No Less Than a Lifetime

by Christine Rimmer

  Price just didn’t want to deal with the difficulty of getting along without her. Which was why he had to see to it that she changed her mind about this move.

  The first thing Faith looked for, once she was safely in the music room, on the other side of the sliding library doors, was a place to sit down. A channel-backed wing chair near the grand piano presented itself. She dropped gratefully into it.

  Once seated, she stared blankly out the bay window behind the piano as she waited for her heart to stop pounding so hard and her knees to stop shaking.

  After a few moments of long, deep breaths, she began to feel better.

  It was done now; she had given her notice. There was no going back. Within a month, she would leave Montgomery House—and Price—for good and all.

  Faith knew she’d done the right thing. She’d worked for Price for eleven years. And for the last five of those years, he had owned her heart.

  But Price had no idea of her feelings. He thought of her as an extension of his precious house. It was true that she loved the house almost as much as he did. However, a mutual passion for an imposing pile of brick and stone wasn’t enough for her anymore.

  She had to get out. She had to move on.

  Since her legs felt as if they just might hold her up now, Faith pushed herself from the chair. She glanced at her watch. Twenty-five minutes from now, she had to be in the kitchen, to meet with Balthazar, the cook. They would go over the menus for next week.

  Until then, she decided, she would retire to her rooms and put her feet up. By the time she came down again, her composure would be completely restored.

  “Oh, but she can’t leave us!” Ariel Montgomery cried. Price’s mother lifted a slim hand and smoothed back the shoulder-length white hair that was always falling in her eyes.

  “Price.” Regis, Price’s father, coughed in distress, then shot the cuffs of his velvet house jacket. “Surely you’re joking. We can’t get along without Faith.”

  “I’m not joking,” Price said.

  They were sitting in the living room of his parents’ suite. Price always felt agitated here. His mother had insisted that the suite be completely redone when she and Regis claimed it. She’d cheerfully ordered all the wainscoting ripped out and the molded ceilings dragged down.

  Ariel’s passion for bold colors and simple lines now ruled. She’d bought fat, amorphous-shaped couches and had them upholstered in purples and yellows, bright greens and oranges. The walls glowed a deep salmon. The throw pillows were alive with chartreuse lizards and lemon-yellow giraffes.

  Ariel erupted from the fuchsia chaise longue where she’d been reclining. “But why is she leaving?”

  “She said she wants to be near her family, to watch her nieces and nephew grow up.”

  Ariel began to pace the room, trailing the scent of Tabu, her signature perfume. “She can’t leave. You remember what the house was like before we found her. A disaster. We lived in hell. I can’t live like that anymore, Price. I’m an artist. I have my priorities, and they have nothing to do with seeing that the chandeliers are properly cleaned. And think of your father.” She flung out a hand toward Regis, whose still-handsome face wore a worried frown. “He has his inventions to consider.” Regis had a workshop in the basement. No one but Faith was ever allowed to enter there. Regis claimed no one else showed the proper respect for his tools and equipment.

  Ariel went on, “We can’t let some stranger come in this house and disrupt everything. We simply can’t deal with that. We aren’t as young as we used to be. And what about Parker? Has anyone considered my poor baby?”

  Though far from a baby, Parker was a full nineteen years younger than Price. Ariel, who’d been forty-six when Parker was born, often referred to him tenderly as “living proof that passion never dies.”

  “Parker isn’t going to like this,” Ariel predicted grimly. “You know how he counts on Faith to take care of him.”

  Through an arch several feet away, Price could see his mother’s studio, where she painted the dazzling watercolors that had brought her modest fame in recent years. The walls in there were eggshell white. Ariel required neutral surroundings while she worked. Price wished they’d chosen the studio for this discussion, instead of the suffocatingly vivid living room.

  “Are you listening to me, Price?” Ariel had planted her fists on her slender hips. That errant lock of white hair fell across her eyes again. She blew it out of the way.

  “I’m listening, Mother. And as soon as you’re through yelling and stomping around, I’ll tell you the rest of what I have to say.”

