Garden Of Scandal

2

Alec worked like a man possessed, slashing and hacking and piling brush without letting up. The sun burned down on his head. Sweat poured off him in streams. He tied a bandana around his forehead and kept working. His shirt grew soaked, clinging to him, confining his movements. He stripped it off and kept working. He could feel the sting of long scratches on his arms from his bout with forty-foot runners from an ancient dog rose. He ignored them and kept working.

He didn’t care about any of it. It was good to use his muscles, to feel them heat up until they glided and contracted in endless rhythm, responding effortlessly to his need. He liked the heat of the sun on his back, enjoyed the smells of cut stems, disturbed earth and smoke. It gave him a sense of accomplishment to rescue antique shrubs and perennials, to watch some semblance of order emerge from what had been a confused mess.

He had to prove himself to make sure he got this job, but there was more to it than that. He needed to show Laurel Bancroft that he was as good as any redneck at achieving what she needed done.

He had thought from the way she was dressed this morning that she might work with him. He had been looking forward to the prospect. But she had gone inside the house and shut the door. He hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of her since.

She was good at closing herself off, from all accounts. Grannie Callie had said she’d hardly left this old place since her husband had died. People seemed to think she had gone a little peculiar. Not crazy, exactly, but not your average grocery-shopping, soaps-watching, club-and-tennis young matron, either.

The kind of work he was doing didn’t take a great deal of concentration, and his mind had a tendency to wander. If he let himself, he could see Laurel Bancroft as some kind of enchanted princess under a spell; she had that fragile look about her. She was trapped in her castle of an old house, drugged and sleeping while life passed her by. And he was a knight-of-old come to hack his way through the thorns and briers to save her.

Jeez, he must be losing it.

Some knight. No armor, for one thing. A pair of hedge clippers in his hands instead of a sword. Hardly perfect, either. And he was definitely not pure.

A screen door slammed at the side of the house. Maisie rounded the corner and leaned over the railing.

“Lunchtime, boy,” she called. “Sandwiches up here on the veranda. You want water or tea?”

He stopped, wiping sweat from his eyes with his forearm before he frowned up at her. “‘Boy’?”

She gave him a grin that put a thousand wrinkles in her face and made him feel good inside. “You don’t like that? I could have called you dummy for being out in this sun without a hat. Water or tea?”

“Water.” He should have known better than to try intimidating a woman who claimed she had changed his diaper when he was a kid. “Where’s Mrs. Bancroft?”

The elderly housekeeper’s gaze slid away from his. “She don’t eat lunch. You want to wash up, there’s a bathroom off the kitchen.”

It looked as if Laurel Bancroft was avoiding him. He didn’t know whether that was good, because it was a sign that he disturbed her, or bad, because it meant she couldn’t stand him. Either way, he was going to have to do something about it.

At least Maisie didn’t desert him. She brought her chicken salad and tea out to the table on the shady front veranda. While he ate, he teased her about her diet fare and how much her old man was going to miss her curves when they were gone. After a while, he got around to what he really wanted to say.

“So what is it with the lady of the house? Is she a recluse or just stuck-up?” He leaned back in his chair, rubbing the condensation from the sides of his water glass with his thumb while he tried to look bored and a little disgusted.

Maisie gave him a narrow look. “She doesn’t have too much for people, is all.”

“How’s that?”

“Her husband died, you know that?”

He nodded as he massaged the biceps in his right arm that had begun to tighten on him.

“Did you know she killed him?” she asked.

Shock brought him upright. “You’re bullsh—I mean, there’s no way!”

“She did it, God’s truth,” Maisie said with a shake of her head. “Not that she meant to. He stepped behind her car as she was backing out of the garage. But there were folks who claimed it was on purpose. The mother-in-law, for one.”

“Nobody else believed it, though, right? I mean, just look at her. How could they?”

“Some people will believe anything. Anyway, seems Laurel and Howard had been having problems. Then there was a big life-insurance policy.”

“But nothing came of it?”

“Nothing official, no investigation. Sadie Bancroft, the husband’s mother, said it was on account of Sheriff Tanning being Laurel’s old boyfriend. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. Anyway, it blew over.”

“Except for the gossip?”

“Yeah, well, there’s always that part.”

He tilted his head. “So she’s hiding out. But why, if she really didn’t mean to do it?”

“You want to know that, you’ll have to ask her.”

Maisie was avoiding his gaze. Alec wondered why. “Think she’ll tell me?”

“Might.” The older woman stood and began stacking dishes. “Depends maybe on how you go about it and why you want to know.” She walked off with her load, leaving him to himself.

