His cell phone rang, jerking Zach out of a muscle-sapping, sweat-pouring marathon.
“Yeah,” he snapped into the speaker.
“Vacation sure as hell hasn’t improved your mood any, Zach.”
One kind of tension eased out of his shoulders. “Waco.”
“You’re so pissed at me for talking to Doc that you’re lying on a beach somewhere and you didn’t even tell me where? Or is this to get out of helping me with the cabin again?”
It was damned tempting to take the out. To say, yeah, he’d left town to avoid working on his buddy’s mountain cabin. “I’m in my hometown.”
“Christ, I didn’t know you had one. You never talk about it. Thought you came from a rock.”
Waco and he were oddities in close-knit Virginia Task Force One. The members of their urban search-and-rescue team largely came from the same region. Tom Robert Hancock, known to all as Waco, talked about his childhood in Texas incessantly, while Zach had said nothing of his.
“Yeah, I’ve got one. And there are, uh, complications here.”
“If you’re pissed at me because I talked to Doc—”
“I’m not pissed. You did what you had to do. And I made the decision to come back here. You didn’t. Doc didn’t. Taz didn’t.” Even if the latter two had pressed him.
“If you hadn’t been having those dreams…”
They’d worked on the cabin during a few days in late July, camping out. The first night hadn’t been too bad. The second night Zach had awakened with that sick feeling in his gut. Apparently he’d awakened Waco, too. Didn’t take much for Waco to put it together.
“I gotta go, Waco.”
“If you need anything, Zach…”
“I know. Thanks.”
He dropped the phone on the shirt he’d taken off an hour ago and leaned into the shovel.
Informal but businesslike, the Bliss House renovation committee members each reported on preparations for the opening. Max and Suz about which rooms would be ready, Annette on crafts that would be for sale, Suz about display spaces, Fran on the gardens, Steve on efforts to get another grant, Rob on the budget (“We could really use that grant,” he said to knowing chuckles) and Kay on plans for the opening. That last item took up the bulk of the meeting since the date loomed closer and closer.
After nearly two and a half hours, the meeting ended.
Fran was halfway to the door, when Steve called her name. “If you could wait a minute?”
“Of course.”
Rob slowed beside her as if he would stop, too, but Kay tugged on his arm.
The door closed behind them and Steve came around the table to where she stood. “I can’t quite bring myself to say thank you. It’s… But you did what needed to be done, Fran.”
He meant in giving Zach a place to stay, in keeping him close at hand to sort all this out.
“Yes, it needed to be done. And everything will work out, Steve. I know it will.”
Her certainty dipped a bit when she tracked Zach down to a diamond-shaped bed at the front corner of the house that linked the Grandmother’s Garden in the front with a rose garden along the side.
Not that he wasn’t doing good work. He was. She couldn’t ask for a better job of working the soil than he was doing. She just wished she could shake the uncomfortable idea that each time he forcefully jammed the shovel into the earth, he was thinking of some member of his family.
“How’s it going, Zach?”
“Fine,” he said with a scowl.
“I’ll go change into my work clothes, and help you—”
“No.” A flutter of excited voices came from the far end of the Grandmother’s Garden behind her, and Zach’s gaze shifted. “I don’t need your help. And you—”
He had dropped the shovel and taken off at a run before Fran realized he wasn’t going to finish his sentence.
She spun around to see what had caused his reaction. At the far end of the Grandmother’s Garden, Muriel Henderson lay crumpled, half on the grass and half in the garden border where she’d been planting pansies. Miriam Jenkins was squeaking her alarm, while two other women knelt beside Muriel, and three more—including Miss Trudi—scrambled toward the scene from where they had been planting.
Zach beat them all there.
When Fran reached the group huddled around Muriel, Zach had his head close to Muriel’s face, as if he were listening to something she said. But as he straightened she saw the older woman was unconscious.
“Did she fall?” he demanded. “Or did she pass out and somebody lowered her to the ground?” When no one answered fast enough for him, he added, “Miss Trudi?”
“I don’t know, Zach. Rosemary?” she asked, looking at one of the two women still kneeling beside Muriel.
