Chapter Nine #2
“That’s right; you don’t discuss. You run to the government to fight your battles for you. I just got a warning letter for polluting Saint Helga’s Spring, and it’s got your fingerprints all over it.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, but the ding of the kitchen timer gave her the perfect excuse to retreat.
She hurried to the kitchen and grabbed a pair of mitts.
A quick glance through the oven window confirmed the pot pie had achieved the perfect golden shade, with the pastry leaves a tiny bit darker.
Satisfaction filled her as she lifted the fragrant pot pie from the oven and set it on a trivet.
“A fancy meal for one?” Jack taunted. “Why does this not surprise me?”
That was a nasty thing to say, but perfectly in keeping with Jack’s boorish nature. She ran a cloth over the kitchen counters to hide her nerves. “Why do you think I had anything to do with that letter?”
“Because someone tampered with the irrigation lines on my golf course, and it magically happened the day after you told me to expect eco-warriors to interfere with the amphitheater. I also just laid a ton of fertilizer on the course, and the laws of gravity means it was all washed into Saint Helga’s wetland.
The request for an environmental inspection was filed the day before I noticed the problem. Somebody tipped them off.”
She folded her arms. “It wasn’t me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“You were the one mouthing off the other day because I plan to cut down some trees on your sacred land. Now my irrigation lines are cracked in three places and it’s washing fertilizer into protected wetlands.”
The anger in his voice seemed too big for her cozy front room with its antiques and lace doilies.
The kitchen counter served as a barrier between the kitchen and the living room, and she stood behind it as if it were a protective shield.
“Is it so unthinkable to believe you may have made a mistake? Or that your irrigation guys were sloppy? Accidents happen all the time.”
“Yeah, they do, except that last month the pump on the waterfall also broke and started dumping water toward the spring. It’s not a coincidence. All my troubles started right after you got back to the United States.”
His implication that she’d resort to sabotage to stop his project was ridiculous. She couldn’t even change the oil on her own car; she certainly wouldn’t know how to rig an irrigation system to cause an ecological crisis.
“How bad is the runoff at the spring going to be?”
“Bad,” he bluntly stated. “The nitrogen and phosphorus levels are twice the acceptable level. Algae blooms will start taking hold unless something can be done. The state is going to charge me a fortune to hire aquatic specialists to get things under control. They’ll probably set up some aeration pumps and maybe break out some aerobic bacteria strains to get things in balance again.
I’ll be setting up security cameras to watch the course around the clock.
All your wannabe mothers will need to go somewhere else to cast their witchy spells. ”
“You are so disrespectful.”
“What else would you call sunrise appeals to mythological Saint Helga?”
“You’ve tracked mud into my home.”
“Don’t change the subject. The Roost and the Spring are on private property. I was being nice letting you stuffy academics poke around, but that’s all over.”
Her jaw dropped. “I need to do my research.”
“Too bad, and don’t ask me to feel sorry for you. You get paid to sit around talking to students about old novels. You couldn’t run a hot dog stand out in the real world, and don’t know how to build anything people actually want.”
Anger gathered. Maybe she’d never managed a hot dog stand, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t if it was necessary.
Jack Latimer was ill-mannered and ignorant about fine literature, but he held the keys to the kingdom.
She needed to find common ground with him if there was any hope of saving the Roost—and the first step was changing the subject.
“Have you had dinner yet? I’ve just made a pot pie.” And it was magnificent. She might not be the world’s best history professor, but nobody could fault her ability to turn out a perfectly prepared meal.
“I’m too mad to eat.” A sheen of sweat glistened on his face, throat, and on the muscles of his forearms. She filled a glass with ice from the freezer door.
“Water or iced tea?” she asked.
“Beer.”
“I don’t have any beer. Water or tea. And if you want tea, your choices are sweet tea, raspberry tea, or plain.”
“What kind of person bothers to make three types of tea?”
“You must have a very low opinion of me to think I’d resort to illegal tampering to stab you in the back.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He simply gaped at her, all corded muscles and sweaty masculine intensity. For once, it appeared she had rendered him speechless.
“You’re right,” he finally said. “You don’t strike me as the sort of person who’d stoop to something underhanded or illegal.
So maybe I owe you an apology, Professor.
” He cleared his throat and a hint of humor lightened his face.
“I hardly ever do this, so I’m probably lousy at it, but you didn’t deserve that broadside I just flung at you.
I’ve got a lot riding on this golf course, but that’s no excuse for taking it out on you.
I owe you an apology and hope you can forgive me. ”
For someone who claimed not to know how to apologize, he’d just done a bang-up job of it.
“Water or tea?”
“Whatever you’re having. And for the record, that thing you just took out of the oven smells so good that the caveman inside me just woke up and is dying to attack it.”
“Would you like to join me for dinner?”
He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.” That drawl was both sexy and wholesome at the same time. The tanned skin on his neck and throat made him look healthy and strong, but the scarred, mottled skin on his arms spoke of something else. Diabetes?
“Are you . . . do you have any allergies or food sensitivities I should know about?”
He chuckled. “I like red meat, red wine, and anything with frosting on it. More often than not I settle for a microwaved burrito and a Twinkie.”
He must have noticed the way she glanced at the track marks on his left arm and he sobered. “It’s hemophilia.”
He said the word lightly, as though it was no big deal.
Hadn’t hemophilia been the disease that afflicted the Russian czar’s only son?
