Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series) (6 page)

“That’s a beautiful magnolia tree,” he said, nodding in the direction of the healthy tree that boasted flowers the size of my hand. “And that pine grove running along the back of your property is peaceful looking. You got a lot of great trees and shrubs here. I like your property, so tell
me.
Tell
me
your hopes and dreams for this place. I’ll listen.”

He was more than willing to listen. The problem was, I hadn’t much to say. Even after all that big talk about hopes and dreams, and
not
counting the bullshit I’d told applicant number two, I really had no idea what to do. I’d spent my time learning about home repairs and restoration so I could turn the inside into a home. I knew nothing about landscaping and nature. Sure, I knew I wanted trellises with flowers and I knew I wanted to do good things for wildlife, but my ideas were disappointingly vague.

But a magical thing happened. Just having someone to really talk to about it, someone who listened and asked questions and offered suggestions, helped me figure it out. I didn’t even care that I’d forgotten to put on boots and a hat, that as we wended our way from one end of the property to the other, swamp muck oozed over my flip-flops, my hair fell half out of its ponytail, and Florida beggarweed seized the opportunity to deposit hundreds of sticky brown pods on my tank top and shorts.

I didn’t care.

During the thirty minutes I spent with Hank, I realized I wanted to naturescape rather than landscape, picking the right features for the right areas, keeping most of it natural for wildlife. As long as it was done properly, the homeowners’ association couldn’t complain. The hard part would be clearing out what I didn’t want to keep. It would be a backbreaking, dirty, and dangerous job. And that was if the wildlife left me alone.

“You know,” Hank said as we circled back around to the front of my house, “I could help you out until you find your prospective husband. I’ve been reading up on Florida naturescaping; maybe I can put some of my reading to practical use. Besides, I’m gettin’ out of shape, so this’d be good for me.”

I wasn’t fooled for a minute. There was nothing wrong with his shape and had there been, he didn’t need to slave away in ninety-eight degree heat to fix it. I smiled into his warm brown eyes, wondering what I’d done to be blessed with Hank coming into my life.

“You don’t need to worry that I’ll say no,” I told him. “What kind of neighbor would I be if I kept you from staying in shape?”

He barked out a laugh, settled his hat on his head, and said, “Later.”

I
had only been inside long enough to wash my hands when the doorbell rang. I took inventory of my appearance, grimacing at the sight of my grimy self, and then squinted out the peephole.

Mr. Carlson, the president of the homeowners’ association and also of a local bank, stood on the stoop. Even though he couldn’t have been forty, I could only think of him as
Mr.
Carlson. Come to think of it, I didn’t even know his first name. That was okay because I’d never dare use it if I did.

It was a scorching day, and he was wearing a dark suit and tie, white shirt, and shiny black shoes. His thinning salt and pepper hair was parted on the side and gelled into place. He had unremarkable features unless you counted his black button eyes and lack of a chin.

For the second time that day, I considered pretending I wasn’t home. For one thing, it was just plain rude of Carlson to show up unannounced. He had my phone number; it wouldn’t have hurt him to use it. For another thing, the registered letter telling me I had ninety days to clean up my property or else be fined a humungous amount of money had only been delivered two weeks earlier, along with an offer from the homeowners’ association to buy me out. There was no reason for Carlson to be here now except to pressure me into selling. Perhaps the board thought I would always be trouble for them, so they might as well get rid of me now and spare themselves future aggravation.

They were probably right. I hadn’t paid any attention to that contract clause about maintaining my two acres in a manner consistent with the rest of the neighborhood until they forced me to. There were probably other clauses I wasn’t paying attention to as well. Only time would tell.

But the bottom line was that I would not be moving, though they offered a fair price.

Buoyed by my determination, I wrenched open the door.

“Mr. Carlson, so
nice
to see you again. To what do I owe this pleasure?” I smiled sweetly without opening the door too wide. He clearly wanted to step in out of the sun. I clearly wasn’t going to let him.

He gave me a disdainful sweeping glance from head to foot. I gave him one back.

“Jane, the association has asked me to stop by with this very generous offer to see if you will reconsider. You have to admit, we’ve been more than accommodating. We could have fined you long ago; you’ve lived here for nine months and done nothing about your yard. But now … the entire neighborhood is upset over your humiliating search for a husband, and they’ve been complaining in droves about the sign, the yard, everything. Otherwise, I’m certain this outrageous amount would not have been agreed upon.”

He unfolded a piece of paper and pointed at the amount. I opened the door wider and leaned over to take a look.

I was surprised, but I didn’t show it. They had upped the offer by fifty thousand dollars.

“Who?” I asked.

Mr. Carlson frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

“Who are the neighbors upset by my humiliating search for a husband? Which ones? I want names.”

