Читать книгу Tall, Dark And Difficult - Patricia Coughlin - Страница 11

The scent was all around him. Her scent…roses and wind…sweet and fresh, and he was falling into a sea of silvery green, her eyes, Rose Davenport’s amazingly beautiful eyes. She was smiling up at him, sighing softly, lost in a cloud of soft, white…ruffles? Pillows, pillows with ruffles. Hell, a motherlode of them, like the pile he’d seen on that old bed in her shop.

He’d had such thoughts about that bed and Rose, and now, like magic, here he was, stretched above her and so hot for her that not even the ruffles bothered him. Griff grinned with pure pleasure. This was like the old days—a beautiful woman tumbling into his arms after minimal effort on his part. Maybe his luck was changing.

He brushed the hair from her cheek and lowered his head to taste her lips.

She touched his mouth with one fingertip—one cool, irresistible fingertip—and screamed in his ear.

He flinched. Why the hell was she screaming at him? It’s not like he’d twisted her arm to get her here. There is no way he would ever become that desperate.

She screamed again. Longer and louder.

Griff opened his eyes to a wall covered with faded pink cabbage roses and realized that the cool fingertip against his lips was merely a damp spot on the pillowcase. He was drooling, for God’s sake.

He sat up to flip the pillow over, and whacked his head against the ceiling that slanted above the bed—just one more of Fairfield House’s charming period details. It was his own damn fault for opting to sleep in his old room. Considering his reason for being there, it just hadn’t seemed right to lay claim to Devora’s majestic four-poster. Not to mention the fact that when he’d tried, his first night there, one of the damn bed rails had let go, leaving him sleeping at a sixty-degree angle. Or trying to, anyway.

He realized it was absurd, but sometimes it seemed as if the old house knew what he had planned for it and was responding the same way its mistress would have: with regal disdain.

The earsplitting sound came again. Not a scream, he realized, but a car horn. Who the hell…?

He swung from the bed, wincing as his left leg threatened to buckle under him, and lunged toward the window. With both hands planted on the sill, he checked out the circular drive below.

Directly beneath his window was a white pickup truck. What looked like an old blue-and-white quilt spilled over the rear tailgate and a familiar logo adorned the driver’s door.

Somewhere downstairs was a shopping bag full of dead flowers with the same logo: a straw hat with black streamers that seemed to be fluttering in the wind and the words Second Hand Rose, Specializing in Has-Beens of Distinction.

So. Has-beens of distinction were Rose Davenport’s specialty. How very fitting, he thought, irritable as only a man who’s recently been yanked from a sound sleep and slammed his head into a wall can be.

Leaving the engine running, Rose hopped from behind the wheel and grinned up at him. Not, he couldn’t help noting, with anything resembling the lustful enthusiasm she had exhibited in his dream.

“Did I wake you?” she called to him.

“No,” he retorted, the rasp in his voice something only black coffee, and lots of it, would ease. “I always get up at…” He squinted over his shoulder at the bedside clock. “Six-thirty?” he bellowed. “Woman, do you know what time it is? It’s six-freakin’-thirty in the morning.”

“Six-freakin’-thirty-five, actually,” she corrected. “Which means we’re already running late, so move your butt, Griffin.”

“Late for what?”

She threw her arms in the air. “Life, Griffin, life. Look at this beautiful morning, the sky, smell the ocean, hear the buzz of the bees. Aren’t you just revving to get out and be part of it?”

He yawned. “No.”

“I thought you military types were supposed to be early risers.”

“Think again,” he suggested, turning away.

“I have coffee.”

Griff hesitated and turned back to see her reach into the truck for a steel thermos.

As he looked on, she removed the cap and sniffed. “Mmm.”

“Black?”

“And strong as sin. There’re homemade blueberry muffins, too.”

“You made muffins for me?” he asked, surprised.

“Not specifically for you. I made them for a brunch I had a couple of weeks ago and there were some left in the freezer.”

“I see.”

“I thawed a couple just for you,” she added.

