Drop Dead Gorgeous Read online

  Maybe, a little voice whispered in my ear, and my heart squeezed from a mixture of pain and panic.

  I had set my cell phone on silent mode, so I wouldn’t be distracted by the ringing, and as I drove I fished the phone out of my purse to see if any calls had come in. The message in the little window said I’d missed three calls. Looking back and forth between the phone and the road—yes, I know it’s dangerous, blah blah blah—I accessed the incoming calls log. Mom had called, Wyatt’s mom had called, and Wyatt had called.

  My heart skipped a beat—literally. Wyatt had called. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  I didn’t return any of the calls right then, because I had to concentrate on Jazz. I was so glad to have him to concentrate on, too, because I wasn’t ready to think about the big stuff. I did keep an eye out for white cars, though; there hadn’t been any white Chevrolets behind me on the drive to Jazz’s, but that didn’t mean I could relax.

  When I pulled into the parking lot of the furniture refinisher’s, Jazz sort of exploded on me. “No! Absolutely not! I’m not spending another penny buying something she wouldn’t appreciate anyway. As she so kindly pointed out, I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to decorating—”

  “Calm down; I don’t want you to buy a thing.” I was kind of losing sympathy with both him and Sally, so my voice was a little sharp. It felt weird. I mean, Jazz and Sally really were like an aunt and uncle to me, so using my grown-up voice on him was a change of pace. He looked a little startled, too, as if in his head he still saw me as a kid.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “I just thought—”

  “And she was right about one thing: you don’t know anything about decorating. One look at your office and I could have told you that. Which is why I’m going to have a long talk with Monica Stevens.”

  He thought about that for a second, then looked hopeful. “Do you think she’ll get Sally’s furniture back?”

  I snorted. “Fat chance of that happening. It was heirloom stuff. Whoever bought it out of Monica’s consignment shop wouldn’t turn it loose on a bet.”

  He sighed, his expression changing back to depression. He looked at the refinishing place, which was really kind of cruddy, with pieces of junk piled haphazardly around the foundation. A rusted iron headboard leaned beside the front door. “Did you find something here that looks like something we had?”

  “That isn’t why we’re here. Come on.”

  Obediently he followed me. I was beginning to get a read on him. Being stubborn by nature, he’d staked out his position and didn’t intend to budge from it. However, because he also loved Sally to death, he desperately wanted someone to do something, anything, that would either force him from his position—so he could feel he had no choice—or would bring Sally around.

  I didn’t care who made the first move. I had a deadline, and I was desperate.

  We went into the shabby place, which was just as piled up on the inside as it was on the outside. A bell over the door rang when we went in, alerting Mr. Potts, the owner, that someone was here. He stuck his head out of the back room, where he did all of his work.

  “I’m back here! Oh, good morning, Miss Mallory.” He came toward us, wiping his hands on a rag. Since I’d just bought my desk there, and had talked to him a good while, he remembered my name. A faintly puzzled look was on his face. “You look different.”

  “Hair,” I said succinctly, moving my head and making my hair swing. A man I’d met only once had noticed my haircut—well, sort of—and Wyatt hadn’t. My heart ached all over again. I pushed thoughts of him away and focused on the problem at hand, introducing Jazz and Mr. Potts to each other. “May we see what you’re working on?”

  I’d briefed him about the situation, so he fell right in. “Sure, come on back! I’m working on this great old armoire, but it’s a handful, let me tell you. I’ve already got about sixty hours in just stripping off the old varnish and paint. Why anyone would paint a piece of furniture like this, I just don’t know.” He kept up a running commentary as he led us back to his workroom.

  The workroom was more clutter, but it was well lit, with big windows marching down each side. He had all of the windows open for ventilation, as well as a big attic fan running. The smell was still pervasive. The floor was covered with a huge tarp; the tarp itself was a Neimanesque collection of stains and paint spatters. In the middle of the tarp sat the piece in question, a massive eight-foot-tall double-door mahogany armoire, with intricate scrollwork on the doors and around the frame.

  Jazz blinked at the huge armoire. “How many hours did you say you’ve already been working on this?”

  “About sixty. This thing is a work of art.” Mr. Potts ran a rough hand lovingly over the wood. “Look at this scrollwork. Makes it harder to refinish, because you have to get the varnish and paint out of all these crevices, but that’s the price you pay for something like this. People don’t do much work like this anymore.”

  “How long will it take you to finish?”

  “Can’t say. Another two weeks, maybe. Getting all this crap off without damaging the wood is the hard part.”

  Jazz walked around the armoire, asking more questions, then moved on to other pieces of furniture in the workroom, most of them in different phases of restoration. What Jazz knew about antiques, refinishing, and furniture in general was absolutely nothing—other than you sat in chairs, slept in beds, things like that—so Mr. Potts was able to elaborate to his heart’s content. When Jazz learned that the armoire was two hundred seventy-nine years old, he turned and gave it a wondering look. “That thing was around when George Washington was born.”

  I’ve kept track of a lot of things in my life, but the year George Washington was born isn’t one of them. Mr. Potts didn’t blink an eye, though. “It sure was. Do you know of the Evers family?”

  Both Jazz and I shook our heads.

  “This was passed down from generation to generation. Emily Tylo inherited it from her grandmother…” He went on to explain how the armoire had ended up at its present home with Emily Tylo, whoever she was.

  Finally Jazz got around to what interested him most. “How much is this worth?”

  Mr. Potts shook his head. “Don’t know, because it isn’t for sale. I don’t know what value an antique collector would put on it, but Emily Tylo values it plenty because it was her grandmother’s. If I were selling it, I wouldn’t take less than five thousand for it, just because of the hours of work I’ve put in.”

  I could see the number forming in Jazz’s head. Five thousand! Nothing gets a businessman’s attention like a lot of zeros. Mission accomplished. The hard part now was getting him away from Mr. Potts, who was taking advantage of having such an interested audience. Finally I just took hold of Jazz’s arm and started pulling him toward the door.

  “Thank you, Mr. Potts, we’ve interrupted you enough,” I called over my shoulder.

  He waved good-bye, and went back to work rubbing on the mahogany armoire.

  Jazz wasn’t dumb. He knew exactly why I’d taken him to see Mr. Potts. When we got in the car he said, “That was a real eye-opener.”

  I didn’t say anything, mainly because he was doing okay on his own, figuring things out. “I had no idea how much work refinishing is,” he murmured. “Sally always had something down in the basement that she was working on, so I never paid much attention to it. She didn’t seem to work on the stuff very much, though.”

  “That’s because she wouldn’t work on it while you were home. She always said she would rather spend the time with you.” Salt is good for wounds. Keeps them from going putrid.

  He winced, and spent several minutes looking out the window. We were almost back to his office before he spoke again. “She loved that old furniture, didn’t she?”

  “Yep. She’d spend months searching for the perfect piece.”

  His mouth worked a little, then he firmed it. After swallowing a couple of times he said belligerently, “I sup