Tall, Dark And Difficult

Rose was aghast. “That?”

“Right.” He glanced at the price tag without flinching, and reached for his wallet.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Very sure.”

“You don’t think it’s a bit…pricey?”

“Not at all. It’s a bargain, in fact, and exactly what I had in mind.”

“For what?”

He looked up from the stack of bills he was thumbing through. “I beg your pardon?”

“I was wondering what you had a nine-foot-long garland of dried hydrangea in mind for? What do you plan to do with it?” she added, when he stared at her in what looked like bewilderment.

“Do?” He looked at the garland with a blank expression.

Please change your mind, Rose pleaded silently.

“I thought I would use it…on the porch.”

“The porch?” she gasped, horrified. “Aren’t you afraid the dampness will ruin it?”

“Good point.”

“I have a wicker plant stand that would be perfect on Devora’s porch,” she told him. “Maybe with a gorgeous Boston fern? Ferns love humidity.”

He shook his head.

“Geraniums?”

“I’m not much for plants. This thing is fine. I’ll figure out what to do with it once I get it home.”

“I see.” She grabbed a stack of pastel tissue and began wrapping it, doing her best not to look perturbed. As he had pointed out, this was a place of business. How was he to know that just because a “thing” had a price tag did not mean it was actually ready to be sold?

With the garland lovingly wrapped and gently arranged in a shopping bag, she wrote out a receipt and calculated the sales tax.

“That will be two hundred and sixty-seven dollars and fifty cents,” she said to him.

The creases suddenly reappeared on his forehead, but if he was having second thoughts, he didn’t say so. With the same ease he’d shown in handling the cane, he tucked the cash away and produced a credit card. “This okay?”

“Sure.”

The transaction complete, Rose handed him the bag, resisting the urge to tell him to take good care of it.

“I’ll be in touch,” she said. “About your party,” she added when he gave her a puzzled look.

“Oh. Well, we’ll talk about that. In the meantime, there is something else I’d like to ask you.”

A date? Rose braced herself, not sure how she felt about that. It was one thing to be neighborly, another thing entirely to risk thinking of him as anything other than Devora’s nephew.

“Shoot,” she invited.

“Devora collected some kind of birds. Glass birds, I think, but I’m not quite—”

He broke off, his expression visibly relieved, when she started to nod.

So he wasn’t going to ask her out, thought Rose, telling herself she wasn’t disappointed.

“Devora collected works by Boris Aureolis, specifically his first nature series. They’re not glass, though I can see how you might think so. They have such a wonderful clarity. They’re actually hard-paste porcelain from the mid-eighteenth century. Aureolis started out as a colorist for Meissen, but ended up a major creative force. He worked with an alchemist to develop the special glaze that distinguishes his work.”

“That’s fascinating,” he said, looking anything but fascinated. “Do you happen to have any in stock?”

He scowled when she laughed and shook her head.

“Heavens, no. Aureolis is too rich for my blood.”

He gave a small grunt. “Really? Just how rich are we talking?”

She nibbled her bottom lip thoughtfully. “I’m no authority, you understand, but they do turn up at auction once in a while, and I was always keeping an eye open for Devora. If I remember correctly, she was missing only four of the series of twenty-five.”

“Three.”

“Three?” She nodded. “That’s right. She snagged the falcon from The Snooty Fox in Burlington.”

“Did she mention what she paid?”

“Probably, but my head is always so full of prices, it’s hard to remember exactly.” She fiddled absently with the sliver of a gold moon that hung on a slender chain around her neck, stopping when she noticed his attention lingering there. Again. “It seems to me it was in the neighborhood of four…maybe high threes.”

“Hundred?”

“Thousand.”

“Figures,” he muttered, then added, “Devora always did have expensive taste.”

“Are you thinking of selling the collection?”

“Actually, I’m looking to complete it.”

Rose’s heart melted a little around the edges. “What a sweet, thoughtful thing to do. Oh, Devora would be so pleased.”

“Trust me, it’s not thoughtful. It’s not even my idea,” he insisted, looking uncomfortable with the approval she was beaming his way. “It’s what Devora wanted. Her last request, you might say. She wants the completed collection donated to the Audubon Society.”

