Garden of Dreams (13 page)

JD shrugged. “They'll all need clearing some way or another. Let's say five strong guys at minimum wage, working whatever hours they want. Maybe a hundred hours a week at most between them?”

Nina's eyes widened. “I can do the math. That's over seven hundred dollars a week plus taxes. There's no way.”

“A bulldozer would be cheaper,” he agreed, “but it'll keep Jackie and friends occupied for a few hours a day, let them learn a little about hard work. And Jackie is smart enough to learn what jerks they are after a week or so.”

“Seven hundred a week? That's an expensive lesson. Even if you sell your watch and the Harley, it will cost more than we have.” She didn't know where the “we” came from. It would cost more than she had, certainly.

‘The corporation can fund basic land preparations as well as design, I figure. I'll have an attorney file nonprofit papers for the foundation. You can talk to him about the specifics, purpose, goals, and so on. It's mostly gobbledygook. You can do it.”

A nonprofit corporation. She still struggled with the concept of a landscape designer, and he had moved on to land clearing and corporations. Things were going way too fast here.

“Corporations need officers and directors and things, don't they?” she whispered.

JD shrugged and shoved his chair back. “Round up a few of your friends, the minister, the principal, whatever. Now that I think of it, you'd probably best get a local lawyer, one who knows Kentucky laws. Put him on the board in exchange for his services. It's no big deal.”

No big deal. He'd just sketched an outline for her future and told her it was no big deal.

Maybe not to him, but she had to live here the rest of her life.

What happened when JD Smith walked out, leaving her holding an empty bag and a worthless corporation?

“So you see the predicament I'm in, Aunt Hattie. He's talking big, stirring up interest, but what happens when the money never comes through? No one will ever believe I wasn't my fault. The garden idea will die deader than a doornail.” Sitting on the bed, twisting her hands in her lap, Nina poured out her story as if her aunt were actually listening. “Should I throw him out, shut him up, call the professor and tell him to forget everything? But how can I do that? He's already paid his rent, and you know we need the money.”

The frail woman at the window picked at the blanket over her legs and muttered, “She's coming back. She's a good girl. She'll come back soon.”

Nina sighed. The nursing attendant said Hattie had occasional bouts of sanity when she complained about her room and the food and wanted to know why Nina didn't take her home. She just wished Hattie would have those bouts when she was around. She desperately needed some advice right now.

No, she didn't. Not really. She knew what Aunt Hattie would say. She'd say taking the thousand dollars was short-term thinking, and she needed to plan for the long term. She'd scold her for risking everything on a stranger, particularly a strange man. She just needed Hattie's presence to remind her of all the lessons on caution she'd been taught.

Giving Hattie a hug and a kiss on her papery thin cheek, Nina straightened her covers. “She'll be back, Hattie,” she said reassuringly. “I'll bring her with me.”

A tear trickled down Nina's cheek as Hattie nodded in approval, just as if the conversation made sense.

Eyes blurred with tears as she drove away from the nursing home, Nina fought the urge to pull over and collapse in an old- fashioned bout of weeping. She just felt so damned
alone
making these decisions by herself, without anyone's advice. Nina had talked to the preacher about declaring Hattie incompetent, but the man had just nodded his head, no matter which argument she used, for or against. Hattie's wandering off to the lake in the middle of the night had pretty well confirmed the final decision. Nina couldn't watch her every minute, and she couldn't afford around-the-clock private nursing.

She feared cooping up her strong, independent aunt in that cubbyhole in a nursing home would kill her. Hattie had deteriorated rapidly in this past year, and Nina blamed herself.

Nina's choices didn't come any easier when she entered the house to the tantalizing aroma of cooking spaghetti sauce and the sight of Jackie sprawled across the living room rug, attacking a computer. He'd apparently unplugged the TV and had his brother's laptop hooked in its place. For some reason, the sight of the boy and the scent of a meal cooking drained whatever fight she had left in her.

“Is that spaghetti I smell?” Nina asked. Underneath the smell of sauce came the distinct odor of something burning.

“Yeah, I'm supposed to stir it every fifteen minutes,” Jackie yelled back, still pounding away with the joysticks. He gave a yip of triumph as he apparently hit whatever target the computer game had thrown him.

In the kitchen, viewing the sauce spurting in volcanic eruptions, spewing molten lava down the side of the pot and across the stove, Nina estimated the pot hadn't been stirred since the game started. She stirred the sauce, turned the range down, then tasted the contents. Not bad. She should pick some fresh lettuce from the garden and fix a salad later.

Not knowing what to make of a man who could cook real marinara, Nina wandered back to the front room. She noticed JD's door was closed and could hear the frantic clicking of his keyboard over the noise of Jackie's game.

“Monster House?” she asked, sitting on the couch and watching the game flicker over the computer screen.

“Nah. This is a new one that's not out yet. Da—” He hesitated. “JD said as long as I'm grounded, I might as well do something useful and test it for him. It's really cool. Wanta play?”

She knew next to nothing about computers. She'd played with a few at school just to see what they were all about but couldn't find any particularly good use for them in her life. She didn't need them for her classes, thank goodness, since the school scarcely had enough to go around. But as much as she hated technology, she couldn't contain her curiosity. Dropping down to the floor beside Jackie, she let him show her how to play the game.

***

His stomach rumbling in anticipation of the meal ahead, JD emerged a few hours later to find Jackie and their landlady totally enraptured by a computer treasure hunt. Leaving them engrossed in the game, he strolled back to the kitchen. From the stains on Jackie's shirt and the dirty plate in the sink, JD assumed his son had eaten. From the pot of cold, gluey pasta in the sink, he assumed Nina hadn't.

