The House On The Creek (24 page)

“Uneventful. You got my latest messages?”

Windsor sobered. “All of them. I can’t say I’m happy.”

Everett crossed to the desk he used as a home office and picked up a file. He weighed it in his hands, and then passed it over. “Notarize these, will you? And then get back to me. I’ll have a memo out before breakfast. And I’ll need you to draw up a list of caterers.”

It galled, some, that he already looked forward to December with an intensity that approached desperation.

The other man sighed. “Maui’s a hard one to give up.”

Everett clapped Windsor on the shoulder. “We’ll manage.” He turned back to his desk, forced himself to think only of business. “We can’t afford not to.”

For the first time in as long as Abby could remember, Williamsburg had a white Halloween. Snow fell in sheets, covering the skeletal woods in clean drifts. Grey clouds in the darkening sky made the evening dour.

Creepy,
Abby thought in appreciation. A truly ghostly night, perfect for the holiday.

Although, as she stood in the drive way and lifted her face to the blizzard, the air felt decidedly more of January than October. Still, the turning seasons always brought her joy, and she whooped a little out loud as she whirled a circle.

Chris would have a snow day or two. And maybe she’d splurge on a fresh, farm raised turkey for Thanksgiving this year, instead of settling for a processed breast. She’d find the time and energy to whip up mashed potatoes and sweet yams and pecan pie.

Grinning to herself, Abby finished her impromptu dance and made for the house. A rough winter was just what she needed to keep her mind occupied. Never mind the fact that her clients would not be pleased by inclement delays.

She wasn’t worried. She always found her way around any bump in the process.

Tons and tons of snow, she thought. The more snow the better. Snow to shovel, snow to play in, snowmen and hot cider in the kitchen of her snug little home.

Not that the old Ross house was exactly weather tight. But that was another project she’d tackle, later, when the inevitable slow season set in. She and Chris would blow insulation into the attic, fix the cracks in the storm windows. She’d nag Jack until he agreed to find her a new oil tank, one that didn’t leak.

She hummed as she climbed the porch steps. They already needed shoveling. Two huge pumpkins, carved grotesquely into a vampire and mummy, glared at her from either side of the front door.

Smiling, she dug in her tote for a matchbook and, crouching down, carefully lit the candles in each pumpkin. Flames danced up behind gaping eyes and toothy mouths, turning the gourds into ghouls.

The flicker sent yellow light across the porch and turned innocent corners into spooky hollows. Pleased, Abby dropped her tote on the porch, and sat down next to the basket of candy she’d put out earlier in anticipation.

Content, for the moment, to watch the falling snow.

She had the ghostly night all to herself. Chris was out at a school chaperoned mixer, masquerading as Zorro, and determined to impress his friends with an old rubber prop sword Abby had found in a second hand shop. The sword wasn’t exactly period, but Chris loved it.

Her child had been happier lately. She wasn’t sure whether the mood change was due to the roll of the seasons, the hours he spent boating on the Creek, or the new video game console Jackson had bought for the Airstream.

Chris still jumped when the phone rang, and Abby knew she was hoping for his daddy at the end of the line.

If Richard Tilletson had read Chris’s email, he hadn’t bothered to respond, hadn’t bothered to pick up the phone. The same could not be said of Everett.

Abby cupped her chin in her hands, and watched the flickering candlelight on the stoop. She wasn’t sure, exactly, how she felt about Everett’s weekly calls. Sunday night, six o’clock sharp, as reliable as the Chesapeake tide.

He spoke to Chris for hours. She didn’t know what they talked about. She’d been determined not to eavesdrop. She only knew the calls made her son smile, and she was grateful for that.

On the other hand, every time the telephone rang on Sunday night her heart galloped in a frantic rhythm.

He never asked to speak with her. She never picked up the phone after noon on Sundays. They were avoiding each other, careful as two dogs around a bone. She told herself she was glad Everett had the sense to keep his distance.

Instead, she was miserable. Even from the West Coast, he turned her life edgewise.

She should never have let him touch her.

She certainly never meant to fall in love with him again, to repeat the mistakes of her youth. Especially not after a scant handful of weeks at his side and only one night of sex.

Good sex. Great sex. Incredibly great sex. But still, just sex.

“It’s not love,” she told the Jack O’ Lanterns. “It’s just an itch wanting scratching. The dry spell ended, and it was good, and now you want more. Only natural.”

The Jack O’ Lanterns were not convinced. She couldn’t blame them. Everett was barely five weeks gone, and already she missed him with an ache that mirrored the sore muscles she brought home from work each night.

She missed him as she’d never missed Chris’s father. She missed him with an intensity that made her knees shake at the oddest moments. That made her eyes well up for no reason, just as they had when she’d been a child and he’d been the first to break her young heart.

“It’s not love,” Abby repeated. “It can’t be.”

He’d offered her a job, a good one. The overtime alone would help her little family get through the winter, help Santa bring good cheer to their tree.

She didn’t want to admit to herself that she’d wanted him to offer his heart.

“Oh, Lord,” Abby murmured through her fingers to the silent snow fall. “It can’t be.” But it was.

She’d loved him once, with a girl’s quick, deep passion. A woman grown, Abby loved him still.

And she knew, with an instinct that made her groan and reach for a handful of Halloween candy, that she’d never stopped loving him in between.

By the end of November snow covered Williamsburg in a thick, unwelcome blanket. Unused to harsh weather, the town stopped for days each time new snow fell. Plows had to be shipped over from Richmond and salt brought in from farther north. The College closed for Thanksgiving break, and by that time the local high schools had already used most of their allotted snow days.

