“It is not my fault you lost your job,” he told her bluntly. “And I like my life as it is. I want no part of you here. Tell my grandmother you won’t take the job.”
“I like your grandmother,” she said curtly. “She’s just like my mother, crusty and unflappable and impossible to fool. I’ll take care of her.”
He stared harder. “In return for what?” he asked, narrowed eyes telling her everything he wasn’t saying.
“How often is she taken advantage of?” she asked instead.
“Her heart is as big as the world,” he said. “She likes strays.”
“I am not a stray. I have owners.”
“Go home.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d have to marry Henry!” she burst out. “If he’d still have me after he saw a copy of this morning’s paper. My reputation will be in shreds.”
“Why not marry Henry?” He frowned.
“Because the most exciting thing he ever said to me was, ‘Amy, your nose has a crook in it.’”
His eyebrows lifted. “Not a passionate man.”
“No.”
His dark eyes roamed over her neat suit. “Are you a passionate woman?”
“That’s something you’ll never need to know. I am going to work for your grandmother, not get involved with you,” she told him firmly.
One corner of his disciplined mouth turned up. “She likes you. She’ll spend her days throwing you at my head and her nights finding more ways to get us married.”
“You’re safe,” she told him, turning toward her old Ford. “I don’t like older men.”
“Forty is not old,” he said shortly.
“At twenty-eight, it is old,” she returned, facing him squarely. “I want somebody to play with.”
He started laughing, and only then did she realize how he’d interpreted what she said. Her face flamed.
“Baseball!” she burst out. “Tennis and swimming and jogging, not…not…that!”
He laughed harder. She didn’t say another word. She crawled into her car and managed with the greatest of difficulty to get it turned around and headed out of the yard. He was still standing there laughing when she drove away.
Four
Amelia showed up for work the next morning at eight-thirty sharp, wearing a sedate gray ensemble that made her pale blue eyes look slate-gray to match it. The skirt and knit blouse were worn with a trendy little short-sleeved cotton jacket, and she put her hair in a neat bun. She wasn’t giving Wentworth Carson any cause for complaint with the way she dressed.
When she pulled up in front of the house, a short, elderly yardman motioned her to move the car down to the garage. She cranked the engine again, with difficulty. The old yellow Ford had a habit of refusing to turn on again after the engine got hot. It was one of those ghostly problems that several mechanics hadn’t been able to solve, so she lived with it. But today it did crank, eventually, and she pulled it with a clank and a clatter down to the elegant, spacious garage where Wentworth’s Rolls and a Mercedes were parked.
It made her feel odd, parking between two such luxurious vehicles, and she was half afraid that she might accidentally scratch one of them. But it was obvious that Wentworth didn’t want her pitiful old wreck parked in front of his house. And that irritated her no end. Snob, she thought angrily.
She’d worked herself into a fever of resentment by the time she got to the front door. Well, he needn’t think she was going to skulk up the back stairs like a servant. She was as good as he was, any day!
The maid opened the door for her with a smile. “Come in, please. Mrs. Carson is still asleep, but Mr. Worth said you’re to have breakfast with him in the dining room. Follow me, please.”
Breakfast with Worth, she thought, how lucky could a working girl get?
He was sitting at the head of the table with a cup of coffee and a pile of toast at his elbow. He glanced up when she came into the room, his eyes dark and steady and expressionless.
“What a treat,” he taunted. “Breakfast with the terror of the Egyptian tombs.”
“I am not a mummy,” she countered. “And I don’t want breakfast.”
“Yes, it’s patently obvious that you rarely eat,” he commented, glancing at her. “But if you work here, you’ll need to. You see,” he added, leaning back with a disgustingly confident smile on his tanned face, “my grandmother and I have an arrangement about you.”
This sounded unpleasant. She sat down gingerly and eyed him suspiciously. “You have?”
“Yes. I don’t have a private secretary. And since you’ll be here all day, every day—” he made it sound like a waking curse “—and since grandmother will need you for only a few hours a day, we’ve decided to share you.”
Her skin chilled. “I don’t want to be shared.”
“But then, it isn’t your choice,” he reminded her. “You can always go home and marry Henry,” he suggested mildly.
She shuddered delicately. “Even working for you wouldn’t be that bad.”
“Should I be flattered?” he murmured dryly. He lifted his head, craggy features relaxing a little as he studied her face. “It must take layers of makeup,” he said absently.
He surprised her. “What?” she stammered.
“Your complexion,” he explained. “It’s much too perfect to be natural.”
“I use soap,” she said curtly. “Nothing else, not even powder. I don’t like artificial things.”
“Neither do I,” he returned. His tanned fingers toyed with a spoon in his coffee. He was wearing a blue jacket with a white shirt and a speckled tie, and he looked every inch a business magnate. But the muscles under that jacket were formidable, and they rippled with every movement he made. His hair seemed even darker under the light, neat and clean, and there was a faint darkness where he shaved, as if he needed to shave often. His mouth fascinated her. She kept remembering how it felt on hers, how expert it had been. He was the kind of man who could have had any woman he wanted, and she was secretly glad that her powers of resistance weren’t going to be tested by him. She would have been defenseless in any kind of confrontation, and she wouldn’t have the sophistication to hold him. He could have broken her heart, and she was delighted that he wasn’t going to try.
