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He caught it somehow and righted it, but he glanced around with a deepening doubt. This place was a minefield of disrepair, and it was way out of his league.
Natalie Granville might be the answer to his prayers, but he definitely wasn’t the answer to hers. She didn’t need a handyman. She needed a miracle.
He moved back down the steps, ready to leave, almost glad that no one had answered the door. He’d just get back in his car and—
But suddenly he heard a sound. A soft, fairylike singing that came from around the east side of the house. The sweet, elderly spinster, the naive Natalie, perhaps?
Curious in spite of himself, he followed the sound, crunching across broken stones with thick weeds growing in the cracks, ignoring the staring eyes of a dozen armless statues that lined the path like wounded soldiers in the war against decay.
As he approached the corner of the house, he caught a glimpse of something soft and white fluttering in the breeze. What was it? It looked like a long, white gauzy stream of lace. He squinted, confused. It looked like a ghostly wedding veil.
He moved closer. It was a wedding veil. A woman stood at the end of a wide back terrace, and she wore a long white wedding dress, her head crowned with the beautiful, flowing, fluttering lace.
But she wasn’t a living, breathing woman. She was a stiffly silent, white marble statue.
Matthew blinked. And as he watched, the soft singing began again. Something weird and disbelieving skimmed across his nerve endings. He was the last man on earth to entertain nonsensical notions. Still, he couldn’t have stopped himself then if a Minotaur had barred the way.
His gaze fixed on the marble bride, he rounded the corner.
And then, finally, he saw the other woman. The young, blond, bikini-clad beauty who was walking the balustrade like a tightrope, singing merrily to herself as she put one bare foot in front of the other.
Now that he was close enough, he could tell she had a lovely voice, but her words were badly slurred, and he noticed that she clutched a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in one hand, holding it out as if for balance.
The balustrade was wide—at least eighteen inches—but it was slick in spots with mildew. And besides, the woman was clearly drunk. He saw her weave slightly, and he began to move fast. She held on for a few wobbling seconds, just long enough for him to reach the balcony.
The bottle fell first, crashing to the terrace and smashing into a hundred pieces. But, two seconds later, the woman fell the other way, and landed neatly in Matthew’s arms.
For a couple of seconds she was utterly silent, her mouth open as she stared, wide-eyed, in shock and breathless disbelief. She instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck, and her face was so close to his that he could count the tiny, pale freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose.
Six.
She was ridiculously light in his arms. She probably wasn’t more than five-four, maybe one-ten? She had a mass of untamed blond hair that fell in soft curls over his arm. Her skin was slippery and warm, and it smelled of coconut oil.
After a couple of seconds, he began to register just how very little she was wearing. He decided he ought to set her down, but her arms were still wrapped around his neck, so it was awkward.
Finally she recovered her breath.
“Gosh,” she said. “It’s a good thing you caught me, isn’t it?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
“I could have broken something. A leg. An arm.” Her eyes widened even more. “I could have broken my neck, just the way my grandfather always used to say I would.”
“Yes,” he agreed, though privately he doubted it. The fall was only a couple of feet, and she was so drunk she probably would have landed limply and safely on the grass.
“So I guess it’s a very good thing you were here.”
“I guess so.”
She nodded sagely, as if they’d solved something important. With a soft sigh, she dropped her head comfortably against his chest.
And jerked it right back up.
“Hey, wait a minute,” she said, concentrating so hard her brow wrinkled. “Why were you here?”
He debated with himself. Since he’d changed his mind about applying for the handyman job, he probably shouldn’t even mention it. On the other hand, he’d hate for her to think he was just some weirdo prowling around.
He looked into her slightly unfocused eyes. They had swirls of gold in the brown, like melted butterscotch being stirred into chocolate syrup. She was very young, very gorgeous, and he was suddenly aware of the warm thrust of her breasts against his chest.
He cleared his throat. “Do you think you’re steady enough to stand up on your own?”
“Oh. Sure.” She helped extricate herself, and she did pretty well, except that she had to take two steps before she found her balance. She frowned, as if trying to hang on to her train of thought. “You were going to tell me—”
“Someone put up an ad for a handyman,” he said, deciding that honesty was his best course. The grandfather she’d mentioned probably took a dim view of trespassers. “I was thinking of applying.”
