Housekeeper Under the Mistletoe

by Cara Colter

  The good guy was not ready to go. The good guy was struggling to find words to bring her comfort. Of course the colossally self-centered guy had been in charge so long, he could find none. The analyst had long ago banished sensitivity as a weakness that could not be tolerated.

  The good guy could not fail to notice she was still trembling, that tears were still slithering out between the fingers that covered her face.

  The bad guy in him sighed with resignation and went, somewhat unwillingly, where the good guy told him to go. It was not a place of numbers. Or words. Or equations. Or analysis.

  The good guy in Jefferson Stone went to the place where his grandmother had gone when a frightened and heartbroken waif had been delivered to her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  But she wasn’t. Her voice was wobbling as if she was running a jackhammer. She scrubbed furiously at her tears with the palm of one hand.

  Some instinct or memory of the little boy he had once been, some primal recognition of what goodness was and what was required of him made Jefferson slide his arms under her and tug her over onto his lap. Her hesitation—a sudden stiffening, a small resistance—did not even last a breath. And then she was snuggled into his chest, her curls tickling his chin, her tears washing through his shirt, her warm weight a puddle against him.

  “It’s okay,” he said. His voice was rusty, unaccustomed to reaching for that gentle note. “It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re safe.”

  Sweetheart? Desperation to make her feel better was obviously making him crazy. What was he doing calling her sweetheart? But somehow he didn’t want to call her Brook, to invest in the obvious lie she had told him about her name.

  It added to his sense of craziness that making physical contact with his new housekeeper seemed to be becoming a regular event!

  But, at that moment, the good did shine through. Because despite the sweetness of her curves, despite her warmth pooling against him, despite her designated role in his life, despite the lie of her name between them, she felt not like the beautiful woman that she was. She felt only like a frightened child, as he had once been. And he felt only like a person reaching deeply and desperately within himself for the decency to comfort her, as his grandmother had once done.

  And so he stroked her hair and told her over and over again, in a crooning voice that he did not recognize as his own, that she was safe. He could feel the tension draining out of her, her muscles relaxing, her breathing becoming more regular, the hard pulsing of her heart slowing.

  And she must have felt safe, because she finally said, her voice low and tentative, “You know how you said I’m not a very good liar?”

  “Hmm?”

  “My name isn’t Brook.”

  He waited.

  She sighed as if she were weighing the wisdom of what she was about to do. “It’s Angelica. Angie.”

  He waited, again, to see if she would go on, if she would explain the necessity of the subterfuge to him, but she didn’t. In fact, he felt her relax totally, and then her breath came in even little puffs against his chest. Her hair had fallen forward, shielding her face, and when he tucked it back, he saw she was asleep.

  He sat there for a long time, afraid to waken her. Finally his arm felt as if it was going numb. He wondered, as he worked his way out from under the slight weight of her, if she had ever truly been awake.

  He settled her back in the bed, drew the covers over her and gazed down at her for a moment.

  Her face looked relaxed, angelic even, the perfect face for someone named Angelica. He bent and kissed her cheek, as if she was a child he had tucked in.

  And then he turned swiftly from her, embarrassed by his tenderness. “I hope,” he muttered, “neither of us remembers a thing about this by morning.”

  She had a chance of that. He did not.

  He glanced once more at the sleeping woman, then went quietly down the steps and closed the door to the turret room behind him.

  Jefferson was aware of steeling himself against whatever he had felt in that room. It was one thing to be a good man. But it was another to care about others. To care about others was to invite unspeakable pain into your life. He would use this incident to shore up rather than lessen his resolve for their relationship to be professional only. He would withdraw himself, as completely as it was possible to do while they were under one roof. Withdrawing was something he was an absolute expert at. After the blow of Hailey’s death, he’d withdrawn quite successfully from the world for the past three years.

  Though it was now late at night, he was aware he would not sleep. He went into his office and shut the door. He was in the middle of a contract to revamp the computer systems for the City of Portland. This was what he loved and this is what he could lose himself in: researching, planning and coordinating the selection and installation of the software systems that gigantic enterprises, towns and cities, corporations and businesses counted on for smooth and efficient operation.

  He sat down at his computer and sighed with satisfaction at the reassuring world devoid of emotional complexity. This was his world: analysis. Numbers and graphs and statistics appeared on the screen before him.

  “Two weeks?” he told himself. “That’s nothing.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ANGIE AWOKE IN the morning, bright light embracing her. For a moment, she had no idea where she was. But the ceiling had a display of dancing light on it, the windows reflecting patterns off the nearby water. She remembered the lake. She remembered arriving at the Stone House. And finding this bedroom and surrendering to the exhaustion that had been building in her.

  And then, she remembered last night.

  She remembered the panic that had clawed at her throat as she woke up to see a man’s figure silhouetted in the doorway.