“She always talked about doing that someday. It was her dream. And it’s also something a lot of people wouldn’t understand, or else would simply write off as the crazy whim of an old lady. No wonder she adored you.”

He looked horrified by her praise. “You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t understand anything. I certainly don’t understand why anyone would spend their time and money chasing after some old glass…excuse me, porcelain birds, just to give them away. I think it’s the single wackiest, most senseless thing I ever heard of.”

“Maybe so,” she allowed with an easy smile. “And yet you’re willing to do it, anyway. Sorry, Griffin, that makes you some kind of hero in my book.”

“I am not willing,” he snapped.

“Then why are you here?”

“Because…” He stopped and clenched his teeth. “Because I have no damn choice.”

“I understand…really. And believe me, that kind of devotion is rare.” Her smile gentled as she reached out and patted the hand with which he was gripping the cane. “Sometimes it takes a personal setback to make us more sensitive to the hearts of others.”

“Sensitive?” His tone was edgy, and a flush darkened his lean face. She could feel the tension in his hand and drew hers back.

“Is that what you think I am?” he demanded, growling now. “Sensitive?”

Oh, yes, most definitely a growl. You’d have thought she’d called him a sissy. Of course, in his testosterone-pickled view of reality, she just may have. It was silly, really, when all she had been trying to do was build on the one thing they had in common—a love for Devora. And why? To ease his damn loneliness, that’s why. After all, it wasn’t as if she was the one out hunting for friends. Well, she’d done her part…and after he’d had the gall to refer to her garland as this thing.

Standing in the pinpoint of his fierce glare, her initial impression of him returned. Conventional wisdom was wrong, she thought. Sometimes you really could judge a book by its cover. She’d have let loose and told him what she really thought of him—but why go out of her way to cheer him up?

She shrugged. “Look, Griffin, I didn’t mean—”

He cut her off. “Good. Because if there is one thing I am not, and never will be, it’s sensitive. Got it?”

“With a vengeance,” she shot back.

“Good.”

That said, he clamped the bag containing her fragile masterpiece under his arm and stalked out.

Chapter Three

Two hundred and sixty-seven dollars. And fifty cents.

Griff couldn’t decide who was crazier, Rose Davenport for thinking anyone would pay that kind of money for a string of dead flowers, or him for paying it.

Him, he realized with disgust. No doubt about it. She, on the other hand, deserved the P. T. Barnum award for taking him.

He made his way down Main Street, oblivious to the tourists and the historic houses built shoulder to shoulder along brick sidewalks made uneven by time and weather and gnarled tree roots. He was preoccupied with trying to figure out how it had happened. He’d walked into the shop prepared to deal with a sweet and slightly sappy little old lady, and had emerged with his pocket picked. Not to mention his dented pride and the exasperating fact that he was not one damn step closer to doing what he had gone there to do.

Hell, if he’d felt compelled to buy something, why couldn’t he have grabbed that beat-up watering can, which now seemed a downright bargain at fifty bucks? Because he hadn’t been thinking, that’s why. At least, not about what he should have been thinking about. Instead, he’d been checking out the way that gold moon necklace looked against Rose Davenport’s skin—skin that was pink and gold and almost luminescent.

And right smack in the middle of that foolishness, it had suddenly occurred to him that he probably ought to buy something. Anything. Sort of as an act of good faith, and to avoid being under obligation to her. Give and get, that was his philosophy. He’d looked around at what was closest to him, and it had come down to the teapot with the violets or the dead flowers. He hated to think what the teapot would have set him back.

Pausing at the corner for traffic to pass, he opened the bag and peered inside. Maybe there was something special about these particular dead flowers that made them more valuable than they appeared. Something he’d missed at first glance. He poked at the tissue paper and shifted the contents around a little, but as far as he could tell there was nothing about the…what had she called the thing? Garland. Nothing about this particular garland that ought to make it worth more than two hundred and sixty bucks. Plus tax. Hell, he’d thought it was overpriced when he misread the tag as twenty-five dollars.

