Black Rose (9 page)

“Nothing like a cardboard box to keep a baby entertained. It was special for me, for all of us, to have her, to be able to share that first Christmas with her.”

With the mold full, Hayley tidied the edges with a trowel. “I know you love her, but, Roz, I just don’t feel right about
you staying home New Year’s Eve to sit with her while I go out to a party.”

“I prefer staying home New Year’s Eve. Lily gives me the perfect excuse. And I’m looking forward to having her to myself.”

“You must’ve been invited to half a dozen parties.”

“More.” Roz straightened, pressed the small of her back. “I’m not interested. You go on out with David and celebrate with other young people. Wear your new earrings and dance. Lily and I will be just fine seeing the new year in together.”

“David said he never could talk you into going to this party, even though it’s been a tradition for years now.” She picked up a bottle of water, drank casually. “He said Harper would probably drop by.”

“I imagine so. They have a number of mutual friends.” Amused, she patted Hayley’s shoulder. “Let’s get this next one done, then call it a day.”

She was tired when she got home, but in that satisfied way of knowing she’d crossed several chores off her list. When she noticed Mitch’s car in her drive, she was surprised to find herself considering going up to change before seeking him out in the library.

Which was, she reminded herself, both a waste of time and hardly her style. So she was wearing her work clothes when she walked into the library.

“Have everything you need?”

He looked up from the piles of books and papers on the library table. Stared at her through the lenses of his horn-rim reading glasses. “Huh?”

“I just got in. I thought I’d see if there was anything else you need.”

“A couple dozen years to organize all of this, a new pair of eyes . . .” He lifted the pot on the desk with him. “More coffee.”

“I can help with the last at least.” She crossed over, mounted the steps to the second level.

“No, that’s all right. My blood level’s probably ninety percent caffeine at this point. What time is it?”

She noted the watch on his wrist, then looked at her own. “Ten after five.”

“A.M. or P.M.?”

“Been at it that long?”

“Long enough to lose track, as usual.” He rubbed the back of one shoulder, circled his neck. “You have some fascinating relatives, Rosalind. I’ve gathered up enough newspaper clippings on the Harpers, going back to the mid-nineteenth century so far, to fill a banker’s box. Did you know, for instance, you have an ancestor who rode for the Pony Express in 1860, and in the 1880s traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show?”

“My great-great-uncle Jeremiah, who’d run off as a boy, it seems, to ride for the Pony Express. Fought Indians, scouted for the Army, took both a Comanche wife and, apparently, another in Kansas City—at more or less the same time. He was a trick rider in the Wild West Show, and was considered a black sheep by the stuffier members of the clan in his day.”

“How about Lucybelle?”

“Ah . . .”

“Gotcha. Married Daniel C. Harper, 1858, left him two years later.” The chair creaked as he leaned back. “She pops up again in San Francisco, in 1862, where she opened her own saloon and bawdy house.”

“That one slipped by me.”

“Well, Daniel C. claimed that he sent her to a clinic in New York, for her health, and that she died there of a wasting disease. Wishful thinking on his part, I assume. But with a little work and magic, I found our Lucybelle entertaining the rough-and-ready crowd in California, where
she lived in apparent good health for another twenty-three years.”

“You really love this stuff.”

“I really do. Imagine Jeremiah, age fifteen, galloping over the plains to deliver the mail. Young, gutsy, skinny. They advertised for skinny boys so they didn’t weigh down the horses.”

“Really.” She eased a hip on the corner of his desk.

“Bent over his mount, riding hell-for-leather, outrunning war parties, covered with dirt and sweat, or half frozen from the cold.”

“And from your tone, you’d say having the time of his life.”

“Had to be something, didn’t it? Then there’s Lucybelle, former Memphis society wife, in a red dress with a derringer in her garter—”

“Aren’t you the romantic one.”

“Had to have a derringer in her garter while she’s manning the bar or bilking miners at cards night after night.”