“Couldn’t get to her fast enough to lower her, but she sort of crumpled more than fell.”
“Good. Whoever’s got a cell phone, call 9-1-1, then go meet them at the drive to guide them back here.”
“I’ll do it.” Rosemary clambered to her feet, pulling a phone from her sweater pocket as she headed for the back of the house.
Zach put his fingers on Muriel’s wrist, not fumbling for the right pulse point, as Fran always did whenever she’d done that.
She stirred slightly, her feet shifting. Zach gave a grunt that sounded like satisfaction.
“Is she—?” Miriam started.
Zach spoke over her. “I need sweaters, jackets, anything to cover her up.”
He accepted Fran’s sweater, folded it then supported Muriel’s head with one large hand as he slid the pillow under it with the other.
He spread the offered jacket, three sweaters and Miss Trudi’s tunic over Muriel. Another jacket he rolled up and slid under her knees.
Her eyes fluttered and she groaned, then started to sit up.
“Whoa there. Stay where you are, Muriel.” Zach backed the order with a firm hand on her shoulder. “How are you feeling?”
“I…uh… What happened?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you.” He smiled at her.
“I felt a little light-headed, then…”
With that smile aimed at her she was probably feeling light-headed right now, too.
Fran could see Zach was watching the woman’s face closely.
“How about now? How are you feeling?”
“A little woozy.”
He nodded. “Well, just stay there for now, and that should be better. Muriel, I’m going to ask you a few questions. While I do, I want you to raise both your arms and hold them there. Understood? Okay, raise your arms. That’s good. No, hold that. Are you diabetic, Muriel?”
“No.”
“History of low blood pressure?”
“No.”
“Good. Okay, you can put your arms down. Has this ever happened to you before?”
“Uh…”
“Yes,” Miss Trudi said from the opposite side of Muriel. “She’s fainted a dozen times I know of these past twenty-five years.”
Zach looked up at Miss Trudi a moment, then to Muriel. “You need to have that checked out.”
“The doctor says it’s nothing. I just—”
“They’re here! They’re here!” called Rosemary, bustling toward them, with two paramedics toting their gear following.
Zach rose, going to meet them partway.
He spoke in a low voice, but Fran heard snatches. “…cool and clammy. Pale… Breathing and pulse good…leaning over to plant…didn’t immobilize because…syncope… No sign of TIA. No slurring of speech. Has a history of passing out.”
As the group reached Muriel, one of the paramedics looked from the woman on the ground to Zach. “You got our Muriel to a T. Hi, Muriel.”
“Oh. Hello, Bobby.”
“Okay, everybody, back up, let us do our job,” ordered the other paramedic, depositing the jackets and sweaters in Fran’s arms before replacing them with a regulation blanket.
By the time Fran matched the clothing with the rightful owners and calmed the Garden Club ladies, the paramedics had Muriel on a gurney they’d retrieved from the ambulance, and were preparing to wheel her out with Miss Trudi accompanying her.
Zach had disappeared.
Fran tracked him back to the diamond-shaped bed.
“You knew exactly what to do.”
“Basic first aid. Learned it in the army.”
“Zach—”
“Fran, I want to get this work done before the sun goes down. Do you mind?”
Did she mind getting lost, that’s what was implicit in that question. And she did mind. There was such a contrast between Zach’s gentle sureness in dealing with Muriel, and his savage attacking of the ground he dug now. How could she not be curious what was behind each of those attitudes.
But how could she insist on getting answers when he was doing the work she’d asked him to do?
So, she’d put on her work clothes, and she’d occupy herself at one of the other seventeen thousand things she needed to get done.
Because maybe, just maybe she didn’t really want to know. Didn’t want to get any more drawn into this man’s life than she already was.
Sunday didn’t turn out at all the way Fran had expected.
When she’d told Zach there was no reason for him to go to Bliss House today, that she was going to be there only a few hours, that he had more than earned a day of rest, he’d growled at her that he’d be there working as long as she was.
Or longer, as it turned out.
Around three, she’d found him adding manure to the bed the Garden Club ladies would fill with donated chrysanthemums in a geometric design the Victorians loved, and said she was going home. This time she got a grunt, and he announced he was staying. And then she’d understood why he’d insisted on driving separate cars. He’d been planning this all along.