The only thing preventing him from tossing it in the nearest trash can was the scent that had wafted up and curled around him when he opened the bag. It was the same scent that filled Rose’s shop. The scent of roses. And cinnamon. And wind. All mixed together. At least, that’s what it smelled like to him. And to his surprise, he didn’t half mind it.

Maybe it wasn’t a total loss, after all. He could always hang the damn thing in the can.

He stopped at the library on his way home and wasted several hours at a table strewn with open encyclopedias and books on every aspect of antiques and collectibles. He learned more than anyone should be forced to know about Meissen, and Boris Aureolis’s groundbreaking innovations in porcelain, and birds native to Northern Europe. He finally gave up and went home, tired, grouchy, and still dragging the ball and chain Devora had attached to his life. Not one of the books he’d examined revealed where he could buy the cursed birds.

Worse, at some point it had dawned on him that he wasn’t even certain which three birds he was looking for. Devora had provided a list of those she owned, but until he could compare that with a complete list, he wasn’t even at square one. It was almost as if she’d developed a masochistic streak in her last days and wanted to make the task as difficult for him as possible. Probably because she knew that would only make him more determined to succeed. With or without the help of Rose Davenport, with her smoky green eyes and insider’s understanding of the secret world of antiques.

There was no way he could approach her again. Not, he thought wincing inside, after the way he’d stormed out of there like a total jackass.

Not unless he became utterly desperate.

He dragged his fingers through the dark wavy hair that fell across his forehead. His hair was longer than it had been in twenty years and he was still getting used to it. It didn’t feel like him, and when he looked in the mirror the man who stared back did not look like the man he used to be. Which made sense. That man was gone. He’d had his nose shoved in that nasty little bit of reality dozens of times every day for over a year.

That man, the old Griff, had had everything under control and had never made a mistake when it counted. Well, almost never, he thought bitterly. He certainly would never have overreacted to something as inconsequential as being called “sensitive” by a shopkeeper. Not even a fine-looking one. Especially not by one who was fine-looking.

No, that old Griff would have laughed at the very suggestion and let loose on Rose Davenport a grin that never, ever failed. When she touched the back of his hand, he would have flipped it and caught hers before she knew what hit her, and said something clever and flirtatious, and with just enough of an edge to make her blush a little. Make her think.

Then he would have leaned closer, close enough to find out if she, too, smelled like roses and cinnamon and wind, close enough to touch that mesmerizing spot on her throat where the gold moon nestled. His touch would be light, one fingertip only, and quick, no more than a second, so fleeting she might question later if he had actually made contact or if she had only imagined it.

That would have her wondering, and waiting for the next time, which would not come soon. Oh, no. He almost smiled just thinking about it. His timing, as always, would be perfect. And eventually, if she continued to intrigue him, Rose Davenport would end up in his bed.

And it would be great. For her as well as him. The chase and the sex. He’d always relished both. There would be no rushing, and no coercion. No lies, no strings, no promises. The old Griff had a code of honor that demanded it.

What the old Griff had not had was a bum leg, loss of peripheral vision in one eye, and no future to speak of.

He rubbed his temple, feeling the ache of a loss so big he couldn’t begin to define its dimensions. Some days, it was as if he had his face pressed against the side of a mountain and was struggling to figure out how tall it was, and how the hell he was going to get over it.

Just a few hours ago he’d thought he had the first step figured out, but in what was turning out to be the new story of his life, he had managed to screw that up, too.

Are you calling me sensitive?

He groaned silently. And he’d had the audacity to label the delivery guy a jerk.

No, he decided with grim resolve, there was no possible way he could ask Rose to help him now. That much was definite, as clear to him as the memory of Devora’s voice, ringing in his head.

“Really, Hollis, do you think it wise to cut off your nose to spite your face?”

“Two hundred and sixty-seven dollars?” Maryann Pontrelli McShane’s lively brown eyes reflected amazement and amusement in about equal parts.

“Plus tax,” Rose added.

“Must have been one hell of a garland.”

“It was,” Rose assured her. “Not that Mr. Hollis Who-are-you-calling-sensitive Griffin appreciated it.”

Her friend tossed back long hair the color of expensive mink, glanced at six-month-old Lisa sleeping peacefully in her stroller, and pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Hollis? What kind of name is Hollis?”