“I wonder if their paths ever crossed.”

“There you go,” he said, pleased. “That’s how you get caught up in all this. It’s possible, you know. Jeremiah might’ve swung through the doors of that saloon, had a whiskey at the bar.”

“And enjoyed the other servings on the menu, all while the more staid of the family fanned themselves on the veranda and complained about the war.”

“There’s a lot of staid, a lot of black sheep here. There was money and there was prestige.”

He pushed some papers around, came up with a copy of another clipping. “And considerable charm.”

She studied the photo of herself, on her engagement, a fresh and vibrant seventeen.

“I wasn’t yet out of high school. Green as grass and mule stubborn. Nobody could talk me out of marrying John
Ashby the June after this picture was taken. God, don’t I look ready for anything?”

“I’ve got clippings of your parents in here. You don’t look like either of them.”

“No. I was always told I resembled my grandfather Harper. He died when I was a child, but from the pictures I’ve seen, I favor him.”

“Yeah, I’ve come across a few, and you do. Reginald Edward Harper, Jr, born . . . 1892, youngest child and only son of Reginald and Beatrice Harper.” He read his notes. “Married, ah . . .”

“Elizabeth McKinnon. I remember her very well. It was she who gave me her love of gardening, and taught me about plants. My father claimed I was her favorite because I looked like my grandfather. Why don’t I get you some tea, something herbal, to offset the coffee?”

“No, that’s okay. I can’t stay. I’ve got a date.”

“Then I’ll let you go.”

“With my son,” he added. “Pizza and ESPN. We try to fit one in every week.”

“That’s nice. For both of you.”

“It is. Listen, I’ve got some other things to deal with and some legwork I’d like to get in. But I’ll be back on Thursday afternoon, work through the evening, if that’s all right with you.”

“Thursday’s New Year’s Eve.”

“Is it?” As if baffled, he looked down at his watch. “My days get turned around on me during holidays. I suppose you’re having people over.”

“Actually, no.”

“Then, if you’re going out, maybe you wouldn’t mind if I worked.”

“I’m not going out. I’m going to take care of the baby, Hayley’s Lily. I’m scooting her out to a party, and Stella
and her boys are going to have a little family party of their own at Logan’s house.”

“If you weren’t asked to a dozen parties, and didn’t have twice that many men after you for a New Year’s Eve date, I’ll eat those newspaper clippings.”

“Your numbers might be somewhat exaggerated, but the point is, I declined the parties, and the dates. I like staying home.”

“Am I going to be in your way if I work in here?”

She angled her head. “I imagine you were asked to your share of parties, and that there were a number of women eager to have you for their date.”

“I stay in on New Year’s. A tradition of mine.”

“Then you won’t be in my way. If the baby’s not restless, we can take part of the evening to start on that interview.”

“Perfect.”

“All right, then. I’ve been busy,” she said after a moment. “The house full over Christmas, all my sons home. And those are only part of the reason I haven’t brought this up before.”

“Brought what up?”

“A couple of weeks ago, Amelia left me a message.”

“A couple of
weeks
ago?”

“I said I’d been busy.” Irritation edged into her voice. “And besides that, I didn’t want to think about it through the holidays. I don’t see my boys very often, and there were a lot of things I wanted to get done before they got here.”

He said nothing, simply dug out his tape recorder, pushed it closer to her, switched it on. “Tell me.”

Irritation deepened, digging a line between those dark, expressive eyebrows. “She said:
Men lie.
”

“That’s it?”

“Yes, that’s it. She wrote it on a mirror.”

“What mirror? Did you take a picture of it?”

“No, I didn’t take a picture.” And she could, privately, kick herself for that later. “I don’t know what difference it makes what mirror. The bathroom mirror. I’d just gotten out of the shower. A hot one. The mirror was steamy, and the message was written on it through the steam.”

“Written or printed?”