Fine. Maybe he’d work himself out of the monosyllabic foul mood he’d been in since yesterday.
She’d returned home to find Kay looking miserable as Rob packed.
“You don’t mind if Kay stays on, do you, Fran?” Rob had asked.
“Of course not, but—”
“Good.”
After she’d showered and changed, Steve, Annette and Nell had arrived, along with Max and Suz, to see the puppies, but it was going to be a quick view for some of them. Steve and Max had arranged to drive Rob to Chicago, leaving his car here for Kay to use. They would have dinner with Rob in the city then turn around and head back.
In half an hour the men had cleared out, Nell and her friend Laura Ellen were on the porch with the puppies, and the women congregated on the couch and easy chairs in the family-room area with soft drinks and popcorn.
“Was that my imagination, or did they practically stampede out of here?” Suz asked.
“A definite stampede,” Annette said. “At least on Steve’s part. He was afraid he might actually have to have a normal conversation with Zach.”
“No fears there,” Fran said. “Zach’s at the gardens, doing his best to work himself to death.”
“Gee, I wonder where he got that idea?” Annette said, making a face at Fran.
“Hey, I’m here resting now, aren’t I?”
“I’m still trying to get over the shock,” Suz teased.
“Speaking of shock,” Annette said, “Nell told me that Miss Trudi had invited Lana to have lunch with her and the girls yesterday while we were having our meeting.”
“You’re kidding—I thought Miss Trudi and Lana were archenemies,” Suz said.
“I know. After the way Lana tried to get Miss Trudi into a nursing home… But Miss Trudi seems to have decided there should be a peace treaty.”
“Lana will never go for that,” Suz said.
“Well, apparently she did,” Annette said. “And I was as stunned as the rest of you. Not only that, but Nell said Lana was okay. Which is the best thing I’ve ever heard her say about her grandmother other than that she employs a good housekeeper.”
They speculated for a few minutes about what Miss Trudi was up to, but since they had no more raw material to work with, the topic faded.
Fran saw Suz and Annette exchange a look that probably communicated a lot between the two old friends. They’d been college roommates who’d gone into business together before selling off their successful company less than a year ago.
“Kay, if I’m not prying, can I ask how Rob’s holding up?” Suz asked.
“It’s exhausting for him, but each day I see a little bit of the worry and tension being lifted from him. He’s going to be okay.” Kay gave a short sigh. “I wish he weren’t feeling quite so protective.”
“I thought you’d worked that out,” Fran said.
Kay sighed again. “I have a feeling we’ve just worked out the first, tough layer of that issue.”
Suz and Annette nodded.
“It’s like living with an onion,” Annette said. “They smell and they make you cry…”
“But if you cook them right they’re delicious,” Suz concluded.
Laughing with them, Fran leaned out of the easy chair, stretching to retrieve a runaway piece of popcorn on the rug. She had watched each of these women find love, and she was thrilled for them. Sometimes, though, she felt a pang.
And sometimes the pangs felt as if they might turn lethal.
Above her the laughter stopped and there was a stirring as if the other three women were straining to see something.
“What in the world happened to you?” Kay sounded torn between alarm and laughter.
Fran looked up from her awkward position precariously near falling on her head. Zach, standing just inside the door, looked as if he’d been sprayed by a mud hose. His eyes were on her.
“Call it a rototiller backfire.”
She straightened. “Rototiller?”
“Don’t worry. Your plants are safe. Used it on the kitchen garden.”
“Oh, Zach, you didn’t have to do that. With all the plants coming in this week…”
“A little more work isn’t going to kill me.” He looked down at his clothes. “I’ll clean up whatever I track through the house.”
He strode off, and solid footfalls on the stairs could be heard.
And then the other three women looked at her—as if she could explain the man to them.
Now there was a joke—the idea that Fran Dalton had a clue to any man.
Nell’s before-school visit Monday morning didn’t catch Zach off guard the way Friday’s had. Not only was he braced when he heard Chester’s excited yip, he was ready with a cup of coffee to take to the porch.
