1-900-Lover Read online

  Seemingly satisfied, the older woman stuffed the napkin back into her pocket. “There. That’s better, though I really wish you had time to change. You’re my representative, you know,” she said, drawing herself up primly. “How you look reflects directly upon me.”

  So an errand was in order, Rowan thought, resisting the urge to smile. “I can change in a flash, Ida. Where do you need me to go?”

  “To the drug store.” She winced uncomfortably and rubbed her belly. “The fiber and prunes didn’t do the trick. I need an enema.”

  And she should definitely be turned out for that mission, Rowan thought dimly, equally horrified and revolted. After all, buying an enema was important business. But just par for the course in her train wreck of a life. She was so used to being humiliated she often wondered what it would feel like to be normal. To not blush or squirm or writhe with embarrassment.

  Rowan swallowed, nodded jerkily, not trusting herself to speak.

  “In fact, you’d better get two. Better safe than sorry,” Ida prophesied grimly.

  Rowan managed a sick smile. Right. And better this than hungry, she tried to tell herself.

  The argument might have worked, too…if she hadn’t just lost her appetite.

  2

  AT THIRTY-TWO and in perfect health, Will Foster found himself skating the edge of an anger-induced aneurysm, or at the very least, a massive stroke.

  Doris Whitaker had screwed him again.

  Not in the literal sense, of course—Will shuddered as her heavily made-up, wrinkled face flashed through his mind’s eye—but figuratively, he might as well have painted a big bull’s-eye on his ass.

  The ass she was undoubtedly watching, the old perv, Will thought with an unhappy start as he strode across her yard to his truck. He cast a glance over his shoulder, and sure enough, she’d been watching him leave. Her painted lips slid into a wider smile and she twinkled her arthritic, bejeweled fingers at him.

  Will forced a tight smile and waved back. “Goodbye,” he muttered through gritted teeth.

  His company, Foster’s Landscape Design, had spent the better part of three summers, not to mention thousands of dollars, trying to fulfill their “satisfaction guaranteed” promise.

  To no avail.

  Though he knew he should simply let it go—should simply concede defeat—perversely, Will couldn’t do it. He’d get that satisfied-customer stamp of approval from her, dammit, or die trying. It was the point of it. All bragging aside, he was good at what he did. He loved his job. Loved developing a landscape, then pulling it together and seeing it to fruition. Loved getting his hands dirty, nursing blooms and watching things grow. He had a tremendous amount of respect for the codependent design of the world. The whole oxygen and carbon dioxide cycle that made plants and animals dependent on one another. It was…awe-inspiring.

  Furthermore, Foster’s Landscape Design was swiftly approaching their ten-year anniversary and in those ten years, he’d never had an unsatisfied customer.

  He absolutely refused to let Doris ruin that record.

  His team had finished up today and, though she’d been pleased throughout the process—had approved the design herself once again—she’d decided that it wasn’t what she’d wanted after all.

  Tear it out and start over.

  Will had wanted to tear something out all right, but it hadn’t been the cacti she’d decided she hated. This was the third freakin’ time she’d pulled this shit. He was at his wit’s end, and quite honestly, if he wasn’t afraid she’d howl blue murder down at that country club she virtually funded, he’d be tempted to tell her to take that cactus and shove it up her—

  Two loud beeps, followed by his mother screaming “Will?” into the two-way radio interrupted the uncharitable thought. Despite the fact that he’d told her repeatedly that yelling wasn’t necessary, Millie Foster, perversely, continued to do it. On purpose, he suspected, because it never failed to startle the hell out of him.

  Will swore, unsnapped the combination radio/phone from his belt and dredged the bottom of his soul for an ounce of unspent patience. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut. “Mother, for the last time, you don’t have to yell.”

  “Sorry,” Millie replied unrepentantly. “I just wanted to make sure that you heard me.”

  “I heard you. What’s up?” Will detected a bit of laughter and catcalling in the background. He frowned. “What’s going on?”