Mr. Carlson cleared his throat as his gaze skittered away from mine. “You certainly can’t expect me to betray confidences.”

“I certainly can. Tell me the names of the neighbors who have complained, right now while you’re standing here and not after you’ve left and gone around to dredge some up.”

He drew back in affront and his chin disappeared into his neck. “How dare you,” he said, glaring at me as though I’d called him a pig or worse. But I guess I
was
calling him worse. I was calling him a liar.

“See here, Jane, you’re going to lose this property, and we’re trying to give you a way out. A more than fair way out, I might add. In less than ten weeks, you’ll have to pay us ten percent of your property value as a fine, and no one will give you a way out then. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand perfectly. And I’m telling you my property will be consistent with the rest of the neighborhood in ten weeks. Wasn’t that the term?
Consistent?”

Mr. Carlson’s beady eyes bugged out and he sputtered for words. “Well … you … Don’t think you can get all your neighbors to let their properties go wild too. That is
not
what the clause means!”

Actually, I hadn’t thought of that. I wish I had, though it wouldn’t have mattered. Alberto would have insisted on an exchange of favors if I asked him to let his lot grow wild. Nothing could be worth that.

“I have no intention of doing such an underhanded thing. I’m going to clean up the place. If I don’t get a prospective husband to help me, my new neighbor, Mr. Tyler, has offered to stand in. And
he
has a friend who owns a land clearing company. So there!”

Mr. Carlson looked shocked, but no more than I must have. I hadn’t known I was going to lie until the words were out of my mouth.

I told myself it was okay to lie because my lie lent credence to something I knew was true, and I probably wouldn’t be able to convince Carlson of that truth otherwise. That was one of the rules of lying. I knew I would get my yard in shape one way or another, and this little lie would convince Mr. Carlson of that too. So he wouldn’t worry. Hmmm. Maybe I could even add rule number one to this and say it was for his own good. Except he wasn’t looking very good.

His red face turned purple and just as I panicked, thinking he might be having some kind of attack, I saw a movement behind him and caught a flash of gray and white.
Little Boy.

Little Boy was the name I’d given the stray cat. I’d spied him in the woods once when he was a kitten, but hadn’t been able to get within thirty feet of him. The next time I saw him was a few months later, and he had grown long but hadn’t filled out. I put a bowl of dry cat food out for him twice a day, and he started sneaking up to eat it. I was working my way up to catching him so I could get him neutered. He seemed to know what I was doing and stayed just out of reach.

I was worried now because Little Boy had a bad habit of spraying around my door and Mr. Carlson was standing in what Little Boy considered his personal territory. Heaven only knew what Carlson would do if he was sprayed by a cat on my stoop.

Little Boy had no intention of stopping to spray Mr. Carlson though. He whisked right by and through the open door with a wriggling present hanging from his mouth.

“Eeeeeek,” I shrieked. “A snake!”

I like to pretend Sue is the only one scared of critters, but Sue has nothing on me when it comes to reptiles. “Catch it!” I screamed just as Little Boy dropped the snake at the place where my feet had been. They weren’t there now because I had jumped out the door and into Mr. Carlson’s arms.

Mr. Carlson was not moved by my fear. Well, he was somewhat moved because I almost knocked him down trying to climb up his body to sit on his head. I figured the higher I got, the less likely it was that the snake would get
me.
Mr. Carlson quickly recovered from his shock, though, and shoved me off.

“I’m not catching a damned snake for you.” His growl came out of a scrunched-up face. “It serves you right. That’s what you get for living the way you do. I have a mind to charge you with assault. I could have been injured the way you came barreling at me!”

He brushed furiously at the front of his coat, cursing loudly now. His anger would have seemed out of proportion to what had just transpired—if it hadn’t been for all the little brown sticky beggarweed pods I had generously gifted him with.

“Trouble, Ms. Jansen?” asked a non-threatening, non-yelling voice. I cut my eyes from Carlson to the owner of the voice.

Oh my God.
The young, good-looking doctor. And I looked like
this.
Didn’t anyone bother using a phone?

*****

Dr. Bryan Rossi had come bearing gifts. The first gift was that he knew how to catch a snake. In between my yelps of terror as he went after it, he laughingly explained that it was just a Florida ringneck snake with a mouth so small it couldn’t bite anyone if it tried. He caught it and took it outside.

The second gift was the way he looked. That would have been the first gift if I hadn’t been so nervous about the snake. He wore faded blue jeans, a navy blue T-shirt that hugged his chest, and white Nike running shoes. I had the sudden urge to jump into his arms.
Just do it,
I thought.