  “I do not yell and stomp!” Ariel hit her chest with a fist, right on the floppy lemon-yellow bow tie of her bright coral painter’s smock.

  Regis chose that moment to rise from the chartreuse sectional in the corner and stride over to his wife. He draped an arm across her shoulders and placed a light kiss on her temple, right over the hair that never would stay out of her eyes. “Darling. Ease off. Price has more to say. Let’s hear him out.”

  Ariel’s sigh was long and dramatic. But she did relax a little. She leaned into her husband’s embrace. “I suppose you’re right.” She and Regis exchanged fond smiles. “I sometimes do get carried away.” She looked at her son again. “I’m sorry, dear.”

  Price nodded and restrained a sigh of his own. He loved his mother, but the more successful her watercolors became, the more she seemed to think that every discussion was a perfect opportunity for an expansive display of artistic temperament.

  Regis led his wife back to her chaise and guided her down in it, then sat at her feet.

  Ariel fiddled with the floppy bow at her neck for a moment, then looked up and met her husband’s eyes. She smiled. Regis smiled back. There might have been no one else in the world at that moment but the two of them.

  Feeling like an intruder, Price glanced away. After over forty years of marriage, his parents still adored each other. They enjoyed the kind of relationship Price himself had once thought to have with the woman he married. But it hadn’t worked out that way for him. His marriage had ended in tragedy and divorce.

  “All right, dearest,” Ariel said to Price a moment later. “I’m calm now. Tell us the rest.”

  Price found he was staring at a fifties-style lamp with a two-tiered shade and a turquoise ceramic mermaid for a base. When he was a child and his mother was required to run their household, he had often eaten mashed potatoes colored the exact aqua-blue of that mermaid lamp base. Ariel had found the natural color of potatoes too bland for her tastes, so she had doused them with food coloring to brighten them up. Fortunately for everyone involved, there had been no need for Ariel to prepare a meal in over fifteen years.

  “Price?” Ariel said, prompting him. “Tell us the rest. About Faith.”

  Price blinked and looked at his mother and father once more. “Yes. All right. Faith has agreed to hire and train her replacement before she leaves us.”

  Ariel looked at Regis. “Is that good?” Regis only frowned and gave his wife an I-don’t-know shake of his head. She turned to Price again. “Well? Is that good?”

  “It will take time to find a replacement.”

  “Time.” Ariel stroked her bow. “Yes. Time is good.” Regis made a low sound of agreement.

  Price added, “She also understands that any applicant would have to be approved by the three of us before being hired.”

  Regis sat up straighter on the end of the chaise. “Hmm…” he said. He and Ariel looked at each other. Matching smiles bloomed on gracefully aging faces.

  Ariel grinned at her older son. “I get it. Of course. We approve the new housekeeper—or there’ll be no new housekeeper.”

  Price nodded. “Exactly.”

  “And Faith would never leave us without someone to take care of us. The dear girl is much too tenderhearted to do something like that.”

  “Right.”

  “And, eventually, if we hold out long enough, she just might change her mind a
ltogether about going away.”

  “It seems possible, at least.”

  Ariel delicately smoothed back her wayward hair. “Oh, my dears. It’s a shame, isn’t it, how truly impossible it is to find good help these days? Especially for a family as exacting as the Montgomerys.”

  Chapter Two

  After letting out the fifth and final applicant of the day, Faith returned to the morning room, where the interviews had taken place.

  The bottom half of a two-story addition off the kitchen, the morning room had lots of windows and was furnished in what Faith always thought of as “classic Victorian porch.” It boasted a good deal of white wicker furniture, as well as an abundance of potted palms and hanging ferns. There was even a talking mynah bird, Sir Winston Churchill, who lived in a wrought-iron cage in a corner between a parlor palm and a ficus tree.

  In the center of the morning room stood a long table with a jointed maple top and sturdy white-painted turned legs. Around the table were ten mismatched Windsor chairs.

