Housekeeper Under the Mistletoe

by Cara Colter

  He was stunningly handsome.

  He looked to be in his early thirties. Tall and powerfully built, he had brown hair, the exact color and sheen of a vat of melted dark chocolate. His hair was long enough to touch the collar of an untucked white denim shirt that needed pressing. His hair was faintly mussed, as if he had been out in the wind.

  To add to the pirate-straight-off-the-boat look of him, his cheekbones and chin were cast in the dark shadows of a day or two of whisker growth. His legs were long and set apart, braced, which showed the powerful cut of his thigh muscles underneath the faded denim of blue jeans. His feet were bare, which Angie was perturbed to note she found sexy. She hastily lifted her eyes from them to look him in the face.

  His eyes were astonishing, the same restless gray blue of the waters of the lake she could see through wall-to-wall windows beyond him. But the water looked welcoming on this sweltering day, and nothing about his expression, and especially not his eyes, welcomed. And still, his eyes were every bit as sexy as his bare feet had been!

  He regarded her with a furrowed brow for a moment, the line of his sensuous mouth pulled down in a surprised frown.

  “Nope,” he said. It was a single word. Despite the fact his voice was a rasp of pure unwelcome, there was something about it that made Angelica even more aware of what an almost criminally attractive man he was, blatantly sexy without even trying.

  Apparently, the attraction was not shared. He shut the door. It clicked closed with metallic finality.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “NOPE.”

  The gravelly rejection rang in Angie’s ears for long moments after the door had clicked shut.

  Oddly, her first reaction to the door being slammed in her face was relief. She reminded herself she no longer wanted men to find her attractive. It was dangerous. Plus, if he was deranged, he could have taken advantage of the isolation to pull her inside that house. Instead, he was dismissing her.

  Though, looking into the strong cast of his face, the intelligence in his eyes, the confidence of his bearing, derangement did not seem like even a remote possibility.

  She recognized her relief at the closing of the door, in part, not just because he was obviously not a pervert just waiting for a damsel in distress to land at his door, but because she had reacted to him in a very primal way, and she could not tolerate that in herself.

  In the past year her fiancé, Harry, had abandoned her in favor of a beach in Thailand, and a more exciting companion, and now she was being stalked by a maniac. If anyone should be absolutely immune to the charms of the opposite sex, it was her! But apparently she wasn’t. So, she should be glad of that door closed with such quiet finality.

  But she wasn’t. In fact, the relief that she was being dismissed was short-lived, indeed. It gave way to a stirring of indignation at his summary dismissal. And indignation felt so much better than the wound she had carried with her since Harry had shattered her dreams.

  And it felt way better than the cowering scared-of-her-own-shadow fear she had been living with ever since Winston’s escalating invasion of her life.

  Angie decided, right that second, that she was not going to be a victim anymore.

  Besides, she needed this position as a housekeeper. It was an answer to that whispered prayer she had said at the bulletin board in Nelson just a few hours ago.

  Angelica took a deep breath. She marshaled her courage. She set her chin and her shoulders. And then she lifted that ring of steel again and rapped it against his door with all the gumption she could muster.

  “Damn him,” she muttered, when it seemed the master of the Stone House intended to ignore her. She drew in a sharp breath, marshalled her threads of tattered courage, and then she grasped the ring again.

  Her hand was clutching the door knocker with the fierce determination of a drowning person clutching a life ring when the door was yanked open.

  The unexpected force pulled Angie over the threshold and into the cool, marbled foyer of his house. She stumbled, let go of the knocker—a full second too late—and put out her hands to stop her forward momentum.

  Angie’s hands ran straight into a solid wall...of man.

  She stared at her hands on his chest. Through the fabric of his shirt she could feel the steady, slow beat of his heart and the shocking heat of his skin. She could feel the utter and steely power of him. His scent was masculine, absolutely tantalizing and utterly spellbinding. He smelled of sunshine and lake water and pine trees. Angie dragged her gaze away from the wide expanse of manly and mesmerizing chest in front of her.

  Those gorgeous stormy-water eyes were fastened, with some consternation, on the placement of her hands, which for some reason she had not yet removed from his person!

  She gulped, came out of her trance, and snapped her hands off his chest and down to her sides. She took a giant step backward.

  He raised his eyes from where her hands had been glued to him and tilted his head at her. “You’re still here,” he said.

  His tone was laconic, but his eyes were narrowed with annoyance. There was a little muscle flicking in the uncompromising line of his unshaven jaw. It was fascinating.

  “Um,” she said intelligently.

  “Yes?”

  “I just needed to know.”

  “Know?”

  “Nope to what?” Angie was trying very hard to regain her sense of equilibrium. She reminded herself to straighten her shoulders and lift her chin.

  He seemed surprised that she would have the audacity to even question him. He regarded her piercingly.

