Garden of Scandal Read online

  She stared at him with wide eyes. She didn’t want to contend with Dan Tanning or anyone else, but how had he known? “Just go away,” she whispered. “Go away and leave me alone.”

  “I might do that if I thought it would help,” he answered in sober consideration. “But I don’t think it will. Not now. So you’re stuck with me.”

  “That’s what you think,” she snapped. “You can’t work for me if I don’t pay you.”

  He gave a low laugh. “Oh, Laurel, this isn’t about the job. But then, you know that, don’t you?”

  “No. No, I don’t.” It was the best she could manage in the way of self-protection.

  “I think you do,” he said, his gaze level. “And you know you can’t hide from it or anything else—not anymore.”

  10

  Laurel was planting roses when Alec showed up the following morning. The brown delivery truck had brought them the afternoon before, twelve of them in gallon pots. She had watered them well and ruthlessly clipped off the blooms and new buds to save their strength. This morning, she was setting them in the ground before the sun got too hot.

  She straightened from her task as she watched Alec swing off his bike and stride toward her, his movements free and easy. His various scratches and scrapes were beginning to heal, his limp had disappeared. He looked so good, so confident, that she felt a welling of despair.

  She thought of reminding him he had been fired, of telling him to go away and never come back. It wasn’t what she wanted, but it would be best. What was the point, though? He had paid no attention the day before.

  When he reached for the shovel in her hand, she held on to it. He watched her, his gaze dark and penetrating, his pressure on the handle insistent. She felt her heartbeat accelerate. Abruptly, she released the shovel, let him take it. Triumph flared across the dark surface of his eyes, but at least he didn’t crow about it.

  Together they planted roses, formed soil around them, watered them. Moving in tandem and with scant comment, they recognized each other’s barest gestures, anticipated each other’s needs, as if they had been working side by side for years. It was curiously satisfying, even with the sun beating down on them and perspiration trickling between their shoulder blades. Afterward, they had coffee and croissants on the veranda, or rather, she had coffee and he had herb tea.

  They stared out at the molten sunlight gathering beyond the overhang of the roof and hardly talked at all. It seemed best that way. Once he yawned, deep and heartfelt, covering his mouth with his fist. Immediately, she did the same.

  He laughed a little, then the amusement faded from his face. His voice was quiet as he said, “Too scared to sleep last night?”

  “A little nervous,” she admitted.

  He hesitated, as if he meant to make a suggestion, then turned away without speaking.

  After a moment, Laurel asked, “So what’s your excuse?”

  “Too much on my mind,” he answered.

  She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but something about the set, closed-in look on his face as he stared out over the railing made her think better of it. Working together, they were fine. Shared plans and tasks made for a decent impersonal relationship, at least on the surface. However, something more than that hovered unacknowledged between them. They both knew it, even as they ignored it. The trouble was, it was hard to overlook when they were at rest, when they were able to stop and look each other in the face.

  After a while, they got up and went back to work.

  That morning set the pattern for the next several days. The only thing that varied was the tasks they undertook and where they ate their impromptu meals. It was amazing, the things they accomplished—the shrubs that got pruned, the perennials that were moved, the fertilizing and watering, raking and burning that occupied their days.

  Alec finished taking down the pine, cutting it in four-foot lengths, then rolling the logs to the edge of the woods where he arranged them into squares to hold compost. The next morning, he appeared with bags of material for cast stone stacked in the back of Grannie Callie’s old truck. With Laurel’s help, he spent three days making an Italianate portal and a collection of columns in several sizes.

  By the end of the week, the yard around the house was beginning to take on its final character. The entire area was so well designed and organized that it felt right to call it a garden. The rose beds in the front, around the fountain, had taken shape with the companion planting of Bath’s pinks, blue Salvia and Shasta daisies, and were outlined by a low hedge of boxwood. Balance and background had been added by the big camellias and other shrubs in the fence corners. The low-hanging branches of the magnolia tree had been trimmed high to reveal its stately proportions, while the old roses on the arbors added neat and lovely harmony.

  The right side of the house had become a special section. The lid of the old cistern held a collection of Laurel’s hand-thrown pots planted with trailing European geraniums. Opposite it, along the fence, was a pergola arching over a matching bench, while the shrubbery border farther down was inset with a rectangular pool featuring a fountain bubbling from the top of a tall column and cascading down into a lily pool.

  The new Italian portal marked the entrance to a Roman garden at the right rear corner, where aromatic basil, oregano and thyme grew along a flagged path. The flagstoned center was walled on two sides by columns topped with pots of ivy or spiky, upright forms of yucca. Across the back was a free-form stone wall onto which her Bocca della Verità had been transferred as a focal point.

  On the other side of the house, the freestanding garage wall supported a large Bacchus Green Man that Laurel had sculpted. Alec had turned the drolly leering Bacchus into a fountain, though, unlike the original from which it was taken, it did not pour wine. Instead, the water that fell from it filled a catch basin set with water plants, while grapevines had been planted on either side with the idea of eventually training them to frame it.

