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A few miles outside the small soundside town of Muddy Landing in a handsome old house that had seen far better days, Daisy Hunter packed another box of her late patient’s clothing, to be dropped off at the Hotline Thrift Shop the next time she was in Elizabeth City. It would’ve been better if she’d moved out the day after he’d died, but her apartment still wasn’t ready. And then Egbert had suggested she stay on at least until she took on another case, and one thing had led to another.
“The estate will continue to pay your salary while you inventory and pack away personal property. Aside from that, houses left standing empty for any length of time tend to deteriorate rather rapidly,” he’d told her. Egbert had a precise way of speaking that, while it wasn’t particularly exciting, was certainly reassuring. A woman would always know where she stood with a man like Egbert Blalock.
Up until Harvey’s death she and the banker had been only nodding acquaintances. Since then they had met several times to discuss Harvey’s business affairs. It was during the second such meeting—or perhaps it was the third—that she’d begun to consider him from a personal standpoint. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that he was excellent husband material. After all, she wasn’t getting any younger, and if she ever intended to have a family of her own—and she definitely did—it was time.
So while Faylene, the three-day-a-week housekeeper, gave the old house one last going-over, including rooms that had been closed off for decades, Daisy made lists, packed away various personal effects and thought about how to go about making a match for herself. She knew how to do it for someone else, but objectivity flew out the window when she started thinking of deliberately engineering a match for herself.
Naturally she hadn’t confided in either of her friends. Knowing Marty and Sasha, at the first hint of any personal interest they’d have taken over and mismanaged the whole affair. Sasha tried on husbands the way other women tried on shoes. Marty was not a whole lot better, although she swore she’d learned after her last experience.
Catching sight of herself in the large dresser mirror, Daisy touched her rumpled hair. At least it was dry now, but the color wouldn’t attract a dead moth, much less a man. She was long overdue for a trim, but before she did anything too drastic she needed to find out if Egbert preferred long hair or short. Did he like blondes, and if so, how blond? Platinum? Honey? Her hair was that indeterminate color usually called dishwater.
His was a nice shade of medium brown, thinning slightly on top. Not that hair loss was anything to be ashamed of, she reminded herself hastily. These days baldness was a fashion statement. It was even considered sexy. And while Egbert wasn’t exactly sexy, neither could he be labeled unsexy. Sasha had once called him dull. Daisy hadn’t bothered to correct her. Egbert wasn’t dull, he was simply steady, reliable and dependable, all excellent traits in a husband. Some women might prefer a flashier type—not too long ago, Daisy would have, too. Now she knew better. Been there, done that, to use a cliché.
Her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Once she’d returned to the house after the service, she had quickly changed out of her damp clothes and gotten to work again, anxious to get the job done so that she’d be ready to set her own plans in motion. A stickler for propriety, she preferred to wait until she was finished here before launching her campaign.
Folding another of Harvey’s tan-and-white-striped dress shirts—he must have had a dozen, all the same color and style—Daisy allowed her thoughts to drift back to the brief rainy service and the stranger she’d seen there. Whoever he was, he definitely wasn’t a local. She’d have noticed him if she’d ever seen him before. What woman wouldn’t? Those long legs and broad shoulders—the high, angular cheekbones, not to mention the startlingly blue eyes. As a rule, eye color was barely discernible from a distance of more than a few feet, but the stranger’s eyes had reminded her of glow-in-the-dark LEDs.
What color were Egbert’s eyes, she wondered idly—hazel?
Brown. It was Harvey whose eyes had been hazel, usually twinkling with humor despite his painfully twisted body. Bless his heart, he should have had a family with him at the end, only he didn’t have a family and most of his friends had either died or moved away. A couple still lived in Elizabeth City, but their visits had dwindled over the past year.
As she went about layering articles in a box, Daisy thought back to the last hour she had spent with her patient. The noise of the television had bothered him, so she’d read him the newspapers. They’d gotten as far as the editorials when somewhere in the middle of Tom Friedman’s piece on nation-building he’d fallen asleep. As it was nothing unusual, she had quietly refolded the paper, adjusted the covers and turned off the light.
The next morning she’d prepared his morning meds and rapped on the door of his bedroom. Hearing no response, she had entered to find her patient sleeping peacefully.
And, as it turned out, permanently.
She hadn’t cried, but sooner or later she probably would. She’d been closer to Harvey Snow than with other patients, maybe because she’d admired his courage. Living alone with a steadily worsening case of rheumatoid arthritis and then two small strokes, he had never lost his sense of humor.