Alec sat on for a few minutes, drinking water as the ice melted in his glass, and gazing out over the garden at what he had done and what he still needed to do. From up here, he could see the outlines, barely, of what had been a typical front yard in the old days. It had been fenced with white pickets to keep out the cows that ranged freely back then, with a gate accessing the driveway, which passed in front of the house, then made a sharp right turn into the garage that was separate from the house. A straight brick sidewalk cut from the front gate to the steps, and curving walkways followed the oval ends of the house around toward the back.

Planting had apparently been haphazard, except for the great treelike camellias and Cape jasmine at the fence corners and the roses along the pickets and over the arbors above the gates. He had found evidence of bulbs of all kinds everywhere, from daffodils and iris to licoris. Originally, the soil between the plantings would have been swept clean of every blade of grass and raked in patterns. Sometime in the forties or fifties, probably, Saint Augustine grass had been planted in the open spots. There were still patches of the thick sod here and there, although the rest was choked with weeds and briers and enough saplings to stock a small forest.

And he had to get after it. He drained his glass, picked up his sweat-damp gloves and went back to work.

Maisie left in the middle of the afternoon, flipping him a quick wave as she drove off in her old boat of a car. He dug up the tough tubers of a mass of saw briers that were trying to climb a column while he allowed a little time to pass. When he thought it might not look too much like he had waited for the housekeeper to leave before storming the house, he pulled his discarded shirt back on, then went and gave the antique brass doorbell a quick twist.

The harsh, discordant sound rang through the house, and from around back, Laurel’s German shepherd, smart dog that he was, started barking immediately. Earlier, Alec had seen Sticks shut up on the porch. The two of them had eyed each other through the screen. Leaning against the doorjamb now, Alec wondered whether Laurel Bancroft was protecting him from the dog or the dog from him.

Laurel didn’t want to answer the door. She felt threatened, almost beleaguered inside her own house. She wished she had never mentioned the garden to Maisie, then this Alec Stanton would never have shown up. She could have gone on as she had been for nearly five years, in comfortable solitude with little contact with the outside world beyond her housekeeper, her grown children, and the man who drove the brown truck that brought her mail-order purchases.

Catalogs had become her lifelines to the world. It was a catalog of antique roses from a place in Texas that had started her thinking about the garden again after all this time. Now look where it had gotten her.

It was a strange blend of fear and irritation that made her snatch open the front door after the third ring. Her voice sounding distinctly tight and unwelcoming, she said, “Yes?”

“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” the dark-haired man who leaned on the doorjamb said, “but I needed to ask a couple of questions.”

He wasn’t sorry at all; she could see that. What she couldn’t see was why he couldn’t have come to the door before Maisie left. The urge to slam it in his face was so strong, a tremor ran down her arm. The main thing stopping her was the suspicion that he might prevent it if she tried.

Through compressed lips, she asked, “What is it?”

“I wondered if you could show me where you want your fountain? And it would help if I had some idea how you’d like to lay out the rose beds you mentioned. Plus, I’m not exactly sure what to save and what to get rid of.”

She glanced at the yard beyond him with a doubtful frown. “Surely you haven’t got as far as all that? I thought you were just clearing and cleaning.”

He smiled, a lazy movement of sensuously molded lips that made her breath catch in her throat. “It always helps to have a plan. Would you mind stepping out here just a minute to tell me a couple of things?”

How could she refuse such a polite and reasonable request? It was obviously impossible. In any case, she was intrigued by the clear line of sight he had created by fighting back the growth along the sidewalk from the steps to the gate. It had seemed a great distance between the two points before, when trees and brush had choked the passage and obscured the view. Now it appeared to be only a few yards.

Before she knew it, she had moved across the porch and down onto the brick path. Alec was talking, pointing out dying jonquil foliage along the walk, asking if she wanted to leave the yellow jasmine vine that had woven its way through a huge spirea near the side gate, and a dozen other questions.

She answered, yet she was painfully aware of being outside in the afternoon sun, exposed and vulnerable to another human being. At the same time, she felt a rising excitement. She could almost see the garden she had envisioned emerging from the shambles around her. In a single day, this man had laid bare the form of the front yard so she could tell how things used to be and how she wanted them again.

Roses. She wanted roses. Not the stiff, formal, near-perfect hybrid blooms everyone thought of when they heard the word, but rather the old Chinas, teas, Bourbons and Gallicas of years gone by. They were survivors, those roses. They had been rescued from cemeteries and around the foundations of deserted houses where they’d been growing, neglected, for countless years. Tough, hardy, they clung to life. Then in early spring, and even through the searing heat of summer and into fall, they unfurled blooms of intricate, fragile beauty, pouring their sweet perfume into the air as if sharing their souls.

