and a couple of old wounds that — '

'Yeah,
well, I had a baby. You want to compare pain?' Eden said as she turned toward
the Mule. She needed to start making a plan of the whole garden, and what
better way to survey her land than in the little truck?

Jared
started to get into the driver's seat, but Eden glared at him, and, with a mock
bow, he handed her the key. It took a minute for her to get the hang of
starting it and keeping it started (choke out, neutral gear, choke off, brake
off, forward gear), but once she got it going, she set off across the lawn.
There was no windshield, and as the air ran cool and fast across her face, she
felt young and free. She glanced at McBride and saw that he was enjoying it
too. On impulse, Eden turned the wheel sharply, and since the truck was so
small, it turned in a circle hardly bigger than an embroidery hoop. She headed
toward the unplanted fields next to her house. There didn't seem to be any
shock absorbers in the little truck because they could feel every bounce of the
rough field. Again, she glanced at McBride and saw that he was smiling.

On
impulse, Eden pushed the gas pedal to the floor and McBride almost fell out the
open side. He grabbed the handle on the steel rod overhead, stuck his long legs
under the dashboard, and held on. Eden raced across the bumpy fields, her teeth
jarring and her breasts bouncing until they hurt. The air was cold on her face
and blew her hair straight out, but the freedom of the ride felt wonderful.
When she saw a  leftover peanut  bale, she hit it at full speed. When
peanut stems flew up, she ducked her head, and McBride put up his arm to
protect his face.