Tall, Dark And Difficult Page 2

  Rose secured the last of the dried flowers in place and stepped back to view her creation from a better perspective.

  She stood with hands on slim hips, head tilted so that her hair tumbled over one bare shoulder. It was hair the color of honey and old gold, thick, and just wavy enough to be a challenge. To gain an edge, and save some time on humid summer mornings, she opted for long layers in back and slightly shorter ones in front and then hoped for the best. It was not the sleek, retro look of the moment, but it had been a while since Rose worried about fashion trends. The casual cut suited both her heart-shaped face and her approach to beauty rituals, which amounted to doing as little as possible.

  She would rather fuss with flowers than her hair any day, and as she ran a discerning eye over the nine-foot length of garland on her worktable, she was pleased to see she had achieved exactly what her artist’s soul had envisioned; a delicate watercolor blend of the hydrangeas’ faded blue and lavender tones, enhanced, but never overpowered, by the deeper violet of the imported, twelve-dollars-and-fifty-cents-a-yard French silk ribbon.

  “Magnificent,” she pronounced, kissing her fingertips to the air.

  But then, she had known it would be from the moment she dived into the Dumpster behind the Wickford Country Club to retrieve the discarded hydrangeas. Her life was nothing if not proof positive of one of the most elemental laws of nature. Human nature, anyway. Namely, that one man’s, or woman’s, trash is another’s treasure. The jettisoned floral arrangements were simply the latest in the long line of rescued castoffs from which she made her living. And a comfortable living at that, she thought, gazing with satisfaction around the five-year-old shop that had been a thirtieth birthday present to herself, and which she had appropriately christened Second Hand Rose.

  She loved her work, and even as she’d climbed from the Dumpster and loaded the hydrangeas into the back of her pickup she had been tingling with anticipation, her thoughts spinning with possibilities. Of course, nothing, especially art, is ever really free. After hauling the flowers home, she spent hours cleaning globs of gravy off the petals with Q-Tips and trimming them with manicure scissors. Then for weeks she’d sidestepped through her small cottage, weaving a path around the bunches of fragile blooms hanging everywhere to dry. It was all worth it however, for this one blissful moment of creative triumph.

  Perhaps, she mused, the swag itself was not quite worth the astronomical price tag she was affixing to it, but then, that was the point. She regularly overpriced items she couldn’t bear to part with right away. Eventually, when she was ready to let go, the piece would be given a steep mark-down and find a new home with some lucky customer who appreciated both beauty and a great bargain. Everyone came out a winner, and in Rose’s mulishly optimistic view of things, that’s the way the whole world ought to work.

  All that remained now was to hang the garland in a carelessly romantic swoop above the wide arch separating the two rooms of her shop. No easy feat, considering her aversion to heights.

  Luckily, she had one thing going for her that other altophobics might not; an uncompromising case of LETCS. That was her own acronym for Little Engine That Could Syndrome. Given the right motivation, there was nothing she could not accomplish if she put her mind to it, or so she told herself on a daily basis. So far, it was working pretty well, and as she went to fetch the stepladder, a determined refrain of “I think I can, I think I can” was already organizing itself inside her head.

  The sound of the bell over the entrance put her plan on hold, drawing her to the front of the shop, as a tall man dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt entered. Rose didn’t recognize him, but she sure recognized the breed, and for no better reason than gut instinct, her stomach muscles knotted.

  Bright August sunlight pouring through the shop’s lace-clad front windows illuminated the man’s many defects, and Rose wasted no time taking a complete inventory. His posture was too straight, his shoulders too broad, and his jaw too square. His entire facial structure had the sort of raw, chiseled quality that, when combined with leather and horse-flesh, had been selling cigarettes for generations. Every sharp angle and crease made it plain that the man was a force to be reckoned with, and he damn well knew it. Even the dark stubble on his chin was too blatantly, alarmingly masculine for her liking.

