Lavender Morning (12 page)
Authors: Jude Deveraux
Tags: #Contemporary, #General, #Romance, #Inheritance and succession, #Large Type Books, #Self-actualization (Psychology), #Fiction, #Love Stories
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 oldfashioned, 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.
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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 and 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?”
“What I sleep in,” Tess said, glancing down at her white silk nightgown with the matching lace-trimmed
robe.
“Well, put some clothes on.”
“If I’m turning you on and it’s too much for you, then I suggest you never again barge into my place in the
middle of the night.”
“Am I going to be billed extra for getting turned on?” Ramsey asked sullenly.
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“No, but that’s a thought.”
“You have anything to drink?”
“Lots,” she said, “but you’re not getting any. You have to drive home, remember? Besides, I’m expecting
company later.”
“Who?” he shot at her.
“One of your cousins.”
“So help me, if it’s Luke, I’ll—”
“What?” she asked. “Forbid me to see him? Luke is better looking than you and he isn’t developing a spare
tire around his middle from sitting at a desk all day. And I’m beginning to think he’s smarter than you are.”
Ramsey just stared at the floor. “So marry him. I wish you would.” He paused. “I like this woman.”
“Which one?” Tess asked as she sat down across from him. She had a whiskey in her hand, and she sipped
it while she looked at him.
“You know which one,” he said. “Jocelyn. Miss Edi’s protégée.”
“Ah, that one. Is it her or her house you like? It would certainly look good to the men in Colonial
Williamsburg if you lived in a house that looked like a Founding Father built it. They might even give you more of
their legal work. It would mean more money for you.”
“You can be really funny sometimes. Ha ha. I’m laughing my head off.” He got up and went to the cabinet
on the far wall. “Don’t say anything, I’m just having some tonic water. You have any ice?”
“You know where the kitchen is.”
“You certainly know how to make a man feel welcome.”
“If he’s invited, I do,” she called after him as he disappeared into her kitchen.
Moments later, he reappeared with a bowl full of ice. “I hate your kitchen,” he said. “It’s worse than
Sara’s. Worse than Joce’s.”
“So put in a new one for me,” she said, brushing her long hair out of her eyes.
“And what? Write it off on expenses? Maybe if you were my mistress…” He looked at her over his drink.
He’d never before seen her in her nightclothes and she was better looking than usual—if that was possible. Her
almond eyes were heavily darkened and her lips reddened.
“You keep looking at me like that and I’ll throw you out. In fact, why don’t you go home right now?”
Ramsey sat back down in the chair and looked away from her. “I know her.”
“What?”
“I know her. Jocelyn. I never told anybody this, but Granddad used to let me read the letters he and Miss
Edi exchanged.”
“Wasn’t there one of those Southern feuds or secrets or some such rubbish involved with your mother and
the rest of them?”
“My mother came from Oregon,” Ramsey said. “And, no, there was no feud concerning my parents’
generation. Whatever happened involved my grandparents. As always with you, you have things in this town
mixed up.”
“I’m charging you an extra hour for that remark. So what’s the problem? And remember, the clock is
ticking. You read some old letters, then what?”
“Miss Edi was a consummate letter writer. I think she corresponded with people all over the world, and my
grandfather was one of them. He visited her several times, and I think my grandmother was a bit jealous. She
said he used any excuse he could come up with to fly down to Florida and spend a few days with Miss Edi.”
“And?” Tess said quickly. “Could you please hurry up with this story? I told you, I have a date.”
“It’s ten o’clock at night, everything is closed, and, besides, you’re in your nightgown. For what reason
could you be meeting—” He paused, his eyes wide. “Oh.”
“You know, I think you should sit down with your sister and let her tell you how babies are made. Or at
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least how people practice to make them.”
“I’m trying to tell you something that’s important to me, something I’ve never told anyone else, and you’re
making fun of me.”
“Did I
ask
you to come over here at night and tell me all about your bad date with little Miss Prim and
Proper?”
“Did you meet her?”
“No, but I saw her, and Luke told me about her.”
“Is he who you’re waiting for?”
“I’m waiting for the local high school football team.”
“You know, Tess, you could use a little of Jocelyn’s ladylike manners.”
“If I had them, I wouldn’t have let you in here tonight to bellyache about your new girlfriend.”
“That’s the problem! She isn’t my girlfriend, and if I don’t do something better than what I did tonight, she
never will be.”
Tess refilled her glass, then sat back down across from him. “I take it that I can’t get rid of you until you cry
enough in your beer to get it all out.”
“Beer? That’s a good idea. You have any?”
“Luke keeps a six-pack in my refrigerator.”
Ramsey raised his hands as though in frustration, then got up and went to the kitchen. When he didn’t come
back to the living room, she went to him.
“What are you doing in my refrigerator? There’s nothing in there for you to eat.”
“You have eggs.”
“Only because Sara gave them to me. They have blue shells,” she added in wonder.
“Ameraucanas.”
“What?”
“Ameraucanas are the breed of chickens Sara’s family raises, and they lay blue and green eggs,” Ramsey
said patiently as he took the bowl of eggs from the refrigerator and a container of butter. It was labeled SHAW
FARMS, as was the loaf of bread. “I’m starving. Want some toast and scrambled eggs?”
“I thought you could only cook that pasta dish of yours.”
“I don’t think scrambled eggs count as cooking.”
“If I could scramble an egg I’d go on TV as a cook.”
Ramsey glanced at her as he pulled a skillet from a cabinet. Last Christmas he’d bought her a complete set
of pots and pans. A month later, when she still hadn’t opened them, he took them out, washed them, and put
them away. Whereas the other men in the office gave Tess gifts of considerable value in gratitude for all she did
for them, Ramsey gave her things he knew she needed. But then, he was the only one who’d seen the inside of
her apartment and knew what she didn’t have. For the most part, his gifts had stayed to the kitchen, as he gave
her knives, dishes, glassware, and small appliances. Luke said it gave Ramsey a reason to go to Tess’s
apartment and unpack everything, but that wasn’t true. He wanted her to be comfortable, and also, he wanted
her to stay in tiny Edilean. Since she’d arrived, his life had run much smoother—and best was that she was a
friend he could talk to. A real friend, not a blood relative. One thing about Tess was that whatever she heard, it
stayed with her. He could tell her the most intimate things about his life and he knew she’d never tell anyone.
“So?” he asked. “You want some eggs or not?”
“Will it get rid of you faster if I eat something?”
“Yeah,” he said, giving her a one-sided grin. “What’s your date going to think when he arrives and I’m
here?”
“That you want some work done,” she said as she took a seat at the little table against the wall.
“Okay, so don’t tell me,” he said as he broke eggs into a bowl, mixed them with a fork, then dropped them
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“O
3/16/2010 kay, so don’t tell me,” he said as he broke eggs into a bowl, mixe
Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html d them with a fork, then dropped them
into the hot skillet.
“One thing about you is that your ego is always intact. No matter what I say, you still think that I want to be
with you.”
