This Heart Of Mine Read online

  Daphne Plants a Pumpkin Patch

  After her dip in the lake, Molly showered and changed, then found herself walking out to the porch and gazing toward the table where she’d left the sack of art supplies she’d bought in town that morning. It was long past time to start work on the drawings.

  Instead of settling at the table, however, she sat on the glider and picked up the pad she’d used yesterday to sketch Daphne diving off the cliff. She gazed off into the distance. Finally she began to write.

  “Mrs. Mallard is building a summer camp on the other side of Nightingale Woods,” Daphne announced one afternoon to Benny, Melissa, Celia the Hen, and Benny’s pal Corky the Raccoon. “And we all get to go!”

  “I don’t like summer camp,” Benny grumbled.

  “Can I wear my movie-star sunglasses?” Melissa asked.

  “What if it rains?” Celia clucked.

  By the time Molly set aside the notepad, she’d written the beginning of Daphne Goes to Summer Camp. Never mind that she’d barely covered two pages, and never mind that her brain might dry up at any minute or that her publisher wouldn’t buy this book until she did what they wanted to Daphne Takes a Tumble. At least she’d written, and for now she was happy.

  The scent of lemon furniture polish greeted her as she walked into the B&B. The rugs had been vacuumed, the windows gleamed, and the tea table in the sitting room held a stack of Dresden rose china dessert plates with matching cups and saucers. Kevin’s strategy of keeping the lovers separated until they’d finished their work seemed to be effective.

  Amy emerged from the back with a pile of fresh white towels and took in the inexpensive canary-yellow sundress Molly had customized with four rows of colorful ribbon trim at the hem. “Wow! You look really cool. Nice makeup. I bet this’ll get Kevin’s attention.”

  “I’m not trying to get Kevin’s attention.”

  Amy caressed the luscious little bruise at the base of her throat. “I’ve got this new perfume in my purse. It drives Troy nuts if I dab a little on my… well, you know. Do you want to borrow some?”

  Molly avoided strangling her by making a dash for the kitchen.

  It was too early to put out the apricot scones and oatmeal-butterscotch bread she’d made that morning, so she picked up her lovey and settled down with him on one of the kitchen chairs near the bay window. He tucked his topknot under her chin and rested his paw on her arm. She drew him closer. “Do you like it here as much as I do, pooch?”

  He gave her an affirmative lick.

  She gazed down the sloping yard toward the lake. These past few days in what she now thought of as Nightingale Woods had brought her back to life. She stroked Roo’s warm belly and admitted that being with Kevin was a big part of it.

  He was stubborn and cocky—maddening beyond belief—but he’d made her feel alive again.

  For all his talk about how smart she was, he didn’t have any trouble keeping up with her. Like a few other jocks she knew—Dan sprang to mind, along with Cal Bonner and Bobby Tom Denton—Kevin’s passion for athletics ran side by side with a keen intellect that his doofus behavior couldn’t hide.

  Not that she’d ever compare Kevin with Dan. Look at the way Dan loved dogs, for example. And kids. And most of all, look at the way Dan loved Phoebe.

  She sighed again and let her gaze wander toward the gardens in the back, where Troy had finally cleared away the winter debris. The lilacs were in bloom, and a few irises displayed their purple ruffles, while a peony bush prepared to open.

  A flicker of movement caught Molly’s eye, and she saw Lilly sitting off to the side on an iron bench. At first Molly thought she was reading, but then she realized she was sewing instead. She thought about Lilly’s coolness toward her and wondered if she were reacting personally or to the bad publicity from the wedding?… the Chicago Stars football heiress who dabbles in writing children’s books… Molly hesitated, then rose and let herself out the back door.

  Lilly sat near a small herb garden. Molly found it odd that someone who played the diva so convincingly hadn’t objected to being stuck away in an attic. And despite that Armani sweater tossed so casually around her shoulders, she seemed remarkably content simply sitting by an overgrown garden and sewing. She was a puzzle. It was hard for Molly to warm up to someone who was so cold to her, but she couldn’t quite dislike Lilly and not just because of her old affection for Lace, Inc. It took courage to stick around in the face of Kevin’s hostility.

