First Impressions Read online

  For the first time since she’d arrived, Eden smiled—really smiled. It wasn’t a polite little grin; it was a big wide smile that involved her entire face. She’d missed this in the years since she’d left Arundel. Someone who knew her. Someone who liked the same things she did. In the years since she’d been away, it seemed that all the men she’d met had wanted her for what she could give them. Their attitude toward Melissa had been one of tolerance. They were willing to put up with a child, but they hadn’t really been interested in her. She’d been too quiet and withdrawn to interest them. In the end, it seemed that it always came down to having to choose between her daughter and some man. Eden had never hesitated in choosing her daughter.

  But now, for the first time since she was a teenager, Eden was alone—free, actually. It was difficult for her to remember a time when she wasn’t someone’s mother. When she was still a teenager, she’d seen kids her age jumping into convertibles as they ran off to spend the day at the beach. Sometimes she’d been nearly overwhelmed with envy. Never in her life had she spent an entire day at the beach. Her parents hadn’t believed in such frivolity, then she’d had the responsibility of a daughter. As for packing up Melissa and going by herself, that wasn’t something that Eden could quite manage to do.

  What she had done was throw herself into gardening. She’d spent her days in the garden, with Melissa never far away from her. Often, Mrs. Farrington had joined them, not to work (she couldn’t contemplate using a hoe) but to sit under a tree in a pretty wrought-iron chair and read things like the Declaration of Independence (which one of her ancestors had signed) to Melissa, Eden, and Toddy.

  Now, Brad was bringing back to Eden the memories of those wonderful days so vividly that she, well, she was feeling as though she was waking up. Design gardens? For a living? Get paid for doing something that she loved to do? When she’d put herself through college, it had been a small community college, and the choices of study had been limited. Garden design had not been offered. She’d taken courses that she thought would help her get a job as a teacher or in museum work or publishing. “Design gardens?” she said at last.

  “Yes, something like what’s at the Belltower House.”

  At that Eden’s eyes widened. “The Belltower House,” she said under her breath. It was one of the most beautiful houses ever built in the United States in the eighteenth century. In the 1950s it had been derelict but had been rescued by the local townspeople and restored beautifully. There had been a gasoline station in front of it, but that was torn down and in its place was put a reproduction of an eighteenth-century garden. No modern plants were allowed. It was gorgeous and accurate.

  “The people we’re aiming at with these houses are retired D.C. people. Power, brains, been everywhere and seen everything. We think that the historical aspect of the houses will appeal to them, and we thought that making the gardens look as historically accurate as the houses would also appeal to them. Of course the landscape company that’s been formed by some of the local kids would put in the gardens and later maintain them, so you wouldn’t have to do the digging.”

  “Local kids?”

  “Okay, so they’re adults and they’re Drakes, Mintons, and one Granville by marriage, namely my daughter’s worthless husband, but I think they can do the job. Maybe you could manage them. They all need direction.”

  She blinked at him. “If I’m understanding this clearly, you’re asking me to take over a landscaping company that has a contract, more or less, for two hundred houses.”

  “That’s about it.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you just come up with this idea or did you develop it a while ago?”

  His face lost its humor. “If you’re asking me if I’ve been wining and dining you in an attempt to get you to help with my new subdivision, the answer is no. But I’ll be honest with you: I am desperate for help. When you met my daughter, was she smiling?”

  “No.”

  “Her life is a mess right now. She married some big, good-looking kid from Louisiana in her last year of college and got pregnant right away. Actually, I think she was pregnant before, but that’s neither here nor there. She came home, and I saw right away that as soon as he saw the Granville house he planned to sit down and do nothing for the rest of his life. I gave him many lectures about how we all have to work for what we’ve managed to keep over the centuries, but nothing registered with him. He said that in Louisiana he helped his father do some landscaping. Between you and me I think he probably dug ditches. Anyway, at Camden’s crying requests I talked my partners into letting this moron become involved in the landscaping. He went out and hired the blackest of the black sheep in this town to work for him, and now he expects me to buy him half a million dollars’ worth of equipment and turn him loose on the gardens of all the houses. He doesn’t know a daisy from a liatris, so how can he put in gardens that look like something Thomas Jefferson might have enjoyed?”

  Brad put his hand over his eyes. “I tell you I’m caught in a three-way vise. I have my investors threatening me if Remi messes up. I have my daughter, who expects me to perform a miracle and make her talent-less husband into a great businessman, and I have this kid telling me he can’t do anything until I buy him half of John Deere.”

  Eden crossed her arms over her chest. “And just this minute you came up with the idea of turning this entire mess over to me and getting me to straighten it out?”

  Brad grinned at her. “Actually, that’s completely accurate. One hundred percent right on. I think you must be a mind reader.”

  In spite of herself, Eden laughed, and her body relaxed. “Your son-in-law is from Louisiana? Does he have one of ‘those’ accents?”

  “Sometimes I can hardly understand him. You wouldn’t really consider doing this, would you?” There was hope in his voice, but also a belief that it would never happen.

  “Let me think about it. You say the books are in my bedroom?”

  “With your notebooks. Do you think you could make up your mind by, say, ten o’clock tomorrow?”

  “What happens at ten?”

  “I’m to meet Remi at the John Deere dealer.”

  Again, Eden laughed. Family, she thought. All the problems of family. When she left Melissa and Stuart and the baby Melissa was about to have, Eden had thought she was saying good-bye to family. But here was an invitation to plunge into a family complete with squabbles and real problems. In this case, though, it looked a bit like diving headfirst into a swimming pool that she knew was empty.

  “Is the John Deere dealer still on Berkshire?”

  “Hasn’t moved since 1954.”

  “I’ll meet you there at ten tomorrow and talk to your son-in-law.”

  Brad grabbed both her hands in his. “I so appreciate this. You don’t know…” He stopped and smiled at her. “I’m not yet sure, but I think maybe everything Mrs. Farrington said about you was right.” He said the last very softly, and he had that unmistakable look on his face: he was about to kiss her.

  As he bent his head toward her, Eden stepped back and the moment was lost. When he kissed her for the first time, she wanted it to be from passion, not gratitude. She took her hands from his. “You better go. I’ll need to go through my books tonight and see…See what a fool I am if I even consider this.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, stepping back. He took his car keys out of his pocket. “Tomorrow.” He seemed to want to say more, but instead he turned and walked away. He looked back once and waved, then she heard his car start and saw the taillights as he drove down the driveway.

  Standing alone in the moonlit garden, Eden shivered. Moments ago, it had seemed very warm, but now she was cold. Hurriedly, she ran up the stairs and back into the house.

  It was utterly quiet inside, but she could feel the presence of another human being. McBride. Right now all she wanted to do was take a shower and settle down with her gardening books and think hard about Brad’s offer of a job. Could she do it? It had been year