Standing in the center of the front garden, Laurel said, “I’d like the fountain here, with the path running around it on either side, then on to the steps. I thought maybe an edging of low boxwood of the kind they have in French gardens would be good, with a few perennials like Bath’s pinks, blue Salvia and Shasta daisies. Beyond that, just roses and more roses.”

She glanced at Alec, half afraid she might have spoken too extravagantly. He was watching her with consideration in the midnight darkness of his eyes and a faint smile hovering at one corner of his mouth. For long moments, he made no answer. Then, as if suddenly becoming aware of her gaze, he gave a quick nod. “I can do that.”

“You think it will work?”

“I think it will be perfect.”

He sounded sincere, but she could hardly take it on trust. “You’re only saying that because you can see it will take weeks of work.”

His smile faded. “I wouldn’t do that. Actually, what I am is relieved. I was afraid you were going to want big maintenance-free beds of junipers all neatened up with chunky bark mulch.”

She made a quick face. “Too West Coast subdivision.”

“Exactly,” he agreed, his eyes warm and steady.

For a fleeting instant, she felt such a strong rapport with the man beside her that she was amazed. They were nothing alike, had little in common as far as background, yet they seemed in that moment to be operating on the same wavelength.

Perhaps this would work, after all. Just so long, of course, as they kept it simple and businesslike. She not only wanted this garden, she needed it. She had come to think, lately, that without it she might go into her house one day and never come out again.

“Let me show you something around here,” Alec said, intruding on her thoughts. Turning, he led the way toward the back of the house where the old outdoor kitchen had been before it was moved inside just before World War II. Her footsteps slowed as she saw where he was headed.

He kicked aside a tangle of brier and weeds, which he had apparently hacked down earlier at the house corner. Underneath was a low brick curbing covered by a large concrete cap. Moving with quick efficiency and lithe strength, he bent and lifted the heavy concrete cover. It made a harsh grating noise as he shoved it from the curbing.

“Don’t!” she cried, stepping back.

He straightened, putting his fists on his hips. “You know what this is?”

“A cistern, of course,” she answered, incensed. “But my husband never—That is, he always said it was extremely dangerous. No one ever goes near it.”

Alec frowned. “It’s just a brick-lined hole in the ground. There’s not even any water in it anymore.”

“Howard was always afraid somebody, one of the kids, would fall in.”

“Then he should have filled it in. But it could be used now as a reflecting pool, if you wanted. It wouldn’t take much to seal the brick lining, make it watertight.”

“It would be so deep,” she protested.

“So’s a swimming pool,” he offered with a shrug, “but that doesn’t stop people from having them. Anyway, it’s not as if there are any kids toddling around to fall in.”

She shook her head, suppressing a shiver. “I’d rather not.”

“Suit yourself. It was just an idea.”

He was disappointed, she thought. The enthusiasm had died out of his face and his movements were stiff as he replaced the heavy concrete cap. Abruptly, she asked, “Did you see the creek?”

“I saw where one crosses the road below here. That it?”

Nodding, she led him toward the winding waterway that ran behind Ivywild, gliding among tall beeches, sweet bay trees and glades of ferns. She was halfway there before it came home to her what she was doing. She had actually left the fenced-in yard. She was moving farther away from the safety and comfort it represented with every step. How long had it been since she had done that so easily?

A shiver moved over her and the skin on the back of her neck prickled. She felt naked, as if she had deliberately abandoned her protective covering. Panic rose inside her, but she choked it down, breathing slowly in and out.

She would be all right—she would. The wide shoulders and hard body of the man at her side spelled protection. He was solid, like a wall or fence that stood between her and whatever danger might lie around her. She had felt it the night before, felt it even more strongly now.

Not that there was really anything out here, of course. Any jeopardy was all in her head, and she needed to get rid of it. She knew that and was determined to keep telling herself so until she believed it. Anyway, she would not be away from her house for long—only for the time it took to show Alec Stanton the small stream.

As she pushed on, moving ahead of him down the tree- and brush-covered slope, following a winding animal trail, she was hyperaware of the warmth and solidity of him beside her. He moved so quietly, with the natural grace of an Indian. In the dusky tree shadows, she thought she could see a copper tint in the deep bronze of his skin.

The awkwardness between them lingered, but it had a different quality from before. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been quite so aware of another human being. Nor could she recall the last time she had cared how any male felt other than her teenage son.

Alec was impressed with the creek. Standing knee-deep in the ferns that edged it, with his hair trailing in its damp ponytail down his back and leaf shadows making a tracery of gray dimness and golden light on his brown skin, he turned to her with a heart-stopping smile. Voice deep and reflective, he said, “This has possibilities.”

