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“Not bulbs. They come up early, remember? Trust me, this will be good for you. A little physical work in the sun will take your mind off your problems.”
“I don’t do physical work,” Ashley retorted, glancing at her perfectly manicured nails and trying to imagine them after gardening. She shuddered at the image.
“You go to a gym,” Maggie reminded her. “In fact, you’re as compulsive about that as you are about everything else. This will be even better for you. You can go for long walks. You’ll be breathing in all this fresh, salty air.”
“It smells like fish,” Ashley retorted, determined not to take pleasure in anything just to spite her hateful sisters. How had she gone all these years without noticing how controlling and obnoxious they were?
Clearly undaunted, Melanie bit back a grin. “Not so much in the garden. You’ll see. There are lots of wonderful fragrances out there. Grandmother saw to that and Mike and I recreated it just the way it was.”
Defeated, Ashley sat down at the kitchen table and rested her head on her arms. “I want to go home.”
“Don’t whine,” Maggie chided. “It’s unbecoming.”
Ashley’s head snapped up. “You sound exactly like Mom.”
“Of course, I do,” Maggie said. “We all do, with a touch of Grandmother Lindsey thrown in. They were our role models. The only thing missing is the Southern accent.”
Ashley thought back to the subtle lessons their grandmother had instilled in all of them on their visits to Rose Cottage. Cornelia Lindsey had been very big on manners. And, despite the fact that the D’Angelo sisters were growing up in Yankee territory, she’d wanted them to become Southern ladies. She’d taught them the importance of family and friendships, of generosity and kindness. Some of the lessons had stuck better than others.
Ashley relented. “Okay, no more whining,” she promised. “But you have to get me out of here before I go stir-crazy.”
“You just got here two hours ago,” Melanie reminded her, looking perplexed.
“And your point is?” Ashley retorted. “In my life, that’s a freaking eternity.”
“Okay, okay, we’ll go to lunch,” Maggie soothed. “No wine with lunch, though.”
Ashley stared at her. “Why the hell not?”
“Because you don’t need it,” Melanie said. “You’ll want a clear head for all that introspection you intend to do.”
“I need the wine for that.” Even as she uttered the words, Ashley heard the hint of desperation in her voice and knew it was a warning. She sighed heavily. “Okay, no wine.”
Once they were out of the house, Melanie and Maggie refused to let her wallow in self-pity. By the time they’d eaten a leisurely lunch and shopped for a couple of hours, Ashley had actually managed to laugh without restraint a couple times. She’d almost forgotten that this was the first of what promised to be way too many unstructured, unfulfilling days. When she remembered that, she shuddered.
Back at Rose Cottage, Maggie gave her a fierce hug. “You’re going to be fine.”
“I suppose,” Ashley conceded grudgingly. She didn’t believe that, not for a minute.
“And we’re expecting you for dinner tonight at seven,” Maggie added. “I’m making all your favorites. All those dishes Mom used to make for you before you started subsisting on salads.” She winked. “Play your cards right, and you can even have a glass of wine.”
Ashley laughed. “Now you’ve made it worth my while to come over and put up with more of these invigorating, if somewhat annoying, pep talks.”
Melanie patted her cheek. “Sweetie, we just want you to get yourself back on track. We promise we won’t hover, but we will be around if you need us.”
“I know and I’m grateful. I really am, even if I have been sounding like a total jerk.” She watched them go, taking her laptop, all those articles and her legal pads. She felt a mixture of relief and fear as they disappeared from sight.
Inside, she glanced at the kitchen clock. It was only two. What on earth was she going to do for five whole hours? What had she done on all those lazy summer afternoons years ago? It finally came to her that when she and her sisters hadn’t been out on the water, she’d gone into the backyard with a book in her hand. She’d gotten lost in amazing adventures in exotic locales.
Impulsively she reached into the bag that her sisters had left and withdrew a paperback without even glancing at the title or the author. Neither really mattered.
Before she could suffer a pang of regret or pick up the phone to call the cable company, she went outside to the swing facing the bay. It was wide enough for her to turn sideways and put her feet on the seat, and there was enough breeze to keep it in motion; just a slight, soothing back and forth.