Cursing the lack of a food disposal, not to mention the absence of a dishwasher, he scraped the mess into the garbage and put on another pot of water to boil. Food obviously wasn't the way to his landlady's heart, or her bed. Remembering her slender arms wrapped around him, her slight weight pressed into his back, he'd stayed awake half the night planning ways to seduce her. Maybe he should invent a romantic computer game.

***

James MacTavish sat in his swivel office chair with the smoggy skyline of Los Angeles behind him, contemplating the depths to which a Monday morning could sink. He'd thought last week bad enough when it started out with JD wrecking his lovingly restored Chevy pickup and DiFrancesco turning the R&D department upside down before he'd taken off in pursuit of JD.

Now he sat here with Harry's paranoid telephone messages about stolen plans, a letter demanding repayment of the loan to DiFrancesco's company, and a message from JD saying the software program had hit a snag. And across from him sat a beautiful, tearful woman demanding he find her son or she would call the police.

Jimmy briefly contemplated a quick trip to Hawaii until JD got his ass back here. Then he studied the streaks of tears down a soft, creamy cheek, blue eyes glittering with as yet unshed moisture, and his guts twisted into a knot.

He'd finally figured out this was the mother of JD's son, the son his partner had known nothing about until a few weeks ago. JD sure had damned good taste in women. This one had endless tanned legs, golden curls clinging to a slender neck, and ruby lips that trembled when she spoke. She also had a purple bruise beneath her right eye.

“I've left my husband, Mr. MacTavish. JD was right. I should have left him when he started smacking Jackie around, but I couldn't bear to admit another failure. Now I realize I that made me a victim, and I refuse that role. I want my son back, Mr. MacTavish. I must have been out of my mind to agree to letting JD take him away. I've been out of my mind for some time now, it seems, but I've come to my senses. Where has that irresponsible idiot taken my son?”

Jimmy could tell her. He'd received the police report on the wrecked truck. But Harry's psycho messages had made him slightly paranoid, also. What if this woman was just a front for DiFrancesco's organization? JD had sworn him to secrecy.

Something had happened to send his partner careening off into Nowheresville. He and JD went back a long way, and Jimmy loyally supported JD's decisions, even if he didn't understand them. Without JD, this company wouldn't exist, he wouldn't have the hefty paycheck he took home every two weeks, or that lovely bonus at the end of each year that had bought him a house in Beverly Hills, a series of red Corvettes, and the attentions of a female like Barbara.

But this woman had a right to her son.

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Walker. JD sends me messages, but there's no way of identifying where they're coming from. He said he was heading to Myrtle Beach, but he hasn't arrived yet. He said the boy's with him and doing fine. He wanted me to pass that on to you so you wouldn't worry. Could it hurt for them to take a small vacation and get to know each other?”

“For all I know, that damned JD Marshall is teaching him devil worship and using Jackie as a front for a car-theft ring. I wouldn't put anything past that man. I want my son, and I want him now. I didn't mind him bringing Jackie here for a weekend or so, but I never agreed to their taking off across the country where I couldn't find them. I'm calling the police, Mr. MacTavish. I'm sorry. I thought you might help me—”

The intercom buzzed. With an apologetic glance to Nancy Walker, Jimmy grabbed the receiver as if it were a lifeline. Swiveling his chair so he looked out the window and away from the weeping woman, he whispered harshly, “What is it?”

“Harry Marshall is on the other line. He sounds rather odd, almost hysterical, and he insisted I interrupt whatever you were doing. He says it's a matter of life and death.”

Jimmy knew JD's terrifying automaton of a secretary too well. If she interrupted him, it could only be a matter of utmost importance. He had her make the connection.

“Jimmy?” The voice over the line sounded weak and terrified. “Jimmy, you've got to find JD. They want the program. They're out here looking for JD, and they're not happy, Jimmy. They may come after you next. Find him—” The rapidly rising hysterical note in his voice cut off when the line went dead.

Jimmy stared at the plastic receiver until it started beeping at him. Pulse pounding, he lowered the phone. He wasn't a fast thinker or impulsive by nature. JD had the ideas. Jimmy carried out the meticulous details. But something told him he'd better think fast and make his own decisions right now.

“Do you have a car, Mrs. Walker?” he inquired. Mentally, he wrote off Barbara without a single regret.

JD's ex-wife looked up at him, startled, but she nodded.

“It wouldn't happen to be a Chevy, would it?” he asked hopefully.

When she nodded again, he resigned himself to fate. “How would you like to tour the USA in your Chevrolet?”

***

“Damn! Damn, damn, and double damn!” JD flung the hematite paperweight against the wall. The blue rock he'd found at the lake had fascinated him, but it shattered now from the force of the blow.

He couldn't believe he'd run into a snag he couldn't solve at this late date. He had the world by the ear with this program. A secured loop from consumer to business to bank and back again via the Internet had been impossible until now. He'd be richer than Gates if he completed this. But he couldn't fix the snag.

Swearing, pacing back and forth, JD finally stalked out of the room he'd closeted himself in since last evening. To his surprise, sunrise crept through the wide mullioned windows in the front room, illuminating old-fashioned braided rugs and that monster couch with all the pillows he could learn to appreciate, should he ever have enough time to lie on it again.

Suddenly tired, he rubbed his eyes and staggered down the hall toward the kitchen. Maybe coffee would refresh his brain. He was so damned
close
. He could taste success. He just needed to unravel that one lousy knot.

A vision in white poured water into the coffee-maker as he entered the kitchen. The ironic lift of a cinnamon-colored eyebrow warned he had not encountered an angel. Feeling gritty in wrinkled jeans and torn shirt, JD ran his hand through his hair, realized it probably already stood on end, and grimaced.

“Good morning to you, too,” she said, reaching for the refrigerator door. “If this is the way you always wake up, I'll set the timer so you can have the coffee
before
I get up.”