He poured a second mug, wrapped Fran’s fingers around it and tipped his head toward the door, inviting her to move ahead of him. They both knew Steve and Annette didn’t want him seeing Nell alone. She sighed, but slid off the stool.
“Morning,” she mumbled.
Nell said hello to Fran, who dropped into a chair next to the whelping box. The little girl gave Zach a quick, neutral look and returned her attention to the puppies.
“Can I ask you somethin’?”
She didn’t look away from the puppies and it took Zach a moment to realize she was talking to him.
“Yeah.”
“Why’d you leave?”
Damn. He wasn’t as prepared for this visit as he’d thought.
“That’s complicated. What it boils down to is that what I needed to finish my growing up wasn’t in Tobias. I had to go somewhere else to find it.”
“Daddy said he wanted me as his daughter even before I was born because I was part of his brother and he loves his brother, but his brother went away.”
Zach felt like a pile of rubble from a cave-in had landed on his chest. Fran cut a look at him.
“And he said he wanted me all for myself,” Nell continued, “the minute he saw me. Daddy was the first person to hold me. Did you know that? The doctor put me right in his arms.”
“I wish I’d known about you back then.”
“Why? I don’t do anything exciting. Not like you.” She didn’t give the words any spin, didn’t make them sarcastic, pointed, self-deprecating like an adult would have.
“Exciting, huh. What’d you hear that was so exciting?”
“You were a—” she tucked her bottom lip under her front teeth for a moment of concentration “—swashbuckler.”
“A swashbuckler?”
“Like a pirate,” she clarified for him.
He shook his head in bemusement. “Never been a pirate. Your—Steve always liked water more than me, anyhow.”
She studied him, those eyes unnerving. “Annette told me Daddy was a champion swimmer. And she showed me pictures of him with lots of trophies.”
“That’s right. I bet some of his records still stand at Tobias High.”
“What about you?”
He shook his head again. “No titles, no records. I wasn’t in sports in high school.”
Those eyes narrowed in a frown. “What about the dog?”
“Dog?” He looked at Chester.
“When you were a kid like me. You took that dog in Grandmother’s house and it had muddy paws and went all over.”
“Oh. Yeah, that I did.”
Her face brightened.
He’d been redeemed, and he felt ridiculously glad.
“I found this stray digging in the big round flower bed out in the center of the front drive,” he told her. “It had been raining like a—uh, a lot, and he had about half the garden on his paws. I was going to take him straight through to the kitchen, but he got away from me. And then I started laughing…”
Nell smiled. “And he went all over the downstairs, even the music room.”
“I don’t remember that, but—”
“Fran said.”
“Then that must be what happened.”
“And Grandmother was furious at you.”
“That’s true.”
“Was that the first time Grandmother said you’re a no-good black sheep?”
Another cave-in.
Standing at the front door of Corbett House, facing those intense blue eyes glaring at him…. You’re my no-good black-sheep father.
“No, that wasn’t the first time.”
She nodded. “That’s what Fran said. Fran said you were always in trouble with Grandmother.”
“Uh, Nell, you better get going to school now,” Fran reminded her.
Wasn’t it interesting that Fran had remembered that episode with the dog from his childhood? Could it be that Honest Fran Dalton hadn’t been entirely honest about not having a crush on him when they were kids?
But so what? A crush when they were kids—that meant nothing.
“I watched your face when Nell was asking me questions,” Zach said abruptly from the passenger seat of her car as they neared Bliss House to start the day’s work.
Fran wondered where this might be going. “Oh?”
“Yeah, and I could tell you had questions you wanted to ask, too. Go ahead and spit them out.”
She didn’t waste any time. “That first day—why did you leave your car down the hill, Zach? Why didn’t you drive?”
“Wanted to see the neighborhood. Didn’t want to drive past and miss things.”
She looked at him, not trying to hide her disappointment at that nonanswer. “Okay.”
He grunted and said, “I knew if I drove up, it would be too easy to keep going. It would only take a couple seconds to go past and be on my way.”
So, he’d made it harder on himself to take the easy way out. Yes, Zach had definitely changed.