  Near the back porch, other water mirrors complemented Laurel’s sea bowl, creating what Alec liked to call a Zen garden. One deeper basin was placed to catch a carefully metered drip, producing a recurring ripple that spread to the edges and returned again to the center with the constant rhythm of a slow-beating heart.

  Day by day, the garden came to magic life. Birds, frogs and dragonflies were attracted to the water. Toads and chameleons and blue-tailed lizards appeared among the greenery. Butterflies drifted in graceful loops, and bees hummed drowsily as they explored the blooms. Laurel watched and smiled, feeling her spirit relaxing, expanding into the unique space she and Alec had created with sweat and aching muscles and, yes, with love.

  The peace was short-lived. It was Alec himself who broke it.

  They were having a late picnic lunch on an old quilt spread over the flagstones of the Italian garden where a tall cedar cast its shade. She had finished and was sitting with her knees drawn up, watching Alec down the last of a canned drink. The lean brown line of his throat, the way it moved as he swallowed, gave her an odd feeling low in her abdomen. In her concentration, she hardly noticed when he lowered the empty can, crumpled it in one hand, then spoke without looking in her direction.

  “Would you mind backing your car out of the garage for me?”

  Her first impulse was to refuse outright, but she swallowed it down. Instead, she asked, “What for?”

  There was trenchant appraisal in his dark eyes as he turned to her. “I’ve about got the yard beyond the fence clear enough to cut the grass and weeds. There’s a riding mower in the back of the garage, but I can’t get to it unless you move the car.”

  The request was reasonable. Still, one of the major reasons Ivywild had been in such bad shape was because she couldn’t stand to get into her car, and so couldn’t use the mower. “I doubt the thing will start,” she said, her voice carefully casual.

  “The car or the mower?”

  “Either one.” The words were clipped, a direct result of the knowing look on his face.
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br />   “The mower doesn’t have to start since I can roll it outside to take a look at it. The car will, I think, because I’ve already been working on it—gave it new points and plugs, a new battery. I hot-wired it to test it, but didn’t want to move it without telling you.” He waited, his expression impassive.

  “You had no right!”

  He lifted a firm shoulder. “It was one more thing that needed doing.”

  “I didn’t ask you to work on it.”

  “You didn’t say not to, either. Come on, Laurel. This is no big deal. Just back out the car.”

  “You know—” she began, then stopped.

  “Yes, I do know,” he said with a hard nod. “I also know that you don’t get rid of fear by giving in to it. You’ve done great so far, leaving the house to come outside, staying out longer and longer to work with me. Now it’s time for another step.”

  “Oh, please,” she said in derision, “don’t go all Zen on me. I’m not an idiot or a child you can tease into doing something because you think you know what’s best. I don’t want to drive the car. I don’t know how I can make that any clearer.”

  “What you’re making clear is that you’re terrified.”

  She clasped her arms more tightly around her knees. “So what? Everybody is afraid of something. Even you.”

  An arrested look came into his eyes. “What am I afraid of?”

  “Failing,” she said without hesitation. “Letting people down, especially the ones who depend on you or you care about. You work so darn hard because you think that will fix it. What you don’t see is that not everything can be fixed.”

  “Don’t you go existentialist on me,” he said, flinging some of her own back at her. “At least I try.”

  It was all she could do to sustain his gaze. Searching for more stable ground, she said, “It doesn’t matter, anyway, because the tires on the car are flat.”

  “Not anymore.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You put new tires on my car?”

  “What if I did?”

  “What makes you think I’ll pay for tires I don’t want!”

  “You won’t have to. They’re on me.”

  “You can’t afford—” she began, then stopped, warned by the sudden tightening of his face. She drew a breath, then let it out. “You can just take them back where you got them.”

  “No,” he replied, the word stark in its quietness.

  “Then I’ll find the keys and you can back the Buick out yourself, because I’m not getting in it.”

  He studied her for a moment, then said, “You must have enjoyed being picked up and carried the other day.”

  “You might be able to put me in it,” she challenged, tilting her chin, “but you can’t make me drive the thing.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  There wasn’t a trace of a smile on his face. In bitter irony, she said, “Oh, of course. A threat will get it every time. What kind of attitude is that?”

  “Mine.”

  She was shaking, not sure whether it was from terror for what he wanted her to do or rage that he would try to force her to do it. Her fingers were turning white where she gripped them, but she couldn’t make herself release them. Through tight lips, she said, “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “I can’t! I promise you, I can’t!”

  “Show me,” he demanded. “Prove what a bastard I am by letting me see what it does to you. What’s so hard about that?”

  “I don’t want you to see!” Tears were burning their way into her eyes. She blinked hard, trying desperately to hold them back.

  “Why? What does it matter? You don’t care what I think.”

  “But it does. I do.” The words, not entirely coherent, were wrung from somewhere deep inside.

  “Then do it for me,” he said in soft entreaty. “Because I ask it.”

  How could she? Dear Lord, how? But if she didn’t try, he was going to pick her up in his arms and put her in the driver’s seat. She didn’t want that, didn’t need it. No, not again. Yet he wasn’t going to let it go, wasn’t going to give up until she’d made a fool of herself. Well, then, she might as well get it over. The sooner, the better.

