The Spring at Moss Hill (16 page)

“A steady paycheck has a certain appeal.”

“I don't want you doing something you hate because you're worried about me.”

“I could do something I hate for a lot of worse reasons, Marty.” Russ tried his whiskey. Triple-distilled, no peat, smooth. Marty had picked a good one. “But I don't hate my work.”

“You could put out your own shingle in LA. You like it up here?”

“I like it fine. No complaints.”

“That takes care of your work life. Your romantic life—”

Russ shook his head. “Not going there. Can you put in an order of fish tacos for me?”

“It's on its way.” Marty finished unloading the glasses. “You got burned by a woman late in your days in the navy.” He held up a hand. “I know this to be the case, because I'm your big brother and I know things, not because you told me.”

“She told you.”

“
Relished
telling me. She looked me up in Phoenix. She knew I didn't like her and wanted to rub it in that she'd dumped you.”

“It was a mutual parting of ways.”

“Best kind.” Clearly Marty believed his own version. “No residual effect on you?”

“None.”

Marty snorted in disbelief, but he had another customer and moved to the other end of the bar. Russ settled in with his whiskey. His tacos arrived, but he wasn't that hungry. He could hear Marty laughing with the customer, a guy in his fifties or sixties, apparently another aspiring screenwriter.

When he returned, Marty put the empty glasses tray away under the bar somewhere. “Trying to save me when I don't need saving gets in the way of saying yes to opportunities and possibilities for yourself.”

“I don't know what you just said, Marty, but I'm not trying to save you.”

But Marty was in a serious mood. “I know you want to be there for me, and I appreciate that, but not at the expense of doing what's right for you and your life.”

“You've sacrificed and suffered a lot,” Russ said, picking up one of the tacos.

“I didn't sacrifice anything. I have suffered, though.”

“You still do suffer, Marty.”

He shrugged, touching his left arm, broken in the crash—one of his lesser injuries. “Not as much. Being here helps. I don't think about the pain. I get lost in what I'm doing. The work here.”

“You love it,” Russ said.

“Yeah. I barely survived a bad helicopter crash that killed our father and traumatized our mother, even if she won't admit it. I had a long, difficult recovery. It was a life-changing, utterly negative, lousy thing to have happen, but there was no sacrifice involved. You were the one who got shot at on behalf of our country. I've never paid your bills. I pay my own bills, and I've said yes to possibilities and opportunities even if they haven't all said yes back. I don't know if they ever will, but I'm happy.” Marty breathed, hit the bar with his palm and grinned. “So there.”

“So there,” Russ said with a smile.

“I don't think I've said that much at one time in ten years.”

“It's because I'm eating a taco and couldn't interrupt you.” Russ picked up his second taco. Hungrier than he thought, maybe. “Do you have a woman in your life?”

“Other than Daphne, you mean?”

“Oh, man. I never even thought that. Hell, Marty.

“You can relax. I'm not Daphne's or anyone else's boy-toy. She gives me advice, even when I don't want it. She thinks I'm like her and will like working behind the scenes. Says to ditch the acting auditions. She's offered to read my scripts, but I can tell she expects me to know I'm supposed to say no, thanks.”

“Smart man,” Russ said.

“It's a good story if I do say so myself.”

“Do you want me to read it?”

“Hell, no. It's a thriller. You'll think the tough guy is based on you.” Marty pointed at Russ's glass. “Another whiskey?”

Russ shook his head. “One's good. Julius is in La Jolla. I'll have the place to myself.”

“His daughter—the one buying his house—has been in with him a few times. She's a gin connoisseur. I know you're not interested, but...” Marty rubbed the back of his neck. “He'd kill me?”

“Slowly and painfully.”

Marty laughed and grabbed Russ's empty glass. “No more worrying about me, brother. Do your own thing and let me do mine.”

“As if I could stop you.”

“Now you're getting the picture.”

Russ ate half of his second taco and left the rest. Marty wanted desperately to succeed in a business that often chewed people up and spit them out, including the best. But it wasn't just success he was after. It was doing the work, being here in Hollywood, seeing what he could accomplish. Russ got it, intellectually, but he couldn't get past his fear that Marty was going to get hurt.

