A Million Different Ways (A Horn Novel Book 1)

by Dangelico, P.

  I stripped the beds and dressed them in luxurious Pratesi thousand thread count sheets, making sure that the intricate scroll embroidered at the edges faced up. I aired out the quilted coverlet and fluffed the pillows, smoothed the edges of the shams as sharp as a knife blade. I coaxed a reluctant shine from the antique dressers, washed and waxed wood floors, and dusted every flat surface until a sweat stain ringed the armpit of my uniform. I was on a tall ladder, working on a faint streak on the floor to ceiling window, when I noticed Mrs. Arnaud standing in the doorway.

  She looked around with a satisfied smile on her face. “Vera, it’s eight. You have missed déjeuner and diner.”

  I wiped away the loose sweaty hair sticking to my neck. “I have a bit more to do, madame.”

  “These rooms have not been this clean and tidy since the estate was built in 1872,” she said, a twitch of amusement on her lips. “We want our guests to be comfortable, although not enough to extend their stay. Come to the kitchen and eat.”

  “I can prepare something myself. I don’t mind.”

  “Silence, silence…allons-y,” she insisted, waving my reluctance away with her hand. And together we made our way to the kitchen.

  I sat at the long counter in front of the La Cornue stove running the length of the wall. Completely engrossed, I watched as she placed the delicate handmade bowtie pasta in a dish, mixed in the broccoli rape, and drizzled it with olive oil. Somehow I managed to curb my impulse to dive head first into it. No small achievement, considering my raging appetite. My stomach had grown fond of having real food again.

  We drifted into a comfortable silence while she watched me eat. Her pudgy elbows rested on the counter, her amiable face cradled in her hands. “Have you had this before?” she asked, twirling her finger at the pasta.

  “Oui, madame,” I answered between bites. “In Italy, I worked for a family that owned a restaurant and it’s a popular dish there.”

  “But you are not Italienne?”

  “No madame, Albanian…though I lived there for six years.”

  Her examining glance made me uneasy. I didn’t want to lie to this kind woman who had essentially rescued me. “How did you like Italie?” She sat on the stool across from me, and nudged over the plate with sliced heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cheese.

  “I loved it. The Italians made me feel welcome, and there’s a large Albanian community living there. The family gave me housing while I worked in the kitchen.”

  “Vraiment?” She sat up straighter, an alert look on her face. “Then maybe you can assist me in the kitchen as well. Mr. Horn refuses to hire another chef.”

  “But you cook so well.”

  “Cook, oui, but I am no chef. Delacroix was let go four years ago, when Mr. Horn took possession of the estate.”

  “Where did Mr. Horn live before?” The question tumbled out of my mouth inadvertently. My hand abruptly stilled from cutting into the mozzarella when I realized I had spoken out loud. I needed to do a better job controlling my curious nature.

  “Texas.” She emphasized the word in her heavy French accent. “You know, where the cowboys come from.” I pressed a brief smile back down. “He came back to Geneva five years ago. He has an apartment in town.” As I stood at the sink to wash my empty dishes, she continued, “I should warn you, Vera. Mr. Horn is a bit temperamental. He’s not mean or spiteful but he’s endured too much in the last five years. He’s still suffering, and I don’t want you to think less of him if he behaves a bit…harshly. It’s nothing personal.”

  I didn’t bother telling her that I had already taken it personally. “I understand. Thank you so much Mrs. Arnaud…for everything.”

  She didn’t respond, although her face revealed a warm understanding. Who knows what would’ve become of me without her mercy.

  “Mrs. Arnaud.”

  “Oui?”

  “Where does Mr. Arnaud live?”

  “I don’t know, chérie. He left for a beer thirty years ago and never returned.”

  “Oh…I’m…I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not,” she replied, a strange twinkle in her eye.

  “Good night, then.”

  “Bon soir.”

  Chapter Four

  I craved tedium, anything that resembled monotony. For the first time in years my days fell into a comfortably predictable routine, absent of worry. In Milan, living and working with the Argentis had been an existence governed by high drama, every day an exercise in patience.

