Aidan had found a spider. Tyler was looking for snakes.
They were having the time of their lives, all that saved Maggie from wishing she’d done anything last night besides dance with their father, as sexy and irresistible as ever.
Seven
“Dog sitting, Noah?” Dylan sat at the round terrace table with a glass of spiced iced tea, complete with an orange wedge and cinnamon stick. “Are you sure about this?”
Noah, seated on a green-painted bench, ran a palm over the minty-looking plants with the purple flowers. He wondered if they had slugs. He noticed the bumblebees were back and withdrew his hand. “It’ll be easier on everyone if I stay,” he said, although he wasn’t precisely sure what he meant.
Obviously neither was Dylan, who gave Noah a skeptical look. “Having you here on your own will be easier on everyone? How?”
“I can tend to the gardens, as well as Buster.”
“Have you ever done any gardening?”
In fact, Noah had not. Even as a kid, he’d never done more than water the flowerpots on the deck of his parents’ townhouse in suburban Los Angeles, under his mother’s supervision.
He stood up with his own iced tea. Plain. No spiced tea for him. “It’ll be fine. Olivia will leave instructions. Remember, I recognized the chives on her note card when she wrote to you about your house. You thought they were clover. Anyway, you don’t need me underfoot while you’re showing her San Diego.”
“I’m not buying it, Noah,” Dylan said, shaking his head. “You’re not staying here because you’ve suddenly turned into Farmer Kendrick. It’s that note Olivia gave you.”
Suddenly restless, Noah walked over to the table but didn’t sit down. The afternoon had turned hazy and humid. Olivia and Dylan would be on their way to the airport soon. Noah wouldn’t be going with them. He’d come close to changing his mind about staying. Then Olivia had handed him the note, telling him that he wasn’t to ask where she got it.
“It was given to me in confidence,” she’d said.
Mostly likely that meant her friend Maggie O’Dunn had given the note to her. But where had Maggie gotten it? Had she written it herself? Based on the contents, Noah doubted it. Maggie would simply have pulled him aside and told him what she’d overheard.
The mysteries of little Knights Bridge.
The note sealed his decision to stay on at least for a few days. He had no intention of pushing Olivia to break a confidence or telling her what he suspected. Nor would he involve Dylan, given that he was engaged to Olivia.
“I read the note, Noah,” Dylan said.
Noah sighed. “When I was walking Buster up the road, testing whether he and I would get along for a few days?”
“That’s right. I figured you didn’t want to hand the note to me outright but you wanted me to read it.”
“Actually, I was just focused on keeping Buster from slobbering on me and didn’t think about the note. I didn’t want to involve you.”
Dylan set his iced tea on the table. “Noah, Olivia gave you that note. I am involved.”
“That doesn’t change anything,” Noah said.
“The note was printed off a computer. Whoever wrote it didn’t want you to see his or her handwriting.”
“Could it have been Brandon Sloan?”
“No,” Dylan said without hesitation. “He’d just have told you on the spot.”
Noah agreed. He sank onto a chair at the table, half wishing he were back in the White Mountains with nothing more pressing on his mind than survival. This was much more complicated. He looked over at his friend. “You know it would take two seconds to find out what Olivia and Maggie have been up to,” he said.
Dylan grimaced as he nodded. “What makes you think Maggie’s involved?”
“She’s always involved, isn’t she?”
“True. She and Olivia go back at least as far as you and I do.” Dylan picked the cinnamon stick out of his tea and flicked it into the grass. “I’m not going to spend a lot of energy guessing. The note says what it says. The person who overheard the man in question provided a thorough account and description. There’s nothing more to add.”
“What about my princess?” Noah asked, his tone more serious than he’d intended.
“You mean is she a bystander? A potential victim? A potential accomplice?”
“The note doesn’t mention her, and yet this man described my presence at the ball in detail. If that had been you, don’t you think you’d have mentioned my dance partner in the Queen Victoria dress?”
“It was Edwardian,” Olivia said, coming out from the kitchen. “Titanic, Downton Abbey.” She swallowed as if she might have gone too far. “I noticed her dress. It was gorgeous.” She added quickly, “There were a lot of gorgeous dresses there last night.”
As tempted as he was, Noah reminded himself that he wasn’t going to grill his best friend’s fiancée about what she was holding back.