her child had been having phone sex on Will’s watch.
Which led him to his present errand.
Before he called his sister and shared that little tidbit—before he paid the bill, even—he intended to directly contact the author of his misery—the phone sex operator. Over the top? Probably. But what the hell—his normally sedate life had been knocked off-kilter today and he had to do something proactive to put it back on the right path. He couldn’t help it. It was all part and parcel of being a professed control freak. Will took exception to the unflattering term, but couldn’t deny his nature. He liked to do things his way, liked having his way, and ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time he could say with confidence that his way was the right way.
Will’s first impulse had been to call the 1-900 line, but he’d quickly changed his mind. The unscrupulous witch wasn’t bleeding another friggin’ nickel out of him. Instead, he’d called a P.I. buddy to do a little snooping for him. The best Will had hoped for was a toll-free line, but what his friend had found had been considerably better. A name and address, and, wonder of wonders, a local one at that. What were the odds?
He’d been destined to blast her.
Given the morning from hell he’d had, to be honest, Will didn’t think he’d ever looked forward to doing anything more.
When he’d learned that the woman lived here it was as though Christmas had come early. Rather than taking out his miserable mood on Doris—who he resignedly admitted he would be forced to continue to work with—or his well-meaning but meddlesome mother—whom he’d live to regret pissing off—Will had found out that he could verbally assault a perfect stranger who really deserved it, and finally blow off the steam which had been steadily building since early this morning.
What better person to verbally eviscerate than a woman so lacking in morals that she’d have phone sex with a teenager? A minor? A mere child?
Granted, Scott was seventeen and, given the way the girls followed him around, the kid was most likely getting laid more frequently and with more furor than his uncle. Will nevertheless thought the woman should have used better judgment. But she hadn’t. She’d crossed the line in order to pad her own pockets—with his money, dammit—and for that, she would pay.
A Jackson native, Will had been at once familiar and surprised by the supposed address of the woman. According to his buddy, she lived in an old but affluent neighborhood on a street one wouldn’t normally expect to find an unsavory phone sex operator in residence.
Wisteria Court was located in the historical district. Huge antebellum homes reminiscent of a bygone era, with aged boxwoods, magnolias, weeping willows and tulip trees stood sentinel on the manicured lawns. The neighborhood was rife with the scent of mint juleps and old money, and he found the idea of a phone sex operator in residence among Jackson’s so-called hoity-toity set perversely funny. Ordinarily, the idea would have drawn a smile.
But not today. Today, he was too pissed.
He slowed the truck to a crawl as he checked house numbers, then finally hitting pay dirt, he wheeled the vehicle into the appropriate drive. Anticipation spiked. Finally, Will thought. He purposely stoked his ire on the way to the door by alternately imagining writing the check to the phone company, and telling his sister about Scott’s foray into the seedy world of phone sex—Reach out and touch someone, indeed, Will thought darkly. So, by the time he plied the knocker every last particle of irritation he’d had that morning set ready on his tongue. He’d pulled back the hammer, so to speak, and was ready to unload.
It was to his vast disappointment then, when an elderly woman with pink foam curlers in her hair answered the door and he was forced to put on the safety.
Again.
He stifled the burgeoning urge to scream.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
Baffled, Will frowned. He knew he had the right address. But this… He inwardly shuddered. This couldn’t possibly be the right woman. “Er…Ms. Crosswhite?”
“Nope. Ida Holcomb. You’re looking for Rowan,” she said matter-of-factly. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “She lives in the guest house in the back.” The woman gasped, laid a hand over her belly, and shot him a pained look. “Gotta go,” she said abruptly, then slammed the door in his face.
Startled, Will drew back, then, shaking his head, made his way off the porch and toward the rear of the property where the older woman had indicated. He had a bead on her now, Will thought, purposefully striding alongside the house. As he rounded the corner, however, the sight that greeted him caused him to slow and every bit of the anger he’d nursed faded into insignificance.
A vintage Vette—a ’62 if he wasn’t mistaken—in pristine condition sat in the drive next to the house. He whistled low and, had his attention not been instantly drawn elsewhere, he would have been tempted to inspect the car from bumper to bumper. As it was, his gaze had landed on the house and surrounding property, and any notion of the car, while it was admittedly a fine piece of machinery, drifted right out of his head.
The house, a miniature version of the primary residence sat at the very back of the property. White frame, double verandah, utterly charming. But it hadn’t been what made him pause, either—it was the garden around the house that had made such an impact. He blinked, pulling it all into focus, and for some wholly unknown reason, an excited tingle started in the heels of his feet and swiftly moved upward.
Will had been in landscape design for years, had been to countless shows in practically every part of the country, and yet nothing in his experience could compare to this.
Though he recognized every flower, vine, shrub and bush—all of them typical to the average bee-and-butterfly garden—the whimsical layout, the use of color and texture combined with what he could only deduce was the owner’s original metalwork and stained glass made it the most unique garden he’d ever seen. There was no discernable plan, no clear-cut layout, and yet everything grew together in a seamless form of ordered pandemonium.
It was gorgeous.
Butterfly bushes, creeping flox, flowering peach and crabapple trees, clematis vines, various lilies, and bedding plants, a variety of ground covers, and perhaps the most interesting of all—antique roses. The swamp rose, in particular, was one that he coveted.
Feeling like he’d been clubbed over the head again, Will slowly resumed his pace. Inexplicably drawn to the roses, the grand dames of antique bushes, he reverently fingered one delicate petal while quietly inspecting the plant. No spots or aphids, and what minimal pruning had been done had been accomplished with a precisely loving hand. Whoever tended this garden had a passion for the process and clearly designed it for their own personal enjoyment.
Not a single detail had been left untended and, despite the fact that he knew this was the work of the skanky phone sex operator, of all people, Will found himself grudgingly impressed. More than impressed. Floored, really. After all, it took a helluva lot of imagination, not to mention a great deal of time and effort to—
The tinkle of feminine laughter drifted to him, snagging his attention back to the task at hand. He scanned the yard and, after a moment, his gaze landed upon a generously rounded, denim-clad rump peeking out from a small raised bed in the far corner of the garden. A pair of tanned, equally shapely legs were attached to the rump. He could see little else save the back of her head, and while he got the impression of long sable-colored hair, in all truthfulness as far as he was concerned she could have been bald and he’d
