Three Down the Aisle (3 page)

“I don’t know,” she said eventually. “Something, I suppose. First, though, I have to air this place out and chase out seven years’ worth of spiders and bug carcasses.”

The man on her doorstep regarded her with undisguised disapproval. “Don’t wait too long. Now is the time of year to fix it.” He dug in his pocket and handed her a card. “When you’re ready, call me. It needs to be done right, and something tells me you’ve never gotten your hands dirty.” He shot a disdainful glance toward her pale, smooth hands. “I’ll show you what to do, so you don’t make things worse than they already are.”

Before she could reject the ungracious offer, before she could even muster a suitably indignant retort, he’d turned on his heel and gone, crashing through the overgrown weeds and vines like an intrepid explorer in alien jungle territory. He stopped several times to examine the rosebushes with a surprisingly gentle caress or to tug violently at a choking strand of honeysuckle, muttering
to himself in an undertone. Melanie had little doubt that whatever he was saying was unflattering.

Annoyed by his judgmental attitude, she was about to rip the card to shreds, but something about the delicate artwork in one corner caught her eye. It was only a line drawing, but the combination of seagrass and roses reminded her of the way Rose Cottage had been in its heyday. He was right about one thing. Her grandmother would be appalled by the garden’s sorry state of neglect.

Her gaze moved from the drawing to the name.

Stefan Mikelewski, Landscape Designer, the card said simply, along with a phone number.

Okay, so he was abrupt and abrasive, but he apparently had actual expertise she could use if she was to make any headway at all in the disastrous garden. She tucked the card in her pocket, then went back to the kitchen, hoping to brew a cup of tea so she could start the day all over again.

One look around, though, told her that even the simple task of boiling water was entirely too daunting to contemplate on an empty stomach. It could take hours to get the stove clean enough to set a teakettle on one of the burners. Coffee was out of the question with no sign of a coffee grinder for the special-blend beans she’d brought with her. Maggie, with her gourmet mentality, had instilled a love of perfect coffee, along with a taste for haute cuisine, in all of the sisters.

Melanie consoled herself that she wasn’t really running away from all the work that needed to be done. She had to go into town anyway so she could stock the refrigerator with groceries and spend a fortune on cleaning supplies. The fast-food dinner she’d had before she’d arrived the night before had worn off hours ago, and she was definitely going to need stamina to tackle the thor
ough cleaning the house required. Last night she’d done little more than sweep out the attic bedroom she and her sisters had always used and make up the bed with the fresh sheets she’d brought with her.

Turning her back on the mess was perfectly sensible, she concluded. “It’ll be just as much of a disaster when I get back,” she told herself, grabbing her purse and heading for the door.

In fact, something told her she could spend the next week scrubbing the place from top to bottom and she’d barely make a dent in the cleanup effort. As much as she’d hated Jeremy a scant thirty-six hours ago, her sisters were about to join him on the shortlist of people Melanie didn’t want to see anytime soon, not unless they came wielding dust rags and brooms.

Her cell phone rang just as she pulled into a parking space in Irvington’s small downtown district, where she’d noticed a promising coffee shop the night before.

“Relaxing yet?” Ashley inquired cheerily.

“Remember what you said about being so exhausted from cleaning I wouldn’t have time to think?” Melanie muttered. “It took two hours to clear a path to the bed last night.”

“Uh-oh,” her sister responded.

“Triple whatever image you have in your mind, and you’ll have some idea of the work ahead of me. And that’s inside. The yard’s worse.”

“That bad?”

“And then some.”

“How’s the weather?”

“Don’t change the subject. I want you to know just how annoyed I am with all of you right now. I feel like Cinderella, left behind to deal with the mess her wicked stepsisters didn’t want to touch.”

“Hey, it sounds like this is working out just fine,” Ashley countered.

“In whose universe?” Melanie retorted.

“You’re not thinking about Jeremy, are you?” Ashley said. “Gotta run. I’m due in court. Love you.”

Melanie tossed her cell phone back in her purse. Much as she hated to admit it, her sister was right. She hadn’t thought about Jeremy the scumbag all morning, except in passing. Whether that was due to the daunting prospect of cleaning Rose Cottage or the equally daunting encounter with Stefan Mikelewski was hard to say.

“Blame it on the cleaning,” she muttered to herself as she headed for a coffee shop down the block. Thinking about doing battle with dust bunnies was a whole lot safer than remembering the way the landscaper had made her blood hum through her veins, especially when he’d deliberately taunted her about the condition of the garden. Maybe that was a reaction to his arrogance and nothing more, but she didn’t want to test the theory with another encounter anytime soon.

