Millionaire on Her Doorstep

by Stella Bagwell

  Oh, well, she told herself, it really didn’t matter whether Adam showed up or not. She would eventually get all these things put away. Besides, it was probably for the best he wasn’t here. After last night, she didn’t know what to expect from him, or herself. The one thing she did know was that she’d have to get a grip on her emotions or she was going to wind up in love with the man.

  The sound of a slamming door interrupted her worried thoughts and she walked over to the front door and peered out. In spite of all her earlier misgivings, her heart clenched at the sight of Adam climbing up the stone steps to the front of the house.

  Like last night, he was dressed in jeans and boots and a black T-shirt. Nestled in the crook of one muscular arm was a large grocery sack. But it was the grin on his face that caught Maureen’s real interest. She’d expected his anger from their argument last night to still be with him. It was a pleasant surprise to see she was wrong.

  “Did you think I’d forgotten?” he asked.

  She opened the door and ushered him inside. “I thought you weren’t coming,” she confessed.

  “I had to go to Eunice this morning and just got back less than an hour ago,” he explained, then looking around the room, he let out a low whistle. “Boy, you really do need help! Are you a pack rat?”

  Maureen’s soft laugh drew his eyes back to her. She was wearing white leggings and a long, loose top of pink-and-white stripes. Her hair was twisted into a loose knot and clamped at the back of her head with a large tortoiseshell barrette. Pink tinged her cheeks and lips, and Adam decided she couldn’t have looked more beautiful if she’d been wearing diamonds and furs.

  “I didn’t think so until I walked through the house and looked at all the boxes.” She sniffed the air as smells from the paper bag in his arm began to permeate the room. “Is that food?”

  He nodded. “Have you eaten yet? I stopped by a deli before I started out here.”

  She motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen area. “No. I didn’t take time,” she told him. “The moving van was here and I wanted to make sure all the large pieces of furniture were put in the right rooms before the men left.”

  Adam placed the sack down on the countertop and began pulling out an assortment of luncheon meats, breads, cheeses, accompanying condiments and cold cans of soda. “I brought paper plates and plastic utensils, too. Just in case you hadn’t found yours yet.”

  “Actually, I’ve found the dishes, but I need to line the shelves before I put them in the cabinets.”

  She helped him carry the groceries over to an oak dining table set in a small alcove off the kitchen. As she took a seat across from him and they began to make sandwiches, Adam looked curiously out the window.

  “This is a beautiful place, but don’t you think you’d feel a little safer in town?”

  She cast him a vague smile. “I’ll feel safe enough. And anyway, I’d like to get a dog. A big outside dog. Like a Doberman pinscher.”

  He chuckled with dismay as he piled cold cuts and cheese atop a slice of sourdough bread. “You don’t want a dog, you want a killer.”

  Maureen wrinkled her nose at him. “Not at all. Dobermans are sweet, affectionate animals. I had a friend who lived in the country who had one. I loved it.”

  Adam cut her a sly glance. “Was this friend a male?”

  “The dog friend or the human friend?” she asked.

  “The human friend.”

  “It was a married couple, actually. He’d retired from the same gas company I worked for in Houston.”

  “Oh. I thought it might have been a young, handsome friend.”

  Her expression dour, she shook her head. “I told you, Adam. I don’t date.”

  “Are you telling me you haven’t dated since your divorce?”

  She popped the lid off the soda can and took a long swallow. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  She wasn’t yet thirty and she was beautiful and sexy. Why was she wasting her life? he wondered. But then he had to remind himself that he, too, had turned his back on love.

  “Then I’m afraid my parents are in for a difficult task.”

  She glanced at him sharply. “What are you talking about?”

  He swallowed a bite of sandwich, then said with a measure of sarcasm, “They want to introduce you to some eligible bachelors.”

  Maureen’s sandwich stopped midway to her mouth. “I hope you’re kidding.”

  “They think you’re lonely.”

  Lonely. Adam or any of his family couldn’t know what the past few years of her life had been like. Many nights she’d deliberately worked herself to the point of exhaustion just so she wouldn’t have to go home and face an empty apartment.

  She figured many people would probably say she had only herself to blame for her solitary existence. But none of them really knew or understood what she’d gone through with David. Maybe a stronger woman could have forgotten and moved on. But so far, Maureen hadn’t found the courage.

  “Don’t your parents realize there are other hobbies besides the opposite sex?”

  “No. They’ve been deliriously in love for twenty-five years.”

  Maureen forced herself to take another bite of her sandwich. As she chewed, she studied Adam’s grim expression. He appeared to be far more disturbed about his parents’ plan to find her a love interest than she did.

  “You’re their son. Why aren’t they focusing on finding you the right partner?”

  His lips turned down at the corners as he reached for his soda. “Because they’ve given up on me.”

  Why? Maureen desperately wanted to ask. But she kept the one word inside her. It would never do for them to keep harping on this subject.

  “Well, it’s very nice of them to be concerned about me. But they’ll soon learn I’m just not interested.”

