Jude Deveraux (21 page)

She
took a deep breath. 'How angry would you be if I told you that I can't tell
you?'

'I'm
flattered that you think I have the right to be angry, but the answer is, Not
at all. Something's very wrong in your life, isn't it?'

Eden
couldn't think what to say, and besides, she wasn't sure that she wasn't being
taped.

'Does
it have something to do with the woman who was killed?'

Eden
looked down at her hands in answer.

'Long ago,
I learned the true meaning of that old cliche, that anything worth having is
worth waiting for. Whatever is to happen between us can wait until you've
solved what you need to in your life. Are those watercolors important to you?'
Brad asked.

'Yes.
Maybe. I don't know.'

He put
his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. 'I have a meeting in just
a few minutes, and Drake and I have to be there, but afterward I'll go get that
poor woman's watercolors — if that's what Hank has — and I'll take them out to
your house.'

'Couldn't
Drake handle the meeting alone?'

'Not
quite,' he said quickly, 'but don't get me started on
that.
The things
we do for old friends, right?'

Smiling,
she nodded.

'We'll
have dinner together tonight at your house, if I can invite myself, that is.'

'McBride
will be there,' Eden said heavily. His strong hands on her shoulders made her
feel like falling forward and putting her face against his chest. He was so
strongly built and looked so warm.

'Don't
break down on me,' Brad said, dipping his head down to look into her eyes.
'Whatever is wrong, we'll fix it. Okay? Will you trust me?'

All she
could do was nod. She'd held up so well since she'd been told that the FBI was
investigating her, but now she wanted to collapse against Brad and turn
everything over to him. A taken-care-of woman, she thought. A luxury she'd
never had.

Brad
slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to him. 'Come on,
let's go back to the car. I'm sure McBride is hysterical by now, since you've
been out of his sight for a whole fifteen minutes.'

In
spite of herself, Eden smiled and Brad lightened his grip on her.

'I just
want to know one thing. Is he protecting you? Is that why he's always with
you?'

She
nodded. 'But I can't — '

'I
know. I mean, I don't know, but I sense that something is wrong. Ever since the
first time I met him in the hospital, I've thought that there was something not
right about him.'

'That's
just what he says about you.'

'Does
he? Well, at least I don't sneak around women's   houses  
with   a   flashlight   and   try 
to make people think I was looking for a circuit box.'

Eden
stopped walking and looked at him in astonishment.

'Yeah,
I knew,' Brad said. 'And I think the sheriff knew too, but he said he believed
McBride. I played along with him. I was hoping that you'd come to trust me
enough to tell me what's going on.'

'I
really can't.'

'That's
okay,' he said. 'I'll find out. I'm a lawyer, remember? I always find out the
truth. And I keep to myself what I find out. I could tell you some truly ugly
secrets about people in this town.'

Eden
lifted her head. 'Such as?'

'Any
secrets I tell you, you're going to have to kiss out of me.'

'No,
no, not that! Anything but that!'

Brad
laughed, and for a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, but she looked
up and there was McBride coming across the street, and he looked furious.

'Tonight,'
Brad whispered. 'I'll be there at seven with wine, flowers, and chocolate cake.
The rest is up to you.'

He pulled
his arm from around her and went forward to meet Jared McBride.

As soon
as Eden said good-bye to Brad at the Queen Anne club-house, she felt a sense of
panic. She was to cook a meal for a man who maybe, possibly, might become part
of her life. What was she to cook? Words from Mrs. Farrington came back to her.
'Honey, don't ever try to impress a man with your cooking, especially one you
want to marry. If you spend all day in the kitchen making him the first meal
you serve him, he'll expect you to spend exactly the same amount of time on
every
meal you cook for him.'

As she
got into the car with Jared behind the wheel, she put her hands to her temples.
What would taste great but was easy to prepare? She didn't want it to seem that
she was trying too hard. 'I need to go to a grocery,' she said, and Jared
turned left.

'So
what were you and Granville talking about while I was taking pictures?' he
asked.

'We
were exchanging spy information,' she said as he pulled into the parking lot of
the Food Lion. 'Wait for me here while I get — '

She cut
off as he got out of the car to go with her. Inside, he followed her around in
silence, watching everyone who got near them while Eden shopped.

When
they got home, Eden went to the kitchen to begin   to
cook.   Her face looked as though she was trying to pass an exam that
would get her into college.

'Mind
if I ... ?' He motioned to her telephone, and she knew he was asking if he
could check her messages. That he knew her PIN number didn't surprise her at
all. He pushed buttons, listened, then hung up.

'Minnie?'
she asked.

He
raised his eyebrows in a way that made him look a bit like a trapped animal.
'Four calls.'

Eden
waited a moment to see if he was going to call Minnie back, but he didn't. He
sat on a stool on the far side of the Vermont soap-stone-topped island and
watched her moving from stove to sink to counter to refrigerator and tried to
lighten the mood. 'You've never cooked for me like that,' he said in a false
whine.

