“No,” she said as she put her head against the side window and looked out at the road. “Have you ever believed in someone completely, then found out that that person wasn’t at all what you thought?”
“Yes,” he said. “You find out something about Ramsey?”
“No, I mean yes. He really cares about people, doesn’t he?”
Luke gave her a glance as he turned a curve. “I guess so. What does he care about?”
“Everything. Everyone.” She sat up straighter. “Where are we going?”
“Plants, remember?”
“I can’t afford them,” she said before she thought.
One minute Luke was driving straight ahead, and the next he’d done a U-turn and was heading back the way they came.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking you home, then we’re going to sit down, and you’re going to explain what you just said.”
Ramsey hadn’t said to keep what he’d told her a secret, but Jocelyn felt that it was just an oversight on his part. Whatever had gone on between Miss Edi and his grandfather had been kept quiet for so many years that she didn’t think she should blab it now. “It’s just some legal stuff,” she said. “It’s, uh, probate. It takes a long time to get the money Miss Edi left me to take care of the house, so I have to wait. Meanwhile, I have nothing but what I have in savings, which isn’t much. But Ramsey got me a job at his sister’s tomorrow. I’m going to bake some cupcakes even though I don’t have so much as a baking pan, but if I can make the cupcakes, everything will be fine. I think. I hope.”
Luke pulled into the driveway of Edilean Manor, turned off the engine, then went around to the other side and opened her door. “Out,” he said when she just sat there. “Unless you want me to carry you, get out of the truck.”
She got out, went to the front door, then fumbled in her pocket for the key. “The house key’s with my car key, and Ramsey has it.”
Luke reached across her and opened the door. “Who locks their front door in this town?”
“But you said—” She didn’t bother to finish as he walked into the kitchen and she followed. He pulled out a chair at the big table and waited until she sat down, then he put a teakettle on the stove to boil.
“Where’d that come from?” she asked.
“My mother. I told her you liked tea, so she gave me a box of stuff for you. Okay, start talking.”
“Probate,” she said. “Ramsey said—”
“Ramsey said no such thing, and if you don’t stop lying to me, I’m going to start shouting. I can be very loud when I want to be. All those years of sports.”
“Don’t shout,” she said as she put her head on her hand. “Why are you doing this? I thought we were going to a nursery and…” She trailed off.
“You look like you got hit by a freight train,” he said as he took the kettle off the burner and poured tea into a pretty teapot that Joce had never seen before. “I want to know what my cousin said to make you react like this.”
“Nothing that you need to use your right hook on.”
“Left.”
“What?”
“Left hook. I’m not going to punch out Ramsey, but I will give him a piece of my mind. What was he thinking to let you leave looking as though you’d been drained by a vampire?”
“You’re exaggerating. He just told me some legal stuff and—” His glare cut her off. “Okay, so I didn’t let him see how much his words affected me. In fact, I let him think I was happy. Full of life. Nothing gets ol’ Jocelyn down.”
“But then you climbed into my truck and you looked like you’d—”
“I know,” Joce said. “Hit by a freight train. Drained of blood. You sure know how to make a girl feel good.”
He set the pot in front of her with a matching cup and saucer, then went to the refrigerator to get milk. “So now that we have that settled, tell me what happened.”
“I can’t. It’s…it’s private.”