“She’s very fragile,” she ventured as she poured coffee from the carafe into a delicate china cup and added cream.
“What?”
“Your grandmother,” she returned. “How did she break her hip?”
“Trying to learn how to break dance.”
Amelia had just taken a mouthful of coffee and almost strangled on it. She gaped at him.
“That’s right,” he said calmly. He sipped his own coffee. “She had videotapes of the steps, and she was trying to do a spin. She was too close to the fireplace. She went down on the stone hearth.”
“But she’s seventy-five!” she exclaimed.
“She likes hard rock,” he continued. “She enjoys very racy movies, she flirts outrageously with men, she can outdrink me when she likes and you’ll get an education in the art of self-expression if you’re ever in the vicinity when she loses her temper.”
She was only just getting her breath back. “An exceptional lady,” she said.
“Quite. But she has an unusually soft heart, and I don’t want her hurt,” he added, with a level, hard gaze. “I don’t know you. But I will. And if I find out anything that doesn’t jibe with what information you’ve given me, I will toss you out on your ear.”
She met his hard gaze levelly, eyebrows raised. “Well, I did get a parking ticket once,” she confessed.
“Funny girl,” he taunted.
“My mama says that laughing beats crying any day,” she returned with a vacant smile.
“Laugh while you can,” he said pleasantly. He finished his coffee. “Are you through? I’d like to get started.”
She blinked. “Started doing what?”
“Working, o
f course. I’m going out in the field today, to inspect a potential building site. You’ll come along and take notes.”
“But…but, Mrs. Carson…?”
He got to his feet, towering over her. “Grandmother won’t be up for hours yet. She watched movies until four in the morning.”
“But she said to be here at eight-thirty,” she protested.
“I told you she’d be trying her hand at matchmaking,” he reminded her.
She looked him up and down and tried to manage a disparaging expression. “Well, I’m really sorry, Wentworth, but you aren’t my type. I don’t like big men.”
He pursed his lips and smiled mischievously. “No?” He reached out a big hand and tugged her gently to her feet. His hands caught her waist and lifted her on a level with his eyes. “There are advantages to being my size. I don’t get argued with much.”
Her hands were on his big shoulders, cold and nervous. And the proximity disturbed her so much that she could feel her heart beating. His eyes were almost black, with very definite whites and black rims around the brown. They were impressive eyes. His nose was impressive, too, despite its size. It had a faintly Roman look, very straight and formidable. His forehead was broad and his mouth was firm and his chin had a dimple in it. She’d never liked dimpled chins, but this one was really sexy.
“Were any of your people Italian?” she asked without meaning to.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” he said. “My grandfather was.”
“You…look Roman.”
His mouth curved a little, making the dimple pronounced. “So they tell me.” His hands contracted, bringing her closer, so that her face was under his, her mouth was under his, so that she could breathe the coffee he’d just swallowed. “Why did you take the job?”
He was really unsettling her. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her lips, the steely strength in the hands that held her off the floor so effortlessly. “I…needed it,” she whispered.
“There are other employers in Chicago,” he reminded her.
“How…far would I get without a recommendation?”
He searched her darkening blue eyes. “Not far,” he said, relenting. “Your eyes looked blue yesterday. Now they’re gray.”
“Are they?”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “Do I make you nervous, Miss Glenn?” he taunted in a voice like velvet. His eyes dropped to her lips.
“Don’t play with me,” she whispered shakily.
“But you said you wanted someone to play with,” he reminded her. “Only yesterday, in fact, as you were driving away in that yellow boxcar you own.”
“It isn’t a boxcar. And I didn’t mean this kind of playing.”
His mouth bent closer to hers as he eased her down to her feet again. “Didn’t you? Most women today play at love.”
“I’m not most women, and I don’t know how to,” she said. She tugged against his hands. “Let me go.”
“Afraid of me?” he chided gently.
She met his dark eyes. “I’m not in your league, Worth. Don’t do this to me. I’m no threat to your grandmother, or to you.”
“I’m not sure about the latter, Amy,” he said quietly, and the sound of her name on his lips had an oddly sweet sound. He bent a little more and brushed his hard mouth softly against hers, a whisper of sensation that tantalized more than satisfied. He lifted his dark, shaggy head, and studied her confused expression.
“Where are we going, and what do you want me to do?” she asked.
He let her go. “To the north side, to see a parcel of land I’m interested in developing. And I want you to take down some ideas and estimates for me. I can’t get the hang of dictating into a tape recorder. I don’t trust the damned things anyway. You can take dictation?” he added with a sharp glance.
“Yes,” she said. “I can. But I don’t have a pad or pen….”
“Come with me.”
She followed him, taking two steps for every one of his, and feeling oddly like a midget beside him. He made her feel wildly feminine. It was a sensation she wasn’t sure she liked.
