Instructions for Love (18 page)

“A quick marinade in hot sauce.”

Her eyes widened, making him grin and shake his head. “It cooks out. You don’t taste its bite, but it gives a lot of dishes a nice flavor.”

“Hot sauce. I’ll have to remember.” She almost asked more about his knowledge of cooking, but had discerned from his harsh eyes before that the topic was not one he liked to discuss.

He stared at her, not eating. “Erin,” he said, making her believe he was about to make some profound statement about the subject she’d skirted, “you don’t have to eat fried fish with a fork. It’s much easier with your fingers.”

She grinned and set down her fork. “Thanks. I was starting to believe I’d starve before I could get much of this food in my stomach.”

Their shared laughter made the moment special. She felt more at ease while they ate more, with her picking fish from the pan with her fingers, and him doing the same. Her stomach was full and satisfied once they finally gave up on eating any more. “I’ll wash,” she insisted, “and you can dry, since you know where to put things.”

“Our dishes can dry themselves, remember?” He gave her a wink. “And we’d put them up tomorrow.”

“I know. But since we’re both here and doing nothing else, why don’t we get the kitchen all straight?”

He offered an exaggerated sigh. “All right. But only this time.”

She smiled. “Agreed.”

While they worked in companionable silence on the dishes, Erin imagined this was what she would want with a mate. They’d work in tune together, sharing household duties and outdoor chores. Together they’d create a comfortable home, where they would enjoy sharing each other’s company. And hopefully, children.

She washed the final piece, a skillet, and then wiped off the table, noticing the rose vase shoved to the opposite end.
Men
, she thought, getting the vase and centering it on the table. Most men didn’t pay attention to such things.

“You were holding flowers similar to this when I first saw you,” she said, recalling that image while she rinsed her towel. She peered at Dane, who rose from where he’d bent to put away the skillet. “And you put your roses on a grave not far from Aunt Tilly’s.”

His face went as cold as the tomb’s marble front. His gaze skid over the flowers and his body stiffened. He rubbed a hand down the bridge of his nose and across his tight lips.

He turned away. “Anything else you want to do in here?” he asked with a brief glance around the room.

Whose death had brought him such anguish? A parent? A woman he adored? Obviously he didn’t want to discuss it with her. “I think we’re done,” she said.

Dane stomped from the kitchen toward the back entrance. Seconds later the screen door slammed.

Erin listened for the sound of his truck starting up. He’d wanted escape. From her? Or the pain that remembering brought him?

When he returned, she would remind him of her own grief from her aunt’s death. Supposedly if you shared your pain from mourning with another person, you would heal faster. She’d try to get Dane to open up about it when he came back.

Still no motor revved up outside. Erin peered out a window.

Darkness cloaked everything, with the spotlights from the trees making her think of beacons of hope. The light from the back door stoop allowed her to see that Dane wasn’t in that area. He wasn’t near the garage, where his truck sat, parked next to the late-model car. Erin’s rental remained at the edge of the shell driveway.

She moved away from the window and through the house. The man may have needed to mourn, she considered, going toward her bedroom. She understood. Maybe he, like her, was requiring time to get over the loss of someone special.

Sitting on the edge of the poster bed, Erin scanned the master bedroom. She tried to envision her lively aunt inside it, getting ready to share this mattress with Cliff, whom she obviously cherished. Erin shook her head, that picture of her aunt here, somehow not right.

She peered at the shut louvered doors. An imagined scene came to her of a woman in flowing nightwear holding those doors open and then stepping out to the porch, where she would view the lovely scene out front with the man she had married.

The woman, however, did not seem to be Erin’s aunt. The woman was much younger in Erin’s imaginings, and the sturdy man beside her strong and youthful.

“Oh, that’s enough,” she told herself, rising from the bed. Exhaustion from fishing in the sun swept through her, along with weariness brought on by trying to reminisce. Erin dug her nightgown out of her suitcase and carried it into the bathroom.

Tap-tap
sounded from outside the bathroom walls.

