The MacGregor Grooms Read Online Free PDF Page A

recall. She’s just not for you. Chilly sort of thing, isn’t she? Her parents are cold fish and stiff as two boards, if I remember right. Well, you eat your breakfast, lad, and make time to come see your grandmother before she nags me to distraction.”
    “Okay, yeah. Give her my love.”
    “Oh, that I’ll do.” And Daniel hung up, wondering how long it would take his grandson to pay a call on pretty Layna Drake.
    *   *   *
    It took under an hour—particularly since D.C. found he’d lost his appetite and had poured his egg batter down the sink. He put his sketchbook and his pencils and charcoals in a battered leather bag and slung it over his shoulder. He decided to walk to give himself time to think.
    His grandfather was right, of course. That grated a bit—the idea that the old man would so confidently eliminate her. It grated just as much, D.C. discovered, as it did when Daniel tossed selections of proper candidates for marriage at his feet.
    He’d damn well make his own choices.
    He certainly wasn’t thinking about Layna in that manner. He just wanted to sketch her face. And since they’d more or less agreed he could come by and do so that day, he might as well get it done.
    She didn’t answer his knock. Vaguely peeved, he shifted his bag and told himself he’d be smarter to walk down to M Street, after all, and do some sketching there. But he could hear the light and liquid notes of a Chopin concerto drifting through the open windows.
    With a shrug, he tried the door, found it unlocked and stepped inside. “Layna?”
    He glanced around, interested, as she hadn’t let him over the threshold the night before. The foyer had polished wood floors and walls the tone of lightly toasted bread. An antique gateleg table held a vase of white tulips.
    Two pencil sketches on the wall caught his eye—street scenes, cleverly done with a fine eye for detail and movement. He moved to the steps, laid a hand on the glossy newel post and called up. He considered going up and searching her out, then decided it was wiser to look through the main floor first.
    She wasn’t in the parlor, with its dignified furnishings, or the book-lined library, which smelled of leather and roses. By the time he’d poked into the sitting room, the dining room and the kitchen, he had a solid grip on her taste and lifestyle.
    Elegant, traditional, tidy—with occasional and surprising touches of splash. A conservative woman who liked beautiful things, preferred classics in furnishings, reading and music, and kept everything in its logical place.
    He saw her through the kitchen window. The postage-stamp patio beyond was outlined with flowers. Layna was underplanting more white tulips with sunny-faced yellow pansies.
    She wore buff-colored garden gloves, a wide-brimmed straw hat and a brown gardening apron over simple beige slacks and a thin summer sweater.
    She looked, he thought, like a picture in some country style magazine article on the proper attire for casual morning gardening. Competent elegance.
    The light was good, D.C. determined, filtering nicely through branches just starting to green with new leaves. He stood where he was and did three quick sketches.
    It amused and intrigued him how precisely she worked. Turn the earth with the spade, mix in fertilizer, carefully tap out the plant, place it exactly in the center of the prepared hole, gently fill in the hole, tamp.
    She was lining them up like little soldiers.
    He was grinning when he stepped outside.
    Because all her concentration had been focused on making a success of her first attempt at gardening, the sound of the screen door slamming was like a bullet in the heart. The spade went one way, the pansies another as she jerked up and spun.
    “Startled you, sorry.”
    “What? How did you get out here?” She had a fist pressed against her racing heart as she stared at him.
    “I walked through the house. You didn’t answer the door.”
    He set his bag on the wrought-iron