Corner-Office Courtship

by Victoria Pade

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “You would have been just a little kid, too. No surprise that you weren’t watching the news or that you wouldn’t remember even if you had heard about it. The trip was supposed to be a family vacation for all of the adults. But H.J.—my great-grandfather—hurt his back a couple of days before they were all going to leave. He couldn’t make it and GiGi volunteered to stay home and take care of him. If that hadn’t happened, everyone would have died and all ten of us would have been orphaned. As it was, with only GiGi and H.J. left, GiGi had us all move in with them.”

  “Your great-grandfather lived here, too?” Nati asked as she studied Cade’s profile, committing to memory every angle of that perfect, masculine bone structure.

  “H.J. had moved in with my grandparents after he retired and had a heart attack. Between GiGi and H.J.—and Margaret and Louie—they raised all ten of us. Although it was GiGi who was boss.”

  “You say that like she was a stern taskmaster,” Nati said.

  “Oh, GiGi was the worst!” he claimed with another of those loving laughs she’d heard from him earlier, and Nati was glad to see any remnants of sad memories disappear.

  Still, she rolled her eyes and repeated facetiously, “The worst? Uh-huh. What does that mean? That she made you share a nanny instead of having your own?”

  “There were nannies before the plane crash, when we lived in our separate homes with our own parents—one for the four of us, one for my six cousins. But when we all came here? GiGi didn’t believe in nannies. People should raise their own kids—that’s what she said.”

  “So she took on ten of you without any nannies at all?”

  “GiGi could have taken on twenty of us,” he said with yet another laugh, this one full of respect and admiration, and Nati got lost for a moment in the lines and creases that animated his face.

  Dragging herself out of that split second of reverie, she said, “Of course there was the help of Margaret and Louie—are they household staff?”

  “That was how they started out years and years ago, but they’ve long since become family. They were as much the bosses of us as GiGi and H.J. were.”

  “And they didn’t wait on you?” Nati asked skeptically.

  “Oh, no. We were responsible for cleaning up after ourselves. The ten of us shared three rooms. We changed the sheets on our own beds, we put away our own laundry, cleaned our own bathrooms, and if we left anything laying around down here, it disappeared forever, no matter how important it was. GiGi raised us the way she was raised and that was all there was to it.”

  “And you were ten little chefs, too?” Nati asked.

  “We were. Meals around here were a very big deal,” he assured her. “GiGi and Margaret made breakfast and sometimes lunch. We all ate together—”

  “Margaret and Louie, too?”

  “Sure. I told you, Margaret and Louie are family.”

  The Pirfoys would be appalled....

  “But dinnertime,” Cade continued, “was a time for Margaret and Louie to be alone and for the ten of us and GiGi to meet here in this kitchen every single day to fix dinner. Then we sat down at that table over there—” he pointed to a breakfast nook large enough to seat a football team “—and we ate as a family. GiGi said it was like a farmhouse kitchen. All of us were here, every night, unless someone had a good excuse and GiGi’s permission to be somewhere else. We all did the cleanup, too. We still have Sunday dinner here every week, in the formal dining room. Now we don’t have to make the meal ourselves. We do have to bring a dish, though....”

  “The Camden family formal Sunday dinner is potluck?”

  “GiGi does the main course and a few other things if the mood strikes her,” he confirmed. “But we’re responsible for the rest. We don’t have to cook the dish ourselves, we can get takeout. Most of us will bring something from one of our favorite restaurants. But yeah, I guess you could say Sunday dinners are sort of potluck.”

  He closed both the food containers and returned the main one to the refrigerator, turning his back to Nati.

  Whose eyes devoured the sight of his broad shoulders. Of his narrow waist. Of that delicious-looking derriere.

  Until she yanked them away and said, “The Camdens were raised on farmhouse dinners and potluck—who would have thought that!”

  “Has your grandfather ever taken you to his hometown?” Cade asked.

  “Northbridge? No, actually I’ve never been to Montana at all.”

  “Well, it’s a small town through and through. And GiGi always says that you can take the girl out of the small town, but you can’t take the small town out of the girl. So we might have lived right here in the heart of Denver—”

  “In a mansion,” Nati pointed out.

  “But we were raised like small-town kids with small-town rules and values. We were taught to take care of each other, of our own, to keep a united front, and to do what was right. GiGi insisted—insists—that every one of us always, always do what’s right....”

  Nati didn’t comment on that. On its face it sounded good. But she’d had her own experience with people who closed ranks and protected themselves and their own assets above all else, and she recognized that what Cade had just said could boil down to that. In fact she thought it was likely. And that kind of a united front could be formidable. Formidable and definitely something she didn’t want to have to deal with.

  Which was why she took a deep breath and said, “Now that you have your shepherd’s pie I really should get going...”

  Cade raised the container. “I took enough for two... Last chance—you can follow me home and still have dinner...”

  “Can’t,” she said glibly before she was any more tempted to accept the offer she so wanted to accept.