She opened the book, read the first paragraph with the intention of hating it, then read the second with a more open mind. By the end of the page, she was hooked. She was reminded of the pleasure she’d felt years ago when her days had been lazy and undemanding and a good story had been all she needed to keep herself entertained for hours on end.
The best days had been the rainy ones, when she’d curled up on a chair in the living room or on the porch, book in hand, a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade beside her. She’d read incessantly, emerging only long enough for meals or to play cards or board games with her grandmother and sisters.
The satisfaction of that was coming back to her, page by page. In this book, the characters jumped off the page, the romance was steamy and the author’s voice was filled with intelligence and wit. Ashley lost herself in the story.
She was stiff and cramped when she finally turned the last page. Her cheeks were unexpectedly damp with happy tears. When was the last time she’d read anything that had affected her like this? Probably before she’d gone to law school. Since then she hadn’t had time for the simple pleasure of reading for entertainment.
For the very first time, Ashley saw this self-imposed banishment in a new light, as a real gift. Maybe if she went back to the girl she’d once been, to someone who was filled with hopes and dreams, she’d be able to discover where she’d slipped off track. Maybe she’d rediscover the humanity that had made her a good judge of people before she’d started to rely on cool calculation and mental agility to succeed.
Not that she intended to tell her sisters that she was beginning to see the benefits of this sabbatical. They’d gloat.
“Oh, my gosh, dinner,” she muttered, glancing at her watch. It was ten minutes till seven, and she’d never even taken a shower or changed. After all her grumbling about the mere thought of being isolated, if she was late for a party, she’d never hear the end of it.
“They’ll just have to take me as I am,” she said, laughing at the evidence that she was already adopting a whole new attitude.
That didn’t stop Ashley from grabbing her purse and car keys and tearing out of the driveway at her more accustomed frantic pace. She simply couldn’t be expected to change everything about her personality overnight.
Josh felt like a rebellious twelve-year-old running away from home and unwanted responsibilities. As he neared the Chesapeake Bay, he could smell the tang of salt water in the cool September air. As he got closer to his family’s longtime second home by the water, there was also a faintly fishy scent that he’d come to acquaint with summer. His mother had balanced that with a garden filled with fragrant blossoms, which were just beginning to fade as summer moved into autumn.
When he turned at last onto the final leg of the journey, a long, winding country road that led from White Stone toward Windmill Point, he spotted a dozen or so brand-new homes interspersed with the old cottages and other recently completed vacation homes. The new additions were huge, dwarfing their quaint and occasionally run-down neighbors, but large or small, they all shared the same incredible view of the Chesapeake Bay and its inlets.
He was almost to the cutoff to Idylwild, the small clapboard cottage with its neat green shutters and sweeping porch, when a fancy car being driven toward him way too fast took the turn ahead of him wide. The driver spotted him too late and tried to overcorrect. Josh cut the wheel in the opposite direction, but the crunch of metal against metal was inevitable, the contact jarring but not enough to cause injury.
He leapt out of the car in full lawyer mode, then backed up a step at the sight of the tawny-haired driver of the other car suddenly bursting into tears. At once all he could think about were broken bones and soft, bleeding skin.
“Are you okay?” he asked, leaning in the driver’s window close enough to catch a faint whiff of something exotic, sexy and expensive. The combination dealt a knockout punch to his belly and put the rest of his all-too-male senses on full alert.
Brown eyes, shimmering with tears, glanced up at him, then away. Her cheeks blazed with unmistakable embarrassment. Josh studied her, trying to figure out why he felt an almost immediate connection to her, as if they’d known each other before. But that couldn’t be, of course. He would have remembered any woman who looked like this. Except for the tear-streaked face, she was as sleek and polished as any of the society women he’d come to know in Richmond. The clothes were expensive, if wrinkled. Gold-and-diamond studs winked from her ears.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “It was my fault.” She was already fumbling in her Gucci bag, apparently digging for her driver’s license, car registration and insurance card. “Dammit, dammit, dammit! Why can’t I ever find anything in here?”
