“Am I early?” he asked.
Eden had taken a five-minute shower. She hoped she looked half as good to him as he did to he
r. He had on a tan cotton short-sleeve shirt, freshly ironed trousers, and he looked like he’d just stepped off a yacht. It was all she could do to keep her hands off of him.
But she knew that McBride was five feet away, so she behaved herself as he opened the door. She took the cake, the flowers, and the wine and handed them all to McBride. He grimaced, letting her know that he didn’t like being a packhorse, but he turned away to take the things into the kitchen.
As soon as he was out of the room, Brad opened the screen door and reached down to pick up something else he’d brought. “It’s a little house-warming gift,” he said, and handed her a plant.
She looked at the plant, rubbed a leaf with her fingertips, and smelled it, then she looked into Brad’s eyes. Slowly, she set the plant on the floor, then looked at him. Their minds were in accord. He put his arms around her, and as she knew they would, their bodies fit together perfectly. When his lips touched hers it was with a pent-up desire that seemed to have been held inside her for a lifetime. Whenever she’d kissed a man in her life, she had always been cautious. She didn’t want to lead him on, didn’t want him to think that she was going to give more than she was going to. But with Brad she didn’t feel cautious. She didn’t feel tentative. She felt that this man was the one she’d been searching for for a very long time.
She kissed him with passion and with promise. Their lips and tongues met; their bodies met. Perhaps it was Eden’s imagination, but it seemed that their spirits met.
She wasn’t sure what would have happened if McBride hadn’t cleared his throat.
Brad pulled his lips from hers, and reluctantly, Eden moved her head down to rest on his shoulder. Her heart was pounding so hard that she couldn’t allow her face to be seen. Brad stroked her hair and after a few moments she was able to pull away and look at McBride.
“Wow,” Jared said in a falsely teasing voice. His expression looked as though he’d like to hit Brad. “Do you react like that to anybody who gives you a plant?”
“This is lemon balm,” Eden said, smiling lovingly at Brad.
“Is there something I’m missing?”
“Lemon balm’s Latin name is Melissa officinalis. I named my daughter after this plant, and Brad knew it. It’s just a thing between gardeners, that’s all.”
“Ah, right,” Jared said, looking from one to the other of them, then he gave a false smile. “Maybe we should eat while it’s still hot.”
“Like me,” Brad whispered as he followed Eden into the dining room, and again she giggled.
During dinner, Eden told herself that she had to stop acting like a teenager, but she was feeling as nervous as a girl on her first date. Brad and McBride talked about some things, but she wasn’t sure what they were saying. Something about the house down the road, the one where the woman who had been hit by the car had lived. Eden cleared the plates after the appetizer (cold asparagus wrapped in paper-thin ham) and brought in the bowls of vegetables (spring peas, tiny new potatoes, itty-bitty carrots) and the roast chicken that she’d wrapped in rosemary from her garden.
Gradually, she was able to calm herself and began to listen to McBride and Brad and even to make a few comments. She had to give it to McBride that he never strayed from his job. His main concern was about the woman who had lived down the road, and he never left the subject. He had quickly secured Brad’s permission to visit the house. To search it, she thought.
She served Brad’s cake on a tall silver pedestal cake stand that Mrs. Farrington had loved.
“Ah, yes,” Brad said, looking at the cake stand. “Pulled out of the walls,” he said.
As they ate cake (from a bakery, not homemade) and had coffee, Eden said to Brad as she cleared the table, “Did you bring them?”
“They’re in the car. I’ll go get them.”
“Get what?” Jared asked as soon as Brad left, and Eden told him about the watercolors.
Jared’s face started turning red, looking as though he was about to explode. “You’ve known about these watercolors all afternoon, but you didn’t tell me about them?”
“Yes, I knew about them, and, no, I didn’t tell you. Do you plan to arrest me for withholding evidence?” She glared at him. “So help me, if you get angry I’ll start keeping everything from you.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Oh, no? Try me.”
Jared glared back at her. “If Granville knows about the watercolors, what else does he know? And how does he know about the watercolors? What did you tell him about me?”
“Don’t look at me like that. I told him nothing, but he’s figured out a lot. He says he knows that you’re not what you say you are, and he knows that you were snooping in my house the night I beat you up. Right now I wish I’d used a weapon on you.”
At that statement, Jared’s face showed astonishment and disbelief, then he started to get angry. “If I hadn’t been here, you’d be dead of snakebite by now.”
“If you hadn’t been here, I doubt very much if any snakes or men would have been inside my house.”