  Marmie lay at Lilly’s feet next to a large sewing basket. Roo ignored the cat to trot over and greet her owner, who leaned down to pat him. Molly realized she was working on a piece of a quilt, but it didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen. The design wasn’t a neatly arranged geometric, but a subtly shaded medley of curves and swirls in various patterns and shades of green, with touches of lavender and a surprising dab of sky blue.

  “That’s beautiful. I didn’t know you were an artist.”

  The familiar hostility that formed in Lilly’s eyes gave the summer afternoon a January chill. “This is just a hobby.”

  Molly decided to ignore the freeze-out. “You’re very good. What’s it going to be?”

  “Probably a real quilt,” she said reluctantly. “Usually I do smaller pieces like pillows, but this garden seems to demand something more dramatic.”

  “You’re doing a quilt of the garden?”

  Lilly’s inherent good manners forced her to respond. “Just the herb garden. I started experimenting with it yesterday.”

  “Do you work from a drawing?”

  Lilly shook her head, attempting to put an end to the conversation. Molly considered letting her do it, but she didn’t want to. “How can you make something this complicated without a drawing?”

  Lilly took her time responding. “I start putting scraps together that appeal to me, and then I pull out my scissors and see what happens. Sometimes the results are disastrous.”

  Molly understood. She created from bits and pieces, too—a few lines of dialogue, random sketches. She never knew what her books were about until she was well into them. “Where do you get your fabrics?”

  Roo had propped his chin on one of Lilly’s pricey Kate Spade sandals, but Molly’s persistence seemed to bother her more. “I always have a box of scraps in my trunk,” she said brusquely. “I buy a lot of remnants, but this project needs fabrics with some history. I’ll probably try to find an antique store that sells vintage clothing.”

  Molly gazed back at the herb garden. “Tell me what you see.”

  She expected a rebuff, but, again, Lilly’s good manners won out. “I was drawn to the lavender first. It’s one of my favorite plants. And I love the silver of that sage behind it.” Lilly’s enthusiasm for her project began to overcome her personal dislike. “The spearmint needs to be weeded out. It’s greedy, and it’ll take over. That little tuft of thyme is fighting to survive against it.”

  “Which one is the thyme?”

  “Those tiny leaves. It’s vulnerable now, but it can be as aggressive as spearmint. It just goes about it more subtly.” Lilly lifted her eyes, and her gaze held Molly’s for a moment.

  Molly got the message. “You think the thyme and I have something in common?”

  “Do you?” she asked coolly.

  “I have a lot of faults, but subtlety isn’t one of them.”

  “I suppose that remains to be seen.”

  Molly wandered to the edge of the garden. “I’m trying hard to dislike you as much as you seem to dislike me, but it’s tough. You were my heroine when I was a little girl.”

  “How nice.” Icicles dripped.

  “Besides, you like my dog. And I have a feeling that your attitude has less to do with my personality than it has to do with your concerns about my marriage.”

  Lilly stiffened.

  Molly decided she had nothing to lose by being blunt. “I know about your real relationship with Kevin.”

  Lilly’s fingers stalled on her needle. “I’m
surprised he told you. Maida said he never spoke about it.”

  “He didn’t. I guessed.”

  “You’re very astute.”

  “You’ve taken a long time to come see him.”

  “After abandoning him, you mean?” Her voice had a bitter edge.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You were thinking it. What kind of woman abandons her child then tries to worm her way back into his life?”

  Molly spoke carefully. “I doubt that you abandoned him. You seem to have found him a good home.”

  She gazed at the garden, but Molly suspected the peace she’d felt here earlier had vanished. “Maida and John had always wanted a child, and they loved him from the day he was born. But as torturous as it was to make my decision, I still gave him up too easily.”

  “Hey, Molly!”

