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She resisted thinking of today’s visit as an interview, even though that’s what Nathan Brady had called it during their brief phone call. Considering it an interview suggested it was something she’d sought out. If she called it something different, she could pretend this was all Temperance’s doing, and it wasn’t what she really wanted, anyway.
She’d only come because she didn’t want to embarrass Temperance.
Avisit. That’s all it was. She was dying to see that greenhouse in daylight.
The property was deep in Vesper Valley, just under an hour west of the city center of Philadelphia. Rowan leaned forward to get the whole view of the house through her windshield. Therewere jutting dormers along the top, five windows on the second floor, and four for the ground floor. All that glass reflected a sky so blue it looked like it belonged over the Caribbean.
The home sprawled into east and west additions. The brick and stone of each wing were unique enough it was clear they’d been added during different periods in its history.
At two minutes until the top of the hour, she forced herself out of the car. The heady scent of a burning fireplace spiced the late September air. Nathan had said to knock on the front door, but if nobody answered, try the vineyard.
Of course, nobody answered.
Rowan roamed to the back of the house, and around a massive deck as large as her childhood home. Beyond, she could see in all directions. The land was all gentle slopes and sweeping green lawns reminiscent of the English countryside. In the flat areas, outbuildings nestled into the landscape like Hobbit homes. The wild vineyards curved around the outer edge of the property, the lack of regular pruning leaving them to ramble untamed along the trellises. Lively red climbing roses twisted up the end posts of the rows facing the main house, unruly as the grapes.
It was wild beauty with a cultured backbone beneath.
So different from where she’d grown up, that cramped two-bedroom house on the coast, with its peeling yellow paint and eternally muddy yard. The occasional whiff of rotting fish on the breeze, and the sticky, ever-present crust of salt on everything.
Grandma Edie would have called this place paradise.
For a few minutes, she stood there and breathed. Her heart was far more pragmatic than poetic, but this land evoked a tenderness in her she struggled to ignore. She felt the visceral pull of the earth under her feet, and a familiar tug of yearning in her belly.
Rowan tamped those feelings down. This place wasn’t hers for the wanting.
The two men at the edge of the vineyard didn’t notice her as she approached. One had sleek black hair, and the other was fairer, but they were conspicuously kin. They were framed the same, though the darker one packed at least thirty more pounds of bulk and muscle on his taller body. Once they heard the crunch of her footfalls, they turned in unison and settled into the same hipshot posture, brows raised in matching inquisitive expressions.
“Hey,” Harrison said.
Harrison Brady in the bright of day wasn’t a thing she’d prepared for. His hair had the shine and color of browned butter, and his eyes were the rich blue-gray of woodsmoke. But his irises were clouded, like they were shielded behind a frost-hazed pane of glass.
“Morning,” she said. “Don’t let me interrupt.”
The black-haired brother reached out to shake her hand. The movement pulled the rolled sleeve of his shirt up his forearm. His skin was solidly decorated with vibrant tattoos, each one merging into another, and his callused hands were built and weathered in a way that made it obvious he used them hard, every day.
“Duncan Brady.” He removed mirrored sunglasses. Keen onyx eyes passed over her, and his smile was wide and wolfish. Gleaming white teeth, canines vaguely pointed. A tiny chip was missing from the corner of one of his incisors. She felt thoroughly sized up and analyzed, even though the exchange was brief.
Duncan Brady was the kind of attractive that made a religious person want to sin, and a faithless one want to thank Jesus. His skin was bronzed by hard outdoor work, and the laugh lines around his eyes were the only relief to an otherwise intimidating face. He had a full black beard, impeccably trimmed tohug the lines of his jaw. His hair swept straight back from his face in a longish, thick wave, framed by closely trimmed sides.
He was the most beautiful human being she’d ever seen in person. Rowan found herself inexplicably amused by how overtly, aggressively sexy he was, standing out here in the weedy old vineyard.
“I’m Rowan.” She smiled and slid her hand from his.
“You and that tall brunette crashed our party last weekend,” he said, grinning. “What’s her name? Frankie?”
“We weren’t crashers,” she laughed. “We were Temperance’s plus ones.”
He slid his sunglasses back on. “I think that’s plus two.”
“I was never great at math,” she said, and Duncan chuckled. Harrison gave her a brief smile when she shifted her attention to him.
“Didn’t get to meet you that night.” Duncan twisted a bit of his beard in his fingertips.
Rowan shrugged. “Take that up with Temperance.”
“I might do that,” he said quietly, and looked away.
“I’m here to see Nathan,” Rowan said. “Is he here?”
