Once Upon a Pillow

by Christina Dodd

  Meeting Griswald is a shock; he is neither gruff nor old, but a powerful, handsome man. In fact, he is Zack Givens, cold, heartless—and charmed by the artless young woman who brings him chicken soup, treats him like a friend…and falls in love with the humble man she imagines him to be. When she discovers Zack's secret and faces his betrayal, she leaves without a backward glance. Can Zack solve the mystery that haunts Hope's past to prove their futures lie together?

  Present day Boston Massachusetts

  Zack Givens hurried into the house, tossed his briefcase onto the brown leather sofa and strolled to the phone on his cherrywood desk. He wanted to be alone when he called his answering service and listened to that woman’s voice again.

  Hope's voice. This afternoon, when he’d heard her, he had thought she sounded warm and passionate, like fragrant nights on a tropical island, like lustrous pearls against a smooth, pale throat…like a woman in the throes of arousal. When he had heard that voice, a shiver had worked down his spine, and… This was stupid. Leaning over, he punched the number for the answering service.

  “This is Hope. Are you calling for Mr. Givens’s messages?”

  What a voice! Friendly, husky, and so sexy. He took a long breath to slow the sudden thump of his heart. Amused at this infatuation with an unknown woman, he built a picture of her in his mind. Hope probably sported broad, capable, child-bearing hips, and when she wasn’t answering the phone she was making spaghetti for her husband and her legion of grandchildren. Zack’s portrait of Hope added a measure of sanity to an obsession that was otherwise pure madness. “I am calling for Mr. Givens’s messages.”

  “Hold, please. I’m ringing Mrs. Monahan. I’m afraid she’s gone out to shovel the snow on her front walk.”

  In an instant, Hope was gone. He didn’t even get music, only the occasional beep that told him he was on hold. Picking up a pencil, he tapped it in beat of syncopated impatience. He wasn’t feeling so infatuated with her now.

  Hope clicked back in. “She’s not there.”

  “I’m here,” he announced in a significant tone.

  “Yes, but you don’t have any real problems. Mrs. Monahan needs an artificial hip and she can’t afford it. Her arthritis, you know. She hobbles on a cane. She needs a walker, but she won’t let me get her one. I know I could track down a used one for almost nothing.”

  “Yes.” He cleared his throat. What did he know about used walkers? “What about her family? Shouldn’t they be worried about this so you could give me my messages?”

  “She doesn’t have a family. A lot of old people don’t.”

  Now that was a situation he couldn’t imagine. His family was always there for him…whether he wanted them or not. “My aunt had a hip replacement two months ago.” Conversation. He was making conversation with the answering service lady. His friends would be so proud.

  Hope's voice grew more concerned. “How is she?” So Hope felt compassion, not only the people she served, but for anyone she ever heard about.

  This answering service was a disaster. “She still has trouble getting around.”

  “That’s miserable. I’ll bet she’s your favorite aunt.”

  “She’s my father’s youngest sister, and except for the arthritis, she’s a real live wire. So yes, she is my favorite.” Why was he telling this woman, this stranger, these things? He made his tone stern. “I’ll take those messages now.”

  Hope responded as she should…finally. “Of course, sir—w ait a minute! There she is.”

  He was back on hold again, listening to that obnoxious beep. This woman at the answering service was incredibly inefficient, operating without any sense of decorum or any understanding of his importance.

  The line snapped back on. “Mrs. Monahan is fine, but she was shoveling her walk. I told her if she fell down she’d be freeze to death. For Pete’s sake, she’s eighty.”

  For Pete’s sake? He hadn’t heard anyone say that for years. So Hope really wasn’t the sensual young thing her voice suggested. He was relieved. He really was.

  “Are you Mr. Griswald? You’re Mr. Givens’s butler, right?” Hope’s voice warmed with amusement. “You have to be. I can’t believe the old fart keeps a male secretary at home. Oops, there’s Mr. Cello. Hold, please.”

  Old fart? Mr. Cello? Old fart?

  She came back on almost immediately. “He’s waiting for news on his student loans. If he doesn’t get scholarships, he has to wait tables again this semester.”

  Zack swore he only understood every other word she spoke. “His name is Cello?”

  “No, that’s the instrument he plays.” Hope sounded impossibly cheerful. “I have nicknames for my clients. There’s Ms. Siamese.”

  “Politically incorrect.”

  “Yes, if I was talking about her. It’s her cat, it yowls all the time she’s on the phone.”

  “Oh.” Politically incorrect? This was appalling. Hope had no business knowing so much about her callers. She truly had no business telling him about them, although she hadn't told him any names. And she should never, ever care so much.

  “There’s poor Mrs. Chess. She’s got a baby, her husband took off, and she’s living on welfare because if she gets a job she can’t pay for the child care and survive. She and I play chess over the phone. She’s lonely.” Hope sounded wistful, as if she were lonely.

  Zack was reeling. “How is she paying for the answering service?”

  “We charge people like your Mr. Givens more to make up for people like her.”

  “It’s illegal to charge one man more for the services he receives.”