His dark hair was thick and wavy, a little shorter on the sides but curling down onto his neck in the back, and his eyes were a silvery gray. If I didn’t know he was a doctor, I’d have taken him for the lead singer of a rock band. A very successful rock band, considering the Cartier watch and the diamond-studded Harvard class ring I noticed when he was showing me the snake. As he turned to shut the door behind him, I got a good look at the part of him that had been hidden by his doctor’s coat at our previous meeting.
Yum.

I forced myself to quit staring in order to lessen the drool production thing I had going, so I took a gander at the two boxes he’d dropped onto the coffee table before going after the snake. One appeared to be a flower box and the other …

He picked up the shoebox, slipped off the bow, opened it, and held out a new sandal exactly like the one I’d lost in the debacle at the gynecologist’s office. I could tell he was going for drama when he got down on one knee and gazed up at me. “Shall I slip it on you to see if it fits?” he asked in a husky voice.

Well, sure,
I was thinking,
if you want me to die of embarrassment.
Oh, wait. Too late. He was already looking down at my feet. They were covered in dried muck, and an ugly clump of mud, complete with sprouting grass, was plastered to the top of my big toe

He tried to swallow his laugh, but it escaped as a snort. Then his body began to shake with silent mirth, and that was all it took for me. I keeled over laughing and once I started, I couldn’t stop. I guess I was releasing stress. Heaven knows it wasn’t getting released any other way.

“That wasn’t part of my fantasy,” he admitted with a chuckle, and I started laughing again so hard that I collapsed onto the sofa.

“I’d go wash my feet,” I said between gulps of air, “but I’m guessing the moment has passed.”

When I got myself under control, I asked, “Where’d you get the shoes anyway? As much as I’ve tried to block out the experience, I think I’d remember if I lost both shoes
and
a shoe box up on that roof.”

“I found your shoe on the drive after a couple of cars had run over it. It was beyond fixing, but my receptionist said she knew where to get another pair.”

Now, why did it irk me that he’d sent his receptionist to buy my shoes? Probably because I figured it irked her. It would irk me if my boss had
me
do it. “Well, that was so nice of your receptionist, but she didn’t have to go to all that trouble.”

“She did if I wanted an excuse to see you again. It’s for little things like this that I pay her the big bucks.”

“Do you? Do you pay her big bucks?”

“I do. Out of my own pocket.”

He looked as if he meant it, so I felt better. Getting paid big bucks to go shoe shopping, even if for someone else, wasn’t so terrible, and when she returned, she got to stare at him. I’d probably work for free if I could look at that all day. He was that handsome. And a young,
rich,
good-looking doctor … women were probably flying in from all over the world to stare at
him.

So what was he doing at my house?

He fished something out of his back pocket and for a second or two, I had a weird fantasy that it was a ring. Until he waved a little white bag in front of my face.

I pulled out a tube of cream.

“It’s for your contact dermatitis.” His eyes held a mischievous glint.

My jaw dropped in shock, but then I remembered what an unattractive look that was on me, so I snapped my mouth shut again. “Dr. Forester should be disbarred or whatever they call it.”

“We’re partners—I’m taking over his practice—so his files are my files and vice versa. But if it makes you feel any better, I also heard about your problem from fifteen other people, and they heard it from fifteen other people, who heard it from—”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it,” I said. The gossip didn’t make me feel any better. Neither did the fact that Dr. Bryan Rossi was, evidently, a gynecologist.

I eyed the cream. I really wanted it, but I wasn’t even sure if contact dermatitis was what I had.

“It’s not herpes, he’s sure, and he would have given you this sample if you hadn’t sneaked out the window.”

“I wouldn’t have had to sneak out the window if he hadn’t shouted out my name to his entire waiting room! As bad as today’s headline was, I prefer it to one with my name and the word
herpes
in it!”

Bryan tipped his head back and laughed. It was a full-bodied, happy laugh. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “He forgets that everyone else can hear. But I thought the headline was a good one. I liked the picture that went with it too.”

Yeah, and he had seen the real picture, without the giant black dot. Who was luckier than him? I toyed with the idea of asking if he’d brought something for my jock itch. That would surely make his day.

“So, tell me,” he asked, “what was it? The toilet paper with the lotion?”

“Wow. You’re good.”

“It keeps me in business. It gets everybody once. There’s something about their claim of softening that skin that makes it irresistible to women. But I can guarantee
that
skin is soft enough already. That’s why it’s so sensitive to the lotion … and everything else.”

Oh my God.
His eyes had gone black and liquid, and so was I. Liquid, that is. Not black. Well, my eyes were probably black, at least as black as his. In romance novels the hero’s eyes always go black during the love scene because his pupils dilate to the size of nickels. For some reason no one ever mentions the heroine’s eyes going black, but hey, women are people too.

When I found my voice, I thanked him for the flowers, the sandals, and the cream. As it turned out, those weren’t the only reasons he’d come over.