Writ on Water (6 page)

Chloe laughed once in disbelief.

“Carpet padding!” Well, it probably made quite an effective weed barrier. Maybe she'd try it at home—buried under some conventional shredded bark, of course.

Chloe put the car back in motion and the identical, pointy-headed gnomes smiled approvingly as she resumed her trip down their seemingly endless ranks. She sincerely hoped that she was on a one-way road, as there wasn't room for two cars to pass without exchanging paint and bodywork and killing a lot of little plaster people.

Around the next bend, the river again hove into view. It was broad and sparkling in the sun like a mile of shattered glass, but pretty as it was, the water wasn't what caught Chloe's attention. Standing on the bank was a young man wielding both a fishing gaff and a net. He was stripped to the waist and tanned to nut brown. Beside him was what appeared to be a mountain of sodden purple, red and yellow bowling shoes. He looked
up at her and smiled engagingly. His teeth were crooked and badly gapped, but it was an infectious smile for all that. There was really nothing for it; Chloe had to grin back.

She had read about some of the strange things that washed up on the banks of the river. Shipping crates frequently went overboard during storms. One town had been blessed with some fifty thousand pairs of athletic shoes that had been in good enough condition to wear. Of course, the sizes were all mismatched and had to be sorted out at the town swap meet, but everyone in the environs had ended up with enough new pairs of sneakers to prevent the town's shoe store from ordering any athletic shoes for over a year. Chloe suspected that these shoes were headed for a like fate. It would be a boon—if the town had a bowling alley. She hadn't seen one on the drive in.

She looked over at a smirking gnome and shook her head. On the other hand, given the
joie de vivre
demonstrated by the locals, maybe the bowling alley wasn't necessary. Or maybe the shoes were for these barefoot gnomes—what did she know? Maybe everyone here was slightly mad.

It occurred to her that the pile of sodden footwear supplied a reasonable explanation for the plaster statuary along the drive. She wondered also if this same teen had been the one to fish out the hideous carpet padding which she was fairly certain was more recycled river wrack.

Chloe began to wonder seriously about how eccentric
her new client was. Previously, she had only been concerned with running into tomb-robbers and being polite to her boss's chum while he reminisced about women he had known. But perhaps that wasn't the greatest danger facing her.

Roland had suggested that MacGregor Patrick, while a bit of an old-style patriarch and firm about maintaining his privacy, was entirely rational and pleasant—not at all like his father, Callum Patrick, who had been fanatical about keeping his distance from outsiders, even to the point of shooting at them. Chloe had gathered that MacGregor's view of the world was a monochromatic one, but the color was rosy since he saw himself at the top of the hierarchy, God's own top-kick, and she had been given to believe he would welcome Roland's protégé into his domain with open doors, and likely open arms.

Yet, nothing had been said about the garden gnomes and there certainly hadn't been any in the one old photograph of Riverview she'd seen on Roland's wall at the office. Maybe this client had gotten weird since the last time Roland came to visit. Old age took some people that way. Chloe's Granny Claire had certainly crossed the line from being eccentric to downright nuts.

Of course, all this oddity was a far cry from the dark things Chloe subconscious had been planting in her dreams. This was quirky, not dangerous. Quirky she could live with. So it was, all in all, a relief to have finally arrived, and to put an
end to her fears of haunted mansions and ghoulish graveyards.

Chloe drove along slowly. She'd have answers to all her questions soon enough. The house couldn't be too far on. The river took another turn less than a mile away; unless there was another bridge, Riverview had to be nearby.

She kept a weathered eye out for more oddities along the trail, and soon spotted a clematis hedge that proved to be growing on a frame made up entirely of deer antlers stitched together with—what else?—Virginia creeper. It was a formidable structure, perhaps not as long as the Great Wall of China, but it would serve to keep out anything larger than a mouse unless it could fly. The gap for the gravel road was the only break Chloe could see.