Another hard, bad landing.

“Russ, here's what I know.” Marty rubbed the back of his neck again, near another of the places that had taken a beating in the helicopter crash. “I know if I'd stayed in Phoenix, I'd have failed at working in Hollywood—because I'd never be here, I'd never have tried.”

“You don't sleep,” Russ said.

“I sleep odd hours when I'm into a script.”

That wasn't all. Marty had coped with insomnia since the crash. He seldom talked about it. Russ respected his brother's privacy and appreciated his positive attitude—his ambitions, his dreams—but he worried. He wanted to do right by his only brother.

Marty sighed. “I'm saying I don't need your protection, Russ.”

“You can damn well take care of yourself. Right, Marty. I get it.”

“Not can. Am. I am taking care of myself.”

“I know you are.”

Russ meant it. Or maybe he didn't. He'd just spent the better part of a day on a plane dreaming about making love to a woman who drew cute badgers for a living. Maybe he didn't know what the hell he meant.

“When do you head east again?” Marty asked.

“Thursday red-eye, arriving early Friday morning.” Russ got to his feet. “I'll see you again before I leave.”

He paid for his whiskey and said good-night to his brother.

* * *

Russ stopped at Sawyer & Sawyer's expensive, elegant offices in Beverly Hills, the lights still on at six-thirty. He didn't stay long. Julie, the young, very smart receptionist, was packing up for the evening and vowed she hadn't meant to be patronizing when she'd offered Daphne tea. Russ told her to put it out of her mind. Daphne was looking for distractions, anything to keep her from thinking about Knights Bridge. That was why she'd talked Marty into letting her pick Russ up in the Rover.

He checked mail and his inbox and lined up real work he needed to get to.

Fifteen minutes, and he was back in his Rover. It was a quick drive to Julius's place, but traffic was miserable. The house was quiet, but it felt as if Julius had stepped out for the evening instead of a few days. Russ found a bottle of Loretta's sparkling water in the refrigerator and took a glass out to the deck.

The bright city lights drowned out the stars. It was a warm evening, warmer than Knights Bridge would be tonight. He could see Kylie out on her balcony, looking at the stunning night sky. She was visual, a woman who noticed everything, took it all in—sometimes, he suspected, getting overwhelmed and needing to withdraw, tuck herself at her worktable with her little stuffed badger.

Russ drank some of the water. It hit the spot after hours in a dry plane and the whiskey.

There'd been no sparkling water on the menu at Smith's.

He couldn't hear a river flowing over a nineteenth-century dam, and he didn't have a blue-eyed blonde across the hall. He could see the shock on her face when she'd spotted him in the Moss Hill meeting room on Sunday. She'd taken one look at him and gotten moving.

A quick thinker, Kylie Shaw/Morwenna Mills.

He could be a rigid SOB. Everyone told him so. He worked hard. Not much play but played hard when he did play. Kylie needed to cut loose.

Marty was having a hell of a time. Why worry about him? Because he didn't have a career and a pension?

Because I wasn't in the helo that day.

His father, a retired army helicopter pilot, had been at the controls. He'd died on impact. His passengers—his wife and their older son—had survived. Janet Colton had sustained minor physical injuries, but the emotional trauma of her ordeal had changed her. She'd bought a house in Scottsdale and had little to do with her sons. She wasn't unpleasant, just remote.

Marty had suffered multiple broken bones and lacerations. Russ had tried to be there for his brother during those tough, miserable weeks—months—in rehab, but it wasn't easy, given the demands of his navy career, and Marty wouldn't hear of him quitting.
You have a future in the navy, Russ. You can't abandon it because of me. I won't allow it.

Marty's long recovery had scuttled his plans to get his MBA and to become a helicopter pilot himself, flying volunteer rescue missions. He'd gotten into product design instead, but he'd changed jobs frequently, never fully committed to—or happy—in his backup profession. It wasn't the work. He knew great people in his field and it paid well. It was that he wanted something else, and he'd finally realized he needed to do it—burn the boats, so to speak, and move to Hollywood.

Russ finished his water, remembering the first time he'd walked into the hospital and had seen his older brother, broken, uncertain he had the willpower to recover.