'I'm
not trying to win your heart. Here, you can chop the onions,' she said as she
pushed a cutting board, a knife, and a big Vidalia onion toward him.

'You
know, don't you, that there's been research done on this. Women complain that
men never help them in the kitchen, but studies have found that women always
dump the most odious jobs on men when they do try to help. It makes men stop
offering to help.'

She
didn't look up from the pot simmering on the stove. 'And who says our tax
dollars are unwisely spent?'

Jared
gave a little smile as he started chopping an onion.

At
exactly seven, Brad showed up at the screen door in the front, yellow and white
daisies and mums in one arm, two bottles of white wine in the other, and a
chocolate cake in a box at his feet.

'Am I
early?' he asked.

Eden
had taken a five-minute shower. She hoped she looked half as good to him as he
did to her. He had on a tan cotton short-sleeve shirt, freshly ironed trousers,
and he looked like he'd just stepped off a yacht. It was all she could do to
keep her hands off of him.

But she
knew that McBride was five feet away, so she behaved herself as he opened the
door. She took the cake, the flowers, and the wine and handed them all to
McBride. He grimaced, letting her know that he didn't like being a packhorse,
but he turned away to take the things into the kitchen.

As soon
as he was out of the room, Brad opened the screen door and reached down to pick
up something else he'd brought. 'It's a little house-warming gift,' he said,
and handed her a plant.

She
looked at the plant, rubbed a leaf with her fingertips, and smelled it, then
she looked into Brad's eyes. Slowly, she set the plant on the floor, then
looked at him. Their minds were in accord. He put his arms around her, and as
she knew they would, their bodies fit together perfectly. When his lips touched
hers it was with a pent-up desire that seemed to have been held inside her for
a lifetime. Whenever she'd kissed a man in her life, she had always been
cautious. She didn't want to lead him on, didn't want him to think that she was
going to give more than she was going to. But with Brad she didn't feel
cautious. She didn't feel tentative. She felt that this man was the one she'd
been searching for for a very long time.

She
kissed him with passion and with promise. Their lips and tongues met; their
bodies met. Perhaps it was Eden's imagination, but it seemed that their spirits
met.

She
wasn't sure what would have happened if McBride hadn't cleared his throat.

Brad
pulled his lips from hers, and reluctantly, Eden moved her head down to rest on
his shoulder. Her heart was pounding so hard that she couldn't allow her face
to be seen. Brad stroked her hair and after a few moments she was able to pull
away and look at McBride.

'Wow,'
Jared said in a falsely teasing voice. His expression looked as though he'd
like to hit Brad. 'Do you react like that to anybody who gives you a plant?'

'This
is lemon balm,' Eden said, smiling lovingly at Brad.

'Is
there something I'm missing?'

'Lemon
balm's Latin name is
Melissa officinalis.
I named my daughter after this
plant, and Brad knew it. It's just a thing between gardeners, that's all.'

'Ah,
right,' Jared said, looking from one to the other of them, then he gave a false
smile. 'Maybe we should eat while it's still hot.'

'Like
me,' Brad whispered as he followed Eden into the dining room, and again she
giggled.

During
dinner, Eden told herself that she had to stop acting like a teenager, but she
was feeling as nervous as a girl on her first date. Brad and McBride talked
about some things, but she wasn't sure what they were saying. Something about
the house down the road, the one where the woman who had been hit by the car
had lived. Eden cleared the plates after the appetizer (cold asparagus wrapped
in paper-thin ham) and brought in the bowls of vegetables (spring peas, tiny
new potatoes, itty-bitty carrots) and the roast chicken that she'd wrapped in
rosemary from her garden.

Gradually,
she was able to calm herself and began to listen to McBride and Brad and even
to make a few comments. She had to give it to McBride that he never strayed
from his job. His main concern was about the woman who had lived down the road,
and he never left the subject. He had quickly secured Brad's permission to
visit the house. To search it, she thought.

She served
Brad's cake on a tall silver pedestal cake stand that Mrs. Farrington had
loved.

'Ah,
yes,' Brad said, looking at the cake stand. 'Pulled out of the walls,' he said.

As they
ate cake (from a bakery, not homemade) and had coffee, Eden said to Brad as she
cleared the table, 'Did you bring them?'

'They're
in the car. I'll go get them.'

'Get
what?' Jared asked as soon as Brad left, and Eden told him about the
watercolors.

Jared's
face started turning red, looking as though he was about to explode. 'You've known
about these watercolors all afternoon, but you didn't tell me about them?'

'Yes, I
knew about them, and, no, I didn't tell you. Do you plan to arrest me for
withholding evidence?' She glared at him. 'So help me, if you get angry I'll
start keeping everything from you.'

'You
can't do that!'

'Oh,
no? Try me.'