  I dreaded going home after my university classes knowing I would be subjected to hours of Mr. Argenti’s incessant complaining about the lousy economy. Pending doom––his favorite topic. If you paid attention to anything he said you would think we were in the middle of the great famine of 1315. My ears ached from the complaints, and my knees were scraped from praying for clients to fill tables. Most of the time we managed. On the nights we didn’t though, the complaints escalated to cataclysmic proportions. The whole staff lived on pins and needles, drowning themselves in chamomile tea just to be able to sleep at night.

  I awoke with a surplus of enthusiasm, happiness lingering on its smooth edges. My day only got better when I was assigned the dusting of the library. Even with the unholy temptation of thousands of rare books, I managed to be done by early afternoon. I went to the kitchen, to inform Mrs. Arnaud that I still had time to do another room, and found her fiddling with the blender. She repeatedly jammed different buttons with her chubby fingers, unable to get it to churn the ambiguous contents in the glass pitcher.

  “Merde!” she shouted. My muffled giggle drew her attention. “Oh, Vera, can you please see if you can get this blender to work. I’m annoyed beyond annoyed, and Mr. Horn is waiting for his frappe.”

  I took the pitcher off the base and discovered the connection to the outlet had come loose. Exasperated, Mrs. Arnaud threw her hands up in the air.

  “Mon Dieu!”

  Once blended, she poured the suspect liquid into a tall, chilled glass. “Hurry to the salle gymnastique and give this to him.”

  Me?! Didn’t Mr. Bentifourt do that sort of thing? Isn’t that what butlers are for? My knees locked, unable to move. I wasn’t ready to face him again––although it had been dark that evening, I thought. With any luck, I figured he would either not recognize me or had forgotten altogether. Determined to not let my emotions get the better of me, I placed the drink on a tray and proceeded to the gym. Having seen it during Charlotte’s grand tour, it could only be described as a faithful imitation of a medieval torture chamber, filled with strange machines and eerie looking straps hanging from the ceiling.

  The closer I got, the clearer a woman’s voice, speaking intimately, became. “Oui, like that…yes…yes…one more time.” The thought of possibly interrupting his afternoon tryst made me sick to my stomach. My footsteps turned reticent, slowing to a crawl. When I finally reached the gym, I found the door wide open and forced myself to step into the doorway.

  A woman dressed in skintight shorts and a tank top stood with her back to me. Her raven hair was scraped back in a high ponytail, her skin was bronzed, and her muscles flexed and hardened every time she moved. Her attention was focused entirely on the large, male figure before her.

  Then she stepped aside.

  He was suspended in mid-air, hanging from the straps on the ceiling, while I stood paralyzed in the doorway and admired him as openly as I would a piece of fine art in a museum. Or the statue of David I had seen in Florence…only better, bigger––definitely certain parts of him seemed to be. His face was tight in concentration. Not even the hardness of his expression could diminish the flawlessness of his masculine beauty. With sweat trickling down the suntanned skin of his bare chest, he lowered his body by slow inches, balancing only on his arms. Strained by the effort, those arms were bulging and rigid, trembling slightly.

  There wasn’t a hint of youth or softness anywhere on him, clearly scraped off by the sharp edges of life. The remains of those experiences were as
evident from a distance as a neon sign blinking Danger here! Proceed at your own risk! As I watched him in a state of hyperawareness, something clicked into place. An insight. The truth of it absolute.

  This man lived behind an impenetrable fortress. He had locked himself up and thrown away the key. His body was still among the living, but his mind had checked out.

  The woman placed her hands on him. One on his corrugated abdomen, the other on his lower back. I couldn’t tell if she was steadying or fondling him. Not that I blamed her––that six pack begged to be touched. She just needed to do a better job pretending she wasn’t doing it for her sake.

  My gaze traveled to the dusting of hair that disappeared under the black pants barely hanging on his hipbones. The end of his tan line was visible, marking the dip between bone and muscle. And then the oddest thing happened. An image flashed before my eyes…my lips…on that bare patch of skin disappearing under his pants. A scalding heat swiftly rose up my neck, followed almost immediately by a mist of sweat collecting above my lips. I wiped it away with the back of my hand and bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste a faint trace of blood.