Sooner or later the tears would come, probably at the worst possible time. It did no good to try to suppress them, this much she knew, both as a nurse and as a woman. Spare the tears and suffer a head cold. The correlation might not have been clinically proved, but she believed it with all her heart.
A deep sigh shuddered through her as she closed the box and taped it shut. Wrenching her thoughts from her depressing task, she made up her mind not to wait any longer to have her hair trimmed, styled and maybe even lightened. She needed cheering up. In fact, she might even take a day off to go shopping, keeping in mind that Egbert’s tastes were probably more conservative than her own. But even a classic shirtwaist could be unbuttoned to show a hint of cleavage and maybe a flash of thigh.
As long as she was shopping, she might as well look for something long and swishy in case he invited her to go dancing. The holidays were coming up, and it had been ages since anyone had taken her out dancing. That used to be her favorite aerobic exercise.
Did Egbert even dance? Maybe they could brush up on their skills together. Dancing skills as well as a few other skills, she thought, trying to drum up a twist of excitement.
She was too tired for excitement. It had been a long day—a long, depressing day, but at least it was nearly over. First thing next week she would get on with her own agenda.
In fact, she could get started right now by calling Paul and making an appointment to get her hair done. Nothing too noticeable, just enough to make Egbert take a second look and wonder if he’d been missing something.
She reached for the phone just as the darn thing rang. Startled, she dropped the roll of tape she’d been holding. The calls had started as soon as word got out about Harvey’s passing—everything from tombstone salesmen to local historians wanting a tour of the house, to antique dealers and real estate people wanting to know what, if anything, would be sold off.
She referred all calls to Egbert as Harvey’s executor. “Snow residence,” she snapped. What she needed was an answering machine, only she wasn’t going to be here that long.
“Daisy, honey, you sound like you need a massage—either that or a stiff drink and a three-pound box of chocolate-covered cherries. How’d it go today?”
“You mean other than the fact that it was pouring rain and the preacher kept sneezing and only a handful of people showed up?”
“Hey, we offered,” Sasha reminded her.
“I know, I’m just being bitchy. Make that chocolate-covered coconut and I might bite.” Daisy dropped tiredly down on the sleigh bed that had been moved back into the room after the rental service had collected the hospital bed. She’d been fighting depression for days.
“Look, Marty and I were thinking—it’s time we took on another project. Now that she’s closed her bookstore she’s drinking too much.” Daisy could hear the protest in the background. “I know for a fact that she’s gained five pounds. You game?”
Smiling tiredly because she knew they were only trying to cheer her up, she said, “Count me out on this one. The last thing I need now is to try to rearrange someone else’s life when I’m up to my ears in artifacts that so far as I know, no one even wants.”
“Oh, honey—I know it’s real sad, but moping’s not going to get you anywhere.” Sasha had a softer side, but she’d learned to cover it with a glitzy style and an offhand manner.
“I’m not moping.” As a professional, Daisy knew better than to get too personally involved with a patient. On the other hand, she’d been with Harvey longer than with most of her previous patients.
“How ’bout it, you ready for a challenge?” Sasha teased.
Daisy sighed. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. Better they think she was grieving than making plans for her own future. If she even hinted as much, the next thing she knew she’d be engaged to some jerk candidate they’d found in a singles’ bar.
No, thanks. Once she set her mind on a course of action she preferred to manage it on her own, the same way she’d been doing ever since her foster parents had split when she was thirteen and neither of them had wanted her. She had managed then, just as she would manage now. By this time next year she fully intended to be settled in Egbert’s tidy Cape Cod on Park Drive, with—in layman’s terms—a bun in the oven.
“Da-aisy. Wake up, hon.”
“I’m here, just barely. Okay, who’ve you got in mind?”
“Faylene.”
Her jaw dropped. “No way! A new project is one thing, but a lost cause is exactly what I don’t need at the moment.” For the past several years Faylene Beasley had worked part-time for Harvey and part-time for Daisy’s two best friends. As a housekeeper she was superb, but a target for matchmaking? “You’re not serious,” Daisy said flatly.
“Serious as a root canal. Honey, have you noticed how grouchy she’s been getting lately? That woman needs a man in her bed.”