“Really?” She tilted her head. “You don’t look like a handyman,” she said. Then she flushed and placed her palm against her forehead. “Oh, that was dumb, wasn’t it? I mean, there isn’t any particular way handymen look, is there? It’s just that you’re so…”
She bit her lower lip as she studied him, apparently searching for the telling detail. “I know. It’s because you smell so good. Darryl smelled like when you open the refrigerator, and you can just tell you’ve left the hamburger in there way too long.” She wrinkled her nose. “You know that smell?”
He couldn’t help chuckling. “Darryl was a handyman, I take it?”
“The last one. I had to let him go. I couldn’t bear to tell him about the hamburger smell, so I told him I was going to finish the work myself.” She sighed, her gaze taking in the mess around her. “I don’t think he believed me.”
Matthew’s mind suddenly skidded, trying to accept the implications of her pronoun choices. “I” had to let him go, she’d said. “I” was going to finish the work. Good God. Was it possible that this young, beautiful woman was Natalie Granville? Could this fragile slip of femininity really be the owner of this weird mansion, custodian of all this decrepit glory?
Surely not. She didn’t look much older than a coed, a completely normal twenty-something, celebrating summer break by sunbathing and getting looped.
“Is this your house?”
She nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. I’m Natalie Granville, the last of the Granvilles, and the proud owner of every crumbling stone you see. Sorry about falling into your arms.” She grinned. “But you certainly proved that you’re a very handy man. Thanks.”
“My pleasure.” He held out his hand. “I’m Matthew Quinn.”
“Hello, Matthew Quinn. You’re hired.”
His first thought was that the sheriff had been right. Natalie Granville was too naive to live. Hired? She didn’t have any idea who Matthew was. She hadn’t asked a single question, requested a single reference. She didn’t even know if he could tell a pair of needle-nose pliers from a monkey wrench. For all she knew he could be jack-of-no-trades. Or even Jack the Ripper.
But his second thought was that, absurdly, he wished he could say yes. There was something inexplicably appealing about her, and it wasn’t just how great she looked in that bikini.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I had already decided not to apply for the job. I’m afraid it’s a little out of my league.”
She frowned. “Oh, no, don’t say that! You’re perfect for it.”
“No, really. I couldn’t tell, from the flyer, how extensive your needs were. I’m okay at the little stuff—painting, patching drywall, replacing gutters, fixing a leaky drain, stuff like that. But this—”
“I’ve got plenty of leaky drains,” she put in desperately. But then, catching his raised eyebrow, she sighed. “And a leaky roof. And a leaky foundation. And of course the water all leaked out of the pool years ago.”
He looked at her heart-shaped face, with the sprinkle of freckles she probably despised standing out against her pale skin. She looked absolutely forlorn.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really do wish I could help.”
“You can! I’m not expecting anyone to tackle everything. Just do what you can. I’ll pay whatever you ask.” She bit her lower lip, catching herself. “Well, I guess I can’t really promise that, because as you may have noticed this house just gobbles money. But I’ll pay what I can, and you can live in the pool house for free, and I’ll cook the meals—”
She stopped herself again. “Unless you like to do your own cooking. I’d let you use the kitchen, of course, and I’d buy the groceries, so even if I couldn’t pay you a whole lot in salary it would still be a good deal, and you—”
“It’s not the money, Natalie,” he said. It seemed silly to call her Ms. Granville when his fingers were still slick from holding her oiled body. “It’s that I don’t have the necessary skills to do this job well.”
“I think you do. Please, Matthew.” She squeezed her hands together. She suddenly looked very pale. “Please say yes.”
He was amazed to discover how difficult it was to resist her. Her artless chatter and sweet smiles might merely be the result of the booze, but he didn’t really believe it. He thought he could still recognize honest-to-God goodness when he saw it.
Even in his old life, back before prison, when he had been making millions in the stock market, both for himself and for a lot of other rich people, innocence had been pretty rare. He had hobnobbed with dazzling genius and indescribable beauty. He had shaken hands with raw ambition and insatiable greed. He had kissed the sleek cheeks of glamour and power and sex.
But he hadn’t ever met anyone as open and guileless as Natalie Granville.
