Black Rose - NRoberts - G2 Black Rose

This was no hobby or little enterprise indulged in by a southern aristocrat. This was serious business. Another layer to the woman, he supposed, and he hadn’t begun to get to the center of her.

Beautiful, enigmatic Rosalind Harper. What man wouldn’t want the chance to peel off those layers and know who she really was?

As it was, he owed his sister and niece a big, sloppy thanks for sending him scrambling out to shop. Running into Roz, seeing her with her shopping cart, having an hour alone with her was the most intriguing personal time he’d had in months.

Hardly a surprise he was hoping for more, and that he’d made this trip to her garden center mainly to study yet another side of her.

He wandered through wide glass doors and found an exotic mass of houseplants. There were tabletop and garden fountains as well, and baskets of ferny and viney things hanging from hooks or standing on pedestals.

Through another set of doors was a kind of greenhouse, with dozens of long wooden tables. Most were empty, but some held plants. The pansies he recognized, and others he didn’t. Though, he noted, they were labeled and billed to be winter hardy.

He was debating whether to continue on or go back and ask for Roz when her son Harper came in from the outside.

“Hi. Need some help?” As he walked toward Mitch, recognition crossed his face. “Oh, hey, Dr. Carnegie.”

“Mitch. Nice to see you again, Harper,” he said as they shook hands.

“You, too. That was some game against Little Rock last week.”

“It was. Were you there?”

“Missed the first quarter, but the second half rocked. Josh ruled.”

Pride in his son beamed through him. “He had a good game. Missouri this week. I’ll have to catch that one on ESPN.”

“Same here. You see your son, tell him I said that three-pointer in the last five minutes was a thing of beauty.”

“I’ll do that.”

“You looking for something, or someone?”

“Someone. Your mother, actually.” You have her eyes, he thought. Her mouth, her coloring. “I was taking a little tour before I hunted her up.” As he looked around, Mitch slipped his hands in his pockets. “This is a hell of a place you’ve got here.”

“Keeps us busy. I just left her in the propagation house. I’ll take you back.”

“Appreciate it. I guess I didn’t think this kind of business would have so much going on this late in the year.”

“Always something going on when you’re dealing with gardening and landscaping.” Mirroring Mitch’s stance, Harper scanned the area. “Holiday stuff’s big now, and we’re working on getting plants ready for March.”

When they stepped outside, Mitch stopped, hooked his thumbs in his jacket pockets. Low, long greenhouses spread, separated into two areas by a wide space where more tables stood under a screened shelter. Even now he could see a field where someone worked a machine to dig up a pine—or a spruce, or a fir. How could you tell the difference?

He caught a glimpse of a little pond, and a small stream, then the woods that shielded the business from the main house, and the main house from the business.

“I’ve got to say, wow. I didn’t expect anything this expansive.”

“Mom doesn’t do things halfway. We started a little smaller, added on two more greenhouses and an additional space in the retail area a couple years ago.”

More than a business, Mitch realized. This was a life. “It must take an incredible amount of work.”

“It does. You’ve gotta love it.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. That’s my castle over there.” Harper gestured. “Grafting house. Mostly, I deal with grafting and propagation. But I get pulled out for other things, like the Christmas tree end this time of year. In fact, I was grabbing ten before I head out to the field when I ran into you.”

As the rain began to fall, Harper nodded toward one of the greenhouses. “That’s the propagation area. Since we’ve got Stella, Mom spends most of her time in there.”

“Then I can find her from here. Why don’t you go on, catch what you’ve got left of your break.”

“Better get right out in the field.” As the rain fell, Harper pulled the bill of his cap lower on his head. “Get those trees up before the rain scares the customers away. Just go ahead in. See you later.”

Harper set off at a jog, and had made the turn toward the field when Hayley rushed up to him from the opposite direction. “Wait! Harper, wait a minute.”

He stopped, lifting the bill a bit to get a better look at her. She was wearing a short red denim jacket over jeans, and one of the In the Garden caps Stella had ordered for employees.

“Jesus, Hayley, get inside. This rain’s going to cut loose big-time any minute.”

“Was that Dr. Carnegie?”

“Yeah. He was looking for the boss.”

“You took him to the propagation house?” Her voice pitched up over the increasing drum of rain. “Are you just stupid?”

“What? He’s looking for Mom, she’s in the propagation house. I just left her there five minutes ago.”

“So you just take him there, say go right in?” She made wild gestures with both hands. “Without letting her know ?”

“Know what?”

“That he’s here, for God’s sake. And now he’s going in, and she’s all dirty and sweaty, with no makeup on and in her grubbiest clothes. You couldn’t stall him for five damn minutes to give her some warning?”

“About what? She looks like she always does. What’s the damn difference?”

“If you don’t know, you are stupid. And it’s too late now. One of these days, Harper Ashby, you’re going to have use of the single brain men pass around among them.”

“What the hell,” he grumbled after she’d given him a punch on the arm and dashed inside again.