Outside, the rain continued to drone down on the steep slate roof. So much for the Indian summer the weatherman had promised. Daisy’s stomach growled, reminding her again that she hadn’t eaten since a skimpy breakfast. “Look, call me tomorrow. Right now I’m too tired to think about it. I’m going to grab a bite of early supper and fall into bed. I might have another bachelor candidate for us to work with.”
Not for Faylene, though. Oh, no—whoever he was, he had to be someone extra special.
Two
Kell’s boots still weren’t dry, but at least he’d scraped most of the mud off. As disappointed as he was that he’d arrived too late to meet his half uncle, he had to admit he’d enjoyed watching the mystery woman dancing around, trying to keep from sinking up to her ankles. Not that he was a leg man, but she had nice ones. She was a blonde—sort of, anyway. With her hooded raincoat and shades, he hadn’t been able to see much more than half a pale face, a few wet strands and a pair of mud-spattered legs. But she definitely had world-class ankles.
Still reeling from learning that the guy he’d come so far to see had died, Kell hadn’t bothered to ask Blalock about the woman who had answered the phone when he’d called from the outskirts of town the night before. The one who had referred him to the banker. The bank had been closed by that time and he’d been forced to wait until this morning.
He should have called back when he’d first discovered a possible connection between the Snows of North Carolina and the Magees of Oklahoma City, but he’d had some things to wind up before he could leave town. Then, too, he sort of liked the idea of turning up unexpectedly, picturing Half Uncle Harvey opening the door, taking one look and recognizing him as his long-lost nephew.
Yeah, like that would have happened. Kell didn’t look anything like his dad. They might be built along the same lines, but Evander Magee had had red hair and freckles. The only facial features they shared were eye color and a shallow cleft in a chin that had been likened a time or two to the Rock of Gibraltar.
Okay, so he might’ve been overly optimistic, taking off without even notifying Snow of his intentions. A pessimist probably wouldn’t have bothered to track down a possible relative in the first place. Trouble was, even now, after all that had happened in his thirty-nine-plus years, Kell was a dogged optimist. Back in his pitching days he’d gone into every game fully expecting to win. As a starter, he might not go nine innings, but he’d damned well do seven. So it stood to reason that once he’d started the search, he’d had to follow through every lead.
It hadn’t helped when he’d got to Muddy Landing after dark only to find that the town’s only motel had been closed ever since Hurricane Isabel had blown through back in September. He’d had to drive miles out of the way and settle for a hole-in-the-wall place where the bed was too short, the walls too thin, the pillows padded with that stuff that fought back. If he hung around much longer he might be tempted to buy himself a camper and a good pillow, only he didn’t think the Porsche was rated for towing.
Bottom line—he had found Harvey Snow a couple of days too late, spent a miserable night on a lousy mattress and, as a result, overslept. He had skipped breakfast, showed up at the bank nearly an hour past opening time and then had to wait to see a man named Blalock who had tried to brush him off, claiming he was pressed for time.
Kell was no quitter. Blocking the door of Blalock’s office, he’d introduced himself and explained why he was there—that he’d been given his name, and that his father had had a younger half brother named Harvey Snow. And that he needed to know how to locate the man as the phone book listed a rural-route number instead of a street address.
That was when he’d heard the bad news. “I’m sorry to tell you, but the man you’re looking for recently passed away. He’s being buried today, in fact. I’m on my way to the service now, so if you’ll excuse me?”
It had taken Kell a moment to digest the news. He hadn’t moved.
“So far as anyone knows,” the smug banker had gone on to say, “Mr. Snow left no surviving relatives.”
Kell had felt like protesting, Dammit, I’m a surviving relative!
Instead he’d ended up following Blalock through a driving rain along miles of narrow blacktop to a country graveyard. After that, he’d followed him back to the bank. Only now, after the banker had called up a few records on his computer and then grilled him like a trout on a spit, was he finally headed out to see where his father had once lived.
Supposedly lived, as Blalock had stipulated.
Kell figured he could spare five days. A week at most. The boys back home could handle things at the store. If not, they had a go-to number.
Somewhere along the line, working with at-risk kids had segued into even more of a full-time job than the sporting goods store he used as a training ground. He was also in the process of turning a working ranch into a baseball camp, so he had just about everything a man could want. Satisfying work, financial security and enough women of the noncommitted variety to keep him happy well into his senior years.
On the other hand, there was this roots thing. Once he’d started digging, he hated like hell to give up. Blalock might have reservations about the Snow-Magee connection, but Kell trusted his instincts, and those were signaling loud and clear that he was right on target. His dad might have spent most of his life in Oklahoma, but Kell would bet his seven-figure portfolio that his roots were in Muddy Landing.
