Believe in Me: A Rosewood Novel (4 page)

Grabbing a bag of potato chips and dumping a small mountain of them next to Travis’s sandwich, she continued. “What I do doesn’t take any talent. I only wish I could be like you—you’ve always been able to make things beautiful. Remember when we were little? How on rainy days you’d go upstairs and rearrange all the rooms in that Victorian dollhouse Mama gave you? Remember the wallpaper and the slipcovers you made for those teeny sofas and chairs?”

“Margot, that was child’s play.”

“What you did for Travis and my bedroom certainly wasn’t. I
hated
what Nicole had done to that room. But you made it wonderful for us, hanging the photographs Charlie Ayer took of Travis and me with Nocturne, and choosing exactly the right colors and furniture for the room—and for us. Travis loves hanging out there.”

She raised a skeptical brow. “Somehow I think he enjoys your bedroom for an entirely different reason than my decorating taste.”

A happy smile lit Margot’s face. “Well, maybe, but you picked out the linens and the bed, too. That sleigh bed is
so
great. And what about the amazing job you did on the third floor?”

“I didn’t—”

“Yes, you did,” she said firmly. “It was drab and beyond sad up there before. You transformed all those rooms, turned them into these special havens for you and the kids.
That ability is so much a part of you, Jordan, you don’t even realize how good you are. Other people have to pay through the nose for what you do instinctively. They may read about what antiques are all the rage and what kind of floral arrangements are must-haves for their foyers, but they still need a decorator to tell them where to put the darned things or what kind of a vase to use. It’s not just decorating you’re good at, either. Think of how you and Patrick have planned a new flower bed for the garden. It’s already looking beautiful. Or the cookies and breads you bake that have everyone running to the kitchen as soon as they come out of the oven. That’s real talent, Jordan.”

It was sweet of Margot to try and boost her ego before her first sales pitch as a decorator, but Jordan knew she was far from special. “Stop. You’re making me sound like Wonderwoman.”

“You are in my book.”

Right. Did Wonderwoman’s husband leave her for a size 36D, streaked-blond associate with an appetite for adulterous, lunch-hour couplings? She didn’t think so.

Her thoughts must have shown on her face, for Margot’s own expression tightened. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms about her, saying fiercely, “Don’t you dare let what Richard’s done make you sell yourself short.”

Jordan hugged her back. “I’ll try not to.”

“Good.”

The back door opened, and Travis came into the mudroom. He bent down and unlaced his paddock boots, leaving them next to the pair Margot had shed earlier. Ellie Banner had a thing about barn dirt in the house.

Walking over to Margot, he looped an arm about her waist and kissed her.

Jordan quickly averted her eyes, fixing them on the salad Margot had prepared. Spying two more olives buried under the crumbled cheese, she plucked them out. So what if
her breath smelled like olives rather than toothpaste by the time she arrived at Nonie’s?

Their kiss finished, Travis grabbed one of the carrot sticks Margot had been slicing and bit off a piece. “Hi, Jordan.”

She swallowed the olives and returned his smile. “Hello, Travis.”

“You ready for the big lunch with Mrs. Harrison?”

“I guess. Margot’s been giving me a pep talk.”

“Not a pep talk. Just the facts. Doesn’t Jordan look beautiful?”

“She always looks beautiful. That’s a fact, too,” he grinned.

Admittedly, it was wonderful to be told you were beautiful by a man as handsome and sexy as Travis Maher, but she knew his words were generated more by kindness than anything else.

“You two are becoming regular walking encyclopedias, just bursting with nifty facts,” she said wryly. “Have you and Miriam banded together to form a PR club dedicated to me?”

“No surprise that Miriam thinks you’re amazing when she sees firsthand how you’re raising the kids. The girl’s sharp,” Travis said.

“I think Andy wants to ask her out,” Margot told them. Andy was one of the stable hands who worked for Rosewood.

“He should go for it. Miriam’s wonderful. Loads of fun. The kids simply adore her. I’m so grateful Ellie suggested she work for us part-time while she gets her degree.” Jordan checked her watch. She still had a few more minutes before she had to leave. Arriving too early would be interpreted as being overeager, which in Nonie Harrison’s world would smack of desperation. “So you’re okay with my borrowing the Rover?”