I should have died with Dad.

No, Marty.

They say it was mechanical failure, but I don't care what went wrong. It's done.

Dad would have done anything to protect you.

Go away.

Russ went inside the dark, quiet house. He'd drunk half the sparkling water. Not his thing.

He pictured himself drinking champagne on Elly O'Dunn's back porch, with Kylie taking it all in—the people, the dogs, the goats, the gardens. Him. Guessing what he knew about her.

He hadn't lied when he'd told her he'd been intrigued by her dual identities.

By her.

He headed upstairs to his borrowed room. Growing up with a father in the army and then a decade of his own in the navy, he was accustomed to moving, keeping his possessions limited to the essentials, but he wondered what it would be like to have a place of his own.

It was the whiskey and the long flight talking.

He would spend tomorrow catching up on his non-Daphne work. He debated getting someone else to escort her east, but he'd signed up for the job.

He'd see it through.

Seventeen

D
aphne turned on the overhead light in her studio. Most of the time she relied on task lighting, but not tonight. She switched on her desk lamp, floor lamp and table lamp. Tonight, she thought, she wanted as much light as possible.

She opened the French doors, letting in the smell of her roses.

Julius was a great guy to have in her corner and a friend, but Russ was something else altogether. She had to admit she'd wanted to preen a bit when she'd picked him up at the airport. He was good-looking, not classically handsome but a man with a strong presence. Sexy. Confident. He knew who he was, but she knew him well enough now to see that sometimes he could get very rooted in that self-knowledge, to the point of rigidity.

He'd looked faintly impatient and annoyed when he'd pulled open the passenger door to his Rover.

“Not faintly,” Daphne said with a laugh.

He'd made no secret of his response to finding her behind the wheel of his beloved Land Rover. That only made him sexier.

Probably not the most evolved thought she'd ever had, but there it was.

She'd noticed how he'd carried his duffel bag. No effort.

Marty was sexy and knew himself, too, in a more tortured way.

Daphne fought a yawn. She couldn't help herself. She felt like an overstimulated toddler. She'd been enthusiastic about the class in February. The closer she got to the day and to Knights Bridge, the more butterflies she felt.

She stood at her large, counter-height worktable, set up in front of the windows and French doors to take advantage of the views of the patio, pool and her roses.

She'd loved roses as a little girl.

It was one hobby her father hadn't minded. Proper, elegant girls and young women could appreciate roses. He'd wanted her to be like his grandmother, the beautiful daughter-in-law of the late, great George Sanderson. Daphne had a photo of just the two of them—her great-great-grandfather in his formal Victorian suit, her great-grandmother in her graceful Edwardian dress.

No photos of the rest of her family. Her feckless grandfather. Her mother, living in her own world, unable and unwilling to deal with her circumstances—to protect her only daughter.

Her father. Handsome, tortured, alcoholic and mean.

Daphne had taken only the one photo with her when she'd fled her childhood home for Knights Bridge. She'd kept it with her on her long trip across the country. She'd bought a frame for it, and now it was on the dresser in the guest room. It might have been a vintage photograph she'd picked up in an antiques store. She couldn't see herself or her father in the faces of her long-dead relatives.

She liked to believe her great-grandmother had tended her own roses, something she herself loved. She'd take books out of the library on roses and study them, then apply what she learned to the three rosebushes in her backyard. She was painstaking, exact. She'd lose herself in the work. She was convinced now, in hindsight, that her work with roses had helped her with her work in costume design.

Her father had grabbed her by the wrist one day, when she was about thirteen.
What did you do to yourself?

I caught a thorn when I was working on the roses.

Why were you working on the roses?

Because they needed trimming.

Trimming? What are you talking about? Leave the roses to the gardeners.

But there were no gardeners.

He'd been drunk, living in the past—before the Depression, bad luck and entitlement had done in the last of the Sanderson money. Before alcoholism had robbed him of his ambition, self-restraint and purpose.

Your father doesn't mean to hit you, Debbie.

She shut her eyes, smelling the roses here in her home in Hollywood Hills. They weren't meant as an homage to her past, a reminder of her roots. She loved roses and most days could sit here, looking out at them, smelling them, and not think about her father at all.

