April of Enchantment (Sweetly Contemporary Collection) Read online

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system — except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews — without the written permission of publisher or author, except where permitted by law.

  Copyright © 1980 and 2012 by Patricia Maxwell

  First Signet Edition: 1981

  First E-Reads Edition: 1999

  Steel Magnolia Press Digital Edition: 2012

  Cover Design by LFD Designs For Authors

  One

  “Who the devil are you?”

  The words rang out loud and harsh in the room shadowed with encroaching twilight. Laura Nichols swung around with a gasp, her violet eyes wide with shock. Her hair, like a shimmering honey-gold curtain, swirled around her, glowing with a life of its own in the dimness. A man stood in the doorway of the nineteenth-century bedroom. He seemed to fill the frame, blocking her exit, a dark man with anger stamped on his hard features.

  As she faced him, his expression changed, smoothing to stunned surprise. His dark gaze flicked over the cascading waves of her hair that reached well below her waist, moving to the pure oval of her face with its delicate winged brows, straight nose, and finely molded lips, and down over her slender form in jeans and a plaid shirt. His dark eyes snapped upward, clashing with her own blue-violet stare.

  “I asked you a question.”

  Laura lifted her chin. “I might ask the same thing of you.”

  He stepped over the threshold and came toward her then, a broad, lithe, almost menacing figure in casual pants and a knit shirt. His words as measured as his steps, he said, “I own this old place, and I don’t like trespassers, or teenage vandals who think it’s great fun to spray the walls with paint or knock out stair balusters.”

  She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue as he came to a halt in front of her with his hands on his hips. “You — you must be Mr. Roman.”

  “I am,” he said, his voice dropping to a soft tone that carried a hint of danger, “and I’m waiting to hear who you are and what you are doing here.”

  “I’m Laura Nichols. Russ Masters gave me a key so I could come by and see what kind of damage the kids who got in last night had done.”

  “I’m touched at your concern, but I don’t see what business it can possibly be of yours.”

  Laura stared at him. “I thought you knew. I’m the historical consultant for the restoration of Crapemyrtle.”

  He lifted a brow, allowing his gaze to move over her once more. “You must be joking.”

  “I assure you I’m not. I was hired two weeks ago by the firm of Masters & Masters, the architects you put in charge of the project.”

  “Impossible. I specifically requested the services of a qualified expert.”

  Irritation stirred inside Laura. “How do you know I’m not?”

  “You don’t look old enough to be out of high school, much less have earned a degree in history.”

  “There was nothing said about a college degree being necessary.” With a faint flush rising to her cheekbones, Laura took the ribbon she held in her hand, forgotten until now, and began to tie her hair in a long pony tail.

  “Maybe not to you, but I certainly told Russ Masters what I required. Crapemyrtle is an old and historically valuable piece of property. It will require an immense amount of time, research, and dedication to put it back the way it was when it was built a hundred and forty years ago. I don’t intend to see the job botched by an amateur.”

  Her head came up. “An amateur? Mr. Roman, I may not have a degree, but I am no amateur at historical preservation. I have been going in and out of the old houses in this section of Louisiana all my life. Before his death my father was a carpenter who specialized in renovation, and my mother and I still live in the Nichols family home, which is every bit as old as this one.”

  “Very interesting, but it doesn’t make you an expert.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion. I would be willing to bet that I know more about woodwork and refinishing, period details and embellishments than any stodgy history professor at college who never painted a jib door or polished a piece of brass. I know the best suppliers, the best wrecking barns where they keep aged, recycled wood — windows, doors, and the like — and also the best millworkers, plasterers, and other workmen. More than that, I have taken a number of courses in interior decoration, especially period design.”

  “Have you ever supervised a complete restoration job from start to finish?”

  “No, but —”

  “I thought not. This isn’t a part-time project. Miss Nichols. When I agreed to let Masters & Masters handle the restoration, it was with the understanding that the modernization — the new kitchen addition and bathrooms — would be finished within six months; no longer. You will have to coordinate your efforts with those of the architect, the contractor, and his carpenter crew, to say nothing of the various cabinetmakers, painters, woodcarvers, and artists. I am engaged to be married, and I want this house ready before the wedding. I don’t have time to waste.”

  “I can promise you, Mr. Roman,” Laura said firmly, her violet eyes dark with anger, “that any delays will not be my fault.”

  “‘I prefer not to take that chance.”

  “Are you saying I’m fired?” she asked slowly.

  “That’s about the size of it.” He stared down at her, his dark gaze firm.

  “On the basis of how I look? Because I’m a female and under thirty?”

  “There’s no need to take it personally. I would feel the same if you were a teenage boy.”

  “I’m not a teenager, I’m twenty-two!”

  “Not a great age, compared to how long this house has been here and how long it will remain.”

  He could be calm and philosophical because he thought he had the upper hand. It crossed her mind to wonder how old he was. Justin Bienvenu Roman, hardworking, high-powered businessman, scion of an old French-Creole family who had been successful enough to buy back the old family mansion — he did not look to be more than a few years over thirty.

