“Thank you for everything,” she said. “I really enjoyed it.”
“Yeah,” he said as he went down the steps. “Me too.”
Jocelyn closed the door and leaned against it. What in the world was wrong with her? She’d had a very romantic date with the man, the one Miss Edi said was to be the love of her life. But somehow, she’d ruined it. She didn’t know how, but she had. Of course her lame jokes about marriage didn’t help. It’s a wonder he didn’t run out the door. What was it he’d said on the phone? That the last time a woman talked to him about marriage they’d had to call an ambulance.
She looked at her watch. It was only nine-thirty. So much for her “date.” In spite of the early hour, she yawned. Maybe the problem was that she was exhausted. Meeting new people, seeing the house, having a date all in one day was too much for anyone.
She left the dirty dishes on the table, flipped the switch to turn out the awful kitchen lights, then started toward the stairs to go to bed. It was when she passed the back door and heard it click that her heart leaped into her throat. Someone was at the door! And he was trying to break in!
Jocelyn’s mind raced as she tried to remember where her cell phone was. Upstairs. Or was it downstairs? She couldn’t remember. Had a landline been hooked up? In the busyness of the day, she’d never even looked for a telephone.
Someone pulled on the door, and she plastered herself against the wall, her heart beating hard. Bending, she moved under the window by the door so the intruder couldn’t see her as she crawled past. If she could get to the front door before he did, she could get out.
As she got past the door, she saw a shadow, then the moonlight showed her a figure. He was big. He had dark hair. He…
She stood up straight. It was Ramsey. He must have forgotten something. She grabbed the doorknob and pulled it inward—and came face-to-face with Luke.
“What are you doing?”
He looked more surprised to see her than she did him. “Checking the doors,” he said. “I thought you might forget to lock them, so I—”
“Sara leaves her door unlocked. I thought this was one of those towns where no one locks their doors.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” he said, then took a step back. “Look, I’m sorry. There weren’t any lights on, so I thought you’d gone to bed.”
“Were you watching the house?”
“That’s what I do,” he said. “That’s my job, remember? Weren’t you told about me? Or are you still mad about the mustard?”
She dropped her hostility. “No, I know that was an accident. Would you like to come in and have some tea?”
“With you and Ramsey?”
“Like you don’t know that he left ten minutes ago,” she said.
He gave her a crooked smile, then stepped inside. The quilt and the candlesticks were still on the floor, along with the chocolate pot and some strawberries. “So did you kick him out?”
“No, I did not kick him out. He had to go home to work.”
Bending over, he ran his finger inside the still warm pot, then put his chocolate-covered finger in his mouth. “That makes sense. I guess that’s why he went to Tess after he left you.”
Joce stopped walking and turned to look at him. He had the pot in his hands and was running a strawberry through it. “He did what?”
“Went to see his assistant, Tess. She lives next door. She runs his life.”
“I’ve already been told that. But he’s there now?”
“Sure,” Luke said, raising his eyes to hers. “Who told you about Tess? Not Rams, that’s for sure.”
“What does that mean?” She started for the kitchen again. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder, “and bring that if you want.”
“Thanks,” he said as he followed her, the cord to the pot dragging across the floor. “I thought that maybe tomorrow you and I could talk about what you want to do with the garden.”
“I don’t know anything about gardening.” She was opening cabinet doors, looking for a teapot or tea bags, something.
“This tea is too much trouble for you. Really, I didn’t mean to bother you. I’ll get something to eat on the way home. They have a few fast-food places over in Williamsburg. Off the highway. It’s not too far away. Couple of hours, that’s all.”
She couldn’t help laughing. “All right, sit down,” she said, and he did. She took the container of leftover pasta out of the old refrigerator and stuck it in an ancient microwave.
“What makes you think that Rams didn’t tell me about his secretary?” She tried to seem as though she didn’t care, and she used his nickname to sound closer to him.