“Ah, printed, with an exclamation point at the end. Like this.” She picked up one of his pens, demonstrated. “Since it wasn’t threatening or earth-shattering information, I figured it could wait.”

“Next time don’t—figure it can wait. What had you been doing before you . . .” Don’t think about her naked in the shower, he ordered himself. “Before you went up to shower?”

“As a matter of fact, I’d been out in the garden talking to you.”

“To me.”

“Yes, that day you came by and I was mulching up branches.”

“Right after your holiday party,” he said, making notes. “I asked you out to dinner.”

“You mentioned something about—”

“No, no, I asked you out socially.” In his excitement, he came around the table, sat on it so they were closer to eye level. “Next thing you know, she’s telling you men lie. Fascinating. She was warning you away from me.”

“Since I’m not heading in your direction, there’s hardly any reason to warn me away.”

“It doesn’t seem to bother her that I’m working here.” He took off his glasses, tossed them on the table. “I’ve been waiting, actually hoping for some sort of sighting or confrontation, something. But she hasn’t bothered about me, so far. Then I make a personal overture, and she leaves you a message. She ever leave you one before?”

“No.”

“Hmm.” But he caught something flicker over her face. “What? You thought of something.”

“Just that it might be a little odd. I saw her recently right after I’d taken a long, hot bath. Shower, bath. Strange.”

Don’t think of her naked in the tub. “What had you been doing before the bath?”

“Nothing. Some work, that’s all.”

“All right. What were you thinking while you were in the tub?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything. It was the night that I did that insane bout of Christmas shopping. I was relaxing.”

“You’d been with me that day, too.”

“Your ego looks a little heavy, Mitch. Need any help with it?”

“Facts are facts. Anyway, she might have been interested, or upset, by what you were thinking. If she could get into Stella’s dreams,” he said when she started to brush that aside, “why couldn’t she get into your waking thoughts?”

“I don’t like that idea. I don’t like it at all.”

“Neither would I, but it’s something to consider. I’m looking at this project from two ends, Roz. From what’s happening now, and why, to what happened then, and why. Who and why and what. It’s all of a piece. And that’s the job you hired me to do. You have to let me know when something happens. And not a couple weeks after the fact.”

“All right. Next time she wakes me up at three in the morning, I’ll give you a call.”

He smiled. “Don’t like taking orders, do you? Much too used to giving them. That’s all right. I can’t blame you, so why don’t I just ask, politely, if I could take a look at your bathroom.”

“Not only does that seem downright silly at this point, but aren’t you supposed to be meeting your son?”

“Josh? Why? Oh, hell, I forgot. I’ve got to go.” He
glanced back at the table. “I’m going to just leave this—do me a favor and don’t tidy it up.”

“I’m not obsessed with tidy.”

“Thank God.” He grabbed his jacket, remembered his reading glasses. “I’ll be back Thursday. Let me know if anything happens before then.”

He hurried toward the door, then stopped and turned. “Rosalind, I have to say, you were a lovely bud at seventeen, but the full bloom? It’s spectacular.”

She gave a half laugh and leaned back on the table herself when she was alone. Idly she studied her ancient boots, then her baggy work pants, currently smeared with dirt and streaks of drying concrete. She figured the flannel shirt she was wearing over a ragged tee was old enough to have a driver’s license.

Men lie, she thought, but occasionally, it was nice to hear.

W
ITH THE NURSERY
closing early for the holiday, Roz earmarked the time to deal with her own houseplants. She had several that needed repotting or dividing, and a few she wanted to propagate for gifts.

With the weather crisp and clear outside, she settled into the humid warmth of her personal greenhouse. She worked with one of her favorites, an enormous African violet that had come from a plantlet her grandmother had given her more than thirty years before. As Norah Jones’s bluesy voice surrounded her, she carefully selected a half dozen new leaves, taking them with their stalks for cuttings. For now, she used a stockpot, sliding the stems in around the edges. In a month they would have roots, and other plantlets would form. Then she would plant them individually in the pale green pots she’d set aside.

