April of Enchantment (Sweetly Contemporary Collection) (9 page)

She was rudely shaken out of her complacency early one morning the first week in March. When she pulled into the live-oak-lined drive, she saw Myra’s crimson sports car parked before the house, drawn onto the grass that was just beginning to show touches of tender green. Beside it was parked a carpenter’s truck with a name stenciled on the door that she did not recognize. Frowning a little, she stepped out of her compact. Her footsteps were swift as she crunched over the white gravel of the drive, mounted the steps, and entered the house.

Myra’s high-pitched tones directed her to the sitting room at the front of the house. The woman, dressed in a pair of tight-fitting black pants worn with a green silk shirt and three-inch-heeled sandals of green leather, stood before the fireplace. She was talking volubly to a man in overalls.

“We’ll tear out this marble mantel. It’s just too, too quaint and insipid. Instead, we’ll put in a brick wall with a raised hearth and glass doors over the fireplace opening. After that, we’ll take down all these silly roses and naked cherubs, and lower the ceiling to something reasonable for better acoustics. Over there on the end wall, I want to take in about four feet of the room, panel it or something, and build a storage cabinet for my stereo equipment, albums, tapes, and so on, in one end, with an arrangement for a wet bar in the other.”

“You’re going to run into problems with the plumbing on that bar, ma’am,” the man said.

“I don’t care,” Myra snapped. “Get a plumber out here to see to it.”

“Myra,” Laura said, finding her voice as she advanced into the room. “You can’t mean it! You can’t be thinking of tearing this room apart like that. It’s the most beautiful in the house!”

The other woman swung around, her red lips curving in a faintly malicious smile. “Can’t I? I told you I meant to have a game room.”

“But not here! It would be — atrocious. You can’t!”

“That’s your opinion. You just stand back and watch me.”

As Myra turned away, Laura put her hand on her green-clad sleeve. “Justin won’t like it. He’ll be furious.”

“You just leave Justin to me,” Myra said through her teeth, jerking her arm away. “Right now, he’s in Baton Rouge, and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“It will ruin the house,” Laura said desperately.

“That’s fine with me; I didn’t like it the way it was anyway.”

Laura glanced at the carpenter, standing back with his hands on his hips, watching the two of them. She looked back to Myra. “I can’t let you do this.”

“And just how do you intend to stop me?” the other woman sneered.

Without wasting time, Laura turned back to the man in overalls. “This house belongs to Justin Roman. It isn’t just any ordinary building; it’s a careful restoration of a historic landmark. Look around you. Do you honestly think that the man who owns this place is going to be happy with a game room just inside his front door like the one outlined to you?”

“I am his fiancée,” Myra declared, breaking in, “and I say he will.”

“I’m the interior designer and consultant here, and I’ve worked long and hard to see that everything is as it should be. You can take my word for it when I tell you that Mr. Roman will not pay a cent for unauthorized construction.”

“Justin doesn’t have to pay. My father —”

Laura turned on her. “Your father doesn’t own this house, and so far as I know, you have not been given power to contract additions or improvements in Justin’s name.” She swung back to the man. “You heard her say yourself that what Justin didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Doesn’t that suggest to you that she’s doing something Mr. Roman would not like, and that she knows it?”

The carpenter fingered his chin, casting a quick look at Myra. “Well, ma’am, it does look as if it would be better all around if I was to get the approval of the owner.”

“You have my approval, and that’s all you need!” Myra screamed. “You’ll do as I say, and not waste another minute about it!”

Laura took a step toward him. “If you touch anything in this room, if you alter it in any way, I can guarantee that you will be slapped with a suit for damages so quick you’ll wonder what happened.” She didn’t know that it was the truth, but it was the most effective threat she could think of at the moment.

“That isn’t so,” Myra yelled at the man. “When the work is done, I can bring Justin around. Get started now, you stupid fool! Do as I say, or I can promise you that you have just lost a job!”

