Holly Read online

  As Holly put on lipstick (the third shade she’d tried), she halted. The problem with trying to remember every moment of her summer with Lorrie was that Nick Taggert’s face kept coming into her mind.

  “Adulthood!” Holly said in disgust, applied the lipstick, looked at it, then wiped it off.

  The problem was that now that she was an adult, it was difficult to sustain a sense of desire for a boy she’d done no more with than work. Every time she thought of Lorrie, Nick’s face popped up. When she remembered her fear of the snake, and the way she’d held absolutely still, and the way Lorrie looked behind the rifle, she saw Nick’s face. In her mind’s eye, she saw Nick shoot the snake, then she saw herself fall on him in gratitude, and she saw them making love on the mown grass near the dairy.

  For the last three days she’d rarely been home. Instead, she’d been in Edenton going from one beauty appointment to another. Taylor had always been the hedonist while Holly had been the worker. If the vegetable patch needed weeding, Holly would weed it. Taylor wouldn’t have noticed, but if she had, she wouldn’t have messed up her perfect manicure to pull weeds.

  To get ready to see Lorrie again, Holly had massages, had subtle streaks of color put in her hair, had a facial, most of her body waxed, and a manicure and a pedicure.

  By the end of three days she didn’t know when she’d ever been so exhausted. She was dying to get this first meeting over. As she was under the dryer, hot lights beating down on the foil on her head, she hoped Lorrie would take one look at her, ask her to marry him, and then elope with her so she could start work on Belle Chere within a week. When the manicurist gouged her with a nail file, Holly changed the week to four days.

  “Ready?” Taylor asked as she walked through the bathroom into Holly’s bedroom.

  “I think so,” Holly said, standing up. She was wearing black hose and a black lace teddy.

  Taylor eyed her stepsister critically from head to toe. “You do look great.”

  “You sound as though you wish I didn’t,” Holly said, smiling, but Taylor didn’t laugh.

  “You have everything,” Taylor said softly.

  As always, Holly immediately felt guilty. She put her arm around Taylor’s shoulders. “You don’t have to worry. You won’t end up living in a cold-water flat.” Holly tried to make a joke but it fell flat. Taylor’s biggest fear in life was that she’d end up like her mother had been: single and broke. Holly suspected that the main reason Taylor was marrying Charles was for the security his old name and his wealth would give her.

  When Holly turned twenty-one and had come into her inheritance, the first thing she’d done was set up trusts for the people she loved. For all that her father was well known, he had no real income, nor did his wife. Holly had provided lifetime incomes for the three of them. Even if Marguerite divorced Holly’s father she’d still have an income as long as she lived. And if Taylor ran off with the lawnmower boy and James disowned her (a distinct possibility), she’d still be able to live well. Not lavishly, but comfortably.

  However, Holly still felt guilty whenever Taylor made a reference to the fact that Holly had it all: beauty, wealth, and her father’s illustrious name.

  Holly wanted to lighten the moment. She went to the armoire (no closets in her bedroom) and pulled out her black silk dress. “So tell me, after one of these one-night stands, how long does it take before you stop seeing the man’s face everywhere?”

  “Face?” Taylor asked. “They have faces?”

  Holly laughed as she stepped into her dress. Her hair had been moussed and sprayed into a perfectly arranged helmet that she didn’t dare mess up. “No, really. You must have liked at least one of them.”

  Taylor sat down on the edge of Holly’s bed (built in 1792 and restored by Holly) and stared at her stepsister. “So tell me everything about this man.”

  “You mean…?” Holly trailed off.

  “I’m not interested in your sex life. I have my own very active sex life.”

  “Really?” Holly asked, turning so Taylor could zip her dress up. “With Charles, I assume.”

  When Taylor snorted as though to say she couldn’t believe Holly could be so naïve, Holly looked at her sharply. “But—who? Taylor, you can’t be serious. Charles is—”

  “Dear little sister, join the twenty-first century. There are people who need more than an old house to give them an orgasm.”

  “I don’t—” Holly began but stopped. The truth was, she didn’t want to hear about whatever Taylor was up to. She was afraid that if she knew, the next time she saw Charles her red face would tell too much.

  “Did he make you laugh?” Taylor asked.

  “Charles?” Holly asked. “Not—Oh, you mean him.” She looked away. The views outside her window were beautiful. She looked over the top of fruit trees to the river beyond. “Yes, he made me laugh. And he got me access into some old houses that—”

  “Oh, Lord!” Taylor said. “Call the caterer and book the church. If he got you inside a bunch of old houses, then he found the key to your heart.” She got up and went to stand in front of her stepsister. “Were any of those houses as good as Belle Chere?”

  “Not hardly,” Holly said, smiling.

  “So go for the big prize, not the little one. Use all your feminine wiles on Lorrie tonight, make him fall madly in love with you, and you’ll get to remodel a whole bunch of old buildings.”

  “Renovate, not remodel,” Holly said without thinking.

  “Whatever. Now are you ready to go?”

  Holly took a deep breath. “I think so. Wish me luck.”

  “With your face and body and that dress, you don’t need luck. I was thinking. Maybe I should get breast implants.”

  “Sure,” Holly said. “Double Ds at least.”

  Laughing, they went downstairs.

  Spring Hill, built in 1790, had a center hall floor plan. Upstairs and down, a wide center hall went from front to back, with four rooms on each floor leading off the hall. Downstairs was a kitchen, dining room, a sitting room, and a library. A powder room had been stuck under the stairs.

  Upstairs, on the right of the hall was the master suite, which consisted of two bedrooms with a connecting door, and two bathrooms. “My own bath helps me keep a sense of mystery,” Marguerite had once said.

  Across the center hall was one bedroom that shared a bath, a laundry room, and a small sitting room.

  It was a simple house with large, gracious rooms. The downstairs rooms had wainscoting on the walls, and deep molding around the doors and ceiling.

  Downstairs, James Latham admired his two daughters, offered each his arm, and walked them to the big double front doors. “Had I known there were two such beautiful young women under all that dreadful denim, I’d have stayed home and kept you to myself.”

  As many times as she’d heard the joke, Holly still smiled. This was the father she knew and loved. He knew how to make women feel beautiful. Growing up, Holly had rarely seen the “other” James Latham, the man who was known as the “hard-nosed negotiator.” Since his heart attack, his family was seeing that man more and more often.

  Laughing, Holly hugged her father’s arm and smiled across his deep chest at Taylor. All was right with the world! She was going to see the man she’d dreamed about for eleven long years. And she was again going to see Belle Chere, beautiful, breathtaking, unpolluted Belle Chere.

  Still smiling, looking up at her father, she saw Taylor’s face change when the doors were opened. Taylor’s eyes darkened, her lashes lowered, and her nostrils flared.

  Holly chuckled to herself. Only a man could make a woman look like that and it was no doubt the new gardener who was doing it. Her father no longer had a full-time valet or a dedicated driver, so the two male employees he did have did double duty. Taylor had mentioned that the gardener would be driving them to Belle Chere.

  Smiling, Holly turned—and looked into the dark blue eyes of Nick Taggert.

  She froze. She stood planted w