B008KQO31S EBOK (7 page)

He strode to a pay phone and called 911. He reported a domestic squabble, described what he had seen and gave both the address and Sean’s name.

When the dispatcher asked for his own, he hung up.

He waited for the squad car to arrive, lurking in the shadows with his hands balled in his pockets. He wanted desperately to intervene, but Phil’s implication that he wasn’t thinking straight rang in his ears.

She was probably right.

The cops came fairly quickly. He waited until they took Sean away, his brother loudly protesting innocence all the way. He’d be out in no time, Nick knew it. The woman wept on the stairs, disregarding the earnest advice of a policewoman.

He’d done what he could, but he didn’t feel a lot better. He couldn’t solve this, though it was a step in the right direction. The squad car pulled away and he stepped into the thinning crowd on Hanover. He walked, more quickly now, with even less destination. The night was getting colder, but anger kept him warm.

By dawn, he’d dealt with the worst of his frustration. He fingered the card in his pocket, checked the address and turned toward Phil’s office, anticipation lightening his step.

M
orning came early and it was not a pretty sight.

The Widow Clicquot had proven to be a vengeful piece of work. My head was pounding when the alarm went off. I vaguely remembered saying to Elaine that the label didn’t make the woman look like a party girl. It was dark and cold, as though the weatherman had forgotten it was supposed to be spring. I groaned a lot, got out of bed and faced the bathroom mirror for the bad news.

And it was bad. My eyes were puffy in that oh-so-attractive-I’m-an-eighty-year-old-alcoholic kind of way. Luck was wounded in a gutter and would die a painful death the moment Nick got a look at how scary mornings could be.

So much for second chances.

Now, I am
not
a morning person, not by any stretch of the imagination, and a mere five hours sleep treads dangerously close to hell in my world view. Heaven, in case you’re interested, involves sleeping in until at least eleven, lounging around in silky pajamas, and perusing horticultural catalogues. I added Nick, naked and enthralled, to the image and felt somewhat perkier.

Elaine insists that my reluctance to face a new day is due to a “tragic” deficiency of caffeine in my bloodstream. Elaine runs on the high voltage stuff—she’s a double espresso before bed kind of girl, and probably sleeps like a baby.

Only fools under-estimate her.

I refuse to get on the coffee bandwagon, since I won’t come within spitting distance of any addictive substance, whether it’s legal or not. Last night had been an exception and even the bubbles were on the side of negative reinforcement this morning.

Now, chocolate is beyond the jurisdiction of this addictive substances injunction. A rare exception. Maybe a loophole. Or somewhere there had been a precedent. I know, the fundamental right of every mortal to eat chocolate is in the Geneva Convention.

If it isn’t, it should be. The precise legal rationale is unimportant—see? I told you I wasn’t cut out for that stuff—but the chocolate is not. It must be bittersweet, it must of European manufacture, and access to it must not be impeded.

Otherwise things can get ugly.

Many foods have been banished from my kitchen and diet because of their betrayal of me in those dark teenage years—auslander potato chips, expat donuts, juvenile-tried-in-adult-court home fries—but my relationship with chocolate is beyond such restrictions.

Our love affair borders on the divine. All transgressions can be forgiven for one’s soul mate—as long as it remembers its place. I handle chocolate as a controlled substance, since prolonged exposure results in extreme lateral growth. One chocolate bar every month and not one bite more is my allotment.

Fantasies fortunately don’t count.

I buy the chocolate on the first of the month, as regularly as clockwork, and ogle it in the fridge for as long as I can stand it. Once it’s gone, I’m S.O.L. until the first rolls around again. Under this agreement, the chocolate I do eat is forbidden to land on my hips.

Thus far, treaty terms had been maintained by both sides.

On this bleary-eyed morning, I surveyed the healthy contents of my fridge and knew I couldn’t face yogurt. I was sleep-deprived, hung-over, and—remembering this part a bit too late to do anything about it—en route to discovering a slightly stale corpse.

And meeting Nick again, maybe without the sparkle of Fortune’s smile.

Nervous? You bet. Sustenance for the soul was due.