MITCH DUCKED INTOthe propagation house out of the rain. If he’d thought the houseplant section seemed exotic, it was nothing compared to this. The place seemed alive with plants in various stages of growth. The humid warmth was almost tropical, and with the rain pattering it seemed he’d walked into some sort of fantasy cave.

The air was pungent with green and brown—plants and soil. Music twined along with the scents. Not classical, he noted. Not quite New Age. Something oddly and appealingly between.

He saw tables and tools, buckets and bags. Shallow black containers holding delicate growing things.

And he saw Roz at the far end, on the side. Her back was to him as she worked.

She had a gorgeous neck. It was an odd thought, and, he admitted, probably a foolish one. But again, facts were facts. She wore her hair short and straight and to his mind, the style showed off that long, lovely neck perfectly.

Then again, all of her was rather long and lovely. Arms, legs, torso. At the moment that intriguing body was camouflaged in baggy pants and a shapeless sweatshirt she’d pushed up at the sleeves. But he remembered, very well, that willowy figure.

Just as he remembered, even before she heard his approach and turned, that her eyes were long as well. Long lidded and in a fascinating shade of deep, deep amber.

“I’m sorry. I’m interrupting.”

“That’s all right. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I got the paperwork, and thought I’d ride out and let you know it’s signed, sealed, and on its way back to your lawyer. Plus, it gave me a chance to see your place. I’m impressed. Even though I don’t know squat about gardening, I’m majorly impressed.”

“Thank you.”

He glanced down at her worktable. There were pots, some empty yet, some filled with soil and small green leaves. “What’s going on here?”

“I’m potting up some seedlings. Celosia—cockscomb.”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“I’m sure you’ve seen them.” She brushed a hand absently over her cheek, transferring a smudge of soil. “In bloom they’re like small feather dusters in bold colors. Red’s very popular.”

“Okay. And you put them in these little pots because?”

“Because they don’t like their roots disturbed after they’re established. I pot them young, then they’ll be blooming for our spring customers, and only have to tolerate that last transplanting. And I don’t imagine you’re all that interested.”

“Didn’t think I would be. But this is like a whole new world. What’s this here?”

She raised her eyebrows. “All right, then. That’s matthiola, also called gillyflower or stock. It’s very fragrant. Those there with the yellowish green leaves? They’ll be double-flowered cultivars. These will flower for spring. Customers prefer to buy in bloom, so I plan my propagation to give them plenty of blooms to choose from. This section is for annuals. I do perennials back there.”

“Is it a gift, or years of study? How do you come to know what to do, how to recognize the . . . cockscomb from the gillyflower at this stage?”

“It’s both, and a love of it with considerable hands-on experience thrown in. I’ve been gardening since I was a child. I remember my grandmother—on the Harper side—putting her hands over mine to show me how to press the soil around a plant. What I remember best about her is in the gardens at Harper House.”

“Elizabeth McKinnon Harper, wife to Reginald Harper, Jr.”

“You have a good memory.”

“I’ve been skimming over some of the lists. What was she like?”

It made her feel soft, and a little sentimental, to be asked. “Kind, and patient, unless you riled her up. Then she was formidable. She went by Lizzie, or Lizzibeth. She always wore men’s pants, and an old blue shirt and an odd straw hat. Southern women of a certain age always wear odd straw hats to garden. It’s the code. She smelled of the eucalyptus and pennyroyal she’d make up into a bug repellant. I use her recipe for it still.”

She picked up another pot. “I still miss her, and she’s been gone nearly thirty years now. Fell asleep in her glider on a hot summer day in July. She’d been deadheading in the garden, and sat down to rest. She never woke up. I think that’s a very pleasant way to pass.”

“How old was she?”

“Well, she claimed to be seventy-six, but in fact, according to the records she was eighty-four. My daddy was a late baby for her, as I was for him. I broke that Harper family tradition by having my children young.”

“Did she ever talk to you about the Harper Bride?”

“She did.” As she spoke, Roz continued with her potting. “Of course, she was a McKinnon by birth and wasn’t raised in the house. But she claimed to have seen the Bride when she’d come to live here, when my great-grandfather passed. My grandfather Harper grew up at Harper House, of course, and if we were right in dating Amelia, would have been a baby around the time she died. But he passed when I was about eight, and I don’t recall him ever speaking of her.”

“How about your parents, or other relatives?”

“Are we on the clock here, Doctor?”

“Sorry.”

“No, I don’t mind.” She labeled the new potted plant, reached for another. “My daddy never said much, now that I think about it. Maybe it’s a thing with the Harper men, or men in general. My mother was a dramatic sort of female, one who enjoyed the illusion of turmoil in her life. She claimed to have seen the Bride often, and with great stress. But then, Mama was always stressed about something.”

“Did either she or your grandmother keep a journal, any sort of diary?”

“Yes, both of them. Another fine old tradition I haven’t followed. My grandmother moved into the guesthouse when my father married and brought his own bride home. After she died, he cleaned out her things. I recall asking him about her journals, but he said they were gone. I don’t know what became of them. As for my mother’s, I have hers. You’re welcome to them, but I doubt you’ll find anything pertinent.”