  He suddenly looked up and a spark of recognition entered his eyes. So much for him not remembering that evening. Then his lids dropped to half-mast and his mouth turned sullen. Imprisoned in his intense gaze, my skin began to itch with an awareness that something unpleasant was coming.

  He let himself down gracefully, careful to land on his good leg. The woman’s eyes followed his and revealed a face as striking as the rest of her. Her wide, full mouth turned pouty when she saw me.

  “I think that’s good enough for today, Yvette.” His voice was low and measured, his attention never wavering from me.

  “Bien sûr, same time tomorrow?” Her expression managed to look both coy and adoring. I wanted to roll my eyes, though wisely refrained.

  “No…let’s do it next week,” he answered while he motioned me forward with a flick of his arrogant index finger.

  I took a deep breath, fixed my gaze on a point over his shoulder, and walked over to him. I could feel him examining me as he took the glass from the tray. I turned to leave when he stopped me again with that finger.

  “Stay.” Stay?

  He casually stepped closer to me, and it took everything I had not to take a giant step back. Every nerve ending in my body was on high alert. The size of him this up close and personal was overwhelming. The scent of him, expensive soap and clean male sweat, affected my body in ways my intellect couldn’t even begin to understand.

  The woman’s gaze skipped back and forth between us. She was waiting for privacy, wanted the rude creature to herself. And I would have been more than happy to oblige her, but he wouldn’t dismiss me. Instead, he took small sips of his putrid green drink and waited patiently for her to collect her gym bag. Her shoulders sagged as she walked towards the door.

  “See you next week, Yvette.”

  I thought I heard amusement in his voice and glanced up, though I couldn’t have been more wrong. His face was unnaturally still, not even a blink to prove that he was in fact human. Yvette grumbled her goodbye in French. As she walked out, a desperate urge to beg her to stay came over me.

  The second she disappeared the air between us grew thin, as if I was suddenly standing in high altitude, laboring for every breath. His heavy stare was all over me while he drank his witch’s brew and dried the sweat off his chest with a small, white towel. Crawling through a pit of vipers would have been less unnerving. He was toying with me and we both knew it.

  “Will there be anything else, sir?” I asked in my most condescending Miss Albright accent. Dear Miss Albright. I distinctly remember as a child wishing a tornado would take her away after seeing the Wizard of Oz for the first time. Now I couldn’t be more grateful for all the relentless grammar and diction lessons she drilled into me.

  He blinked at first, a touch of surprise in his expression. Then his eyes narrowed. “No.”

  I should cut off my tongue. I turned to leave.

  “Actually, there is something.” The chill in his voice stopped me dead in my tracks. I don’t know how I managed to remain composed as I faced him. It felt like a heavy metal band was playing a concert inside my chest.

  “Have you been crawling around my house, in the middle of the night?” Adding in a velvet soft voice, “Like a thief.”

  He may as well have lit a bonfire under my feet because my entire body instantly went up in flames. It took a minute for me to remember how to make my throat work again. “No, sir.”

  “Good,” he replied, then he turned his back to me like I ceased to exist.

  My nerves were so fried afterwards that my teeth chattered all the way back to the kitchen.

  * * *

  The first few days I lived in a gastronomic fog, indulging in all the food I could stuff into my tiny stomach. The Scottish salmon fillet was cooked to perfection. I licked the sauce Veloute off my thumb and caught Giovanni, one of the gardeners, watching me. He quickly diverted his gaze as a stain of embarrassment spread on his cheeks. Across from me, Mrs. Arnaud prepared a dinner tray for François, a part time driver and full time caretaker of Mr. Horn’s fleet of expensive cars. There was a weary tightness around her eyes.

  “Mrs. Arnaud, let me do that please. You must be exhausted.”

  “Thank you, chérie.”

  Outside, a cool wind caressed my skin. A blade of orange, the remains of daylight, cut the horizon in two while the edge of the sky dissolved into darkness. François was often busy tending to the cars around dinner time so we took turns bringing him his food. He was drying a black Mercedes SUV when he spotted me crossing the gravel driveway.

