Lavender Morning Read online

  “Thank you for everything,” she said. “I really enjoyed it.”

  “Yeah,” he said as he went down the steps. “Me too.”

  Jocelyn closed the door and leaned against it. What in the world was wrong with her? She’d had a very romantic date with the man, the one Miss Edi said was to be the love of her life. But somehow, she’d ruined it. She didn’t know how, but she had. Of course her lame jokes about marriage didn’t help. It’s a wonder he didn’t run out the door. What was it he’d said on the phone? That the last time a woman talked to him about marriage they’d had to call an ambulance.

  She looked at her watch. It was only nine-thirty. So much for her “date.” In spite of the early hour, she yawned. Maybe the problem was that she was exhausted. Meeting new people, seeing the house, having a date all in one day was too much for anyone.

  She left the dirty dishes on the table, flipped the switch to turn out the awful kitchen lights, then started toward the stairs to go to bed. It was when she passed the back door and heard it click that her heart leaped into her throat. Someone was at the door! And he was trying to break in!

  Jocelyn’s mind raced as she tried to remember where her cell phone was. Upstairs. Or was it downstairs? She couldn’t remember. Had a landline been hooked up? In the busyness of the day, she’d never even looked for a telephone.

  Someone pulled on the door, and she plastered herself against the wall, her heart beating hard. Bending, she moved under the window by the door so the intruder couldn’t see her as she crawled past. If she could get to the front door before he did, she could get out.

  As she got past the door, she saw a shadow, then the moonlight showed her a figure. He was big. He had dark hair. He…

  She stood up straight. It was Ramsey. He must have forgotten something. She grabbed the doorknob and pulled it inward—and came face-to-face with Luke.

  “What are you doing?”

  He looked more surprised to see her than she did him. “Checking the doors,” he said. “I thought you might forget to lock them, so I—”

  “Sara leaves her door unlocked. I thought this was one of those towns where no one locks their doors.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” he said, then took a step back. “Look, I’m sorry. There weren’t any lights on, so I thought you’d gone to bed.”

  “Were you watching the house?”

  “That’s what I do,” he said. “That’s my job, remember? Weren’t you told about me? Or are you still mad about the mustard?”

  She dropped her hostility. “No, I know that was an accident. Would you like to come in and have some tea?”

  “With you and Ramsey?”

  “Like you don’t know that he left ten minutes ago,” she said.

  He gave her a crooked smile, then stepped inside. The quilt and the candlesticks were still on the floor, along with the chocolate pot and some strawberries. “So did you kick him out?”

  “No, I did not kick him out. He had to go home to work.”

  Bending over, he ran his finger inside the still warm pot, then put his chocolate-covered finger in his mouth. “That makes sense. I guess that’s why he went to Tess after he left you.”

  Joce stopped walking and turned to look at him. He had the pot in his hands and was running a strawberry through it. “He did what?”

  “Went to see his assistant, Tess. She lives next door. She runs his life.”

  “I’ve already been told that. But he’s there now?”

  “Sure,” Luke said, raising his eyes to hers. “Who told you about Tess? Not Rams, that’s for sure.”

  “What does that mean?” She started for the kitchen again. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder, “and bring that if you want.”

  “Thanks,” he said as he followed her, the cord to the pot dragging across the floor. “I thought that maybe tomorrow you and I could talk about what you want to do with the garden.”

  “I don’t know anything about gardening.” She was opening cabinet doors, looking for a teapot or tea bags, something.

  “This tea is too much trouble for you. Really, I didn’t mean to bother you. I’ll get something to eat on the way home. They have a few fast-food places over in Williamsburg. Off the highway. It’s not too far away. Couple of hours, that’s all.”

  She couldn’t help laughing. “All right, sit down,” she said, and he did. She took the container of leftover pasta out of the old refrigerator and stuck it in an ancient microwave.

  “What makes you think that Rams didn’t tell me about his secretary?” She tried to seem as though she didn’t care, and she used his nickname to sound closer to him.

  “I take it you haven’t met Tess,” Luke said as he got up, went to the cabinets, then reached over her head to get a plate. He took a knife and fork out of a drawer.

  Jocelyn hadn’t looked in the cabinets, so she didn’t know where anything was. “No, I haven’t met her, but I’ve heard about her.”

  “From Sara? She tell you about the red dress?”

  “What is it with this woman and a low-cut, red dress?” Joce asked as she opened the microwave.

  “Sure you want to hear?”

  “I’m all grown up. I think I can stand it. What happened with the secretary and a dress?”

  Luke took the bowl of pasta from her, dumped it on the plate, and put it on the table. “Want some?”

  “No, thank you. I ate earlier. With Ramsey, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah. You were together such a short time that I nearly forgot about that date. It was a date, wasn’t it?”

  Joce didn’t bother to answer him but poured some wine into a glass and took a sip. “Sorry, but that’s the last of it,” she said, but her tone let Luke know she wasn’t sorry at all. What was it about this man that put her in the worst possible mood? Or was her mood caused by the fact that Ramsey had made her think they were on the way to becoming an item, then he’d gone next door to another woman?

  Luke got up, opened the refrigerator, and got out a beer.

  “You certainly have made yourself at home in my house.”

  “I’m here a lot, so you better get used to me.” He tasted the pasta. “This is pretty good. Did Rams make it? He always was a good cook. He can even make worm pies. You should get him to tell you about them.”

  “Before or after you tell me about the red dress?”

  “Oh, that,” Luke said, his mouth full. “Tess doesn’t take well to being given orders. The way she sees it, she does her job and that’s all that’s required of her. Anything else is her own business.”

  “Don’t we all feel that way?” Joce asked. She sat down in a chair across from him.

  “Not to the extent Tess does, but Rams always was a bit of what we call down here persnickety.”

  “I see,” Jocelyn said with a cool smile. “He can cook and now he’s persnickety. What will you tell me next? He used to be a female?”

  “Not that I know of,” Luke said innocently. “Did he tell you he wanted to be? I hear there are some really good clinics for that kind of thing nowadays. Not that I know anything about them, but I bet ol’ Rams knows a lot.”

  Joce couldn’t keep from laughing. “You’re horrible. Just tell me the story.”

  Luke ate a few more bites, then said, “It was simple really. Rams told Tess he didn’t like what she was wearing.”

  “She didn’t take it off, did she?”

  “Is that what the secretaries do in law offices in Florida? If so, I’m in the wrong state.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “No, she didn’t remove anything. It was just after she started working at MAW. That’s—”

  “I know what it is. Go on.”

  “You certainly have picked up on a lot around here. So, anyway, Tess had only been there about six weeks, but already she’d straightened out the whole office. She’d fired two secretaries and made the two she kept actually work. It was a true revelation to my cousin Rams. A woman who did some work to earn