“Local kids?”
“Okay, so they’re adults and they’re Drakes, Mintons, and one Granville by marriage, namely my daughter’s worthless husband, but I think they can do the job. Maybe you could manage them. They all need direction.”
She blinked at him. “If I’m understanding this clearly, you’re asking me to take over a landscaping company that has a contract, more or less, for two hundred houses.”
“That’s about it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you just come up with this idea or did you develop it a while ago?”
His face lost its humor. “If you’re asking me if I’ve been wining and dining you in an attempt to get you to help with my new subdivision, the answer is no. But I’ll be honest with you: I am desperate for help. When you met my daughter, was she smiling?”
“No.”
“Her life is a mess right now. She married some big, good-looking kid from Louisiana in her last year of college and got pregnant right away. Actually, I think she was pregnant before, but that’s neither here nor there. She came home, and I saw right away that as soon as he saw the Granville house he planned to sit down and do nothing for the rest of his life. I gave him many lectures about how we all have to work for what we’ve managed to keep over the centuries, but nothing registered with him. He said that in Louisiana he helped his father do some landscaping. Between you and me I think he probably dug ditches. Anyway, at Camden’s crying requests I talked my partners into letting this moron become involved in the landscaping. He went out and hired the blackest of the black sheep in this town to work for him, and now he expects me to buy him half a million dollars’ worth of equipment and turn him loose on the gardens of all the houses. He doesn’t know a daisy from a liatris, so how can he put in gardens that look like something Thomas Jefferson might have enjoyed?”
Brad put his hand over his eyes. “I tell you I’m caught in a three-way vise. I have my investors threatening me if Remi messes up. I have my daughter, who expects me to perform a miracle and make her talent-less husband into a great businessman, and I have this kid telling me he can’t do anything until I buy him half of John Deere.”
Eden crossed her arms over her chest. “And just this minute you came up with the idea of turning this entire mess over to me and getting me to straighten it out?”
Brad grinned at her. “Actually, that’s completely accurate. One hundred percent right on. I think you must be a mind reader.”
In spite of herself, Eden laughed, and her body relaxed. “Your son-in-law is from Louisiana? Does he have one of ‘those’ accents?”
“Sometimes I can hardly understand him. You wouldn’t really consider doing this, would you?” There was hope in his voice, but also a belief that it would never happen.
“Let me think about it. You say the books are in my bedroom?”
“With your notebooks. Do you think you could make up your mind by, say, ten o’clock tomorrow?”
“What happens at ten?”
“I’m to meet Remi at the John Deere dealer.”
Again, Eden laughed. Family, she thought. All the problems of family. When she left Melissa and Stuart and the baby Melissa was about to have, Eden had thought she was saying good-bye to family. But here was an invitation to plunge into a family complete with squabbles and real problems. In this case, though, it looked a bit like diving headfirst into a swimming pool that she knew was empty.
“Is the John Deere dealer still on Berkshire?”
“Hasn’t moved since 1954.”
“I’ll meet you there at ten tomorrow and talk to your son-in-law.”
Brad grabbed both her hands in his. “I so appreciate this. You don’t know…” He stopped and smiled at her. “I’m not yet sure, but I think maybe everything Mrs. Farrington said about you was right.” He said the last very softly, and he had that unmistakable look on his face: he was about to kiss her.
As he bent his head toward her, Eden stepped back and the moment was lost. When he kissed her for the first time, she wanted it to be from passion, not gratitude. She took her hands from his. “You better go. I’ll need to go through my books tonight and see…See what a fool I am if I even consider this.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, stepping back. He took his car keys out of his pocket. “Tomorrow.” He seemed to want to say more, but instead he turned and walked away. He looked back once and waved, then she heard his car start and saw the taillights as he drove down the driveway.
Standing alone in the moonlit garden, Eden shivered. Moments ago, it had seemed very warm, but now she was cold. Hurriedly, she ran up the stairs and back into the house.
It was utterly quiet inside, but she could feel the presence of another human being. McBride. Right now all she wanted to do was take a shower and settle down with her gardening books and think hard about Brad’s offer of a job. Could she do it? It had been year
s since she’d even read a gardening book. Could she remember all that she’d learned? Had she even learned enough to be able to design gardens from scratch? Plant heights, pH levels, bloom time, pruning—they all had to be considered. And then there was the entire eighteenth-century philosophy of design. They were complicated gardens. And would she be able to get along with Brad’s son-in-law, Remi? She’d never been able to get along with her own son-in-law, so how could she think of taking on someone else’s?
She made herself a cup of tea and finished cleaning the kitchen while her thoughts tumbled on top of one another. When at last she was ready to go upstairs, she thought about staying downstairs and sleeping on the couch. Upstairs was Mr. McBride and the confrontation she wanted to avoid. When she’d moved him into her house she had good reasons, but right now she couldn’t remember one of them. Had she really wanted protection from Brad? She smiled at that idea. She was beginning to think that being protected from Mr. Braddon Norfleet Granville was the last thing she wanted.
She stopped at the foot of the stairs and took a deep breath. Firm, she told herself. She had to be firm.
Chapter Six