The man’s face stiffened as he glared at the woman in green. “I tell you what; nobody yells at me like that. You can just take your job and do whatever you want with it, ma’am.”

Her eyes blazing with frustration, Myra watched as he leaned to pick up his tool box. “I’ll find another carpenter, and a better one than you!”

“You do that,” he said, and swinging around, marched from the room.

Myra whirled on Laura. “You think you’ve won, don’t you? But by lunchtime I’ll have another carpenter out here and working!”

“Justin may have something to say about that.”

The other woman walked to where her clutch purse lay and picked it up. When she turned, she had regained her composure. “You can call him, if you like, but do you really think he is going to take your side against me, the woman who is going to be his wife?”

“Not mine personally,” Laura answered, putting as much force as she could into the words, “but I think he will side with what’s best for Crapemyrtle.”

Myra smiled with a hard twist of the lips. “Possibly, but he won’t thank you for forcing him to choose.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Laura said with a lift of her chin. “I only care for what’s best for the house.”

“That’s always good to hear,” Myra replied. “I was beginning to think your outlook toward the man who is going to be my husband was a little too personal, that you actually thought you knew him better than I did. I couldn’t allow that, you know.”

There was no time for Laura to consider Myra’s parting shot or the look of malicious triumph that shone in her vivid green eyes. She had to get to a phone as quickly as possible. It was still early. If she could reach Justin soon enough, he could drive out and put a stop to Myra’s plans once and for all.

Laura sent her blue compact racing back toward town. At the Nichols house, she jerked to a halt, got out, slamming the door behind her, and raced up the walk. Her mother appeared from the back as she came through the door.

“What is it? What’s the matter, Laura?”

“I can’t stop now, I’ll tell you later,” she cried.

She may as well have saved her breath. It was early, all right, too early for Justin’s office to be open. With fingers that shook, she found his home number, which he had given to her in case of emergency. When she had dialed, there was no answer to the persistent ring.

Laura glanced at her watch. It was an hour yet before she could reasonably expect to reach him at his place of business. By that time, she could be over halfway to Baton Rouge. If she could see him in person, she might be better able to impress the importance of what had taken place upon him, make him understand what a hideous mistake it would be to allow his fiancée to have her way. He could not fob her off with an excuse, or plead business engagements, or worse, be deflected from speaking to her at all by a polite secretary. More important, if she could convince him to return to Crapemyrtle, she could be certain they started at once, giving them time to reach the house before lunchtime, before Myra could round up her next carpenter crew.

The decision was only half-formed in her mind when she dropped the receiver back in its cradle and swung toward the stairs.

She met her mother halfway down. The older woman reached out to catch her arm. “Laura?”

“Oh, Mom, it’s awful. Myra is trying to turn the sitting room into a game room with a wet bar. I’ve got to find Justin so he can stop her.”

Mrs. Nichols seemed to have no trouble understanding that tumbled speech. She nodded.

“I’m going into Baton Rouge, but I’ll be back by lunch.”

Her mother released her. “Be careful,” she said, but Laura, already whipping through the door, scarcely heard.

On the long drive into the city, Laura rehearsed what she meant to say, going over the words again and again to imprint them in her mind. She would be calm and rational, setting her case forth without accusing Myra, but also presenting it in such a way as to make Justin see the enormity of the crime his fiancée was going to perpetrate.

It crossed her mind that she should have changed out of her jeans and turtle-neck shirt, but she dismissed the idea. What she looked like didn’t count; this was not a social call. It was business, a bid to be allowed to do her job, a gamble to save Crapemyrtle.

She did not think that was putting it too dramatically. As far as she was concerned, to have any one of the rooms cut up and modernized in such a manner was no less a disaster than if fire was allowed to raze the antique structure.