“Why did you come back?”
“The absent are always at fault.”
“What?”
“It’s a saying someone told me—maybe I didn’t want to be at fault anymore. You know those twelve-step programs where they say you have to say you’re sorry to the people you’ve wronged?”
“You’re in a twelve-step program?”
His mouth shifted into a rueful grin. “I don’t think they have one for being a Corbett. No, I’m not in any twelve-step program. But a guy who is in one found me and wanted to make amends for a wrong he’d done me. Maybe that planted the seed a year or so ago—the idea of coming back. I thought I’d make it better by coming here, setting things to rest. I never expected I’d make it worse.”
“What had he done, the man who wanted to make amends?”
“He stole my bike. It was the last thing I had, and it left me flat busted and he knew it.”
They’d reached Bliss House. She pulled into the drive beside a Trevetti Building truck and turned off the ignition. “Did you accept his apology?”
“No. No—don’t look at me like that.”
“I wasn’t looking at you any way.”
“Yeah, you were, with those big caramel eyes all gentle and disappointed, but refusing to judge.”
“I don’t know—”
“I didn’t accept his apology because he’d done me a favor.” That stopped her protests over his absurd comment about her eyes. “After he left me busted, I had to accept help from this guy whose barn we’d slept in, this great old guy.”
He chuckled. “God, Elliott would hate to hear me describe him that way. He prided himself on being a cranky old cuss. After the guy took off with my bike, Elliott gave me a place to stay in exchange for doing work he couldn’t do. He was on oxygen and couldn’t get around real well.
“I don’t know that I’d ever had a friend who wasn’t looking for something from me, but Elliott wasn’t. Didn’t take any guff, either. Laid out what he expected and what he’d give in return and lived by it to the letter. After a few months with him, I started seeing things straighter.”
“For example?”
“For example, that I had to suck it up and be something. When winter set in he said I could stay on, but I would be marking time and I was too damned young to do that. So I entered the army.” He laughed. “You should have seen your face when I told Nell that.”
She couldn’t help it. She’d felt as if the world had turned over and shuddered. Zach Corbett in the army. Taking orders. Marching in time to anything, much less a command.
“You…you liked it?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. It wasn’t the career for me, but I did okay after a while.” His mouth twisted. “It was a rocky start. But it worked out okay. More than okay. Elliott had said it would be the making of me, and he was right. They gave me training, more courses toward a degree and some great friends. It was a good experience. I told Elliott that the last time I saw him, last January.” She saw his sorrow, knew what he would say next. “I got out there a couple times a year, but this time…he was failing. I knew that, but I wasn’t prepared when I got the call three weeks later that he’d died.”
“I’m sorry, Zach.”
“You’d have liked him, Fran.” He grinned suddenly. “And he’d have thought you were the best thing he’d ever seen.”
She didn’t know how to react to that, so she didn’t. “You left the army…when?”
“Four years ago.”
“And since then?”
He looked out the passenger window. “I work for a county government in northern Virginia, across the river from Washington. Who’d have believed I’d end up like Steve, working for local government. But it’s a good group. Finally got my degree last summer. Have a little house I’m fixing up. It’s a good life, Fran.”
She’d sensed changes in him, but nothing like this.
And through the amazement, Fran felt a thread of uneasiness. The Zach who had left Tobias would have been a lousy father for Nell. In fact, he probably wouldn’t have been much interested in her. But what about this man?
And what risk did that pose to the happy family who lived on Kelly Street?
She nodded, acknowledging his assessment of his life, then opened her car door. Abruptly, she pivoted back to face him.
“Do you have a family?” she asked. “I mean kids, because—”
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
At the look he gave her, a shiver went through her. This could be even more complicated than anyone else in Tobias knew.
Why hadn’t he told her the whole truth?
Zach didn’t know exactly.
He’d decided before he set off for Tobias that he wouldn’t tell Lana about his life. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say on the issue, and the only way to keep her from saying something was to give her nothing to say anything about.
He’d half expected Steve to be far from Tobias; he’d figured he would seek out his brother afterward. But when he’d set off, his only thought was to tell Lana face-to-face that he was alive and that he was done with the past once and for all.