Roland had mentioned that MacGregor, in addition to liking his privacy, always had an eye out for a bargain. But wasn't this taking thriftiness and privacy to ridiculous lengths? There weren't enough deer in the state to supply the antlers for the hedge—not in one man's lifetime! What had he done; gone scrounging out-of-state for cast-off horns in bankrupt steakhouses and hunters' cabins? Why would anyone want or need such a fortification around one's home anyway?

Feeling both an enlarging curiosity and a return of mild trepidation, Chloe advanced slowly through the narrow, prickly gap and found Riverview itself waiting beyond the hedge.

“Well, damn.”

It was a pleasant house, if somewhat over-wrought for modern tastes. Ornate pilasters supported baroque architraves at every door and window, and the porch was overloaded with Doric columns and sculptures. It was also just slightly too tall for its width, even considering the porte cochere that had been added on to the south side of the building sometime in the twenties. The two wings met up awkwardly, reminiscent of the masks of comedy and tragedy. Taken all together, it gave the visual impression of existing on the other side of a giant wide-angle lens.

But Chloe was too pleased with the shady trees and perfumed air to quibble with the architectural oddities. Whatever else might have been done with outer gardens that lined the drive, those closest to the house were immaculate and conventional, and pre–Civil War in their manicured magnificence. She hated to think what MacGregor Patrick paid for their upkeep.

The only anachronism she spotted, after turning off the radio and climbing out of the car, was an abandoned tractor-mower that someone had left sitting in the shade of an ancient pecan tree. It seemed plausible to her that the gardener had been turned into a garden gnome by some southern cousin of the Medusa who attacked all pedestrians and transformed them into plaster garden ornaments, but it was more likely that he was at lunch. Or perhaps taking a siesta while waiting for the heat of the day to pass. Or maybe the
mower had been abandoned by the boy at the river while he went fishing for bowling shoes. She wouldn't blame him for choosing the watery shade over the sunny lawn. It would take a truly ambitious person to tackle the remainder of the acre-plus meadow that was still unshorn while the temperatures were in the nineties and the humidity just as high.

Chloe stepped out of the car and enjoyed the old-fashioned sound of oyster shells crunching underfoot as she turned around to get a full view of the premises. She breathed deeply of the warm air that smelled of green things like honeysuckle and mown grass. On cue, the pure notes of birdsong filled the air.

“Ashley Wilkes, I've come home.”

“Yeah. It's a regular Twelve Oaks,” said a deep voice behind her. “We're short a few slaves though.”

Chloe jumped and turned around, confronting a tall, tanned chest of the male variety. It was also a very sweaty chest, and had bits of grass lodged in its red-gold curls. The man—alas—couldn't be MacGregor Patrick. He was at least three decades too young.

The missing gardener, she thought with relief, urging her heart to calm down even as she pulled her eyes up another foot to somewhere near the seventy-two inch mark where it was more polite to stare. It wasn't a complete hardship to give up on the chest, as the face was likewise very attractive,
though also sheened with sweat and adorned with grass clippings.

She couldn't guess how he had managed to sneak up on her over the oyster shells.

“I'm Rory,” he told her, head tipped to one side as he studied her face. His smile was polite, but not particularly inviting. He didn't offer his hand either, but stayed three feet back while he stared hard into her sunglasses-covered eyes.

Intuition told her that his gaze was more assessing than admiring, and the failure to offer a hand in greeting was from reserve rather than a concern with staining her clothes or offending her nostrils with his body odor. Given the level of friendliness she had encountered in town, this cool first reaction suggested that there wasn't much chance for an immediate friendship with the hired help. It also quite ruined her fantasy about southern gentleman being invariably hospitable to the gentler sex.

Of course, he wasn't a
gentleman;
he was a lower-class working stiff. MacGregor would be different. Her fantasy could remain intact.

Amused with herself and the gardener's almost rude stare, Chloe's lips twitched as she turned her body to face the man dead-on. She took off her sunglasses and returned his cool gaze. Granny Claire had taught her how to use
the eye
to good effect; the man's hazel gaze at once riveted on her own and stayed there unblinking, just as it should.

