Ashley forced herself to take a deep breath before entering Jeff’s study. Her sudden attraction to him hadn’t gone away over dinner. The only thing she could figure was that she’d been so sick when she’d first met him that she hadn’t noticed the appeal of the man or her own weakness where he was concerned. Now that the virus was under control, she was able to feel the pull. Which made for a great science experiment, but didn’t help her current situation: how to get through a conversation with him and not act like an idiot.
Practice, she thought desperately. Maybe this was a case of practice making perfect. That decided, or at least hoped for, she tapped on Jeff’s open door and walked into his study.
The room was large, with beautiful bookcases on two walls and a bay window on the third wall, overlooking the garden. His wood desk was big enough to double as an extra bed, and two leather club chairs faced the imposing barrier.
Jeff looked up as she entered. He was still wearing his suit, although he’d taken off the jacket and loosened his tie. A few strands of hair fell across his forehead. They should have softened his appearance, but he was as formidable as always.
“Have a seat,” he said, motioning to one of the empty club chairs.
She sank into the dark brown leather seat and tried to relax. She had an agenda and a purpose. She would do well to remember both and not think about how his gray eyes made her think of the sea during a storm or the way his long, strong fingers had looked as he briefly touched her daughter’s hair. She wasn’t sure if he was a kind man, but he was capable of kind acts. Did that make him any safer for her?
“You’ve been very good to us,” she said, plunging in when it became apparent he wasn’t going to speak first, which made sense—she’d been the one to request the meeting. “Putting us up, arranging for Maggie to get to school. It’s not that I’m not grateful, it’s just that there are some things I need to do myself.”
He rose. “Are you taking any medication?”
She blinked at him. “What?”
“Are you taking anything for the flu? I was going to offer you a brandy.”
“Oh. No. I’m feeling much better. A brandy would be nice.”
It would also give her something to hold so she wouldn’t have to worry about her fingers twisting together the way they were now.
He opened the doors of a cabinet built into one of the bookcases and withdrew a bottle of brandy along with two glasses.
“Go on with what you were saying. You need to be responsible for some things yourself. Can you be more specific?”
As he spoke, he poured, then handed her a glass. She took it, careful to keep her fingers from touching his. “Thanks. I was talking about the baby-sitter. When she dropped off Maggie she wouldn’t let me pay her. That’s not right.”
He poured his own drink, then settled on a corner of the desk. Which meant he was closer to her than he’d been before. Which meant her heart had jumped into her throat, making it impossible to breathe or swallow.
“You have a point,” he said.
“I do?”
He nodded.
She forced herself to be calm. Slowly she found herself breathing again. She even managed to take a tiny sip of the brandy. It was hot and wonderful as it burned its way down to her stomach.
“I didn’t mean to take over your life,” he said. “I’ll give you an invoice for the baby-sitting expenses to date and you can reimburse me.”
“I, ah, thank you,” she said, surprised he’d seen her side so easily. She also wondered how many times she’d thanked the man since meeting him.
“Anything else?”
As in, did she want to talk about anything else, she supposed. She studied him, thinking that despite the beautiful home and the successful business, he was incredibly alone. Before she and Maggie arrived, there hadn’t even been any food in the house. She sensed he lived for work and little else and found herself wondering why.
Of course there could be women, she reminded herself. Maybe it was her own wishful thinking that he spent a lot of time by himself. There could be dozens of girlfriends. But only the kind he didn’t invite home, she thought. The house was too silent. There were no echoes of past voices and laughter.
“Ashley?”
“Huh? Oh, sorry. I was lost in thought.”
“Want to tell me about what?”
“Not especially.” She gave him a false smile, then said the first thing that popped into her mind. “I’m not a widow.”
A slight raising of his left eyebrow was his only response.
She closed her eyes and wondered if that had sounded as stupid as she thought. “What I mean is that based on what I said before you probably think I’m a widow, and I’m not. Well, technically Damian is dead, but we divorced first. He died a few months later.”
“All right.”
She could see he was wondering what possible relevance that information had for him. “It’s just that we’d talked about it before. Actually, Maggie mentioned it. She made it sound as if…well…” She cleared her throat and took another sip of her brandy.
“I, ah, should go now,” she said, rising to her feet. “You have work and I—”
“You’re welcome to stay,” he said. “If you’re feeling up to a little conversation.”
“I—yes, that would be nice.” She plopped back onto the seat and smiled. The man made her nervous, but with a little effort on her part, she was sure she could act fairly normal.
“Tell me about school,” he said, moving around the desk and settling into his leather executive chair. “Why accounting?”
“It suits me,” she said, consciously relaxing in her chair. “I’ve always enjoyed math and I’m basically an orderly person. I wanted a career that gave me flexibility with my time and didn’t tie me down to a big city.”
“You want to leave Seattle?”
“No, but I want the option in case that changes.”
“Makes sense.”
“I started college right out of high school, but with getting married and then getting pregnant, I wasn’t able to finish as quickly as I would like.”