“Absolutely. We’ve got loads to do this afternoon. And
since Jade drove to school, I don’t have to worry about picking her up, I only have to worry that she’ll take a detour and stop at Screaming Susie’s.” Margot had nearly fainted from shock the afternoon Jade came home with kelly green hair, the outrageous color acquired at a punk barbershop located in a strip mall on Route 50. Two weeks later Jade switched to fire-engine red and, as if that weren’t enough, allowed the “butchers”—as Margot called them—to hack her long hair into a ragged mop around her ears.

“She’ll run out of color options soon.” Travis leaned a jeans-clad hip against the counter and took a sip of the coffee he’d poured himself. “She’s gone through practically every color in the rainbow.”

“I wouldn’t put it past Jade to go toxic Day-Glo,” Margot said. “Most girls would kill to have hair like hers.”

“After what she’s been dealing with at school, with the girls still freezing her out and the guys all trailing after her with their tongues hanging to the floor, I’m surprised she’s
only
waging a chemical attack on her hair,” Jordan said.

Margot shuddered. “Man, I am so glad I’m not seventeen. Of course Jade has it worse than your average obstinate, know-it-all, reckless teen.”

That was sadly true. Jade possessed all the complications and contradictions of a bright, beautiful teen on the cusp of womanhood, plus a couple hundred more.

Their half-sister had been through hell in the last eighteen months, her world shattered when their father, RJ, and her mother, Nicole, died after the plane their father was piloting crashed into the Chesapeake. Merely days afterward, Jade was dealt another blow when the lawyer for the estate informed her that her parents had neglected to provide her with a guardian. Margot had immediately stepped up and offered to assume responsibility for Jade, but their relationship had been far from easy during the first few months. And Jade’s troubles certainly hadn’t ended there.

In jaw-droppingly short order, she’d intentionally gotten
herself expelled from her elite boarding school in Massachusetts, forcing Margot to move back home to Rosewood with her. Jade had doubtless believed that being back at home and attending high school in Warburg would make her happier. Things didn’t quite work out that way. At Warburg High, a clique of girls turned against her and began posting on the Internet vicious stories not only about Jade but about her mother, too.

It was horrible enough to be labeled a whore and have pornographic images of oneself Photoshopped on the Web, but to have one’s dead mother called a cheating slut, to know that stories were being widely circulated about her affairs was more than anyone should bear.

Wounded, Jade struck back. Unfortunately, her method of retaliation—stealing the boyfriend of Blair Hood, the ringleader of the clique, and making out with him at a wild house party in plain sight of everybody—only landed her in more hot water when the Warburg police arrived, responding to a call from a neighbor who complained about the noise.

Passed out from drinking shots of Jägermeister, Jade was brought home in the back of a police patrol car, the backseat of which was covered with vomit by the time the cruiser reached Rosewood. It was only the next morning when Margot confronted her that Jade, hungover and scared about her run-in with the police, confided to her about the bullying she was being subjected to at school. With the fierceness of a lioness defending her cub, Margot saw to it that the vile pages on the Web were removed, and that the girls responsible for the sleaze were disciplined by the school.

All this had happened last year. But even now, judging from the closed expression on their half-sister’s face when she came home from school, Jordan could only assume that the clique of girls behind the Internet bullying had simply switched tactics, tormenting Jade in more devious ways.

So why should it surprise any of them that Jade’s answer was to try and make herself so unattractive to the boys that the girls would stop seeing her as a threat?

But her plan hadn’t worked as intended. From the constant buzzing of her cell, the boys were still after her. Not even her bored replies when she bothered to take their calls deterred them.

If the boys were this crazy for her, then the girls must be puce with jealousy. Navigating a social scene like that had to be a waking nightmare. Jordan only prayed that Jade would manage to keep her cool and not get provoked into doing anything more serious than driving Margot nuts with her polychromatic ’dos.

Having finished slicing the carrots, Margot arranged the sticks in a neat pile next to Travis’s sandwich and passed him the nearly overflowing plate. “Here you go, honey.”

“Thanks. This looks great,” he said, a smile spreading across his lightly tanned face. Travis was a very good-looking man. When he smiled at Margot like that, he made movie stars look homely.

“You want anything else to go with that?” The breathlessness in Margot’s voice showed just how susceptible she was to her husband’s slow smile.