The boy suffered so terribly his mother turned to an insane monk in a desperate attempt to assuage the child’s agony, but that was the extent of Alice’s knowledge about the disease.
“Is it true that you can bleed to death from a papercut?”
He shook his head. “Not really. If I get hurt, I take an injection of the missing blood factor to give my clotting ability a boost.”
She nodded to the mottled skin on his arms. “It looks like you’ve taken a lot of injections.”
“Three times a week ever since I was eight years old. Those injections mean that run-of-the-mill bumps and bruises won’t send me to the hospital like they did when I was a kid.
Things were a lot worse back then. I was a normal kid who always wanted to jump on the mattress or slide down a banister.
It drove my mother nuts. A bumped elbow that wouldn’t hurt normal kids could send me to the hospital for a week.
Anyway, that chicken pot pie smells mighty good, and I’m up to date on my injections, so there’s no worry of any traumatic bleeding emergency tonight. ”
It was a relief he could joke about his condition. From the outside, he looked extraordinarily healthy, but looks could be deceiving.
She filled his glass with sweet tea, then watched as he tilted his head back to drink, the cords in his throat moving as he drained the glass, then he slammed it down on the counter. She winced, grateful the glass didn’t shatter because that was a hand-blown Murano tumbler brought back from Italy.
She set out her less valuable Staffordshire plates while Jack glanced around her home.
It was hard to read his expression as he scanned the dried flowers on the mantel and the live herbs on her windowsill.
Lace from France covered the end tables and Meissen figurines decorated the fireplace mantel.
She braced herself for a snide comment. The porcelain sculptures were ridiculously feminine.
She’d bought them for their idealized image of women from centuries past, ranging from the milkmaid wearing an apron to the grand lady with her tiny waist, piles of hair, and elegant hat perched atop her head.
Each figurine was a masterwork of grace, their facial features delicately sculpted in perfect tranquility.
She loved them. If he insulted them . . .
“I kind of like this place,” he said.
It was the last thing she’d expected him to say. “You do?”
“Yeah, I do. It feels like I just stepped back in time, but I like it. This place suits you.”
Her spine relaxed another notch. “What kind of style does your home have?”
He gave an amused snort. “I’ve got a PO box and a storage unit in Baltimore. The rest of the time I live in hotels around the world.”
Such a thing seemed inconceivable. “Why do you live in hotels?”
“Because I don’t like being tied down,” he said. “My job keeps me on the road. I’ve been in Virginia longer than usual because I bought a stake in the golf course. I’m heading to Japan next.”
She sat at the dining table and gestured for him to do the same. When he took a bite of chicken pot pie, his face transformed and he actually groaned. “Lady, this is a lot better than anything my microwave can make.”
A smile spread across her face. “At last we are in perfect agreement! Tell me, why did you become a golf course architect?”
“Because I wasn’t good enough to qualify for the PGA tour. I went to college on a golf scholarship but soon learned I wasn’t good enough to turn pro.”
“I didn’t realize they gave scholarships for golf.”
She must have said something wrong because he set his fork down and stared at her wall filled with hundreds of books.
“You know how some kids in high school are smart or good-looking or great at sports? I was the kid in the wheelchair who wasn’t good at anything.
I missed most of the third grade, and never caught up.
Golf was an escape. I wasn’t good enough to turn pro, but I knew what a gorgeous golf course should look like, so in college I majored in landscape architecture.
I found my calling and won’t ever look back.
What about you? I heard in town you specialize in Jane Austen. ”
“Actually, it’s the history of feminine domesticity in the nineteenth century, and Jane Austen is a big part of that. I still have to teach all manner of history classes. Everything from eighteenth to twentieth-century European and American history. I’m going up for tenure next year, and—”
“What’s tenure?”
Alice blinked. In her world of academia, everyone knew what tenure was, but laypeople like Jack had no reason to understand the arcane and somewhat brutal process.
“It’s how we prove our academic merit through a record of publication and accomplishments in our field.
If we pass, we get a lifetime contract.”
“And if you fail?”
Alice gave a helpless shrug. “Then you go back on the job market. The odds of getting a position after failing to get tenure aren’t good.”
Jack nodded. “And you’re hoping to bolster your tenure case by finding out who Saint Helga was?”
“Bingo,” Alice said. “Solving that mystery will guarantee at least two journal articles and perhaps a few conference presentations. The topic appeals to historians, folklorists, and anyone interested in women’s history. If I can trace the origin of the legend, I’ll get tenure—and save my job.”
Jack scrutinized her so long she grew uncomfortable. “You like being a college professor?”
“I like teaching.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I like my job,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too defensive. “And I love living in Williamsburg. The place is brimming with culture and history and natural beauty. I want to stay here forever. It’s my home.”
And that meant she had to do something to bolster her thin academic record before her tenure hearing next spring.
Her work on the Emma movie set was intended to secure her case for tenure, but that had clearly failed.
Solving the puzzle behind the legend of Saint Helga was her last shot at proving her academic worth, and for that, she needed Jack’s cooperation.
Inviting him to dinner was a first step to finding common ground with him.
It was a universal truth that even the staunchest of adversaries could find common ground over a well-appointed table.
Over the next hour they formed a cautious rapport. They still didn’t trust each other, had nothing in common, and didn’t even value each other’s chosen occupation, but they found something perhaps more valuable.
They found a tiny glimmer of mutual respect.