“Thanks,” he said, feeling considerably less obliged to be polite than he had a few seconds ago. “Leave ’em with the coffee on the porch. I’ll be down in a few hours.”

“That’s quite an imagination you have there. You can’t actually believe I rose at the crack of dawn to fetch you breakfast.”

“It sure looks that way.”

“Get real, Griffin. This is Saturday. In a few hours we’ll have thirty miles and a morning’s work under our belts.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Yard sales, dozens of them,” she added, waving the classified section of the newspaper at him.

“Thanks, I already have more yard than I know what to do with.” He yawned again, wondering if he crawled back into bed right then, the dream Rose would pick up where the real Rose had so rudely interrupted.

“Very funny.”

He frowned. “I wasn’t trying to be.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what a yard sale is?’

“I have a vague idea,” he admitted, “and no interest in learning more.”

“But you do still have an interest in acquiring the pieces to complete Devora’s porcelain collection.”

“True,” he countered, his smile amused, “but I hardly expect to find them amidst piles of used baby clothes and old exercise equipment.”

She grinned broadly. “That’s the beauty of this business, Griffin—you can always expect the unexpected. You know what the seasoned veterans say…”

“I’ll bite. What do seasoned veterans say?”

“They say when it comes to junk, you just never know.”

“And on that less than inspiring note…”

“Who do you think coined the phrase ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure’?”

“A woman.”

“Wrong. A yard sale enthusiast. In case you’ve forgotten, Griffin, you’re the one who asked me for help. You’re a desperate man, remember? And desperate men can’t afford to overlook a single possibility, no matter how insignificant it may appear to the eye of a raw, still wet-behind-the-ears novice.”

The raw, still wet-behind-the-ears novice resisted the urge to toss something out the window at her.

“So now that you’re up to speed on the day’s agenda, let’s get cracking,” she ordered, tossing the thermos and newspaper back into the truck. “Our first stop is an early-bird special in Middletown.”

“I don’t even want to think about birds for another five or so hours.”

“I’ll give you five minutes.”

“For what?”

“To shower and dress and get down here.”

“That’s out of the question.”

“Would it help, from a motivational standpoint, if I pointed out that you are paying me by the hour…and that the meter’s been running since I turned into your drive?”

He glared at her, but didn’t bother to protest. She didn’t seem to be in a capitulating state of mind this morning…if she ever was. Beneath Rose Davenport’s soft, pretty facade beat the heart of a cutthroat venture capitalist. Pride alone demanded he not allow her to bamboozle him out of any more money than absolutely necessary.

“I’ll be right down.”

“Did you really make these muffins?” Griff asked, polishing off his second and washing it down with a swig of very fine coffee.

“Sure did,” replied Rose. “With frozen blueberries, because that’s all I could get. You ought to taste my muffins in August.”

Was that an invitation?

Griff glanced across the small cab at her. Her words held an erotic appeal that he was pretty sure she did not intend, and as tempting as it was to explore the matter further, he was smart enough not to risk it. His belly was pleasantly full, the coffee was just as hot and strong as she’d promised, and a taste of Rose Davenport would top the morning off nicely. Which was just one reason he put the notion firmly from his mind.

He was in a better mood than he’d been in a while, a better mood than he’d have thought possible considering the morning’s inauspicious start. It was as close to content as he hoped to get, and he was in no hurry for it to end.

There was also the matter of the damn birds. Because of them, he was more or less at her mercy…as his reluctant presence this morning demonstrated. A smart man knows when to keep his mouth shut and his hands to himself.

For several moments they drove in silence, across the bridge from the mainland to the tiny island of Jamestown. On the other side, another bridge connected Jamestown to Aquidneck Island—home to several towns, of which Newport was the most famous—and yet another, the Mount Hope Bridge, completed the circle. Rhode Islanders were geographically indisposed to driving long distances, and the trio of bridges helped to bring the entire state within their thirty-minute limit.

The water was calm and blue, the fresh air and the hum of tires on pavement was lulling. The view of Rose’s long, suntanned legs was a bonus. He couldn’t recall when he’d seen someone work a clutch so captivatingly. He also realized that he had a real weakness for faded denim coveralls hacked off above the knee.

