had the roses in her left hand. Her right strayed to the pearls at her throat. She fondled them, ticking them off like the beads of a rosary. “He was out there, on the side porch, just a moment ago.” Each word was heavy with disdain.
Jane resisted the urge to say something sarcastic. Well, Mother. It is his house. I suppose he has the right to be out on the porch.
Word around town was that Cade Bravo owned an ostentatious new house in Las Vegas and a condo in nearby Lake Tahoe. He’d taken the small town of New Venice completely by surprise when he’d bought the Lipcott place next-door to Jane’s. A run-down farmhouse-style Victorian seemed the last place he would ever want to live.
But the house wasn’t run-down anymore. Renovations had gone on for months. Finally the various work crews had picked up and moved on and the new owner had taken up residence.
“At least he had the grace to respect the integrity of the original home,” Virginia said grudgingly, hand still at her pearls.
Jane thought he had done a beautiful job with the old house. It looked much as it must have when it was first built, at the turn of the last century, a house a lot like Jane’s house, one that harkened back to simpler, more graceful times, with an inviting deep wraparound porch and fish scale shingles up under the eaves.
Virginia muttered, “Still. One of those Bravo boys living on Green Street. Who ever could have imagined such a thing?” Green Street was wide and tree-lined. The charming old houses on it had always been owned by respectable and prosperous members of the New Venice community, people from well-established local families—the Elliotts and the Chases, the Moores and the Lipcotts.
True, Cade Bravo had surprised everyone by prospering. In that sense, he fit the profile for a resident of Green Street. Was he respectable? Not by Virginia Chase Elliott’s exacting standards. But then, in Virginia’s thoroughly biased opinion, no Bravo was—or ever could be—considered respectable.
“Does he bother you, honey?” Her mother was looking right at her now.
“Of course not.”
“He was always such a wild one—the worst of the bunch, everyone says so. Takes after that mother of his.” Virginia’s gray eyes narrowed when she mentioned Caitlin Bravo. Her hand worried all the harder at her pearls. “I suppose he’s got the women in and out all the time.”
“No. He’s very quiet, actually, when he’s here—and you should get those roses home. Cut an inch off the stems, at a slant, and—”
Her mother waved the hand that had been so busy with the pearls. “I know, I know. Remove any leaves below the waterline.”
Jane smiled. “That’s right. And use that flower food I gave you.”
Virginia sighed. “I will, I will—and how is Celia?”
Celia Tuttle was one of Jane’s two closest friends. Her name was Celia Bravo now. A little over two months ago, at the end of May, Celia had married Cade’s oldest brother, Aaron.
“Happy,” said Jane. “Celia is very, very happy.”
One of Virginia’s eyebrows inched upward. “Pregnant, or so I heard.”
“Yes. She and Aaron are thrilled about that.”
“I meant, a little too pregnant for how long they’ve been married.”
Jane shook her head. “Mother. Give it up. Celia is happy. Aaron loves her madly. They are absolutely adorable together, totally devoted—and looking forward to having a baby. I’d like to find a man who loves me the way Aaron Bravo loves his wife.”
Her mother made a prim noise in her throat. Jane folded her arms and gave Virginia a long, steady look heavily freighted with rebuke.
Virginia relented. She waved her hand again. “All right, all right. Celia is a sweet girl and if she’s happy, I’m happy for her.”
“So good of you to say so.”
“Don’t get that superior tone, please. I don’t like it when you do that—and I know, I know. Celia is your dearest friend in the world, along with Jillian.” Jane and Celia and Jillian Diamond had been best friends since kindergarten. “I ought to have sense enough never to say a word against either of them.”
“Yes, you should.”
Virginia stepped closer, the look in her eyes softening. She reached out and smoothed Jane’s always-wild hair in a gesture so tender, so purely maternal that Jane couldn’t help but be soothed by it. Jane did love her mother, though Virginia was not always easy to love.
“You haven’t mentioned how your date went Friday.”
Jane gave her mother a noncommittal smile. “I had a nice time.”
Virginia looked pained. “My. Your indifference is nothing short of stunning.”
Indifference. Sadly that pretty much summed up Jane’s feelings about Friday night. It had been her second date with that particular man. He taught Science at the high school and Jane had met him over a year ago now. He’d come into her bookstore looking for a good manual on Sierra birds and a well-illustrated book on weather patterns. He really did seem the kind of man she’d been looking for: steady and trustworthy, kind and wise. A man who had sought to be her friend first. He’d told her he admired her straightforwardness, said he respected her independence and valued her intelligence. Jane believed him when he said those things.
And he was nice-looking, too, with thick brown hair and a muscular build. There was nothing not to like about him. Jane did like him. She also knew in her heart that liking was all she felt for him.
Was she asking too much in daring to want it all—decency and steadiness and a kiss that turned her inside out?
Probably.
“Gary Nevis is a great guy, Mom. I just don’t think he’s the guy for me.”
“Now. Give it time. You might discover there’s more there than you realized.”
“Good advice,” Jane agreed without much enthusiasm.
“And on that note, I’ll take my roses and go home.”
Jane walked her mother out the door and down the front steps.
“A beautiful summer we’re having,” her mother said as they proceeded down the walk toward the car at the curb.
“Oh, yes.” Jane turned her face up to the warm ball of the August sun. “A splendid summer.” Northern Nevada’s Comstock Valley was, in Jane’s admittedly biased opinion, the best place in the entire world to live. A place where the pace of life was not too hectic, where you knew your neighbors, where people were always forgetting to lock their doors and it never mattered because nothing bad every happened. Here, folks enjoyed reasonably mild winters and summers where daytime temperatures tended to max out in the low eighties.
At the curb, about twenty feet from the low, celadon-green sports car parked in front of Cade’s house, Jane took the roses and held the door open while her mother got settled into her Town Car, sliding onto the
