DAY 3, Wednesday
Before the sun was up the next morning, Erik, his trusty steed Seabiscuit, and his camera were in the parking lot of Windsor Gardens, waiting for an employee to arrive.
Hoping for it to be the employee he wanted.
He had slept well and dreamlessly for half the night before, wrapped in the sweet smell of the mountains coming to life with budding leaves and blossoms filling the air that whispered through his open hotel room window, and the enveloping silence, so different from the chaotic noise that was ever-present in the city.
Deep in the night, however, the dreams had come.
In them he was back in the Louisiana Superdome, the stench of fear and humanity filling his nostrils, violence and shouting all around him. He was pushing his way through the crowds, searching for someone, following a shadow that he did not recognize. When the shadow finally stopped and turned around, he saw the slightly sad gray eyes, the crooked smile that made his heart thunder.
Briony.
He had groaned and rolled over in his sleep, but now he was climbing up a heavily wooded mountain, slipping on shale from time to time. Again, he was following the model’s shadow as it flitted through the trees, until at last he was at the summit, looking down on the winding river below him.
Alone.
Even in his dreams, Erik could feel the cold wind rustling his hair.
Finally, after more images he could not remember in the morning, the dreams shifted, and he found himself in a bombed-out city, broken to the point that it could have been almost anywhere in the war-torn Middle East, most likely a memory of his time in Afghanistan. He was crawling through buildings without ceilings, alleyways strewn with the refuse of war, when he came upon a group of women, wrapped in traditional garb, crouching around a pathetic fire. A tall, thin one had her back to him, a lock of dirty blond hair escaping her head scarf.
Briony, he whispered.
The woman turned around.
It was the girl from the In-2-It lobby, the journalism student.
Zola? he thought hazily. No, Zoe.
She smiled at him, her face smudged with ashes. Postcards from Zabul, series one through three, she said. Brilliant stuff. The photos are utterly haunting.
Briony? he had whispered again. Where is she?
The dream Zoe had pointed further down the alleyway, to a place where what appeared to be a fashion show was taking place.
Erik peered down the street.
Amid the squalor and rubble, Briony was elegantly walking the broken cobblestones as if they were a runway, displaying an outfit that looked as if it were in a collection from the French Revolution, her white hair upswept like that of Marie Antoinette. She stopped and posed, looking in his direction, then turned and sashayed out of the alleyway and vanished.
He had woken in a cold sweat, gray light hovering outside the hotel room window.
He was attempting to flush the dreams of the night before from his now-awake mind, munching a breakfast muffin and sipping his minted and peppered tea, when a black Cadillac sedan pulled into the parking lot across from him, a silver-haired driver behind the wheel.
“Thanks for the lift, Ed,” Briony said from the back seat as she reached for her purse and her thermos of hot spiced cider. “I’m sure my dad appreciated the extra hour of sleep. He had a lot of the cabernet last night.”
“Hold on a minute, Miss Windsor,” her driver said, his smile fading. “Stay put.”
He opened the door and got out, closed it carefully, and then walked briskly over to the Corolla parked on the other side of the lot’s median. He rapped on the driver’s side window.
The car started up, and the window came down.
“Can I help you, sir?” Ed asked brusquely.
Erik blinked. “I’m waiting for the garden center to open.”
“That would be two hours from now.”
“Oh. Well, I am hoping one of the employees will arrive a little early—I arranged with the owner to take photos of some of his plants, and I’d like to do it in early light, and before other customers get here. I don’t want to be in anyone’s way.” He smiled disarmingly.
Ed did not smile in return. “Wait a minute, please.”
He strode back to the sedan, opened the door again and stuck his head in.
“It’s a guy who claims your dad said he could photograph the plants.”
Briony exhaled. “Good looking? Light blue eyes? Muscles for miles?”
Ed shrugged. “I guess. I wasn’t sizing him up as a potential boyfriend.”
Briony laughed. “I would expect not. I think he might have been here yesterday, and he was looking for a garden tour. I think we can risk letting him take his pictures.”
“Then I’ll wait here with you until your dad shows up,” Ed said, looking back over his shoulder suspiciously.
“Don’t be silly. I’ll be fine.”
“No, ma’am. Not leaving you alone.”
Briony leaned forward and kissed her long-time driver on the cheek.
“You have an hour-and-a-half drive to and from Albany to make,” she said. “And you have an appointment this evening with the real estate agent. If you’re going to live in Obergrande, you need to be happy with one of the houses Dad and the agent have scouted out for you. You should get a chance to take a nap before you see them.”
Ed’s face lost its look of concern and he chuckled.
“You really don’t have to buy me a house, you know,” he said. “I have my own savings.”
“Shut up, Ed,” Briony said. “You spent twelve of your golden years driving my butt all over the world, and I still don’t have my license, so you’re not done with me yet. If I paid you a nickel for every mile you’ve driven me, you could buy the freaking Taj Mahal. Now get going; pick us out a nice new car.” She opened her door.
“I believe that negotiator has got that all taken care of,” Ed said, turning around and sitting down in the driver’s seat again. “My understanding is that I am to drive this car in, and drive another one out. I should be back by lunchtime.”
“Safe travels,” Briony said. She got out of the car, closed the door decisively behind her, and waved enthusiastically to Ed until he gave up, laughing. He put the car in reverse, pulled out of the parking lot and drove off, winking his lights.