  Scrambling to her feet, she stalked away from him toward the back porch that led into the house. The keys to the car hung on the Victorian brass hook by the door, exactly where they had been hanging for five solid years. She reached for them, felt their cold, metallic chill against the palm of her hand in spite of the heat of the day.

  Maisie, turning from the sink where she was washing dishes, asked in concern, “What’s the matter? What was all the shouting between you and Alec out there?”

  “Nothing,” Laurel said. She didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to think about it. If she made her mind a blank, maybe she could manage. Yes, that was it. Blank, she needed to keep her mind absolutely blank. Then she might be able to show him. Swinging from Maisie, she jerked open the back door.

  She would show him. Yes, she would. Men, they were all alike. This was the way she had left the house that day, the day Howard died, slamming out the back door and marching along the concrete path to the garage. Down the side wall and around to the open doors, too hurt and angry to think or pay attention to where she was going, what she was doing.

  Howard had said she worked in the yard too much, that she was neglecting her house and children while she yearned after rosebushes that cost too much, anyway. But if they could afford a truck for Evan, then they could afford a few roses, and she was buying them this very day. Howard could like that or lump it!

  The garage, as always, smelled of fertilizer overlaid with old oil and ancient dust. Snatch open the car door and slide behind the wheel. Put the key in the ignition. Turn it and listen to the motor. Reach back for the seat belt to fasten.

  Automatic. Don’t think. Glance in the rearview mirror. Nothing behind her. Put the car in gear and ease down on the gas. Don’t think, don’t remember. Moving. Turn and look back over her right shoulder, just to be sure. That was the way she had seen Howard that day, coming after her from the front garden. Howard, running after her, yelling as he—

  Alec!

  Alec was behind the Buick.

  Laurel jammed her foot on the brake pedal so hard, she felt the pressure in the top of her head. Too late! The back bumper struck with a sickening thud. She whipped forward against the belt, stopped. She sat perfectly still for a bare moment. Then, with a gasping sob, she folded her arms on the wheel and crumpled forward against them as she dissolved into tears.

  The door jerked open beside her. Alec reached in to ram the car into Park and turn off the motor. Then he caught her arm and pulled her out, dragging her against him while he held her, rocking her, murmuring against her ear. “It’s all right, I’m all right. You didn’t hit me, you didn’t. The back wheels just bumped a pine log, that’s all.”

  She heard him but the words hardly penetrated. In the agony of remembered horror and new fear, she pressed closer.

  Alec cradled the back of her head with his hand, nestling her face in the turn of his neck. “It’s all right. You slammed on the brakes the second you saw me, as fast as was humanly possible. Understand, Laurel? You tried to stop, you really did. You used the brakes, but you hit the log, anyway, just like you hit your husband that day. You couldn’t have stopped then. There was no way, don’t you see? Move the car, and you’ll see the skid marks to prove it. You hear me, Laurel? You tried to stop but couldn’t. It was an accident. All this time it was just an accident.”

  Alec hurt inside with a jagged, tearing ache. He recognized Laurel’s pain, her terror and shuddering grief, as if it were his own. He felt the hot tears that wet his shirt and kept coming, endlessly falling.

  He hadn’t known it would be like this. He had expected her to be enraged with him, but so relieved to know she was really innocent that it wouldn’t matter. Oh, he had been prepared for a few minutes of nerves and recriminations, maybe, but nothing like this.
And he had never dreamed it would be so hard for him to take, that every tear would burn him with acid pain.

  He should have known.

  He had wanted to set Laurel free from her fears, not cause her more grief. The way she trembled in his arms was enough to make his chest hurt and his own throat close in sympathy. All he could think of to do was to rock her slowly and wait to learn his punishment for what he had done.

  Still, it was so sweet to hold her, so sweet that she permitted it. He could go on like this forever, talking nonsense, stroking the thick braid down her back, imprinting the feel of her warm curves and soft femininity on his mind. He was even enjoying her dependence, her acceptance, in a peculiar sort of way—enjoying it far too much. As she was going to find out in short order if he didn’t do something.

  “Don’t cry, Laurel,” he said, his voice not quite steady as he spoke against her hair. “Please, don’t. You were right about me. I am afraid of not being there for the people I care about, afraid of doing the wrong thing, of hindering instead of making things better. I messed up big-time here, but meant it for the best. It may still work out all right if you’ll just get back in the car right now and try again….”

  She stiffened against him, partly in shock, he thought, but also in anger. Lifting her head from his shoulder, she said in watery disbelief, “You want me to get back in that car?”

  “It’s no monster, just a vehicle made out of metal and plastic. It only does what you tell it.”

  “I nearly ran over you!” Her face changed. “I thought—Did you say I hit a pine log?”

  He nodded, deliberately letting his trepidation show to encourage her anger.

  “You let me think…You threw it down behind the car for me to hit, didn’t you? You jerk!”

  She grabbed handfuls of his shirt and gave him a shake, though Alec barely swayed. “Well, I wanted to prove a point,” he said reasonably, “and it was better than letting you run over me.”