Chris loved the unusual weather and spent every free moment out in the cold, building ice forts or racing around on borrowed cross country skis with a group of boys from debate team.

He spent one weekend learning how to ice skate at the local mall, and then decided he desperately wanted to join Williamsburg’s junior hockey league. His eagerness had Abby setting aside spare change toward the purchase of hockey blades for Christmas.

Abby’s client list grew in spite of the cold weather. She had a professor who wanted the kitchen in his old cottage restored to its former glory, and a senator who wanted his sprawling plantation style home on the James completely refitted with period light fixtures.

She had one woman who wanted her garden walk redesigned and another who couldn’t decide whether she wanted tile or hardwood in her basement.

The fax machine she’d picked up on Jack’s advice buzzed and beeped from early morning until late in the night, and her pay by the minute cell never seemed to stop ringing.

She had the phone with her one dreary afternoon as she chopped wood beneath a light mist of snow, and its shrill ring nearly sent the ax spinning from her hands.

“Abby Ross!” She barked, pressing the phone against her cheek as she stripped gloves from her fingers.

“Ms. Ross?” The voice was bland, dry, and vaguely familiar. “Mike Windsor. I trust you have a moment?”

“Mr. Windsor. What a pleasant surprise.” Abby made a face at the chopping block as she balanced the phone between shoulder and jaw, and tucked her fingers under her armpits to keep them warm. “I didn’t expect to hear from you until the weekend.”

“Yes, well.” The man cleared his throat. “Something’s come up.”

Something always did, Abby thought as she watched her breath turn to mist on the cold air. She’d had her share of paranoid clients, but Everett’s squawky agent took the cake. And then ran with it.

She wasn’t sure what the trouble was. In the beginning she’d assumed the man just didn’t trust her to do the job. He phoned her daily, day and night, fretting about this and that and the other thing.

He didn’t like the amount she billed for furniture. Her food budget was definitely too high. His transportation budget, on the other hand, was too low.

Abby had tried to be understanding. But the calls kept coming, even after she’d proved - to herself, at least - that she could handle the job. And finally, she’d revised her opinion. The man wasn’t a worry wart. He was a chauvinist pig.

And he simply didn’t like her.

Yet, much as she’d hated to admit it, she’d begun to look forward to his calls. Because Windsor’s annoying discontent only meant that nothing had changed and, come Christmas, Everett would be home. If only for a little while.

“Ms. Ross?”

“Yes.” Abby blinked and focused. “I’m here. What can I do for you?”

“Mr. Anderson asked me to phone.”

“Of course he did.” Abby didn’t bother to hide her sarcasm. She doubted very much that Everett knew about his agent’s incessant hounding.

“Mr. Anderson is away on business,” Windsor said without apology. “But he asked me to relay a few specifications.”

“Specifications?” Pompous ass.

“Yes. About the lights.”

“Beg your pardon, the lights?” Abby frowned down at a piece of split wood. Last Saturday Windsor had nagged about tree skirts, mums and dining room furniture. She didn’t remember anything about lights.

“Christmas lights. For the eaves of the house. He said he saw the ones he wanted in a catalog, and he’s sent the catalog out express mail. You should get it tomorrow.”

“What are they?” Abby asked, suspicious. She suspected Windsor had found lights tacky enough to curdle cream, and then decided they were a necessary item.

“I believe he described them as ‘white icicles’.”

Abby grunted. She’d seem similar lights in a catalog herself and thought they’d looked rather pretty, if not Williamsburg traditional.

“Remind him he needs Twelfth Night candles in each window. Candles plus outside lights may be a little too much.”

“I’ll remind him,” Windsor said. Abby hoped he wasn’t lying through his teeth. “Mr. Anderson also said to tell you that he’ll be out of town for the next week, and that he’ll phone you after the first of December. Meanwhile, I will continue to be at your disposal.”

Abby felt her frown turn into a scowl. Still balancing the phone, she pulled her hands from beneath her jacket and worked stiffening fingers. “Ev’s either remarkably brave or remarkably stupid. Party’s on the eighth. He waits too late there’ll be no time to fix any screw ups.”

“Mr. Anderson,” the emphasis was light but unmistakable, “has no doubts as your ability and skill. As I said, I will continue to be-”

“-at my disposal.” Abby finished. “I get it. You can tell him I’ve cleared up the mess with the Hampton caterers.”

“I’m sure he’ll be pleased. The catalog should be on your doorstep before noon tomorrow. Have a good evening, Ms. Ross.”

“Gee, thanks,” Abby ground out, but the line was dead against her ear.

“Coward,” she muttered, and didn’t know whether she meant herself or her vanished lover. Or both.

Shaking her head, she stuck her phone in her coat, and went back to chopping wood.

Chapter Sixteen

SHE GAVE IN AT LAST
and called him on Thanksgiving, late in the evening after she and Chris and Jack had polished off half a turkey, one-fifth of a Virginia ham, and one quarter of a pumpkin pie.

She called him at home, using the number he had left her on a yellow Post It in case of emergencies.

The apple cider she and Chris had imbibed all through dinner fizzed cheerfully in her belly, and she felt almost content as she picked up the phone and dialed the West Coast number. The boys’ boisterous singing in the kitchen gave her the courage to put the call through, and she was calm and composed by the time the line began to ring.

By the fourth ring her smile had faded, and by the seventh she was beginning to feel strangely weepy. On the tenth a woman answered, light and bubbly.

“Anderson residence.”

Abby couldn’t force a sound past the catch in her chest.

“Hello?”

Abby cleared her throat. “Sorry. I’m looking for Everett Anderson.”

“He’s out of town until the end of the month.” She sounded very young. “Can I take a message?”