Lavender Morning (Edilean 1)

“Rich old woman who paid your firm a fortune. What a hero you are! Are you here tonight to ask me to help you get closer to this house’s new owner? For what? Marriage? A hot affair?”

“What is your hostility toward her?”

Tess pushed her empty plate away. “I don’t know, maybe it has to do with having two—not one but two—men come to me today to go on and on about her. What is her secret? I saw her, and she’s not a great beauty. I haven’t heard that she’s brilliant, so what’s the hold she has over you men?”

Ramsey was looking at her with his mouth open. “You’re jealous of Jocelyn, aren’t you?”

Tess threw her hands into the air and stood up. “That’s it. I want you to leave now. And for your information, I am not jealous of her or anyone else. If I wanted either you or Luke I could have you.”

Ramsey snorted. “I know you too well to feel romantic about you. Is that what your problem is? That a man comes over late at night and isn’t dizzy with the beauty of you?”

“You’re sick, you know that?” She practically stomped to the front door and opened it. “Go home. Now.”

“All right,” Ramsey said. “I apologize. I thought it was going to be a great night with Jocelyn, but…”

“But what?” she asked impatiently, holding the screen door wide.

“We ran out of things to talk about.”

At that, all the anger left Tess. If there was one thing Ramsey McDowell could do, it was talk. She couldn’t help smiling. “Did you ask her what she planned to do with her life now that she’s a stranger in a town where everyone not only knows one another but they’re related? Your cousins have to marry from outside here or they’ll give birth to morons. Did you ask her about her plans for the future?”

“No,” Ramsey said. “I guess I didn’t think of it that way. Edilean is home to me, so I…” His head came up. “She likes to make cupcakes.”

“Cupcakes. You had a first date with her and that’s all you found out about her? That she likes to make cupcakes?”

“I’m not a complete idiot. We talked about other things.”

“Like what?”

“For your information, we talked about marriage.”

Closing her eyes, Tess shook her head. “I don’t know how you got through law school. You have no brain.”

He was standing in her doorway, and she knew that her apartment was filling with mosquitoes, but she also knew that if she didn’t give him some advice he’d never leave. “Create a cupcake emergency.”

“A what?”

“Make up something where cupcakes are needed immediately and she’s the only one who can make them.”

“How can cupcakes be an emergency?”

“I don’t know. Talk to your sister. Kids and cupcakes go together. Let Viv work it out. And from now on, talk to anyone but me about your love problems. Got it?”

“Yeah, maybe,” he said.

Tess could see that she’d given him something to think about, so she pushed him out the door and closed it behind him.

Saturday night, she thought. This is what Saturday night in a small town was like. While she was pretending to wait for some man who didn’t show up, she’d had to deal with a lovesick boss who didn’t know what to say to his new girlfriend. “What does he expect me to do?” Tess mumbled. “Hold his hand and listen, then give him advice on how to win the woman?”

And how was she supposed to do that? Tess had no idea what this woman Jocelyn Minton was like. Sara liked her and Luke seemed to be mesmerized by her, but that didn’t tell much.

The truth was, that as far as Tess could tell, she didn’t like the woman. Or maybe it was as Ramsey said, and she was jealous. But not jealous as he thought she was. Tess had read the legal papers in Ramsey’s office and she knew that Jocelyn had been given everything all her life. As a child she’d been befriended by a rich old woman who’d died and left her everything. It was straight out of Dickens.

If Tess was jealous it was because Jocelyn had been given so much while nothing had been given to Tess. Her parents died when she was young, and she’d been raised by a grandmother who treated hate as one of the four food groups—and she insisted on full servings of it daily. “They ruined my life,” her grandmother used to say. “Edilean Harcourt and all of them took my life from me. I could have done something, been somebody, but that town destroyed everything I had. If it weren’t for what they did to me, you and I would be rich now. Living in luxury. McDowell and Harcourt. They’re the ones who stole everything.”

Tess had to shake her head to clear it of the angry old woman’s voice. She was paying her grandmother back for all she’d received, meaning food, clothing, and shelter, so why wouldn’t the old woman’s voice leave her?

Tess put the dishes in the washer, turned off the glaring overhead light, and went to her bedroom. She took off the itchy white silk gown and robe, and put on the big T-shirt she usually slept in. She’d only put on the new gown when she’d seen Ramsey drive up. From what Luke told her today, she’d guessed that Jocelyn and Ramsey wouldn’t hit it off well.