  As a rule, Rose wasn’t given to snap judgments, or forming impressions based on appearance alone. But there were always exceptions. One look was enough to convince her that the man before her was historically and irreparably flawed, descended from generations of those similarly afflicted, born of a renegade breed. A modern link in a long and all-too-resilient chain of men who conquered nations and broke hearts with equal aplomb.

  A winner. A taker. A user.

  Chapter Two

  All right. So maybe she was a wee bit sensitive—perhaps one might even say a tad irrational—when it came to a certain type of male. The assertive, self-assured, gorgeous-enough-to-arouse-mud type. Which this man definitely was. Even the back of his neck was sexy, she noted when he briefly turned his head. She hated that in a man.

  Deranged. That was the word her best friend, Maryann McShane, used to describe Rose’s attitude. As the happily married mother of a beautiful six-month-old daughter, Maryann considered it her duty to maneuver Rose into the same blissful state. She was forever finding another “perfectly nice man” for Rose, and Rose was forever refusing to cooperate. Having been married to one driven and demanding man for five years, she figured she had earned the right to be a little deranged on the subject.

  She might not have the whole Mars-Venus thing figured out, but she had learned to steer clear of a certain sort of man. The sort who didn’t know enough to take off his silly sunglasses when he stepped indoors. Not that it was a chronic problem—men who wore mirrored aviator shades usually only ventured into her shop when led on the invisible leash that some silicone-laden blonde had attached to his libido. Since there was nary a breast implant in sight, she couldn’t help wondering what Mr. Mirrors wanted.

  As if reading her mind, or her disapproving smirk, he removed the sunglasses and hooked them into the neck of his T-shirt. Rose quickly underscored too damn handsome on his growing list of faults, and cursed herself for responding to the genetically programmed urge to suck in her stomach and wonder if she had remembered to put on lipstick.

  Not that it mattered. He slid his gaze over her too quickly to notice she had lips. Clearly, he found her about as fascinating as the rack of vintage beaded purses by her side. Maybe less so.

  For Rose, his utter lack of interest came not as an insult—nor as a surprise, for that matter—but as a relief. She’d have liked to save time by informing him straight off that even though the word antiques appeared on the sign out front, she did not deal in rusty bayonets, Civil War memorabilia or vintage auto parts.

  She settled for “Good morning,” causing his gaze to settle on her directly for the first time.

  “Morning,” he replied.

  “May I help you with something, or are you just browsing?”

  The standard query caused one corner of his mouth to quirk. It was a very nice mouth, she noted, adding it to the list.

  “Browsing?” His cool gaze took in the shelves of sparkling Depression-era glass, baskets overflowing with freshly laundered vintage linens and, occupying center stage, her current pièce de résistance, an old white iron bed, dressed in a faded quilt and generations of loving wear and tear.

  “Hardly,” he muttered, with a blend of smug superiority and barely concealed disdain.

  Obviously, in spite of his attire, this was no common, garden-variety Neanderthal she was dealing with. This was the King of the Heap, Leader of the Pack, the infamous Number One Combo. She knew the type well. Arrogant and tactless, and, unless she missed her guess, served with a side order of cynicism. There was only one way to deal with a Number One. Ignore him.

  “I’m here to see the proprietor,” he announced, before she had the chance. “Miss
Rose Davenport.”

  The way her name rolled off his tongue was the verbal equivalent of the look he’d just given her shop. Rose folded her arms and her chin came up.

  “I’m Rose Davenport.”

  That earned her a closer look—and a frown, something that seemed to come to him quite naturally. And fairly regularly, judging from the pattern of lines around his mouth. The man definitely needed to lighten up.

  “Do you have a mother, or maybe a grandmother, by that name?”

  “Afraid not. It’s me or nothing.”

  His eyes, a deep and distracting shade of blue, narrowed with impatience.

  “I’m looking for the Rose Davenport who was friends with Devora Fairfield,” he told her emphatically, as if he could get her to produce another Rose Davenport through sheer force of will. She’d wager the technique worked for him more often than not.