  Lilly tensed as Kevin came around the corner with Marmie lolling fat and happy in his arms. He stopped abruptly when he saw Lilly, and, as Molly watched, the charmer gave way to a hard-eyed man with a grudge.

  He approached Molly as if she were alone in the garden. “Somebody let her out.”

  “I did,” Lilly said. “She was with me until a few minutes ago. She must have heard you coming.”

  “This is your cat?”

  “Yes.”

  He put her on the ground, almost as if she’d gone radioactive, then turned to walk away.

  Lilly came up off the bench. Molly saw something both desperate and touching in her expression. “Do you want to know about your father?” Lilly blurted out.

  Kevin stiffened. Molly’s heart went out to him as she thought of all the questions she’d had over the years about her own mother. Slowly he turned.

  Lilly clutched her hands. She sounded breathless, as if she’d just run a long distance. “His name was Dooley Price. I don’t think that was his real first name, but it was all I knew. He was eighteen, a tall, skinny farm kid from Oklahoma. We met at the bus station the day we arrived in L.A.” She drank in Kevin’s face. “His hair was as light as yours, but his features were broader. You look more like me.” She dipped her head. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear that. Dooley was athletic. He’d ridden in rodeos—earned some prize money, I think—and he was convinced he could get rich doing stunts in the movies. I don’t remember any more about him—another black mark you can chalk up against me. I think he smoked Marlboros and loved candy bars, but it was a long time ago, and that could have been someone else. We’d broken up by the time I discovered I was pregnant, and I didn’t know how to find him.” She paused and seemed to brace herself. “A few years later I read in the paper that he’d been killed doing some kind of stunt with a car.”

  Kevin’s expression remained stony. He wouldn’t let anyone see that this meant anything to him. Oh, Molly understood all about that.

  Roo was sensitive to people’s distress. He got up and rubbed against Kevin’s ankles.

  “Do you have a picture of him?” Molly asked because she knew Kevin wouldn’t. The only photograph she had of her mother was her most treasured possession.

  Lilly made a helpless gesture and shook her head. “We were only kids—two screwed-up teenagers. Kevin, I’m sorry.”

  He regarded her coldly. “There’s no place for you in my life. I don’t know how I can make that any clearer. I want you to leave.”

  “I know you do.”

  Both animals got up and followed him as he walked away.

  Lilly’s eyes glistened with fierce tears as she spun on Molly. “I’m not leaving!”

  “I don’t think you should,” Molly replied.

  Their eyes locked, and Molly thought she saw a faint crack forming in the wall between them.

  Half an hour later, as Molly slipped the last of her apricot scones into a wicker basket, Amy appeared to announce that she and Troy would be staying in the upstairs bedroom Kevin had abandoned when he’d moved into Molly’s cottage. “Somebody has to sleep here at night,” Amy explained, “and Kevin said he’d pay us extra to do it. Isn’t that cool?”

  “That’s great.”

  “I mean, we won’t be able to make noise, but—”

  “Get the jam, will you?” Molly couldn’t bear hearing any more details of Amy and Troy’s Super Bowl sex life.

  But Amy wouldn’t give up, and the buttery late-afternoon sunlight splashed her love-bitten neck as she regarded Molly earnestly. “It looks like things with you and Kevin could still work out if you just, maybe, tried a little harder. I’m serious about the perfume. Sex is real important to men, and if you’d just use a little—”

  Molly shoved the scones at her and made a dash for the sitting room.

  Later, when she got back to the cottage, Kevin was already there. He sat on the droopy old couch in the front room with Roo lolling on the cushion next to him. His feet were propped up, and a book lay open in his lap. Although he looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world, Molly knew better.

  He glanced up at her. “I like this Benny guy.”

  Her heart sank as she realized he was reading Daphne Says Hello. The other four books in the series lay nearby.

  “Where did you get those?”

  “Last night when I went into town. There’s a kids’ store—mainly clothes, but the owner sells some books and toys, too. She had these in the window. When I told her you were here, she got pretty excited about it.” He tapped the page with his index finger. “This Benny character—”

  “Those are children’s books. I can’t imagine why you’d bother reading them.”