Of course, he reminded himself wryly, she was very drunk. She might be a lot more cynical when she was sober. She probably had a ten-page application for the handyman inside, requiring everything from his blood type to his shoe size.
Or she might be just plain crazy. After all, somebody had dressed that statue up in a wedding gown.
“You know,” he said gently, “smelling good doesn’t exactly qualify me to reroof an Italian villa.”
“I know, but still.” She put one hand against her heart earnestly. “I know it sounds crazy, but I know it’s the right thing. I need you here. It’s just a feeling I have.”
A feeling that probably had much more to do with the Jack Daniel’s than it did with Matthew himself. But he refrained from saying so. She had begun to look a little green around the edges, and he thought what she needed most of all might be a couple of aspirin and a long nap. When she woke up, she probably wouldn’t even remember dancing on the balustrade…or begging a total stranger to live in the pool house and fix her leaky drains.
The sound of a sports car rumbling up the back driveway interrupted whatever she’d been going to say next. She looked over at the long-nosed car, a shiny model of British racing green that Matthew recognized as costing as much as a small house.
“Damnation.” She groaned. “I told him not to come. Well, I didn’t exactly tell him, but I didn’t answer when he called, and surely he ought to know—”
“Nat?” A long, lean young man unfolded himself from the car and smiled over at Natalie, pointedly ignoring Matthew. He was dressed in the official rich young stud uniform of khakis, polo shirt and boat shoes. “I called three times, honey. But you didn’t pick up.”
“That’s because I was busy interviewing my new handyman,” she said, drawing herself erect and obviously trying to sound haughty and businesslike. The effect was spoiled somewhat by her saying “thatsh” instead of “that’s” and “hannyman” instead of “handyman.” And of course the wild hair and the bikini weren’t exactly her most professional look.
The man took it all in. He was clearly trying to size up the situation, and finding himself unable to make the pieces fit. He looked over at Matthew narrowly. “Handyman?”
“Yes,” Natalie said, working hard to get the s right. She tugged self-consciously at her bikini pants, trying to cover her hipbone, but merely succeeding in exposing an extra inch of thigh in the process. “Matthew, meet Stuart Leith, city councilman for Firefly Glen. Stuart, Matthew Quinn.”
“Hello.” Stuart’s voice was flat. “Quinn, did you say? And you want to be Natalie’s new handyman?” It was the same tone he would have used to say, “You want to fly to the moon on a bumblebee’s back?”
For a minute, Matthew considered saying yes, just because he’d like to wipe the smug look from Stuart the Stud’s face. God, had he ever looked that self-satisfied? He should have spent three years in prison for that alone.
But he couldn’t play macho games right now. It wouldn’t be fair to Natalie. “Actually, no,” he said, forcing himself to smile politely. “I had thought of applying, but when I got here I could see I’m not quite right for the job.”
“Matthew,” Natalie began plaintively. A few beads of sweat had formed on her brow. She was going to be sick. He knew the signs.
“I see,” Stuart said firmly, closing the door to his car carefully and coming around to stand by Natalie. “So. You were probably just about to leave, then, weren’t you? Don’t let me hold you up.”
Natalie made a low sound of distress. “Oh, dear. I’m afraid I don’t feel very good.”
“Come on, honey, I’ll take you inside.” Stuart aimed steady eyes at Matthew. “You can find your way back to the gate, can’t you?”
Matthew nodded. “Be careful,” he said. “There’s some broken glass on the patio.”
“Thanks. I’ll take care of it.” Stuart bent over Natalie. “What on earth has been going on here, honey?”
“Matthew.”
“Bye, Natalie,” he said quietly as Stuart began to lead her away.
She groaned, but whether it was because he was leaving, or because the Jack Daniel’s had finally staged its inevitable revolt in her stomach, he couldn’t tell. He had already turned his back on them and was heading around to the front of the house where he’d left his car.
Goodbye, and good riddance. He had plenty of trouble in his life right now. He didn’t need to take on more. And no question the lovely Natalie Granville, however adorable, was capital T trouble. Her crumbling mansion was trouble, her empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s before lunchtime was trouble, her statue wearing a wedding dress was trouble. Even her snooty, smothering boyfriend was trouble.