Briony turned back to face the car in front of her. She shielded her eyes and waited until the man she had met the day before got out of the weather-beaten Corolla.
“Good morning, Sarah,” Erik called as he did. His smile brightened, and Briony felt an unexpected warmth rush through her.
“Good morning,” she said in return. “You’re back soon. Did you run out of herbs for your tea already?”
“No—in fact, I just finished a delicious cup flavored with the spearmint and oregano leaves I bought here yesterday.”
“Hmmm. Well, what can I do for you, then?”
Erik reached back into his car and took out his camera case.
“Dave said it would be all right to scope the place out and take some pictures,” he said lightly. “He also offered to answer questions if he wasn’t busy—when will he be here?”
“Soon,” Briony said hesitantly. She had been unconsciously admiring the impressive curves of the customer’s muscular arms and upper body, noting how fit he appeared to keep himself, when the thought occurred to her that had apparently been on Ed’s mind.
That she was outmatched in strength and alone with a stranger when no one else was around.
“Great,” Erik said. “Do you mind if I get started, then?”
Briony rubbed her arms as a chill morning wind blasted through. “Sure,” she said as nonchalantly as she could. “Go right ahead.”
Erik nodded and shut the car door. “Thanks,” he said. He smiled at her again and then trotted off across the parking lot, making his way toward the rows of climbing arbor plants.
Briony exhaled and crossed her arms as she watched him walking around some of the rarer specimens, crouching easily in front of short ones, standing on his toes to get close-ups of especially tall ones. He has an impressive stance for an amateur, she thought as he backed up, focusing his camera. And beautifully muscled legs, and a great backside.
The thought shocked her.
The rush that had flashed through her body when he smiled at her had grown into a tingling heat, something she didn’t recall feeling for a very long time, if ever.
Is this what normal attraction feels like, in the real world? she wondered. Her experiences with men had been surprisingly few for a twenty-eight-year-old supermodel with the male world at her feet, limited mostly to high school flirtations and carefully-orchestrated, chaperoned events in adulthood set up rigidly by her management team, which she archly referred to as “playdates.”
There was something heady, something exciting about being able to admire a disinterested stranger from afar and not have anyone from Hanoway Ltd. intervene.
A disinterested stranger who had told her yesterday that he would only be in town for six weeks.
And was clearly fascinated only by the plants in Windsor Gardens.
What’s the harm in admiring the view? she wondered, amazed by the wildness in her blood that was making her ears ring. Isn’t that what anyone who picked up a copy of In-2-It, Sports Illustrated or Maxim did to me? No blood, no foul. Harmless.
And isn’t this the point of being back here? Of finally getting to live my life on my own terms, without the stakes of every decision being so artificially high?
Feeling suddenly safer, Briony uncrossed her arms, threw caution to the winds, and made her way casually across the garden center grounds.
Out of the corner of his eye shielded by the camera, Erik could see her coming.
He had, in his own assessment, done a convincing job of appearing engaged in his project, in spite of his hands shaking almost visibly. He was feeling light-headed, while his heart pounded painfully and his extremities felt strangely numb.
The words of the late comic Robin Williams came back to him out of nowhere.
The problem is, God gave man a brain and a penis and only enough blood to run one at a time.
Well, that explains why my brain’s not working, he thought.
The sight of her approaching was only making that problem harder.
He turned quickly away, clicking photos off in rapid succession, trying to convince himself that the root of his excitement was the story, the favorable climate that seemed to be developing, the possibility that shortly he might know the answer to the second of Katherine Bruce’s questions, and to be able to get back to his real work and his herbs and his unwashed gym clothes and his bachelor pad and his life in Brooklyn within a day or so.
And failing miserably to actually convince himself of any of it.
He spun slowly, taking a succession of photos of the quaint buildings across the street and the mountains beyond them, until he was angled toward her again.
There was something almost comic in the way she had disguised herself from the public eye, the owlish glasses and ordinary clothing that was a little too big, hiding the curves of her famous figure. The dark color she had chosen to mask her iconic dirty-blond hair was pleasant and ordinary, but had seemed to coarsen the shining locks that once had floated so lightly and freely around her face.
It didn’t matter.
She was still unbelievably attractive, no matter how much she tried to hide it.
At least to him.
She stopped a comfortable distance away.
“Finding what you need?”
Erik lowered his camera and smiled broadly. “Partly.”
“Partly? Is there something you need help with?”
Erik took a deep breath and leapt.
“Yes,” he said, trying to keep his words from coming out too quickly or intensely. “I need to know a lot more about horticulture than I do. I hope Dave is willing to tell me a little about what I’m taking pictures of when he gets here. I don’t want to bother him while he’s working, but I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Oh,” said Briony awkwardly. “Well, if you want to ask some specifics, I may be able to help with that until he gets here.”
“That would be great,” Erik said. “Thank you. I’m trying to focus on two things here—plants that are indigenous to the Adirondacks, or at least this general part of Upstate New York, and any specialty items you carry. I mostly sought this place out because I saw on your website that you carry some rare plants, and I would love to get pictures of them.”
“Anything in particular?”
Erik shook his head. “Not really. Just whatever you can show me that’s not the run-of-the-mill stuff that every nursery carries.”
Briony nodded. “All right, but most of that is farther back in the garden, or in the hothouse.”
“Lead on,” Erik said.
He followed Briony deeper into the garden center, both of them believing they had successfully conveyed their lack of interest to the other.
And only fooling themselves.