Cottage by the Sea (20 page)

   "Hmmm…"

   "Why don't you take a couple of days to think about it?"

   Luke remained very still. Then, one by one, he held up the collection of drawings Blythe had submitted to him.

   "You're a very creative woman," he said finally, "and an even more impressive business woman and negotiator… but I expect you learned all that in Hollywood."

   "I learned it when I was eighteen playing poker with Otis McCafferty behind a rodeo arena," she retorted coolly. "And if my proposal doesn't seem fair—"

   "Actually," Luke interrupted, appearing to sense, correctly, that he had offended her, "it's more than fair. It
is
angelic, in fact—given your willingness to risk your own money in this venture. If my last remarks sounded churlish, I apologize."

   Blythe merely raised an eyebrow in agreement.

   "I was expressing myself poorly," he continued, shaking his head in a gesture of frustration. "It's just that I've debated the fate of Barton Hall for such a long time, perhaps I feel a bit muddleheaded for not having thought of such a sensible and rather obvious solution myself—capitalizing on our rather spectacular gardens." He glanced out the window in the direction of the towering rhododendrons. "But what you're proposing sounds awfully ambitious. It's much more than a mere nursery scheme…"

   "Much more," Blythe agreed calmly.

   "We'd have to get permission from the County Council," Luke murmured. "And need all sorts of licenses for catalogue and Internet businesses."

   "Obviously we'd have a number of major hurdles to overcome," she said, nodding in agreement, "but I'll bet this kind of start-up enterprise will probably qualify for a government grant or two if you train people in the nursery business and provide them employment. You can probably create a non-profit foundation to support the educational activities associated with the enterprise, which would help you with the Inland Revenue."

   As she watched his gaze shift back to the drawings she had made, she wondered suddenly if she hadn't foolishly allowed herself to be carried away with enthusiasm for a venture that entailed a host of critical unknowns, most important of which was her own willingness to remain in Cornwall for the foreseeable future. Then there was the issue of Luke's ability—or desire—to accept a woman as his full-fledged business partner. After all, this was Britain, she thought ruefully.

   However, Luke carefully placed her sketches on the table beside his chair and extended his hand, callused from having taken on so many of the duties that had belonged to the retired head gardener.

   "What can I lose that I won't lose by doing nothing?" he mused. "And how often is one offered the opportunity to go into business with such an accomplished professional?" Then the hereditary owner of Barton Hall seized her hand and said in a reasonable imitation of John Wayne's western drawl, "Put'er there!"

   As Blythe shook his hand, it was her turn to wonder what in the world she had let herself in for.

Blythe and Lucas kept the financial details of their written contract simple: she agreed to deposit funds from her American bank into a joint account in a St. Austell building society. The sum there equaled the cost of the estimated renovation on existing buildings and the purchase of equipment and additional plant stock. Each partner was required to sign all checks for more than two hundred pounds, and Blythe had veto power over any expenditure she deemed unrealistic or excessive.

   Fortunately the new partners found themselves in agreement over most practical and design issues. One point they didn't agree on, however, was the matter of Blythe's rent for Painter's Cottage.

   "I absolutely insist that I continue to pay you like a good little tenant," she said firmly, after a spirited discussion one morning. She knew full well that the cash generated by Luke's summer leases paid for extras like Mrs. Quiller's salary.

   "Perhaps you're not the brilliant negotiator I'd credited you for," Luke protested as he reluctantly accepted the check for July's rent. "If I ever sign over the deed for the cottage, you'll have paid for it twice!"

   "You should be praying that you never have to sign the deed over to me," Blythe reminded him mildly, "since that will mean we will have failed with Barton Hall Nurseries—plural."

   "We mustn't…" Luke replied, suddenly in dead earnest. "We simply mustn't fail."

   "We're going to be a huge hit!" she exclaimed, closing her checkbook.

   "That's a deal," Lucas replied, holding out his hand.

