Everlasting Love

Chapter 1 of "Connecting Rooms" by Jayne Ann KrentzinEverlasting Love No one ever said that the devil couldn't have a rose garden, Amy Comfort thought. It just seemed a trifle out of character. On the other hand, the rose garden of the old Draycott place was no ordinary one. And Owen Sweet, Amy had decided, was no ordinary gardener."Are you, or are you not, a private investigator?" Amy demanded."Depends --" Owen Sweet answered. With the lethal precision of a fencer, he used a pair of garden shears on a clotted mass of evil-looking vines."What does it depend on?""On whether or not I feel like working at it." Owen took hold of the severed vines with heavily gloved hands. He ripped the old vegetation away from the window with a single, powerful motion. "I'm a little busy at the moment.""Yes, I can see that."Owen took no notice of her sarcasm. He seized another tangle of vines and dispatched them with ease.Amy watched, morosely fascinated. She couldn't help it. She liked watching Owen Sweet.The vegetation he was attacking with such diligence had grown so thickly over the windows of the old house that it had effectively blocked all sunlight from reaching some of the rooms.Not that sunlight was a common commodity here on Misplaced Island, Amy thought. The forgotten little patch of land located off the coast of Washington sat squarely in the middle of a rain shadow. A perpetual mist shrouded the island on good days. Dense rain poured down the rest of the time.The local joke was that the island had earned its name when its original discoverer had temporarily misplaced it in the fog. Whatever the truth of that story, there was no doubt but that one had to be determined to find Misplaced Island.And, Amy thought, one had to have either a powerful motivation or an extremely odd sense of whimsy to make one's home here. She wondered which of those two possibilities applied to Owen Sweet."Owen, this garden went wild years ago, just like the house." Amy was growing increasingly exasperated. Time was running out, and she needed Owen Sweet. "It can wait a few more days before you tame it."Owen paused briefly to look at her. His sea-green eyes gleamed in the misty gray light. "I'm in the mood to do it now."Sweetwas definitely a misnomer, Amy reflected, not for the first time. As far as she had been able to discern, Owen was anything but sweet, in either nature or temperament. She suspected he was yet another result of a baby having been switched at birth. Happened all the time, they said. Amy wondered what Sweet's parents had thought when they discovered that they had been given a little green-eyed, black-haired demon to raise.He was proving to be stubborn and thoroughly irritating, but there was something about the man that fascinated Amy. She did not know him very well, even though she had sold him the Draycott place. No one on the island really knew Owen Sweet.He had moved to Misplaced Island two months ago. Amy had met him when he walked into the real estate office she operated out of the parlor of her cliffside cottage. She had been stunned by her reaction to him. Hunger and longing and a singing sense of joyous discovery barely began to describe it.She had tried to squelch the feelings. True, she was a struggling romance novelist on the side, but Amy was far too pragmatic to believe in love at first sight. On the other hand, she trusted her own instincts when it came to people. They had stood her in good stead in the real estate business, and she saw no reason to discount them when dealing with members of the opposite sex. One thing was for certain. Those instincts had never reacted with such overwhelming intensity to any of the handful of men she had dated.Owen had appeared oblivious of her carefully concealed response to him. He had announced without preamble that he'd already toured the island on his own and had checked out the availabHoward, Linda is the author of 'Everlasting Love' with ISBN 9780671521509 and ISBN 0671521500.