The past will not stop speaking to me….
Clearing up the residue of his distant past, putting it in its place, so the recent past could settle in where it belonged. So he could move on to the future, the way the old man had said.
Fate clearly had other ideas. The past wasn’t finished with him.
Maybe that’s why he hadn’t told Fran all he’d done with what the army had taught him—he was afraid he’d end up telling her about the old man. And the dreams.
Kay pulled into the driveway fast enough to spurt adrenaline into Zach’s bloodstream.
He rose from his seat on the porch steps and shifted his hold on the stick he’d been using to dislodge today’s dirt from the treads in his running shoes.
A gray sedan that had been closely following Kay’s car parked across the entry to the drive, and a man with the straps of two cameras and a tape recorder crisscrossed over his shabby T-shirt and protruding belly emerged at a surprising speed, considering his girth.
“Kay! Kay! I just want a statement. How do you feel about this guy you’re living with being in the middle of a scandal? Is it like reliving a nightmare? Give me a statement! How does your father feel about you being with somebody who’s gonna send guys to prison like your grandmother did to him?”
Zach started toward Kay. There was a haunted wariness in her eyes, but she didn’t flinch and she didn’t alter her pace as she headed for the house.
“What’s going on?” he asked, once he’d reached her.
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, Zach.”
Right. He believed that.
“Go on in the house, Kay. I’ll take care of this.”
“Zach…”
He strode down the deep lawn to the guy, who backed up as Zach neared.
“I’m on a public street!” the guy shouted. “I’m on a public street!”
“If you weren’t, I’d already have called the cops.”
That seemed to calm the man. “Okay. All right. Glad you understand I have a job to do.”
“You’re mistaken. It’s not all right, and I don’t understand bottom-feeders like you. If you trespass, I’ll call the cops. But understand this, I don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not you’re on a public street. You’re in my town and you’re bothering my friend. You’d be well-advised to stop doing both.”
He gave the guy a cold stare, then pivoted to return to the house.
“Hey! I know you from somewhere. Where the—? I’ve seen you somewhere. Heard that voice. Who are you?”
“Wrong again.” Zach told his muscles to keep going and they obeyed.
“I know that face. I don’t forget faces. It’ll come to me.”
Zach turned back, arms crossed over his chest, and glared at the weasel.
As he expected, the guy climbed into his car, still yelling how he’d never give up while, in fact, giving up.
With the car out of sight, Zach once more turned to the house and saw Fran just inside the porch door.
“What was that about?” she asked.
“That should be my question, shouldn’t it?”
“I mean that reporter saying he knew you.”
“That’s not a reporter—not a real one, anyway—and he’s wrong about knowing me. But why would a guy like that chase Kay? Is this connected to that phone call the other morning?”
“I’ll fill you in,” Kay said, stepping onto the porch from the kitchen. “Let me call Rob first, then we’ll get comfortable.”
She was as good as her word. Fifteen minutes later, they sat on the porch with Chester leaning against Kay’s knees.
“So why was that tabloid sleaze chasing you, Kay?” Zach asked.
“Ah,” Kay said. “So you recognized him as tabloid sleaze. I did, too, as soon as I saw him outside the cleaners. That’s where he spotted me. My family was hounded by tabloid reporters when I was a kid after my grandmother turned in my father for breaking the law. I won’t bore you with the details, but it had a lot of elements the tabloids love: famous artist, family feud, society figures, betrayal, big money. They were drooling.
“Most of the coverage of the investigation into Rob’s firm is from the financial angle. Only a few are trying to pump this up to a scandal, then connect it to my family’s history. This guy is one of them.”
“You let me know if he bothers you again,” Zach said.
A smile spread across Kay’s face. “As tempting as that is, it’s not necessary. Just now on the phone, I told Rob about our visitor and persuaded him I’ll be better off in his building in Chicago, with its doorman and security. And with me gone, the sleazes won’t hound Fran or anyone else here in Tobias.”
Fran tamped the ground where Canterbury bells would bloom their old-fashioned colors of blue and white in front of the spiraea.
“That’s it for today. I can’t believe how much we’ve accomplished these past three days.”