He helped himself to another muffin from the napkin-lined basket on the seat between them. “Devora used to make blueberry pancakes for breakfast every Saturday morning,” he remarked, surprising himself by voicing the thought even as it drifted through his head.

Rose smiled as she downshifted and changed lanes.

“It’s one of the things I remember best about summers here. It was almost a ritual. On Friday we got the berries, either picking them ourselves or walking to that little market down on Haverly. The fruit was piled on round tables out front with big canvas umbrellas for shade— Is that place still there?” he interrupted himself to ask.

Rose nodded. “Umbrellas and all.”

He smiled, oddly pleased. “It was my job to wash the berries and pick off the stems, while she made the batter. I remember she had this special bowl, tan with two blue stripes. And she always wore the same apron,” he went on, gazing out at the sailboats on the bay, seeing instead the past as it unfolded inside him, one fragment of memory at a time.

“It was black, with bunches of blueberries and green leaves all over it. It matched the Saturday morning place mats.” He gave a short laugh. “I can still see them, with her white everyday china plates on top, and in the center of the table was this special pitcher for the syrup. Damn, I haven’t thought of any of this in years.”

He wasn’t quite sure why he was permitting himself to think about it now, much less share it with someone else. If Rose had spoken or pressed him in even the most innocent way, he would have shut down instantly. But she didn’t, and her easy, tranquil silence was difficult to resist.

“It was only as big as my hand,” he recalled, “and shaped like a bunch of grapes, with a stem for a handle. But for a kid, grapes looked enough like blueberries to add to the occasion. It was a great little pitcher.”

“Majolica,” she said quietly.

“Pardon me?”

“I know which pitcher you’re talking about. It’s Majolica, a type of very colorful ceramic with a special glaze.”

“Is it as overpriced as the Meissen stuff?”

“Not quite.”

“Good.” He turned to look out the window once more before adding, “Because one Saturday morning I dropped it and the handle broke.”

They passed meandering stone walls and wild roses and a field of grazing cows.

“I ran,” he said. “As soon as I saw that broken handle, I took off and ran all the way down to the water, to a little opening between two rocks where I knew no one else could fit. I didn’t wait around to hear her scream at me for being such a klutz.”

“It’s hard to imagine Devora screaming,” she observed, stopping the truck to toss a token into the toll basket at the head of the Newport Bridge.

“She didn’t. She simply followed me and stood at the edge of the rocks, her apron whipping in the breeze, and said, ‘Come along, Hollis. All this exercise has made me hungry, and I abhor cold, soggy pancakes.’”

“What did you do?”

“I went along, of course. This was my aunt Devora, remember.”

Rose laughed and nodded.

“When we got back to the house, the broken pitcher was on the counter. I took one look at it and started bawling, so hard I couldn’t even tell her I was sorry.” His mouth curved into a small smile. “Devora just wiped my face with her apron. ‘Oh, that,’ she said, waving it off as if it wasn’t the special Saturday morning pitcher I had broken. ‘I have some glue that will take care of that. Perhaps you can fix it for me after breakfast.’”

“Did you?”

He nodded. “But not very well, I’m afraid. It didn’t matter. The next week it was back on the table, and she never said another word about it. It was not the reaction I’d expected.”

They were driving through a neighborhood of large, older homes. Rose stopped at a crossroads to glance at the map she had prepared, then turned left.

“What did you expect?”

“For all hell to break loose. My mother was…” He hesitated. “I guess Devora put it most delicately. She used to say my mother was high-strung. That’s why I started coming to Wickford in the first place. To give Mom a break. And because Devora said Manhattan was no place for a rambunctious young boy to spend the summer.”

“Your family lived in the city?”

“Central Park West.”

She whistled softly. “Very Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Griffin.”

“Lifestyles of the Ruthless and Neurotic is more like it,” he retorted. “And with no fishing, no sand crabs, no blueberry pancakes on Saturday mornings. I liked Devora’s place a lot better.”