There were paintings he still kept in his cabin, covered and turned toward the wall so that if he and Jillian spent a night there, she wouldn’t peek. He worked on them only when he was alone. One was of a gardener wearing calf-high rubber boots, gardening gloves and a wide-brimmed straw hat—and that was all. She was turned to the side; only the lower half of her face was visible, the strong line of her jaw and her beautiful, plump, pink lips in a secret smile. Also visible was a side view of her nude body—the soft curve of her breast, the round arc of her perfect butt, her long, elegant legs, graceful arms and delicious shoulder. It was Jilly as he pictured her.
That painting’s twin was the nude gardener crouched between rows of plants, small spade in hand, grooming. No one but Colin would know how perfectly each of those curves fit into his big hands, how soft that velvet skin felt against his rougher skin, how much pleasure those exquisite lips brought him.
She had become the answer to prayers he hadn’t known he whispered.
After an afternoon of perfect light, Colin cleaned up his brushes, put away his paints and washed up in the upstairs bathroom. He heard a scraping sound from the room right below him and was still drying his hands on a small towel when he walked into the maid’s quarters. He found Jillian had pushed the bed away from the wall and was measuring the size of the room.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
She turned toward him with her eyes glowing. “I’ve had an offer on my town house. I’m accepting it. I asked the Realtor to hire a moving crew to pack up all my things and deliver them to me here. It’s either store them here where I live and have plenty of space, or rent a storage facility. I don’t have that much—my town house is pretty small. So—we’re going to make a change—this bed will go upstairs and I’m going to put my desk, credenza and shelves in here. This will be my office. What do you think?”
Colin tilted his head and frowned slightly. “Don’t you want to go back there to close up your house? Pack up your own stuff? See your friends again? Because I could help manage the garden with Denny if you need to be away.”
“I’m not even going back to close on the sale. Until I got settled in here, I didn’t even realize how little that town house meant to me. It was no more than a crash pad. I spent all my time at work. If I end up going back there, I’m going to find something different.”
“You must have friends from work you miss,” he said.
She drew a deep breath and sat on the edge of the bed. “I think maybe I’m ready to tell you about it. About him. About what happened to me.”
Colin sat down beside her. “Only if you want to.”
“I want to. It’s become kind of blurry and surreal in my mind—I still can’t believe it really happened.
“He was a man on a mission. And he was relentless….” Twenty minutes later Jillian had shared with Colin many of the details about her relationship with Kurt, telling the story with brutal honesty.
“You must have been at least flattered if you were going to break rules,” Colin said, pulling her closer to him.
She laughed. “Truthfully, I had promoted him because we lost a director in my department and Kurt had come with glowing letters of recommendation. I was watching him closely to see how he was holding up with his added responsibilities. He was watching me closely for other reasons. I began to get the attraction message from him and he was…”
“Tempting you…”
“I was very busy with work. I didn’t have a lot of time for socializing. But, I began to see him away from work and I knew these were not just a couple of colleagues talking business over dinner. I knew what his intentions were. I warned him that it was not a good idea, but after a few months, after he continually made the excuse that we both spent so much time at work, neither of us had anyone to date and next thing I knew, I was sleeping with him and worrying about keeping it a secret from the boss.” She laughed bitterly. “The boss, Harry, who was my best friend in the company. Six months after I met Kurt and one month after I first was intimate with him, he accused me of sexual harassment. He had a lawyer, witnesses, a complicated log of events that I couldn’t exactly refute, text messages and emails that could certainly be construed as exploitive if it weren’t for the simple fact that he’d approached me, worked very hard to seduce me and it was completely consensual. In fact, when you get down to it, he put the pressure on me! I was very reluctant! He had set me up from the beginning—he forced me out of my job and part of the settlement he asked for to keep us all out of court was to take over my position and he wanted me terminated.”
“Did you fight?”
She shook her head. “We talked about fighting it, me and Harry. We both knew it was all trumped up. But in the end Harry pulled my fat out of the fire. He told me to resign, but that he was going to replace me with a consultant and would consider my resignation a leave of absence. He gave Kurt vested stock options—probably worth a lot of money, but going to court might have cost more. But Harry got a confidentiality agreement, which both Kurt and I signed, and a waiver—that would be the end of the complaint. No further suit. This was critical—I wouldn’t have my reputation damaged by these phony accusations. I still have a good reputation in the industry.” She fell back on the bed and looked up at him. She shook her head. “I can’t believe I was so naive. So unprepared.”
Colin reclined beside her, his elbow braced on the bed, his head balanced on his hand. “You never suspected?”
“Not for a second,” she said. “He was cute and charming, but so wily. It never would have occurred to me that he was both lazy and predatory. He even walked me into a jewelry store once and got me looking at rings. Not that I was ready to be so serious, just a casual, fun thing. Know how I found out the truth? I walked into the boss’s office for a meeting and Kurt was sitting there wearing a perfect, pathetic hangdog look—the poor victim. I was stunned. I could barely breathe.”
