by Teresa Hill
Adorable?
Girl?
He made it sound like Jane was six. She fumed but said nothing, not wanting to embarrass Gram.
This was going to be a very long dinner.
“Men have their uses. Limited at best…”
Wyatt caught that much as he followed Leo through the cottage door, then hung back, not wanting to walk into the middle of that particular conversation. Leo, of course, had no reservations about getting into anything with any number of women, kissing his new lady-love, Kathleen, and her friend, which Wyatt could see didn’t go over so well with Kathleen.
Jeez, right in front of her like that? What was Leo thinking?
And the granddaughter, Jane, the adorable girl, had just met Leo and already she was fuming on her grandmother’s behalf.
Wyatt decided navigating this room was going to take all the diplomatic skills he possessed, that he’d rather step in between feuding spouses on the way to divorce court than this particular group.
Bracing himself, he walked to Leo’s side.
“My nephew Wyatt dropped by for a few minutes. To take care of some business for me,” Leo said. “He met Kathleen in the garden by the pool earlier. Gladdy, my dear, Jane, meet Wyatt. Wyatt, these two lovely ladies are Kathleen’s cousin Gladdy and her granddaughter, Jane.”
Wyatt smiled and nodded to Gladdy, a shorter, more gently rounded version of Kathleen with the same pretty white hair. He would have done the same to Jane, but she stood ramrod straight and extended a hand, giving him a firm, businesslike handshake, which he returned in the same manner, fighting the urge to snap to attention and salute at the way she held herself.
He hoped he passed her little test, being properly businesslike and not trying the bowing-over-the-back-of-the-hand kiss Leo favored in greeting all women, whether they were five or one hundred and five.
Wyatt anticipated Jane might have slapped him if he’d tried it. He’d seen her reaction to Leo’s patented move, after all.
She was obviously going for the classic power-suit look some women favored, and she might have pulled it off. She had the matching skirt and jacket in power-red, a no-frills white blouse, hair raked back from her face in a severe knot and carried her leather briefcase by her side.
It was just that Jane was pint-size, maybe five foot two, Wyatt guessed.
She looked like a dress-up doll in that outfit. Like a little girl who’d been sneaking into her mother’s closet.
It was cute, really, if a man liked that sort of thing, though he was certain that was not the look she was going for.
His mouth twitched, amusement warring with the need not to offend her or to show any undo interest. After all, she already thought Leo was an awful flirt. Wyatt didn’t want her to think all the Gray men were like that.
“Well, it was lovely to meet you all,” Wyatt said. “I won’t keep you from your dinner. Leo, just don’t forget what we talked about, okay?”
“Wyatt, you’re not staying for dinner?” Kathleen asked.
“Oh, honey, it’s my fault,” Leo said. “I didn’t know he was coming by today, and I didn’t call in time to make a reservation for him.”
Wyatt hadn’t been here for dinner yet. He usually took Leo out to a restaurant nearby. But he knew guests were welcome, for a slight meal fee and with a few hours’ notice, to make sure there was enough for everyone in the cottage who wanted to eat that evening.
“Sorry, ladies. Another time,” he responded, thinking how happy he was to escape this little group.
“Oh, you’re welcome to stay,” Amy piped up from the kitchen. “We have a resident who has a sore throat and just told me that she wasn’t coming to dinner tonight. So there’s plenty.”
Wyatt tried to keep the pained expression from his face, knowing it might be smart to stay and see firsthand what the problem was, maybe even talk to Leo’s new lady himself and set her straight about Leo’s abysmal record with women, much as he dreaded the idea.
“Well, in that case, I’d be happy to join you,” he said.
Leo held out a chair for Kathleen, and Wyatt did the same for Gladdy, then hesitated over doing so for Jane, feeling she would see it as an insult to her abilities to pull out her own chair, rather than plain, old-fashioned manners.