She shrank back, her big-city instinct taking over. It was pitch black out there, and a person must be out in the dark. The flower garden was beyond that wall, which held no other window besides the stained-glass one high above the tub.

Reeling in her fear, she pressed her ear to the wall, curiosity taking over.

The occasional tap sounded like a large rock striking the outer wall.

She quieted her breathing to listen.

Words in a deep voice were uttered. Some sounded like cursing.

Dane, she decided, pulling away. He’d gone back there, and for whatever reason, was now angrily throwing things.

He didn’t need her trying to butt in to whatever was bothering him, and she needed a soak in cool water to get rid of the sticky feel of too much humidity that even the air condition had problems wiping out.

She filled the tub and stepped inside.

The deep fresh water surrounding her skin made her recall the bayous and swamps, and she smiled. Alligators. Maybe they weren’t such scary creatures. Unless you found yourself in the water next to them.

The water lulled her, and no more noise came from outside. Erin found herself on the verge of drifting to sleep. The temptation came to just toss on her gown and crawl into bed. But if she was going to have clean clothes for tomorrow, she had better wash some of them. She hadn’t brought enough things to wear for days.

Dressing in her nightgown and robe, she gathered her towels and the clothes she’d worn. She headed toward the back room where she’d seen the washer and dryer.

“Erin,” Dane said. He stood in the dining room, his eyes growing wider when he saw her. His hands held the open manila envelope and the pages her Aunt Tilly wrote.

She stopped in her tracks, anger flaring through her. “What are you doing with that?”

His gaze swerved from her face to the papers. “You must’ve left this here by the phone.”

“Maybe. But I didn’t leave the envelope open.”

He set the envelope down on the phone table. With a hand free, he flipped up the bottom edges of the pages. “Well Tilly told you not to look at whatever nonsense she instructed you to do each day here, but she didn’t say I couldn’t look.”

Erin grabbed the papers. “Those are personal.”

“I know I shouldn’t have tried to read them. But I needed to know what she had in mind for you to do around this place tomorrow.”

“I don’t see how that could be any of your business.”

His chest rose with deeper breaths. He stared at her eyes, looking like he was building up to say something challenging.

Dane’s gaze slid away from her face. His body language changed from a stand-off stance. “I’m sorry.” He turned and walked away.

Erin stayed in place, waiting for her anger to abate. What an annoying man. Every time she thought good things about him, he went and did something that chafed her. She waited until he’d gone off toward the kitchen area. Then she started to slide the papers back into the envelope.

Her grip tightened on the clamped-together pages. What
did
Aunt Tilly want her to do tomorrow? Erin would be losing her job and giving up her income by carrying out those wishes.

She glanced at the doorway toward the kitchen. With no sign of Dane, she turned the papers from her aunt until she reached the page headed
Day 3 Instructions
.

Reading what it said, Erin shuddered. She sank back to the phone desk and shook her head, unable to believe what she read.

Chapter Thirteen

Day was starting to sprinkle a few light rays through the banana trees’ branches when Dane drove off from the house in the morning. He glanced through the rearview mirror at her car parked in the driveway. Maybe by the time he returned, it would be gone, and so would she.

“Man,” he uttered, raking a hand across the top of his head and down the back of his neck. Why did that woman still have to be here? And making anger expand even more in his chest, why had he let her stay?

He’d wanted her to, but only briefly, after she’d left his house and gone out to stay in the cottage. That loneliness he’d experienced during the hour or so she was gone surely stemmed from having her company in the boat earlier in the day. He
had
enjoyed their friendly banter and liked having Erin to tease.

Dane found himself grinning, considering her and the gators.

He tightened his lips, shucking off the pleased face. At least during the brief time she’d spent in Tilly’s cottage, he had been able to gather his clothes from his closet. But how stupid. Without thinking, he’d brought those clothes into the first guest bedroom, even when he’d thought she wouldn’t come back to sleep in his room again. Who did she think she was, telling him he had no business checking into whatever Tilly wanted her to do this day? This was
his
place; whatever concerned Erin about staying on his plantation concerned him.