He led her into a pine-paneled office with a huge oak desk and heavy furniture with leather upholstery. It had a stone fireplace and a thick beige carpet and dark brown curtains. A man’s room. It intimidated her, like its owner.
He jerked open a desk drawer and produced a steno pad and two pencils and handed them to her. She tucked them into her shoulder bag while he watched her with narrowed, speculating eyes. She kept her eyes lowered so that he couldn’t see the confusion he’d caused. She had to remember that he didn’t want her there, and that he might use underhanded means to remove her. If only she didn’t view those means with anticipation as well as fear!
When they got to the garage, he went immediately to the Mercedes and she gave him a quick glance. She’d expected him to get into the Rolls.
“The Rolls belongs to my grandmother,” he told her with a knowing smile as he opened the passenger door of the Mercedes for her. “She likes elegance and style. I prefer subtlety and performance.” As he said it, he gave her own pitifully aging relic a hard glare.
“The yardman told me to put it in here,” she said icily. “I guessed that you wouldn’t want it standing in your front yard. It might shock some of your friends.”
“Most of my friends are dead or out of the country,” he said carelessly, getting in beside her. He cranked the car and reversed it smoothly out of the garage. “I thought you might appreciate having it out of the weather. I don’t give a damn if you park it in front of the mailbox.”
She shifted restlessly. “Sorry.” Her eyes searched his profile, liking the strength of it. It wasn’t the epitome of male beauty, but it was a strong, earthy face, full of complexities. Like the man.
“Are you an only child?” he asked as he drove.
“Yes. Are you?”
He shook his head. “I had a brother, two years younger. He was killed in Vietnam, about half a mile from where I was stationed at Da Nang.”
“I’m sorry.” She stared at the purse in her lap. “It must have been hard on your grandmother, too.”
“She grieved for a long time. Jackie was full of fun. He teased her, brought her flowers. He was always into something exciting. She lived through him.” His chest rose and fell gently. “I was never able to replace him in her eyes. I’m not as uninhibited. I work harder than I play.”
“I can just see you, trying to break dance,” she murmured.
He laughed. “I’d go through the floor,” he said with a dry glance in her direction.
She measured the size of him and silently agreed. “What are you going to build?” she asked.
“At the new site? A condominium.”
“Another one?” she exclaimed. “But Chicago is full of condominiums.”
“Not in this part of town,” he countered. “This one is specifically for elderly residents. A sort of low-cost condo.”
“Don’t tell me you have a soft spot, too?” she teased gently.
He glanced at her as they stopped for a red light. “Only for grandmother. So look out, if you have ideas in that direction. I gave up dreams of a wife and kids a long time ago. I’m not in the market for an over-the-hill virgin.”
Her indrawn breath was audible over traffic. “What makes you think I’d ever be interested in you, Mount Everest!”
“You like kissing me,” he said carelessly, and had the audacity to grin.
“I like popcorn, too, so what?” she demanded.
His dark eyes skimmed over her body before he moved into the throng of early-morning traffic again. “So you’re curious. Maybe I am, too.”
“About what?” she had to ask.
His mouth curved. “Sex.”
She turned her gaze out the window at the skyscrapers and city traffic and blaring horns. “I imagine you’ve already forgotten everything I’ll learn for the rest of my life.”
“I was a rounder in my youth,” he admitted. �
�And once or twice, things got serious. But I had great instincts for self-preservation.”
There was an odd note in his deep, gravelly voice, and she turned her head in time to catch the tautening of his jaw. “And someone hurt you, really badly,” she said without thinking.
The black scowl would have intimidated her if they hadn’t been moving. “Has grandmother been talking to you?” he demanded.
“Not about your private life, no,” she returned. Her eyes fell to her lap. “I almost got engaged once. He was a nice guy. Very flashy, good family, old money.” She smiled bitterly. “We got on like a house on fire. I would have done anything for him. First love and all that. He was proper about it, though, he wanted to marry me, not seduce me. So he took me home to mother. I was nineteen and in my second year of college.” She stretched and studied the couple in a cab across from them as he made a turn.
“Obviously you didn’t marry him,” he said, breaking the silence.
“His mother was horrified. I was a little country girl from Georgia, and I looked it. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that after a week at his home, suffering his mother’s contempt and getting a look at his way of life, I broke the engagement myself and came home. I quit college. I couldn’t bear the memories. It took me a long time to get over it.”
“He was a mama’s boy, I gather.”
She nodded. “I heard later that he married the heiress to a cosmetic company. A nice little merger.”
“Too bad it didn’t work out.”
“On the contrary,” she said. “I was lucky. He drank like a fish and did everything his mother told him. Retrospect is a wonderful thing. I’d have had a horrendous life. After the newness had worn off, I’d have died of neglect. He wasn’t even much as a would-be lover,” she added with a shy laugh. “He grabbed.”
“Men can be taught,” he said with a sideways glance. “None of us know without being told what pleases a woman. Despite the fiction that says we should.”
“I’d never be able to do that,” she said. Her long legs crossed as she shifted to face him. It was uncanny how easy he was to talk to. She might have known him all her life.
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