As she drank her coffee and ate an entire huge cinnamon roll, she considered how fortunate it was that she had days and days of work ahead of her inside the house before she could even begin to contemplate doing anything outside. That would give her time to decide if she wanted to tackle it on her own or ask for help from the disconcerting Mr. Mikelewski.

Or maybe just hightail it back to Boston and forget the whole thing.

Now there was an idea, she thought happily—until she remembered the reason she’d left in the first place. She swallowed hard and steeled her resolve to stay right here.

After all, no amount of dirt and grime, no tangle of weeds, no judgmental scowls from Mr. Mikelewski
could be awful enough to drive her back to the city where Jeremy was contentedly living with the wife and two children he’d neglected to mention to her until she’d caught him red-handed.

The memory of her total humiliation was a terrific motivator, she concluded, as she made a whirlwind trip through the grocery store and exited with a cart piled high with comfort food and antibacterial scrubbing supplies.

She was going to wash years of dirt out of Rose Cottage and toss every last memory of Jeremy out with the filthy water…or die trying.

I
t had been a week now, and Mike hadn’t been able to shake the image of Melanie D’Angelo standing in her doorway clutching a heavy lamp and facing him down without the slightest hint of trepidation. Of course, there had been shadows in her cornflower-blue eyes and smudges on her pale cheeks, but she’d shown absolutely no fear in the face of his intrusive, skeptical questions or his condemnation of the garden’s sad neglect. He’d been impressed, to say nothing of intrigued. Now, thanks to that unexpected encounter, he was more drawn to the Lindsey cottage than ever.

It was the shadows in her eyes that had gotten to him. They were evidence of the kind of vulnerability he tended to avoid like the plague these days. He had all the emotional upset in his life he could cope with. He didn’t need to go taking on some stranger’s woes, even if she did have skin like silk and a body that all but
begged for a man’s attention. He still hadn’t forgotten the way her blouse had gaped slightly to reveal a slight hint of cleavage or the way her jeans had clung to the curve of her hips and her endlessly long legs.

He didn’t need a woman in his life, especially not one who all but shouted that she came with complications.

Hell, he had all the work he could handle, too. He didn’t need to go looking for any more, especially of the unpaid variety. She hadn’t called, so obviously she didn’t think she needed his help untangling that mess in her yard. He should forget all about Melanie D’Angelo and the Lindsey cottage. They were someone else’s problem.

But then he remembered the photo she’d shown him. Oh, he’d noticed the four gorgeous teenagers and their handsome mother and smiling grandmother, but his heart had done a little stutter-step at the sight of the climbing pink, white and red roses, the heirloom tea roses, the brilliant orange tiger lilies, the stately hollyhocks. Someone—Cornelia Lindsey, obviously—had tended that garden with love, and it deserved respect by those who followed. Her descendants
should
be ashamed for not nurturing such an incredible legacy.

That was one of the things he liked most about his work. If a man spent time nurturing a garden, planting carefully, watering, weeding and fertilizing, he could count on it to offer beauty and behave predictably.

Nature had its whims, of course. Hurricane Isabel in 2003 had wreaked havoc on many of the stately old trees around the area and carved up riverbanks and shorelines. Even so, in Mike’s view people were far less reliable, no matter how much nurturing they received. Linda was testament to that. And for all of the dedicated nurturing he gave to Jessie, the results were unpredictable, as well.
That didn’t mean he would ever stop trying, but he needed one part of his life—his work—that he could count on and control to some degree.

Each day when he drove past Rose Cottage, he looked for evidence that Melanie D’Angelo had clipped back the first rosebush, but so far the garden was as much a disaster as ever. Despite his own best advice to stay the hell away, it grated on him that she’d done absolutely nothing. It was almost as if she were deliberately defying him. But that was absurd, of course. Why would a stranger’s opinion matter to her one way or the other? She was clearly perfectly comfortable with the overgrown surroundings. Maybe she didn’t intend to stick around long enough for any of it to matter.

When he pulled off the road in front of the house, he told himself it was only because he had an hour to kill before his next appointment. He told himself he was only being neighborly, reassuring himself that Melanie hadn’t been overcome by dust, squeezed to death by a tenacious honeysuckle vine or attacked by a stray water moccasin.

