At Your Service

by Amy Jo Cousins

  He dumped her unceremoniously on the bed and threw himself down next to her, bouncing them both on the mattress. She laughed and then groaned and clutched her stomach.

  "You may have done—ow—permanent damage, Tyler."

  "I couldn't resist." He rolled her over and tickled her with stiff fingers beneath her arms and at her sides, as she shouted and squirmed and wrestled to break free. "It's so much fun, making you shriek."

  With a heave of her hips and a carefully placed shove, she threw him on his back and pinned him. "I'll show you shrieking." And did, as he reared up suddenly and nipped at her breast.

  Before she could blink, their positions were reversed and it was Tyler who rose above her. He spoke in his best evil-villain voice. "Yes, you will."

  By the time he worked his way down her body with his mouth, his fingers had slipped from tickling to stroking, and her shrieks slid into shuddering moans.

  Then he slipped inside her and she was wrapped in him, around him, and the night shattered again in front of her eyes.

  She woke him once more in the night, already slipping over him as he rose to consciousness. They made love silently, slowly, and when she fell asleep again, it was with him still inside her.

  He woke her in return when the alarm went off loudly before he smacked the snooze button. He pulled her beneath him, finally able to see clearly in the morning light. "It's set for a half hour early," he told her, and took her mouth.

  She fell asleep again in a tangle of warm sheets, the sound of his shower faint in her ears.

  She was vaguely aware of sounds, later, that might be someone pulling clothes from drawers and tugging them on. And the clatter of metal and porcelain tugged at her brain, their meaning not quite apparent.

  But the smell of coffee was clear enough, even to her sleep-befuddled head, so she pulled on Tyler's T-shirt again and followed the scent into the kitchen. Tyler was sitting at the min-iscule kitchen table, a mug of coffee at his elbow.

  A second mug rested near the edge of the table closest to the door. Behind it was a small electric fan, pointing steadily toward the bedroom and blowing the scent of dark roast through the room.

  "Cute." She grabbed the mug and turned to climb onto his lap, straddling him on the chair. Draping herself bonelessly against him, she brought her hands together behind his head and lifted the mug to her mouth, careful not to spill. She sighed. "Mmm, coffee. Good."

  "Good morning to you, too, darlin'." His words were muffled in the fabric covering her shoulder. He pressed a kiss there. "Sleepy?"

  "Waking up." She took another large swallow and felt the caffeine work its magic on her fuzzy head. "Are you leaving?"

  "Duty calls. Or, at least, beer vendors do. And you have Sarah's spare key, so you can sleep as late as you like." He ran his hands up her bare thighs. "I wish I could stay here with you."

  "Mmm." Her head was clearing, and with that, and more coffee, came interesting ideas. She dropped the mug on the table and pulled herself up straight. Her arms were draped over his shoulders, and she scraped her nails through the short hair at the back of his neck. "You could stay here." She pressed her mouth to his, teasing it open with her tongue. "Just for a little bit longer."

  She felt him harden against her thigh and smiled with pleasure. Tyler's hands reached up to lug hers from his neck and hold them sedately at her sides. "Grace, I can't be late." He still held her hands, so she brushed her breasts against him and felt him flinch. Eyes with heavy lids locked with his, she pressed herself against his lap and made herself tremble. "Grace. I have people." A shudder. "People waiting. I can't be late."

  With a quick tug, she was free and snaking her hands down to his waist, working swiftly at his jeans. When he sprang free into her hands, she held him strongly.

  "If you can't be late," she told him, feeling wicked and loving it, "then you'll just have to be fast."

  She took him into her and felt the light breaking through her again.

  When she woke again, the light was shining intensely through the window and the apartment was silent around her. She slid out of bed, still in Tyler's T-shirt, and walked to (he bathroom, wincing slightly at the soreness in her thighs and other, more intimate places. The thought made her smile.