“Rare.”

“Besides rare. British maybe?”

Rose shrugged. “British, French, Cro-Magnon.”

“Easy to see why he prefers Griff.”

“I suppose.” She climbed onto the stool behind the counter and took a sip of the iced chai tea Maryann had brought. “Mmm.”

Iced chai was part of their Thursday ritual.

On Thursdays the shop was open until nine, and Maryann’s husband, Ted, worked late at his law office in Providence. Maryann and Lisa stopped by during the early evening lull, and while the baby napped, the two women caught up with whatever was going on in each other’s lives. During the busy summer months, the shop was Rose’s life, and it was Maryann who usually had the more interesting tales to tell. Not so today. Rose had been stewing over her run-in with Griffin for two days and was happy to be able to grouse about it to someone who would understand.

“I’d still like to know what he’s going to do with my beautiful hydrangeas.”

“His beautiful hydrangeas,” Maryann corrected with a characteristically realistic expression.

“I fished them out of the Dumpster. I wiped the gravy off them—one delicate petal at a time, I might add. And I was the one who spent hours searching for exactly the right shade of ribbon to embellish them.”

“But he’s the one who coughed up more than two hundred and sixty bucks. You do the math.”

“I have,” Rose informed her triumphantly. She produced a legal pad on which she’d scrawled column after column of figures. “If you look at all the time I spent—in the Dumpster, cleaning and drying the flowers, and assembling the garland—and then calculate an hourly wage based on average past receipts—” she glanced up “—in season, of course. And add it all up, I didn’t even come close to breaking even.”

Maryann spoke softly. “Rose, sweetie, get a grip. I know you’re riled, but try not to wake Lisa. Also, I’m not sure you can expect to be compensated for the weeks the flowers spent just hanging around drying.”

Rose’s eyes flashed. “I’d like to know why not. Firemen get paid for the time they spend sitting around waiting for a fire. The crew on a fishing boat—”

“All right, all right, I get the idea. So what’s your point?”

“That Griffin stole the garland, that’s my point. I figure he owes me two thousand, one hundred and seven dollars and thirty-six cents. Plus tax. I’m willing to round it to two thousand even.”

“And just how do you plan to collect?”

“I don’t.” She sighed and tossed the pad aside. “I admit that legally I probably don’t have a leg to stand on.”

“I’m no expert,” Maryann admitted, “but I do watch my share of Judge Judy, and I am married to a third-generation attorney, and that would be my take on the situation, too. Look at it this way—in spite of the fact that you lost two grand on the deal, it was still nearly one-hundred-percent profit. How many businesses can pull that off?”

“I suppose.” Rose leaned on the counter and propped her chin on her hand. “I’d still like to figure out some way to collect. I also wish I hadn’t offered to throw a party for him.”

Maryann’s eyes widened with fresh interest. “Do tell? What’s this guy like, anyway?”

Rose shrugged. “Tall.”

“Tall? That’s the best you can do? I seem to recall Edie Blanchard saying Devora’s nephew is a dead ringer for Pierce Brosnan.”

“When did Edie Blanchard see him?” she asked, more interested than she cared to be, a fact that would not be lost on Maryann.

“At Devora’s memorial service. That was the week we were in Baltimore for Ted’s old roommate’s wedding,” she reminded Rose. “Edie told me all about it when I got back, and I remember how she went on and on about him being the spitting image of Pierce Brosnan. I would have mentioned it to you at the time, but it seemed…trivial, considering the situation and how hard you took the loss.”

Rose nodded. “Well, trust me, Edie was wrong. He’s no Pierce Brosnan.” She paused and tilted her head to the side, thinking it over before grudgingly adding, “Pierce Brosnan’s bigger, tougher, less charming and not nearly as well-dressed brother…maybe.”

“Hey, that’s still not chopped liver.”

“Stop,” Rose ordered, as a familiar gleam appeared in her friend’s dark eyes.

“Stop what?” Maryann’s lashes fluttered with what might be taken for innocence by someone who didn’t know her so well and hadn’t spent countless evenings on the receiving end of her self-acclaimed gift for matchmaking.

“We had an agreement, remember?”

