Envy Mass Market

“I know.”

After registering momentary surprise that he knew that, she said, “Oh. The article.”

“Yeah.”

Several strands of hair had come loose from her ponytail and were lying against her nape. The wheat-colored strands appeared slightly damp and curled from the humidity. He caught himself staring at them.

He looked away to clear his vision. “Yeah, that article was chock-full of information about you, your father, and your husband. What’s he like?”

“Very robust. Especially for a man of seventy-eight.”

“I meant your husband. Is he also very robust?”

“We agreed not to ask any personal questions.”

“That’s personal? What don’t you want me to know about your husband?”

“Nothing. It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

“I followed you here to talk about Envy.”

“Want to sit down?”

Apparently confused by his sudden shift of topic, she shook her head. “There’s nowhere to sit.” She glanced at the beams overhead. “Besides, it’s creepy under here.”

He swept his arm toward the front part of the building and she preceded him from beneath the overhang. Her attention was drawn to a circle of bricks in the dirt floor. They were stacked two deep, forming an enclosure roughly five feet in diameter. “What’s that?”

“Careful,” Parker warned as he quickly rolled his chair to her side. “That’s an abandoned well.”

“Why in here?”

“One of the more innovative patriarchs of the cotton dynasty decided to convert the gin to steam power. He began digging this well for the water supply, but died of diphtheria before the project was completed. His heir abandoned the idea as impractical. Rightly, I believe. It wasn’t economically feasible for the amount of their production.”

She peered over the rim of bricks into the darkness of the hole. “How deep is it?”

“Deep enough.”

“For what?”

After holding her gaze for a moment, he backed up, then wheeled past her. He hitched his chin toward an upended crate. “That’ll do for a perch if you’re not too particular.”

After testing the crate’s sturdiness, she gingerly sat down on the rough wood.

“Be careful of splinters,” he warned. “Although my picking them out of the backs of your thighs is a bewitching thought.”

She shot him a withering look. “I’ll take care not to fidget.”

“I’m sure I would enjoy extracting the splinters, but I’m equally sure your very robust husband wouldn’t approve.”

“Was that thunder?”

“Changing the subject, Maris?”

“Yes.”

Grinning, he glanced over his shoulder toward the open door. It had grown noticeably darker outside as well as in. “Afternoon thunderstorms frequently boil up during the summer. Sometimes they pass over in an hour or less, sometimes they linger through the night. You never can tell.” Overhead the first raindrops struck the roof with fat-sounding slaps.