She sat up, cross-legged on the bed, facing him. “I was devastated. Not only was I shattered that this man would betray me like that, I’d lost my real true love—the company I’d helped found and build.”
“And tell me this—how could your mentor, your best friend, let that happen to you?”
“Because he didn’t know. In retrospect, I should have confided in Harry immediately.” She shook her head. “I didn’t want my friend and mentor involved in my love life. In the end, he had to rescue me as best he could.
“When this accusation hit the fan, everything changed. I wanted to fight it out, but Harry saw it otherwise. I can see now that he made sense. When it was all over I left BSS, got in my car and drove. I came up here to get away, to rest and think. I didn’t know I was going to discover the garden. That was an accident.”
“And what did he get?” Colin asked, reaching out and running a finger around her ear, along her jaw.
“Well, not everything he wanted. He got his vested options and will make some money, but he didn’t get my job. But, there wasn’t a going-away party for me. That tells me he wasn’t as confidential as he was supposed to be and leaked the whole thing. And that he’d charmed more people than just me.”
“Bastard,” Colin grumbled.
“So in answer to that first question—are there friends there? There are several I’d work with again and a few I’d consider friends, but to be completely frank I actually didn’t have many close friends in San Jose—probably because I spent most of the past ten years simply working. Believe me, I won’t make that mistake again.”
Colin’s jaw pulsed briefly and she put her palm against it. “Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t feel sorry for me.”
He gave a short laugh. “Sorry for you? God, no! Angry for you, yes!”
“But here I am and in truth, Colin, I’ve never felt better about anything. I’m the CEO of the backyard garden and it feels real good. No one’s getting the better of me here. Well, the frost or aphids might—but I’m on top of it!” She smiled at him.
“Ji
lly, do you feel safe and in control now? With the garden? And with me?”
She leaned toward him for a kiss. “Yes. And you don’t have to be angry for me, either. I’ve got that covered.”
Jillian never even suggested that Colin keep her most personal information secret. She knew she didn’t have to. One thing he did ask her was, “Have you talked to Harry since you left?” When she said there had just been a few emails between them, he said, “He was on your side, Jilly. I know you didn’t think you got what you needed at the time, but it sounds like he did the best he could for a trusted friend—the most important thing was, he believed you.”
She realized she’d been avoiding Harry because she didn’t want to show her weakness by asking how Kurt was doing. There was a tiny part of her that was afraid he was thriving.
She knew how to work her way around office gossip. Too bad she hadn’t thought that so necessary when she was seeing Kurt! But no way was she going to have anyone pass around the news that Jillian Matlock had called the CEO! She didn’t call his office; from the widow’s walk, she dialed up Harry’s cell phone from her cell phone. Her name would come up on his caller ID.
“So—you’re not dead?” he answered gruffly.
She laughed before she said hello. “I am very much alive and sitting on the top of a three-story, ninety-year-old Victorian house, on the widow’s walk, in the middle of a forest, because I have good reception up here. The view over the forest and farms is awesome. How are you, Harry?”
“I’m grumpy. I’m told I need a knee replacement. My wife has me on a diet for my cholesterol. She wants to go on a month-long cruise. I don’t think I could survive something like that. I want to send her on the cruise with her sister and go to Pebble Beach for three days. Think she’ll buy that?”
She laughed at him; he adored his wife. “You’d be better off on a ship with your bad knee. Besides, you could use a vacation,” she said.
“I could use a knee replacement, too, but who has time? Seriously, I don’t think I can be trapped on a boat for a month. I might throw myself overboard. Jillian, how the hell are you?”
“I’m better than I’ve been in a long while, Harry. You’ll never guess what I’m doing. I’ve started a very special garden….”
“Oh, God, please make this interesting soon, before I nod off….”
So she gave him the bullet points—she had started growing specialty, hard-to-find fruits and vegetables, the exotic kind that garnished meals at fancy restaurants, not something just any gardener could do.
“You going to grow in summer, read sex novels in winter?” he asked.
“You told me to relax and think. Some people go on cruises, some play golf even with a bad knee, some people go to the lake or the beach for the summer. Some even sky-dive for fun! And me? I’m going to spend the summer in the garden. And I’m not only relaxed, I’m having a blast! If I’m still here after September, I might buy smudge pots and experiment with a winter crop. I’m planting a lot of stuff right now just to see what works, what’s strong, what’s weak. I’ll have an idea what’s possible by late summer. I might end up with a wide variety or just a few special items. Then I’ll have to decide why I’m doing this.”
“Organic? What about bugs and worms?”
“Harry, you know about gardening?”
“Not a damn thing. These seem like obvious questions.”
She had to chuckle. This was how he’d gotten so far—he knew a little bit about a lot of things and a lot about a few things. Brilliant man. “I’m doing a lot of research and, so far, things are going well. We’re even making our own mulch now….”
“We?”
“I hired a hand. And I sold my town house—my goods will be delivered soon. I’m putting a little money into the garden. Call it research and development, but this is actually a low-cost operation.”
When she paused, so did he. The silence stretched out. Finally, in his gruff voice he said, “You sound good, Jill.”