Matthew slammed the car door, turned the key and shoved the gearshift into drive. He should be glad to go, glad to escape from this moldering nuthouse. What a pair! A bone-deep snob and a ditzy, tipsy, possibly crazy Pollyanna.
But maybe he was crazy, too. Because instead of feeling relieved as he watched Summer House grow smaller and smaller in his rearview mirror, he felt an unmistakable, inexplicable pinch of real regret.
SUZIE STRICKLAND SAT in the Summer House driveway for two hours that Saturday afternoon, waiting for Stuart Leith to leave.
She wanted to talk to Natalie.
And she wanted to do it alone. But she couldn’t wait forever. She had summer school Monday, and she had a ton of homework.
How long could that preppy cretin hang around, anyhow? Natalie couldn’t really enjoy his company, could she? He was a double-barreled knuckle-dragger, whereas Natalie was actually kind of cool.
Suzie’s fingers instinctively strayed to her eyebrow, accustomed to fiddling with the little gold ring when she was nervous or irritable or worried. But the ring wasn’t there. The piercing had become infected last week, and she had to wait for it to heal.
It was like a conspiracy. She needed to write an essay to go with her college application, and if she expected to have a shot at an art scholarship it would have to be good as hell, really creative. But how was she supposed to be creative when so many things were driving her crazy?
And here came one more. The lawn mower’s rumble had been growing louder for the past half an hour. Mike Frome, another preppy cretin, was some kind of distant cousin of Natalie’s, and he was spending the summer working on the estate.
She slouched down in the seat, but he saw her anyway. He cut off the mower and came sauntering over, wiping his face with his shirt just so he could show off his buffed-up abs.
“Hey, Suzi-freaka,” he said, in that superior, sarcastic way he had. He’d started calling her that in middle school, when she had worn bell-bottoms and peace signs. He, of course, wouldn’t be caught dead in anything that hadn’t already received the Boring Young Conservatives Seal of Approval.
His crowd and her crowd had hated each other since puberty. She had been pretty pissed at fate when, one day last year, while shooting pictures of the basketball team for the school paper, she had discovered that he had suddenly become really cute.
And she meant really cute.
She sat up, acting surprised, pretending she hadn’t noticed his arrival. “Well, if it isn’t Mindless Mike. What are you doing here?”
“I work here.” He put his elbow on the hood of her car and leaned down, smiling in at her. He was all sweaty, but he looked cute sweaty, which he undoubtedly already knew. “What are you doing here?”
“I work here, too, moron.” Oh, brother. She shouldn’t have said that. She hadn’t even asked Natalie about it yet. But he always acted so darn superior, as if his money and his looks and his athletic ability guaranteed him entrée anywhere, while poor little Suzie Strickland, whose parents actually worked for a living, had to prove that she had the right to breathe the same air.
“Oh, yeah?” He looked curious. “What do you do? Are you like the maid or something?”
He was close enough that she could have reached out and punched him. But he would have had a field day with that, telling everyone at school how crazy Suzi-freaka had gone postal on him.
“No,” she said icily. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to be painting a trompe l’oeil in the Summer House library.” She smiled a Cheshire cat smile. “Not that you’d have any clue what a ‘trompe l’oeil’ actually is.”
Mike looked a shade less confident. “The hell I don’t. I was in your art history class last year, remember? It’s a—” he wiped his face again “—a thing on the wall.”
She snorted. “Yeah. Right. It’s a thing on the wall. What did you get in art history class, anyway? A D minus?”
He rolled his eyes. “You know what, Suzi-freaka? I don’t remember what I got. Some of us have more in our lives than obsessing about making the honor roll.”
“Well, that’s fortunate. Considering you haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of ever making the honor roll.”
“Whatever.” Mike yawned extravagantly and pretended to scan the sky with a professional eye. “I’d better get back to work before the rain comes in. I’ve got a hot date tonight.” He raised the pitch of his voice, imitating her. “Not that you’d have a clue what a ‘hot date’ actually is.”
Okay, now she really was going to punch him.
“The hell I don’t,” she countered. “It’s a double-D cup with a single-digit IQ, in the back seat of your daddy’s Land Rover.” She gave him a dirty look. “Although frankly I would have thought you’d had your fill of all that with Justine Millner.”