  “I heard you the first time, and the answer is the same. If you’re looking for Rose Davenport, I’m it.”

  He eyed her suspiciously. “You were friends with Devora?”

  “I sure was. Did you know Devora?”

  “She was my aunt,” he replied. “Great-aunt, actually.”

  It was her turn to take a closer look at him. The height…the jaw… Of course. “You’re Hollis.”

  “Griffin,” he countered with obvious irritation. “Just ‘Griff’ will do. Devora was the only one I allowed to call me Hollis.”

  “Allowed?” Rose couldn’t help arching her tawny brows as she struggled to reconcile the man before her with the spit-and-polished military officer she had encountered only once before, briefly and nearly two years ago.

  He shrugged. “Figuratively speaking, that is.”

  It was a rather terse acknowledgment of the fact that no one had ever “allowed” Devora Fairfield to do anything. The spirited spinster, whom Rose had been honored to call her friend, had invariably done and said precisely as she deemed right and proper and damn well pleased. Rose couldn’t decide if it was annoyance or grudging affection that hovered in Hollis Griffin’s voice when he spoke of his aunt, and it really didn’t matter.

  It had been no secret that Devora loved her nephew as if he were a child of her body and not simply her heart, and that was good enough for Rose. She immediately erased the mental list she’d been compiling. For Devora’s sake alone, she was prepared to befriend Hollis Griffin in the manner that came most naturally to her—utterly and enthusiastically.

  “Okay, ‘Griff’ it is.” Smiling warmly, she stepped closer to offer her right hand, and for the first time noticed the cane in his.

  “You probably don’t remember me,” she went on, concealing her surprise. “We met at Devora’s funeral service.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.” He slipped the cane under his arm with an ease that suggested he’d had it a while, and shook her hand.

  “That’s all right, I didn’t recognize you, either, without your uniform.”

  That seemed to irk him as much as being called Hollis had.

  “I’m retired from the Air Force,” he explained curtly.

  “I see,” said Rose, though she didn’t.

  Devora always sent her nephew a “care package” of goodies on his birthday, and Rose recalled that he was almost exactly five years older than she was, which would make him a few months shy of forty. A bit young for retirement. Especially since, according to his aunt, the man lived to fly; the more high risk the mission, the better. Devora worried about the danger inherent in his work, but she had also sung his praises at every opportunity. Rose’s understanding was that Griffin wasn’t merely a pilot, but an aviation junkie, as skilled working on a jet’s engine as he was at its controls. She added his early retirement to the cane and came up with a half-dozen questions she was smart enough not to ask.

  “It would be a wonder if you remember anyone you met that day,” she continued in an instinctive attempt to put him at ease. “All of Wickford was there, plus Devora’s old friends from as far away as Florida. I hope you know how beloved your aunt was around here, and how very much she is missed.”

  Especially by me, thought Rose with the same twinge of wistfulness that always accompanied thoughts of the woman who had understood her better than her own family ever had.

  “Devora certainly had her good points,” he agreed. This time there was no mistaking the affection in his tone, or the look of impatience that quickly followed as he added, “And her quirks.”

  “Ah, but the quirks were the best thing about Devora,” she countered with a chuckle. “Who else do you know who kept a working butter churn in the kitchen?”

  “Who, indeed?”

  “I’ll never forget the first time she invited me for tea. I walked into that beautiful house and felt…” Swept up in the memory, she searched for words to fully capture and share it. “Like…oh, like Alice stepping through the looking glass.”

  “I can understand that,” he countered. “The Mad Hatter would feel right at home there.”

  “So did I. No, that’s wrong. Home is too ordinary a word. It was more like wonderland, each room more full of treasure than the last.”

  “And you like all that ju—treasure?” he enquired in a cautious tone.

  “Like it?” She sighed. “I love it. And the furniture…don’t get me started.”

  “Didn’t plan to.”

  “That yellow brocade settee in the hall,” she continued, her expression dreamy.