  “You couldn’t have been much older when you started building your fortune.” She pushed her hands into the pockets of her jeans, waiting for his reaction.

  He tilted his head to one side. “It seems you have the advantage of knowing more about me than I do about you. How is that, I wonder?”

  “I was interested in who had bought Crapemyrtle, and why.”

  “And who supplied you information?”

  “Russ Masters. I believe he’s a friend of yours, as well as your architect.”

  “Also a friend of yours, I suspect.”

  “That’s right,” she answered, wariness creeping into her tone.

  “A close friend?”

  She stiffened. “If you think that’s the reason I was hired for this job, you are mistaken.”

  “The thought had occurred to me.”

  “It had nothing to do with it. My credentials were more than satisfactory for Russ and his father. They have seen me on the sites of restorations more times than any of us can count. More than that, they recognize the importance of the diary.”

  “The diary? That is what you said?”

  Laura closed her lips tightly together. She wished she had never mentioned it. “I supp
ose no one told you about that, either.”

  “As it happens, they didn’t, but I haven’t spoken to Russ in some time.”

  “Surely he called you about the break-in?”

  “I didn’t speak to him. I’ve been out of the office on business. I found his message, as well as the police report, when I returned this afternoon.”

  “And you drove straight down? You could have saved yourself a trip. The damage was slight.”

  “So I see, but though I’m certain your opinion is professionally correct, I preferred to see for myself.”

  The irony in his tone could not be mistaken. Laura was beginning to dislike this dark, self-assured man intensely. Her nerves still tingled from the scare he had given her, coming upon her so stealthily in the stillness of the old house. She had not heard his car pull up outside, but then she had been so engrossed in the atmosphere of the old mansion, so intent on her fanciful pretense at belonging to it and to another time. She had been thrown off balance at discovering someone else in the house, but that was nothing to her confusion at being caught with her hair flowing around her shoulder in front of the enormous, pedimented cheval glass. She felt foolish, embarrassed, defensive, and not at all up to coping, just this minute, with the sardonic appraisal she saw in the eyes of the man in front of her.

  She swung away from him. “Are you certain you’re Justin Roman? You don’t seem very well informed. How do I know you aren’t a trespasser, some kind of tramp planning on spending the night with a roof over his head and a fire in the fireplace?”

  “You don’t.”

  The quiet sound of his words caught at her attention and she flung him a quick glance over her shoulder. “There are all sorts of weird things that happen in houses like these, this far out of town, deserted, with no neighbors. People move in, set up communes of the drug-high unemployed, or stage beer-drinking parties, even hold séances, devil-cult ceremonies —”

  “Orgies,” he added helpfully, an easy step bringing him closer to her.

  Alarm coursed along her veins, but she could not seem to change the dangerous course the conversation had taken. “You might be anybody.”

  “So I might. In which case, it was a little unwise of you to come out here to Crapemyrtle alone, wasn’t it?”

  “I — I’ve heard about those things, but I’ve never seen any evidence except for empty beer cans scattered in the rooms of some old house.”

  He was between her and the inside door. She moved away, edging toward the French windows that led from the bedroom out onto the front gallery. They were bolted from the inside. All she had to do was pull up the iron rod that held the bolt in place.

  “You’ve been lucky, until now.”

  “No such thing. I’m always careful. I never go into a place if there is any sign of occupation.”

  “You came in here,” he said, his voice quiet, tentative.

  “I’ve been in here dozens of times. The house has been empty for nearly three years.”

  “Trespassing?”

  “If you want to call it that, though the heirs of the last owner certainly didn’t mind; they didn’t even care enough to see to the grounds or the repairs to keep it from falling down.”

  “But you did?” There was skepticism in his tone, and something more she could not define.

  “I’ve always l—liked it.” She had nearly said “loved.” It was true enough. The gracious old Greek Revival mansion, with its rows of white Doric columns along the galleries on three sides and stuccoed, white painted brick walls, had always appealed to her. Sometimes she had come in the fall and early spring, bringing a broom to sweep the leaves from the floors of the galleries to prevent them from rotting through, climbing to the upper floors by way of the outside servants’ stairs that rose in the back. In the summer, she had clipped and pruned the roses in the garden, enjoying the delicious perfume of varieties that were, some of them, as old as the house, keeping the verdant grass of the lawn from choking them out.

  “Is that why you want to handle the project?”

  This was better, a retreat from what had seemed almost like a threat in his manner. “Not entirely. It would be a showcase, something to prove what I can do, given the opportunity.”

  She was going to make it. Still, even as she pulled the bolt and placed her hand on the knob of the French window, ready to turn it, to dash outside along the gallery and down the servants’ stairs, she was not certain such drastic measures were necessary. She hesitated.

  “I can’t allow you to do that.” His hand came down on hers with firm strength, preventing her from turning the knob.