  “I just wanted to let you know that you have a dinner date tonight, so be sure and finish up in time to take a proper bath.”

  Dinner date? Will thought, utterly confused. A proper bath? He hadn’t made a date with anyone. In fact, he hadn’t had a date in months. Even if he’d met someone who’d sparked any interest—which he hadn’t—he wouldn’t have had the time. Spring was the busiest season of his year, the time of year when his laughable social life was shoved to the back burner. Besides, his last serious relationship had left a bad taste in his mouth—a combination of bitter regret, bad judgment and plain stupidity—and it wasn’t a flavor he wished to sample again anytime soon.

  Will frowned as the implication of this conversation finally surfaced in his muddled brain and he mentally swore—she was matchmaking.

  Again.

  His grim mood blackened further. Though he loved her to distraction, and he knew she simply had his best interests at heart, Will nonetheless was exceedingly weary of her meddling. “Mother, I didn’t make a date for tonight, and if you have made one for me, then you’ll be the one to cancel it. We’ve been down this road, and I’m not in the mood to backtrack. Not today.”

  An exasperated huff sounded. “Don’t you want to know who it’s with before I cancel it?”

  He wasn’t remotely curious. “No,” he said flatly.

  “Fine,” his mother replied. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t have seen the need to meddle—”

  Ha! Will thought.

  “But,” she sighed, and a curious, almost ominous quiver had entered her voice. “I just thought that, given this ph—phone bill, that desperate m-measures should be t-taken.”

  More guffaws, more laughter from her end, and he could have sworn he heard his brother, Ben, say, “Hell, yeah! An inflatable woman would have been cheaper.” But that couldn’t possibly be right, Will thought, thoroughly confused, because it didn’t make any sense. And his phone bill? What was wrong with his phone bill, and what did that have to do with her finding him a date?

  Will developed an eye twitch. He shoved the key in the ignition and started the truck. “Make sense, Mom. What are you talking about? What’s wrong with my phone bill?”

  “Nothing…if you don’t mind that it’s five times more than last month.”

  “What?” But that would make it—Will did the mental calculation and blinked, astounded—right at a thousand dollars. His jaw all but dropped.

  “You sound surprised, dear,” she continued blithely. “I guess you didn’t realize how long you spent t-talking to y-your 1-900-Lover.” She dissolved into a fit of whooping, wheezing laughter that made his face burn. “At any rate, a real date would have been cheaper, which is why I can’t in good conscience call Rebecca Hillendale and cancel on your behalf. There are times when a mother simply must intervene.”

  For the first time in his life, Will Foster knew what it felt like to be literally struck dumb. Not dumb as in he couldn’t speak, but dumb as in stupid, as in he had a brain, but couldn’t for the life of him make it function. Several thoughts swirled simultaneously through his head, but they were disjointed and dim, and he lacked the cognitive ability to put them in any sort of order, much less get them out of his mouth.

  The best he could figure out, somehow—and God only knew how—1-900-charges, presumably for phone sex—had ended up on his phone bill. Apparently—and much to his immediate, unwarranted humiliation—his mother had broadcast this at the office—where she’d seemingly forgotten that she worked for him—and then had taken it upon herself to find him a date.
/>   Meanwhile, Rebecca Hillendale was a humpbacked harpy with the disposition of a constipated porcupine and he’d rather die a slow painful death or have his testicles removed with red-hot pincers than to sit through a meal with her. These were the thoughts roiling through his tortured mind, but when he finally managed to speak, it was in short staccato sentences devoid of any emotion except outrage.

  “Mother, I’ll be there in a minute.” Will slipped the transmission into reverse, backed into the street, then dropped the gear shift into drive. The truck shot forward. “Nobody leaves.”

  “But—”

  “Nobody leaves.”

  AN HOUR LATER Will’s mind was in order, but his temper was not.

  According to the phone company, the calls Will insisted that he hadn’t made, had, in fact, been dialed from his number. Curiously, during hours that he was at work. Another look at the bill—at the dates the calls were placed, specifically—had shed a new light on the situation.