  “Mr. Givens is receiving more services. I’m keeping a permanent log of every call he receives, plus I’m to keep track of Mr. Givens’s appointments, plus I’m to send flowers and jewelry as instructed by Mr. Givens should he need to stage a seduction. Somebody has to take care of the big man’s seductions. You can’t expect him to stage them himself.” Hope mocked him—Zack Givens—with words and tone.

  “You don’t have much of an opinion of Mr. Givens. What’s he done to you?”

  “Nothing.” She chuckled huskily. “He’s just rich. When it comes to the milk of human kindness, those kind of people are a dry cow.”

  He had never heard himself described as a dry cow before.

  “Have you been a butler long?”

  He hesitated. Should he tell her the truth? She’d be embarrassed. She’d be afraid of losing her job. She’d learn a valuable lesson.

  “Oh, dear. You’re going to be flayed alive by the big man for being so long at getting his messages, aren’t you, and you’re too polite to tell me to stop chattering. Hang on, I have them here. If Mr. Givens is nasty to you, you have him call, and I’ll make it clear it’s all my fault that you’re late.”

  “No. Really. He won’t mind. He’s really a grand employer.”

  “And you’re a loyal employee,” she said warmly. “Now let me give you the messages.”

  He surrendered. If Hope insisted on thinking that he, Zack, was a dastardly old fart, who was he to correct her? “I’ve got a pen and paper.”

  In the first business-like tone he’d heard from her, Hope read, “Aunt Cecily reminds Mr. Givens that he’s an ungrateful whelp and wants him to come to dinner tomorrow night. His sister Janna called from Washington to say Congressman Nottingham had made a pass at her, which makes her officially part of the Senate.”

  “Did she say if she knocked him ass over tea kettle?”

  Hope laughed, a long, low, breathy laugh that lifted the hairs on the back of his head and made him feel like the greatest wit in Boston. “No, she didn’t. Would she have?”

  “Check the news tonight,” he advised.

  Hope read another half a dozen, none of them particularly important, but she appeared sure of all of her facts, and she did, after all, seem efficient. And the conversation, while exasperating him, hadn’t changed his mind about her voice. She really was the sexiest sounding woman he’d ever heard.

>   “That’s all the messages, Mr. Griswald.” Hope drawled her words, wrapping her tongue around each syllable as if it were honey candy.

  Closing his eyes, he listened, and imagined how that tongue would feel sliding along his…his eyes sprang open. That was it. He’d gone mad. He was having fantasies about a female he’d never met and who was probably twice his age and three times his weight with four times the facial hair.

  “Thank you for the messages. And Hope?” He cradled the receiver between his ear and his shoulder. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Steal a Sneak Peek at Connie Brockway’s

  delightful historical romance

  No Place for a Dame

  Beautiful, bold and brilliant Avery dreams of becoming a member of the Royal Astronomical Society—and the only way she can join the all-male society is to disguise herself as a boy. After helping Giles, Lord Strand, escape a disastrous engagement, she is certain he will assist in her daring masquerade. No lady would ever come up with such a preposterous scheme, and no gentleman would accept…but fortunately for Avery, Giles is no gentleman.

  A bargain is struck between the stargazing adventuress and society’s most sophisticated lord. He will sponsor her as his prodigy and she will cover for him as he hunts London’s darkest warrens for a missing colleague from his shadowy past. But time and again Giles finds his quest compromised by his fierce and unwise attraction to the lovely girl who, though no lady, may well be the one dame to finally unlock the secrets of his heart.

  Giles smelled faintly of cedar and spearmint and this close Avery could see the starburst of lines radiating from the corners of his eyes, the cut-glass glitter of his irises framed by gunmetal gray auroras, the hard line of his jaw smudged with a nascent beard, and the deep lines scored on either side of his nose. Lines of dissipation? Or weariness? Could they be erased with a caress…?

  She jerked back. Where had that thought come from? He released her chin and she released her breath. Thank God, he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Your heart is racing and your eyes are dilated.”

  Treacherous pulse. Feckless eyes.

  “I forgot to eat lunch. It may have made me faint.”

  “You? Forgot to eat?” His patent incredulity rekindled her indignation. She nearly thanked him.

  “Am I to presume that is how one is suppose to commence ‘a polite conversation’?” she asked. “Such helpful instruction. I shall endeavor to remember it next time I am in polite company.”

  His lips twitched in an unfairly attractive manner. “I see that whatever ailed you was only temporary and that you are back to your customary contentious self.

  “I am not contentious.”

  “You are. Decidedly contentious.” He went back round to his chair.

  “Only with you.”

  This took him by some surprise. “Is that true?”

  “Mostly.”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “And why is that do you suppose?”

  “You provoke me.”

  “I most certainly do not,” he said.

  “Intentionally, I suspect.”

  “Good God. You don’t really believe that? I will allow that, perhaps, at times, I do provoke you,” he said. “But never intentionally. Such behavior is beneath a gentleman and, for all my sins, I am still a gentleman.”

  “Except when you are with me.”

  An odd light banked deep within his grey eyes. Then he tore his gaze away and quaffed back the glass of port near his hand. “Madame, especially when I am with you.”

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