This man might be staring like a besotted idiot, but that didn't mean anything. He was just doing the same double-take everyone did when they saw her irises in daylight for the first time. She had her Granny Claire's eyes, and she knew how mesmerizing they could be when they focused, unblinking, on their target. If the gardener was normal, the next thing he would do was either make the sign of the cross, or else say was something fatuous about her gaze. It depended on whether he was more horny or superstitious.

And if he was the type who liked
Gone With the Wind
, it was likely to be a lulu of a comment.

Chloe waited a moment in ladylike silence for the gardener to speak, but as he only continued to stare, she decided to take a hand in their conversation.

“Hello. So, what do you think?” She gestured at her face.

Rory blinked. The woman's eyes were the color of blueberries with the bloom still on them. They were deep wells of southern twilight, a dark shade so near purple that he suspected they were the result of colored contacts. He peered intently, but even the bright light of day failed to show a tell-tale ring around the iris that would reassure him that their color was man-made.

Witch eyes
.

The bright light did, however, show a great deal of amusement lurking in her gaze. The dark eyelashes that fringed those amazing irises fluttered
down in broad parody of silent movie flirtation, covering her dark eyes and allowing him a momentary reprieve during which he was able to pull his own gaze away.

“Hello. So, what do you think?” she repeated conversationally. “Sparkling sapphires? Or maybe twilight in the arctic, lit by a million gleaming stars?”

“No.” He shook his head, feeling both bemused and slightly embarrassed by the accuracy of her question, which suggested that people often uttered silly platitudes when confronted with the unusual color of her eyes. “Blueberries.”

She snorted.

“Ripe blueberries,” he amplified, knowing he sounded stupid. “Or perhaps Concord grapes.”

Her lips, which he finally got around to noticing, twitched once but remained prim in spite of the laughter in her eyes.

“Well, at least that's in keeping with your profession. So, where would I find Mr. Patrick?”

“Senior, junior or collateral?”

“Uh . . . senior.”

“And your name is?” he prompted, wanting to be certain that this was the woman his father had been expecting. Nothing MacGregor had said about Roland's protégé had led him to think that she was particularly bright or so spectacularly gorgeous.

But then, his father wouldn't consider her mind to be of primary importance when he was looking
for an employee. Loyalty and references—and some degree of charm—were all that mattered to MacGregor. Her appearance would simply be a bonus, eye candy to sweeten his day.

“Chloe Smith,” she answered, handing over her keys along with her confirmation of identity. She didn't shake his hand. “Like the perfume. The one in the pretty pink box you see in all the magazines.”

“I don't wear cologne too often. Is it a nice perfume?” he asked, accepting the keys with a straight face. He decided not to mention that he wasn't the hired help or that he was familiar with both the perfume and the third century Greek story about the lovers Daphnis and Chloe.

“It's supposed to be very sweetening. You should really try it.”

“Peachy?” he asked, clinging to his agricultural theme.

“Just the box.”

“Too bad. I really like Georgia peaches,” he said, still completely deadpan.

She turned away to fetch two cases from the backseat of the car, but not before he'd seen her smile. It was slow, a tooth by tooth revelation that was halted almost as soon as it had begun.

“Allow me—,” he began, in a belated effort to show some manners.

“No, thanks.” Her face was once again under control. She wasn't the type to laugh at the locals, at least not to their faces. “But you can get the suitcase
in the trunk for me. Just leave it on the porch—no need to track all that grass inside. So, where will I find Mr. Patrick,
senior?”

“In the library. Straight through the foyer and hang a right,” Rory said.

He didn't offer to escort her, since she clearly didn't expect him to step inside the house. Covered in lawn clippings as he was, that wasn't an entirely off-base assumption on her part, he admitted, fighting off a sudden irritation at being summarily dismissed. Women usually had to make a slightly greater effort to walk away from him.

“Thanks.” She smiled fleetingly and pressed something into his hand. By the time he looked up from the five-dollar bill in his fist, Chloe Smith's shapely silhouette was disappearing through the back door. It was a nice tip and a very nice smile—and a truly exquisite walk.