Following the narrow, wet highway between flat fields and a marshy shoreline dotted with private landings and small boats, he was wishing he’d paid more attention back when his old man used to reminisce about bear hunting in the Great Dismal Swamp and fishing on the Outer Banks. Both areas were less than an hour’s drive from Muddy Landing. That alone was evidence that he was on the right track.
Trouble was, he’d usually been too impatient to listen. Hanging in the open doorway, baseball glove in hand, he’d been like, yeah, yeah, look, I gotta run now, the guys are waiting. He wished now he’d paid more attention when his dad had had a few beers and got to rambling, but at the time about all he’d been interested in was playing pickup baseball and showing off his best stuff in case any girls were watching.
Speaking of girls—or in this case, women—he had a feeling the woman in the black raincoat was the same one he’d spoken to on the phone, the one who’d referred him to Blalock. Hadn’t Blalock said that Snow’s nurse was still staying at the house, winding up a few things? Kell thought it was damned decent of her to show up at the funeral. Not many others had bothered. Dressed the way she was, with those wraparound shades, she’d reminded him of one of those mysterious women you saw in movies standing alone at some high-class funeral. They always turned out to be the Other Woman.
The question was, whose Other Woman was the lady in black? Half Uncle Harvey’s?
If Blalock knew, he wasn’t talking. After only a couple of brief conversations before and after the graveside service, Kell got the distinct impression that the banker was reluctant to uncover any possible link between his client and Kell’s father. From an executor’s point of view, a relative coming in from left field at this stage of the game might muddy up the waters. Blalock struck him as the kind of guy who liked his waters nice and clear with no hidden snags.
Kell should have assured him right off the bat that he wasn’t interested in the estate. Now that it was too late to meet his relative, all he wanted was a chance to learn more about his father’s early life and maybe even meet a few cousins if any lived nearby.
The trail had split some fifty-odd years ago when sixteen-year-old Evander Magee had left home. Kell, who’d been fourteen when both his parents had died in the fire that had blazed through their double-wide, burning any documentary evidence they might have possessed, had never even thought about his roots until recently. The combination of watching his fortieth birthday barrel down on him and becoming a godfather to his best friend’s twin sons had set him to thinking about family.
That’s when Kell had first confronted the fact that he was the last in the Magee line. That was a pretty heavy burden on the shoulders of a man who had conscientiously avoided anything that even smelled like commitment.
He thought again about the bedraggled blonde in black. Kell liked blondes. He liked women, period—wearing black or any other color. Better yet, wearing nothing at all. She’d sounded pretty cool on the phone. She’d looked cold, wet and miserable in the flesh.
He wondered if she’d thawed out yet.
The day of the funeral seemed endless. By late afternoon the rain had finally tapered off. While her friends, who evidently thought she shouldn’t be left alone, sipped iced tea and leafed through an old issue of Southern Living, an exhausted Daisy relaxed in the dark green cane rocker on a screened porch that had been damaged in the hurricane and never repaired. She watched rose-tinted clouds float over the hedgerow, smelled the fresh green scent of broken branches and wet, overgrown pittosporum. This was her favorite place to sit as long as the mosquitoes weren’t too bad.
It had been slightly more than two months since Hurricane Isabel had come whipping across the sound, roaring upriver all the way to Muddy Landing and beyond. Things were still in a mess. Construction workers, already pushed to the limit building those little starter houses that were springing up like toadstools, had quit building to repair hurricane damage. The owner of her apartment building kept making excuses as to why the place wasn’t ready for reoccupancy, and she understood, she really did, but darn it, she couldn’t stay here much longer. She had her own life to get on with.
Sprawled out in the glider, Marty and Sasha were talking about a DVD they had recently rented, arguing the merits of Jude Law over Johnny Depp. Daisy wished they would leave so she could get on with the job of going through closets, drawers and shelves, and helping Faylene give one last cleaning to rooms that hadn’t been used in decades. Maybe tomorrow she’d feel more like shopping and doing something about her hair, but not now. Not when she was surrounded by reminders of a gentle man whose entire adult life had been filled with pain and loneliness.
“Stop mooning about that poor man. He lived a full life,” Sasha said.
“I doubt it,” Marty murmured. “Didn’t you say he was bedridden, Daisy?”
“Only the last few months. After his strokes. Before that he got around just fine in his chair. And I’m not mooning, I’m tired. I promised Eg—Mr. Blalock we’d have the house ready to show by the end of next week.”