  Disoriented, her fears and stresses must have been playing out in her dreams, because Angie had thought, Winston found me. She had reached for that lamp and attacked with full force.

  But it had not been Winston. She hoped it had all been a bad dream.

  But, no, it was all true. There was the lamp, with a large chunk missing from its glass base and the shade completely crumpled, lying on her floor.

  It hadn’t been Winston. It had been a man she barely knew. It had been her new employer, Jefferson Stone.

  Heat raced up her cheeks as she remembered him comforting her even after she had smashed a lamp over his head. When he had climbed onto the bed? That’s when she should have protested more convincingly that she did not need him! When he had pulled her onto his lap? That’s when she should have put the wall up and resisted with all her might.

  But, no, instead, weakling that she was, she had surrendered into it, allowed herself to feel something she had not felt in months, not even with the police.

  It was a sensation beyond feeling safe. Angie had felt protected.

  Even if Jefferson hadn’t said to her, over and over, that she was safe, she would have felt protected by him. It was not his words that had comforted. Unlike her, he was incapable of lying about who he was. She had felt the truth that was at the core of Jefferson Stone. She had felt the great strength and calm in his physical presence.

  She had felt he was that man—that one-in-a-million man—who would lay down his life to protect someone he perceived as weaker than himself, or vulnerable.

  Fresh from terrifying dreams—not to mention months of uncertainty—she had not been strong enough to resist what he had offered. It was what she had wanted most since her terrifying ordeal with Winston had begun. To feel safe again in the world.

  And after she had felt safe? After she had realized she was in a lovely bedroom at a house on a lake that most people would not be able to find, even with a map? Then she should have told him to go, released him from that primal dut
y he felt to protect someone not as strong as him.

  But, oh, no, she had given herself completely over to the temptation of being weak. She had relished his presence. The solidness of his chest, that delicious scent that was all his, the tenderness of his hand in her hair. She had lapped up his attention like a greedy child lapping up ice cream, and in the light of morning, that was exceedingly embarrassing.

  Had he really kissed her cheek before he left the room? Her hand flew there as if she would be able to feel the evidence of it lingering. She had let down her guard. She had told him her name was not Brook. It was a moment of terrible weakness that had allowed these indiscretions. She vowed there would not be another.

  Though maybe that would not be her choice. She had admitted she had lied to him. She had hit him with a lamp! He would be within his rights, in the cold light of day, to ask her to leave. Or at least to demand an explanation.

  A half hour later, showered and dressed and ready for her first day of official duties—if she still had a job—she realized her new boss must also have a plan of avoidance. Obviously, she had managed to embarrass him, too.

  His office door was shut when she went by it. There was coffee ready in the kitchen, but investigation did not show much else for breakfast. The man did not even have a loaf of bread! There was an empty box on the counter.

  She picked it up and read the label. Apparently Jefferson had indulged in a microwavable bean burrito for breakfast. It was quite pathetic, actually.

  She remembered her resolve, even before last night’s kindness, to make his life better while she was here. Now, standing there holding the burrito box, she committed more fully to that. She would see that he had proper meals and clean clothes, and that every surface of his house shone, reminding him of what a beautiful place he lived in. Maybe reminding him that it was a beautiful world.

  That awareness, that it was a beautiful world, had evaporated from her in the past while, too. Maybe, in helping him discover it, she could recover some of her own faith in the world.

  A little frightened, Angie realized she was allowing the most dangerous thing of all into her world.

  She was allowing herself to hope.

  That hope infused her as she did normal things. She made a grocery list, put dishes in the dishwasher, cleaned crumbs off the counter. It was a testament to how crazy her life had become that doing these small things filled her with such pleasure. She had never really appreciated how wonderful it was to just be normal.

  Still, she could not use these simple pleasures as an excuse to delay seeing Jefferson this morning. With her list in hand, she approached his office door. It was true her boss had made it plain he didn’t like interruptions, but she couldn’t very well ignore the events of last night. And she needed to know if he planned to oust her over her deception about her name.

  Standing in the hallway, she was aware her heart was beating too hard. She rehearsed what she would say. If he did keep her on, she needed him to know that his tender concern, while appreciated, was not in any way expected by her. The exact opposite, in fact. She would prefer they stay on less familiar terms. The list was a pretext to get into his office and make her speech.

  She knocked.

  “Yes?”

  She opened the door a crack and peeked in. Jefferson looked exhausted. Here, she had vowed to make his life better, and it was apparent it was already worse!

  “You haven’t been up all night, have you?” she asked, appalled, her rehearsed speech forgotten.

  He glowered at her. “You’re my housekeeper, not my mother.” His tone was unnecessarily curt.

  But all she heard was you’re my housekeeper. He wasn’t firing her!

  She was relieved that the tenderness she thought she had experienced last night had been largely imagined. At the same time, she was aware that she was ever so faintly annoyed that he had reached the conclusion, all by himself, that his tender concern would not be necessary in the light of day.