They’d be a gift for Stella, for her new house, her new life.

It pleased her to be able to pass this sentimental piece of her heritage along to a woman who’d understand, to someone Roz had come to love.

One day she’d do the same for her sons when they married, and give to them this living piece of her heritage. She would love the women they chose because they did. If she was lucky, she’d like the women they married.

Daughters-in-law, she mused. And grandchildren. It didn’t seem quite possible that those events weren’t far around her next corner. Odder still that she was beginning to yearn for them. And that, she decided, had its roots in having Stella and Hayley and the children in the house.

Still, she could wait. She accepted change, but that didn’t mean she was in a hurry for it.

Right now her life was in pretty good order. Her business was flourishing, and that was not only a personal triumph, it was an intense relief.

She’d risked a great deal by starting In the Garden. But it was a risk she’d had to take—for herself, and for her heritage.

Harper House, and she would never give it up, cost a great deal to maintain. She was well aware there were people who believed she had money to burn, but while she certainly wasn’t at the point where she needed to pinch every penny, she was hardly rolling in it.

She’d raised three children, clothed and fed them, educated them. Her legacy had allowed her to stay home with them rather than seek outside employment, and her own canniness with investments had added a cushion.

But three college educations and medical school for Mason hadn’t come cheap. And when the house demanded new plumbing, new paint, a new roof, she was obliged to see it got what it needed.

Enough so that she’d discreetly sold some things over the years. Admittedly, paintings or jewelry she hadn’t cared for, but it had still given her a little twinge of guilt to sell what had been given to her.

Sacrificing pieces to preserve the whole.

There’d come a time when she’d been confident her sons’ futures were seen to, as best she could, and the house was secure. But money was needed nonetheless. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t considered finding a job—considered very briefly.

Mitch was right, she didn’t care to take orders. But she was, without question, very adept at giving them. Play to your strengths, after all, she thought with a glimmer of a smile. That’s just what she’d done.

It had been a choice between gathering her courage to start her own business, or swallowing her pride to work for someone else.

For Roz, it was no contest.

She’d piled a great deal of her eggs into that single basket, and the first two years had been touch and go. But it had grown. She and Harper had made it grow.

She’d taken a hit with the divorce. Stupid, stupid mistake. While Bryce had gotten very little out of the deal—and only what she’d permitted him to get—it had cost her dearly in pride and in money to shed herself of him.

But they’d weathered it. Her sons, her home, her business were thriving. So she could think, a little, of changes. Of expansions on both her business and personal fronts. Just as she could enjoy the successful present.

She moved from the African violets to her bromeliads, and by the time she’d finished dividing, she decided Stella was going to get one of these, too. Pleased, she worked another hour, then shifted to check the spring bulbs she was forcing. She’d have narcissus blooming in another week.

When she was satisfied, she carted everything she wanted in the house inside, arranging, as she preferred them, a forest of plants in the solarium, then placing other pots throughout the house.

Last, she carried a trio of bulbs in forcing bottles to the kitchen.

“And what have you brought me?” David asked.

“David, I despair of teaching you anything about horticulture. They’re very obviously tulips.” She arranged them on the windowsill beside the banquette. “They’ll bloom in a few weeks.”

“I despair of teaching you anything about the choices of stylish gardening wear. How long have you owned that shirt?”

“I have no idea. What are you doing in here?” She pulled open the refrigerator, took out the pitcher of cold tea that was always there. “Shouldn’t you be starting your primping marathon for tonight’s party?”

“I’m making you up a nice platter of cold cuts and sides, as you refuse to come out and play with us tonight. And as I treated myself to a few hours at the day spa today while you were grubbing in dirt, my primping has already started.”

“You don’t have to go to any trouble with platters, David. I can find the makings for a sandwich myself.”