  She swung her head to stare up at him, her violet eyes questioning, shadowed with fear. Abruptly, he encircled her slim waist with his right arm, pulling her against him. His lips came down on hers with the touch of fire. Firm, warm, demanding, they possessed hers. She felt as though a white-hot current passed between them, almost like an electric charge. An instant later, she was free.

  Dazed, she swayed, and in that moment, he pulled his billfold from his pocket and opened it to his identification, holding it in front of her.

  “Justin Roman,” he said, “at your service.”

  She looked from the billfold he held, with its indisputable proof, to his hard, dark-brown gaze. Anger licked along her veins, ousting the perilous weakness of a moment before. “If that’s who you really are, then what was the meaning of that — that demonstration?”

  For a moment he appeared disconcerted, though not, she thought, so much from what she had said as from some conclusion of his own. “To prove a point,” he said slowly, “and because I wanted to.”

  “What point?” she demanded.

  “To the best of my remembrance, I meant to show you that someone who looks as you do will always be at risk on the site of a project like this. You would need a guardian.”

  “Probably, as long as there are men like you around! I thought you were engaged.”

  “So I am.”

  “You don’t act like it.”

  “I seem to have less character than I thought,” he said, a suspended look in his eyes.

  It was a disarming admission. To counteract it, Laura sent him a cool glance. “That’s your problem. I’m only interested in my job. Won’t you reconsider?”

  “In the light of — recent developments?”

  She glared at him. “No! Because I’m the right person for it.”

  “Because you need a showcase, you mean. I can’t allow you to use Crapemyrtle like that. It isn’t the kind of place that can be treated as an experiment.”

  “Experiment!” She took a deep breath. “I told you this wouldn’t be the first job I’ve worked on.”

  “Only the first you handled from start to finish.”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t do it.”

  He looked away, gazing through the window and down the drive of grand old live oaks that led to the front door of Crapemyrtle. “We have already been over this. I think that you mentioned a diary?”

  “It isn’t important, not if you aren’t going to keep me on.” She followed the direction of his gaze. The branches of the live oaks were moving arthritically in the winter wind that sent dry leaves scuttling over the rutted white gravel of the narrow drive. The evergreen oaks, the overgrown shrubbery that crowded against the house, and the great, shapeless boxwood hedge that enclosed the grounds made it seem darker than it really was. It had been a sunny, pleasantly warm day for early January, but it was turning cooler as evening drew in, and near freezing temperatures were predicted during the night. She shivered a little, wishing she had brought her coat out of her car. It was down there in her dark-blue compact parked just ahead of the silver-gray car Justin Roman was driving. Looking closer, she saw that his vehicle was an older model, actually what might be called an antique or classic, with an incredibly long body and low-slung lines.

  He turned, his eyes narrowing as he stared down at her. “Blackmail?”

  “What?”
<
br />   “Apparently Masters & Masters thought the diary was important when they took you on. Contemporary information on the house, what it looked like — colors, fabrics, locations of rooms — would be valuable to have, but I don’t intend to pay through the nose for it, or to hand over a salary to someone who has nothing else to recommend her.”

  “I never suggested such a thing,” Laura said, her eyes flashing violet lights. “As for my recommendation, has it slipped your mind that it is personal — or so you seem sure — from Russ?”

  “No,” he answered, “it hasn’t.”

  “Speaking of which, to the best of my understanding, Masters & Masters is the firm paying my salary. And that is enough to make me wonder, Mr. Roman, if you are my employer at all. It may be you don’t have the power to take me off this project.”

  “If Russ Masters doesn’t want to replace you, I can always find myself another architect.”

  She regarded him with clear eyes. “I don’t think you will do that. You have a contract, plans have been drawn for the additions and have been started on the architectural details that must be replaced; you have an agreement with a contractor who has already started to have materials delivered. If you started over, you would lose money, but more than that, you would forfeit valuable time — and possibly a friend.”

  “You have it all figured out, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Nor would I,” he assured her, his voice grim. “Russ isn’t an unreasonable man.”

  “Unlike others,” she said softly.

  He ignored that. “And even if you stay on, I wonder how you’ll like it if you have me breathing down your neck every minute, because that’s where I’ll be, checking and rechecking everything you do, dogging your every footstep.”

  “Good,” she answered pugnaciously. “Accuracy is important to me, too. And if you are going to be that close, I hope you don’t mind holding a tape measure or a ladder now and then. There are times when I could use an assistant.”

  He stared at her, his dark gaze moving over her face, noting the stubborn tilt of her chin and the square set of her shoulders. The light through the dusty glass slanted across the planes of his face, glinting on his thick dark brows, the high ridge of his cheekbones, and the deep cleft of his chin, leaving his eyes with their long, thick lashes in shadow. His skin held an undertone of bronze, partially the legacy of his French heritage, partially from outdoor pursuits. Whether it was the result of his action only moments before or a trick of the fading evening, there seemed also to be a hint of sensuality in the firmly molded curves of his mouth. Laura looked away, another shiver running over her.