“Maybe later,” he said softly.

They stared into each other’s eyes, lost to the rest of the world.

She was not going to be jealous of Margot and Travis’s happiness, but right now three was most definitely a crowd.

“Bye, guys,” she said, her voice extra chipper.

“Oh!” Margot gave a start at the sound of her voice but recovered admirably. “You’re leaving?”

She nodded. “Miriam will chew me out if she finds I’m still on the premises.”

“Good luck, sweetie.”

“Yeah, break a leg, Jordan.”

“Thanks.” She smiled. “I should be back around three.”

“I’ll stick a bottle of the champagne Damien gave us as a wedding present in the fridge—we can toast Rosewood Design’s first commission and your taming of Warburg’s scariest dragon lady.”

“Sounds lovely.” Jordan only hoped she would have something for them to celebrate.

The Harrison house, formally known as Overlea, was located a mile outside of Warburg. As Jordan drove along the winding country roads that led toward town, she steeled herself for what was bound to be a less than relaxing lunch. Nonie Harrison handily captured the title of Warburg’s most domineering woman, which was probably why her husband, Eugene, extended his winters in Palm Beach through early June.

Nonie belonged to Jordan’s father’s generation, and Jordan had always wondered whether she’d married Eugene Harrison because she’d been unable to catch the dashing RJ Radcliffe—the dashing and recklessly foolish RJ Radcliffe, she quickly amended. While Eugene might possess all the excitement of a pet rock, at least the Harrison fortune was intact, whereas their spendthrift father had been afflicted with horrendously poor judgment when it came to investments.

Thank God for Margot and her perfect jawline and photogenic proportions. Her success as a fashion model had saved Rosewood, which had been in the family since the 1840s, from bankruptcy. Without her generosity and determination to preserve their heritage, they would have been left with no alternative but to sell the beautiful mansion and the horse farm.

Of the multitude of Richard’s selfish acts during the last year of their marriage, Jordan was most ashamed by his dishonesty in refusing to help Margot with the debts. He had claimed that they needed to put aside money for their own three children. As it turned out, his pious excuse was
just one in a long string of lies. The real reason he hadn’t wanted to lend Margot any money was that he’d siphoned a lot of his and Jordan’s savings to buy a fancy D.C. love nest for Cynthia Delaroux and himself.

What Jordan hated most was her own sense of blame. She should have insisted to Richard that they chip in to pay off the debts her father had left. Instead, she’d been a pushover, a docile, smiling dupe.

But no longer.

Months had passed since the divorce, since she’d uprooted her children and moved back home. Thanks to her family and everyone else at Rosewood, Kate and Max were happily settled and far more secure than one could hope for children experiencing the breakup of their family and the absence of a father. Luckily, Olivia was too young to be anything other than a sunny toddler who adored everyone.

Jordan’s relief once she knew her children weren’t going to be collateral damage in the wreck of the marriage had allowed her to regain her bearings and take stock of her own situation. She’d quickly realized that it was past time she proved that she, too, could contribute to keeping Rosewood afloat—not just by helping with the horses at the farm, but with her own outside work.

Today represented day one of Jordan’s plan. She was dusting off the career as an interior designer that she’d set aside six years ago with the birth of Kate. She’d named her fledgling business Rosewood Designs and hoped to target the well-heeled of Warburg and the neighboring towns in Loudon County, offering decorating advice to those with more money than taste.

Nonie fit the bill perfectly.

With the death of Nicole, Jordan’s stepmother, Nonie had attained the rank of Warburg’s premier social hostess. As such, she wielded a terrific influence on the rest of Warburg’s “ladies.” If Jordan could get Nonie to hire her as a decorator, others would eagerly follow suit.

In celebration of her rise to the pinnacle of Warburg society, Nonie had undertaken a renovation project of her guest cottage. In its final stages of completion, she was looking for an interior designer to decorate the cottage from top to bottom.

As it happened in most small communities, the news had traveled via Warburg’s gossip grapevine. Lottie Mulhouse told Jordan about Nonie’s plans at the grocery store checkout line. Jordan had decided to grab the bull by the horns, or, as Margot might say, the dragon lady by the tail. She called Nonie and told her she was starting an interior design company. Might Nonie be interested in having her come over and take a look at the cottage?