“Nicer this way, especially when you have company.” He chuckled. “The professor’s in the library, and I put a couple of bottles of champagne in to chill so the two of you can—let’s say—pop a cork.”

“David.” She gave him a light cuff on the side of the head before she poured the tea. “I’m not popping anything with anyone. I’m minding the baby.”

“Babies sleep. Roz, my treasure, he’s
gorgeous
, in that sexily rumpled academic sort of way. Jump him. But for God’s sake, change your clothes first. I set out your white cashmere sweater, and those black pants I talked you into—the ones with lots of lycra, and those fabulous Jimmy Choo’s.”

“I’m certainly not wearing white cashmere, skintight pants—which I’d never have bought if you hadn’t hypnotized me or something—or a pair of five-inch heels when
I’m babysitting for a seven-month-old. It’s not even a date.”

“Don’t you just love those horn-rims? What is it about a man in horn-rim glasses?”

She took an olive out of the bowl he’d filled. “You’re certainly wound up tonight.”

He covered the bowls and the tray he’d prepared with plastic. “There now. You’re going to have yourself a nice New Year’s Eve picnic with the horn-rimmed hunk.”

“David, why in the world do you think I need a man?”

“My darling Roz, we
all
need a man.”

S
HE DID CHANGE
, but brutally rejected David’s choices in favor of a simple cotton shirt and jeans, and her favored wool socks in lieu of shoes. Still, she had enough vanity to do her makeup.

In the nursery, she listened patiently to all of Hayley’s nervous-mother instructions, assured, and reassured, swore an oath she would call if there was any sort of a problem. And finally nudged the girl out and on her way.

She waited, watching from the window until she saw the car drive away. Then, grinning, she turned to where Lily gurgled in her bouncy chair.

“I’ve got you all to myself now. Come on up here to Aunt Roz, ’cause I’ve just got to eat you right up like a bowl of sugar.”

In the library, Mitch pretended to read, took sketchy notes, and listened to the baby monitor that stood on a table on the lower level.

Every room had one, at least every room he’d been in, he thought. Since the experiences last spring, he thought that was a wise and basic precaution.

But he wasn’t thinking of safety or precautions now. He
was simply charmed and amused, listening first to Hayley’s anxiety-filled departure, and now Roz’s verbal love affair with the baby.

He’d never heard that tone in her voice before, hadn’t known it could soften like that, like fragrant wax under low heat. Nor had he expected her to dote, as she so obviously doted, on a child.

She talked nonsense, cooed, laughed, made the silly noises adults habitually made around babies and, from the sounds of Lily’s response, made the baby as happy as the sitter.

It was another angle to a woman he’d seen as formidable, confident, a little aloof, and oddly direct. All those facets had already combined into a woman he found smoothly sexy. Now this . . . softness, he supposed, was a surprising icing on an already desirable cake.

He heard her laugh, a long, lovely roll, and gave up even the pretense of working.

He heard the music and banging of toys, the child’s burbling and giggles, and the undiluted pleasure in the woman’s voice. Later, he heard her singing as she rocked the baby to sleep.

Soon after, he heard her murmured words, her quiet sigh, then the monitor was silent.

He sighed himself, sorry the interlude was over. Then reaching for his coffeepot, found it empty. Again.

He carried it into the kitchen to brew another pot, and was just measuring out the coffee when Roz came in.

“Hi,” he said. “Be out of your way in a minute. David said I should just make myself coffee whenever.”

“Of course. I was about to make use of the cold cuts he put together earlier, if you’d like something to eat.”

“I would, thanks. He mentioned there’d be makings when he showed me where I could find what I needed for
coffee. And . . .” He widened his eyes as Roz took out the tray, the bowls. “I see he meant it.”

“He’s constantly afraid I’ll starve to death if he doesn’t leave me enough food for six people.” She glanced over. “And?”

“Sorry?”

“You started to say something else? Regarding David?”

“Oh well, just that I think he was hitting on me.”