  When Faith emerged from the kitchen, Regis, Ariel and Price were waiting at one end of the table, right where she’d left them a few minutes before. Regis and Ariel were whispering together. They stopped immediately when they caught sight of Faith—which probably should have warned her that all was not as it should be.

  Gripping a clipboard that held the applications, Faith moved toward the foot of the table opposite the rest of them. Just before she sank into the chair there, Ariel gestured expansively. “Oh, come on, dear. Don’t sit ten miles away from us. Let’s get together on this thing.”

  Price, who was lounging at the head of the table, pulled out the chair next to him, on his left. He smiled at her, inviting her to take the seat he offered.

  Faith looked from his enticing smile to his lean hand, which still rested on the back of the chair he’d pulled out for her. If she sat there, she would be less than two feet from him.

  Though the morning room was no more than pleasantly warm, Faith felt a dew of moisture break out on her upper lip. She didn’t want to sit that close to Price. Whenever she was forced to be too near him, she had terrible trouble concentrating. Sometimes, when he came near, she could smell the expensive after-shave he wore—the after-shave that she herself regularly ordered by phone from a world-famous house of design. She loved the smell of that after-shave; it was subtle and clean and undeniably masculine.

  “Faith, dear?” Ariel said. All three Montgomerys were watching her expectantly.

  Faith gripped her clipboard more tightly and marched down the table to take the chair Price held out for her.

  His hand was still resting on the back of the chair when she sat in it, which caused her to experience a swift and stunningly seductive vision. She saw herself leaning back in the chair—and Price laying his hand on her shoulder. She imagined his fingers rubbing idly, in an absentminded caress.

  Of course, that was something he would never, ever do. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help envisioning it.

  She breathed a little easier when he took his hand away. Quickly she scooted her chair even closer to the table—and marginally farther away from him. Then she busied herself with her clipboard, lifting the clamp to release the applications that the prospective housekeepers had filled out. She set the applications on the table, within easy reach of everyone.

  That done, she cleared her throat. “Now,” she began. “I think we—”

  Sir Winston chose that moment to interrupt. The mynah bird shrieked, “What’s going on here? What’s the haps? What’s the story?”

  A musical trill of laughter escaped Ariel. She smoothed her white hair away from her eyes and turned toward the bird. “Winnie, you naughty boy.” She followed the comment with several loud kissing noises, which the bird ardently returned.

  Faith shuffled the applications some more as she waited politely for Ariel to stop throwing kisses at the bird.

  At last Ariel seemed to realize that she was holding up the proceedings. “Oh. Sorry. Carry on.” She smiled sweetly and folded her hands on the table.

  Faith removed the pen she’d hooked on the top of the clipboard and straightened the plain piece of paper she’d left under the clip for note-taking. She pointed at the applications with the pen. “Well, all I was saying was that I think we have some really good possibilities here.”

  No one said a word. Faith looked from Ariel to Regis and back to Ariel again, waiting for one of them to say something. At last, Ariel broke the silence with a long drawn-out sigh.

  Puzzled, Faith shifted her gaze to Regis, who was rolling up the sleeve of his chambray work shirt. Regis had been called from the basement for the interviews. He always wore a chambray shirt and loose khaki pants when he worked on his inventions. Regis looked up from his sleeve and into Faith’s eyes. He sighed, too.

  “What? What is it?” Faith glanced at Price, though the tingle all through her body when she did that almost made her wish she hadn’t.

  “Faith.” Price said, and nothing more. He sounded hopelessly grim.

  “What?”

  Ariel spoke up at last. “We’re sorry, dear.” Her voice seemed to drip regret. “But not one of those women will do.”

  “Bad news, boys!” cawed Sir Winston.

  “They’re not for us at all,” Regis solemnly declared.

  Bewildered, Faith could only sputter, “B-but…why not? They all have excellent references and related work experience. And they’d all be willing to live in.”

  Ariel sniffed. “References aren’t everything.”

  “And nothing relates to working at Montgomery House,” Regis chided as he rolled up his other sleeve.