“Oh, that.” Maryann waved off the reminder. “I agreed not to arrange any blind dates for you during your busy season. I never agreed to pretend men don’t exist, or that I do not find them—individually and as a species—a source of great interest, potential and amusement.”

“Maryann, I don’t want to put a damper on your enthusiasm—”

“Much,” her friend interjected.

“But I feel I should point out that you are married.”

“Married, not dead. And, at the risk of putting some heat on that wet blanket you insist on hiding under, I would like to point out that you are neither…married or dead, that is.”

“And happily so.”

“Ha. You just think you’re happy.” Maryann hoisted herself onto the counter as gracefully as she did everything in life, and zeroed in on Rose with the zeal and determination of a used car salesman on the last day of the month. “You are as textbook a case as the person who insists he does not like calamari when he has never even tasted it.”

“Squid,” Rose corrected. “Call it what it is, Maryann—fried squid.”

“My point exactly,” Maryann crowed. “Why doesn’t this otherwise sensible man taste it before ruling out any possibility of liking it? Because even though the menu says, calamari, he’s thinking, squid. Even though everyone else at the table is chomping away and telling him how great it is, telling him, ‘Try it, you’ll like it,’ he’s got squid on the brain. Squid, squid, squid. And, I might add, these fellow diners are not strangers.

“Oh, no,” she continued, having warmed to the point where her Ivy League education and marriage into a family of hardcore WASPs inevitably gave way to the unbridled animation of her deep Italian roots. She waved her expensively manicured hands, shrugged her shoulders, tossed her head. A one-woman show. “These are the very people he chooses to break bread with, people he knows and trusts. His best friend in the whole, entire world is sitting right next to him, holding out his fork, saying, ‘Just a bite, one little bite. Trust me.’”

“All right, Maryann, you win,” Rose said. “You’ve convinced me.”

Maryann’s beautiful face glowed with amazement. “I have?”

“One hundred percent. The very next time we have dinner together, I swear I will eat the calamari right off your plate.”

“Very funny.” She slid from the counter, straightened her white shorts and replaced the pacifier in Lisa’s mouth, just as the baby began to stir.

“As you are well aware,” she said to Rose, “the calamari was merely an illustration, a device, a metaphor for happy marriage. And just as the man was afraid to try the calamari because he couldn’t stop thinking, squid, squid, squid, you are afraid to give the whole men-love-marriage thing a chance.”

“With one small, but critical difference.” Rose’s tone became emphatic. “I have tried marriage.”

“Right. To a squid,” Maryann retorted, throwing both hands in the air, palms up. “I rest my case.”

“Thank you.”

“With this one final thought.”

Rose groaned.

“If you want to go on living a giant yawning hole of a life, go right ahead.”

“Thanks, I will.” Rose raised her plastic cup as if to toast the prospect.

“But, as my gramma Viola, God rest her soul, always said, ‘God works in mysterious ways.’”

She gave that time to sink into Rose’s resistant skull before continuing. “One of these days, that door will open—” She aimed one glossy crimson fingertip at the front door. “And in will walk the one man who can fill all that emptiness inside you.”

“Let me guess…his name will be Right. Mr. Richard Right.”

“Go ahead and laugh. As my gramma was also fond of saying…” She shifted effortlessly into broken English. “Justa you wait and see, Miss Smarty-Pants.”

“I will. But if you don’t mind, I won’t hold my breath, because the entire concept of Mr. Right—that is, one specific person out of hundreds of millions who is destined to be the soul mate of another specific person—is a myth.”

Maryann planted her fists on hips that Raquel Welch in her prime would have envied, and rolled her eyes. “Like you would know?”

“I’ve read Cosmo, too, Maryann. Not to mention having a degree in sociology.”

“Phooey. What does sociology have to do with true love?”

“Plenty.” It was the best Rose could do on the spur of the moment, especially considering she was a little rusty in both areas. About all she remembered from what she had once thought would be her life’s work with the Department of Social Services was the people. She remembered families without homes, babies without mothers, men and women who’d grown old and given up. She remembered those she had struggled to help, and all the ones she couldn’t, no matter how hard she fought, how many hours she logged, how many rules she bent.

“Such as?”