“I take it you haven’t met Tess,” Luke said as he got up, went to the cabinets, then reached over her head to get a plate. He took a knife and fork out of a drawer.
Jocelyn hadn’t looked in the cabinets, so she didn’t know where anything was. “No, I haven’t met her, but I’ve heard about her.”
“From Sara? She tell you about the red dress?”
“What is it with this woman and a low-cut, red dress?” Joce asked as she opened the microwave.
“Sure you want to hear?”
“I’m all grown up. I think I can stand it. What happened with the secretary and a dress?”
Luke took the bowl of pasta from her, dumped it on the plate, and put it on the table. “Want some?”
“No, thank you. I ate earlier. With Ramsey, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. You were together such a short time that I nearly forgot about that date. It was a date, wasn’t it?”
Joce didn’t bother to answer him but poured some wine into a glass and took a sip. “Sorry, but that’s the last of it,” she said, but her tone let Luke know she wasn’t sorry at all. What was it about this man that put her in the worst possible mood? Or was her mood caused by the fact that Ramsey had made her think they were on the way to becoming an item, then he’d gone next door to another woman?
Luke got up, opened the refrigerator, and got out a beer.
“You certainly have made yourself at home in my house.”
“I’m here a lot, so you better get used to me.” He tasted the pasta. “This is pretty good. Did Rams make it? He always was a good cook. He can even make worm pies. You should get him to tell you about them.”
“Before or after you tell me about the red dress?”
“Oh, that,” Luke said, his mouth full. “Tess doesn’t take well to being given orders. The way she sees it, she does her job and that’s all that’s required of her. Anything else is her own business.”
“Don’t we all feel that way?” Joce asked. She sat down in a chair across from him.
“Not to the extent Tess does, but Rams always was a bit of what we call down here persnickety.”
“I see,” Jocelyn said with a cool smile. “He can cook and now he’s persnickety. What will you tell me next? He used to be a female?”
“Not that I know of,” Luke said innocently. “Did he tell you he wanted to be? I hear there are some really good clinics for that kind of thing nowadays. Not that I know anything about them, but I bet ol’ Rams knows a lot.”
Joce couldn’t keep from laughing. “You’re horrible. Just tell me the story.”
Luke ate a few more bites, then said, “It was simple really. Rams told Tess he didn’t like what she was wearing.”
“She didn’t take it off, did she?”
“Is that what the secretaries do in law offices in Florida? If so, I’m in the wrong state.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“No, she didn’t remove anything. It was just after she started working at MAW. That’s—”
“I know what it is. Go on.”
“You certainly have picked up on a lot around here. So, anyway, Tess had only been there about six weeks, but already she’d straightened out the whole office. She’d fired two secretaries and made the two she kept actually work. It was a true revelation to my cousin Rams. A woman who did some work to earn
what she was paid.”
“Does he know you talk about him like this?”
“Did he tell you about me?”
“I am happy to say that we never spoke a single word about you all night.”
“Hour and a half.” Luke waved his fork around. “I mean, technically speaking, it wasn’t really a whole night. It was just an hour and a half. Pretty short date, wasn’t it? Now if it had been me taking a woman out—”
“Yeah, I know. You would have made love on the blue corn chips. Get on with the story about Ramsey.”
“To make love on a bed of blue corn chips. Now, there’s something I haven’t tried. Do you know about this from experience?”
“My experience is none of your business. What did Ramsey do?”
“He didn’t do anything. He’s more of a talker than a doer. Now me…Okay, stop looking at me like that. Anyway, all the men in the office were pleased with Tess in every way. I mean, she’s smart and sassy, and did whoever told you about her tell you that she’s drop-dead gorgeous?”
“No,” Jocelyn said but didn’t elaborate.