She arched her back to ease those muscles, and saw that Zach was doing the same. The move looked entirely different on him, emphasizing the width of his shoulders, the power of his thighs under his jeans.
“I have a new appreciation for Johnny Appleseed,” he grumbled.
Plant orders had begun to arrive Tuesday morning, continued through Wednesday and today. According to her clipboard, they were down to one midsize and two small deliveries due tomorrow. They’d kept up better than she’d hoped. There would still be planting to do after Fred Buchell moved the donated trees into place Sunday. But that was all within her schedule.
The gardens were going to be ready for the opening.
They would give only a hint of what they would offer next spring and summer, but judicious plantings of pansies and mums, plus some late-blooming roses, would keep visitors interested.
“These gardens would never have been done in time without you, Zach.” She wondered if working hard eased any of his frustration at having no contact with Nell or Steve these past days. It clearly didn’t ease all of the frustration. One night Chester’s low bark woke her and she’d looked out the window to see Zach jogging up the back lawn, apparently at the end of a predawn run. “Thank you.”
He cocked a brow. “You’re welcome, but somehow I think you would have figured out a way to get them done.”
She smiled. “I’m glad I didn’t have to figure it out.”
A slow grin lifted the corners of his mouth. He stepped closer, pulling off his work gloves. “There you go again, getting a dirty face.”
He brought one hand up, the pad of his thumb stroking across her lips.
He’d done this before, that first day. She’d wondered at the gesture, decided he’d been telling her to stay still, not to move or speak, so he could wipe off the dirt on her face.
She’d been wrong. That wasn’t what he’d been communicating then and it wasn’t what he was communicating now.
But…
That was as far as her mind could get. But…
He leaned in.
Her lungs stopped functioning, her heart went into overdrive, and her mind did come up with another thought:
Zach Corbett is going to kiss me.
“Fran? Fran, my dear?”
Miss Trudi’s fluting call barely penetrated her mental fog, but Zach swung away.
“Oh, Fran, my dear, there you are. I have been searching for you and Zach to— Oh, my, what a magnificent canvas you have created of this garden. Why, it quite takes my breath away.”
Having regained her breath—and her sanity—during Miss Trudi’s fluttering speech, Fran jumped in at the first opening. “Why were you looking for us, Miss Trudi?”
“Oh, my, didn’t I say? A delivery has arrived that Annette is quite certain contains the seed packets. We did not care to open boxes addressed to you, although we are quite eager to see the packets.”
“Me, too. Let me get my tools…”
Zach beat her to it, gathering the fork, spade and rake and putting them in the wheelbarrow. He followed behind the two women with it, while Miss Trudi told him the seed packets were part of Kay’s goal to spread the word about the gardens. When he veered toward the potting shed, Miss Trudi insisted he join them.
“Oh, good,” said Suz when they came into the kitchen. “Now we can open these.”
Beyond Suz, Fran saw Max, Annette and Steve sitting at a table loaded with three large boxes.
Had Miss Trudi purposely neglected to mention that Steve was in the kitchen when she’d urged Zach to join them?
“Here are scissors for the tape.”
Fran took them from Annette, just as Zach moved into her peripheral vision. Miss Trudi’s hand was on his arm, drawing him forward.
“You better open that box fast, Fran, before these two explode,” Max said, nodding toward Suz and Annette.
She’d hesitated, she realized, waiting for communication between Steve and Zach. There was none, and Max’s urging got her busy. Eagerly, she reached in and removed…
“Oh, no.”
One more thing she’d have to figure out how to get done.
“I thought they were supposed to be labeled,” Annette said.
“They were.” Fran saw that each packet had growing instructions stamped on the back, but the front was pristine, glaring white, with only a sticker tucked under the rubber band around each bunch to tell the kind of seeds.
Methodically, Fran checked the stacks of packets. They were all that way. Max opened the other boxes and shook his head. She found the packing list.
“It’s the right order, all the kinds of seeds we ordered.”
“What are we going to do?” Annette asked.
“We’ll have to send them back,” Max said.
Fran shook her head. “There isn’t time. Not by the opening.”
