Tall, Dark And Difficult. Patricia Coughlin
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His cool gaze took in the shelves of sparkling Depression-era glass, baskets overflowing with freshly laundered vintage linens and, occupying center stage, her current pièce de résistance, an old white iron bed, dressed in a faded quilt and generations of loving wear and tear.
“Hardly,” he muttered, with a blend of smug superiority and barely concealed disdain.
Obviously, in spite of his attire, this was no common, garden-variety Neanderthal she was dealing with. This was the King of the Heap, Leader of the Pack, the infamous Number One Combo. She knew the type well. Arrogant and tactless, and, unless she missed her guess, served with a side order of cynicism. There was only one way to deal with a Number One. Ignore him.
“I’m here to see the proprietor,” he announced, before she had the chance. “Miss Rose Davenport.”
The way her name rolled off his tongue was the verbal equivalent of the look he’d just given her shop. Rose folded her arms and her chin came up.
“I’m Rose Davenport.”
That earned her a closer look—and a frown, something that seemed to come to him quite naturally. And fairly regularly, judging from the pattern of lines around his mouth. The man definitely needed to lighten up.
“Do you have a mother, or maybe a grandmother, by that name?”
“Afraid not. It’s me or nothing.”
His eyes, a deep and distracting shade of blue, narrowed with impatience.
“I’m looking for the Rose Davenport who was friends with Devora Fairfield,” he told her emphatically, as if he could get her to produce another Rose Davenport through sheer force of will. She’d wager the technique worked for him more often than not.
“I heard you the first time, and the answer is the same. If you’re looking for Rose Davenport, I’m it.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “You were friends with Devora?”
“I sure was. Did you know Devora?”
“She was my aunt,” he replied. “Great-aunt, actually.”
It was her turn to take a closer look at him. The height…the jaw… Of course. “You’re Hollis.”
“Griffin,” he countered with obvious irritation. “Just ‘Griff’ will do. Devora was the only one I allowed to call me Hollis.”
“Allowed?” Rose couldn’t help arching her tawny brows as she struggled to reconcile the man before her with the spit-and-polished military officer she had encountered only once before, briefly and nearly two years ago.
He shrugged. “Figuratively speaking, that is.”
It was a rather terse acknowledgment of the fact that no one had ever “allowed” Devora Fairfield to do anything. The spirited spinster, whom Rose had been honored to call her friend, had invariably done and said precisely as she deemed right and proper and damn well pleased. Rose couldn’t decide if it was annoyance or grudging affection that hovered in Hollis Griffin’s voice when he spoke of his aunt, and it really didn’t matter.
It had been no secret that Devora loved her nephew as if he were a child of her body and not simply her heart, and that was good enough for Rose. She immediately erased the mental list she’d been compiling. For Devora’s sake alone, she was prepared to befriend Hollis Griffin in the manner that came most naturally to her—utterly and enthusiastically.
“Okay, ‘Griff’ it is.” Smiling warmly, she stepped closer to offer her right hand, and for the first time noticed the cane in his.
“You probably don’t remember me,” she went on, concealing her surprise. “We met at Devora’s funeral service.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember.” He slipped the cane under his arm with an ease that suggested he’d had it a while, and shook her hand.
“That’s all right, I didn’t recognize you, either, without your uniform.”
That seemed to irk him as much as being called Hollis had.
“I’m retired from the Air Force,” he explained curtly.
“I see,” said Rose, though she didn’t.
Devora always sent her nephew a “care package” of goodies on his birthday, and Rose recalled that he was almost exactly five years older than she was, which would make him a few months shy of forty. A bit young for retirement. Especially since, according to his aunt, the man lived to fly; the more high risk the mission, the better. Devora worried about the danger inherent in his work, but she had also sung his praises at every opportunity. Rose’s understanding was that Griffin wasn’t merely a pilot, but an aviation junkie, as skilled working on a jet’s engine as he was at its controls. She added his early retirement to the cane and came up with a half-dozen questions she was smart enough not to ask.
“It would be a wonder if you remember anyone you met that day,” she continued in an instinctive attempt to put him at ease. “All of Wickford was there, plus Devora’s old friends from as far away as Florida. I hope you know how beloved your aunt was around here, and how very much she is missed.”
Especially by me, thought Rose with the same twinge of wistfulness that always accompanied thoughts of the woman who had understood her better than her own family ever had.
“Devora certainly had her good points,” he agreed. This time there was no mistaking the affection in his tone, or the look of impatience that quickly followed as he added, “And her quirks.”
“Ah, but the quirks were the best thing about Devora,” she countered with a chuckle. “Who else do you know who kept a working butter churn in the kitchen?”
“Who, indeed?”
“I’ll never forget the first time she invited me for tea. I walked into that beautiful house and felt…” Swept up in the memory, she searched for words to fully capture and share it. “Like…oh, like Alice stepping through the looking glass.”
“I can understand that,” he countered. “The Mad Hatter would feel right at home there.”
“So did I. No, that’s wrong. Home is too ordinary a word. It was more like wonderland, each room more full of treasure than the last.”
“And you like all that ju—treasure?” he enquired in a cautious tone.
“Like it?” She sighed. “I love it. And the furniture…don’t get me started.”
“Didn’t plan to.”
“That yellow brocade settee in the hall,” she continued, her expression dreamy.
“The low one with the spiky arms? Have you ever tried actually sitting on that thing?”
“Once,” she told him, grinning. “I felt like a princess. But my absolute favorite piece is the hand-carved cherry-wood cabinet in the sitting room…the one with all the Bavarian china and the ivory figurines. The first time I saw it, I just stared in absolute, dumbstruck wonder.”
He nodded. “I’ve stared that way at a lot of Devora’s stuff.”
“She had an amazing eye. Did you know the glass sides of that cabinet are a J-curve?”
“I had no idea. Is that good?”
“Good and bad. Good because it’s so rare and because it’s refractive quality is so much greater than a standard curve. Bad because it’s so rare and costs a fortune to replace should it be broken.”
“Sort of like ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t.’ Which is something I definitely understand.”
“I’m glad.”
“You are?”
“Very. When we found out that Devora had left the house to her ‘hotshot nephew from