  “Okay, your loss...” he responded just as glibly.

  But Nati thought that there might have been a little disappointment to the resigned smile on those supple-looking lips.

  Then he sighed, shrugged in defeat and said, “I guess we better go then.”

  “I don’t know the way so I’ll follow you.”

  Container in hand, Cade ushered her out of the kitchen through a doorway that put them in the entry hall directly opposite the front door behind the sweeping staircase.

  After letting them both out, he made sure the door was locked then pushed a button on something attached to his key ring and apparently activated an alarm system before he walked Nati to the driver’s-side door of her car.

  “So what are you bringing to Sunday dinner tomorrow?” she asked as she unlocked her door. She had to jiggle it a little before it finally opened.

  “Loaves of bread from an Italian restaurant and bakery I found on the way home from your shop, actually. Want to come?”

  That surprised Nati so much she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. Or maybe she’d misunderstood him and he hadn’t just invited her to the Camden’s Sunday dinner.

  Except then he said, “We’re all free to bring anyone we’d like to Sunday dinners. What do you say? Want to meet the whole crew?”

  Why was that tempting, too?

  Curiosity, Nati decided.

  Plus it would mean she’d get to see him.

  “No, thanks,” she said quickly so she wouldn’t accidentally give in to either her curiosity or the yen to be with him. “I’m cooking for my grandfather tomorrow night. But I’ll be back at work on your wall on Monday. My friend Holly is watching both shops until three when I’ll need to relieve her, but until then I’ll be doing the first coat of your paint.”

  “Okay.”

  Nati told herself she was imagining things, but for a moment they merely stood there in the lee of her open car door—her looking up into his handsome face, him gazing down at her through those amazing blue eyes—and it was
as if she were waiting for him to kiss her good-night.

  Which was totally insane, she told herself.

  But that didn’t stop her from wondering what it might be like if he did just come in a little closer, bend down and press his lips to hers...

  No, it was insane, she told herself. There was not going to be any kissing between her and Cade Camden. Not now, not ever. Not for any reason. Never.

  She finally did break the bonds of that glance and get into her car, reaching for the armrest to close the door.

  But Cade was in the way. He leaned on the doorframe, studying her. Looking for all the world as if he might not want her to go.

  But that was even more insane.

  When he finally stepped out of the way so she could close her door, she said an offhand, “See you next week,” and pulled it shut.

  “Drive safe,” he called through the window, remaining where he was as if he intended to watch her go before he got into his own car.

  Nati pulled around his sports car where it was parked just ahead of her, circled the fountain and went down the drive to the street, heading for home.

  But not without mentally reading herself the riot act for having even entertained the smallest, briefest thought of kissing Cade Camden.

  And even worse, for feeling the slightest disappointment that he hadn’t kissed her.

  The slightest disappointment that wasn’t really slight at all...

  Chapter Four

  “I’m glad you went and had a good time,” Nati said to her grandfather as they discussed his Vegas trip over a spaghetti dinner the next night.

  She cut them each a piece of the cake she’d baked, brought the plate to the kitchen table where she’d eaten more meals in her life than she could count, and then ventured tentatively into the subject she was dreading.

  “I have something I need to tell you that I’m not sure you’re going to like.”

  “It isn’t that you’re going back to Doug, is it?” Jonah Morrison said as if that were the worst thing she could possibly say.

  “No!” Nati answered with her own revulsion at that idea. “I would never go back to Doug, or Philadelphia, or any of that. I’m here to stay—so don’t go looking for some merry widow to move into my place downstairs,” she joked.

  “No merry widows for me!” Jonah joked in return.

  He wasn’t a tall man—barely five feet eight—but he was solidly built and still handsome with his shock of thick white hair. In the local senior community he was in high demand by the ladies, so the merry widow jokes were common between them.

  “What’s going on?” he asked in a more serious tone.

  “I’ve contracted some work with two of the Camdens,” Nati said without beating around the bush, deciding it was best to just get to the point.

  Her grandfather frowned a little. “Doing...”

  “I’m texturing a wall for Cade Camden—he’s one of the grandchildren but I don’t know where he is in the mix, apparently there are—”

  “Ten of them.”

  So Jonah had kept track.

  Nati didn’t say anything to that. She merely went on. “And now I’m also going to redo a design on an antique hope chest for Cade’s grandmother....”

  “Georgianna?”

  “I actually met her yesterday...”

  “How is she?” Jonah asked without any hint of animosity in his voice.

  “Good, I think. She looks good. We didn’t really talk about her health but she seems robust. She said to tell you hello.”

  “She always was a good gal.”

  Of all the reactions Nati had anticipated, this wasn’t one of them. She hadn’t expected her grandfather to act as if he were merely hearing about an old acquaintance.

  “But she’s a Camden,” Nati reminded him, wondering if her grandfather had somehow lost sight of that.

  “I take some of the blame for that—for her being a Camden,” Jonah said, surprising Nati.