  In the bathroom, she caught herself in the mirror and the smile faded. Her blond hair was knotted from hours of passion and sweat. Nonetheless, her roots showed clearly the chestnut hair growing in and this obvious sign of her deception was enough to stop her cold.

  She leaned over the sink, unhappy with the picture reflected opposite her. The woman in the mirror looked well-loved, lips swollen and red from rough kisses. A faint bruise was emerging on her thigh where Tyler had gripped her hard in the previous night's dark. The shadows under her eyes spoke of a night not spent asleep.

  She looked like a woman who'd spent the night making love.

  Making love. The words rolled ominously around in her head. Making love. Not "having sex." Grace knew the difference, and knew what she and Tyler had done wasn't just sex. She'd known she was falling in love with him as she'd lain down to sleep with him on the floor last night; she'd chosen to stay anyway. She'd lain with him and been wrapped in his life as surely as she'd been wrapped in his arms. She couldn't argue with that.

  Can't argue with it? The voice in her head was outraged. And bitter. How real is it, Grace, when you say you're in love with the man and you don't trust him enough to tell him a goddamn bit of truth about yourself? How real is it, when everything he knows about you is a lie?

  "I have told him the truth, basically," she argued with herself in the mirror. She couldn't meet her own eyes. "He knows everything important about me,"

  Stop fooling yourself damn it. You don't think the fact that you're Grace Haley, millionaire and restaurant powerhouse, is going to be considered an important thing? That your engagement to another man has been announced publicly in the society pages of several newspapers?

  Get real.

  In the shower, she pressed her face into the spray and let the water run over her face, her mouth open beneath the fall. She braced herself against the wall with her hands and leaned into the blast, scalding hot water coursing down her skin. The spray pounded at the top of her skull, but couldn't wash away the one thought that kept returning to her over and over.

  She stepped out of the shower and wrapped a plush towel around herself, avoiding even a glimpse of herself in the fogged mirror. But she couldn't avoid the inescapable conclusion pushing to be acknowledged.

  She made it to the bedroom, shutting out that voice. But the sight of the twist of sheets on Tyler's bed where she'd so recently slept with him was a smack in the face. She sank onto the edge of the mattress and dropped her head.

  "Ah, damn." The pain was physical, a jagged tear chasing her heart beneath her breastbone.

  She was a coward.

  From the moment she'd left her restaurants, left her condo, her life, she'd been running. Running hard and fast enough to keep her own thoughts confused. Telling herself that she just needed the distance, the space to figure out what to do.

  Instead of sticking to what she knew was right, she'd let other people intimidate and threaten her into giving up and fleeing the field. She'd yielded at the first push, to people who had no real power to hurt her, or her business.

  Her mother certainly couldnlt hurt her. She rarely bothered to stop in Chicago, in between her jaunts to the various tropical playgrounds of the wealthy and bored. An occasional request for more money to be deposited in her account was the extent of Grace's contact with her.

  Not even her Charles, the titular head of her family's corporation, could cause her any real trouble. To begin with, his complete ignorance of the business limited his options to act. And with fifty percent of the company stock in her name, although Grace didn't hold a majority and couldn't get rid of him without support from other family members, support that would not be forthcoming, neither could he make any serious business decisions w
ithout her approval.

  At least, he couldn't if she were there to state her refusal to go along with his commands.

  "Damn it, what were you thinking?" Her fists were hard against her temples. She felt as though she'd pulled herself free of a pool of thick mud and was only now managing to clear the filth from her eyes. The foolishness of her actions was glaringly apparent to her, as it would be to anyone who was thinking straight.

  Running away hadn't been the answer.

  She knew the answer to make now, and that was to return to her life and fix her own problems.

  To stop lying to the people she'd met here, people she was coming to care about.

  The immediate release of the tension she'd been carrying around in her muscles for weeks on end was bodily sensation. Like having treated herself to a full massage. The relief was overwhelming, and a clear sign that she was making the right decision.