  The calls had coincided with his nephew’s visit.

  Scott, his sister’s eldest son, typically spent every spring break with Will. Usually Will put him to work, but a four-wheeler accident the week before Scott’s visit had foiled that plan. Scott had been forced to spend the holiday playing catch-up on his studies, and Will had decided it would be shitty to cancel the kid’s visit simply because he’d lose the labor.

  Given the make-up work situation, he’d had to plead with his sister for the ungrateful brat to even come, and now as thanks, Scott had put him in a horrible position—he’d left him with a whopping thousand dollar phone bill and the unhappy task of telling his sister that her child had been having phone sex on Will’s watch.

  Which led him to his present errand.

  Before he called his sister and shared that little tidbit—before he paid the bill, even—he intended to directly contact the author of his misery—the phone sex operator. Over the top? Probably. But what the hell—his normally sedate life had been knocked off-kilter today and he had to do something proactive to put it back on the right path. He couldn’t help it. It was all part and parcel of being a professed control freak. Will took exception to the unflattering term, but couldn’t deny his nature. He liked to do things his way, liked having his way, and ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time he could say with confidence that his way was the right way.

  Will’s first impulse had been to call the 1-900 line, but he’d quickly changed his mind. The unscrupulous witch wasn’t bleeding another friggin’ nickel out of him. Instead, he’d called a P.I. buddy to do a little snooping for him. The best Will had hoped for was a toll-free line, but what his friend had found had been considerably better. A name and address, and, wonder of wonders, a local one at that. What were the odds?

  He’d been destined to blast her.

  Given the morning from hell he’d had, to be honest, Will didn’t think he’d ever looked forward to doing anything more.

  When he’d learned that the woman lived here it was as though Christmas had come early. Rather than taking out his miserable mood on Doris—who he resignedly admitted he would be forced to continue to work with—or his well-meaning but meddlesome mother—whom he’d live to regret pissing off—Will had found out that he could verbally assault a perfect stranger who really deserved it, and finally blow off the steam which had been steadily building since early this morning.

  What better person to verbally eviscerate than a woman so lacking in morals that she’d have phone sex with a teenager? A minor? A mere child?

  Granted, Scott was seventeen and, given the way the girls followed him around, the kid was most likely getting laid more frequently and with more furor than his uncle. Will nevertheless thought the woman should have used better judgment. But she hadn’t. She’d crossed the line in order to pad her own pockets—with his money, dammit—and for that, she would pay.

  A Jackson native, Will had been at once familiar and surprised by the supposed address of the woman. According to his buddy, she lived in an old but affluent neighborhood on a street one wouldn’t normally expect to find an unsavory phone sex operator in residence.

  Wisteria Court was located in the historical district. Huge antebellum homes reminiscent of a bygone era, with aged boxwoods, magnolias, weeping willows and tulip trees stood sentinel on the manicured lawns. The neighborhood was rife with the scent of mint juleps and old money, and he found the idea of a phone sex operator in residence among Jackson’s so-called hoity-toity set perversely funny. Ordinarily, the idea would have drawn a smile.

  But not today. Today, he was too pissed.

  He slowed the truck to a crawl as he checked house numbers, then finally hitting pay dirt, he wheeled the vehicle into the appropriate drive. Anticipation spiked. Finally, Will thought. He purposely stoked his ire on the way to the door by alternately imagining writing the check to the phone company, and telling his sister about Scott’s foray into the seedy world of phone sex—Reach out and touch someone, indeed, Will thought darkly. So, by the time he plied the knocker every last particle of irritation he’d had that morning set ready on his tongue. He’d pulled back the hammer, so to speak, and was ready to unload.

  It was to his vast disappointment then, when an elderly woman with pink foam curlers in her hair answered the door and he was forced to put on the safety.

  Again.

  He stifled the burgeoning urge to scream.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  Baffled, Will frowned. He knew he had the right address. But this… He inwardly shuddered. This couldn’t possibly be the right woman. “Er…Ms. Crosswhite?”

