"What's eating you?" Jane asked, walking into Lacey's designing room and hearing another pencil snap.
"Who? What?" Lacey quipped, glancing around and accepting the cup of steaming coffee Jane handed her.
"What's your problem that's going to make us bankrupt due to a lack of a pencil supply?" Jane questioned, glancing at the collection of midget-sized writing sticks.
"Just nervous, I guess," Lacey answered.
"What about?"
Lacey turned around and glared at Jane. "What else?"
"Rafe Chancellor."
"And his housekeeper. Or maybe I should say his keeper-keeper. Honestly, there's nothing that woman doesn't do for him."
Jane raised an eyebrow at that.
"There's nothing I wouldn't put past her," Lacey complained. "I mean, I know I spend my nights in his bed, a lot of times just sleeping with him. Do you know how nice that is?"
Jane smiled.
"A man can only stand so much of a good thing, but how do I know what he's doing with her when I'm busy here during the day?"
"Is he that kind of a man?"
Lacey shrugged. "How do I know? He never tells me what he's thinking or feeling. I think we have something terrific developing, and I think he cares about me as much as I do him. He isn't the type to look at other women. But I sure as anything know they're looking at him. He's charismatic. And it doesn't help to know he has this young woman who's washing out his socks every day."
Jane settled into the rocking chair Lacey had placed neat the window and rocked back and forth without answering for a while. "What kind of a woman is she?" Jane asked.
"Little Miss Perfect," Lacey answered, and another pencil snapped.
"What does she look like?" Jane asked, sipping her coffee.
"Probably like a centerfold," Lacey grumbled. "Rafe only picks the best in everything he chooses."
"At least that says something about you."
"Thanks," Lacey said, sweeping the broken pencils into the wastebasket. "But I'm not so sure I rate next to Miss Chinese Laundry, Mom-and-apple-pie, and Marilyn Monroe rolled into one."
"What's she like?"
"She has the sweetest little voice you ever heard on the phone," Lacey drawled, "and prepares the best beef tournedos you ever tasted."
The rocking chair creaked back and forth. "Do I take that to mean you've never actually met the woman?" Jane asked.
"No," Lacey said, turning in her chair to look at Jane. "She always manages to dust the contents of Rafe's closets, wash and iron his bath towels, and leave a casserole fit for the Queen of England and five guests and leave before I get there, even when I've arrived early, just purposely to get a glimpse of her. Amazing woman."
"She sounds like a robot," Jane commented.
Lacey took a swallow of coffee and set her cup down on her drawing board. "It would suit me just fine if Rafe kept her under the kitchen sink and out of my love life. I don't do well with competition."
Jane laughed. "You thrive on competition and you know it. Just look at the Jumper Line you came up with and the April Showers coats you designed. If that didn't come out of a spirit of competition, I don't know what did."
"That's different. That's business. This is something real with Rafe. I don't want to start playing guessing games and jealousy games with him. But damn it all, I wish he'd tell me what he thinks. He can be the strong silent type in everything else, but where I'm concerned, I want words. Words like 'My housekeeper makes a terrific chicken tetrazzini, but I could live on a diet of Lacey,' or, 'My housekeeper has a knack for lighting a charcoal fire with one match, but you are the pilot light in my heart.'"
Jane started laughing and Lacey turned and grinned.
"Is that asking too much?" Lacey yelled.
Jane set her coffee cup on the floor to prevent the contents from spilling. "It doesn't seem like it, but he may be a man who has trouble putting things into words. It doesn't make him any less of a person, just different in his methods of communication."
"Fine, if he'll just give me a phrase book of translations to help me cope with his messages in sign language." Lacey signed. "And the thing is, there's no one I can talk to about him."
"What do you mean by that?" Jane asked. "Aren't you telling me about him now?"
"That's not what I mean," Lacey answered. "There's no one who knows Rafe well that I can go to for an interpretation of his feelings. As little as he has said to me about his feelings for me, I know he's opened up to me more than he has to probably anybody he knows here in town. Which is a good sign, I suppose, now that I come to think of it."
Jane nodded. "I don't think you have much to worry about. Look at how thoughtful he's been in wanting to see you so often. He introduces you to his friends. He wouldn't be doing that if he didn't intend to keep you in his world. And he talks about you to his friends. Didn't you tell me how some of his friends were already picking out your wedding date just because Rafe's never been so gung-ho about any woman the whole time he's been living here?"
Lacey nodded in agreement.
"Silence creates suspicion," Jane said, picking up her coffee cup again and sipping from it. "I think you should pay a little visit to the housekeeper and check her out firsthand, especially since Rafe's out of town. The best way to deal with a problem is to confront it head-on."
"I can just see us getting into a bake-off competition," Lacey mumbled. "She'd win. But if we had a dress-designing competition, I'd come out ahead."
"Right," Jane agreed, cheering Lacey on.
"But what good is a dress going to do Rafe?" Lacey asked. "I still haven't figured out one good reason why he needs me."
"Probably the same reason you need him," Jane commented. "Because neither one of you needs anybody."