Jared
glared back at her. 'If Granville knows about the watercolors, what else does
he know? And
how
does he know about the watercolors? What did you tell
him about me?'

'Don't look
at me like that. I
told
him nothing, but he's figured out a lot. He says
he knows that you're not what you say you are, and he knows that you were
snooping in my house the night I beat you up. Right now I wish I'd used a
weapon on you.'

At that
statement, Jared's face showed astonishment and disbelief, then he started to
get angry. 'If I hadn't been here, you'd be dead of snakebite by now.'

'If you
hadn't been here, I doubt very much if any snakes or men would have been inside
my house.'

'You
think I caused all this?' Jared gasped out.

'You —
' Eden began, then saw Brad.

'Did I
miss something?' Brad asked.

'Nothing
worth repeating,' Eden said, smiling coldly at McBride as Brad put the box on
the dining table.

'This
has been a great evening,' Jared said as he put himself between the box and
Brad. 'Lotta fun, but — ' He yawned hugely. 'I think it's time all of us hit
the hay. Maybe we can do this again, Granville.'

Brad
didn't move, just stood there and stared at Jared. 'I'm not leaving.'

Jared
took a step closer to him. 'I think — '

'Stop
it, both of you!' Eden said. 'You! McBride, back off. Brad knows a lot about
this and maybe he can help us.'

'Help
us with what?' Jared asked, glaring at her.

'Finding
out whatever it is that you're trying to find out,' Brad said, his lips in a
line and staring at McBride.

'I'm
not — '

'The
two of you fighting like a couple of dogs isn't going to help anything,' Eden
said. She put her body between the two men, then put her hand on Brad's chest.
'Mr. McBride believes that the woman who rented your house was murdered, that
it wasn't an accident, and he's here trying to find out who killed her and
why.' Her eyes begged Brad to accept what she was telling him and to ask no more
questions. Brad's lawyer-mind would, of course, see right away that what she
was saying made no sense. A murder investigation didn't cause the investigator
to move in with a person who'd not even been in town the same time as the
victim. And, besides, earlier Eden had admitted that McBride was protecting
Eden. From what?

Understanding,
Brad picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips. 'For you, anything.'

Behind
them, Jared rolled his eyes, then glanced at the box on the table. It seemed
that wanting to see what his friend and colleague had left behind was
overriding his common sense.

When 
the  two  men  seemed  to have silently agreed to back off,
Eden turned to the box and opened it. Slowly, she withdrew nine framed
watercolors, each nine by twelve, and put them on the table, one beside the
other.

'Hank
said he should charge me rent on them,' Brad said into the heavy silence. 'He
was going to put them in an auction this weekend.'

Jared
set the box on the floor, and the three of them looked at the paintings. They
were nice, what the English call 'chocolate box' paintings, meaning they were
like the romanticized house and garden paintings that are often seen on boxes
of chocolates. Not great art, but charming, something you could easily look at
every day and not get tired of. All the pictures were of Farrington Manor. Two
were of the exterior, and the rest were of the interior.

Standing
up straight, Brad looked at Eden. 'I did not give her or anyone else permission
to enter your house. It was kept locked, and I made sure that someone came by
here
every day
to check on the place. I didn't want pipes freezing and
not find out about it for a week.'

Eden
waved her hand to let Brad know that she wasn't concerned that the woman had
illegally entered her house. 'Maybe this is what she was doing when she was out
at two A.M. These curtains are heavy, and there are blinds under them. She
could have closed off the windows to block out enough light so that she could
have worked in here at night. The question is why?'

Brad
couldn't let go of his feeling of wrongdoing. 'The truth is that if she'd asked
for permission to paint the interiors I would have said yes. So why didn't she
ask me?'

'Maybe
she didn't trust you,' Jared said. 'You have a lot to gain with this house being
inherited by an attractive woman like Ms. Palmer.'

Turning,
her face red, Eden opened her mouth to bawl McBride out for his insinuation,
but then she heard Brad laugh.

'That's
it, Eden, I'm after your money and this old house.' He seemed to be truly amused
by what Jared was implying. He looked at Eden. 'You know, don't you, that if
either of us had any sense we'd sell our old houses and buy one of those new
brick things in Queen Anne. I could get us a real deal.'

Eden
smiled at the absurdity of the idea. 'Trade an authentic Queen Anne for a fake
one?'

Jared
grimaced as he looked from one to the other. 'All right,' he said, 'point
taken. Now, could you two get back to these watercolors? What do you see in
them? Anything different? Unusual?'

Brad
looked down at the nine pictures, but Eden looked across the table at Jared.
Was he asking for Brad's help? What was next? Would he tell Brad what was going
on?
Trust
him? Looking at McBride, Eden raised her eyebrows in
disbelief.

Understanding
her completely, Jared pointed to the paintings, as though to tell her to get
busy and stop trying to analyze things.