He played it safe and stood back, indicating that she should take her choice of seats, the one next to Gladdy or Kathleen. Leo, of course, seated himself between the two women at the small, round table. Jane picked the seat next to Gladdy, leaving Wyatt the one next to Kathleen.
Everything was fine for a while. The food was actually outstanding. He joined the others in heaping praise on the very young-looking girl who had made and served the meal.
Amy, a bit flustered by the attention, fumbled the fork on his empty plate as she removed it, and Wyatt and Jane both hurried to bend over and pick it up.
And that’s when Wyatt—and unfortunately Jane—saw it.
They already knew Leo was leaning comfortably toward Kathleen, his arm stretched across the back of her chair, his hand cupping her far shoulder. But now that they’d bent over to pick up the fork, they could see he was also holding hands under the table with Gladdy! He pulled his hand away when they bent over, but not quickly enough.
Jane gave an outraged huff, her mouth falling open, eyes shooting sparks at Wyatt under the table. Wyatt, hoping he looked properly shocked to Jane, picked up the fork and slowly straightened.
He handed the lost fork to Amy, then got another zinging look from Jane. Gladdy, he noted, had the grace to blush and carefully bring both her hands to the top of the table, clasping them together almost in a prayer-like motion.
Begging them not to tell?
Leo, the idiot, looked relaxed as could be, and Kathleen perhaps a bit confused, but smiling all the same in that lovely way of hers.
Wyatt wiped his mouth with his cloth napkin and as unobtrusively as possible, leaned toward Jane and whispered, “Meet me at that bar across the street after this? We need to talk.”
Her seething look said, Yes, we certainly do.
Chapter Three
“What in the world is wrong with that man?” Jane demanded, upon entering the bar, not even bothering to sit down.
Wyatt had selected a table in the far corner, wanting privacy and anticipating that this conversation might get loud at some point. Not thinking she’d walk in and stand there, all puffed up and mad, trying to glare down at him. A ridiculous attempt, given how tiny the woman was.
Even sitting down, he could very nearly look her in the eye.
And she was really adorable when she was spitting fire like that. Not that Wyatt would dare tell her. She already had a terrible opinion of the men in his family.
“Is he demented in some way that isn’t quite obvious to a person untrained in geriatric medicine?” Jane asked, hands on her hips, still filled with anger.
“Unfortunately not,” Wyatt told her.
“Unfortunately?” She enunciated each syllable like he might be demented himself and didn’t quite understand the big word.
“Yes. If he was actually impaired in some way, he’d have some excuse for his behavior,” Wyatt admitted. “Jane, I’m very sorry, but there’s simply no excuse. It’s just the way he is. Always has been. He’s like a kid in a candy store where women are concerned.”
He had her agreeing with him for a minute, maybe even sympathizing, and then she started seething again.
“Kid in a candy store? Like women are all laid out in a row, his for the taking, waiting for him to pick which one he wants?”
“Unfortunately, yes. He’s just that…” Wyatt would have said confident, but stopped himself. He thought she might have hit him, if he had. “Look, I know it’s…offensive, especially to someone like you—”
“Someone like me?” She practically spit the words at him.
“A modern woman,” he said, trying desperately to save himself now. “An enlightened woman. A strong, successful, extremely capable woman.�
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Who doesn’t think she needs a man for anything at all. He got it. He understood her perfectly, he believed. Oh, yes, he did, because his last words placated her a bit.
“Look, the man was born in a different era. He was raised to see women and relationships differently than we do today,” Wyatt tried, not about to explain that his father, twenty years Leo’s junior, thought of women the same way and that he’d been raised much in the woman-as-candy-in-a-store philosophy, too.
“That’s really no excuse for his behavior,” Jane said, not quite as militant-sounding as before.
“I know. Believe me, I do, and I’m sorry.” Wyatt dared to pull out the seat next to him and offer it to her. “Jane, please, sit down. Let’s talk about this. Let me get you a drink. God knows, I need one after dealing with Uncle Leo.”