   "Please don't use that word," Blythe replied fervently. "It reminds me of Hollywood."

   "Agreed then… that we'll make this a smashing success?" he corrected himself, his hand still extended toward her.

   "Agreed." She smiled, enjoying the warmth of his fingers as they encased her own. She sat down at his desk and quickly inserted the few agreed-upon changes into the document she'd typed on the computer. The laptop and portable printer that had been so essential when she was employed as a production designer had been air-expressed to Cornwall from California by a friend the previous week. Despite the castle's antiquated wiring, a voltage converter in a sunny room near Luke's library had put the machines in perfect working order. Eventually, both would be moved to the offices planned for the coach house and they'd see about getting an Internet or wireless connection through the cable TV satellite company extending its reach into the West Country.

   "If this had been a movie deal," she laughed as the edited document spit out the front end of her portable printer, "this contract would have been a hundred and twenty-seven pages long!"

   "Whatever for?" Luke asked, mesmerized by the sight of their amended agreement magically emerging from Blythe's machine.

   "Funeral clauses and anti-funeral funeral clauses."

   "How grim. What do funeral clauses in a film contract do, exactly?"

   "All the contingency clauses are put in there in case someone later changes his mind and wants to get out of the deal. In La-La Land they're called the 'what if' clauses. What if I grow to hate you? What if your work stinks? What if I get a better deal?"

   "But a contract's a contract," he protested. "At least it is in England."

   "I'm very glad to hear that," she replied.

   Luke seized his antique silver-plated fountain pen and signed his name to their homemade document. Then he handed the pen to Blythe, who signed her triple-barreled signature with a flourish.

   "This is going to be fun," she laughed. "
I'm
going to play 'producer' for a change, and I can't wait for the day I have to tell you that you simply cannot purchase one more hoe."

   The next morning, however, tormented by her own sense of mild panic, Blythe awakened at four-thirty. Waves cracked rhythmically on the beach below as a group of insomniac seagulls cried out in concert with the sound of sheep bleating in the nearby field, roused by the summer's early-rising sun. Try as she might to use this Cornish symphony to lull her back to sleep, a thousand thoughts about the project crowded her brain.

   Alone in her bed under the eaves, she watched the anemic sunlight as it slanted through the tall artist's window and cast gloomy shadows across the cottage walls. As the sun continued to rise behind a solid bank of clouds in the east, her thoughts dwelled upon the impulsive way she had signed a legally binding document—without a shred of legal advice—to fund Barton Hall Nurseries. Glumly she imagined the harshness with which her attorney would severely chastise her for such foolhardy behavior.

   At last, pulling herself out of bed, Blythe reached the decision that she at least owed lawyer Lisa Spector a call to tell her about her impetuous actions. Perhaps the hardheaded Ms. Spector would refer Blythe to a solicitor in London who could go over the written agreement she and Luke had created together, as well as advise her as the project went along.

   This wasn't a phone call she wanted Luke to overhear, so by six o'clock on that Friday morning, Blythe donned a goose-down vest and her Barbour coat and trudged along the road in the direction of Penare.

   Passing Lamledra Farm on her left, she headed up the hill to Canton Road, which ran next to the Gorran Haven post office. There she passed the village public telephone housed in a familiar red call box. Fortunately British Telecom had not yet replaced this charming antique with one of its nondescript modern equivalents made of vandal-resistant acrylic that was such a blight on the landscape.

   She slid an icy coin into the slot. After listening to a dozen peremptory pips, she eventually reached the international operator and dutifully recited her calling-card number. It was still Thursday in California, just past nine o'clock in the evening. Even during the worst moments of the divorce proceedings, Blythe had refrained from contacting her attorney outside office hours. However, her full-blown anxiety before dawn's light concerning her hasty decision to become partners with Lucas Teague had prompted her to plod up the hill to the village and put the call through to Lisa's home number.

