Ten minutes later, she persuaded him to call Clate's assistant. A minute after that, he installed her on a polished elevator while eyebrows raised all through the lobby. She was to get off on a high floor, and a woman would be there to greet her.
The woman was named Mabel Porter, all of twenty-four, smartly dressed, professional, and very surprised, except she tried not to show it. She apologized, for what Piper wasn't exactly sure, and explained that Clate was out of town, but that he'd be back later that evening. "He'll be so surprised to see you," she said.
Piper grinned, pleased with herself. "This is true."
Mabel showed her to a suite whose living room alone was bigger than the downstairs of Piper's eighteenth-century house. There were also a bedroom, a bathroom, and a bar area. The decor was Southern in flavor, very expensive, flowery, and tasteful. No layers of paint to scrape off the wainscoting, no creaky wide pineboard floors. Piper thanked Mabel, then asked, on sudden impulse, "Are you the one who inquired about the history of the Frye house?"
Mabel's mouth dropped open and her face paled.
Piper smiled brightly. "Oh, don't worry. I think it took initiative on your part. You were anticipating your boss's needs. He —well, I am sure that if he hadn't caught me stealing valerian root a couple of weeks ago he'd have thought resort sooner or later."
"I don't think so. He—that kind of development isn't his sort of thing. I know that now. I hope you don't—I didn't mean any harm. Mr. Jackson—"
"It's okay, Mabel. If I know Mr. Jackson, he figured it was you when I first showed him the letter from the research historian. He crumpled it up, tossed it in the fireplace, and forgot about it. I think he's probably more forgiving these days than he used to be." She liked this impulse thing. Maybe she'd be as good as Hannah in another fifty or sixty years. "Anyway, I was just curious."
"I see." Mabel regarded her with fresh appreciation. Here was not just some crazy Yankee, but a woman who understood the fundamentals of business, which, when it came down to it, was just having good instincts about people. "You're not what I expected, Ms. Macintosh. If there's anything you need, please don't hesitate to let me know."
After Mabel left, Piper threw open all the drapes and drank in the view while hot water poured into her enormous, spotless tub. She'd added a few drops of Hannah's infusion of meadowsweet to help her relax. Wherever Clate was, whenever he returned, she wanted to be ready.
She smiled as she sank beneath the water. It didn't occur to her that he might not be happy to see her.
Summer had arrived in the Cumberland hills, hot and humid, thunder rumbling in the distance. Clate could smell the sweet, overpowering scent of Irma's honeysuckle as he stood with one foot on the bottom step of her front porch. Hers was a little yellow clapboard house, simple and pretty. In her final effort to get him to understand right from wrong, she had left her house to Clayton Jackson, Sr., and his new family. At her insistence, they'd moved in when she'd had to go into the nursing home in the weeks before her death. The senior Jackson had been helping her out for years, without pay.
Clate heard the kids out back, had seen them when he'd pulled in. A boy and a girl. Dark haired, tanned, barefoot. They were squealing as they ran through a sprinkler. He couldn't stop staring at them. Beautiful kids. More than he could have ever expected.
A crow cawed overhead, bees hummed in the honeysuckle. He could hear his car engine running behind him. Security. He needed to know he could leave fast, in case coming here was a mistake.
The old screen door opened, and a thin, wiry gray-haired man walked out. Clate recognized the loping gait. He had gotten his own thick build from his mother's side of the family.
Family. No, that wasn't what they'd been. Three people caught in the same horrible windstorm was more like it. A couple of troubled teenagers with a baby they didn't know how to raise properly. They'd done their best. And their worst.
The door shut. His father walked down the steps. He wasn't much over fifty, still young. He rubbed the back of his neck, awkward, even afraid. "Hello, Clate."
"Hello."
"Reckon you heard about the house. I did some work for Miss Irma from time to time, but other'n that—" He shrugged. "I don't know why she did half the things she did. But I thank the good Lord she was here for you."