“She is. A real knockout. Sometimes when she walks across the lawn I have to shut off the mower and just sit there and watch her. But, anyway, Rams wasn’t happy with what he had. As usual with him, he wanted more. Always more. He called her into his office for what he said was an ‘evaluation’ and told her that her work was excellent, but he wasn’t too pleased with what she wore. He didn’t like her jeans and shirt and he hated the cowboy boots. He told her that he wanted her to start wearing dresses to work. No more trousers.”
Jocelyn leaned back in the chair, her eyes wide. “What in the world did she do?”
“Wore a dress. Any more of that garlic bread left?”
Jocelyn got up and handed him the basket. “Sara said ‘low-cut’ and you said ‘red.’ So what was the dress like?”
“I wasn’t in town that day so I didn’t get to see it, but…Hang on a minute.” He leaned back in his chair and pulled his cell phone out of the little case on his hip. “I have to keep this with me at all times because I’m a volunteer with the fire department.” He pushed a few buttons. “Ah, here it is. This is what my cousin Ken sent me. He’s the W in MAW.”
Jocelyn took the phone and looked at the photo. It was of a woman in a red dress, except that there was very little to the garment. It was shorter than the Steps’ shortest, and the sides were open to the waist, as was the front. The woman’s face was turned away so she couldn’t see it, but her long, auburn hair fell in fat curls past her shoulders. And her body was magnificent.
“I see,” Joce said as she handed the phone back to him.
“Yeah, that’s what everyone said that day. ‘I see.’ The worst thing is that Rams had some of those blue bloods coming in from Williamsburg that day, and they saw Tess in her dress. But Ken said they took it pretty well. When their mouths hung open, Tess told them that Ramsey didn’t like her usual attire, so he’d told her to wear a dress and she did. After that, Rams was the butt of a lot of jokes.”
“And now I guess Tess wears whatever she wants to.”
“Tess does what she wants to do, and no one ever even makes a suggestion that she should do otherwise.”
“And that’s where Ramsey went after he left me.”
“He usually does,” Luke said. He held up the cord to the chocolate pot. “You wouldn’t mind plugging this in, would you?”
She looked for an outlet, but when she couldn’t find one, he got an extension cord out of a drawer and plugged it into the overhead light. The dangling cord was ugly, but it worked.
“Join me?” he asked as he dipped a strawberry into the chocolate, but she shook her head no. She wondered what Ramsey was doing next door.
“Thinking about ol’ Rams?” Luke asked. When she didn’t answer, he said, “So what’s the deal with you and my cousin? Are you one of those women who’s set her cap for him and you plan to be Mrs. McDowell by the end of the year?”
“No, I haven’t ‘set my cap’ for him. What an old-fashioned phrase. Have you finished those strawberries yet? It’s late, and I’d like to go to bed. I’m going to church tomorrow.”
“Rams picking you up?”
Suddenly, Jocelyn didn’t like what was going on. She didn’t want to walk into church tomorrow and have people looking at her as though they knew she’d had visits from two men in one night. More important, she didn’t want to become embroiled in whatever was going on between these two cousins. It was obvious that Luke’s only interest in her was Ramsey’s attention.
“You know, I think I’ve said more than enough about my personal life. I think that if you continue to work here, you and I should get some things straight. From now on, I’ll check my own locks, so you don’t have to skulk around my house late at night.”
“This is late to you?”
She ignored his question. “Second, I’d like you to keep your nose out of my life. This is a small town and if you and I start…” She waved her hand to the whole scene of the two of them in her almost-dark kitchen. “I just don’t think it’s good for this to happen again.”
“Sure,” he said as he swung his long legs out of the chair. “Sorry to have bothered you.”
Jocelyn hadn’t meant to be so cold, and she certainly didn’t want to alienate someone who worked for her, someone she was going to see daily, but at the same time she thought it was better to not start any gossip.
She followed him to the back door, ready to lock it after he left. He paused on the doorstep.
“Tell me, Miss Minton,” he said formally, “you had a date with my cousin tonight, but I wonder what you would say if I asked you out.”