“But you didn’t give up.”
He wasn’t asking a question. His gray eyes seemed to see past her facade of quiet confidence—if that’s what her facade was projecting.
“I’m not the giving-up kind,” she admitted, and took another sip of her brandy.
Around them, the night was still. It wasn’t raining and there wasn’t any wind. In the distance she heard the faint sound of a car, but nothing else. While she and Jeff weren’t the only people left in the world, there was an air of solitude in the study. As if they might be cut off from civilization. Oddly, that didn’t seem like such a bad thing.
“Who taught you not to quit?” he asked.
She considered the question. “I didn’t have a choice. If I’d given up, I wouldn’t have survived.”
“Why?”
She hesitated, not sure she was ready, or willing, to tell her life story to a virtual stranger. But, despite his emotional distance, Jeff was easy to talk to. Probably because she doubted she could say anything that would shock him. He’d seen and done so much more than she could ever imagine. Her life would be very small in comparison.
“I had a sister who was four years older than me. Margaret… Maggie. I adored her. My dad ran off before I was born, so it was just us three girls. At least that’s what my mom used to say.” She smiled sadly at the memory. “Mom worked really long hours. She was a waitress. She tried going back to school so she could do something else, but she couldn’t make it. She was always so tired. She kept saying that she should have done it when she was young and that we should learn from her mistakes. Don’t give up on college no matter what.”
“You took her words to heart.”
Ashley nodded. “They made a lot of sense.”
He continued to study her. Was he taking her measure? Did he find her wanting? Lamplight touched his hair, illuminating the light s
trands. There wasn’t any gold glinting there—just pure blond. A muscle twitched in his cheek.
“You told me you don’t have any family,” he said. “Where are they now?”
Involuntarily she looked away, lowering her chin and biting her bottom lip. “Gone,” she said softly. “Maggie was hit by a drunk driver when she was just sixteen. She and a couple of friends were walking home from the library. It was about nine in the evening and they’d been studying for midterms. All three girls were killed instantly.” She hesitated. “It was a difficult time.”
The simple sentence didn’t begin to explain what she’d gone through. The shock—the incredible pain and disbelief. Her sister, her best friend, was gone.
She clutched the brandy glass in both hands. “Mom was never the same. She sort of disappeared into herself after that. A few months after Maggie died, Social Services put me in a foster home and my mom in a mental institution. One of the times they let her out for a weekend to visit with me, she killed herself.”
Jeff didn’t say anything. Ashley figured there wasn’t all that much to say. She’d had more than her share of tragedy. Most of the time she was able to deal with it, but other times it threatened to drag her down.
“What happened after that?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I grew up in a series of foster homes. Most of them were pretty okay. The people tried to be nice and help me fit in. I had some counseling. I managed to make friends and keep up my grades. Unfortunately I had lousy taste in men. I had a series of loser boyfriends. They weren’t mean—they just didn’t get anything right.”
“Including Damian?”
Ashley tried to remember the last time she’d talked about her past. She usually didn’t say anything because there was no way to talk about it without making her life sound like a badly written soap opera. Now she found herself spilling her guts and she couldn’t figure out why. She wasn’t sure Jeff was even interested.
“Damian tried,” she said. “But he wasn’t what I wanted him to be. We met during my senior year of high school and I was so sure he was the one. I believed that he would love me unconditionally and forever.”
“Is that what you wanted?”
The question startled her. “Of course. Doesn’t everyone?”
“No,” he said evenly.
Ashley stared in surprise. Who wouldn’t want more love in their life? She thought about Jeff. He was a man who spent his life alone. Most likely by choice. But why?
She thought about asking, but she wasn’t feeling that brave.
“Damian tried,” she continued, picking up the thread of her story. “He cared about me, but he was too young and too much of a dreamer. He would rather scheme than work. He was always going to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Unfortunately his dreams weren’t practical, and when it came time to put food on the table, he took shortcuts. I don’t know everything he was involved in, but I suspect it was all illegal. By the time I’d figured that out, we were married and I was pregnant. After Maggie was born, I told Damian he was going to have to change his ways or it would be over. It had been scary enough when it was just me, but with a child to consider—” she shook her head “—I couldn’t do it.”
She wondered if he would ask for details. She didn’t want to talk about the strange men who had come to the house in the middle of the night, or the gun she’d found in her husband’s coat pocket.
But Jeff didn’t ask about that. Instead he said, “When he wouldn’t go straight, you left him?”
“I didn’t have a choice. I filed for divorce. Six months after it was final, he was killed in a car accident.”
“You’ve been on your own ever since.”
Again, not a question.
She nodded.
He leaned forward and set his drink on the desk. “You’re strong, Ashley. You’ve more than survived all that life has handed you—you’ve succeeded. Not many people can say that.”
His kind words made her squirm. “I didn’t have a choice. There was Maggie to think of.”
“You named her after your sister.”
