First Impressions Read online

  “No,” she said. “Don’t get up.” She walked to the edge of the porch. “You know something, Brad? I don’t know anything about myself. I lived as a prisoner when I was a child, and went from childhood to motherhood in one night.” She turned back to face him. “I’ve worked hard at giving my daughter all that I could. I gave up my life for her.”

  “But she’s grown-up now,” Brad said.

  “Yes, she’s grown now and about to be a mother herself. She went to dances as a teenager and she—” Eden waved her hand. “What I’m trying to say is that I want to find out about myself. I want to find out what I’m good at, what I can do, and what I like. I don’t want to be Mrs. Farrington. I want to be me. It’s just that I’ve experienced so little in my life that I don’t know who I am.”

  Sitting on the swing, Brad looked at her. “You want to leave here, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “I’ll go with you. I’ll live on a sailboat, if it means that I can be near you.”

  “No,” Eden answered. “You belong here. This is your town. And you know something? It’s my daughter’s town too. I’m going to give her and Stuart and my grandchild Farrington Manor. They belong there. Stuart can open an accounting firm here in Arundel. It’s a good place to raise a child.”

  “It’s a good place to live,” Brad said, his voice pleading with her, his eyes near to tears.

  “Brad, you’re a wonderful man, a little controlling for someone as independent as I am, but a good man. But I need to try out my wings. I need to…to see some of the world before I get to be too old to enjoy it.”

  “Wherever you want to go, I’ll go with you,” Brad said, struggling to stand up.

  She stepped down a step. “Give me a year,” she said. “One year.”

  “A year,” he said in agreement. “Then I’m going after you wherever you are in the world.”

  “A deal,” she said, then she turned and ran down the porch steps before she could change her mind.

  Epilogue

  EDEN Palmer looked up from the book she was reading. A man was standing over her. The sun was behind his head so she couldn’t see his face. But she knew who he was.

  “This seat taken?” he asked, motioning to the beach chair next to her.

  “No,” she answered and put down her book. She twirled around in the chair, presenting her almost naked back to him, and handed him the suntan lotion.

  “I hear you’ve been busy,” Jared McBride said as he massaged oil into her skin. Since she was lying completely in the shade of a huge umbrella, and her skin was perfectly white, he knew she didn’t need the lotion.

  “Very busy,” she said, turning her head toward the ocean where Melissa and Stuart and her grandson were playing.

  “You didn’t stay in Arundel?”

  “No, as I’m sure you know.”

  “I might have checked out a few things about you. Now and then. I hear you’re writing a book about gardens around the world.”

  “It gets me into the gardens,” she said.

  “I stopped by Arundel about a month after the trial.”

  “Trials,” Eden said.

  “Yeah, right. Your testimony helped put Runkel away. And we got Jolly’s boss. You were great!” He grinned at Eden, but she didn’t smile back, just kept looking at him solemnly. “Sorry you had to go through that, but the agency appreciates it a lot.”

  “Tell them they’re welcome.” She didn’t say any more, just let Jared continue caressing her back. She saw Stuart start toward her, but Melissa stopped him.

  “I saw Granville.”

  “Oh?”

  “You can imagine my surprise when I found out that you two weren’t married. I thought that was a done deal. Money change your mind?”

  “Being so close to death changed my mind. How was Braddon?”

  “Full of confidence. He said that when you got back you two would be married. He told me…Well, actually, I had to get him drunk first, but he told me that you’d asked for a year to make up your mind. He seemed to think that was a normal thing. He said that in Victorian times it was ordinary for a young woman to take a year to make up her mind about who to marry.”

  “Ah,” Eden said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. Just ah.”

  “I did a little checking and it’s been over a year since you asked him for a year to make up your mind.”

  “Ah.”

  “Have you made up your mind yet?”

  “Maybe,” she said, then turned and took the lotion from him. “I don’t have access to every person on earth’s intimate files, nor do I get people drunk, so I haven’t been able to keep track of you. What have you been doing in the last year?”

  “One year, six weeks, and two days,” he said. “Not that I’ve been counting. I quit the agency.”

  “Get another job?”

  “Don’t want one.”

  “What do you plan to do with the rest of your life?”

  “I thought I’d take it one day at a time. Not plan anything. You wouldn’t like to go on a safari with me, would you?”

  “Photos, not shooting?”

  “No shooting anything. I gave that up. I think they have some gardens in Africa.”

  “Really?”

  There was a shout and Jared looked toward the water. “That your grandchild?”

  “Yes,” Eden said, and her voice nearly melted.

  “Handsome kid.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  He turned back to her. “Eden, I’ve lived my whole life alone. Even when I was married, I was alone. I made a real cock-up of that, but I’d like to try something different. Maybe—”

  She put her fingertips over his lips. “I’ve been alone too, so let’s see how we get along. I’d like to go on a safari.”

  Melissa, Stuart, and dear little Cody were walking toward them. Stuart was frowning at Eden in a protective way.

  “By the way,” Eden said, not taking her eyes off her approaching family. “What’s your real name?”

  “Montgomery. Jared Montgomery.”