  I don't know what happened to me. But somehow, after Grandmother died, I lost my way. I let Charles and Mother take control of my life. Somehow things got to the point so that when they decided that Charles and I should get married, I didn't even have the strength of will to tell them no.

  But no more. I'll straighten out my business and my life, and settle matters with my family, and then I'll sit down with Tyler and explain to him who I am and why I lied to him about everything.

  He would be mad. No doubt about that. In fact, perhaps mad was not the word. Irate. Furious. Angry beyond all attempts to repair. But she would make him listen. Hadn't he known from the beginning that she was holding back something from him? And hadn't he given her permission to do so, until year's end, as long as she came clean then?

  You'd have until the end of the year to straighten out whatever problems you have, and I'll help you out any way I can. But on December thirty-first, New Year's Eve, you sign on one hundred percent, and there'll be no more hiding for you. Do we have a deal?

  "You're damn right we do," she muttered as she pulled her clothes on. "We have a deal, and I'll even beat my deadline. Just give me a few more weeks to clear things up, and I'll come clean in before Thanksgiving, buddy, not December thirty-first."

  As she gathered her things and then scraped the remaining dirty plates and started the dishwasher running, Grace was aware of that other, more cautious, voice in her head. And she listened, because it was making sense.

  The best thing she could do, right now, would be to go find Tyler and tell him the truth about everything. Today. Immediately.

  Because the worst thing that could happen right now would be for Tyler to find out the truth about her from someone else. Anyone else. If Grace could explain herself to Tyler, one on one, she just might be able to make him listen long enough to understand why she'd done all this. Lied to him about her name and history. Lied to his family. Run away from her own family and job. Let him think she was hiding from an abusive boyfriend and not a wealthy fiancé. And Tyler might possibly believe and understand her.

  But only, let me repeat only, if you are the one to tell him, Grace. If he finds out from anyone else, well, can we say "fat chance"?

  Tell him today.

  The telephone handset was at her ear and she'd punched in most of the digits needed to call up Tyler at the bar when another truth of the situation occurred to her. She paused for a moment and then placed the handset back on its base.

  The last thought to run through her head before she picked up the phone was how happy she was to be able to tell Tyler the truth, and how grateful she would be for the help and support he'd be sure to provide her in dealing with this mess of her family and business. She knew she would be able to rely on him completely, and that was a relief.

  And then came the thought that stopped her cold.

  Of course she would be able to rely on Tyler. That's what he did. He helped people in need, particularly women, even if he wasn't asked to do so. If she went to him now and told him about her slew of problems, he would be mad, yes, but his innate compassion would soon take over. He would jump at the chance to take care of her, at that point, and would start seeing her as someone who needed his protection. Tyler would help her patch up her life, and by the time he'd saved her, would probably decide he was in love with her. The relationship between them was already heading in that direction.

  Grace remembered when she'd first questioned whether Tyler's feelings for her might be based on the protectiveness that sprang up naturally in him at the sight of a young woman, obviously on the outs, living in dangerous circumstances, looking for work and on the run from a bad relationship.

  Wouldn't this simply be more of the same uncertainty?

  If she went to Tyler, problems in hand, she would always be afraid that his feelings for her were based on concern and compassion, not love. And, although it had taken her a while to get here, Grace finally knew that she didn't want to be protected. Or loved because she needed protection.

  She needed to be able to come to Tyler as her own person, needing nothing from him, but wanting so much more. She needed Tyler to love her for who she was, a woman in her own right, with her own life, and not a set of problems that needed him to solve them.

  A quick run-thro'ugh of her plan convinced Grace. All she needed was time. Just a few weeks, maybe less, and she would be able to go to Tyler as an adult, a woman asking for his understanding and his love, not his help.

  It was risky. Grace acknowledged that. The safest course would be to confess everything now and make her own peace later with the uncertainty she felt regarding Tyler's affection.

  But I've been playing it safe for most of my life. The first risky thing I ever did was to try to talk my way into an under-the-table job at Tyler's. And that's turned out pretty well so far. So if it comes down to taking a chance, in order to do what's right both for myself and for my relationship with Tyler, then I guess I'm up for that chance.

