for a small, neat ranch-style house during the fifteen years they were married. But that was all it had been—talk.
“It’s mighty big for one person.”
“I like big,” Laurel said and felt a sudden flush sweep over her face for no reason that made any sense. Or she hoped that it didn’t, although that seemed doubtful, considering the ghost of a smile hovering at one corner of Alec Stanton’s mouth.
“Where shall I start?”
“What?”
He tilted his head. “You were going to tell me where to start to work.”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” she said and spun around, leading the way toward the front garden.
She had meant to help him, in part to be on hand to point out what she wanted to keep and what needed to go. She soon saw that it was unnecessary. He knew his plants and shrubs; his time as a yardman had been put to good use. He was also efficient. He didn’t start work until he had checked out the tools in the shed behind the detached garage, then oiled and sharpened them.
“You could use a new pair of hedge shears,” he suggested as he ran a callused thumb along the edge of a wide blade. “It would make your job around here a lot easier.”
He was right, and she knew it. “I’ll tell Maisie to pick them up next time she goes into town.”
“You’re also out of gas for the lawn mower.”
“She can get that, too.”
He studied her for a moment, his eyes as dark and fathomless as obsidian. “You know you have a flat on your car? And the rest of the tires are so dry-rotted you’d be lucky to get out of the driveway on them.”
“I don’t go out much,” she said, avoiding his gaze.
“You don’t go at all, to hear Grannie tell it—haven’t left this place in ages. All you do is read and make clay pots in the shed out behind the garage. Why is that?”
“No reason. I just prefer my own company.” She gave him a cool look before she turned away. “I’ll be in the house if you need anything.”
To retreat was instinctive self-protection, that was all. She didn’t have to explain herself. Certainly it was none of this man’s business whether she went out or stayed home, worked with her pottery or flew to the moon on a broomstick. Nor did she need someone watching her, giving unasked-for advice, prying into her life. She would pay him for what he did today, regardless of what he had said, then send him on his way. She had gotten along without Alec Stanton before he came, and she could get along without him when he was gone.
As the day advanced, however, it could not be denied that he was making progress. He cut away dozens of pine and sassafras saplings from the old fence enclosure, exposing the unpainted pickets almost all the way across the front of the garden. He rescued and pruned the Russell’s Cottage Rose in the corner, tearing out a head-high pile of honeysuckle vines in the process. An arbor and garden bench of weathered cypress were unearthed from a covering of wild grapevines. And the debris from his efforts was thrown into a pile that made a slow-burning green bonfire. The gray pall of smoke rose high enough to cross the face of the noonday sun.
Laurel tried not to watch him. Yet against her best intentions it seemed everything she did took her near the front windows of the house. It was only natural to look out. A perfectly ordinary impulse. That was all.
He had removed his shirt in the middle of the morning. A sheen of perspiration gilded the sun-bronzed expanse of his back, shimmering with his movements, while dust and bits of dried leaves stuck to the corded muscles of his arms. The soft hair on his chest glinted like damp velvet, making a conduit for the trickling sweat that crept down the washboard-like ridges of his abdomen to dampen the waist of his jeans. He was hot and sweaty and dirty and magnificent. And she disliked him intensely for making her aware of it.
The last thing she wanted was to think about a man—any man. She had gotten along fine without being reminded of the male race; had hardly thought of love or sex since her husband had died. To be forced to return to all that now would not be helpful. She wouldn’t do it, she wouldn’t.
“I’ve got cold roast chicken and fruit salad for lunch,” Maisie said from behind her. “You want I should serve it for you and Alec out on the veranda?”
Laurel swung to face the housekeeper with guilty color flooding her face. Maisie Warfield, rotund and white-haired, stood in the doorway that led from the dining room to the parlor. She wiped her wet hands on a dish towel as she studied Laurel. There was a shrewd look in the snapping blue of her eyes, and faint amusement crinkled the tanned skin around them into shallow wrinkles.
“No. No, I don’t think so,” Laurel replied. “You—can take him a sandwich and a cold drink.”
Maisie’s smile faded and she set her hamlike fist that held the dishcloth on a padded hip. “Why? You got something against Alec?”
“Of course not. I just prefer my privacy.” Laurel turned back to the window, ignoring the other woman’s stern gaze.
“He’s not going to bite.”
A wry smile curled Laurel’s lips. “How do you know?”
“What?”
She turned to give her housekeeper a straight glance. “I said, yes, I know. But I still don’t intend to eat with him. Or anything else.”
“You’d rather stay shut up in this house instead of keeping him company.”
“That’s about it.”
The housekeeper shrugged. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Laurel made no reply. She was too afraid Maisie might be right.
2
Alec worked like a man possessed, slashing and hacking and piling brush without letting up. The sun burned down on his head. Sweat poured off him in streams. He tied a bandana around his forehead and kept working. His shirt grew soaked, clinging to him, confining his movements. He stripped it off and kept working. He could feel the sting of long scratches on his arms from his bout with forty-foot runners from an ancient dog rose. He ignored them and kept working.
He didn’t care about any of it. It was good to use his muscles, to feel them heat up until they glided and contracted in endless rhythm, responding effortlessly to his need. He liked the heat of the sun on his back, enjoyed the smells of cut stems, disturbed earth and smoke. It gave him a sense of accomplishment to rescue antique shrubs and perennials, to watch some semblance of order emerge from what had been a confused mess.
He had to prove himself to make sure he got this job, but there was more to it than that. He needed to show Laurel Bancroft that he was as good as any redneck at achieving what she needed done.
He had thought from the way she was dressed this morning that she might work with him. He had been looking forward to the prospect. But she had gone inside the house and shut the door. He hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of her since.
She was good at closing herself off, from all accounts. Grannie Callie had said she’d hardly left this old