When she didn’t respond to his knock with that lethal lamp in her hand, he went looking for her. That it also gave him a chance to explore the rest of the property was purely a side benefit.

As he’d expected, the view was magnificent, with crabbing boats on the horizon and sunshine glittering on the gentle swells of the bay. Old oak trees and a line of weeping willows near the water’s edge dappled the overgrown lawn with shade. There were more eyesores, though. A now-dead oak had been ripped from the ground by the hurricane, its roots exposed and as tall as a house. It had lain there so long it had destroyed everything beneath it. Other trees had been split, most
likely by lightning, and should have been trimmed back long ago if there was to be any chance to save them.

At first, with so many downed trees and plants to draw his attention, he almost missed Melanie, but he finally spotted her at the back edge of the lawn, sitting on a weathered glider, her shoulders hunched, one foot tucked under her, the other pushing the swing idly to and fro. She looked so thoroughly dejected and defeated he almost turned and left her to her obvious misery, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Six years after learning the hardest lesson of his life, and he was apparently still a sucker for a vulnerable woman.

“Melanie?” He spoke her name softly, but she jumped just the same, sending tea splashing out of her cup and onto her long, bare legs.

“Damn, I’m sorry,” he apologized, offering her a handkerchief to wipe up the mess.

“Do you intend to make a habit of starting my day by scaring me half to death?” she inquired irritably.

“Apparently so,” he said with a shrug. “Sorry. Want me to leave?”

She actually took her time answering, which told him she was seriously weighing her options.

“No, I suppose not. Now that you’re here, you might as well sit down,” she said grudgingly. She slid over to make room for him on the swing.

Mike hesitated. The swing wasn’t all that wide. Sitting beside her would put her a little too close for comfort.

“If you don’t sit, I’ll have to stand,” she said eventually. “Looking up at you is giving me a crick in my neck.”

Since there was no alternative other than the overgrown lawn, Mike sat on the swing, keeping a careful distance between them. “You haven’t done much work
on the yard yet,” he noted, figuring he’d be safer if he put her on the defensive.

“I don’t even know where to begin. Besides, I’m still trying to deal with the house.”

He regarded her skeptically.

She immediately bristled. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. I
have
been working. In fact, once I got started, I decided the living room could use a fresh coat of paint and maybe some new curtains. That’s made everything else look shabby, so the whole project has gotten out of hand. I’ve done nothing but paint for days now.”

He didn’t even try to contain his surprise. “You’ve painted the entire house since I last saw you?”

“Most of it,” she said. “I haven’t gotten to the attic bedrooms yet.”

“When? How?”

She grinned. “Don’t tell me you’re actually impressed with something I’ve done.”

Mike didn’t want to concede that he was. “Haven’t seen the job yet, have I?”

“Oh, come on, admit it. You didn’t think I was going to lift a finger to put things right around here, did you? You probably thought I’d turn a blind eye to the work that needed to be done or, worse, just give up and run away.”

“To be honest, that thought did occur to me. Why didn’t you?”

“No place else I wanted to be,” she admitted.

Her eyes were filled with that same sorrow he’d noted on his last visit. It made him want to hold her. To fight the urge, he balled his hands into fists and dug his nails into his palms.

“What’s wrong with home?” he asked.

“If you’re referring to the place where my parents live, there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“You’re still living with your folks?”

She gave him a wry look. “You’re going to keep poking at this, aren’t you?”

“Just being neighborly.”

“Well, then, let me make it as plain as I possibly can. I don’t want to talk about Boston or my past.”

Mike could understand that kind of reluctance all too well. “Okay. Then that brings us back to this place.”

She gave him a faint grin. “Actually, Mr. Mikelewski—”

“Mike.”

“Mike, then. When it comes to this place, I think you’ll find I’m full of surprises. Once I get around to these gardens, I intend to see that you’re awed and amazed. By the time I leave—”

He gave her a sharp look. He’d expected as much, so he was surprised by the disappointment that slashed through him. “You’re not here to stay?”

“Nope. Just passing through.”

That made her willingness to do anything at all to bring the place back to its former beauty all the more remarkable. He should have felt a wave of relief at the news that she wasn’t staying, but he didn’t. He told himself it was because there was no way she could turn this garden around on some two-week vacation or whatever she was taking here.

“That makes it even more important that you consider my offer of help,” he told her. “You won’t be able to accomplish much on your own during a brief vacation.”