Remorse flooded through him, and he silently apologized to Tilly. He would never read her personal papers. She’d been a delightful woman, all spry and full of life. Recalling her made an ache knot up in his throat. He noted that discomfort and sent thoughts of Tilly away.

If only that woman from up north hadn’t fooled with Anna’s roses. Erin’s attractiveness made him distracted. But after she did that, centering the rose vase on the table, he realized how swept up he’d felt with her company. He had shared that one kiss with her, making him want more of them. He’d also wanted much more of her warmth and natural charm around him.

Anna’s roses
. Erin had gone into the garden and snipped the buds as though they meant nothing, except blooming flowers. And she had almost made him forget about Anna.

Dane gritted his teeth. He’d almost allowed another woman to lure him and make him forget about his wife. But no more. At one time the North and South had been enemies. Maybe it was time to treat his guest as though that time had returned.

Curving up the incline, he spotted the vet’s truck parked close to the barn. Dane pulled over to talk to its owner. Snorts from the hogs outside and clucks from the chickens greeted him. He’d raised livestock as kid. His grandpa let him keep them here. He had slopped hogs and milked cows. Now he paid others who needed jobs to tend to the animals.

An unhappy cow’s bellow came from the far end of the barn where James Landry, the vet, stood talking to Andre Green, who tended to these animals for Dane.

The comforting smell of hay and animal warmth sent familiar longings through him, making him miss this part of working a farm. He’d slopped hogs out here, milked the cows, scooted chickens aside to pick their eggs, and fed all of them not that long ago, it seemed, when he first purchased the plantation. Those days the money was tight, and he’d struggled to get the cash inflow from each year’s crop more than the overwhelming expenditures. But he had been lucky, with nature giving him the right amount of cool days with not too much rain while he got the fields up and running. Later he’d bought more property, expanding his fields so that now he owned so many acres he didn’t have time to work with the animals at all. “Hi, Bess. Hey, Tess,” he said, passing the first two cows.

Lowing with a sickly sound came from the last stall. Dane’s belly clenched. He strode to the vet. “How’s she doing?”

“Afraid not too good. Her calf’s breech. Both of them might not make it.”

Dane stroked the sullen cow’s head, making eye contact with her moist wide brown ones. “You’ll be okay, Estelle. The doc knows what to do. He’ll help you get through this, and you’re going to have one cute baby.” He glanced over his shoulder, thoughts reaching him of the woman back in his house. At least he had so much to keep him busy that he wouldn’t be thinking of her again today. With any luck, when he’d finally get back there, he would find the place deserted, maybe with a note from her tacked to the back door saying she’d gone back to reclaim her job and Trevor.

That thought, however, didn’t bring him great comfort. Dane shook his head, his mind turning fuzzy.

The vet’s words made him center his attention on these men and this animal’s problem. “I’ll take care of it when she’s ready to drop her calf.”

“Thanks,” Dane said, “and let me know, too.” He returned to his truck and without thinking, backed up and started to turn. He slammed on his brakes. No, he didn’t want to go back to the house.

He angled his truck back on the road and took off, heading into his vast cane fields.

Erin awoke seeing the slits of light pouring into the bedroom from the door slats. “My gosh,” she said, sitting upright. She’d slept much later than normal. She slid off the bed, her bare feet hitting the floor and then running.

She reached the door to Dane’s bedroom, pressed her ear against it, and listened.

No sound came of his moving around in there.

She moved to the door to the foyer, heard nothing, and opened the door a crack to peek out.

No sign of him. No suggestion of movement or even a slight cough that might come from a person clearing his throat.

“Well,” she said, shutting the door and slipping on her robe, “good.” He’d probably left the house early, which meant she wouldn’t have to bother with him. What a nice thought. How could the man be so nosy?

His prying into her belongings could mean only one thing. The man had no manners.

Either that, she considered, crossing the master bedroom, or he’d been trying to find out things of importance between Erin and her aunt.