  “I mean, who answers their door like that? With a single word? Nope? When you don’t even know why I’m here.” Angie had to remind herself of her vow not to be a victim anymore. Still, she had to fight herself not to fidget, to hold her chin firmly in place and her shoulders square. He regarded her silently, with lowered brows and narrowed eyes. She was certain that he intended to let her stew, to see if he could make her squirm. She held her ground.

  Finally, he sighed. The sound was one of pure exasperation, and yet she felt certain his expelled breath had touched her cheek, like a kiss. It was everything she could do to keep her hands at her sides and not touch her cheek.

  “Nope to whatever you’re selling.” His voice was stern and annoyed, not the voice of a man who could kiss cheeks with his very breath.

  “But you don’t even know what I’m selling!” she protested. Was that a quaver in her voice?

  “Yes, I do.” His voice was like gravel.

  “You don’t,” she said stubbornly.

  “I do.”

  I do. The words she had expected to be hearing from Harry. Even said out of context, they filled Angie with a longing that made her despise herself. How many kicks in the teeth did a gal have to endure before she got it? There was no knight in shining armor. There was no happily ever after. Those kind of illusions were what got people in trouble.

  “Girl Guide cookies,” he said, his voice hard, “or your version of enlightenment, or tickets to the high school play. And to all of those, an emphatic nope.”

  See? This man was the cynical type. He would never fall victim to illusions of any kind.

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, stripping any trace of quaver—or illusions—from her voice, “you’re wrong on all counts. I am not selling anything.”

  This man was not accustomed to being told he was wrong. She could see that instantly, when the dark slashes of his brows dropped dangerously.

  Angie told herself she needed to be careful not to be off-putting. He was going to be her future boss, after all!

  “I’ve come about your posting on the community board in Nelson,” she told him.

  The firm line of his lips deepened into a frown. That, coupled with his lowered brows, made it inarguable. Her fut
ure boss was scowling at her. He had no idea what she was talking about.

  “I’m here about the position you advertised for a housekeeper.”

  His eyebrows shot up. His gaze swept her. “Oh,” he said, “that.”

  “Yes, that.”

  He gave her another long look, apparently contemplating her suitability for the position. She tried for her most housekeeperly expression.

  “Especially nope to that,” he said.

  When the door began to whisper shut, again, it was pure desperation that made Angie put one foot in to stop it.

  The man—good God, was he Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights—glanced down at her foot with astonished irritation. And then he gave her a look so icily reserved it should have made her withdraw her foot and touch her forelock immediately. But it did not. Angie held her ground.

  The master of the mansion glared back down at her foot with deep annoyance, but she refused to retreat. She couldn’t!

  After a moment, he sighed again, and once more she felt the sensuous heat of his breath whisper across her cheek.

  Then he opened the door wide and leaned the breadth of one of those amazing shoulders against the jamb, the seeming casualness of his stance not fooling her. Every fiber of his being was practically vibrating with displeasure. He folded his arms over the immenseness of his chest and tilted his head at her, waiting for an explanation for her audacity.

  Really, all that icy remoteness should not have made him more attractive. But the impatient frown tugging at the edges of those too-stern lips made her think renegade thoughts of what was beyond the ice and what it would be like to know that.

  These were crazy thoughts. This man was making her think crazy thoughts. She was a woman who had suffered so completely at the hands of love.

  First, her Harry had decided all their dreams together were decidedly stodgy and had replaced her with insulting quickness with someone far more exotic and exciting.

  And then, a coworker, Winston, had taken total advantage of her brokenhearted vulnerability. She had caved to his constant requests. Angie had said yes instead of no to a single cup of coffee. He had used that yes to force his way into her life.

  With that kind of track record, it made her thoroughly annoyed with herself for even noticing what the master of the Stone House looked like. And what his voice sounded like. And what he smelled like. And what his breath had felt like grazing the tenderness of her cheek.

  If she had a choice, she would have cut and run. But she was desperate. She had absolutely no choice.

  With her foot against the door he was too polite to slam, she said, determined, “I need this job.”

  He contemplated that, and her, in silence.

  “Really,” she clarified when it seemed as if he was not going to say anything at all.

  “Well, you don’t qualify.” His determination seemed to match her own. Or exceed it.

  “In what way?”

  “You’re obviously not mature.”

  “I guess that would depend how you defined mature,” she said.

  “Old.”

  “How old?” she pressed. “Fifty? Sixty? Seventy? Eighty?” She hoped she was pointing out how ridiculous he was being. Old was not necessarily a great qualification in a housekeeper.

  For a moment he said nothing, and then one corner of that sinfully sexy mouth lifted, but not in a nice way. “Older than you.”

  “I’m sure the human rights commission would have quite a bit to say about not being considered for a job—for which I’m perfectly qualified—because of my age,” she said.

  The smile deepened, tickling across his lips—cool, unfriendly, dangerous—and then he doused it and lowered the slash of his brows at her. “Are you threatening me?”

  It occurred to her that annoying him would be the worst possible way to wiggle her way into this job position.