  In his late thirties, he wasn’t by any means classically handsome. But there was a devilish sparkle in his hazel eyes, evidence of a wicked sense of humor and an easygoing personality, which made him attractive. He was medium height and cycling fit. I had seen him ride off a couple of times at dawn; his determined body bent over the handlebars, his legs pumping furiously beneath him.

  He straightened and his warm eyes flickered over me, never staying in one place for more than an impersonal study. An inviting smile tipped up the corners of his mouth. After wiping his hands clean, he walked towards me. “Merci, mademoiselle.” His French accent was smooth and soft. As he took the tray from me, our fingers tangled. A quick flash of heat appeared in his eyes, and his smile widened just a touch. Normally that would’ve made my pulse hum nervously. And yet something about him felt safe, unthreatening.

  “You’re welcome. I hope I brought enough.”

  He was working up to something. I could read it in his lively expression, in the way he impatiently ran a hand through his wavy brown hair. He was nervous. “Would you care to join me in a glass of wine?”

  I was considering how to gently decline when the bright xenon headlights of a sleek, black sports car came around the corner of the house, straight towards us. It pulled up next to the Mercedes and the purring of the engine cut off. Spontaneously, my whole body went rigid. Much like what happens to a gazelle on the plains of the Serengeti when it realizes it’s too late to run from the salivating lion crouching only a foot away.

  He stepped out of the car and gracefully unfolded his body until he stood tall. The impeccable fit of his bespoke, grey three-piece suit outlined the extraordinary width of his shoulders, his French blue shirt accenting his golden skin. His tie had been discarded and the top buttons of his shirt were undone.

  My eyes fell on the exposed skin at the base of his throat, and a film of sweat broke out on the back of my neck. Having this reaction to him of all people was an unbearable annoyance––not to mention, a serious inconvenience.

  Placing his forearm on the roof of the car, he rapped two knuckles while his alert eyes skipped from François, to me. Some obscure, dark emotion crossed his face. I had no idea what it meant. Then again, everything about this man was a total mystery to me.

  The atmosphere
suddenly turned frosty, underscored with hostility. When his piercing gaze returned to me, it was hard and filled with contempt. A deep flush surged up from his collar, and my mouth went immediately dry. It felt like he had just caught me stealing the family jewels.

  Francois greeted him but he didn’t respond. He continued to stare at me completely indifferent to the fact that this farce was being played out in front of an audience. And for a moment, it was just the two of us––all else seemed to fade away. Until he slammed the door shut with enough force to make me flinch.

  Talk about anger management––he was a perfect candidate for mood altering drugs.

  With awkwardness I was certain I shouldn’t be feeling, I turned to François and mumbled my goodbye. He accepted, looking as perplexed by Horn’s behavior as I was, then, bless his gallant soul, he stepped in between the car and me. I wasn’t about to stick around for another life threatening glare so I turned on my heels and marched back to the house.

  As I reached the kitchen door, I heard gravel crunching under footsteps, right behind me. My self-control took a nosedive, decreasing with every step drawing closer. I turned the doorknob in the wrong direction and tugged it hard enough to rattle the glass above it. He stopped disturbingly close. The man was a furnace. With my hair pulled back in a tight bun, I felt the heat radiating from him on the back of my neck––or maybe it was his anger.

  “Step aside.”

  The vestibule wasn’t made for two people to fit comfortably. I almost tripped in my haste to move out of his way. Careful not to touch him in any way, I plastered myself up against the wall while his large hand gripped the doorknob and paused for an amount of time too long to be insignificant. When I looked up, I found him focused straight ahead, his brows pinched, his mouth set in a grim line. “I advise you not to get overly friendly with the other members of the staff. They might get the wrong idea about you.”

  Huh? His wooden tone confused me. It took me a while to realize he had just impugned my honor. My eyes snapped up to meet his, blazing with righteous indignation. How dare he! This man knew absolutely nothing about me. I had lived the life of a veritable monk these past six years. If I hadn’t been so appalled, I would have laughed at the irony of it. Humiliation burned my cheeks as soft, angry words pushed up my throat. “I brought him his dinner.”