She took a step farther back into the house. “Luke, you seem like a nice man, and from what little I saw of the garden, you do good work, but I don’t think that you and I…Well, I mean…We’re not…”
“I understand,” he said, then tugged on the front lock of his hair and bent his head to her in an old-fashioned, subservient way. “Good night, Miss Minton,” he said, then went down the stairs and disappeared into the night.
Jocelyn shut the door, locked it, then leaned against it. What a day! she thought. Too much, too fast.
She went up the stairs to her bedroom and once again smiled at the clean bed. Tomorrow at church she’d have to find out who’d made this welcome for her and thank them.
She tried to keep herself from doing it, but she looked out the window to the driveway below. Ramsey’s car was still there, so he was still with Tess. The drop-dead gorgeous Tess.
Jocelyn washed her face, slathered on moisturizer, put on her nightgown, and climbed into bed. Her first thought was of Luke. She wasn’t naive enough not to know that everything he’d done tonight was one of those male competitions over a female. Luke made her feel like a female deer, with two rutting stags fighting over her. From what she could piece together, Ramsey and Luke had been competing over everything their entire lives.
So now she was the new trophy. Brand-new in town, knew nothing and no one, new owner of the “big house.” Yes sirree Bob, she was the prize to beat all prizes.
She knew Luke was part of the contest, but the question was whether Ramsey was or not. Of the two men, she certainly liked Ramsey better. He’d gone to a great deal of trouble to prepare a meal for her and create a romantic setting in her barren, lonely house.
On the other hand, Luke had lied about locks needing to be checked so he could gain entry into her house late at night. Then he’d pretty much helped himself to the meal Ramsey had prepared.
As far as she could tell, Ramsey was a giver and Luke a taker.
All in all, as she started to go to sleep, she thought about what Luke had said as he was leaving. Not that Luke had seriously asked her out. She had a vision of him in a bar, laughing with his fifty or so other cousins about how he’d taken Ramsey’s girl away from him. “Ol’ Rams didn’t even see me coming,” she could almost hear him say. “I just swooped in an
d stole her right from under Rams’s nose.”
The vision was so unsettling that she hit the pillows with her fist and stared up at the ceiling. If Ramsey “won” her, would he do the same thing at a cocktail party? She could see Ramsey at a country club, raising his glass of single malt as he said to a group of men, “And here’s to yet again trumping my cousin.”
When Joce heard Ramsey’s car start, then drive away, she thought, And there’s another problem. This Tess sounded much too close to Ramsey for her liking. Tonight when Luke showed her Tess’s photo Jocelyn had felt downright jealous. Jealous! What a truly absurd emotion. Jealous of what? A man she’d met just that night? A man who may or may not have been using her in some stupid contest with his cousin?
When the car was gone, Joce felt her body relax—and that made her even more angry. She’d been tense because a man she’d just met had been in the apartment of another woman?
Okay, Jocelyn, she told herself, you need to get a life. Before you even so much as think about a man, you need to get a life.
The room was quiet and she eventually drifted off to sleep.
5
I BLEW IT,” RAMSEY said as soon as Tess opened her door. “I nearly killed myself to make a good first impression, but I blew it. She made jokes and I just sat there and stared at her. It was like I didn’t even know what she was saying.”
“I’m charging you for this,” Tess said. “Time and a half.”
“Whatever,” he said as he sat down in the big chair in her living room. “Wine, chocolate-covered strawberries. I did it all because I really wanted to make her think…I don’t know what I hoped to accomplish, but I didn’t pull it off.”
“You wanted to make her think that even though you live in this two-bit hick town you are a man of the world. So who got the whole thing together for you?”
“My mom and Viv.” He looked up at her. “What makes you think I didn’t do it myself?”
“You can barely feed yourself. Did you make that pasta thing for her?”
“Sure. What else was I going to make? It’s the only thing I know how to cook.” He looked back at her again. “What the hell do you have on?”