She looked a bit miffed, like she’d been winding up for a really great fight or a rant on women’s rights, and he was depriving her of that opportunity by agreeing with her and apologizing. It was one of Wyatt’s greatest weapons—being able to soothe outraged females. He was a master at work right now, even if he did say so himself, much like Leo in that gigantic candy store of women.
Jane sat, still looking as if she didn’t trust him a bit, but not foaming at the mouth or anything. With Jane, he decided, that was progress.
He motioned for the waitress who’d been hovering a few feet away, figuring out if they were really going to start a fight at the bar and how she might handle it. She came to the table, looking a bit nervous but calming down as Jane stayed silent.
At his quiet question about her drink preference, Jane looked a bit sheepishly at the waitress and murmured, “White wine spritzer, please.”
Wyatt tried to contain a grimace at the idea of wanting to dilute good wine with anything, at the idea of such a sissy, girly drink. Jane didn’t seem girly at all. Maybe she didn’t approve of really drinking. She was prim and buttoned-up after all.
“You’re going to make fun of my drink?” she asked, apparently not going to let him get away with anything.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Wyatt insisted. Then asked for a bourbon, straight up.
Jeez, the woman was prickly.
The waitress nodded, promised to bring their drinks right away, and then escaped, looking quite happy to get far, far away from them.
Wyatt sat back in his chair, trying to look relaxed and in perfect control of the spitfire that was Jane. “So, as I said before, my uncle’s attitude toward women is inexcusable. Outdated, sexist, arrogant, immature. I realize that. I freely admit it and apologize sincerely for it.”
Jane gave him an odd look, hopefully discarding the next three insults she had planned to hurl at him over Leo’s behavior.
Good. They were getting somewhere.
“If there was anything I could do to change the way he behaves, believe me, I would have done it years ago. It’s caused him and me enormous amounts of trouble and grief. But I fear, at eighty-six—”
“Eighty-six? He told Gram he was only eighty-one.”
“Well, he’s not,” Wyatt went on. “Honestly, a woman can’t believe a word that man says, and unfortunately, I simply cannot change him. I’ve tried. So, at this point, all I can do is be completely up front about…how he is…and hope that saves women like your grandmother and great-aunt from being hurt by him.”
“That’s it? That’s your solution?”
Wyatt shrugged, trying to look both reasonable and helpless at the same time. “I don’t know what else to do. He’s a grown man. I have virtually no control over him. Any more than you can control your grandmother—”
“My grandmother’s not the one running around with two different people at the same time.”
Wyatt could only pray it was merely two women for Leo at the moment.
“I was just hoping,” he explained quietly, “that your grandmother might be more…reasonable…to deal with than my uncle. That once we explain to her…the way he is…”
“You want to tell her that he’s a complete cad and a liar?” Jane asked.
“Better than her finding out on her own. And, actually, I thought you might tell her. That the news might be easier coming from you. But if you think it should come from me, of course, I’ll do it.”
Jane’s mouth fell open, literally.
The waitress returned with their drinks. Jane didn’t touch hers. Wyatt downed his in one long gulp.
“Another, please?” he asked the waitress before she left.
Jane leaned toward him, whispering urgently, “My grandmother thinks she’s in love with him!”
Wyatt sighed, feeling a headache coming on. “He’s only been there a week.”
“I know. It’s ridiculous, I admit, but she does! What in the world does he do to these women?”
Wyatt could only shake his head in wonder. He refrained from saying that surely any woman who could believe she was in love in a week’s time was, perhaps, just asking to get hurt.
He wouldn’t dare say that to Jane.
She sat back in her chair, looking sad and worried. “You have to understand, my grandmother has never been in love before. She’s had men, of course. She’s a beautiful woman. Been married a number of times, and been genuinely happy for a time with a man, but she’s never claimed to be in love. She doesn’t even believe in love, as far as I know.”
“So what the devil happened between the two of them?”
“I have no idea.”
