Richard regarded her suspiciously. Despite her tone, she didn’t look the least bit tired. She obviously had some reason for feigning exhaustion, and he was willing to bet he knew what it was.
His suspicions were confirmed, when she added, “Why don’t you take Anna Louise? She knows my taste as well as anybody. She can pick out the wallpaper.”
Anna Louise glanced at him. She looked about as dismayed by the prospect of being confined in a car with him for hours as he was.
“Really, Maisey, this is something that should be your choice,” she said hurriedly. “I’m sure Richard can bring back samples, if you don’t want to go along with him.”
His grandmother’s chin set stubbornly. “Then that’ll mean a second trip. What’s the use of that? No, Anna Louise, I’d like you to pick something out, something cheerful. You have the time, don’t you? You always take Mondays off.”
Clearly beaten by Maisey’s clever scheming, Anna Louise sighed. “I have the time.”
“Well, then, that’s settled,” Maisey said.
If Richard had had a grain of sense, he would have worried about the triumphant note in her voice. Instead he just nodded, deciding he might as well make the best of it. “We’ll go right after lunch.”
“Fine,” Anna Louise agreed. “I’ll be ready.”
“Perfect,” Maisey said enthusiastically. “Why don’t you stay there for dinner and a movie? It’ll be a nice break for both of you. How often do you get a chance to eat in a nice restaurant?”
“Maisey, I just got home,” Richard protested. “I don’t need a break and I’ve spent the last ten years eating in restaurants.”
“And I really should be back to do...” Anna Louise’s voice trailed off. Finally, she added weakly, “Chores. I have a lot of chores I always leave for Monday.”
“Fiddle-faddle,” Maisey said dismissively. “Those chores will still be waiting next Monday. When opportunity comes knocking, you should take advantage of it.”
“Opportunity,” Anna Louise repeated with evident nervousness. Her gaze was pinned worriedly on Richard.
He knew exactly how she felt. He hadn’t been this uneasy going into Iraq the day before the bombs had started dropping. His boss had called that an opportunity, too.
CHAPTER FOUR
Self-preservation made Richard long to toot the horn when he got to Anna Louise’s just after twelve-thirty. He did not want to go inside the parsonage, which he remembered all too well as a grim, sterile place from Pastor Flynn’s day. He didn’t like envisioning Anna Louise in that kind of environment. She deserved color and light to go with her personality.
Unfortunately, Maisey had pounded strong Southern manners into him from an early age. He parked the car and went to the front door, then waited for Anna Louise to answer his knock.
“Come on in,” she hollered from the depths of the house. “The door’s open.”
Richard turned the knob, infuriated by her irresponsibility. “Have you lost your mind?” he shouted as he stepped into the foyer. “I could have been a mass murderer.”
“But you’re not, are you?” she said calmly, wiping her hands on a dish towel as she came toward him from the hallway that he recalled led to the kitchen.
“You had no way of knowing that,” he observed. “You couldn’t even see it was me from back there.”
She faced him unflinchingly. “Now let’s just think about this a minute,” she said reasonably. “If you were a mass murderer, would a flimsy old lock have stopped you?”
He scowled at her. “No, but—”
“Forget it,” she told him with a grin. “You can’t win.”
“I’m not trying to win,” he snapped in frustration. “I’m trying to save your neck.”
“If I’m not worried about it, why should you be?”
She had him there. “Fine. Get yourself killed,” he said. “Are you ready?”
“Let me put this back in the kitchen and I’ll be right with you.”
While she was gone, he glanced around for the first time. Something had happened to the parsonage. And he had no doubts at all that Anna Louise was responsible for the changes. It was no wonder Maisey trusted her to pick out wallpaper. With probably no decent budget for decorating, she had turned the little house from a dark, dreary place into a sunny, cheerful environment.
The walls had been painted a pale shade of yellow that reminded him of daffodils. The woodwork was white. The stiff old furniture he remembered had been replaced with over-stuffed chairs and a sofa covered in yellow and white pinstripes. Astonishingly healthy plants in pots of every size and shape sat on every available surface. Where heavy drapes had once blocked out the light, now sheer curtains let it in. The transformation was astonishing.
“I can see from your expression this isn’t the way you remember it,” she said when she returned, her purse in hand.
“Far from it,” he said. “This suits you.”
“Thanks. It’s taken me five years to get it the way I wanted it, but the downstairs is finally done. Someday I’ll get to the bedrooms.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Richard stared down at the floor. Dear heavenly days, it was going to be a very long afternoon, he thought.
“Let’s go,” he said gruffly.
She shot a puzzled look at him, but she didn’t argue.
Thanks to that moment in the hallway, all of Richard’s journalistic skills deserted him on the drive to Charlottesville. He’d always thought there wasn’t a human being on the face of the earth, power broker or pauper, that he couldn’t interview. In a normal social setting that skill translated into easy, casual conversation. Talking to Anna Louise was proving to be the exception.
All of the normal questions a man might ask a woman in whom he was interested seemed too intimate, too likely to lead them off on a dangerous conversational path. Of course, that might have had something to do with his inability to remain the slightest bit objective in her presence. Every masculine instinct called for his usual flirtatious, live-for-the-moment approach to an attractive woman. He