  “Curiosity. You know, there are a couple of things about Benny that seem kind of familiar. For example—”

  “Really? Well, thank you. He’s entirely imaginary, but I do try to give all my characters qualities that readers can identify with.”

  “Yeah, well, I can identify with Benny, all right.” He gazed down at a drawing of Benny wearing sunglasses that looked very much like his silver-rimmed Revos. “One thing I don’t understand… The store owner said she’d gotten some pressure from one of her customers to take the books off the shelf because they were pornographic. Tell me what I’m missing.”

  Roo finally hopped off the couch and came over to greet her. She leaned down to pat him. “Have you ever heard of SKIFSA? Straight Kids for a Straight America?”

  “Sure. They get their kicks going after gays and lesbians. The women all have big hair, and the men show too much teeth when they smile.”

  “Exactly. And right now they’re after my bunny.”

  “What do you mean?” Roo trotted back to Kevin.

  “They’re attacking the Daphne series as homosexual propaganda.”

  Kevin started to laugh.

  “I’m not kidding. They hadn’t paid any attention to my books until we got married, but after all the stories about us appeared in the press, they decided to jump on the publicity bandwagon and go after me.” She found herself telling him about her conversation with Helen and the changes Birdcage wanted in the Daphne books.

  “I hope you told her exactly what she could do with her changes.”

  “It’s not that easy. I have a contract, and they’re keeping Daphne Takes a Tumble off the publication schedule until I send them the new illustrations.” She didn’t mention the rest of the advance money they owed her. “Besides, it’s not as if moving Daphne and Melissa a few inches farther apart affects the story.”

  “Then why haven’t you done the drawings?”

  “I’ve had some troubles with… with writer’s block. But it’s gotten a lot better since I’ve been here.”

  “So now you’re going to do them?”

  She didn’t like the disapproval she detected in his voice. “It’s easy to stand on principle when you have a few million dollars in the bank, but I don’t.”

  “I guess.”

  She got up and headed into the kitchen. As she pulled out a bottle of wine, Roo rubbed against her ankles. She heard Kevin come up behind her.

  “We’re
drinking again, are we?”

  “You’re strong enough to fight me off if I get out of hand.”

  “Just don’t make me hurt my passing arm.”

  She smiled and poured. He took the glass she handed him, and by unspoken agreement they walked together out onto the porch. The glider squeaked as he eased down next to her and took a sip of wine.

  “You’re a good writer, Molly. I can see why kids like your books. When you were drawing Benny, did you happen to notice how much—”

  “What’s with you and my pooch?”

  “Damned if I know.” He glared down at the poodle, who’d collapsed over one of his feet. “He followed me back here from the B&B. Believe me, I didn’t encourage it.”

  Molly remembered the way Roo had picked up on Kevin’s distress in the garden with Lilly. Apparently they had bonded, only Kevin didn’t know it yet.

  “How’s your leg?” he asked.

  “Leg?”

  “Any aftereffects from that cramp?”

  “It’s… a little sore. Very sore. Sort of this dull throb. Pretty painful, actually. I’ll have to take some Tylenol. But I’m sure it’ll be better by tomorrow.”

  “No more swimming alone, okay? I’m serious. It was a stupid thing to do.” He propped his arm along the back of the cushions and gave her his I-mean-business-you-lowlife-rookie look. “And while we’re at it, don’t get too cozy with Lilly.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that. In case you didn’t notice, she’s not too fond of me. Still, I think you need to hear her out.”

  “That’s not going to happen. This is my life, Molly, and you don’t understand anything about it.”

  “That’s not exactly true,” she said carefully. “I’m an orphan, too.”

  He withdrew his arm. “You don’t get to call yourself an orphan if you’re over twenty-one.”

  “The point is, my mother died when I was two, so I know something about feeling disconnected from your roots.”

  “Our circumstances aren’t anything alike, so don’t try to make comparisons.” He gazed out into the woods. “I had two great parents. You didn’t have any.”