  “Nope. Ida Holcomb. You’re looking for Rowan,” she said matter-of-factly. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “She lives in the guest house in the back.” The woman gasped, laid a hand over her belly, and shot him a pained look. “Gotta go,” she said abruptly, then slammed the door in his face.

  Startled, Will drew back, then, shaking his head, made his way off the porch and toward the rear of the property where the older woman had indicated. He had a bead on her now, Will thought, purposefully striding alongside the house. As he rounded the corner, however, the sight that greeted him caused him to slow and every bit of the anger he’d nursed faded into insignificance.

  A vintage Vette—a ’62 if he wasn’t mistaken—in pristine condition sat in the drive next to the house. He whistled low and, had his attention not been instantly drawn elsewhere, he would have been tempted to inspect the car from bumper to bumper. As it was, his gaze had landed on the house and surrounding property, and any notion of the car, while it was admittedly a fine piece of machinery, drifted right out of his head.

  The house, a miniature version of the primary residence sat at the very back of the property. White frame, double verandah, utterly charming. But it hadn’t been what made him pause, either—it was the garden around the house that had made such an impact. He blinked, pulling it all into focus, and for some wholly unknown reason, an excited tingle started in the heels of his feet and swiftly moved upward.

  Will had been in landscape design for years, had been to countless shows in practically every part of the country, and yet nothing in his experience could compare to this.

  Though he recognized every flower, vine, shrub and bush—all of them typical to the average bee-and-butterfly garden—the whimsical layout, the use of color and texture combined with what he could only deduce was the owner’s original metalwork and stained glass made it the most unique garden he’d ever seen. There was no discernable plan, no clear-cut layout, and yet everything grew together in a seamless form of ordered pandemonium.

  It was gorgeous.

  Butterfly bushes, creeping flox, flowering peach and crabapple trees, clematis vines, various lilies, and bedding plants, a variety of ground covers, and perhaps the most interesting of all—antique roses. The swamp rose, in particular, was one that he coveted.

  Feeling like he’d been clubbed over the head again, Will slowly resumed his pace. I
nexplicably drawn to the roses, the grand dames of antique bushes, he reverently fingered one delicate petal while quietly inspecting the plant. No spots or aphids, and what minimal pruning had been done had been accomplished with a precisely loving hand. Whoever tended this garden had a passion for the process and clearly designed it for their own personal enjoyment.

  Not a single detail had been left untended and, despite the fact that he knew this was the work of the skanky phone sex operator, of all people, Will found himself grudgingly impressed. More than impressed. Floored, really. After all, it took a helluva lot of imagination, not to mention a great deal of time and effort to—

  The tinkle of feminine laughter drifted to him, snagging his attention back to the task at hand. He scanned the yard and, after a moment, his gaze landed upon a generously rounded, denim-clad rump peeking out from a small raised bed in the far corner of the garden. A pair of tanned, equally shapely legs were attached to the rump. He could see little else save the back of her head, and while he got the impression of long sable-colored hair, in all truthfulness as far as he was concerned she could have been bald and he’d never have noticed—he was too busy admiring her ass.

  And oh, what an ass it was.

  Full, curvy and heart-shaped, it gently tested the strength of the seams of her roomy cutoffs and accentuated what he could tell even from this distance was a small waist.

  She flicked a weed off to her side where a growing pile accumulated on the lawn. “Oh, you naughty boy,” she said, her voice the perfect mixture of flirtatious and intimate. She laughed again, a long wanton giggle that too effectively conjured images of twisted sheets and bare limbs, made the fine hairs on his arms stand on end and a hum of attraction vibrate his spine.

  Who the hell was she talking to? Will wondered, trying to peer around her. He frowned, intrigued. Who was a naughty boy? He didn’t see any boy. She leaned back on her haunches, seemingly admiring her handiwork and he saw it then—the headset. In a moment of blind, dawning comprehension he realized what she was doing.