  “I just wanted to apologize for last night,” Angie said, the opening line of her speech. It would be a shame to let the whole thing go to waste. She opened the door a little more, though he clearly had not invited her to.

  “No need.” He waved a dismissive hand at her. The message was clear—Leave me alone.

  “I was very tired...” She felt driven to explain, stepping over the threshold into his office. “I’m sure it won’t happen again.”

  “Great,” he said. He glanced up from his computer, acknowledged the fact she was actually in his office with a slight frown and looked back at the computer. “I only have so many lamps.”

  This was very good. He was going to make it about the lamp instead of about her. And him. And embarrassingly tender moments.

  “I’ll pay for the lamp,” she insisted, following his lead. Let’s make it about the lamp. Only that was harder than it should have been. Even with that scowl on his face, he was a very attractive man. It was not so easy to dismiss the fact she had been on his lap last night.

  “I don’t care about it, actually.” Apparently, it was easy for him to dismiss it.

  “Well, I do. I’ll pay for it. I insist.”

  “Whatever.” This was a discharge.

  In case she didn’t get that, he waved a hand at her, as if she was a bothersome fly. She noticed a lump on his head and stepped in to his office even farther. She didn’t stop until she was standing right in front of him.

  He looked up from his computer and folded his arms over his chest, clearly annoyed. “You’ve apologized. We’ve established you are paying for the lamp. Was there anything else?”

  “Are you having any symptoms of concussion?” she asked. “Because you have quite a large lump right—”

  She reached for him; he reared back. She snatched her hand away and touched her own forehead above her eyebrow. “Here,” she finished weakly.

  “I am not having the symptoms of a concussion,” he said.

  “How’s your head?” He had a lump rising above one of his slashing eyebrows.

  She thought he would at least express some curiosity about her real identity, but he did not.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me why I gave you a false name?” she said.

  He studied her for a moment. “No.”

  “Oh.” She realized she was disappointed in his lack of interest—not that she wanted to get into the whole tawdry tale of her failure to discern a bad person from a good one. Still, she felt driven to say something else.

  “I just want you to know, I’m not a person you can’t trust.”

  He looked at his watch, a hint that she didn’t have to say anything else.

  For some reason, she babbled on. “I don’t have a list of aliases. There is no dead person in an attic somewhere that can be attributed to me. I’m not on the run from the law.”

  Something like a smile tickled at the edges of his lips. “You think you had to tell me that you’re not a murderer or a fugitive?” he asked.

  She nodded vigorously.

  “It’s imminently apparent that you are not.”

  “That’s good,” she said, though she wasn’t so sure. He had managed to say that as if she had boring written all over her, as if she was exactly the kind of woman whose fiancé would leave in search of excitement elsewhere.

  “It’s also imminently apparent that something, or someone, has thrown a very bad scare into you. If it’s a man—” the smile had disappeared completely and something dangerous darkened his eyes “—you need to get rid of him and never look back.”

  She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. Jefferson was already looking back to his computer. It was a man, but it was too complicated to explain, and he clearly did not want an explanation. Despite the advice, he was letting her know that theirs was a temporary arrangem
ent and that she had to handle her life herself. He had absolutely no interest in her personal dramas. He did not want a repeat of last night any more than she did.

  Except that looking at him, she did feel a strange longing to see the tender side of him again, to feel his hand in her hair and his lips on her cheek.

  After a moment, he glanced at her, and she realized she was still standing there, trying to reconcile this cold indifference with the man who had comforted her last night.

  Yes, that lump on your head, right over your scowling brow, needs some attention. And I would love to finish what I started, to lean over and put my fingers on it, as if somehow I could soothe the pain away. The way you soothed mine away last night.

  But he was looking at her like the man least likely to want his pain soothed away. She thought of the little lost boy in that photograph in the living room. And she suspected the lump on Jefferson Stone’s head was the least of his pain.

  She was glad she had the grocery list and didn’t have to make up an excuse for the fact she was standing there staring at him. “You asked me if there was anything else and yes, there is. There’s this.”

  Trying not to feel as if she was scurrying under his impatient eye, she crossed the room and thrust the list in front of him.

  He picked it up and studied it. The annoyed scowl creased his brow again. “Good grief, are we supplying a barracks?” he said, lifting his eyes to hers.

  “It’s really just basics.”

  He glared again at the list, then lifted those cool gray eyes to hers. “Cumin is a basic?”

  His pronunciation of cumin was way off. He made it sound like something quite erotic.

  “It’s a spice! You don’t have any spices,” she sputtered. She willed herself not to blush over something so silly as the pronunciation of cumin.

  “Well, I doubt if they have anything quite so exotic in Anslow. There’s no big-box supermarket there. It’s a little family general store.”