Lacey gave what Jane had to say a lot of thought, as long as it took her to drive from the boutique out to Rafe's house. As long as she knew the housekeeper was around this morning, she might as well get this initial meeting over with to decide what sorts of tactics she should take against this competition. With Rafe out of town, Lacey would have enough time to implement whatever change of plans was needed before he returned, whether that involved changing the color of her hair or whipping up a fully edible gingerbread house for two. Whatever the housekeeper's appeal, Lacey decided, she would top it.
Suddenly she realized she hadn't taken time to figure out what the purpose of her visit was going to be to camouflage her spy mission. Lacey's irritation increased as she pulled into Rafe's long driveway and noticed the unfamiliar car parked behind his 1933 Chevy. A hulking lineback figure was waxing the fenders of Rafe's antique car.
"Great," Lacey muttered to herself as she pulled up behind a dusty blue Beetle missing the rear bumper. "Her boyfriend is here too. I wonder how he feels about his girl working for a man like Rafe Chancellor? We probably have a lot in common to talk about."
The barefoot lineback with the short-cropped hair stopped polishing the car at the sound of Lacey's arrival and stepped around the hood of the VW to see who was in Rafe's driveway.
Lacey plastered a smile on her face and opened her car door.
The lineback returned her smile and stepped over to Lacey's car, holding out a hand. "I bet you're Lacey Adams," Lacey was greeted, her hand being pumped in the introduction. "Lieutenant Colonel Rafe told me you had a car like that. I'm his housekeeper."
Lacey's smile quivered. Well, maybe, she thought, taking a closer look at the lineback. If she stretched her imagination, she would be able to see the girl behind the loose-fitting sweatshirt and baggy jeans. Even the hair threw her off, but the voice was definitely the one she had heard over the phone. "I'm really glad to meet you," Lacey said, pumping her hand back. "Rafe talks so highly of you and all you do for him. I have to tell you I'm envious." But not in the same way I was on the drive over here, she added to herself. What a relief to know she wasn't going to have to learn how to plow fields and bale hay just to keep up.
"What brought you out
here?" the girl asked, tucking her rag in her hip pocket.
"Oh… I… Uh." They both knew Rafe was out of town. "I'm missing a sketchbook and thought I might have left it here. Did you run across one about this big?" Lacey gestured with her hands. "No? Well, I must have overlooked it somewhere at home."
"Can I fix you something cool to drink while you're here? Lieutenant Colonel Rafe says you like freshly brewed tea."
"Does he talk about me much?" Lacey asked, glowing from this report, anxious to hear more.
"All the time."
"Oh. Well. Gee. I'd like something to drink, thanks."
"How about some cassis tea?"
"What?"
"It's nothin' more than blackberry, but the box says 'cassis,'" she answered. "It's not as good as sassafras, but it'll do to cool you down on a hot day like today."
It figured, Lacey thought, watching her wipe off her perspiring forehead with the back of her hand. She wouldn't have ordinary tea bags like everybody else. She'd have something exotic like cassis. "Sounds great."
"Let me just shove the thirty-three back into the garage. Lieutenant Colonel Rafe doesn't like it left out where the hot sun can bake the color out of the paint."
"Shove it back?" Lacey's mouth dropped open.
"It won't take a minute," she assured Lacey.
"But why not just get in it and drive it back?"
"Lieutenant Colonel Rafe doesn't let just anybody drive it."
"Oh," Lacey answered, and watched while she pushed the car back into place.
Lacey spent more than an hour listening to the housekeeper describe Rafe's likes and dislikes from a maintenance, cleanup, housekeeping-cooking point of view. It never hurt to have that kind of arsenal of information, even if Lacey wasn't sure she'd ever know what to do with it.
"Now what's your problem?" Jane asked Lacey two days later. Lacey was sitting at her drawing desk with a collection of wadded paper lined up in perfect order across the top.
"Oh, nothing," Lacey answered, continuing to stare out of the window and barely acknowledging Jane's entrance into the attic room.
"It must be something or you wouldn't be so full of nervous energy and not doing anything about it." Jane walked over to the desk and uncrumpled one of the papers, turning it over back and front. "There's nothing on this," she said, and looked over at Lacey, waving her hand in front of her face to attract her attention. "I thought you were having trouble with a design."
Lacey shook her head. "I don't feel like designing anything today."
"I see," Jane said, and perched in the window so that even if Lacey wasn't going to look at her she couldn't avoid seeing her. "I bet this has some connection with Rafe Chancellor. What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
Jane let that pass, and took her time before she tried to make her own deductions about the situation. "It can't be the housekeeper. You already told me she'd never make first grade as Miss America. You can't still be worried about that."
"I'm not," Lacey answered, and met Jane's eyes directly. "It's nothing."
"Lacey…"
"He's been gone now for three days," Lacey said, "and I have heard nothing from him."
"Now we're getting somewhere," Jane said, smiling. "It's only three days."
"It feels like three months," Lacey said, and crumpled another sheet of paper, adding it to the pile on her desktop. "I can see why he didn't call the first night. He was probably tired from the trip and he'd seen me just a few hours earlier. Fine. The second day, maybe he didn't call because he got really busy with his first day's business and thought it would be too late when he got back to his room to call me. Last night I figured he'd call for certain. I mean, it's been three days. I'm hungry just for the sound of his voice. Isn't he supposed to be feeling these things too?"
