“Windowsill,” Eden said, turning toward the stairs.
“You eat, I’ll get the necklace, and I’ll get someone out here as fast as they can to look at it.”
Eden, starving, grabbed a muffin from under its cloth covering. “No helicopters,” she called after him. “Everyone in Arundel will come out here to see what’s going on if a helicopter lands in the fields.” She went to the stove and lifted the lid to the skillet. “Helicopters,” she muttered. “Two weeks ago I would never have thought of helicopters.”
She slid the omelet onto the plate that Jared had placed on the counter and sat down to eat. What next? was her only thought. What monumental, dramatic thing could happen next?
When she heard the hydraulic brakes of a truck pulling into her driveway, she wasn’t even surprised.
“What’s that?” McBride asked from the doorway, the necklace in his hand.
“A SWAT team?” she asked, her mouth full.
Someone knocked on the door and Jared went to open it. Eden heard him exchange a few words with the driver, then they both went outside. She heard sounds of the truck door opening but didn’t get up to look. By the time McBride came back into the room, she had finished eating.
“I think you better come look at this,” he said.
“Is it good or bad?”
“Come and see what you think.”
She put down her napkin, drained the last of her tea, and followed him to the front door.
Chapter Seventeen
ALL she could do was stare. Her mouth gaped open, and her eyes blinked several times, but she still couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
On the oval lawn in front of the house was a little red truck, a Kawasaki Mule, cute beyond describing. It had a wide seat in front and a truck bed in back that was full of what looked to be top-of-the-line Spear and Jackson gardening tools from England. Behind the truck, on the ground, were hundreds of black plastic pots full of perennials. In front of them were annuals, and in back were boxes that bore the words LIVE TREES INSIDE OPEN IMMEDIATELY.
Slowly, Eden went down the stairs to stand beside McBride. She was too astonished to move.
Not so Jared. He stepped into the little truck, turned the key, and started the engine. “Look at this,” he said, then flipped a switch and the bed moved upward. “It’s a dump truck.”
Shovels, rakes, a gardening fork, a three-pronged bulb planter, a soil aerator, and at least a dozen hand tools went tumbling out the back to the ground. “Look what you’ve done,” Eden cried as she began to pick up the tools.
Jared turned off the engine, stepped out of the truck, and looked at her. “So what do you think of all this?”
“I think Braddon Granville is the most wonderful man in the world,” she said softly as she put the tools against the big cypress tree. She went to the perennials to read the labels. Astilbe. For shade, she thought. Under the pecan trees. Heuchera and agastache.
“You think it was Granville who sent you all this?” Jared asked.
“Of course. Who else would do this?”
“Ah, yes, who else could it be?” he said.
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Are you going to accept gifts from a man you barely know?” Jared had his hands in his pockets and, for once, he wasn’t wearing his isn’t-life-funny look.
Eden looked at the plants, the truck, and the tools, then back at McBride. “Since I was eighteen years old, I’ve tried to set an example for my daughter. When a man liked me and offered me a gift, I didn’t take it because I didn’t want my daughter to grow up thinking that if a man gave her something she owed him something.”
“Hard life to live.”
“Yes, it was sometimes. I think I wanted to prove to myself and the world that even though I’d had a child when I was a child, I could still be a good mother.”
Jared, with his hands still in his pockets, nodded toward all the things around them. “But now you have nothing to prove, so you’re going to accept the gifts.”
She put her hand on the fender of the little red truck. “I’d rather have these things than an engagement ring.”