“I love them both.” She cleared her throat. “And things are looking up. In eighteen months I’ll have my degree and I’ll be able to get a real accounting job, with good pay. Maggie will be entering kindergarten. A couple of years after that, I’ll be able to afford a town house for us. We’ll be a regular family.”
She was counting the days until that time. She was tired of watching every penny and stretching them until they snapped like rubber bands. She wanted to be able to buy her daughter pretty clothes and occasional dinners out. She wanted to go to the movies every couple of months and maybe even afford a trip to Disneyland.
That would come, she reminded herself. The worst of it was behind her. She would—
“I don’t want you going back to work at Ritter/ Rankin Security,” Jeff said.
Her world shattered. In that second, as he spoke those few words, everything changed. Her throat tightened and her hands started to shake.
“Because I brought Maggie to work?” she asked, barely able to breathe, let alone speak. “But Jeff, you have to understand why.”
“I do understand. Your schedule is impossible. You don’t get any sleep. Your free time is spent studying and taking care of your daughter. You have no savings, no back-up. I’m amazed you’ve stayed as healthy as you have.”
So why was he firing her? She needed the money and the benefits the job provided. Where else would she get such perfect hours and medical insurance for her child? Her eyes burned, but she refused to give in to the tears.
She set her glass on the desk and rose to her feet. “You can’t fire me,” she insisted. “Dammit, Jeff, I do good work. How can you do this—cutting me off without a way to support my child? I’ll have to drop out of school. I—”
She couldn’t go on. It was so unfair.
“You misunderstand me,” he told her. “I’m not trying to make your situation worse. I’m offering you alternative employment. I would like to hire you as my housekeeper. You’ll take care of things here—cooking, cleaning, whatever else there is to do. You can live here rent free. In addition, I’ve spoken with my financial director. There is plenty of contract accounting work. If you’re interested, you can do that to supplement your income. The combined amounts should give you about double what you’re making now.”
As usual, she couldn’t read what he was thinking, but she had a good idea. No doubt he was pleased with himself for acting so magnanimous.
“So I’m your charity case for the month?” she asked. “It’s an interesting practice, taking people off the street and fixing them. Will you do orphans next?”
“You’re overreacting.”
“Probably because I’m a woman, right?” She pressed her lips together to hold in the rage. He was playing with her. She didn’t understand why, but she recognized the sensation of being manipulated.
“Your offer is generous,” she told him. “But I’m not interested. Maggie and I will be fine without you. And we’ll be leaving in the morning.”
Chapter Six
Ashley hurried to her room. She felt hot and lightheaded, as if her flu had returned, but she knew her symptoms weren’t that easy to explain. Her eyes burned and her hands balled into fists. She felt angry and embarrassed—but most of all she felt betrayed.
How could he have said all that? Offered her all that? It wasn’t right. She was a temporary guest in his home and he’d treated her like a—a— She stopped in the center of the upstairs hall and leaned against the wall. She didn’t know what he’d treated her like, but it made her feel ugly inside. As if she’d somehow been selling herself. As if… Damn.
Ashley sank onto the floor, pulling her knees up to her chest. Shame flooded her as the truth crashed over her with the subtlety of a Midwestern thunderstorm. She was an idiot. A down-to-the-bones kind of fool.
Jeff Ritter had come out of nowhere and rescued her. There was no other wa
y to describe his taking charge of her life and setting everything right. He’d brought her into his gorgeous home and he’d been kind to her and her daughter. The second the flu bug had departed her system, she’d found out she was incredibly aware of him as a man. She thought he was good-looking and sexually intriguing. That kind of attraction hadn’t happened to her in years. In fact she’d been so immune, she’d assumed that part of her was dead.
She’d been startled to feel like a woman again and she’d gone from zero to having-a-crush-on in less than nine seconds. His offers for her to be his housekeeper and do part-time accounting work had blown her fantasy apart in a single breath. She’d been left feeling like an idiot and acting even worse.
It was the stress in her life, she told herself. Too much to do, too little time and money. Years of just getting by had worn her down. At the least little upset, she’d fallen apart. So she’d thought Jeff was the answer to a single mom’s prayers and he’d thought she was efficient hired help. Did that matter? He wasn’t responsible for her fantasies being destroyed. She shouldn’t be having them in the first place.
She leaned her head against the wall and wished she could take back the past fifteen minutes and have them to do over again. This time she would see his offer for what it was—kindness from a stranger, not a rejection from a fantasy lover. Unfortunately time wasn’t going to bend just for her.
Jeff stared at the chair Ashley had used and wondered what the hell had happened. Somehow he’d upset her or insulted her, or both. She was going to leave in the morning and he couldn’t stop her. Not that he should want to.
He drained the last of his brandy and hoped the fire burning down to his stomach would ease some of the ache inside. He could almost remember a time when normal conversations had been simple. When he’d been comfortable around people and had taken pleasure in their company. He could remember laughing with Nicole. Touching her, kissing her. He remembered easy words spoken without thinking. Not anymore. Not ever. He weighed each word, wondering if he was getting it right. Because he didn’t know how to do that anymore.
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