  “No, not at all. I’m just suggesting that you might have attracted a better response to your posting for an available position if you had said you needed someone highly organized and hardworking and honest.”

  “All of which I’m presuming you are?” he said drily.

  She took it as very hopeful that he had not tried to physically shove her foot out the door and slam it on her.

  Not that he looked like a man who ever had to get physical to get what he wanted. That look he was giving her was daunting. Anyone less desperate would have backed down long before now.

  “I’m desperate.” There she had admitted it to him.

  “Your desperation is not my con—”

  “I’m willing to guess you haven’t had a single response to that ad,” she plowed on. “Who would answer an ad like that?”

  “Apparently, you would.”

  “I’m not just desperate.”

  “How very nice for you,” he said, his tone so sardonic it had a knife’s edge to it.

  “I’m also highly organized and hardworking and honest.”

  “You’re too young.”

  “Humph. I think youth could be a great advantage for this position.”

  He didn’t answer, so she rushed on.

  “I will be terrific at this job. You’ll love me.”

  He looked insultingly dubious about that.

  How could she have said that? That he would love her? You did not want to even think a word like that in front of a man like this—who could make you feel as if he had kissed you by simply sighing in your direction.

  “I’ll work for free for one day. If you’re not impressed, you haven’t lost anything.”

  He frowned at her. “Look, Miss—”

  “Nelson,” she filled in, using the name of the town she had just come through. “Brook Nelson.” There. A new name. She had used part of the city of Cranbrook that she had passed through on this wild ride, and part of the town of Nelson.

  She held her breath, knowing from the tension she felt while she waited that she needed the new existence her new name promised her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  JEFFERSON STONE REGARDED his unwanted visitor. Something shivered along his spine when she said her name. He knew she was lying.

  And she wasn’t very good at lying, either. In fact, she was terrible at it.

  He allowed himself to study her more closely. Brook Nelson—or whoever the hell she really was—was cute as a button. She was dressed in a brightly patterned summer blouse and white shorts. She was a little bit of a thing, slender and not very tall. It looked as if a good wind would pick her up and toss her.

  And yet when her hands had been pressed into his chest, he had been aware of something substantial about her. That little bit of a thing had set off a tingle in him—an awareness—that had been as unwelcome as she was.

  Hard not to be aware of her, when those shorts ended midthigh and showed off quite a bit of her legs.

  Annoyed with himself, Jefferson shook off the thought and continued his study of his housekeeper candidate.

  It just underscored what he already knew: she would not do.

  She had light hair, a few shades darker than blond, but not brown. Golden, like sand he had seen on Kaiteriteri Beach in New Zealand. That hair was cut short, he suspected in a largely unsuccessful effort to make those plump curls behave themselves. They weren’t. They were corkscrewing around her head in a most unruly manner.

  Her eyes were hazel, leaning toward the gold side of that autumn-like combination of golds and greens and browns. She had delicate features and it was probably that scattering of freckles across her nose that made her seem so wholesome, even though she was lying about who she was.

  There was something earnest about her. Despite her youth, and despite the shortness of those shorts, she seemed faintly prim, as if she would be easily shocked by bad words.
Which, of course, was part of the reason she would be a very bad fit for him as a housekeeper.

  Because of her size, Jefferson had assumed she was young. But on closer inspection, she looked as if she was in her midtwenties. Still, she was exactly the type you would expect to be peddling cookies for a good cause or wanting to change the world for the better or encouraging attendance at the annual Anslow high school performance of Grease, which would be dreadful.

  And he should know. Because a long time ago, in a different life, he had been cast as the renegade in that very high school play.

  Jefferson shook it off. He did not like reminders of his past life.

  Besides, Brook wasn’t anything like the ideal person he had in his head for this job, which was gray haired, motherly but not chatty, and someone willing to stay out of his way and keep schtum about his life.

  Brook Nelson, in spite of the wholesome exterior and her claims of honesty, was lying about who she was. He needed her gone.

  “Look, Miss, um, Nelson, I’ve gone through three housekeepers in three weeks—”

  “Somebody answered that ad?” she asked disbelievingly.

  “Not exactly,” he had to admit. “That ad was a result of the other failures.”

  The failure was that he had mentioned to Maggie, at the Anslow Emporium, that he was going to need someone.

  He hadn’t anticipated that telling Maggie—whom he had known since he was six—that he needed some help at his house would be like creating a posting in a lonely hearts club rag.

  “Tell me about my three predecessors.”

  He frowned at that. She was a cheeky little thing, wasn’t she? What part of no could she not get? But, since she was immune to slamming doors, why not give her anecdotal evidence of her unsuitability for this position?

  “Okay, the first one was not mature. Mandy, showed up in flip-flops, and had a most irritating way of popping her gum, except when she was texting on her cell phone, which seemed to require her jaw to stop moving. When she had been here approximately three hours, she knocked on my office door to complain that the internet signal was weak from the deck. And then she acted insulted when I suggested I didn’t need her services any longer.”