She got long, fresh rolls from the bread drawer. “Not very hard, I’m sure.”

“No, not hard. Just . . . charmingly actually.”

“I hope you weren’t offended.”

“No, I was, well, sort of flattered, really. Considering the age difference.”

“He likes the way you look in your glasses.”

“In my . . . what?”

“Horn-rims. They just turn him to mush, apparently. You want me to just pile everything on here, or would you rather pick and choose?”

“Just pile, thanks. I appreciate it.”

“It’s no trouble as I’m making some for myself as it is.” She looked up sharply, as a voice, Amelia’s voice, began to sing through the monitor.

“It’s a jolt, isn’t it?” Mitch said. “Every time.”

“She doesn’t go into Lily’s room every night, not like she did with the boys. She favors boys. I suppose she knows Hayley’s out, and wants to . . .”

She trailed off, her fingers fumbling, as they rarely did, with the sandwiches as she recalled the monitor in the library. And her own session with Lily.

“I hadn’t thought about the monitor where you were working, disturbing you.”

“It didn’t—you didn’t—in the least.”

“In any case, feel free to switch it off in there when
you’re working. God knows we have them everywhere. Hayley went out and bought one that has video, too, for her room. Amazing the sorts of things they have now, to make life a bit easier for new mothers.”

“You must’ve been a good one. It came through,” he added, “when you were up there with her.”

“I was. Am. It’s my most important job.” But her interlude with Lily had been private—or so she’d thought. Just how many times had she sang the hokeypokey along with Elmo?

Best not to think about it.

“Would you like to take this back in, eat while you work, or take a break, and eat in here?”

“In here, if it’s all right with you.”

“That’ll be fine.” She hesitated, then opened the refrigerator again, took out the champagne. “Seeing as it’s New Year’s Eve, I’m going to open this. We can have something a little more festive than coffee with our poor boys.”

“Thanks, but I don’t drink. Can’t.”

“Oh.” She felt abominably slow and stupid. Hadn’t she noticed herself that he never took alcohol? Couldn’t she have used her brain to put two and two together before embarrassing a guest? “Coffee it is, then.”

“Please.” He stepped over to lay a hand on her arm before she replaced the bottle. “Open it, enjoy it. It doesn’t bother me when other people have a drink. In fact, it’s important to me that they’re comfortable. That you’re comfortable. Here, let me do it.”

He took the bottle. “Don’t worry, opening a bottle of champagne isn’t backsliding.”

“I certainly didn’t mean to make
you
uncomfortable. I should’ve realized.”

“Why? I’m not still wearing that sign that says Recovering Alcoholic around my neck, am I?”

She smiled a little, walked to the display cabinet for a flute. “No.”

He released the cork, a quick, celebrational pop. “I started drinking when I was about fifteen. Sneaking a beer now and then, the way boys often do. Nothing major. I did love an ice-cold beer.”

He set both their plates on the table, then poured his coffee while she arranged the rest of the simple meal. “Went through the drinking insanity in college, but again, plenty do the same. Never missed a class because of it, never caused me any trouble, really. My grades stayed up—enough I graduated with honors, top five percent of my class. I loved college nearly as much as I did an ice-cold beer. Am I going to bore you with this?”

“No,” she said, her eyes on his. “You’re not.”

“All right.” He took his first bite of the sandwich, nodded. “Miz Harper, you make a hell of a po’boy.”

“I do.”

“So I went to grad school, got my master’s. Taught, got married, worked on my doctorate. Had myself a gorgeous baby boy. And I drank. I was . . . an amiable drunk, if you know what I mean. I was never confrontational, never abusive—physically, I mean, never picked fights. But I can’t say I was ever completely sober from the time Josh was born—a bit before that to be honest, until I set the bottle down the last time.”

He sampled David’s potato salad. “I worked—taught, wrote, provided my family with a good living. Drinking never cost me a day’s work, any more than it had cost me class time. But it cost me my wife and my son.”