me that flat of petunias.” She stuck the small spade in the ground again, fighting the rocky soil. “Gardening’s good for you. It gets you back in touch with nature.”
“I’ve no desire to touch nature.”
This time she laughed and lifted her face to the sky. No, the closest C.J. would come to nature would be a chlorinated pool—solar-heated. Up to a few months ago she’d barely gotten much closer herself. She’d certainly never attempted to. But now she’d found something—something she hadn’t even been looking for. If she hadn’t come to the East Coast to collaborate on the score for a new musical, if she hadn’t taken an impulsive drive south after the long, grueling sessions had ended, she never would’ve happened on the sleepy little town tucked into the Blue Ridge.
Do we ever know where we belong, Maggie wondered, unless we’re lucky enough to stumble onto our own personal space? She only knew that she’d been heading nowhere in particular and she’d come home.
Maybe it had been fate that had led her into Morganville, a cluster of houses cupped in the foothills that boasted a population of 142. From the town proper, it spread out into farms and isolated mountain homes. If fate had taken her to Morganville, it had again taken her past the sign that listed the sale of a house and twelve acres. There’d been no moment of indecision, no quibbling over the price, no last-minute doubts. Maggie had met the terms and had had the deed in her hand within thirty days.
Looking up at the three-story frame house, with shutters still hanging crooked, Maggie could well imagine her friends and colleagues wondering about her mental state. She’d left her Italian-marble entrance hall and mosaic-tiled pool for rusty hinges and rocks. She’d done it without a backward glance.
Maggie patted the dirt around the petunias, then sat back. They looked a bit more spritely than her pansies. Maybe she was beginning to get the hang of it. “What do you think?”
“I think you should come back to L.A. and finish the score.”
“I meant the flowers.” She brushed off her jeans as she rose. “In any case, I am finishing the score—right here.”
“Maggie, how can you work here?” C.J. exploded. He tossed out both arms in a gesture she’d always admired for its unapologetic theatrics. “How can you live here? This place isn’t even civilized.”
“Why? Because there’s no health club and boutique on every other corner?” Wanting to temper the words, she tucked a hand through C.J.’s arm. “Go ahead, take a deep breath. The clean air won’t hurt you.”
“Smog’s underrated,” he mumbled as he shifted his feet again. Professionally he was her agent, but personally C.J. considered himself her friend, perhaps her best friend since Jerry had died. Thinking of that, he changed his tone again. This time it was gentle. “Look, Maggie, I know you’ve been through some rough times. Maybe L.A. has too many memories for you to deal with right now. But you can’t bury yourself.”
“I’m not burying myself.” She put her hands on his forearms, squeezing for both emphasis and support. “And I buried Jerry nearly two years ago. That was another part of my life, C.J., and has nothing to do with this. This is home. I don’t know how else to explain it.” She slid her hands down to his, forgetting hers were smeared with earth. “This is my mountain now, and I’m happier here, more settled, than I ever was in Los Angeles.”
He knew he was beating his head against a wall, but opted to give it one more shot. “Maggie.” He slipped an arm around her shoulder, as if, she thought ruefully, she was a small child needing guidance. “Look at that place.” He let the silence hang a moment while they both studied the house on the rise above. He noticed that the porch was missing several boards and that the paint on the trim was peeling badly. Maggie saw the sun reflecting off the window glass in rainbows. “You can’t possibly be serious about living there.”
“A little paint, a few nails.” She shrugged it away. Long ago she’d learned that surface problems were best ignored. It was the problem simmering under the surface, not quite visible, that had to be dealt with. “It has such possibilities, C.J.”
“The biggest one is that it’ll fall down on your head.”
“I had the roof fixed last week—a local man.”
“Maggie, I’m not at all convinced there are any local men, or women, within ten miles. This place doesn’t look fit for anything but elves and gnomes.”
“Well, he might’ve been a gnome.” Her sense of fun spurred her on as she stretched her back muscles. “He was about five foot five, stocky as a bull and somewhere around a hundred and two. His name was Bog.”
“Maggie—”
“He was very helpful,” she went on. “He and his boy are coming back to deal with the porch and some of the other major repairs.”
“All right, so you’ve got a gnome to do some hammering and sawing. What about this?” He swept his hand around to take in the surrounding land. It was rocky, uneven and overgrown with weeds and thickets. Not even a dedicated optimist could’ve considered any part of it a lawn. A burly tree slanted dangerously toward the house itself, while thorny vines and wildflowers scrambled for space. There was a pervading smell of earth and green.
“Like Sleeping Beauty’s castle,” Maggie murmured. “I’ll be sorry in a way to hack it down, but Mr. Bog has that under control, too.”
“He does excavation work, too?”
Maggie tilted her head and arched her brows. It was a look that made anyone over forty remember her mother. “He recommended a landscaper. Mr. Bog assures me that Cliff Delaney is the best man in the county. He’s coming by this afternoon to take a look at the place.”
“If he’s a smart man, he’ll take one look at that gully you call a road leading up here and keep on going.”
“But you brought your rented Mercedes all the way up.” Turning, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate that or the fact that you flew in from the Coast or that you care enough to be concerned. I appreciate all of it. I appreciate you.” She ruffled his hair, something no one else would’ve gotten away with. “Trust my judgment on this, C.J. I really do know what I’m doing. Professionally, my work can’t do anything but improve here.”
“That’s yet to be seen,” he muttered, but lifted a hand to touch her cheek. She was still young enough to have foolish dreams, he thought. Still sweet enough to believe in them. “You know it’s not your work I’m worried about.”
“I know.” Her voice softened, and with it her eyes, her mouth. She was not a woman who guided her emotions, but one who was guided by them. “I need the peace here. Do you know, this is the first time in my life I’ve gotten off the merry-go-round? I’m enjoying the solid ground, C.J.”
He knew her well and understood that there was no moving her, for the moment, from the position she’d taken. He understood, too, that from birth her life had been ribboned with the stuff of fantasies—and of nightmares. Perhaps she did need to compensate, for a time.
“I’ve got a plane to catch,” he grumbled. “As long as you insist on staying here, I want you to call me every day.”
Maggie kissed him again. “Once a week,” she countered. “You’ll have the completed