“I am good, Harry. Is BSS doing all right?”
“All right. Stock’s up. Board’s a pain in my ass. One software product fuckup and recall but that’s only one of our many products and we can afford to eat it.” Another silence. “He’s not here anymore, Jill.”
“I didn’t ask,” she said.
“He’s—”
“I’d like it on the record that I didn’t ask,” she said emphatically.
“He couldn’t take the heat. He knew he was up against an enemy in me. Plus there was the incidental fact that he’s completely incompetent. I gave him a sterling recommendation to help him out of here—the only thing that could have made it sweeter is if it had been to one of our competitors. He skipped, got a title and a pay raise. And is blessedly gone.”
She actually dropped her chin and rubbed her temples. “I’m sorry. Feeling completely stupid once more.”
“Aw, give yourself a break. He probably drugged your herbal tea or some damn thing. I told you, Jill—you gotta have a little balance in your life. Work hard but have some good times. Drink a few martinis here and there, have men in your life sometimes so you don’t run the risk of getting lonesome, so the wrong one can’t come along and trip you up.”
“No chance of that up here,” she said.
“Well, he’s gone and we both know he’s not gonna make it. He’s gonna fall so hard he’ll leave a very big hole where he lands…. And you’re happy—just do the happy dance and come to see us. Come to the house, have a big meal, tell us about the gardens….”
“You’ll be on a cruise,” she said, feeling a little emotional. “Or off carbs…”
“Seriously, you’re ready for your own company. You always have been. I started my first when I was twenty-eight. Didn’t go that well, but I was ready and the experience was good for me. You should try it. Now’s the time.”
“For right now, it’s time to garden. It’s the strangest thing—it makes me feel…I don’t know…like I’m really part of something that never stops. Year after year, the cycle of life kind of thing. In a perfect world I’d work six months a year and garden from spring to fall. Could you get into that, Harry? Put me to work from October to April?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me if you made a business out of it. I always expected you to start your own company. I didn’t think you’d do tomatoes, but what the hell, huh? There’s money all over this world—you just have to have a nose for it. Those tomatoes smell like money, Jillian?”
She laughed through the feeling of tears that had gathered in her throat. “Sometimes they do.”
“Hah! I knew it! When they’re ripe, send me some, will you?”
“Sure.”
“And Jill? There’s one more thing and I am absolutely not supposed to discuss this. A couple of the women from Corporate Communications who stood as witnesses in his case came to me—they realized their mistake, realized they’d been had and tricked into believing you exploited him. They now have guilt. They see the light and know they were used. They’re sorry.”
“Tell them to go to hell,” she said, bitter.
He laughed so loud and hard it triggered a coughing fit. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, I couldn’t say it, but I thought it. Too little too late, huh?”
“How can I be such a hard-ass,” she amended. “He tricked me, after all.”
“Let him go. He’s so over, the body is getting cold. Hey, if you don’t come down here, I might come up there, see what you got.”
“You’ll be on a cruise.”
“We could compromise,” he said. “Three-day cruise, three-day trip to the veggie farm, three days at Pebble Beach. You know what, Matlock? I miss the hell out of you. It was time for you to take on the world, but that doesn’t make it easy.”
“I love you, Harry.”
“Yeah, yeah… Every broad I ever gave a few million to has said that.”
She laughed into the phone.
“Godspeed, kid,” he said.
“God bless, Harry,??
? she said.
Jillian’s town house had been a small two bedroom—around sixteen hundred square feet. Perfect for one single woman. Therefore it hadn’t held a lot of furniture. Denny helped her move the bed Colin had purchased out of the maid’s quarters to one of the second-floor bedrooms. When her furniture arrived, the office furniture that had been in her second bedroom went into the maid’s quarters. She moved her computer and recliner from the kitchen into that room.
Her living room sectional went into the sunroom along with her big flat screen, bookcases and side tables and there was still more than enough room for Colin to paint. It became the most wonderful room—a den and studio all in one. She had come to love the smell of his paints.
Jillian put both leaves in her dining room table to make it longer and it still didn’t overpower the eating area of the roomy kitchen. Her patio furniture—table, chairs, two chaise lounges—went on the back porch. Her bedroom furniture went into the largest second-floor bedroom.
She bought herself a hanging rack for clothes and filled her bedroom bureau drawers. The rack went into the third empty bedroom on the second floor, which served as one big closet. The problem with these old Victorian’s—no closets. Whoever moved into this place permanently would have to invest in wardrobes.
Certain parts of the Victorian took on a look of peaceful domesticity. Colin and Jill were rarely apart and never spent a night away from each other. Colin still liked to prowl around for wildlife shots and he enjoyed painting on hilltops for a few hours here and there, but daily life saw them mostly together. In evenings, while Jill sat in the office and read the gardening blogs on the computer, Colin sat in the recliner in the same room, reading or surfing art and galleries on his laptop. Jill invited him to use her computer anytime he wished to and before long his laptop and color printer appeared to have found a permanent home in the office.