“I know,” she said and caught her breath, suddenly more afraid of those possibilities than she had been of anything in five long years.

He tilted his head, the darkness of his eyes as meltingly warm and sweet as chocolate. “Does this mean I get the job?”

He had done so much in so short a time. He could clear all the choking debris from Ivywild. He could make her rose garden for her. If she had not ventured out to see what he had done—what he could do—if she had not seen the promise, she might have answered differently. Now there was only one reply possible.

“Yes, I…suppose it must.”

Pleasure flared across his face in sudden brightness. “Good,” he said softly. “In fact, that’s great.”

Laurel wasn’t so sure.

She was even less certain when night closed in and Alec finally roared away down the drive on his Harley. She had grown used to being alone, and yet tonight she really felt it for the first time in ages. It was a warm evening, but she was chilled. Wrapping her arms around herself, she wondered what it would be like to have a man’s warm arms to hold her, or a firm chest to support her as she pressed close against it. It had been so long.

Of course, Howard had never been particularly good at simple affection. Whenever she’d tried to cuddle in his arms, she had usually gotten sex. That part of their marriage had been all right; not especially inspiring but no disaster, either. They had talked—mostly practical conversations of the kind necessary between husband and wife, about plumbing repairs, the children’s progress in school, what was for dinner. Sometimes they had gone out to eat or visited friends, driving home in companionable silence. Now and then, Howard had taken her hand. But no, he’d had no gift for gentle caresses, no interest in the passionless need to hold and absorb the essence of another person. It was foolish, perhaps, to miss what you had never had.

She was lonely, that was it. The night stretched empty and still and dreary ahead of her. There was nothing on television she wanted to watch, and she had read everything of interest on her bookshelves. She wasn’t sleepy, wasn’t even tired.

She couldn’t stop thinking of Alec Stanton. The way he looked at her, the way his smile started at one corner of his mouth and spread across his lips in slow glory. The deep set of his eyes under his brows, and the planes of his face that swept down from the high ridges of his cheekbones, giving him the predatory look of some ancient warrior. The easy way he moved, his deceptive strength. The gleam of his skin with its gilding of perspiration, the rippling glide of the dragon on his upper chest as his pectoral muscles contracted and relaxed.

How stupid, to indulge in sophomoric mooning over a hired hand, a young hired hand. It was even more stupid to allow herself the twinges of such a ridiculous attraction. If she could just be objective about it, she might laugh at the trick her mind had played on her, getting her worked up over such an unsuitable partner, like a canary eyeing the iridescent magnificence of a pheasant.

It was only hormones run amok, that was all. Nothing would come of it. Alec Stanton would do his job, then he would be gone and everything would be the same again. Everything, except she would have a new rose garden.

She would have to be satisfied with that.

It had been a mistake to leave her house, perhaps. There was more than one kind of safety, more than one kind of danger. Still, if she stayed inside now until after Alec had finished her garden, then she couldn’t get hurt.

Could she?

3

Laurel Bancroft was keeping an eye on him from the windows; Alec knew this because he had caught her at it.

He didn’t like it, didn’t appreciate being made to feel like a criminal she needed to stay away from at all costs. Or worse, that maybe he wasn’t good enough to associate with her. It had been going on for three days. He’d about had a bellyful of it.

He didn’t care if she was a widow, didn’t give a rat’s behind if she’d actually killed her husband and had good reason to shut herself away. It didn’t even matter that she didn’t see another soul beside Maisie. He wanted her out of that house. He wanted her to talk to him.

The anger that simmered inside him while he dug and chopped and ripped weeds from the ground was strange, in a way. What people thought and how they acted toward him had ceased to bother him years ago. But Laurel Bancroft had opened old wounds. She’d made him as self-conscious as a teenager again. She’d made him care, which was something else he held against her.

What it was about her, he didn’t know. It wasn’t just that she was an attractive woman, because there were jillions of those in California, and he had known his share. Nor was it, as his brother sometimes claimed, that he had a weakness for problem females. He might feel the need to lend a hand to those who seemed to be struggling, but that had nothing to do with the woman who owned Ivywild.

There she was again, behind the draperies that covered the window on the end of the house. She was standing well back and barely shifting the drape, but he had learned to watch for the shadowy movement.

That did it.

He dropped the shovel he was wielding, then stripped off his gloves and crammed them into his back pocket. He was not going to be spied on any longer. Either she was coming out or he was going in.

Maisie answered his knock. Her gray brows climbed toward her hairline as she saw the grim look on his face. Wiping her damp hands on her apron, she asked, “Something the matter?”