   Now, shivering within the confines of the frigid telephone booth, Blythe suddenly hoped that Lisa's voice mail would pick up, allowing her merely to leave a message asking her lawyer to forward the names of recommended legal counsel in London. That way she could avoid a discussion about the recent developments in Cornwall.

   The familiar, curt voice cut across ten thousand miles of satellite transmission.

   "Have you gone bananas?" Lisa demanded as soon as she heard the details of Blythe's intentions. "I can't believe you signed a business deal without having me go over it first… and with a guy you've known for all of one month!"

   "Almost two months," Blythe corrected her.

   "Jesus, Blythe! What are you doing? Wasn't one English bastard enough for you in this life?"

   "I know it all must sound a little crazy," Blythe admitted, feeling like the fool she knew Lisa thought she was, "but I got so totally charged by the amazing possibilities in this gorgeous place, I just had to give it a try. Finally I'll be back in the field I should never have left and—"

   "Are you really ready to give up the film business, with all the contacts it's taken you ten years to build, to stay in England for three years?" Lisa boiled. "You do realize, don't you, that you're about to invest a substantial chunk of change—not to mention emotional and creative energy—half a world away from everything you've ever known?"

   "Nothing is forever," Blythe replied, pushing aside her residual doubts as she rallied to defend her joint venture. "And I think Lucas Teague and I could really make a success out of this. And trust me, Lisa, I
like
the fact that it has nothing to do with the movie business—or with movie people."

   "I can't believe you're telling me that you're willing to completely forsake your friends and your entire profession to grow a few rhod… rhodo-whatchamacallits in Cornwall!" Lisa exclaimed.

   "Rho-do-den-drons," she prompted helpfully.

   "Christ, Blythe!" Lisa exploded over the wire. "You said yourself last time we talked that you were depressed. It sounds to me as if you're going off the deep—"

   The wind off the bay was whistling through a broken windowpane near her ankles, rendering the telephone booth frigid. Just then a large vehicle rumbled by, making conversation almost impossible.

   "Hold it, Lisa," Blythe shouted. "I can't hear you. Let this lorry pass by."

   "This what? Where the hell are you?" Lisa yelled.

   "At a public phone in Gorran Haven," Blythe answered. "I wanted some privacy and my cottage and spots around here don't get very good cell phone service—
yet,"
she added sheepishly.

   "Well, explain to me, then," Lisa said more calmly when the truck had turned the corner into Rattle Alley, "how a sufficient number of customers are going to find you in a backwater like Cornwall—where even telephones are apparently rationed commodities?"

   Blythe herself had worried from the first whether customers from St. Austell and environs would drive an extra ten miles out of their way merely to shop in a castle garden. Historic houses were a dime a dozen as far as the British were concerned and they already knew they'd have to invest in a satellite service to guarantee more robust phone and Internet connections.

   "That's a reasonable issue to raise," Blythe agreed, attempting to sound centered and thoroughly prepared to answer any objection Lisa might throw her way. It was a technique she had learned from Chris when they had run up against skepticism, or even outright contempt, for their ideas in the Hollywood executive suites. "However, twenty-five acres of gardens with rhododendron trees forty feet high are pretty spectacular, Lisa. People come from around the world to see them in bloom."

   "What happens when it isn't spring?" Lisa snapped, assuming her most lawyerly tone. "Look, Blythe, I, for one, don't even know what a rhododendron looks like. What I do know is that you'll probably need to recruit an army of skilled carpenters, plumbers, roofers, and gardening gurus to transform that ancient pile into a going concern. Where do you propose to find qualified people in the sticks? And whose little checkbook will be called upon to ante up if Rhododendron-land turns out to cost a lot more than you've budgeted? Not Lord What's-his-name, certainly. Why else would he need
you for a partner? I just hop
e you haven't fallen for the oldest con in the world: 'Distraught divorcee falls for slick dude with a fancy title and a leaky roof.'"