It lurked in the back of the fridge, a glorious truffle-filled Belgian confection that I had hidden from myself but knew damn well was there. This month’s chocolate orgasm. I pounced on it before it could get playful, inhaled half of it before I had realized what I had done.

Discipline returned and I savored the rest in the slow motion it deserved, to heck with the three weeks remaining in the month. It was chocolate bliss. I rolled each bite around my mouth in a near-swoon, and by this one deed, made myself ten minutes later than I already was.

It was worth it.

The crumpled gold foil brought the inevitable panic, but I reminded myself sternly that my luck had changed. Just to prove the point, I opted for my little black Chanel suit, because the skirt has a mercilessly sleek fit. One wrongful meal and I’ll pop the zipper.

And this morning, I didn’t even need control tops. Time for a victory dance. It looked good—but then, black is my best color. Besides its slimming effect, it makes my hair look more red. The sapphire blouse makes my eyes look more blue than they really are and yes, I had a bit of color in my cheeks this morning despite my aching head.

Because I was triumphant. My luck had turned. I could eat chocolate for breakfast! I could push the books into the black with a single contract! I could kiss Nick Sullivan!

I was Woman. I was Invincible. I roared in the bedroom and probably was responsible for the thump of my upstairs neighbor falling out of bed.

I put on my lipstick in two expert swipes, grabbed my keys and jacket, jammed on my heels and ran for the door. There was a cab ambling down the street, evidently looking just for me.

I could get used to living like this.

I flagged the cab down and settled in, relieved to find my tiny calculator in this purse. I could
calculate
the tip to the precision of eight decimal points, instead of winging it and mucking it up.

As a bonus, there, tucked in the tiny side pocket where I should put my keys, was a pressed four leaf clover. I remembered finding it one day in the back lot of the office, growing through a crack in the concrete of all things, and had pressed it just on general principle.

Tough luck, I’d said to Elaine and laughed.

Now it made me smile again. But maybe luck was tougher than we tend to believe. I smoothed the pressed leaf and eased it back into the pocket. I felt a thousand times better than I should about life the universe and everything, even when the cab driver took the corner on two wheels.

He was obviously anxious to be rid of a cheap tipper like me.

* * *

So, the yard was abandoned.

It wasn’t really surprising at that hour of the morning, but I was disappointed that Nick wasn’t there waiting for me. He’d come, though. He was the kind of guy who kept his promises.

At least he used to be.

Doubt wiggled its toes.

Let’s take a moment to set the scene. The head office of Coxwell & Pope is not the most glam place in the world. There’s a gravel lot in front of the relentlessly functional square building of taupe brick, which dates from the late fifties. It’s a building that says “no frills” in its every line.

It had been built by a paving company to house the owner/manager/salesman and his secretary, as well as all their files. That company’s backhoes and pavers had once parked in rows along the side of the highway. I remember seeing them as a kid on our trips to the city. The big yellow monsters with their jagged teeth had been a landmark of being “almost there”, or in the other direction, of “nowhere near home”. In those days, this had been a no-man’s-land of cheap real estate.

No-man’s-land had moved much closer to Maine since then. Now the lot was smaller, the land on either side having been sold off when the paving company moved on. Far from being beyond the reach of civilization, we were nestled in the midst of a gasoline alley that stretched from Boston almost all the way to Rosemount.

The small fenced back lot was perfect for our baby backhoe and minimal inventory of interlock and interesting rocks. Mostly we used it as a staging area, buying what we needed shortly before installing it rather than keeping inventory. Our business was very susceptible to personal taste, which meant that any inventory would have had to be enormous to be useful.

I preferred letting the big interlock companies and tree farms keep the inventory—and pay for it—until I knew I needed it.

Our office rubbed shoulders with a fried chicken place and an obscenely expensive nursery. Both Elaine and I had sworn off chicken shortly after we took the office three years before—the smell of the fat all day and most of the night is enough to put anyone off deep-frying for good—and often joked about poaching customers from among the nursery’s well-heeled clientele.