  Last night, she’d kissed him as though she was more than interested, Adam thought. But he wasn’t going to point that out to her right now. He was here to help her unpack, not to seduce her.

  Darkness had fallen by the time they finished their simple meal. While Maureen put the leftovers away in the refrigerator, Adam went through the house, turning on lights and stacking boxes to one side so they could have clear walking paths.

  They started in the kitchen by lining shelves and putting away dishes, utensils and pots and pans. Maureen was surprised at Adam’s understanding of where things should go and how the working order of the room should be laid out. She hadn’t expected him to know about such things, and he laughed when she told him so.

  “I’m a man of many talents,” he assured her with a cocky grin. “You’re going to realize that once you really get to know me.”

  She climbed down from her perch on the countertop and dusted her hands against the sides of her thighs. “I’m about to see how good you are in the interior decorating department,” she told him, then asked, “Do you have any patience at all?”

  “I was standing behind a door when God was handing out patience.”

  She chuckled. “Well, I’ll try not to test the little you have. I only need you to hang a few pictures on the wall.”

  “Hang pictures! Woman, are you crazy? You’ve got dozens of boxes to unpack and you’re worried about hanging pictures?”

  She gave him a mocking smile. “Already trying to get out of the job?”

  He shook his head as though he’d never understand women, then motioned her out of the kitchen. “If we’re finished in here, we’d better get started or we’ll never make it to work by eight in the morning.”

  As it turned out, hanging Maureen’s oil paintings and watercolors didn’t take as long as Adam first expected. In no time, the two of them had also cleared out the boxes in the living room and arranged the furniture and lamps into a comfortable setting.

  “Are you sure this is the way you want everything?” Adam asked as they stood back and surveyed the long room.

  “Yes. I like it. Don’t you?”

  He glanced
at her with dismay. “Yes. But I figured you’d want to change your mind at least two or three times before we called it quits in here.”

  She frowned at him. “I’m not a fickle woman. Once I make up my mind about something, it stays that way.”

  Adam’s expression grew serious as he searched her brown eyes. “Does that include me?”

  “What does that question mean?” she asked warily.

  He wanted to close the two steps between them. He wanted to take her into his arms, pull the clasp from her hair and kiss her lips until neither one of them could think about the right or wrong of it.

  “Have you really made up your mind to keep your hands off me?”

  She turned away from him quickly but not before Adam caught a glimpse of torment on her face. “I thought we went all through this last night. You told me you wouldn’t—”

  “I’m not going to try anything with you,” he interrupted sharply. “I just thought...” He stopped and shook his head with self-disgust. “Hell, I don’t know why I even want you to change your mind.”

  She twisted around to face him and he could see her eyes were filled with anguish. “I don’t know why, either. I’m sure there are all sorts of women out there who’d be more than willing to have an affair with you.”

  An affair. The word had never really seemed distasteful to Adam before. Playing the field had always seemed the natural thing for him to do. But now, when Maureen merely said the word affair, he inwardly cringed. “I don’t want to just bed a woman, Maureen.”

  She groaned and shook her head. “You don’t want love or marriage, either, Adam. So what’s left? What do you want?”

  I want you. The realization struck him with such force he could only stare at her.

  “That’s exactly what I thought,” she went on before he could make any sort of reply. “You’re out for a good time. And that’s all.”

  Frowning with disgust, he said, “You really think poorly of me, don’t you?”

  She forced herself to smile and lighten the tension that had been building for the past few moments. “No. Just wisely,” she said, then motioned for him to follow her.

  Adam had helped her unpack several boxes of clothes and shoes when Maureen decided she would go to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. While she was gone, Adam opened the last two boxes marked Miscellaneous and began to place the items out on the bed so Maureen could see what else she had to find storage space for.

  There was a small cedar jewelry box, several clumps of silk flowers, an assortment of vases and a collection of old college textbooks, all of which were on the subject of geoscience. In the second box, he found several more books, most of which were bestselling fiction. As he sifted through the paperbacks, he expected to find at least one romance, but he didn’t.

  When Maureen had sworn off love, she must have well and truly meant it, he thought.

  With the books piled out of the way, he found two photo albums, but as soon as he realized what they were, he closed the covers and placed them aside. He didn’t know anyone in Maureen’s past, so he wouldn’t recognize who or what was in the photos. Besides, he felt to look at them would be invading her privacy. And he respected her too much to do that.

  Beneath the albums, at the bottom of the box, was a small, hand-sewn quilt with cats and dogs embroidered on each square. Adam didn’t know anything about quilts, but he was pretty sure this one was some sort of baby blanket and he wondered if it was something she’d hung on to from her tragic childhood.

  He lifted the quilt out of the box, and as he did so he realized something was wrapped inside it. He laid the colorful blanket out on the bed, then carefully unfolded it. Inside was a small yellow baby rattle and a gold-framed photo of a very small baby girl. At the bottom, a lock of dark hair was captured beneath the glass.