* * *

In the morning, after toast and about a gallon of coffee, since she hadn't slept well, if at all, Daphne dragged her suitcase out of the hall closet into her bedroom, plopped it on her bed and packed for Knights Bridge.

“Hell,” she muttered. “I'm going.”

She decided against sequins and such for her Saturday class and settled on a black jumpsuit—her own design—with Manolo Blahnik flats, gold jewelry, a diamond watch and a colorful Hermes scarf. She'd make a statement while looking professional.

Satisfied, she threw in jeans, a couple of simple tops, walking shoes and wool socks. Damned if she was showing up in New England in April without wool socks. She remembered seeing daffodils covered in snow. It could happen, although the forecast for the next few days was promising—in the sixties, zero chance of precipitation of any kind.

She wheeled her suitcase to the entry and left it by the front door.

Done.

She changed into a cute retro swimsuit she'd designed for herself and a cover-up and was on her way to the pool when her doorbell rang. Russ? The mailman? Not Julius or Loretta. They were in La Jolla. Annoying, but there it was. She had friends but not many who'd ring her doorbell on what ostensibly was a work day.

She opened her front door to Noah Kendrick and Phoebe O'Dunn. A San Diego high-tech billionaire and his Knights Bridge librarian fiancée, two lovely people who, in a way, were responsible for Daphne boarding a flight for Boston tonight. Phoebe was the one who'd discovered Debbie Sanderson's secret attic room in the Knights Bridge town library.

Daphne couldn't help but smile as she greeted them. “Please, come in.”

“We won't stay long,” Phoebe said, stepping inside. “We're driving to San Diego from the winery and wanted to stop by and wish you luck in Knights Bridge.”

“Thank you,” Daphne said, genuinely taken aback.

Noah eased into the small entry behind Phoebe. “We're sorry we can't be there.”

“Well, it's not like you need a class in costume design.” Daphne motioned toward the back of the house. “Won't you have a seat on the patio, stay for coffee?”

Phoebe shook her head. “We don't want to take up your time, and we have to run. We wanted to be there on Saturday to support my sisters, too. Ava and Ruby are so excited about this weekend. They remind me of my mother. Always a million different things going on at once, all of which they're confident they can handle with ease—and usually do. It's great, such energy and enthusiasm.”

“Contagious,” Daphne said, smiling, feeling slightly guilty at her uncharitable thoughts toward Phoebe's twin younger sisters during her tossing and turning overnight. She'd splashed cold water on her face and scolded her reflection in the mirror for sounding like her father. “I'm looking forward to seeing Ava and Ruby. We've talked on the phone and emailed over the winter, but it's not the same as seeing them face-to-face.”

“So true,” Phoebe said. She had long, softly curling auburn hair and kind turquoise eyes—her sensitive, quiet nature a contrast to her more exuberant younger sisters. Noah, lithe and fair, moved closer to her. She hooked her arm into his arm, color rising in her cheeks. “We credit you for bringing us together, Daphne. I hope my finding your attic room has brought you more positives than it has—” she hesitated “—than it has negatives.”

“You mean did it open a big can of squirmy, nasty worms?” Daphne laughed. “Well, it did, but it needed opening. I'm glad my neurotic ways did some good, though. You two look happy as clams.”

“We'll be in Knights Bridge again soon,” Noah said.

Phoebe flushed. “I'm going to be talking to my mother about wedding plans.”

“You're not having your wedding at her place with the goats, are you?” Daphne waved a hand. “Sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”

Noah laughed. “It would be fun. Imagine Julius and Loretta.”

“I am,” Daphne said.

“We're having it at the winery,” Phoebe said. “Trust me, my mother will be hugely relieved.”

Of that, Daphne had no doubt, given Noah Kendrick's circle of friends, colleagues and acquaintances who would expect to be invited to his wedding.

“And of course we hope you can be there,” Phoebe added.

“I'm so glad. I wouldn't miss it.”

After they left, Daphne went out to the pool. She'd order herself a nice lunch and have it delivered, and that evening, she'd board a plane with Russ Colton. Life could be worse, even if he was flying coach and she was flying first class.