The President's Daughter - Mariah Stewart [9]
“Oh.” Jude’s voice brightened. “Isn’t Don that good-looking carpenter who worked with you on the gazebo for the park?”
Dina rolled her eyes. “You know perfectly well who he is. Don’t get any ideas.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Mom, you are about as subtle as a sledgehammer. But for the record, I’m not interested in Don. He’s a good carpenter; he’s a nice man. He’s been very generous with donating his time and his talents to the community projects we’ve been working on.”
“And...?”
“And nothing. That’s it. I really don’t have any interest in him other than a professional one.”
“Pity.” Jude sighed. She knew her daughter well, knew when to give up. “Why not stop by on your way back home, if you’re not too late? I’m thinking about making a cranberry apple cobbler.”
“Bribery,” Dina muttered. “Some mothers will resort to anything to keep their offspring tied to their apron strings.”
“Whatever works.”
“Unfortunately, I think tonight I’ll have to take a rain check. I have a big day at the shop tomorrow and I’m beat. Polly and I worked day and night during the Valentine’s Day rush.”
Dina glanced at the clock. “Mom, I have to run. I need to shower and grab a bite before the meeting. I’ll give you a call in the morning.”
Dina hung up the phone, then, slinging the forgotten bag of perlite into a bin under the table she kept for that purpose, dusted her hands off on her jeans. She took one quick glance at the primroses that sat under the grow lights, then, satisfied that all was well, grabbed her jacket, turned off the overhead light, and locked up for the night.
Alone in the frosty air of late February, Dina paused between the greenhouse and the carriage house that served as her home. Against a darkening pink-and-gold evening sky geese flew in a precise wedge over the flat fields, and somewhere in the distance an owl hooted. Dina smiled. All was right with her particular world at that particular moment. She climbed the three steps leading to the porch of the carriage house, searching her pockets for the key, then unlocked the door and walked into the quiet of the small entry.
The clock ticked loudly from the wall, and she scowled as she passed it to turn on the light. She’d found the clock at a yard sale in town six months ago, and no matter how many times she changed the batteries, the damned thing still kept erratic time. Tonight it read 1:45. Dina sighed and made a mental note: Buy new clock.
She passed through the small dining area and slid her jacket onto the back of one of the four chairs. The table was cluttered with several piles of mail, magazines, and other assorted stacks of papers. Contracts for future jobs, bills relating to the business, household bills, phone messages, sketches, each had their own place on the table. It was the only way Dina could keep things straight.
In her all-white kitchen, Dina filled a pot of water and placed it on the stove to boil for pasta, then assembled all she would need for her dinner. While the water simmered, she went to the living room window and looked out toward the former Aldrich farm, which Dina had purchased the year before primarily for its acreage. The lights were on in the kitchen windows of the old yellow farmhouse where her assistant, Polly Valentine, was making dinner for her daughter, Erin.
That same old yellow farmhouse that Dina had purchased with an eye toward living in herself.
That had been her original plan. The fates, it would seem, had something else in mind.
When Dina had started looking for a property from which to run her business, the only suitable place available had been the seven acres with the carriage house in which she now lived. At one time there had been a farmhouse, but that had been burned to the ground by vagrants years earlier and since the owners, who lived in town, rented out their fields to a neighbor, the house had never been rebuilt. With money from a trust fund, Dina had purchased the seven acres with an eye