Laurel raised her hands in mock despair. “There wasn’t room for me in the stairway, so I was exiled to the dining room. You can see me before you leave.”
She took the final step onto the landing, opened the first door on the left, and switched on the light. If Lolly liked old-fashioned, this was the mother lode: a gilt mirror over the dressing table, antique furniture, and pink-flowered dimity curtains looping over gilded Cupid hooks, then hanging down on either side of the window.
Lolly came in behind her, stood in the center of the room, and pivoted slowly to take everything in.
“It’s all so beautiful—I love the Aubusson and all the pastel colors. And that pale green bed and chest and vanity table are supercool. Are they, like, French Provincial?”
“Well, yes. Not the kind you get in stores, though. My great-grandfather bought it all in France way back when.”
“Awesome. And I bet this is a feather bed.” Lolly dropped her purse and backpack to the floor, then carefully sat down on the edge of the mattress, bouncing a little to test it. “I always wondered how it would feel to sleep on a feather bed.”
Laurel laughed. “Sorry. That bed has had several mattresses through the years. The feathers have flown the coop.”
Lolly’s face fell. “No feathers?”
“They tend to hatch lice. I think you’ll like the inner springs better.”
Lolly yawned again, nodded a reluctant acceptance, and looked over at the half-open pocket door beside the bed. “Is that an en suite?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Cool.”
Laurel slid the door open and stepped inside the bathroom for a quick inspection to make sure no spiders had expired in the tub recently, as they had the distressing habit of doing. Score one for modern insecticides.
“There’s a clean nightgown hanging on the hook behind the door, and you can use all the towels you want,” she said, returning to the bedroom. “As you’ll see, we’ve got plenty.” Although she would have sold every one of them if there’d been any sort of market for old linens.
Lolly yawned and sat down on the bed, her head drooping toward her shoulder, and smoothed the sheet with her hand.
“Thank you.”
Laurel moved to the door. “You’re welcome, honey.”
She turned on the window unit, and Lolly jerked around as the machine wheezed into action. Laurel smiled. Let Jase be the one to explain Stone Age technology to his daughter.
“Sweet dreams. I’ll leave the bathroom light on in case you wake up during the night.”
Lolly nodded, yawned again, and kicked off her flip-flops. “Good night.”
“Good night, honey.”
Laurel closed the door and crossed the hall to her bedroom, a nest of warmth settling between her breasts.
Jase’s daughter was sleeping across the hall in her house tonight.
Chapter Four
Laurel slipped off her shoes and scrunched her toes into the soft silk rug beside the bed, another vestige of Erasmus’s Chinese phase.
This room would be hard to leave. It had been her own private place—her bower—since she was born. She’d store the rug and the cherrywood bedroom suite till she had a place big enough to accommodate them, but the room itself, with its high ceiling, crown molding, and wall-length closet—there was no reproducing that.
Opening the door to the connecting bathroom, she turned on the faucets of the tub. Nothing like a long, restful soak before bed. She unbuttoned her shirt and slipped it off her arms. Her bra followed next, then her slacks and panties.
What if Jase hadn’t left town sixteen years ago, and if, by some miracle, they’d actually ended up getting married? He wouldn’t have deserted her like Dave did.
Or would he?
She glanced at herself in the mirror and teased her nipples erect to make sure they still worked.
Get real, Laurel Elizabeth. If Jase knew what everybody else in Bosque Bend knows, he probably wouldn’t even have allowed Lolly to spend the night here. Not that it mattered. Now that his daughter had turned up, he’d come pick her up, turn that Caddie around, and hightail it right back to Dallas. Just like she would hightail herself out of town the second she had a contract on the house.
She stepped into the tub and settled down into the warm, soothing water, expecting to drift into near unconsciousness, but the second she closed her eyes, her brain began rerunning a mental tape from sixteen years ago.
*