Garden Of Scandal. Jennifer Blake

anger that simmered inside him while he dug and chopped and ripped weeds from the ground was strange, in a way. What people thought and how they acted toward him had ceased to bother him years ago. But Laurel Bancroft had opened old wounds. She’d made him as self-conscious as a teenager again. She’d made him care, which was something else he held against her.

      What it was about her, he didn’t know. It wasn’t just that she was an attractive woman, because there were jillions of those in California, and he had known his share. Nor was it, as his brother sometimes claimed, that he had a weakness for problem females. He might feel the need to lend a hand to those who seemed to be struggling, but that had nothing to do with the woman who owned Ivywild.

      There she was again, behind the draperies that covered the window on the end of the house. She was standing well back and barely shifting the drape, but he had learned to watch for the shadowy movement.

      That did it.

      He dropped the shovel he was wielding, then stripped off his gloves and crammed them into his back pocket. He was not going to be spied on any longer. Either she was coming out or he was going in.

      Maisie answered his knock. Her gray brows climbed toward her hairline as she saw the grim look on his face. Wiping her damp hands on her apron, she asked, “Something the matter?”

      Alec gave a short nod. “I’d like to talk to Mrs. Bancroft a minute.”

      “She’s busy,” the older woman answered, not budging an inch. “What do you need?”

      “Answers,” he said. “Could you get her for me?”

      Maisie considered him, her faded gaze holding a hint of acknowledgment of the human capacity for dealing misery. Finally, she nodded. “Wait here a minute.”

      Alec put his hands on his hipbones as he watched the housekeeper move off into the house. Wait here, she’d said. Like a good boy. Or the hired help. His lips tightened.

      After a few seconds, he heard the murmur of voices, then a silence followed by the returning shuffle of the house slippers Maisie wore. She spoke while still some distance down the hall.

      “She says find out what you want.”

      “I want,” he replied with stringent softness, “to talk to her.”

      “Well, she don’t want to talk to you, so don’t push it.”

      “What if I do? You going to stop me? Or will you just tell Grannie Callie on me?” He stepped forward into the long hallway.

      “You’ll get yourself fired,” Maisie warned, even as she backed up a few steps.

      “Fine. I’ll be fired.”

      “I thought you wanted this job.”

      “Where is she?” He strode deeper into the house while Maisie turned and trotted along behind him.

      “In her bedroom,” the older woman answered a bit breathlessly. “You can’t go in there.”

      “I think maybe I can,” he said, heading for the door Maisie had glanced at as she spoke.

      “It’s on your own head, then.”

      The warning in the housekeeper’s voice as she came to a halt was fretted with something that might have been grudging approval. He didn’t stay to analyze it, but turned the knob of the bedroom door and pushed inside.

      The widow Bancroft was sitting on a chaise longue with pillows propped behind her back, her feet curled to one side and a book in her hands. Her gaze widened and a tint of soft rose crept into her face as she stared at him. Her lips parted as if she had drawn a quick breath and forgotten to release it.

      The bedroom was like her, Alec thought—a medley of cream, blue and coral-pink; of substantial Victorian furniture and fragile, sensuous fabrics. It was a retreat and he had breached it. More than that, he had caught her unawares, before she could raise her defenses. She was barefoot and almost certainly braless under an oversize and much-washed T-shirt worn with a pair of white shorts. Her hair spilled over her left shoulder, shimmering with the beat of her heart, and she wore not the first smidgen of makeup to obscure her clear skin or the soft coral of her lips. She was the most enticing sight he had ever come across in his life.

      In the flicker of an eyelid, she recovered her outward aplomb. Setting her book aside, she uncurled from the chaise and got to her feet. As she spoke, her voice was edgy. “What is it? Do you have a problem?”

      “You might say so. I want to know why you’re afraid of me.” He hadn’t meant it to come out just like that, but he let it stand anyway.

      “I’m not,” she said in immediate denial.

      “You could have fooled me. Unless you have some other reason for hiding in here?”

      She stared at him an instant too long before she spoke. “Who said I was hiding? Just because I don’t feel the need to oversee everything you do—”

      “You’re letting me make this garden on my own, and you know it. When I get through, it won’t be yours but mine.”

      She shrugged briefly. “So I’ll make it mine when you’re gone.”

      “There’s no need. I can make sure that it reflects what you want right now. You won’t have to lift a finger except to point. You can tell me what you want moved and what stays as is, what you want pruned to size and what you prefer to be left natural. I’ve gotten rid of the briers and vines and everything else that obviously doesn’t belong, but now it’s decision time.”

      “You decide, then,” she said through compressed lips. “You seem to know more about it than I do, anyway.”

      “I don’t know what you like or what you want.” The words were simple and he meant them, but the emphasis he put on them in his own mind turned his ears hot.

      “Do whatever you like!”

      He stared at her, then gave himself a mental shake. She was talking about flowers and shrubs, that was all. “Suppose I clear off everything,” he said, “take it down to the bare…ground.”

      “You can’t!”

      “I could,” he growled with absolute conviction. “Nothing easier.”

      “But there are camellias out there over eighty years old, and one big sweet olive that—” She stopped, her eyes narrowing. “But you know that.”

      “I know what’s there,” he said. “I just don’t know what you care about.”

      “I can tell you—”

      “Show me.” He cut across what she had intended to say without compunction.

      Her lips firmed. “I don’t think—”

      “Unless it’s me,” he said softly. “Since you’re not afraid, then you must not like the company.”

      Surprise and dismay flashed in the rich blue of her eyes. “That isn’t it at all.”

      “Then what’s the problem?”

      “Nothing!”

      “I don’t think so.”

      Her lashes flickered. “At least it’s nothing to do with you, nothing to you. I can’t imagine why you’re so concerned.”

      “Call me perverse. I like to know where I stand.”

      “Where you don’t belong, actually. In my bedroom.” She flashed him a look of irritation before she turned away again.

      “Level with me and I’m gone,” he stated with precision.

      Her lips tightened, and she crossed her arms over her chest as she sighed. “It’s not you, all right? If you must know, it’s me. I don’t deal well with people.”

      “That