“It’s okay,” Josh soothed, sensing that she was about to burst into another noisy round of sobs that would claw at his gut. “There’s no rush. We’re in the country. Folks around here don’t get all worked up over a little fender bender. We can take care of the formalities in a minute. How about some bottled water? I just picked up a case of the stuff. It’s warm, but it might help. I have a first-aid kit, too. We can take care of that scrape on your cheek.”
She self-consciously touched her hand to her face, then stared at the blood with shock. She immediately turned pale.
“Hold on,” Josh said. “Don’t you dare faint on me. It’s nothing. Just a tiny little cut.” He glanced inside the car, trying to figure out if anything was broken. He couldn’t see any glass that would explain the injury.
Without waiting for a reply, he ran back to his ridiculously oversize but trendy SUV, retrieved a bottle of water, some peroxide and antibiotic cream, then went back. By then, the other driver had emerged from behind the wheel, all five-ten or so of her, with narrow hips and endless legs and just enough curves to make a man’s blood stir with interest.
“I’m Josh,” he said when he could get his tongue untangled. He handed her the water. He poured the peroxide on a cotton ball and reached over to touch the wound, but she immediately tried to take the cotton from him.
“I’ll do it,” she said.
“You can’t see what you’re doing,” he said, holding firm and cupping her chin in his other hand, then daubing the peroxide on the scrape. He bit back a grin when she winced even before he’d made contact.
“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked when he’d cleaned the wound.
She frowned at him.
“You never did say what your name is,” he reminded her as he smoothed on antibiotic cream, trying not to linger on her soft-as-silk skin.
“Ashley.”
He heard the unmistakable Boston accent. “Just visiting the area?”
“For three weeks,” she said emphatically, as if that were two-and-a-half weeks too long. “Are you a local?”
“I like to think of myself as one,” he said. Richmond might be where he lived, but this was the home of his heart. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it until he’d made that final turn onto this road leading to the cottage where he’d spent some of the happiest summers of his life. He’d finally felt as if all the problems that had sent him scurrying down here were falling into perspective.
“Either you are or you aren’t,” she said, studying him with a narrowed gaze.
Amused by her need for precision, Josh said, “I’ve pretty much grown up around here.”
“Then you probably know the sheriff or whoever we need to call to report this,” she said.
“Let’s take a look and see if it’s even worth reporting,” he suggested. He examined first her car and then his own, concluding that they were both in need of new front bumpers and maybe a paint touch-up, but that both cars had escaped serious damage.
“Look, why don’t we call this even?” he suggested.
“Because I caused it,” she said, grimly determined to take responsibility. “I should deal with all the damages.”
“That’s why we carry insurance,” he corrected. “You deal with your company. I’ll deal with mine. It might not even be worth it, though. A body shop could fix things up for next to nothing.”
“But I should pay whatever it costs,” she insisted.
Josh couldn’t seem to stop himself from suggesting, “Then have dinner with me one night while you’re here. We’ll pick someplace outrageously expensive, and you can buy if it’ll make you feel better.”
She murmured something under her breath, but finally nodded.
Josh studied her curiously. “What did you say?”
“I said you’re obviously not a lawyer, or you’d be all over this, milking it for every dime you could get in damages.”
He laughed. “That’s just about the nicest compliment anyone’s paid me in months,” he said, deciding then and there that not being a lawyer for a bit suited him just fine. It wasn’t that far from the truth. Wasn’t that precisely why he’d come here, to figure out if he wanted to be a lawyer anymore with all that it entailed, including his expected engagement to his boss’s daughter?
“Do you have a phone number, Ashley? I’ll call you about dinner.”
She jotted it down, but before she handed it to him, she added something else, “If you change your mind about my paying for the damage to your car, I won’t fight you.”
Josh glanced at the paper and saw that she’d written, “My fault. I owe you,” then signed her name in the kind of illegible scrawl usually used by physicians.
“A confession?” he asked, amused. “Think it would hold up in court?”
“It would if I wanted it to,” she said flatly, then lowered herself gracefully into her car, giving him one last intoxicating view of those incredibly long legs. “See you around.”
“Oh, you can count on that,” Josh said, fingering the piece of paper she’d given him.