  “The low one with the spiky arms? Have you ever tried actually sitting on that thing?”

  “Once,” she told him, grinning. “I felt like a princess. But my absolute favorite piece is the hand-carved cherry-wood cabinet in the sitting room…the one with all the Bavarian china and the ivory figurines. The first time I saw it, I just stared in absolute, dumbstruck wonder.”

  He nodded. “I’ve stared that way at a lot of Devora’s stuff.”

  “She had an amazing eye. Did you know the glass sides of that cabinet are a J-curve?”

  “I had no idea. Is that good?”

  “Good and bad. Good because it’s so rare and because it’s refractive quality is so much greater than a standard curve. Bad because it’s so rare and costs a fortune to replace should it be broken.”

  “Sort of like ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t.’ Which is something I definitely understand.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “You are?”

  “Very. When we found out that Devora had left the house to her ‘hotshot nephew from California,’ as you were sometimes referred to, some folks around here, including me,” she confessed with a rueful smile, “were worried you would sell to an outside developer. Do you have any idea how much a house that size, with that much water frontage and a view that would make a sailor weep, is worth on today’s market?”

  “Some,” he murmured.

  “What am I saying? Of course you know what it’s worth. But much more important, you obviously understand that the true value of a person’s home cannot be measured in dollars and cents. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have kept it in the family, and Wickford would have one more commercial enterprise to contend with.”

  “Pardon me for saying so, but isn’t this a commercial enterprise?” He indicated the shop.

  “I suppose it is, if you want to get technical. I prefer to think of it as a labor of love.” She grinned unabashedly. “Besides, as a New Englander born and bred, I have a geographical obligation to be cantankerous and irrational when it comes to outsiders.”

  “Let me guess,” he said dryly. “Outsiders would be anyone whose local roots don’t stretch back for at least three generations?”

  “Exactly. But since your roots are impeccable, things couldn’t have worked out better.” A sudden thought caused her mouth to pucker. “You are planning to live in the house, aren’t you? I mean, that is why you’re here?”

  Those dangerously blue eyes met hers, and Rose got the distinct impression that Hollis Griffin didn’t like b
eing asked personal questions. Not that the question struck her as overly personal—but then, she warmed up to strangers quickly enough to turn a chance encounter in a dentist’s waiting room into a lifelong friendship. She had a hunch that Griff took a while longer to thaw.

  “My long-range plans aren’t firm yet,” he said finally, “but I sold my condo in California and last week I moved everything I own into Devora’s place.”

  “Last week?” she echoed, surprised. “I never even noticed.”

  “No reason you should have. It wasn’t much of a move. Just a couple of suitcases and a TV.” He shrugged. “I got rid of everything else.”

  “That’s great,” she told him.

  He gave her a puzzled look. “It is?”

  “Sure. There’s nothing as exciting as a completely fresh start—new town, new neighbors… Speaking of which, I live in that little cottage just beyond your yard. Weathered gray shingles, white shutters.”

  “Pink door?”

  “Actually, the color is Sun-Kissed Rose—but yes, that’s me. At this time of year the trees and shrubbery provide a buffer, but come fall we’ll have a clear view of each other.”

  He said nothing.

  “Apparently no one else noticed your arrival, either, or the news would have spread like wildfire. You know what they say about small towns.”

  “Yes, unfortunately. I tend to keep to myself.”

  “You can try, but be warned, Fairfield House is as much a local treasure as Devora was. Folks are bound to be curious about its new owner.” Her smile was meant to be reassuring. “Look on the bright side—we’re nosy but friendly. If there’s anything I can do to help you get settled, just give a shout. I know nearly everyone in Wickford, along with their hidden talents and who has what available to rent or borrow. Whatever you might need—butcher, baker, candlesticks and caviar for twelve,” she said, ticking the items off on her fingers, “or just someone to haul away trash—I can hook you up.”

  He gave a faint, undecipherable smile. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”