“Show to who? Whom?”
She shrugged. “All those people who’ve been calling, I guess.” She drifted off again, thinking of all that needed doing and where to draw the line. Thank goodness she had never collected much beyond her clothes, a few nice pieces of furniture and a shelfful of her favorite authors, the latter thanks to Marty’s generous discount. That was one of the benefits of having a bookseller for a friend.
Sasha said, “Well, he’s always been pleasant to me, even when he had cars lined up waiting for service.”
Who, Harvey? Daisy jerked her meandering thoughts back to the present. Being nice to a gorgeous redhead was no big deal, but since when had Harvey had cars lined up? He hadn’t driven in years. Didn’t even own a car anymore.
“His garage is neat as a pin—for a garage, that is. And we know he’s honest,” Sasha continued.
Oh. They must be talking about Faylene’s potential suitor. “How do we know that?” Daisy wasn’t particularly interested in the prospective match. If they’d been talking about matching up anyone but Faylene she might have opted out, but none of them could get along without the housekeeper. If Faylene wasn’t happy, someone had darned well better find out why and do something about it.
“For one thing,” the redhead explained, “when he changed my oil and rotated my tires last week he charged me exactly what he charged Oren.” Oren being her next-door neighbor.
“Okay, so it’s just barely possible he won’t try to con her out of her life’s savings.” Having once been taken for everything she owned by a man who claimed to adore her, integrity ranked high on Daisy’s list of requirements—another area where Egbert scored in the top one percentile. “When it comes to dealing with his customers he might be trustworthy, but—”
“Look, all we’re trying to do here is get them together for a first date. They’re bound to know each other casually, the same way everybody in Muddy Landing knows everybody else here, right?” Sasha waited for nods of agreement. “So all we have to do is get the two of them up close and personal and see if anything clicks. I mean, Gus is no Joe Millionaire and Faye’s certainly not whatsername, fill in the blanks, but they’re probably about the same age—fiftyish—and they’re both single. Who knows, he might take one deep look into her eyes and—”
“And ignore everything else,” Marty said dryly. “Okay, so Gus has all his own hair and teeth, and Faye—well, you have to admit she has great legs.”
It went without saying that her hair was a disaster and her face had more wrinkles than a box of prunes. Her exact age remained a mystery, but she wore white sneakers, white shorts and support hose in all but the coldest months so that her legs, which really were shapely, appeared at first glance to be bare and smoothly tanned.
Daisy said, “He’ll freak if she takes him home with her.” Faylene lived in Crooked Creek Mobile Home Park, the small area surrounding her single-wide graced by forty-seven pieces of concrete sculpture at last count.
“So she collects art.” Sasha shrugged. “He probably collects something, most men do.” Two of her three husbands had collected other women.
“Whatever, they can work it out between them. Anyone heard anything about his sexual practices?”
“Does he practice?”
“The question is, how many hours a day does he practice?”
“No, the question is, how good is he?”
The two other women batted that particular ball back and forth until Daisy broke into a reluctant grin. Chuckling, Sasha said, “Oh, hush up, y’all know what I mean. After that last fiasco, we need to be sure of his, uh—persuasion.”
Marty said, “Methodist. You reckon he goes to any box suppers? I don’t remember seeing him there.”
“If he does, that means he probably can’t cook,” Daisy offered.
“Or that he’s big on charity.” The box suppers raised money for various charities, most recently for victims of Hurricane Isabel. The three women had found it a handy place to dish a little dirt and scout out matchmaking prospects—or as Daisy put it, victims.
“If he can thaw and microwave, that’s more than Faye can do,” Sasha reminded them.
“Here, here.” Marty lifted her glass of iced tea in a toast. “So are we going to do boxes for the next supper?” We, meaning Daisy. The other two women provided the raw material; it was Daisy who turned it into a delectable feast. “I think it’s Wednesday after next—or maybe this coming Wednesday. What’s today’s date, anyway?”
Daisy’s attention had strayed again. Maybe she should try one of those short, spiky cuts. Or maybe not. Egbert probably preferred a more conservative style. “Hmm? What date? Oh, Faylene’s date.”
Sasha glanced at her watch, which, depending on the button pushed, revealed everything from the phase of the moon to the Dow Jones averages. “Okay, this is Friday—it’s this coming Wednesday. Outside if the weather holds, in the community center if it rains or turns out cold.”