  Faith was inclined to agree with Regis on that particular point; there really was nothing like working at Montgomery House. But they needed a new housekeeper. So someone would have to tackle the job.

  “And we don’t want some stranger living here, anyway,” Ariel added.

  “What are you telling me?” Faith asked. “Have you changed your mind about needing someone available at all times? Would you prefer that the new housekeeper live off the premises?”

  “No,” Ariel replied. “We need someone here. Just not some stranger.”

  “Well, Ariel.” Faith kept her voice reasonable only because she’d had so many years of experience in dealing with Montgomerys. “Everyone’s a stranger at first.”

  “Not everyone.”

  To Faith’s right, Price made a sound that closely resembled a stifled laugh. Faith shot him a glance. His face was alert and interested and impossible to read.

  Faith frowned at him. He lifted a brow, as if he were wondering, in all innocence, why she had frowned at him.

  Faith gave up on him and faced Ariel again. “I’m not going to argue with you about the definition of the word stranger,” she told her.

  “Well, of course you’re not, dear.” Ariel’s face bloomed in a gracious lady-of-the manor smile.

  Faith mentally counted to ten. “Let’s go over your choices, then.” She snared up one of the applications. “Look at this one. Ms. Annabella Fenton. She’s run a successful bed-and-breakfast for five years in a row.”

  “So why did she stop?” Regis wanted to know.

  Faith patiently explained, “She told us. You remember. The B-and-B was sold, and the new owners wanted to run it themselves.”

  “So she said,” Ariel grumbled. “Did you notice how she never smiled? I could not tolerate a housekeeper who never smiled.”

  “You are so right, my angel,” Regis concurred. “That Ms. Fenton was much too glum.”

  Refusing to be daunted, Faith held up a second application. “How about this one? She’s run a twenty-room estate in Bel Air. And she seemed very friendly.”

  “Too friendly,” Ariel muttered. “I can’t stand a woman who smiles all the time. It’s almost as bad as a woman who never smiles.”

  Over in his ficus-and-palm bower, Sir Winston squawked out what sounded like enthusiastic agreement.

 
; Regis picked up a third application himself. “Remember this one? Too quiet by half. I’d never know what she was thinking. I couldn’t live with that.”

  Ariel leaned over and planted a light kiss on her husband’s cheek. “Precisely, my darling.” She shivered. “Creepy. Too quiet is creepy. We don’t need creepiness around here.” She laughed, a throaty sound. “No more creepiness than we’ve already got, anyway.”

  “Oh, my sweet,” Regis said tenderly. “You do have a way…with words, among other things.” They stared into each other’s eyes.

  “Je t’adore, “ Ariel whispered.

  “Te amo,” said Regis.

  Faith wanted to strangle them both. She knew what was coming next—what always occurred when Price’s parents started talking to each other in foreign languages.

  “If we could just…” Faith began.

  But now Regis was whispering in his wife’s ear. Ariel sucked in one quick little gasp. She was blushing.

  The two aging lovebirds stood at the same time. “We’ll be retiring now,” Ariel said with a girlish giggle.

  “But what about the applicants?” Faith pleaded.

  Ariel blew in her husband’s ear before answering. “Dear. None of them will do. We told you. You’ll have to tell that agency to send some more people over. Not tomorrow, though. We’ll be busy tomorrow.”

  “But I…”

  Ariel and Regis were already at the arch that led to the kitchen. Ariel giggled again. Regis made a low growling sound. And then they were gone, on their way up the back stairs to their suite on the second floor.

  Sir Winston cawed after them, “Go to it, baby!”

  Faith put her head down on the table and let out a groan.

  “Sorry. You know how they are,” said a deep, indulgent voice beside her.

  Faith snapped upright. She’d been so frustrated with the elder Montgomerys, she’d actually forgotten for a moment that Price was still sitting at her side.

  Faith took a calming few seconds to close her eyes and rub the tension from her temples. Then she made herself face him, though, as always, she had to steel herself against the flood of hopeless yearning that swept through her when her eyes met his.