Jane sat back in her chair, taking a sip of her wine spritzer. What could this man possibly find offensive about a white wine spritzer?
But on the topic of Leo, she had to concede to herself at least, that for a man, Wyatt Gray was being exceedingly reasonable, much as she hated admitting it.
He had acknowledged his uncle’s bad behavior and didn’t really try to make excuses, merely admitting he was incapable of controlling the man. Jane had tried for decades to change Gram and Gladdy’s attitudes toward life in general and men in particular without much success. Except for getting control of their finances. So she had to empathize with Wyatt’s own troubles where his uncle was concerned.
“What about Gladdy?” Wyatt asked finally. “She doesn’t think she’s in love with Leo, does she?”
“I have no idea. I couldn’t believe they were holding hands under the table. It’s like something twelve-year-olds would do.”
Jane felt awful remembering that soft, warm glow on Gladdy’s face. She’d looked delighted with their intimate dinner at first, and Jane had simply thought Gladdy was happy for Gram, silly as that would be, because Gladdy didn’t believe in love any more than Gram did.
“They’ve never fought over a man before,” Jane confided. “And they grew up together, moved into their first apartment together and have lived together off and on ever since. The thought of a man coming between them is unthinkable.”
And yet, Jane had seen with her very own eyes the way Gladdy looked at Leo and Leo looked at her. And Gram!
That little weasel of an eighty-six-year-old man!
“I suppose we could start by talking to Gladdy,” Wyatt offered. “Appeal to her sense of friendship and devotion to your grandmother, and at the same time, tell her the sad, hard truth about Leo. That might, at least, keep him from coming between the two women.”
Jane nodded sadly. “It would be a start.”
“Just tell me what you want, Jane. I’ll do whatever you think would be best. If you want me to talk to Gladdy, I will. I’ll be unmerciful in explaining Leo’s lifelong habits with women.”
“Short of hog-tying your uncle to his bed and locking him in his room—”
“Believe me, I’ve wished I could.”
Which actually had Jane smiling a bit.
Wyatt Gray was a reasonable man, and Jane had found that so few men were. She regretted how things had started out between them.
“I’m sorry if I behaved badly toward you at first,” she said, because a polite, well-bred, empow
ered woman always acknowledged her own unfair treatment of others and apologized. “Gram and Gladdy…Well, I just adore them both, and looking out for them hasn’t always been easy, but believe me, they need someone to look out for them and I try my best.”
Wyatt gave her a reassuring smile and let one of his hands settle softly over hers on the table between them. “I’m sure you do your absolute best for everyone you care about.”
Which was just so nice of him.
People sometimes thought Jane could be overzealous and maybe even a bit aggressive in her attempts to take care of others, when she truly never wanted to do anything but help. Women could just be so mixed up about some things, have such wrong ideas, and she felt it was her calling to straighten them out, to educate them, to help extricate them from the troubles they found themselves in. It wasn’t a job to Jane. It was her calling, her mission in life.
“That’s incredibly kind and generous of you,” she admitted. “Especially when I yelled at you at first.”
“It’s completely forgotten,” he promised, smiling once again.
She could see a bit of Leo in him when he smiled like that. The dangerous charm, that wicked twinkle in his eye. Not that he was flirting with her or anything like that. He’d been perfectly respectful during their exchange. Some men thought flirting was as natural and expected as breathing in any exchange between the sexes, even the most businesslike. Something of which Jane naturally disapproved.
But Wyatt hadn’t been like that at all.
Still, the dangerous charm was there lurking below the surface in the man, even if he didn’t turn it on every time with all women. But when he did…
Jane shivered just a bit, thinking he really was too good-looking for any woman’s good and likely too used to getting his way with women, just as Leo was. She couldn’t let herself forget that.
Not that Jane ever really forgot herself with a man.
“Well,” she said, feeling a little warm and uneasy suddenly. “I suppose the best thing would be to talk to Gladdy first. I’ll try it myself and see how it goes.”