Oh, hell. She shouldn’t have said that. He had told her about the Justine Millner problem in confidence, one night when, to their total shock, they had ended up at the same party. She had sworn never to mention it again.
But what was she supposed to do? Justine was Mike Frome’s only weak spot, whereas Suzie herself had hundreds, and he knew how to jab an insult into any of them at will.
“You know what you are, Suzi-freaka?” Mike palmed the hood of her car hard in a sardonic goodbye slap. “You’re some kind of serious bitch.”
She watched him lope away. Bitch. He’d never called her that before. Well, so what? Did he really think she cared what he called her? Did he really think she gave a flying flip?
She turned the key in the ignition and started the car. That horrible Stuart Leith wasn’t going anywhere. Apparently everyone on the face of the earth was having hot dates on this summer Saturday night—everyone but her.
Not that she cared. She didn’t care one bit. They were mindless animals, and she was an artist.
But for the first time in her entire life, that word didn’t bring any magical comfort. For the first time in her life, she would have gladly traded places with Justine Millner, or any other bimbo with a double-D cup and a reservation for two in the back of Mike Frome’s father’s SUV.
CHAPTER THREE
NATALIE WAS GOING TO DIE.
At least that’s what she’d been hoping since she woke up this morning, and she figured she had a pretty good chance. If this screaming headache and roiling nausea didn’t get her, surely the humiliation would.
But in the meantime, she had to deliver these plants to Theo. If by some awful chance she lived, she’d still have to pay the electricity bill. And the water bill. And the property taxes. And the insurance. And, and, and…
So she kept driving, even though the sun was stabbing swords of light into her eyeballs and when she hit a bump her skull almost burst from the pain.
She double-parked in front of the Candlelight Café, Theo’s diner on Main Street. She glanced up toward the sheriff’s office, hoping Harry was out on call. He was such a stickler about things like double parking. And she couldn’t afford another ticket. She hadn’t paid her last two yet.
Theodosia Burke, the seventy-four-year-old tyrannical owner of the café, must have been watching for Natalie’s car. Within a very few seconds, the wiry little woman had joined Natalie at the back of the tiny Honda Civic, where the hatch had been lifted to reveal six lush rabbit’s foot ferns in hanging baskets.
Though grateful for the help, Natalie was surprised that Theo had been willing to leave her customers. She ran her little diner like a five-star gourmet restaurant.
“Good morning,” Theo screamed.
The words echoed in Natalie’s brain like thunder. She tried not to wince, but she couldn’t help putting a protective hand to her forehead to try to keep her brain from exploding.
“Morning,” she whispered with her eyes shut.
“Well, I’ll be darned.” Theo paused, a hanging basket in each hand. “It’s true, isn’t it? I thought that idiot Leith was lying. What’s the matter with you, girl? Don’t you know why Granvilles don’t drink? They can’t hold their liquor worth squat.”
Natalie tried to smile, but she had the feeling it looked more like a grimace. “Yes, ma’am,” she said meekly. “I can confirm that.”
“Idiot young people,” Theo complained. “Always have to learn everything the hard way.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Natalie wasn’t up to arguing. The sun was beating down on her, and she’d begun to perspire, which, besides being quite disagreeable, made her feel a little sick.
Theo chuckled thoughtfully. “Stu told me about the wedding dress. Sure wish I could have seen that.”
Natalie didn’t join in the chuckle, so Theo finally subsided. “I guess yesterday was a little rough, huh? I hope you weren’t feeling too sorry for yourself. That never did anyone a bit of good, you know.”
Natalie started to protest that Granvilles didn’t indulge in self-pity, but it wasn’t strictly true. She was feeling fairly darn sorry for herself this morning. But not over Bart Beswick and the non-wedding day.
“Darn it,” she began rather vehemently. But that was a mistake. Her head ringing, she took a deep breath and started over in a fierce whisper. “Why does everyone keep forgetting I was the one who called off this wedding? They all treat me like some pitiful jilted bride who is half dying of a broken heart.”
Theo laughed out loud. “They don’t think you’re pitiful, girl. They think you’re crazy. You just passed up the chance to marry about twenty million bucks. Which, as we all know, you could definitely use.”