“What a shame,” Suz said. “But that’s okay. We’ll get the right ones and give them out later. People at the opening weren’t expecting them so they won’t be disappointed, and—”
“No,” Fran broke in. “We’ll make labels. It’s too good an idea for promoting Bliss House to pass up. Suz and Annette, I’ll need your computer expertise, but we can do this. We can use the prototype I sent the seed company.”
“You’re right,” Annette said. “We can make our own labels.”
“Then it’s just a matter of sticking them on. Everyone come over Saturday, we’ll have pizza and put them on.”
“Like an old-fashioned sewing bee. That’s a great idea,” Suz said.
“Yes, of course,” Miss Trudi agreed. “Many hands will make light work. Why, Nell and her friend, Laura Ellen, can also lend assistance.”
“I don’t think Nell—”
“Why ever not, Steve?” Miss Trudi asked with the guileless look that indicated she was at her most dangerous. “Surely you aren’t objecting to Nell joining because Zach will be involved. You are aware, are you not, that Nell has had conversations with Zach in Fran’s company?”
Steve shot a look toward Zach. “I know Nell’s been over a couple of mornings before school for a few minutes, but for a—”
“More than ten minutes isn’t in your rule book?” Zach demanded. “You want to set more rules about when I can see my daughter?”
The word reverberated in the room like the tick of a bomb.
Steve turned so the brothers faced off across the corner of the table.
“I am Nell’s father, Zach. Getting a woman pregnant doesn’t make you or any man a father. All you did was donate sperm—as reckless as ever.”
Fran thought Steve’s words sliced into Zach, but he was too angry, too intent for her to be sure. And out of his anger came an accusation.
“You told Nell about me because you thought I was dead. If you’d known I might come back and foul things up for you, you wouldn’t have told her.”
“We told her because a child should know—a person should know—the truth. You must agree or you wouldn’t have tried to tell me that Ambrose wasn’t my father.”
Fran held her breath to keep from gasping. But she was the only one reacting. The rest of them had already known.
Zach, still glaring, softened the slightest degree. “I didn’t know how to tell you straight out. I should have.”
“You’re damn right you should have. But you were never the best at doing what you should have, were you?”
Zach rammed the wheelbarrow over a rut. But when he reached the shed he forced himself to put the tools away carefully.
You were never the best at doing what you should have, were you?
Hell, no, he wasn’t. That’s why he’d gotten in the trouble he had; that’s why he’d gotten the reputation he had; that’s why he’d left Tobias.
So why the hell did it hurt to hear it?
Miss Trudi had gotten him out of the house—he wasn’t sure how. It was the least she could do, considering she’d dragged him in there and then pushed the button on the bomb with her Why ever not, Steve?
Zach had told her to mind her own damned business next time, and then he’d grabbed the wheelbarrow.
He turned, and there in the doorway of the shed, silhouetted by waning daylight, was a woman. Not Fran. He knew that instantly.
“Zach?”
“You, too, Annette?” he snarled. “You’re going to tell me to stay away, too?”
“No. Not me, too. I only have a minute, but… This isn’t only about you, or about you going away.”
He gave a scoffing grunt.
“It’s not just you,” she repeated. “After the gossip about our wedding falling apart and Lily and everything, Steve is protective of Nell with everyone. He worried that I might hurt her, and when I first met her he came rushing in as if I posed some grave danger or—”
“You? But he loves you—she loves you.”
“She didn’t know me then—” the look she gave him provided a split second of warning before she added the final word “—either.”
It still rocked him. His daughter didn’t know him.
“Remember, I’d been away a long time, too,” she continued. “I’d never met Nell until this spring. And Steve was right there, worrying that our past would affect how I dealt with Nell, that I might fail to recognize she’s become an individual these past eight years.”
Yeah, he got it. Annette was kind, but subtle she wasn’t. She was saying he also had to deal with Nell as she was now. No rewinding this story to when she was a baby. He had to deal with her as a girl who’d had a father for eight years, and it wasn’t him.
“I’ve got to go, but…Zach, you know you were surprised Steve was protective of Nell with me because Steve loves me? That’s my point. Because he loves you, too.”