  “Why would you be to blame for that?” she asked.

  “Oh, you know, Nati, I was a young buck back when I knew her. I loved Georgianna, she was something special. But we were just getting out of high school and she wanted to get married—like most girls then. I was full of myself and feeling my oats and I didn’t want to be tied down. Not at eighteen. Even to her. So I broke up with her.”

  “You did? I never knew that. For some reason, I thought she’d dumped you. For the Camden guy.”

  “No, it was me who did the dumping, as you put it,” he said with a hint of genuine guilt in his tone. “Hank Camden came along later, at the end of the summer. I was already juggling two other girls by then.”

  “I’ve always gotten the impression that H. J. Camden bought the mortgage on your parents’ farm and foreclosed on it to get you out of the way so his son could have Georgianna.”

  The elderly man shrugged. “You got that impression because that’s what my folks thought—and yes, I believe old H.J. was worried that Georgianna was carrying a torch for me. I just don’t know that Georgianna was carrying a torch for me. I do—and did—know that I was no threat to H.J.’s son Hank because I didn’t have any intention of starting up again with Georgianna. I’d ended things with her so I was out of the picture. But there was something H.J. said when he came by the farm just as I was helping my father close it up that made me think twice—”

  The grimace on her grandfather’s lined brow showed more of his guilty feelings.

  “He sort of grumbled as I passed by him with the last of our things—something about how now I’d be out of the way and I’d better stay out of the way. It did make me wonder if the old coot had done what he’d done just to get rid of me.”

  “Would he stoop that low?”

  “H. J. Camden? I wouldn’t put anything past him. He was a ruthless bugger who made enemies of a lot of people. My dad always said that plane crash was meant for him—”

  “The plane crash that killed his son and grandsons and their wives? I just heard about that last night.”

  “Oh, it was all over the news and in the papers when it happened. The crash killed Hank and both of her sons,” Jonah confirmed. “There’s always been the suspicion that there was foul play, that something was done to that plane to cause it to crash. But it was never proven. There wasn’t enough left to prove anything. But what old H.J. did to my folks and me? That was a drop in the bucket compared to what he did to other people. If you think my folks hated the Camdens, you haven’t seen anything!”

  “But you? How do you feel about them? I mean, I’ve never thought that you liked them, but—”

  “I don’t have any fond memories of H.J., that’s for sure—it was a low-down thing he did foreclosing on us. But when it comes to Georgianna? She’s just a Camden by marriage. I’d bet my last nickel that she didn’t know what her father-in-law was up to with our farm. I never held that against her. In a way, it was more my fault than hers, anyway. If I’d have married her, she wouldn’t have gotten together with Hank and the Camdens would have left us alone.”

  “And then you both ended up in Denver,” Nati mused.

  “That’s not so strange. Two of my lodge brothers are from Montana, too, and came here for the same reason my family did—the advantages of a bigger city where there’s still the feel of the West, where there’s still the mountains and pretty much the same weather and like-minded people who don’t think wearing a pair of cowboy boots makes you a hick.”

  “But all these years both you and your old girlfriend have lived in the same city, and you’ve never had any kind of contact?”

  “No,” Jonah said as if the idea were farfetched. “There was no reason we would. It’s not like we ran in the same circles—a housepainter and the mama bear of the high-and-mighty Camdens. The only way we would h
ave ever run into each other is if I’d have been hired to paint her house and I’m sure old H.J. wouldn’t have let that happen. Not that I would have taken the job...”

  “But it’s all right with you that I work for them?” Nati asked.

  “There’s no history between you and them. And their money is as good as anyone else’s,” Jonah said.

  “So you don’t mind?”

  “Honey, after all you’ve done for me, all you did for your gramma, and ending up where you’ve ended up because of it? How could I begrudge you making your living wherever you need to? Just don’t take any guff from any of them.”

  Nati laughed and instantly thought of the warmth of Cade’s smile, the consideration he’d already shown her, how easy it was to be with him. “So far there’s no guff for me to take.”

  “Which one of them did you say you were working for again?”

  “Cade. Georgianna is his grandmother. Apparently all the grandkids call her GiGi.”

  “Well, I hope they all took after her rather than the other side of the family.”

  “I don’t know. I do know that he has her blue eyes.”

  “She did have the most beautiful blue eyes!” Jonah reminisced.

  And just that quick the image of Cade’s eyes, of his entire face popped into Nati’s mind and sent something tingling all through her.

  But all she said was, “So does her grandson.”

  And yet it was enough to cause her grandfather’s brows to arch in surprise before she changed the subject by asking how he liked the cake.

  * * *

  Nati spent Monday morning putting the first coat of paint on Cade’s wall and then returned to her shop for the remainder of the day without crossing paths with the man himself.

  Although she couldn’t shake the disappointment she felt over not getting to see him, she had a firm talk with herself on the drive to her shop about how it was for the best, about how there was absolutely no reason for her to be giving him a second thought.