Justin’s office was in a tall building of concrete and glass that towered into the sky. Laura took the elevator to the top and marched down the hall until she came to the suite marked with his name and corporation. He was in. The secretary-receptionist announced her and directed her to the correct door. Laura went quickly toward it and turned the knob.

A wide room paneled in cypress and carpeted in gray broadloom opened out before her. A curtained expanse of windows gave ample light. One wall held a set of antique maps in polished steel frames while the other was taken up by file cabinets and bookcases of fine, built-in cabinetry. Justin sat behind an English partner’s desk, a remote figure in a vested suit with a perfectly knotted tie at the collar of a silk shirt, its white in sharp contrast to the bronze of his face. He looked up as she entered and indicated the Sheraton chair drawn up across from him.

“Laura,” he said, registering faint surprise, “come in. Sit down and tell me what brings you up to Baton Rouge.”

Her carefully prepared speech went out of her head. She moved quickly toward him across the thick carpet. “You have got to do something before it’s too late.”

He came slowly to his feet, dropping the papers he held in his hand, his brows drawing together over his nose. “What’s the problem?”

“It’s Myra,” Laura said baldly, and launched at once into a quick sketch of what had happened.

He stared at her when she had finished, a measuring look in his dark eyes. “She wouldn’t dare.”

“She would, and she is,” Laura assured him.

“I can’t believe it.”

“I wouldn’t make up such a thing. You have to come back with me to Crapemyrtle now and call a halt to what she is doing. That is, if you want her stopped.”

“Are you sure she wants to make such a radical change?”

Laura made an impatient gesture. “I told you what she plans exactly the way I heard her describe it to a carpenter. If you can’t accept it, then come back with me and ask her yourself. Talk to her. After all, she is your fiancée!”

A grim look settled over his face. “I didn’t say I doubted your word. It’s just that I think there has been some mistake.”

“All I’m asking is that you come and see for yourself!” Laura braced her hands on his desk, leaning toward him.

His dark eyes with the gold flecks in their depths rested for an instant on her flushed face, then met the look of angry pleading in her violet gaze. “It looks,” he said slowly, “as if I’m going to have to do just that.”

They made the trip from Baton Rouge in record time. The only vehicles on the drive as they pulled up were a couple of painters’ trucks. There was no sign of Myra’s crimson sports car. Laura allowed herself a brief sigh of relief.

There were fresh tracks on the lawn, as of some big delivery truck, she noticed as she slid from her compact. Her lips tightened. She had been trying to protect the grounds and the flowers that surrounded it on all sides, but sometimes she thought it was a losing battle.

She waited for Justin, who had come to a stop behind her in his own car. Together, they entered the house, going at once to the sitting room. It was untouched, still as Laura had left it. There was no sign that Myra had returned, though it lacked only a half-hour until lunchtime.

Laura swung slowly around in the center of the room, inspecting it with her eyes, before she allowed herself to be sure. “Nothing has changed,” she said. “We are in time.”

“It looks that way,” Justin agreed.

Laura sent him a quick glance, disturbed by the neutral tone of his voice. He still didn’t believe her, or perhaps he simply didn’t want to think the woman he was engaged to, the woman he presumably loved, could be so underhanded. It was right, of course, that his loyalty should belong to her, but it was also disturbing.

Turning toward the windows, Laura said, “Myra should be back soon.”

“I hope so. I need to get back to the office.”

Laura scarcely heard his quiet words. Her attention was caught by the rumble of machinery. She glanced through the French window toward the garden, the direction from which the sound came. Her horrified gaze caught the upward flash of a great orange mechanical arm. And then she was snatching open the glass-paned door, running along the gallery, taking the path toward the rose garden.

She heard Justin call her name, but she paid no heed. Through her mind flashed Myra’s declaration that she meant to have a swimming pool, the glitter of ill-concealed triumph she had seen in the woman’s emerald eyes, and the fresh tracks of heavy machinery she had noticed on the lawn. Taken with what she had just seen and heard, they spelled just one thing.