Jane smiled and crossed her arms, ready to give her advice. "I'm sure men feel these things too. But they handle them differently than women do."
"Like ignoring them."
"Where is he?"
"At the Plaza in New York."
Jane frowned. "If you know where he is and how to get in touch with him, why don't you call him?"
"Because I want him to call me," Lacey said, squashing the line of crumpled paper together into one giant wad. "I want to know that he's missing me the way I'm missing him, even if he is busy. Can anyone be too busy to miss another person?"
"I know," Jane sympathized.
"Besides," Lacey said, tossing the wadded paper into the wastebasket, "I don't want to bother him if he's busy. I want him to know I don't have to call him up every two seconds just to get a high from the sound of his voice. I want him to know I can stand on my own two feet without him. I was doing it before I met him and I'll still be doing it twenty years from now, with or without him. And I don't want him to know I'm missing him as badly as I'm missing him if he's not missing me that much too."
Jane laughed. "You sound like a true independent woman."
"I am!" Lacey returned, poking her chin out at Jane. "It's just that where Rafe's concerned I feel like a soft-shelled crab. All you have to do is poke me and I'll wiggle away and hide under a rock someplace until he can come rescue me again."
"Why do you need reassurance about that man?" Jane asked, leaning back so that her shoulders rested against the closed panes of the window.
"Because he never tells me anything. He's the strong, stone-mountain-silent type. Very hush-hush about his feelings and emotions. He should be in the Pentagon instead of New York."
Jane shook her head and smiled at Lacey. "Look at everybody around you, will you, and quit whimpering? The man obviously adores your company. Every time he's in town he wants you around him. How many other men have you known who keep you guessing week after week about when they're just going to call you up for the next date?"
"I know," Lacey whined, "but—"
"And from what you've told me," Jane continued, not giving Lacey a chance to speak, "he's open enough with you to show his affection toward you, touching you as he crosses a room, surprising you with kisses, introducing you to his friends and letting them know how proud he is to have you with him."
"I know, but—"
"And how many men have any of us ever met who like to cook for the women they're dating? And don't mind taking them out to dinner even after a hard day at the office? And don't ask the women to pick up their socks after them?"
"How much did he pay you to say all of this to me?" Lacey joked.
Jane ignored her attempt at humor and continued. "And how many men do you know who are capable of accepting you as you are? Who don't let your business threaten them? Who actually encourage you in what you do? Frankly, until you met this Rafe Chancellor," Jane confided, "I didn't think there was anyone who could match you. Not a man, anyway. But this guy has definite possibilities."
"I know," Lacey said, feeling twice as despondent now because Jane was absolutely correct in everything she had said about Rafe. "But I just wish he'd tell me he loves me."
"He may never tell you that," Jane answered. "Not in words, if he's as strong and closemouthed as you say he is. Are you going to let mere words stand between you and what you want?"
"I know, but—"
"Hasn't all that he's already done with you and for you spoken for itself?"
Lacey nodded. "You're right. But when you don't hear anything, you start imagining the worst —other women, boredom with you, other women, second thoughts about you, and other women."
Jane shook her head. "Not a man like Rafe, from what you've told me. He is so much like you, just interested in a one-on-one relationship. Why invest a lot of useless energy in other relationships when you can have everything you want wrapped into one person?"
"Are you sure he isn't paying you for this speech?"
Jane laughed. "Think about it."
"I will. And you're absolutely right."
Jane was silent for a while. "Have you ever thought," she said eventually, "that maybe he doe
sn't tell you he loves you every five minutes because he's afraid of being rejected again, the same way he was when his wife left him?"
"He never talks about her," Lacey answered, and picked up a pencil to doodle on the pad of paper in front of her.
"That could be a sign of deep pain," Jane answered. "If he comes out and tells you he loves you and then you say, 'Thanks but no thanks, I was just along for the ride,' how do you think that would make him feel?"
"But I wouldn't say that."
Jane lifted her shoulders and uncrossed her arms. "He doesn't know that."
Lacey put her chin in her hands and leaned into her drawing desk. "What you don't understand, and maybe he doesn't either, is that I feel just as vulnerable about him. He's such a terrific person, it scares me to think that he might not always want me to stay with him."
Jane smiled at Lacey, but it wasn't a happy smile.
"If he doesn't want me, there's nothing I can do about it because I won't stay where I'm not wanted,"
Jane hopped out of the window. "I think you're making a mountain out of a crawfish mound."
"Maybe so, but it's something I have to face. I need to be prepared to deal with it if it happens."
"Maybe," Jane answered, "but you shouldn't be so prepared for disaster that you miss the good things that are happening around you." She stepped over to Lacey's desk and patted her shoulder. "You're a strong independent woman—most of the time. You can deal with it if it has to happen that way. That's all you need to know. Why don't you call the poor man and let him know you're thinking of him? He may be wondering why he hasn't heard from you after three days. Does he have to do everything you do measure for measure?"
"No. It'd be boring if he were my carbon copy."
Male Order Bride Page 14