What was good about our location was its visibility. We had a beautifully big sign, with flowing green text that proclaimed Coxwell & Pope to be purveyors of exquisite garden design and landscaping. When we noticed all the Land Rover Ladies taking a good look at the sign from next door, obviously not wanting to risk their fancy shoes on the gravel, we had added our phone number to the sign. It was cheaper than paving the lot and we have had a few calls from Back Bay.

Including Mrs. Eugenia Hathaway, my personal favorite and patron saint of the Land Rover Ladies. Except she has a Jag, in a lovely hue of emerald.

Mrs. H., though, was our ticket to profitability and possibly to a whole lot more.

The back gate was still locked up, the Bronco Beast—also embellished with logo—sat cold and hulking beside the office door. It looks completely decrepit, but it’s not as old as you might think. I guess hard living had aged it beyond its years. All the office lights were out and the sky was pale pearly grey. Determined to see the bright side, I resolved that I could get some work done on those sketches while I waited for Nick.

The fat for the chicken was already heated up—I could smell it and my stomach was not impressed. Fried chicken for breakfast was not an appealing concept any day of the week. I was thinking that the yogurt might have been a good choice after all as I did the key shuffle.

Which was why Nick nearly gave me a heart attack when he stepped out of the shadows.

I did squeal his name.

He looked as though he might have laughed at me under other circumstances. “You were expecting someone else?”

“Of course not.”

He looked just as yummy as he had the night before, which didn’t help me find my composure. The dark shadow of a day’s beard only made him look a bit more mysterious, his eyes more startlingly green. My heart, having jumped, now lodged solidly in my throat.

Worse, I felt myself blushing. I figured I’d blushed more in the last twelve hours than in all the years since I was Fat Philippa. “I didn’t see you.”

“That would be the point.” Nick shoved his hands into his pockets, his gaze assessing. “You were the one who said I shouldn’t be seen.”

“Right.” I opened the back passenger door of the Beast and managed a smile. “The windows are tinted, so if you stay down, we can stick to that plan.”

Nick climbed in and looked around himself with some surprise. “Do you think you could have found anything bigger?”

I bristled that he dared to criticize my baby. “It’s useful.”

Nick snorted. “Where does the stewardess sit?”

“Very funny.” I slammed the door and got in behind the wheel—a neat trick in a straight skirt but one I had mastered—and started the engine.

The truck grumbled to life, coughing and farting its way to a throaty rumble that made the keys jingle in the ignition. The Beast is well-seasoned, pretty much reliable and possessed of enough quirks that it commands affection.

“Seriously, I’ve flown on smaller aircraft.” Nick leaned forward between the seats. “Is that a
cup holder
?” His expression effectively communicated his disdain, and I—who dearly love this snorting behemoth—was insulted on its behalf. “Why on earth would you need such a gas-guzzling monster?”

I met his gaze in the rear view mirror. “We move trees. We plant shrubs by the dozen and perennials by the thousand. Sometimes I even have to deliver interlock stones to the crew. A bicycle, however environmentally responsible, wouldn’t quite be up to the job. And I don’t think we could afford the comp for the rickshaw drivers.”

Nick leaned back, looking cool and dangerous. I eyed him in the mirror and felt as though the Marlboro Man had slid into the back seat to lecture me on bio-sustainability.

Before I was even awake.

“But you could get a new one. It would have to be more efficient than this. How many miles do you have on this thing?” He leaned forward again, peering at the odometer, which had stuck many moons ago at 162,000 miles.

“New trucks cost a lot more.”

“Capital investment. Put it on the books.”

“That won’t pay for it.” I shook my head. “Tell you what—the next time we win the lottery, my first acquisition will be a shiny new truck.”

I got a raised eyebrow for that. The Beast was running as smooth as silk now that it had warmed up.

Maybe it was showing off and defying Nick’s attitude.

“But every time you take this puppy to the corner for a coffee between then and now, it adds a little something special to the atmosphere.”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“Phil, we have to be responsible with the planet...”

“Global warming is good for my business.”

Nick looked shocked for one satisfying moment, before he realized I was joking. Then he leaned forward to argue.