He stood watching until she was out of sight, then tucked the piece of paper into his pocket and gave it a pat. Coming home was turning out to be one of the smartest decisions he’d made in a long time.
And ironically the past couple of minutes had already given him insight into one of those important decisions he was here to consider. If he could feel this powerful tug of attraction to a woman who’d just creamed his beloved car, then the very last thing he ought to be considering was marriage to Stephanie Lockport Williams. First thing in the morning, he’d have to call and make it clear to her that despite her father’s wishes, they had no future.
And right after that, he’d call the mysterious Ashley and invite her out for a crab feast. There was no better way to get to know a woman than watching her handle the messy task of picking crabs. Stephanie had flatly refused to touch the things, which should have told Josh all he needed to know months ago.
Something told him that Ashley would show no such restraint. In fact, he had a hunch she’d go after those crabs with all the passion and enthusiasm of a local. There was something wildly seductive in watching a woman hammer away at the hard shells, then delicately pick out the sweet meat and dip it in melted butter, then savor every bite. He thought of Ashley’s lush lips closing around a chunk of backfin crabmeat dripping in butter, and concluded it was definitely a spectacle he could hardly wait to see.
2
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Ashley muttered as she sat with Maggie on the porch of the farmhouse Maggie and Rick lived in a few miles from Rose Cottage. It had an orchard out back, the trees laden down with ripe apples. The sun was beginning to drop in the western sky, splashing everything with orange light. It was so serene, it should have creeped Ashley out, but she had other things on her mind, like that ridiculous accident she’d caused by driving too fast on an unfamiliar winding road. For a split second she’d lost her concentration, and that had been enough to nearly cause a tragedy. There would have been no adequate defense for it.
“What is wrong with me?” she asked her sister plaintively.
Maggie glanced at her husband. Both of them were fighting a grin.
“What?” Ashley demanded. “Why are you two laughing at me?”
“We’re not laughing at you,” Maggie rushed to assure her. “It’s just that the saint is discovering she’s human. It’s a wonderful thing to see. I, for one, never thought it would happen. I can’t wait to tell Melanie and Mike when they get here.”
Ashley gave her sister a sour look. “You know, if you keep this up, you’re going to make me sorry I agreed to come to Virginia for five minutes, much less three weeks,” she told Maggie irritably. “I can go back to Boston first thing in the morning, you know.”
“But you won’t,” Maggie said.
Ashley found her confidence annoying. “Oh? Why is that, Ms. Know-it-all?”
“You made a deal with us. If you break it, then we’ll know you’re in some sort of emotional meltdown that probably requires hospitalization.”
Ashley scowled. “Not even remotely funny.”
“I didn’t mean it to be,” Maggie assured her. “You need this sabbatical, Ashley, and one way or another we’re going to see to it that you take it. Rose Cottage is much cheaper and a whole lot more pleasant than some quiet sanitarium in a tranquil setting with shrinks watching your every move.” She let that image sink in, then asked, “Don’t you agree?”
Ashley stared hard at her sister to see if she was joking. She didn’t appear to be. “You wouldn’t do that to me.”
“If it was the only way to assure that you get some rest, we would,” Maggie retorted emphatically. “Don’t test us. That’s how worried we are about you.”
“Mom and Dad would never allow it,” Ashley said.
“Are you so sure of that? They’re worried sick, too.”
“I’m not having a damn breakdown, though you could easily drive me to one,” Ashley said, barely keeping a grip on her temper. The last thing she needed to do was give them ammunition to have her committed. And they would do it. She could see that now. There was no mistaking the resolve in Maggie’s eyes.
“You’re not having one yet,” Maggie agreed. “But you’re on the verge, Ashley. None of us have ever seen you strung this tight before. Everyone has their limits. What happened in court was only the final blow. You’ve been pushing yourself too hard for too long.”
“I think we need to change the subject before you really get on my nerves,” Ashley told her sister. She deliberately turned to Rick. “Do you know of a Josh around here?”
Rick looked as if he didn’t really want to be drawn into the conversation, even if the subject seemed to be neutral. Ashley could hardly blame him. When he shrugged, she turned back to Maggie. “What about you? Do you know a Josh?”