  Decision made, Grace picked up the phone again, this time to call Paul. She needed one last favor from her close friend, and then she'd do her best to make sure he never had to worry about the future of his kitchen again. What she wanted him to do was easy enough to explain.

  "Yes, chérie, your idiot fiancé still comes here, to his so-called 'office' every day. He pretend to be making phone calls and such, but mostly he sticks his dirty little fingers into my pots until I throw the knife at him."

  "I need another favor, Paul."

  "Anything, especially if it will get that peacock-head out of my kitchen."

  Her next call was to her attorney. Grace hadn't contacted him since the day she'd left everything behind, other than to send him a note explaining specifically that she was taking a brief hiatus to mourn her grandmother and that she would be contacting him in a reasonable amount of time.

  Perhaps most people would not consider several months to be reasonable, but the word was vague enough to make it impossible for anyone to act in her stead.

  "Hello, Franklin. It's Grace Haley."

  Somewhat to her surprise, Franklin did not sound particularly enthused to hear from her after such a long time. Perhaps he was understandably frustrated over the position in which she'd placed him. She was sure her family had tried to intimidate him into acting as her representative, knowing he possessed the authority to make a wide range of independent business decisions on Grace's behalf.

  She got right to the point and explained what she planned to do.

  "A gentleman named Paul Montcrasse will be calling you with the list of people to be contacted. You should hear from him this afternoon. Please arrange for those people to meet with me, as soon as possible, although I understand that many of them will need to travel quite a distance to get here."

  "But, Ms. Haley, that could take weeks. And your fiancé—"

  Boy, was she getting sick of that word.

  "Make it clear that I expect them, or their representatives, immediately. We will use the penthouse suite at the Drake Hotel. In fact, put them all up at the Drake, Franklin, as a gesture of
my appreciation for their trouble. I'll pay the bill personally."

  "But, Ms. Haley, I know that Mr. Huntington would want to meet with you before you make any rash decisions." Franklin's voice cracked with his agitation.

  "Good God, Franklin. Anyone would think you were Charles's attorney, not mine." She couldn't prevent the irritation from rising in her voice. She tried to squelch it and was mostly successful. "Just set it all up please, and don't worry about Mr. Huntington. He will be taken care of, have no fear."

  Eight

  Pressing ice wrapped in a rough towel to the corner of her battered and bleeding temple, Grace decided that her official story for the bruised face was going to involve a car door, or perhaps an inauspiciously placed lamp. Anything but the truth.

  That she'd been clocked in the head by a cell phone-wielding attorney was rather embarrassing.

  That she'd very nearly been beaten up in a bar brawl that ended with a very small, but clearly annoyed, Chihuahua peeing on her, was simply humiliating.

  She was definitely going with the car door story.

  Pulling the towel away from her head for a moment, she grimaced at the sight of blood smeared on the cloth. Lovely. No doubt the bruised-and-bloodied look would go over well at the meeting she'd set up tomorrow at the Drake Hotel. She would be the picture of an accomplished and in control executive. Ha.

  She wasn't even going to try to kid herself that makeup would be able to cover this.

  And the week had started so promisingly.

  She'd made full use of her second day off, taking Monday afternoon to touch up her roots and to hit the shops on Oak Street in search of a designer suit to spend every last penny of her savings from waiting tables on. It might be superficial, but Grace was fully aware of how much easier it was to command respect in a roomful of business people when you were wearing a fifteen-hundred-dollar Chanel suit. She considered the money well spent on her armor.

  When she caught herself sneaking up the stairs of their apartment and praying that Sarah wasn't home, to notice and wonder at the suit bag emblazoned with the world-famous interlocking Cs, Grace decided that she would be very happy when her days of pretending to be someone else were over. The tension, and fear of getting caught in all her skullduggery, was weighing more and more heavily on her nerves as the clock ticked down to her day of resolution.