  He was studying the baby’s features, trying to figure out whether the picture was of Maureen, when he heard her footsteps enter the room. Still holding on to the photo, he glanced at her. “Is this adorable baby girl you?” he asked with a grin.

  She didn’t smile. In fact, her face had a frozen look as she stepped over to him.

  “No. It’s not me,” she said curtly. She reached out to take the photograph from him, but he kept a grip on it.

  “Then who is it?” he asked. “You told me you didn’t have any close relatives. She must belong to a friend.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “The child is obviously important to you,” he persisted. “Why don’t you want to tell me who she is?”

  Maureen reached up and tugged the frame from his hand, then pressed the photograph facedown to her bosom. Her features were stiff when she finally spoke. “The baby was my daughter, Elizabeth.”

  The words hit him like a fist in the face. “Your daughter!”

  She nodded and turned away from him. Adam stared at her rigid back as all sorts of questions whirled through his mind.

  “You said was your daughter. Where is she now? With her father?” Had the man who’d walked out on Maureen also taken their child from her, too? Just the thought made Adam want to hunt the man down and kill him.

  The sound that slipped out of her was choked and bitter. “No. My daughter is dead.”

  Adam didn’t know what to say. What to think. She’d never once mentioned having a child. Or losing one.

  For long moments, he stood in stunned silence as he pictured her going through the pain and joy of birth, then later the utter grief of having the baby taken from her.

  Slowly, he closed the small space between them and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Tell me,” he whispered.

  Shaking her head, she refused to look at him.

  “Tell me,” he urged again, bringing his cheek against hers.

  His closeness gave her the strength to swallow down the tight knot of tears in her throat and finally she was able to say, “I can’t, Adam.”

  “How long has it been since you lost her?”

  “Ten years.” She drew in a bracing breath. “Elizabeth died of crib death. She wasn’t quite three months old.”

  “Oh, Maureen.”

  It was all he said, yet it was enough for her to feel his sympathy. In fact, his stark response was far better than those she’d received directly after she’d lost Elizabeth. Many had tried to console her with medical explanations for her baby’s death and then there’d been others who’d urged her to forget her lost child and have another to replace her. Maureen had wanted to scream that a child could never be replaced.

  “I was still in college when it happened,” she found herself saying. “David was putting in long hours as an electrician’s helper. And I was...well, I was determined to finish my master’s. It was my last semester and I was studying for final exams. I had moved the baby’s crib into the kitchen so I could watch her while I studied at the dining table. David came in later that night and found me sound asleep with my head on an open book. Elizabeth was...she wasn’t breathing.”

  “So your husband was still living with you at the time?”

  She nodded, then slowly turned to face him. There was such a look of utter desolation on her face that Adam felt as if he’d been kicked in the chest by a wild horse.

  “Yes, we were still married at the time. But he left a few days after Elizabeth’s funeral. He...well, he believed I was selfish and negligent. He accused me of putting my career before my baby. He said if I’d been taking care of Elizabeth like a real mother instead of sticking my nose in a damn textbook, she wouldn’t have died.”

  Adam’s head reared back in total disbelief. “No,” he said quietly. “I can’t believe that, Maureen. The man must have been crazy.”

  Her gaze dropped to the floor between their feet. “Logically, I knew he was wrong. But emotionally, I already felt guilty about Elizabeth’s death. David took pleasure in driving the guilt even deeper.”

  Adam shook his head as he tried to fathom the heartbreak and loss Maureen must have suffered. How had she
managed to hold up under it? he wondered.

  “How could he have said such things? Anyone with any sense knows crib deaths are unexplainable. Even if you watched the baby every second of the day and night, the vigil still wouldn’t have necessarily saved her life,” he reasoned.

  “Like I said, logically, I understood all that. But I was so wounded and full of grief I had to blame someone, and I was the one who was taking care of her.”

  “Is that why he left you? Because of the baby?”

  Maureen tilted the picture away from her chest and stared down at the child she’d given birth to. In some ways, losing her seemed so long ago. Yet the pain was still as sharp and fresh as if it had happened yesterday.

  “Elizabeth’s death gave him a reason to turn his back on me.”

  “He couldn’t have loved you, Maureen. A real husband would’ve been there for you to lean on and he would’ve needed to lean on you. The man must have been a real bastard.”

  “It was my fault for not having realized his true feelings about me before I married him,” she said with bitter resolution.

  “Did you love him?” Adam had to ask.

  She let out a weary sigh. “When I first started dating David, he showed me more attention than I’d ever had in my life. And I guess...I mistook his physical affection for real love.”

  “But did you love him?” he repeated.

  She glanced away from him. “I thought I did. I married him with hopes and plans for a family and a future. But that...didn’t happen.”

  She carried the picture over to a long cherry wood dresser and placed it in a bottom drawer. Adam picked up the baby quilt and rattle and crossed the room to her. “Do you want to put these things with the photo?” he asked.

  She took the items from him, and Adam couldn’t help but notice her fingers trembled as she absently traced the outline of a sleeping cat.