She gave him a long, steady look, then nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. And for the record, I’m not exactly on vacation. It’s more like a sabbatical.”

“How long?”

“I’m not sure.”

He saw her evasiveness as just more evidence that she couldn’t be counted on to make a real difference here. “Say you do all this work,” he said, regarding her curiously, “who’ll look after it once you’re gone? Or do you plan to abandon it again?”

“To be honest, I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” she told him. “Right now I’m barely planning this afternoon, much less tomorrow or next week.”

“Drifting’s fine for a time,” he said. He’d done his share in those first weeks after he and Linda had separated. Only Jessie’s demand for attention had kept him focused at all. He glanced at the woman next to him and added, “But making it a way of life is dangerous.”

“Oh?” she asked, her tone edgy. “Do you have a lot of experience drifting along?”

Mike thought about the question before responding. When it came to emotional drifting, he’d become a grand champion, but having Jessie hadn’t allowed him to drift in any other way for long. She forced him to live in the moment, since plans could get scrambled in a heartbeat on one of her bad days.

“Everyone needs goals,” he said at last.

She regarded him curiously. “What are yours?”

The conversation was getting way too serious and increasingly personal. Mike grinned, taking that as his cue to leave before he did or said something he’d regret. “I only have one goal that concerns you…getting you to fix up this garden.” He winked at her. “See you around.”

On his way back to his car, Mike couldn’t resist taking a peek in the front window. His jaw dropped. Melanie had indeed painted. The walls, which had been a dingy
cream on his last visit, were now a sunny yellow. The trim was white, and the sheer curtains billowing at the windows were fresh as a breeze. A blue-and-white spatterware pitcher held a bouquet of daffodils. If every room had been transformed like this one, Melanie D’Angelo was going to bring Rose Cottage back to life.

He couldn’t help wondering, though, what it was going to take to put a sparkle back into her eyes.

“Not my job,” he told himself grimly, then wondered why the hell he’d needed to utter the obvious warning. It should have been a given.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the whole time he’d been sitting in that swing he’d wanted to haul her into his arms and kiss her until that sad mouth of hers curved into a smile. That was damn dangerous thinking for a man who’d vowed never to get involved in another relationship that could break either his heart or his daughter’s.

Melanie was feeling inspired. The living room at Rose Cottage had turned out so well that she was ready to tackle the rest of the house. She’d gone through a dozen different decorating magazines and turned down the corners of every color scheme that appealed to her.

Now she was on a mission to see what she could find in the local stores to use as some sort of centerpiece—a piece of pottery, a painting, throw pillows—in each room to set the tone she wanted to achieve. Since she was unemployed and using her dwindling savings to accomplish the makeover, she had to be frugal. Fortunately, there were all sorts of antique shops tucked away in the Northern Neck, and not all of them dealt with high-end items she couldn’t possibly afford. Besides, she liked the idea of bringing in things with a history.

For her own room she was looking for the shades of the sea—blue, soft green, pale gray—but she couldn’t quite resist an occasional burst of orange or pink or even red in an old picture for the walls or a pillow that could be tossed on the bed. After all, even the tranquil bay turned brilliant shades of orange at sunset.

She’d just emerged from a shop in the neighboring town of Kilmarnock, feeling triumphant about finding a cobalt blue pitcher inside, when she spotted Mike’s truck across the street. Her heart did a little stutter-step of anticipation. Because of that, she would have hurried on, but he came out of the real estate office and immediately spotted her.

Crossing the street with his long stride, he studied her with his usual solemn expression. “You look pleased with yourself,” he concluded.

She lifted the bag containing her treasured pitcher. “Successful bargain hunting,” she told him. Because she couldn’t resist, she pulled the dark blue pitcher from the bag and held it up to the light, which made the old glass sparkle like sapphires. “Isn’t it amazing?”

His gaze was on her, not the pitcher at all, when he echoed, “Amazing.”

Her heart skipped a beat under that intense gaze. “You’re not looking at the pitcher.”

He shrugged and dutifully shifted his gaze. “It’s a nice one, all right. It would look good with flowers in it.”

She laughed. “Do you ever think about anything besides gardens?”

“Sure.”

“Such as?”

“Have lunch with me and I’ll tell you.”

The faintly flirtatious words seemed to catch him by
surprise as much as they did her. Melanie was tempted to refuse, but the idea of another lonely meal back at the house held no appeal. Even the company of this dour man with the one-track mind was more intriguing than eating one more tuna on rye by herself.