Wild Orchids Read online

  I spent a couple of evenings copying titles, authors, and dates of some of the resource books that were still in my father’s bedroom bookcase, made a couple of color copies of Miss Lane (she didn’t marry until after her uncle was out of office), and wrote a whopping good chapter from what I remembered of what my father had told me.

  Instead of showing the chapter to old Professor Hartshorn and getting it torn apart with criticism, I put his name on it as the author, and mailed it to the university president with a note saying he (Professor Hartshorn) wanted to show him (the prez) what he was working on.

  I wasn’t prepared for what followed. I’d heard that Hartshorn was a good history teacher and that’s why he was allowed to stay at the university. But good as he was, the man hadn’t published and it was rumored that at last he was going to be fired.

  After the president received the chapter, he was wild with excitement. He came running to Professor Hartshorn’s office, chapter in hand, shouting, “This is brilliant. Totally brilliant. You must read this at the next faculty meeting. And here people were saying you weren’t actually writing anything.”

  I was working in the back room, but I have to say that Professor Hartshorn fell into step with it all. He said, “Miss Maxwell, I seem to have misplaced my copy of the chapter of my book that I wrote.” If the university president heard anything odd in the word emphasis in that sentence, he didn’t let on. I slapped a copy of the twenty-five page chapter on the professor’s desk, didn’t look at either man, and went back into the other room.

  A few minutes later Professor Hartshorn called me back into his office. “Tell me, Miss Maxwell, when did my publishing house say this book must be finished?”

  “Three years,” I said. I needed a job, and three years was as long as I’d ever stayed anywhere. This was, of course, before I met Kirk and decided to stay in one place for the rest of my life.

  “Isn’t that a long time?” the president asked, looking at Hartshorn and ignoring that I, a mere student, was standing there.

  “Obscure subject,” Hartshorn said, frowning at being bothered. “Difficult to research. Now go away, Henry, and let me get back to work.”

  Smiling, happy that he wasn’t going to have to fire an institution like Professor Hartshorn, the president left. I waited for the blast to come from the professor. But it didn’t happen. Without looking at me, he picked up my chapter, handed it back to me, and said, “Chapter every three months. And write lots about Harriet Lane’s bosom.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and went back to work. For the next two years, every three months, I’d go through my father’s books and write twenty-five pages about the golden hair, violet eyes, and voluptuous figure of Miss Harriet Lane.

  At the end of the second year, as a joke, I got Jennifer’s mother to help me make a period costume to Miss Lane’s measurements (please don’t ask me how my father got hold of her vital statistics, but fanatics have ways) in violet silk with pink piping. I’d bought a dressmaker’s dummy at a yard sale and with the help of cotton batting—a lot of cotton—Jennifer’s mom and I managed to re-create Miss Lane’s famous bosom. Jennifer, Heather, and I carried the dressed mannequin into Professor Hartshorn’s office at six A.M. one Monday morning so it was there when the professor arrived.

  But he said nothing about the headless person that took up the entire corner of his small office. A week went by, and he still said nothing. I was quite disappointed—until Saturday morning, that is. I went through the drive-in at my bank to deposit my paycheck as usual when the teller—a friend of mine—said, “Congratulations.”

  “On what?” I asked.

  “Your raise. And you’ve made a mistake on the deposit slip. I’ll fix it for you but you’ll have to initial it.”

  That’s when I found out that the darling old coot had given me a twenty-five percent raise. All for Harriet Lane’s magnificent bosom.

  But, now, in just three weeks I was going to get married and quit work. For a while, I planned to read, take photos, and have lunch with the girls. I’d had a paying job since I was fourteen years old and now, at twenty-six, I was looking forward to some time off.

  But that was all before I went to the party at Jennifer’s house and met Ford Newcombe.

  Kirk took more than a minute. In fact he took more than thirty minutes. He was deep in conference with the eldest Handley son, the one who handled all the family investments so the father could play golf. Of course everyone in town knew that Mrs. Handley was the one who actually controlled the money, but the sons put on a show.

  I was standing by myself, sipping my rum and Coke, and thinking about how I was looking forward to changing my life. I’d become bored by my job with Professor Hartshorn. It wasn’t as creative as I’d hoped it would be, and there was no place to advance to. I hadn’t yet told Kirk, but I was hoping to eventually open a little business of my own. My dream was to have a small home portrait studio where I could take natural light photos of people, something that I could someday put into a book. All I needed was some time off so I could use my savings and what my father had left me to set up my business. I wanted a home business so if I had kids…

  “He’s asking for you,” Heather whispered into my ear.

  I glanced at Kirk, but he was still head to head with the oldest Handley son.

  “No, not him,” Heather said. “Him.”

  She nodded toward Ford Newcombe who was standing by the window, drink in hand, and listening to Miss Donnelly. Instantly, I felt sorry for him. Miss Donnelly wrote the bulletin for the local Methodist church so she told people she was a “published writer.” No doubt she thought she was Ford Newcombe’s equal.

  “Go on,” Heather said, pushing me in the small of my back.

  But I didn’t move. There isn’t much of me, but what there is, is muscle. “Heather,” I said calmly, “you’ve lost your mind. That man is not ‘asking’ for me.”

  “Yes, he is. He asked Jennifer’s mom about fifty questions about you, who you are, where you work, everything. I think he has the hots for you.”

  “Better not tell Kirk or there’ll be a duel.”

  Heather didn’t laugh. “Look on the bright side. Once he gets to know you, he’ll throw you out.”

  Heather, too, had a sharp tongue.

  “Go on,” she said, pushing harder. “See what the man wants.”

  Truthfully, I felt I owed him an apology, and besides, who can pass up time with a celebrity? I could tell my grandkids, et cetera.

  When Ford Newcombe saw me, he looked as though I were his life raft. “There you are,” he said loudly, over Miss Donnelly’s head. “I have those papers you wanted to see, but we need to look at them outside.”

  That made no sense since it was pitch dark outside. “Sure,” I said just as loud. “Let’s go.” I followed him outside—trailed by Jennifer, Autumn, Heather, and Ashley.

  He got all the way to the little waist-high fence that surrounds the big deck behind Jennifer’s parents’ house before he turned around to look at me, and when he did, his eyes widened.

  I knew what he was seeing even before I turned. I had been used. All of them were dying to meet him, and dying to ask him questions he’d probably answered a million times.

  Stepping back, I let them have him. After all, for all I knew the man loved having four pretty young women bombard him with questions and shy smiles. I looked back through the glass doors to see if Kirk was finished yet, but he was still yakking away, so I stood to the side and played with the straw in my watery drink.

  It wasn’t until Ashley asked, “What are you working on now?” that I began to listen. The answer to “Do you write with a typewriter, a computer, or by hand?” held no interest for me.

  “It’s a true story,” he said.

  That made me look at him sharply. Okay, so I admit it. I’ve read every word Ford Newcombe has written and a lot of what’s been written about him, so I knew that, more or less, everything he’s written has been a “true story.